The Protectorate (1)

The statue of Cromwell, erected in 1899,
 the three-hundredth
anniversary of his birth. 
Note that he is
outside the Houses of Parliament, not inside!

The key theme of the 1650s is the unsuccessful search for a lasting political settlement to replace the government of the king. The failure of this search made the restoration of the monarchy inevitable. However, if Cromwell had lived longer, or been succeeded by a son of equal ability, the story might have been different!

Barebone's Parliament

Although the dissolution of the Rump looked like a military coup, Cromwell’s primary aim was to get governing authority back into safe, and preferably reforming, civilian hands. This shows the cautious conservative side of his baffling character. Some historians have seen the dissolution of the Rump as a transitional moment for him: the shift from holy warrior to cautious pragmatist and conciliator - though one could argue that the holy warrior was always there beneath the surface..

For the Fifth Monarchists these were ‘Overturning days'. Many 'godly' congregations saw the expulsion of the Rump as the moment when God’s people might leave the wilderness behind and achieve the Promised Land – and they wrote to Cromwell to tell him so. Thomas Harrison wanted to see an assembly of seventy godly men, based on the Sanhedrin, to fit the land for the imminent coming of Christ. Cromwell had some sympathy with this view, but he repeatedly declared his belief that the kingdom of Christ would be realized spiritually in the hearts of men, not physically on earth; the way to it was through liberty of conscience and the elimination of evils. 

The compromise solution was to summon a surrogate (and temporary) British assembly of 138 men ‘of approved fidelity and honesty’ (121 from England, six from Wales, five from Scotland, six from Ireland) with supreme authority to make a constitution. This parliament, which met in July 1653, is officially known as the Nominated Parliament because it was not elected but nominated by Cromwell and the Council of Officers collectively. However, it was derisively known as ‘Barebone’s Parliament’ after one of its members, the Baptist leather-seller, Praise-God Barbon, a warden of the Leathersellers’ Company and lay preacher to a congregation of his own. 

Praise-God Barbon
Public domain

Far from being the mad assembly of religious fanatics of royalist propaganda, this was in the main a thoughtful body with radical ideas for reforming society. It spent most of its brief life discussing much-needed reforms, and in the space of five months it passed over thirty acts and had other major ones in preparation. In order to fill the vacuum created by the abolition of church courts, it established machinery for the probate of wills, and for registering births, marriages and deaths. Civil marriages solemnised by JPs were legalised (though were probably not popular). Measures were taken to abolish the excise. Acts were passed for the relief of creditors and poor prisoners, and to regulate the conditions under which lunatics were held. Discussions were held on how to replace tithes by salaries. 


But the parliament could not overcome the fact that it was not an elected parliament, and although religious radicals such as Fifth Monarchists were in the minority, they were well-organised and aroused the fierce hatred of traditionalists, who feared they were out to overturn the entire social order..

On 12 December the moderates met early one morning while many of the radicals were at their weekly prayer meeting at Blackfriars. One member after another rose up to denounce them. The Assembly (with the connivance of the Speaker) voted to hand power back to Cromwell. (Did Cromwell know beforehand? Was he deliberately not told? Did he deliberately not ask?)  When the absent MPs turned up later in the day, they were dispersed by soldiers. The mace and Parliament rolls were handed over to Cromwell.

‘For the second time in less than a year, civil authority returned into the hands of the Army, and for the second time Cromwell refused to lead a military government.’ Mark Kishlansky, A Monarchy Transformed (Penguin, 1996), p. 206.

The coming of the Protectorate

With Barebone’s Parliament gone, there was only one realistic way of filling the constitutional gap short of bringing back the king.  The initiative was taken by General John Lambert who summoned a large concourse of army officers to the Council Chamber at Whitehall where he secured their agreement to a document called the Instrument of Government, which was to be formally presented to Cromwell. 

On 16 December 1653 Cromwell was installed at a ceremony staged in Westminster Hall as Lord Protector of the British Republic. At his installation he wore a plain black outfit with grey worsted stockings in an attempt to refute the charge that he was king in all but name. This did not mollify either convinced republicans or Fifth Monarchists, some of whom denounced Cromwell from the pulpit as ‘the dissemblingest perjured villain in the world’.  For them the Protectorate was a restoration of single-person government and the adoption of a formal constitution seemed to fly in the face of God’s providence. Cromwell became an apostate and an enemy.

The Instrument of Government

The Instrument of Government was Britain's first written constitution and was the basis of government for the next three and a half years.

1. Power was divided between the Protector and the Council of State - thus introducing the separation of powers. 
2. Executive power was vested in the Protector, but he had to act with the consent of the majority of the council when parliament was not sitting and with parliament's consent when it was.
3. Parliament was a single chamber composed of 460 members, including thirty each from Scotland and Ireland. The county franchise, which comprised all adult males with property worth £200, was more restricted than the old. There was to be no taxation without Parliament.
4. Income was set aside for a standing army and a navy, chargeable upon state revenues. The standing army was a major innovation.
5. Though much of an established church was to be retained, no-one was to be compelled to attend its services. All ‘peaceful’ Christians except Catholics and episcopalians were to have freedom of worship. 

Far from being a programme for a military dictatorship, the Instrument has been seen by sympathetic historians as a carefully thought out document with a strong concern for constitutional proprieties. Austin Woolrych states that Cromwell 

'willingly accepted formal constitutional restraints on his authority that no previous English monarch would have dreamt of bowing to, and which had no parallels in contemporary European monarchies'. (Britain in Revolution (Oxford, 2003), p. 593)

The early Protectorate

In the nine months before the new Parliament met, Cromwell and the Council ruled England effectively through protectoral ordinances.  He signed his documents Oliver P., and granted knighthoods. His household assumed the characteristics of a court. At Hampton Court he patronised secular music, dancing, painting, and writing. By 1655 the office of lord chamberlain had been reconstituted and four gentlemen of the bedchamber were appointed to attend the lord protector. 

In April 1654 the government made peace with the Dutch. On the domestic front, poor relief was administered more effectively than under the Stuarts. In road maintenance and the administration of justice the government performed no worse and sometimes better than other seventeenth-century governments.

Religious policy

A broad established church, generally practising Presbyterian worship, was maintained during the Protectorate, and under protectoral ordinance, scandalous clergy were dismissed. In practice a great diversity of religious practices was permitted, with the emphasis on Protestant piety broadly defined rather than narrow denominational qualifications. For the first time in England the initiative for determining the form of worship in individual parishes came from below. 


This policy of relative toleration should not be confused with modern liberal pluralism. Cromwell believed that God spoke to his saints in many ways and that it was wrong to coerce the consciences of the godly as Archbishop Laud had done. He therefore went out of his way to be conciliatory to those with whom he disagreed. He had several meetings with the Quaker, George Fox, and with Fifth Monarchists. In London and some larger centres of population, semi-private congregations met to worship according to the Anglican prayer book, with the authorities generally turning a blind eye. Cromwell even showed practical sympathy for some Roman Catholics, though they were never granted official toleration. The French ambassador noted that Catholic priests were moving freely about London.  

The First Protectorate Parliament (September 1654-January 1655)

July 12, 1654: ‘This day sett a part for the choice of parliament men through the kingdom.’ (Diary of Ralph Josselin, p. 326) 

In early September Josselin reported (p. 330) a false rumour spread around that Cromwell was going to make himself emperor!  

On 3 September 1654, the anniversary of Dunbar and Worcester, Cromwell met his first Parliament, held after the first general elections for fourteen years. It was composed of moderate Puritan gentlemen, some of whom could not forgive the dissolution of the Rump. 

It soon became clear that there were two major obstacles to agreement: religious toleration and the role of the army. Most MPs wished, as they saw it, to restore religious order. In practice this meant suppressing the sects, which Cromwell saw it as a veiled attempt to restore the Presbyterian establishment. Parliament wished to reduce the size of the army quickly, but Cromwell believed he needed to keep the numbers up in the face of possible Leveller- Royalist conspiracies and to man the garrisons in Scotland and Ireland.

 On 22 January 1655, faced with Parliament’s proposal to slash the size of the army immediately and reduce its funding, Cromwell dissolved the House (after five lunar rather than calendar months), probably in the same fit of impulsive millenarianism that had caused him to dissolve the Rump. In a disappointed speech he accused members of ‘disettlement and division, discontent and dissatisfaction’ and compared them unfavourably with the Rump. He also attacked their religious intolerance: 

‘What greater hypocrisy than for those who were oppressed by the bishops to become the greatest oppressors themselves, so soon as their yoke was removed?’ (Quoted Barry Coward, Cromwell, Pearson, 1991, pp. 122-3)

Conclusion

1. The failure of this parliament highlighted Cromwell's dilemma; he had not found a constitution to replace the one overthrown in 1640. His fundamental contradiction was that he continued to rely on the army to enforce ‘godly reformation’, yet by 1655 the traditional rulers of England were at one in seeing the army as the prime danger to every thing they held dear. 
2. By this time ranks of Cromwell’s political enemies had swollen: the Levellers, the political Independents, the Fifth Monarchists and now the republican MPs.  He became more authoritarian – but he believed he had no choice as the realm was in danger.