From the execution of Charles I in January 1649, to the restoration of his son as Charles II in May 1660, the kingdoms of England, Scotland and Ireland experienced a series of constitutional experiments.  Ultimately, the English republic did not last but the chronicle of those eleven years, with their high ideals and religious fervour, is important and unexpected.  Important, because the experiments laid the groundwork for modern ideas of government in Europe and America.  Unexpected because of the characters who influenced events and the ways their positions evolved.

Richard Cromwell by John Hayls, circa 1658. (Courtesy of the Cromwell Museum, Huntingdon) (Puritan Rule Under Cromwell, Amberley Publishing)

It was a decade of conflict, in which some people lost everything and some did very well.  There were enormous transfers of property and, particularly in Ireland, the losses were inestimable and tragic.  It was also a decade in which religious idealists had a leading role in government while ecstatic’s and millenarians had a chance to influence or even dictate policy.  The Scottish Presbyterians, with their cherished formula for church government, were fixed in their aims, whereas the Independents who formed a ruling group in London were devoted to Gospel reading and the continuing insights of influential preachers.  Millenarians, expecting the imminent coming of the kingdom of Jesus, were frantic to prepare by purifying the nation.  Trying to lead a government while these restive voices forced their ideals into the public sphere was difficult, but the republicans were not just concerned about the sanctity of the nation – they had a reform agenda of some urgency.  More perhaps than any other group, the London merchants would claim the ear of government as they were the principal funders of the state.  The rural population however, reacted very differently to the swift changes of rulers.  Tied to the agricultural cycle of the year and concerned about their rights to land, country people were more conservative than the aspirational townspeople; used to the symbols of kingship and the rituals of the Elizabethan church in their parishes, they saw less to gain from Puritan politics.

Charles II, after Adriaen Hannemann. (© National Portrait Gallery, London) (Puritan Rule Under Cromwell, Amberley Publishing)

Meanwhile, Charles, son of the executed king, strained to regain his inheritance.  As leader of a royalist army, he attempted to hold Scotland, but his forces were beaten at Dunbar and at Worcester where he led his own army but was forced to flee.  In Europe, he was the guest of his sister in the Protestant Netherlands but for longer he lived at the French court with his royal relations, where he was influenced by the splendour of their lifestyle.  It was not to last.  Cromwell’s powerful military forces gave England an important role in European affairs.  When England made a treaty with France, Charles was forced to move, settling for a time in Germany.  Short of money, his youth drifting away, it seemed as though his day would never come.  Yet in 1660, parliament in London invited the young man to return as Charles II.

General George Monck, 1st Duke of Albermarle, after Samuel Cooper. (Courtesy of the Cromwell Museum, Huntingdon) (Puritan Rule Under Cromwell, Amberley Publishing)

Why should a reforming state, trying to create a meritocratic government and a modern balance of power, collapse after eleven years and revert once more to monarchy?  There are multiple reasons which become apparent as the narrative proceeds.  The power and cost of the Puritan army underlies the story, the minority of people who shared the religious beliefs of the rulers, the social upheavals caused by confiscation, the disruptions to legislation, the generous rewards given to army officers, the difficulties of reforming the law or parliament itself.  The revolutionaries had emphasised how highly they regarded the rule of law and how the king had overturned it.  Yet they too had difficulties with the courts.  Perhaps their greatest problem was the scale of their ambition for change; they believed that people and society could be radically altered.  As it turned out, the stubborn habits of the population, their pleasures and pastimes, the familiar shapes of society proved more powerful than millenarian stirrings or spiritual aspiration.  Practical reform was too slow, changes of government too frequent and the presence of the army too obvious for the majority of the population to tolerate.  The rule of the major-generals was only the last straw in an increasingly militarised state.

Sir Henry Vane the Younger, studio of Sir Peter Lely. (© Lord Barnard, Raby Estate) (Puritan Rule Under Cromwell, Amberley Publishing)

When Oliver Cromwell died, his army could not coalesce behind another officer or accept the full rule of parliament.  In the ensuing disintegration, only one general could hold his forces together.  General Monck laid his mark on history when he marched down from Scotland and demanded the full reinstatement of parliament.  Once called, the members did what might have been unthinkable at any other moment during those turbulent years; they not only recalled the king but did so without conditions.

John Owen, attributed to John Greenhill. (© National Portrait Gallery, London) (Puritan Rule Under Cromwell, Amberley Publishing)

Suddenly feted by friends and enemies alike, Charles went on board the newly renamed flagship of Cromwell’s fleet and sailed back to London to take the thrones of his father once more.

Puritan Rule Under Cromwell by Jane Hayter-Hames is available for purchase now.