The rise and fall of the British Republic

1. The rise and fall of the British Republic Gabriel Glickman

2. Oliver Cromwell (1599-1658)

3. Problems for the republic • How to create a new constitution - competing powerbases of parliament and army. • Relationship with Scotland and Ireland. • Foreign policy – Europe and the World. • What religious settlement? • Continuing royalist threat – exiled court of Charles II.

4. Cromwell and the New Model Army • New Model Army (formerly the Eastern Association) liberated from direct parliamentary control. • Wins the First Civil War for parliament with victories at Naseby and Langport (1645). • Flourishing of ‘Independent’ Puritanism within the army – deeply religious culture. • Cromwell’s criteria for military promotions - ‘I had rather have a plain russet-coated captain that knows what he fights for and loves what he knows, than that which you call a gentleman and is nothing else’.

5. Representation, June 1647- defines New Model Army as political entity: ‘We were not a mere mercenary army, hired to serve any arbitrary power of a state, but called forth and conjured by the several declarations of Parliament to the defence of our own and the People's just Rights and Liberties...’

6. The Putney Debates, October 1647 – ideological confrontation: • Colonel Thomas Rainsborough: I think that the poorest he that is in England hath a life to live, as the greatest he... every man that is to live under a government ought first by his own consent to put himself under that government...’ • Col Henry Ireton: ‘No person hath a right to an interest or share in the disposing of the affairs of the kingdom... that hath not a permanent fixed interest in this kingdom’.

7. Cromwell – political transformation between 1647 and 1649 • Army officers politically moderate in 1647. • Heads of the Proposals put before Charles I: limited reform. • 1648 – ‘that most memorable year that ever this nation saw’(Cromwell). - Conclusion drawn from Second Civil War that Charles I cannot be trusted: can be no more deals.

8. Oliver Cromwell to Colonel Robert Hammond, 25 November 1648: ‘Our fleshly reasonings ensnare us... My dear friend let us look into providences, surely they mean somewhat, they hang so together, have been so constant, so clear and unclouded’.

9. The rule of the ‘Rump Parliament’ 1649-1653 • England declared a ‘Commonwealth and Free State’ under rule of 210 remaining members of House of Commons after abolition of House of Lords. • Isolation in Europe – war against Dutch declared 1652. • Conflicts in British Isles against Catholics and Royalists in Ireland (1649) and Covenanters who declare Charles II as king in Scotland (1650-1). • Later notoriety for Cromwell due to alleged massacre of Irish at Drogheda - ‘a righteous judgment of God upon these barbarous wretches... who have imbrued their hands in so much innocent blood’.

10. Andrew Marvell, Horation Ode upon Cromwell’s return from Ireland (1650) ‘While victory his crest does plume! What may not others fear If thus he crown each year! A Cæsar he ere long to Gaul, To Italy an Hannibal, And to all states not free, Shall climacteric be. ‘

11. Commonwealth to Protectorate • Reformist agenda in the Rump Parliament stymied by factionalism and alleged corruption. - 20 April 1653 – Cromwell dissolves Rump Parliament by force. - June-December 1653 – England ruled by ‘Nominated Assembly’ handpicked by the army while a new constitution is drawn up. • Cromwell, the Protectorate and the Instrument of Government: • December 1653 – Cromwell made Lord Protector for life under new Instrument of Government constitution drawn up by Henry Ireton. • Key institutions – Protector, Council of State nominated by Protector and unicameral British parliament with 400 English MPs, 30 Irish and 30 Scottish MPs.

12. The Western Design 1654-5 • Centrepiece of Cromwellian foreign policy = war with Spain and attack on the Spanish West Indies. • Apocalyptic visions of triumph of Protestant religion. • Largest English fleet ever to sail across the Atlantic. • Cromwell envisioned as a new Emperor.

13. MarchamontNedham, Of the dominion or ownership of the sea (1652)

14. Problems for the Protectorate • Divisions between army and parliament. • Clash over issue of religious toleration – parliamentary Presbyterians vs army Independents. • Royalist conspiracies/ uprisings e.g. Glencairn (1654), Penruddock (1655). • Growing government debts. • Defeat of the Western Design a shattering blow for Cromwell – seen as God’s rebuke (‘Sin of Achan’).

15. Cromwell’s ‘ideological schizophrenia’ (Worden) • Torn between religious radicalism and political/ social conservatism. • Instinct towards toleration, but fears growing moral and religious divides. • These issues brought to a head by offer of the Crown (1657).

16. Protectorate coat of arms

17. Henry VIII coat of arms

18. Cromwell and the kingship BulstrodeWhitelocke MP: ‘as for the new Title, that of Protector was not known to the Law; that of King is, and has been for many hundreds of years. If we keep the title of Protector... our Instrument has only its own footing to rest upon; but with that of King, it will ground itself in all the ancient foundations of the Laws of England’. Oliver Cromwell: ‘I will not seek to set up that, that providence hath destroyed and laid in the dust; and I would not build Jericho again’.