In 1660, Sir Kenelm Digby wrote a letter addressed to Charles II on the behalf of the king's ‘Catholike subjects’, in which he expressed his happiness at Charles's return, and hoped that the king would have a happy, long, and peaceful reign. In the letter, he wrote that he and other Catholic subjects could not doubt but that the king’s:

In this vein, Digby implored Charles II to ‘permitt us to practise that Religion, in wch yr worthy and pious ancestors lived so gloriously many ages; in wch this nation lived so happy att home, and so estimed a broad; and in wch att this day the farre greatest part of the Christian world, both Princes and subiects, live prosperously and quietly’.

Like the 1650s, Digby managed to survive rather well during the early Restoration period, despite his Blackloist past and friendship with Cromwell. He managed to secure a place as Chancellor in the royal household of the Queen dowager Henrietta Maria, a post held until his death in 1665, and he also served in the household of the new Queen consort, Catherine of Braganza. Digby was in some ways unique, as seen in Chapter Six. But, his experience as a politically engaged English Catholic, who suffered sequestration, went into exile, and contributed to intellectual debates surrounding his faith in a republican England, before returning to the Royalist fold at the Restoration, shows how gentry Catholics could negotiate the turmoil of civil strife of the mid-seventeenth-century.

The restoration of King Charles II to the throne in spring 1660 officially ended Commonwealth and parliamentary rule. While Charles arrived back in England in late May and entered the capital in triumph on his thirtieth birthday, some voiced private concerns about whether his return would see some Catholics present at court capable of drawing the king towards popery and even towards arbitrary government. In a letter written to her father Peter Hatton on 1 May 1660, Mary Hatton Helsby was apprehensive about the king's return.