Five-Mile Act required all who had not subscribed to the Act of Uniformity to take an oath of nonresistance, swearing never to attempt any change in church or state or to come within five miles of any incorporated town or place where they had been ministers. Strict enforcement of this law proved impossible.
Two great domestic disasters: the great plague in London (1665) and the great London fire (Sept. 1666), burning 450 acres. St. Paul's destroyed and rebuilt by Christopher Wren. The fire led to a building trades boom in London.
Clarendon forced to resign, impeached, and exiled. Chief officers of the state began to be considered a council, forerunner of the cabinet system. The Cabal (Clifford, Arlington, Buckingham, Ashley, Lauderdale) rose to power. Powers divided between court supporters (royalists) and country supporters (parliamentarians), anticipating the Tories and Whigs, respectively.
Sir William Temple and John De Witt negotiated the Triple Alliance (England, Holland, and Sweden) as a check on Louis XIV. Charles II secretly signed the Treaty of Dover with Louis XIV, after which James immediately professed his Catholicism (See 1670).
