At the Restoration (May 1660) the Duke of York returned to England with the king, and was immediately made lord•high•adruiral and lord-warden of the Cinque Ports. The course of his conduct for the next twenty-five years forms an important part of the public history of his brother'e reign, but ouiy the leading incidents can be shortly noticed here. In September 1660, he married Anne, the eldest daughter of the Chancellor Hyde (afterwards Earl of Clarendon), to whom it was affirmed that he had been married, or at least con tracted, at Breda about a year before. The lady was at any rate far gone with child when the present marriage took place, and produced a sou in about six weeks, a circumstance which makes her father's professed ignorance and want of suspicion as to the whole affair the more extraordinary. For some curious details touching his behaviour when the matter was first communicated to him by the king, his 'Life,' written by himself, may be consulted. It is asserted by Burnet that the duke endeavoured to avoid the marriage, and that "bethought to have shaken her from claiming it by great promises and as great threatenings; but she was a woman of great spirit. and would have it knee u that she was so, let him use her afterwards as he pleased." This Is altogether opposed to her father's account, according to whom the duke petitioned the king to give his consent to the marriage with a " passion which was expressed in a very wonderful manner, and with many tears, protesting that if his majesty would not give his consent he would immediately leave the king dom, and must spend his life in foreign parts." But the delay of the step till so near the last moment does not look much like impatience on the duke's side, and rather gives ground for suspecting that there was some reluctance which it required great exertions to overcome.
The Duke of York took an eager part in promoting the war with Holland, which broke out in the close of 1664, and as lord-high admiral he assumed the command of the fleet which was fitted out, and which put to sea even before any declaration of hostilities. The motive that has been sometimes assigned for the conduct of both the brothers on this occasion is their wish to crush the Dutch as a Protestant people, and to disable them from interfering to prevent the re-establishment of popery in England. On the 3rd of June 1665, the duke gained a great victory off Harwich over the Dutch fleet commanded by Admiral Opdam, who was killed, aud nineteen of whose ships were taken or sunk, with the lose of only one on the part of the English. The death of the Duchess of York took place in the thirty-fourth year of her age, ou the 31st of March 1671, hastened, as is supposed, by the neglect, if not the positive ill-usage of her husband, who, notwithstanding his professions of zeal for religion, indulged himself in a large share of the reigning licentious ness, and kept a mistress almoet from the date of his marriage. A few mouths before her death the duchess had signed a declaration of her reconciliation to the ancient religion ; and immediately after that event the duke also publicly avowed his conversion to popery, an act which, although his concealed inclinations had been long suspected, did not fail to create a great senslition, especially as, from his brother's want of issue, he was now looked upon as Charles's probable successor on the throne.
When war was anew declared against Holland, in March 1672, the Duke of York again took the chief command at sea. The most remarkable event of this contest was the action fought 28th of May 1672, in Solehay, off the coast of Suffolk, between the combined English and French fleets under the duke and Count D'Eetrdes, and the Dutch fleet commanded by De ltuyter, who attacked the allies with a very inferior force, and was not driven off till the engagement had lasted the whole day, and the English fleet had been so shattered as to be disabled from pursuing him. The French are accused of having taken little part in the affair ; the object of their government, it is conjectured, having been to allow the English and Dutch to destroy each other. On the passing, In the beginning of the following year, of the Teat Act, which required all officers, civil and military, to receive the sacrament according to the usage of the Established Church, the duke necessarily resigned both tho command of the fleet, in which ho was succeeded by Prince Rupert, and the office of lord high-admiral, which however was assigned to a board of commis sioners consisting of' his friends and dependants, so that he still remained substantially at the head of the naval affairs of the country.
On the 21st of November 1673, he married Mary Beatrix Eleenora, daughter of Alphonse IV., duke of Modena, a lady then only in her fifteenth year. Before concluding this union ho had paid hie addresses to Susan, Lady Belasye, daughter of Sir William Armine, Bart., and widow of Sir William Belasye, the sou of Lord Belasyo; but that affair was broken off, partly by the obstinate Protestantism of the lady, partly by the interference of her father, who gave the king information of what was projected, when Charles sent for his brother and told him that having played the fool in making an unequal marriage once already, he ought to be satisfied without repeating the same thing in his advanced ago. The lady was induced to relinquish the claim she had, founded upon a written promise of marriage, and by way of compensation was, 25th of March 1674, created Baroness Belasye for life. She survived till 1713. On the 4th of November 1677, the duke's daughter Mary, then in her sixteenth year, was, greatly to the public satisfaction, married to her cousin William, prince of Orange, the consent of her father having been obtained to this Protestant alliance by the persuasions of the king, his brother, who represented to him how much he might soften the popular hostility to him on account of his religion by so apparently strong an evidence of his liberality. • During the excitement produced by Titus Oates's Popish Plot, in 1678-79, the Duke by the advice of his brother, retired to the continent, and he resided at Brussels with his wife and his youngest daughter for five or six months. While be was absent the famous bill for his exclusion from the throne was twice read in the Commons, and ordered to be committed, by large majorities, and was only prevented from being passed in that house by the prorogation of the parliament, 27th May 1679. To this date may he assigned the commencement of the open rivalry between the Duke of York and Charles's natural son the Duke of Monmouth, whose popularity with the nation, still more than the presumed partiality of his father, undoubtedly made him a somewhat formidable competitor for the succession, in the actual cir cumatancee of the legitimate heir. For the present however the latter succeeded in maintaining the ascendancy. Returning home iu the beginning of September he had the satisfaction of seeing Monmouth removed from his poet of captain-general and exiled, while he obtained from the king for himself the government of Scotland. Before he set out for that country however he became involved with other persons of his religion in the discredit of giving countenance to the story of the Meal-Tub Plot, which the Remove Catholics got up with the hope, in which they were grievously disappointed, of counteracting the effects of Oates's pretended discoveries. The share which the duke had in this business only added to the dislike in which he was held by the great body of the nation, and which was still further increased by the bigoted severity of his administration of affairs in Scotland. In November 1780 new exclusion bill was brought into the House of Commons, but although it was carried through all its stages in that house by great majorities, it was thrown out in the Lords. The bill was again introduced in the lower house in the following January, but the prorogation of the parliament on the 10th of that month, and its dissolution a few days after, prevented the business being proceeded with. A new parliament having met at Oxford in March, the bill was again brought forward there, and again defeated by the same expedient, this the last parliament held by Charles IL having been dissolved after it had sat only seven days.