The November Declaration reveals how Restoration government sought order by converting dispossession into legal procedures. Its promise of limited restitution depended on Catholic former proprietors proving innocence within institutions shaped by Protestant possessors, while soldiers and Adventurers received protection. This suggests that restoration meant not a return to an earlier settlement, but a negotiated preservation of the Cromwellian transformation. The declaration’s ambiguity may have reduced instability, yet it also made loyalty, evidence and ownership enduring sources of contention. How should we assess the balance between pragmatic political stabilisation and the unequal burdens placed upon those seeking to recover ancestral land?