1660
Restoration of Charles II
Eleven years after his father's execution, Charles II rode into London on his thirtieth birthday to bells and bonfires. The monarchy, the House of Lords, and the Church of England were all restored. England had tried a republic, decided it preferred a king, and agreed, mostly, to forget the experiment.
Royal Society Founded
At Gresham College in London, a group of natural philosophers including Christopher Wren, Robert Boyle, and John Wilkins met to formalize their weekly discussions into a permanent society for the promotion of experimental learning. Two years later, Charles II granted the Royal Society a charter. English science had acquired an institution.
Samuel Pepys Begins His Diary
A twenty-six-year-old clerk in the Navy Office named Samuel Pepys began writing a private diary in shorthand: fires, plagues, dinner parties, lovers, tailoring bills, the Restoration court. For nine years he recorded everything. The manuscript would eventually become the most vivid personal chronicle of the seventeenth century, preserving daily life in Restoration London with an intimacy no other source can match.
Rembrandt's Last Self-Portrait Period
Bankrupt and outliving both his wife and his favorite son, Rembrandt van Rijn continued to paint a long series of unforgiving self-portraits: aging face, worn velvet, eyes full of the accumulation of looking. They are still the most searching autobiographical paintings in the Western tradition, proof that a brush in the hands of a master can tell the truth about a human face.