300th Anniversary of the Treaty of Breda between Britain, France and the Netherlands

Number by catalogue:  Michel: 525   Scott: 350  

Perforation type: 13 ¾x13 ¾

Subject:

20 cents. Engraving with New Amsterdam*, 1660

Additional:

The Treaty of Breda was signed on May 1, 1660 between Charles II (King in exile of England, Scotland and Ireland) and the Scottish Covenanters during the Wars of the Three Kingdoms.

When Charles I was executed in 1649, the radical Covenanters, or "Kirk Party", moved to do a new deal with Charles II, the son of the dead King, who was in exile in Breda. The treaty basically granted everything the Kirk Party wanted. Charles II undertook to establish Presbyterianism as the national religion and to recognise the authority of the Kirk's General Assembly in civil law in England as it already was in Scotland. Charles also took the Solemn League and Covenant oath of 1643.

Charles was crowned King of Scotland in Scone in January 1651, but by then the terms agreed at Breda were already a dead letter. The army associated with the Kirk Party under David Leslie was destroyed by Oliver Cromwell at the Battle of Dunbar in September 1650 and the English Parliamentarian New Model Army had taken Edinburgh and much of Lowland Scotland. Even a subsequent rapprochement between moderate and radical Covenanters and their former enemies, the Scottish Royalists, was not enough to restore Charles' throne. He fled the country for France after his defeat at the battle of Worcester in September 1651.

Under the Commonwealth of England, Scotland was annexed, its legislative institutions abolished and Presbyterianism dis-established. There was freedom of religion under the Commonwealth, except for Roman Catholics, but the edicts of the Kirk's assemblies were no longer enforced by law, as previously.

*More about New Amsterdam you can read here