Memory Aids: Lock In the Key Facts

🧠 Memory Aids: Lock In the Key Facts

The CABAL acronym explained: The five ministers were Clifford, Arlington, Buckingham, Ashley (Cooper), and Lauderdale. Their initials spell CABAL — a coincidence that contemporaries and historians have delighted in ever since. Remember: CABAL = a secret group plotting together, which is exactly what Parliament suspected these ministers of doing. The key thing to note is that the CABAL is famous not because it was an effective government, but because it contained both pro-Catholic and Protestant ministers with conflicting agendas — reflecting Charles's deliberate divide-and-rule approach.

Three chief ministers, three phases of the reign:

• Clarendon (1660-67) — Restoration phase: designed settlement, Clarendon Code
• CABAL (1667-73) — Middle phase: Secret Treaty of Dover, Declaration of Indulgence
• Danby (1673-78) — Anglican reaction phase: Test Acts, Tory alliance
• Personal rule (1681-85) — Final phase: no Parliament, French subsidy

Charles's three "C" character traits for the exam:

• Charm — made him popular; helped him through crises
• Cunning — Secret Treaty of Dover; playing ministers off each other
• Caution — always retreated rather than risk civil war; "not going on his travels again"

These three traits explain most of his key political decisions.

Key statistics to memorise:

• 14+ illegitimate children (but no legitimate heir)
• 90,000 people "touched" for scrofula during his reign
• £1.2 million per year — his parliamentary income (often insufficient)
• £160,000 per year — what Louis XIV paid him under the Treaty of Dover
• 1670 — year of the Secret Treaty of Dover