Restoration Britain: From Puritan Gloom to Party Boom!
“Once this puritanical misery is lifted,” I suggested during one of those interminable family quiz sessions in lockdown 2020, “It’ll be like Restoration Britain all over again – we’ll party like it’s 1660.” The Great Aunt – sharp as a tack – snapped back, “I hope we haven’t got to wait 11 years.” The House Party App (remember that!) fell silent. She was right of course. The first little three-month lockdown was simply an appetiser for a grim stretch of puritanical misery of which we’re only five years in. Charles II had to fight and wait just shy of 12 years to reclaim the throne from the boorish Cromwell after the execution of his father in 1649, and I fear we Cavaliers will have to commit to a similar time frame.
In last week’s news alone, there were three announcements that prove we are still sludging through the grim Puritanical period where fun is banned and everyone is skint. Interest rates have been held at 5% and national debt hit 100% of national income; apart from Lady Starmer and Sue Gray with her salary, who has got money to party? No one I know; all our money is going on increased mortgages or food. Rachel Reeves is rehanging her office with inevitably unappealing paintings of women or paintings by women (Mrs. Thatcher, anyone? – no, not her). And joy of joys, the fourth plinth is scaffolded with death masks. And this is just one week of news; of beauty, joy and optimism there is none.
One in five children are said to experience mental health issues, the most inspiring policy on offer from Grey Labour is assisted dying and the most exciting thing the Prime Minister has done with his greedy receipt of gifts is buy himself some grey glasses. Starmer clearly agrees with the dreary state of the nation, repeating his mantra that everything is “appalling”. Things must be bad, as the King has taken to reciting poetry.
Turning on the radio, I’m scolded for not giving up my tube seat for someone with invisible needs and cautioned not to speed. What counts for socialising today consists of ‘An Evening of Menopause Myth Busting’ or perhaps attending my local city’s Green Week, an event-free festival of recycling and worry. The countryside dinner party scene has almost resurrected itself after lockdown, but not quite in the same flamboyant fashion: people seem to have to get up earlier, or they’re ‘fasting’ (the new word for dieting/clean eating/food intolerances).
“Perhaps you’ve just got old and dull,” suggests my husband. “By the way, the drains are blocked.” The only conversations we seem to be having recently revolve around the paying of colossal bills: “Have you done the car insurance for the eldest son?… What shall we do about the damp patch?… Just remembered from last winter the chimney needs relining… yawn, yawn, yawn.” And even to venture these comments will cause the fun police to tut: “Oh, look at her with her chimney”. Of aspiration or enjoyment of “nice things”, as Ed West terms them, there must be none.
The mood music from the current Government is this: be quiet and do what we tell you. Not dissimilar, I would suggest, to Cromwell’s miserable reign. Here, John Evelyn, the great diarist, records Christmas Day in Cromwell’s Britain; the prying nature of the state into men’s souls and social media posts is the same:
I went with my Wife to celebrate Christmas Day… The chapell was surrounded with souldiers, and all the communicants and assembly surpriz’d and kept prisoners by them… In the afternoon came Col. Whaley, Goffe, and others, from White-hall, to examine us one by one; some they committed to ye Marshall, some to prison. When I came before them they tooke my name and abode, examin’d me why – contrary to an ordinance made that none should any longer observe ye superstitious time of the Nativity… With other frivolous and insnaring questions and much threatning; and finding no colour to detaine me, they dismiss’d me with much pitty of my ignorance.
December 25th, 1657
Compare this to the casual festivity that Samuel Pepys records when the Merry Monarch is back on the throne:
Lay pretty long in bed, and then rose, leaving my wife desirous to sleep, having sat up till four this morning seeing her mayds make mince-pies. I to church, where our parson Mills made a good sermon. Then home, and dined well on some good ribbs of beef roasted and mince pies; only my wife, brother, and Barker, and plenty of good wine of my owne, and my heart full of true joy; and thanks to God Almighty for the goodness of my condition at this day. After dinner, I begun to teach my wife and Barker my song, ‘It is decreed’, which pleases me mightily.
December 25th, 1666
Has anyone recently felt so joyful that they’ve composed a song and played it heartily for their wife on Christmas Day? All we have, by way of musical levity, is the return of the miserabilist Oasis, and even that this joyless Government has thought fit to moan about.
Why did Britain choose to shrug off the Puritan yoke? A combination of the incompetence of Richard Cromwell (watch out, Labour NEPO babies), clever strategic alliances made by the future Charles II (Farage or the next Tory leader), general weariness of Republican rule and shift in popular sentiment that yearned for the stability and freedom (us). I have no doubt we too will shrug off this heavy, proscriptive Government of scolds and Net Zero zealots, and we too will party like it’s 1660.
Joanna Gray is a writer and confidence mentor.
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I was almost thrown out of a pub where I have been a regular for some years yesterday because some woman complained that me having a beer while ignoring her¹ (no idea who she was) made her feel uncomfortable. I figure that must have been a Labour voter. There are a lot of people out there who have a downright manic desire to interfere with the affairs of others because they believe to be entitled to that.
¹ That was arguably not the impression she claimed to have conjured up but most certainly what I was doing, having stopped there for a beer at the end of each Saturday’s walk since the time when on-entry fillout forms had just become voluntary and hand sanitizers stations where still located in prominent places everywhere.
We walked along the Kennet to The Cunning Man today. Worth a look if you’ve not been.
Thanks for the tip. But that’s almost 2½ miles distance as the crow flies from the place where I’m living which is way outside of my usual radius.
The walk along the river is very pleasant- assuming you find riverside walks pleasing
I got rid of my TV for good on second day of lockdown – 24th March 2020 – as I had no wish to be lectured by 3 stooges from London and a mad female megalomaniac in Edinburgh telling me what to do and I refused to wear a mask throughout the entire Covid debacle. My point is that one should be yourself and not what others want or insist you should be – tell them to mind their own business and do what you want with confidence. Most of these ghastly Puritans scuttle off like ‘timorous beasties’ a la Burns.
Speculation about a budget is as old as the hills. Understandable as a source of revenue via advertising. Incidentally, there are some who welcome interest rates being a little higher than inflation, not the other way round. No-one welcomes a pile of worthless notes, after all.
A ‘Government of Scolds’. Quite.
If only they were not so worthy of scolding themselves. And I include the latest set of MPs too.
“Charles II had to fight and wait just shy of 12 years to reclaim the throne from the boorish Cromwell…”
Then wait until 1688 – The Glorious Revolution – to get rid of Charlie’s brother James II, up to the old authoritarian tricks.
“Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.”― H.L. Mencken,
This government will eventually be voted out, after 5 or 10 years, but it will be replaced by one that is almost as bad. The state will get bigger and play an ever increasing role in our lives. We will still have the Climate Change Act, the Equalities Act, the Online Safety Act, restrictions on speech that “incite racial or religious hatred”, OFCOM, the BBC, mass immigration (immigration will be nowhere near zero in our lifetimes, and I am NOT talking about “net” immigration which is meaningless), the NHS (unreformed), the preference for safety (safety that is illusory) over living. All civilisations collapse, so will ours. It may be reborn but I think by the time it collapses that’s unlikely as demographics will have changed irrevocably.
And don’t you dare smoke (or even vape), enjoy more than 2 units of alcohol (1 pint or glass of wine) a day or eat a burger, bag of crisps etc. or who’ll be taxed to hell and back and told you’re putting a massive strain on the health service and are being antisocial.
The centuries old definition of Puritanism, it’s the fear that someone somewhere might be enjoying life, holds true and has been adopted by those in power.