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- [00:01]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Want to walk the halls of Anne Boleyn's childhood home? Or explore the castles that made up Henry VIII's English stronghold? With a subscription to History hit, you can dive into our Tudor past alongside the world's leading historians and archaeologists. You'll also unlock hundreds of hours of original documentaries with a brand new release every single week covering everything from the ancient world to to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com subscribe.
- [00:35]
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Dr. Jonathan Healey
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- [01:48]
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- [01:49]
Professor Ronald Hutton
Hank.
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- [01:55]
Professor Ronald Hutton
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- [02:22]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Hello, I'm Professor Susannah Lipscomb, and welcome to Not Just the Tudors From History Hit, the podcast in which we explore everything from Anne Boleyn to the Aztecs, from Holbein to the Huguenots, from Shakespeare to samurais, relieved by regular doses of murder, espionage and witchcraft. Not, in other words, just the Tudors, but most definitely also the Tudors. Imagine a world turned upside down. King Charles I, who believed himself to be God's anointed representative on earth ruling by divine right, was marched to the scaffold in January 1649 and publicly executed in front of a gasping crowd in the freezing London winter. For one breathtaking moment, the unthinkable had happened. The monarchy, that ancient pillar of order stretching back through the mists of medieval time, had been toppled Suddenly, a nation that had known nothing but kings for a thousand years found itself without one. The divine right to rule was rejected. The crown was gone. And in its place arose something radical, something almost unimaginable. A commonwealth, a republic, a kingdom without a king. For 11 extraordinary years, England experimented with a new vision of power, reimagining what governance could be in a world liberated from monarchy. Yet this revolutionary moment, this tantalizing glimpse of an alternative future, would not survive. The forces arrayed against it proved too powerful, the contradictions too deep. Within little more than a decade, the impossible happened again. The monarchy didn't just return. It came flooding back with such exuberance, such joy, that it seemed the people had never wanted anything, anything else. Over the coming month on not just the Tudors, I'll be tracing England's journey from republic to restoration, from the demise of Oliver Cromwell in 1658 to the end of the Stuart dynasty in 1714 and the arrival of the Georgian age. I'll be examining the reign of the merry monarch, Charles ii, followed by the brief and disastrous rule of his brother, James ii, usurped by his daughter Mary II and her husband, William of Orange, and finally, the succession of her sister, Queen Anne, before the search began for the next in line, who was a Protestant, bypassing more than 50 Catholics with stronger hereditary claims to bring George I over from Hanover. But first, joining me today is a panel of expert historians for an in depth discussion about why Cromwell's republic failed, which you can also watch when you subscribe to historyhit.com they are Professor Ronald Hutton from the University of Bristol, claimed biographer of Oliver Cromwell and expert on all things about magic and folklore, has been a guest of mine numerous times here on Not Just the Tudors speaking about the witch and Oliver Cromwell. Dr. Jonathan Healy from the University of Oxford is author of the Blazing A New History of Revolutionary England. And he too has joined me for episodes on the prelude to the English Civil War and 17th century revolutionary England. And author Dr. Miranda Maylands, who spoke to me about Oliver Cromwell's wife and daughters, about whom she has written wonderful novels, the Puritan Princess and the Rebel Daughter. All of those episodes are fascinating and well worth revisiting together today. Today we're going to be scrutinizing the tensions that undermine Oliver Cromwell's revolutionary republic and why it ultimately did not last, and asking, what does the restoration of Charles II tell us about power, legitimacy and the enduring pull of the monarchy in the 17th century and beyond?
- [06:40]
Host / Moderator
So, 1649, Charles I is executed, the monarchy is abolished, The House of Lords dismissed. England turns into Republic. But 11 years later, the monarchy is reinvited. Charles II becomes king. So what I want to ask you about is why did it fail, if that's the right word for it, this experiment. And if we start at the very beginning and think about the events of January 1649, many of the men in Parliament didn't plan to execute the king or to abolish monarchy, as I understand it. And so I wonder, how did the immediate events that led to the abolishing of the monarchy change? What happened next? How important are they to understanding the nature of the Republic that was established?
- [07:29]
Professor Ronald Hutton
Ronald, which of those do you want to take first?
- [07:32]
Host / Moderator
You can answer whichever of those you wish.
- [07:36]
Professor Ronald Hutton
Let's go for the biggie at the beginning, which is why did it fail? I would propose there are two totally different ways of looking at it. One is that it failed because most of the English and Welsh didn't want it. And so when they were given Carte Blanche in April 1660, they voted in a parliament that would get rid of it. But there are lots of regimes that have lasted a long time in history, established by people who initially went through periods of unpopularity. And so the other reason why the Republic fails is that the people in charge who've put it there, fallout among themselves. And the moment that happens, then they're doomed.
- [08:18]
Host / Moderator
What do you think, Jonathan?
- [08:19]
Dr. Jonathan Healey
There's a tension, isn't there? I think in between different. I mean, the point about the people at the center falling out, I think is really, is really apt. And there's a tension between an ideology which basically sort of says, you know, power comes from Parliament and comes from the. The people. And on the other side you've got an army which wants to protect its religious fellow travelers. And those two elements clash throughout the period, don't they?
- [08:47]
Dr. Miranda Maylands
Yes, absolutely. It's the army on the one hand, it's Parliament on the other hand. And as you say, it's this tension between trying to bring in change for a minority against possibly the wishes of a majority. And I think that leads all the way through the 1650s to constantly shifting landscape of coalitions. And, you know, we have more coalitions, of course, in 1659, which is a very complicated year, and the centre can't hold, I guess, at that stage.
- [09:15]
Host / Moderator
Miranda, take me back to the very beginning. Do you think that the Republic was undermined from the beginning by the circumstances of its creation?
- [09:26]
Dr. Miranda Maylands
Yes, yes and no. Yes, yes, to an extent. I think it always after the execution of the King, as You said earlier, I think most of the people who were involved in that never intended that to be the outcome, or at least that wasn't what the majority of the parliamentarian side had fought the civil war to achieve. So they didn't have an oven ready plan to wheel out in January 1649. And as a result, I think the Commonwealth regime which comes in then is brought in very hastily. It's a bit of a fudge. And it then almost retrospectively has to legitimise itself and has to put out the arguments to support its position. And it's really battling with that, I think, all the way through the 1650s, to varying degrees, at different moments, that becomes the legitimacy underneath the Commonwealth, underneath the rump, becomes more a pressing issue than at others.
- [10:20]
Professor Ronald Hutton
Ronald the great difference between the English revolution of this time and modern revolutions is that the republic has not established by a popular uprising, it's established by military coup d'. Etat. And the people of England and Wales never quite forgive it for that, not least because the army then has to remain there to maintain the republic. And to maintain the army you need to pay very heavy taxes. And that is going to provide another element of unpopularity. Add to this brew the fact that the army tends to stand for certain principles like liberty of conscience to radical Protestants that are not shared by an awful lot, probably the majority of the people in England and Wales, and it's a thoroughly unstable situation. Doesn't mean that the army is necessarily a bad thing. Members can say wonderful things that resonate down the centuries about liberty and the populace, but the political foundations are based ultimately on an armed force which the ruled resent.
- [11:30]
Host / Moderator
What do you think, Jonathan?
- [11:32]
Dr. Jonathan Healey
Yeah, and quite a lot of the rulers as well. I mean, you know, even although the army is sort of propping up the republic, there is a significant group within the republican leadership who look very much askance at this, at this armed force. And to take one of the kind of classic examples, when Oliver Cromwell was offered the Crown in 1657, in large measure this was an attempt by civilians to wrestle that power away from the army and to create a new constitution based on parliamentary sovereignty, rather than what Professor Hudden is saying, the power of the sword.
- [12:06]
Host / Moderator
So we will come to that. But at the very beginning, tell me about the sort of government that's been established and whether it seems to be not revolutionary enough. Is the real problem that they're almost as tyrannical as the king they've replaced.
- [12:23]
Dr. Jonathan Healey
One of the first things they have to face down is a revolt by the Levelers, isn't it? You know, when the public was created in early 1649, it immediately Antag the sort of one of the genuinely revolutionary groups, which is the levelers. And, and they, you know, fermented an army, a revolt, a mutiny in the army, which ended at Burford. So immediately the new republic is facing challenges from what we would call the Left.
- [12:49]
Dr. Miranda Maylands
Well, exactly. And I think it does face that challenge, that in itself, because we now have, with the execution of the King, then the hasty abolition of the monarchy. The House of Lords is also abolished. We now have a single repository of power, a House of Commons. And there is also a fear that that in itself could become as dictatorial as you say, as any other one, one representative of power could be.
- [13:14]
Professor Ronald Hutton
I think your point about it not being revolutionary enough is a valuable one, a valid one, because again, a difference between this revolution and those of the 20th century, even the 18th, is that the social order is left intact. So you get rid of the House of Lords, but you leave the Lords, you break the power of the wealthy gentry and merchants, and yet you leave them with the cash. So you do not provide the infrastructure for a different kind of politics. The hope was that somehow the traditional leaders of society would convert, would come round to the way of thinking of those in charge and that would solve the problem. But they have such a vested interest in the old order. Order, they're not going to do that.
- [14:01]
Host / Moderator
What do you think, Jonathan?
- [14:02]
Dr. Jonathan Healey
Yeah, I mean, it is important, though, not to underestimate the revolutionary nature of what happened in 1649. You've got a country which has been a monarchy since time immemorial and, you know, okay, in 1637, when the Scots first rebelled against Charles, he immediately sort of says, oh, they're going to turn me into a Duke of Venice. It turns out he was right. That's kind of what they did try and do. But the, the idea of actually abolishing the monarchy, rather than, you know, reducing its power drastically, is, is, is very sort of, it's very new. There are preced Roman precedents, obviously, there are contemporary precedents with the Dutch Republic and with Venice, but it's, it's a really radical step to do that. And, you know, although the social order, yeah, of course, you know, the aristocrats stay in power as well, but there is a sense of renewal, there is a sense of new possibilities at the time, which, you know, applies to constitutional ideas, applies to religious, it applies to science, it implies to, applies to all kinds of things.
- [14:57]
Dr. Miranda Maylands
There's a sense of opening out, isn't there? There's a sense of potentially of new opportunities for change. It's a bit of a melting pot is opened or a Pandora's box in terms of ideas, isn't it? Because if you take away such a fundamental piece of the structure which is the monarchy, then in a sense everything's up for debate.
- [15:16]
Host / Moderator
And I suppose there's a question about the ways in which a republic could be justified in spiritual and religious terms that we ought to consider.
- [15:25]
Dr. Jonathan Healey
Yes, I mean, one way of justifying it is that it's a question of providence, isn't it? God has given victory to the New Model army and then the New Model army must take advantage of that and run things their way. So one person's military coup is another person's providential delivery, I suppose. But I mean, there are other ways as well. You know, you could justify it on grounds of sovereignty coming from the people and all kinds of things.
- [15:51]
Professor Ronald Hutton
There's always this incredible tension, though, at the heart of the republic. Its establishment is justified in terms of the will and sovereignty of the people. But at no point do those in charge feel able to trust the people to validate their power. Most of them want a religious settlement which gives a liberty to radicals far beyond that which most of the populace wants. And the franchise that is adopted is one that denies most people, even most adult males, the vote. So we're not looking at a modern liberal democracy. We're looking at people who say all the right things about freedom and the popular will, but dare not actually trust them. Even the religious freedom denies liberty to Catholics and Anglicans, people adhering to the traditional Church of England in which practically everybody had grown up.
- [16:47]
Host / Moderator
What do you think, Miranda?
- [16:48]
Dr. Miranda Maylands
Yes, I agree. And we get very confused, I think, when we try and apply our modern ideas of what is progressive or what is liberal or what is reactionary, what is conservative to this period, because it becomes very confusing. And you end up with situations where an interest that is advancing an argument that we would think of today as being progressive, you know, liberty of conscience, even, as Ronald says, it's quite a limited idea of that. It's not full toleration, but it is more toleration than has ever been given before for other religious groups that can be advanced sometimes at the point of a sword against a parliament which is actually less keen on that, more reactionary, less keen on toleration, less keen, for instance, on behaving kindly or towards defeated royalists. That's another sticking point, isn't it? So. So you have These forces which pull in different directions and are trying to achieve different things all at the same time.
- [17:39]
Dr. Jonathan Healey
And there are different types of tolerate. There are different reasons of toleration as well, aren't there? There's sort of toleration for the sake of it, which, you know, some people have seen in this period. And then there's toleration because you eventually want to get to the right kind of religion, which will then be imposed on everyone properly. This is sort of, you know, it's almost like a kind of debating tool. So yeah, as you say, it's very difficult to see modern liberalism here. It's a very different world.
- [18:02]
Host / Moderator
And let's talk about who the people are as well. In one regard, we need to think about the three kingdoms because of course Charles II is proclaimed king in Ireland and there's the Scottish allegiance to him as well. And then of course we get those horrible massacres, the terrible massacres that happen under Oliver Cromwell in Ireland. So can we talk about the relationship between those three different kingdoms and what that means for the Republic?
- [18:27]
Dr. Miranda Maylands
Well, I think it's an essential context for people to understand. And these wars, which have traditionally been called the English Civil War, much more recently thought of in terms of the War of the three Kingdoms or the British Civil wars, plural. And I guess the starting point is to understand that during the course of the Civil wars in the 1640s, all, both Ireland and Scotland are involved and there are Scottish invasions of England, there are Scottish forces in Ireland, there are English forces in Ireland. So it's a real mixture. The whole thing is kicked off in first place by problems in Scotland and a war between fighting between Charles I and the Scots and then obviously an Irish rebellion as well. But what's happened in 1649 is that the English have unilaterally decided to kill a British monarch. So that sets off a chain reaction round the archipelago which will continue throughout the decade.
- [19:15]
Professor Ronald Hutton
It also provides a chronic insecurity for all three kingdoms. The English traditional relationship with the other two is very different one from the other. Ireland was viewed as a conquered province of England with an English style government dumped on it and the majority of the inhabitants following the faith of Antichrist Catholicism. By contrast, the Scots had had a more radical reformation than the English and in many ways provided an admired pattern for English parliamentarian radicals. And Parliament would arguably not have won the English Civil War had the Scots not come in to help it. So their traditional friends and allies, and in many ways everything could have been stabilized if Parliament, having beaten the King, had Been allowed to sort things out in 1647 with a settlement with a limited monarchy and a reformed church that looks much more like the Scottish one. And then the Scots and the English conquering Ireland together, instead of which the army wrecks everything, makes it much more exciting. But it's the mutiny of the army that overturns this settlement and turns the Scots by stages into enemies instead of being allies.
- [20:36]
Host / Moderator
Yeah.
- [20:36]
Dr. Jonathan Healey
I mean, to say something in slight defence of the army of 1647, there was an element of Charles playing off one side against the other. And, you know, one of the things that happened in the 1640s, there's been an explosion of these sort of religious groups which had some support in the. In the New Model army. And they may have had less protection, let's put it this way, under a Scottish system. So there's an element of protection there, but, you know, I mean, not much to add to what's been. What's been said, but the. I suppose one crucial element of the initial foundation of the English republic was its imposition as a political system over the whole of the archipelago. And, you know, in some ways it was a sort of imperial project, wasn't it? It was, you know, an attempt of an English metropole to impose, against the wills of Ireland and Scotland, a republican settlement.
- [21:31]
Dr. Miranda Maylands
And that was an extraordinary achievement which previous monarchic regimes could only have dreamed of. The idea that the English would impose, as you say, their Englishness at the point of a sword upon a conquered Ireland and a subdued Scotland as well, it really does change the landscape.
- [21:49]
Dr. Jonathan Healey
I mean, it's what Charles I would have wanted, really, wasn't it?
- [21:51]
Dr. Miranda Maylands
Indeed, tried to achieve, really.
- [21:53]
Professor Ronald Hutton
In some ways, Charles would have preferred to gain the allegiance of the elites of the other kingdoms. The scale and the speed of what happens in 1649-51 is astonishing. The Scots often say that the English never conquered them. This is broadly true in history, but it's resoundingly not true of 1650-51. That's the only occasion when the English actually steamrolled Scotland. And it is the definitive period of the English conquest of Ireland, when the majority of the traditional landowners of Ireland are dispossessed. The overturning of the traditional social order in Scotland and Ireland is revolutionary on a scale. Never attempted in England. Wales, if it had been attempted in England and Wales, and it could well be, would have had a longer lasting English republic.
- [22:47]
Dr. Jonathan Healey
And by the end of the 1650s, you've got a situation where you've got a sort of British army, a very Very significant. I believe probably the majority of it is stationed in Ireland and Scotland, not. Not in England. So, yeah, it's a sort of. It's a military conquest.
- [23:02]
Dr. Miranda Maylands
And the Commonwealth's achievements in conquering Ireland and Scotland arguably set the tone or set the agenda for the future relationships between those nations. Even once we've had the Restoration, even once the King Charles II has come back, that nation of that long memory of the fact that the English have conquered and run each of those countries is very important, I think, for the future act of Union.
- [23:27]
Professor Ronald Hutton
And yeah, Ireland never recovered in a sense until the 20th century and it's still divided.
- [23:33]
Dr. Jonathan Healey
And the Cromwellian settlement of Ireland was maintained in the Restoration. There's an article by Toby Barnard, isn't there, which says that the most hated English figure in late 17th century Ireland was the Earl of Clarendon, not Cromwell, because he was the one who could have changed it all and didn't.
- [23:48]
Host / Moderator
Let's think about the other countries that are part of the British Isles. And Ireland is an important one to consider because Oliver Cromwell went to crush the Irish rebels after they've declared for Charles ii. And we have those terrible massacres at Drogheda and Wexford in which innocent civilians are killed. I'd like to talk about the impact it has on Ireland, but also think about whether that carnage undermines the new regime.
- [24:19]
Dr. Jonathan Healey
I think Ireland in this period had gone through a, a horrendous experience of attempted initially conquest by English and Scottish forces. And it. There was a, an English, and there was a Scottish army in Ireland from 1642, at the very start of the English Civil War. And immediately horrific massacres were being committed by those English and Scottish armies. So the Cromwellian conquest was the culmination of a very, very long and tragic episode in Irish history. And it was, you know, it was horrific because, you know, as a result of these years of warfare and conquest by British forces, Ireland probably lost about 20% of its population. And that's before we get to the transplantation of people from Ireland, from the more prosperous parts of Ireland to, to other parts and, you know, the, the repression of Catholicism and all those things. So it is a very, very tough period in Irish history. And what it is really is it's the c. Of a long period of English and Scottish conquest of Ireland, which, you know, has its roots in, in Queen Elizabeth I and, and Henry vii, but really kind of, it's, it's, it's Cromwell who really kind of finishes the job, if you like, from a, From a British point of view.
- [25:38]
Professor Ronald Hutton
It's the war that finished Ireland. In Irish national memory and poetic diction, it establishes a Protestant supremacy, largely of implanted foreigners over Ireland until the early 20th century. In many ways, from the Irish point of view, which may have a lot going for it, the damage is still there. It's never been healed. And the bloodshed in my lifetime can be traced directly to those events. So there's nothing good that can be said about it from the Irish point of view. From the English point of view, slaughtering Catholic or Protestant Irish simply upped Cromwell's credibility in the eyes of most of the English. Murdering people at Droghida in cold blood was one of the most popular things he could have been said to have done.
- [26:34]
Dr. Miranda Maylands
And that actually taps into a point about Cromwell's attitude in Ireland in that it was not exceptional. He was a representative of the widespread view at the time, which was rather xenophobic and certainly anti Catholic, certainly anti Irish. And over there, you know, he feels he's trying to avenge this awful massacre that had happened at the beginning of the Civil War in 1641. But there's also, I think, from Cromwell's point of view, and he is clearly unsettled by what happens at Drogheda and Wexford and writes very long explanatory letters to the Council of State where he tries to set out exactly what happened or what went wrong or what his orders had been or whether they had been obeyed, etc. But I think also we have to remember that this is the third Civil War, and each civil war has escalated in terms of violence and in terms of anger and in terms of the field of war has spread geographically. And Cromwell at this point, he is very much, as you say, anti Irish, anti anti Catholic, but he's also just very anti Royalist at this point. And it's almost the English royalists who are fighting in Ireland who are as much, if not more, his targets than the Catholic Irish themselves.
- [27:48]
Dr. Jonathan Healey
And so I personally think there's a bit of a danger with the sort of Cromwell in Ireland myth in that it lets the English and Scottish political class off the hook because you can sort of put what happened in Ireland down to one bad guy, one bad apple. Whereas actually there's a whole sort of backlog of English bigotry against Ireland, which. Which leads to this. And I think, you know, just focusing on. On Cromwell actually kind of lets the English political class off the hook in the 17th century because the attitudes were. Were horrific. And, you know, that's why you get it. It's the Culmination of a long process.
- [28:20]
Professor Ronald Hutton
In case you get angry Letters to History hit because of my phrase murdered in cold blood. I'll explain that what actually happened at Drogheda in particular, is that Cromwell ordered the killing of the entire garrison inside. I don't think he realized how big it was. It's over 3,000 people, and that included those who were trying to surrender. And there's some good evidence that it included people who had surrendered already on promise of mercy. And there's good reason to believe that a significant number, not a majority of the civilian population, died as collateral damage.
- [29:01]
Host / Moderator
Thinking about context, by 1652, most European kingdoms have recognized the Republic. But then we have war, unsurprisingly, with people who look like they might have been natural allies. Protestant republicans just across the sea, the Dutch. What do you think the Anglo Dutch wars does to the nature of the Republic? Does it destabilize it?
- [29:27]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Jonathan?
- [29:28]
Dr. Jonathan Healey
I mean, in some ways, it's a sort of. It's a kind of foundational moment because it's. It's an international war. I mean, you know, we've just talked about how successful the Republic, the English Republic, was in conquering the rest of the archipelago. But this isn't a. This is a. A foreign war which is successful now in 17th century English history, 17th century British history. That's unusual, you know, to put it mildly. So in some ways, it's sort of, you know, successful foundational moment, which, you know, generates this kind of grudging respect for the Republic then for Cromwell on.
- [30:03]
Dr. Miranda Maylands
The Continent, and has been achieved through a mighty navy which has just been built up, particularly in the last few years, which is going to become the sort of signature achievement and force of those regimes in the 1650s. But also, I think Jonathan is quite right. I think it's quite important culturally, and there's a sense of achievement and pride in national achievements abroad. But equally, it's a huge drain on finances, which is a real problem, and the Commonwealth can't really afford it.
- [30:33]
Professor Ronald Hutton
I'd underline that last part. I completely agree with the fact that it bolsters the reputation of the Republic abroad. They've just trashed the strongest naval power in Europe, but the finances never recover. The reason why the Republic lurches into another war almost immediately after influence is bluntly, it can't afford to pay off the navy. It's got to send it out to sea again to fight somebody else in the hope that this war will be more profitable. And the gains from the war with the Dutch are really Quite tiny compared with the outlay of blood and money involved. You know, we get an East Indian island, we never actually occupy. The Dutch accept a trading relationship which they're willing to accept at the beginning of the war. And the real gain, the one that really matters to people like Cromwell, is that the natural leader of the Dutch Republic, the Prince of Orange, is pushed out of Dutch politics for two decades simply because he happens to be related to the exiled Stewart family. So this speaks as much to neurosis and weakness as it does to chest beating.
- [31:51]
Dr. Jonathan Healey
And there's that wonderful meeting after the Dutch war has finished where they're supposed to say, well, we've got this navy, what do we do with it? We've got Spain and we've got France and which side do we go into?
- [32:00]
Professor Ronald Hutton
And it's so meat headed.
- [32:02]
Dr. Jonathan Healey
Yeah, well, absolutely.
- [32:03]
Professor Ronald Hutton
It's one of the very few insights we have into the kind of discussions that make policy in the Republic. And it's incredibly dense. Basically here is, you know, we got this financial problem. Best thing is to start another war. Trouble is, war costs even more. So we need a profitable war. And then somebody with brains arrives and that's John Lambert who says, you must be out of your minds. We're not. It's going to be incredibly costly, incredibly dangerous, it'll wreck the economy.
- [32:35]
Dr. Miranda Maylands
John Lambert's usually right.
- [32:36]
Professor Ronald Hutton
I was going to say, yeah, don't do it. And all of this said, yeah, but we're going to fight Catholics so God's going to be on our side. Somehow it will turn out all right. And Lamberthe correct right down the line.
- [32:49]
Host / Moderator
We need to put Oliver Cromwell into the picture quite quickly. We get to 1653 and everything changes. So suddenly it feels like four years into this experiment, the Republic morphs into a protectorate. And I want to know whether you think that is the real end of the revolution.
- [33:07]
Dr. Miranda Maylands
Miranda Well, I think we have to also understand, I guess, how the Protectorate comes into being. And you mention Oliver Cromwell. So many people, when they think about this period, people who maybe don't know that much about it, assume that Cromwell single handedly killed the king. First of all, he led the war, he led the army against the King, he then killed the king and then he took power for himself. Which isn't, isn't at all what happened the last few years, the first few years after of the new Commonwealth, after the regicide. Cromwell is away fighting, achieving these miraculous conquests and Ireland and Scotland. And I think the, the important moment is when he comes back from Scotland, back into the Centre of power, where the new regime has been being run by, you know, by a council, by the Parliament, by lots of committees. And his allies are very frustrated that not enough has been achieved in the time that they've been away fighting these wars. Not enough of the original platform, which they all wanted. Well, Cromwell feels that they should have wanted to achieve. And the whole purpose of creating the Commonwealth was to achieve electoral reform, legal reform, et cetera, haven't happened. And so we then have this period where Cromwell, in usual Cromwell fashion, is very much trying to bash heads together, bring together coalitions, stand between the army and Parliament and get everyone to work and pull together on the same side to achieve this reform. But he gets frustrated with it. It's not going quickly enough. There's a lot of confusion as to whether the Parliament. Parliament is actually going to dissolve itself and submit itself to fresh elections, which is what the army wants. And then Cromwell steps into the breach in April 1653 and throws out Parliament. Very. A very famous and rather autocratic moment, reminiscent of Charles I's attempt on the five members.
- [34:50]
Dr. Jonathan Healey
Well, they're more successful, I suppose.
- [34:51]
Dr. Miranda Maylands
They're more successful, yeah.
- [34:53]
Professor Ronald Hutton
Yes. And also Charles was just attempting to persuade the Commons to honor his wish to go for five members. He wasn't terminating a Parliament by military force as nobody had ever done before in history. One cannot underestimate the shock value of that moment. I'd slice up the view in a slightly different way, which is entirely compatible with what you've said. And that is again, the problem is the army. Since 1647, the army has had a pretty consistent, if nebulous, reform program. That is a broad based national church with toleration of groups outside it who are radical Protestants and without tithes, the compulsory payments in each parish to support the national church, regular reformed parliaments on a more rational franchise and bunch of constituencies, and a reform of the law to make it cheaper and faster. Now, the problem with this reform program is the army can never find an elected or even selected body of people in a Parliament who are willing to enact it. So they get a Parliament that they've purged down to the minimum to kill the King, remove the House of Lords, establish a republic, but even those won't do what the army wants with the rest of the programme. So Cromwell tries to hold the two together. April 1653, with the army sliding out from underneath him, dead against the Parliament. He throws the Parliament out, gets the loyalty of the army again. Then they select people for a Parliament who might be trusted to enact the reform program. But even they don't do it, they fall to bits. And that's why Cromwell ends up being pushed by the army quite willingly into a new system whereby it's a cavalryman's metaphor. I think it's a cavalry general who designs it that you have elected Parliament, but you bridle and tame them by having a powerful council and Cromwell instead of a House of Lords and a king, it still doesn't work well.
- [37:01]
Dr. Jonathan Healey
And certain sort of fundamentals set down in a written constitution, which is an idea which has some genesis at least in the Leveler movement and certainly the army revolt of 1647. Some really interesting kind of things coming into that sort of army reform program. And. And the idea that the law has become bloated is something which goes back a long way. And so there's all kinds of things there. The nominated assembly or bare bones Parliament, which calls itself a parliament is a very interesting case in point, isn't it? Because it's specifically selected to be people who will push reform and do quite radical things. And yet it is fundamentally still a fairly conservative body. And as a indicative element of that, it is nicknamed Barebones Parliament because of this kind of oik who is supposed to be kind of the sort of emblematic guy who is still a very, very wealthy London merchant, even though he's sort of seen as being this kind of.
- [37:58]
Dr. Miranda Maylands
With the most wonderful name.
- [37:59]
Dr. Jonathan Healey
Praise God. Barebone. Yes, a most wonderful name.
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Professor Ronald Hutton
Are you looking for the perfect podcast to hunker down with during the longer, colder, darker nights?
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Dr. Miranda Maylands
Well, look no further than the award winning After Dark Myths, Misdeeds and the Paranormal with me, Maddie Pellet and me, Anthony Delaney.
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Professor Ronald Hutton
We are historians and love all things.
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Dr. Jonathan Healey
Gloomy and macabre, from Tudor executioners and.
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Dr. Miranda Maylands
Ancient Egyptian death rituals to witch trials and folklore. Feel transported back in time on After Dark, out every Monday and Thursday, wherever you get your podcasts.
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Professor Ronald Hutton
And guess what? We're Also now on YouTube After Dark, a podcast from history hit.
- [40:35]
Host / Moderator
But after that, with this protectorate, I mean, is this a form of limited monarchy? How radically different is this from the power of kings and queens that have come before?
- [40:46]
Dr. Miranda Maylands
Well, I think you can see it in sort of myriad different ways. I think it's, it's important to appreciate, as John was just saying, that it is brought in with a written constitution, which is Britain's first written constitution, the instrument of government penned by the aforementioned John Lambert. But the, the idea is, as you said, there's a powerful council, but power, sovereign power, is vested in Oliver Cromwell as a single person, but acting with the Parliament and acting with his council. And the purpose of the council, as you say, is to be this beefed up body. And actually in the first few months of the protectorate, before Cromwell summons his first parliament, I think he and the council issue more than 80 ordinances, so they are very busy. It's a bit of a sort of Trump blitz of Trumpian Blitz of these ordinances to, to get things going in terms of government. But then again, you know, there is this sense that under the constitution they have to, there has to be regular Parliament. And again we come back to the endless quest for a legislative body which will enact the programme of reform which Cromwell and his army colleagues want to achieve. He brings in the first Protectorate Parliament and lays before their feet all of these ordinances and all of the achievements so far of the protectorate. And actually to much his irritation, all the Parliament wants to talk about is the instrument of government and this military imposed constitution, when they want to tear it all to pieces and rewrite it and change it and everything. And that's terribly frustrating to Cromwell. So he is head of State, so I think we can certainly see him As a monarchical figure and he is invested with ceremony and he has, he lives in the royal palaces at Hampton Court and Whitehall. And he has the old. Has protectoral livery and lifeguard and barge and carriage and, you know, so a lot of that is there. His head's on the coins and on all the regalia. But it is a slightly different. It isn't a monarchy. It is important that he's not a king. He probably rejected the term king when it was first suggested, maybe, we don't know for certain, and took the idea of Lord Protector instead. But it's a single person's rule. It's a sort of limited, mixed monarchical system or as he might have said, something with monarchical quality in it. But it's looking forward as well as backward. It's trying to bring together some republican ritual, some royal ritual, fudge, something new.
- [43:09]
Dr. Jonathan Healey
I think, I don't think Charles I would have seen it as a monarchy. I think if he'd looked at this and said, you know, and someone had said, oh, it's just like being a king, he would have been horrified. You know, the idea of having the written constitution, you know, regular checks and balances on his power. There is a sort of irony though, which is that for a lot of people, the protectorship, which is in theory supposed to be, you know, couched around with all these restrictive terms because it's new and I know there'd been law protectors before, but because this particular form of it was new and to a mindset in a world where people, in order to understand politics, in order to understand the law, in order to understand the constitution, they always look back, they look for precedents because it was unprecedented. That for them meant that the power of the protector was on potentially unlimited. You know, they were much more. More confident with the idea of a king being limited by the constitution than they were with this new form of government. Especially as, as you say, it's sort of fundamentally backed by the army. And the whole idea of the. The instrument of government was, would be that it would be put before Parliament, Parliament would give assent to it and then that because Parliament either represented the people or Parliament was the people in some understandings of the time, it was the people congregated that would then give the constitution, give the new constitution the force, the popular acclaim that it needed. But as you say, it didn't happen because they were infuriated that this thing had come from the army. Lambert was an intelligent guy, but he was a soldier.
- [44:41]
Host / Moderator
Ronald, do you agree?
- [44:43]
Professor Ronald Hutton
Again, I agree with all this I agree that the constitution established in 1654 would have been both novel and shocking to most of the people in the nation. There are precedents of which the educator would be aware. It's not too dissimilar from the structure of the Republic of Venice, which is the great example of an endearing republic from the time. And it's not too dissimilar from the Roman republic appointing dictators for military emergencies, or of Athens appointing archons to take over armies. But the two problems are, first, who's put it there and it's the army for the sake of their reform program. And the second is that it's always falling between two chairs. It's too radical for most of the nation. But actually those 80 ordinances accomplish almost nothing in terms of forwarding the reform programme. They decide to tidy up one of the law courts, nothing gets done, none of their directives and the ordinance actually get executed. They get blocked by the lawyers. The amount of achievement is zilch. And the Parliament that follows, as you've said, it's an adult parliament, it achieves practically, it can't even agree to work with the government.
- [46:04]
Dr. Miranda Maylands
And as you say, I think that point about falling between two stalls is a really important one. And the same can be said of Oliver Cromwell's himself, his personal aspect and his rule in this sense is. It's too. It's not radical enough for the radicals. This regime is too monarchical, but equally, it's not legitimately monarchical and royal enough for the royalists. And so as a result, you know, Cromwell can't really win because either he's thought of as he's being, you know, he's betraying the. The radical cause by. By taking on this kingly aspect or. But equally for the royalists, they see him as a usurper who doesn't have a right to that, so he can't really please anybody. It's very hard to do that.
- [46:44]
Host / Moderator
Is this why he is asked to be king, to clarify the situation, as it were, or is it ultimately that they can't think of government except in the sort of form of a singular person at the head?
- [46:58]
Professor Ronald Hutton
They can, which is why they didn't go for the single person option until the single chamber Parliament had failed to do what the soldiers wanted. And there's no serious drive to make Cromwell king until way into the time the protectorate. And that's as part of a deliberate counter revolution. Until then, the army had been trying to find Parliaments with whom it could work, who'd enact its reform program, and they try again in 1656. But to their amazement and confidence, consternation, what they get instead is quite a coherent parliamentary movement that says, here's the deal. We'll recognize your government if you throw the reform program overboard and actually go backwards. Bring back a monarchy, a House of Lords and a tighter Church of England, and then we'll vote you taxes. And that's when the regime wobbles and some of it cracks.
- [47:58]
Dr. Miranda Maylands
And again, they'll do that on the basis of their own constitution, which they have written, that parliament, which is called the humble petition and advice. Again, they don't want Lambert's military constitution to stay on the books, do they? They want to replace it with their own. And as part of that drive, that there is this attempt to make Cromwell king.
- [48:18]
Host / Moderator
And let's think about succession, because Cromwell dies quite suddenly in September 1658. And the thing about a monarchy is, you know, in theory, in theory, who's going to inherit? So what measures had been put in place for the succession?
- [48:36]
Dr. Miranda Maylands
Well, again, this had changed, as Ronald was saying, as the character of the protectorate had slightly changed over these five years. The question of the. Whether it was hereditary or not had changed. And the new constitution, the humble petition and advice had said, it's going to make it. It hereditary. And Oliver Cromwell can nominate his. His heir. And again, you know, historians all argue. We all argue, don't we, as to whether he actually wanted to choose his son Richard, whether he did nominate him, or whether he wished to nominate another army figure, John Lambert, Charles Fleetwood, someone like that. But certainly whichever way you. Whatever way you land on that debate, I think you could say of Oliver that he falls into the trap of so many early modern monarchs, Elizabeth I and similar, in that he doesn't plan adequately enough for his succession or make his wishes known. He avoids it, really, till the last possible moment.
- [49:30]
Dr. Jonathan Healey
Richard Cromwell is a fascinating figure, and he'd spent much of the previous years in a small Hampshire village called Hursley, which is sort of just outside Romsey. And if you look at Hursley on the map today, the monarch's way goes through it, which is supposed to be the path of Charles II as he was escaping. So I like the idea that Richard Cromwell was sort of, you know, busily kind of tending his turnips in his garden. And then the exiled monarch kind of crops up. One of the things about Richard is that he had been, you know, he. He had. He had lived the life of a country gentleman, which meant that he didn't have the same connection with the army, but actually in some ways that made him a more palatable option because he probably had more connection with the people in Parliament who, you know, still very much a sort of a parliament of country, country gentlemen. And, you know, by 1659, you're starting to get some, not huge numbers, but some ex royalists coming back into Parliament. You're starting to get a much more sort of moderate, you know, moderate kind of legisl legislature.
- [50:28]
Dr. Miranda Maylands
And equally, as you say, Richard didn't have his father's friends, but then equally, he didn't have his enemies.
- [50:32]
Dr. Jonathan Healey
Exactly.
- [50:32]
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- [50:33]
Dr. Miranda Maylands
So there is a sense he's a likable guy. He was a likable guy, actually. Quite competent and quite charming. And there is a sense, and I think there's more of a belief about this among historians now than there used to be back in the age where we all just called him Tumbledown Dick and thought he was hopeless.
- [50:49]
Professor Ronald Hutton
Yeah, I. I'm more pro.
- [50:50]
Dr. Miranda Maylands
Are you still in that. Oh, you're pro Richard.
- [50:52]
Professor Ronald Hutton
Richard than most. I mean, I, I was pro him when I wrote a book about this back in 1985 when it was still fashionable. I'm also harder on Oliver than most people, though it's only a shift of degree. I think that the comparison between Cromwell, Oliver Cromwell and Elizabeth I is an apt one. In both of them are most unusual in their lack of regard for succession planning. Oliver does three fatal things that are going to doom his son's protectorate. The first is that he produces a divided council of people who are deliberately balanced against each other. And he does this in other kingdoms as well. In Ireland, he sends in his son to take over and then hamstrings his son with a bunch of people who won't work properly with his son. This is Henry Cromwell, the younger son. Second thing is that he puts Richard, the obvious heir, in cold storage so that Oliver can't be accused of dynastic ambition and brings him out of it far too late to train him for the job. And the third thing is that right up to his deathbed and maybe even there, he doesn't make it crystal clear that Richard is the heir and share the power with him to get him ready. The result being exactly as you've said. Richard, I think, has all his father's strength of character without any of his father's form, death experiences, and above all, the army doesn't know him. And so his reaction is to achieve the solution his father couldn't by throwing the army's reform program overboard to get to work with a normal Parliament, and when the army objects to flatten the opposition with the coup d' etat, and it's all working right up to the point when he fails to get the grip on the army and instead it turns on him in fury and throws him over along with the protectorate.
- [52:46]
Host / Moderator
Is there anybody who could have maintained the Protectorate longer? If Oliver Cromwell had nominated someone, I don't know, the brilliant John Lambert, for example, would it have sustained?
- [52:58]
Dr. Jonathan Healey
I think the trouble with that is that there's still a kind of hereditary prejudice, if you like, in England at the time, in that they, you know, the way that every estate works at this point in most cases is that it goes down the patrilineal line and it doesn't. So. So I think there's. There's that sort of prejudice to kind of get over. And, you know, if you. If you're getting to a situation of one ruler nominating the next, then I think, I don't know whether that's going to get, you know, get much kind of support. Maybe there's room for an election or perhaps a subscription of the people. But I mean, again, that would have been a very. A very radical departure. So in a way, his only real option, I think, is to live longer or to. Or to, you know, produce, you know, or to make sure Richard is better suited to the. To the role.
- [53:44]
Dr. Miranda Maylands
I think that's right. And I think, as you were saying, he either needs to live longer or he needs to help prepare his son adequately for what's coming. And what you say about him keeping that balance of a lot of people around him, advisers who disagree with each other. And again, this comes back to this idea of Oliver Cromwell, the coalition builder. He liked to have people of varying backgrounds and views around him who then argued with each other. But he was this centrifugal sort of balancing force. Again, coming back to a Tudor parallel, that's quite a Henry VIII time tactic to have your council slightly divided, but, you know, you're in the middle and you get swing one way, you swing the other, give a bit of favor this way, give a bit of favor that way. But that's really in a very difficult position for Richard Cromwell to hold. And as you say, he has to.
- [54:27]
Host / Moderator
He.
- [54:27]
Dr. Miranda Maylands
He doesn't hold it, he plumps one way over the other and then loses power as a result.
- [54:32]
Dr. Jonathan Healey
There's quite a lot of sort of bitter enemies as well. By 1650, I mean, you know, you've had. You've had nine years of Republican politics which has led to 1658. And you've, you've got the disaffected Republicans, you know, the, the Arthur Hesselriggs and Henry Vanes of this world. And you've got the disaffected, disaffected army people like the Desboroughs who've been kicked out in 1657. So there's a lot of kind of circling enemies in, in 1659.
- [54:58]
Dr. Miranda Maylands
I think it's, it's a, it's a.
- [54:59]
Dr. Jonathan Healey
Tough old job being Lord Protector. Well, quite, if you're 30 years old.
- [55:03]
Dr. Miranda Maylands
I think there's a lot of big personalities and we see this when we eventually get to the Restoration, don't we? And that. And Charles II is brought back. That actually the, the real thirst for vengeance comes from the former allies of each other. It's from the MPs in the new Parliament who want revenge over their former colleagues, actually, in a sense, rather than the restored King.
- [55:23]
Professor Ronald Hutton
I agree with that. But I would also extend the implications of what you're saying to suggest that had Oliver lived longer then I think he'd have remained Lord Protector because he is so good at keeping power. But his government looks ideologically and almost financially bankrupt in the last half year of his life. He clearly has no idea now where to go. He never did have an idea of where to go. He always relied on other people and God to show him. But suddenly everybody around him is out of ideas by 1658 and he's completely become, in many ways like the, the feline general and politician he is. There is only one way out and he takes it. He dies.
- [56:18]
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Dr. Jonathan Healey
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- [57:44]
Host / Moderator
So Richard Cromwell, you've suggested, is a far more capable character than people have painted him. In years past, but one without the experience to sustain the Protectorate. So where does that leave us in 1659? I mean, are we sort of back to the beginning?
- [58:02]
Dr. Jonathan Healey
I mean, it leads to a period of chaos, doesn't it, in the sense that there's a series of very, very quick changes of government and you don't have to be particularly royalist after sort of 12 months of political chaos to think, well, why don't we just go back to the system which has given us stability for centuries? You know, why don't we just sort of ditch all these experiments? And I think that's one of the problems with the way that we understand the Restoration. We. We sort of see it as a. As a big outpouring of relief and joy and there were elements of that. But there's also a simple desire for stability. And that is particularly the case after the. The sort of 12 months of. Of chaos that. That followed Richard's resignation in early 1659.
- [58:50]
Host / Moderator
Absolutely.
- [58:51]
Dr. Miranda Maylands
And I think, again, because we're all still having to sing from the, in a sense, the Restorations hymn sheet, we have this notion that Charles II comes back on this wave of popular desire, but it's not really the case at all, actually.
- [59:05]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Right.
- [59:05]
Dr. Miranda Maylands
Until really up until spring 1660, the view in the exile court is of despair. When are they ever going to get to come back? Because we've been talking all the way through this, this, you know, this conversation about the 1650s, the Royalist, the Stuart Court really isn't in any of these conversations. It is out of sight, out of mind, and it is the republic that does for itself. They all fall out amongst each other and, and they. Charles II is actually very lucky. I think, in a sense he's the beneficiary of that chaos.
- [59:33]
Professor Ronald Hutton
Yeah. Charles II and Henry VII are two of the luckiest monarchs in our history. Again, I have a different view on it, but it is one that is completely compatible with what you said. I see the end of the 1650s as being rather like a video fast forward of the period 1649-53, that the army in control once again brings back the Parliament it had created in the revolution in the hope that Parliament would have learned its lesson and now be ready to enact the army's reform program as it wasn't before. And the Parliament brought back, thinks the army has now learned its lesson and will not try and push the MPs around to do anything. And it took four years for the two sides to fall out at the beginning of the Republic. It takes four months for them to do so in 1659. And history should have repeated itself. So what is the different element? Just one thing. An ex royalist put there by Cromwell in charge of Scotland with a very good army who's prepared to overturn the army rule book in every respect and is clever enough to do it stage by stage. Had Oliver Cromwell not put George Monk in charge of Scotland and its resources and had the purge Parliament not been silly enough to leave him there when it was brought back, being distracted by the army of England, there'd have been no Restoration. There'd probably have been another English revolution in which the army enacted its long delayed reform program. At last.
- [61:17]
Dr. Miranda Maylands
Then Cromwell had this great fondness, as we were saying earlier, for these former royalists who, and many of them did flock to his banner. Lord Broghill and Edward Montagu. Many of the men who are actually behind the initiative to try and make Cromwell King in 1657 are these former supporters, these former royalists who actually just want a more monarchical system because that's what they feel comfortable with. And they, most of them play, play a blinder really in the spring of 1660, because they transfer their allegiance subtly through coded letters to Charles II and then help. They are the agents who help bring him back. And the argument they make, which, which I find very interesting, is that they try and say to Charles ii, we'll be very helpful to you and you can trust we're fundamentally monarchists. It's just that we vested our hopes for a while in the House of Cromwell because that seemed the best choice and the only choice available to us. But now we'll, we'll divert and we'll, we'll help you.
- [62:13]
Dr. Jonathan Healey
And they also, they seem to be much to me, I mean, partly it's because they're on the ground, aren't they, in England? But they're much more central to the Restoration than the, the exiled royalists. You know, the sort of Edward Nicholases and the Clarendon and the Henrietta Maria, the Queen Mother, who are all just bickering. You know, they're sort of not really, not really getting much done but, but yeah, there's sor. Cromwellians or Cromwellians at the time who bring the, bring the Restoration on. Fascinating figures and those people in the.
- [62:40]
Dr. Miranda Maylands
Exile court, I mean all the letters they're sending and they've sent all these agents over to England to try and recruit these men and all of the letters they say, and Hyde writes saying, we need these men, we need these men to achieve this. You know, get, get, get this person on side. Get that person on side. It's the, it's the only, it's the only possibility. And yes, they're very, they're very interesting because as you say, they are full on supporters of the House of Cromwell. They are Cromwellians really, but they have come full circle now and also they all. Coming back to our point about Richard Cromwell having a better chance than perhaps we have traditionally thought, most of these men are supportive of Richard Cromwell. They're fully behind his protectorate. So again, you know, they did give the House of Cromwell their best support until it no longer would hold. And then they had a very pragmatic view which was that their allegiance would then shift, shift to the power that they could, they could bring back.
- [63:32]
Dr. Jonathan Healey
And I think that they're kind of after stability, aren't they, and the social order to a point, you know, and also making sure that the more kind of radical fringes of the religious revolution are controlled. I mean the Quakers in particular are very important at this point because they look very, very radical. They look very, very dangerous to sort of, you know, the conservative gentry. And there's an element of, of whichever ruler can protect us from the more radical fringes of the revolution, be they Quakers, be they levelers, et cetera, et cetera. That's the people that we will swing behind. And initially it's Cromwell and then it becomes Charles.
- [64:10]
Professor Ronald Hutton
Agreed, Agreed, agreed. Cromwellians who are recruited by the Restoration, a lot of whom are recruited by Cromwell from neutrals or former Royalists, are the people who would have established a viable Cromwellian republic. But of course they couldn't because the army would never allow it. So the true heroes or villains of this whole story are the common soldiers and junior officers of that army that won the Civil War and then perpetuated itself as a revolutionary force while never able to get the government that it wanted. You can see the downfall of Richard Cromwell in one cheat of paper in the Bodleian Library at Oxford drawn up for Richard, listing the colonels of the army in three columns. When Richard's about to stage his coup d' etat to take over the army and remove the opposition in it. Those who will support, those who will oppose and those who'll remain neutral. So you put together the ditherers and Richard's people and you got a two thirds majority, which is what Richard relied on. He didn't realize that the ordinary soldiers, even of the regiments commanded by his supporters would turn against him. So the push comes from below and it pushes Cromwell along with the rest. Once these ordinary troopers and rankers of the republican army are disempowered. The republic can disintegrate. Those are the vital, underestimated, unsung people.
- [65:45]
Dr. Jonathan Healey
And they probably get more representation within the army than they do than they would do in Parliament.
- [65:49]
Professor Ronald Hutton
That's right, yeah. The limelight should be on them rather than on the Cromwells and the Lamberts and the rest.
- [65:55]
Dr. Miranda Maylands
But I think they also benefit from the fact that the, the senior army leaders at that point who are supportive, well, notionally supportive of the Protectorate, Charles Fleetwood and John Desborough etc, but. And they're actually members of the Cromwell family. Richard. Charles Fleetwood is Richard Cromwell's brother in law and Desbrun as his uncle. Uncle in law. They similarly they commit what I see as the biggest own goal in history really because they, they collude to bring down or to take Rich, take all Richard's power away. Then they think they can keep him as a puppet figure for a while, but that's just not tenable. And actually in so doing, you know, they've opened up the, the chaos of the year we've just described and then eventually the return of the monarchy.
- [66:35]
Host / Moderator
So I asked at the beginning why this experiment with republicanism failed. Was it a failure?
- [66:42]
Dr. Jonathan Healey
Well, there is an argument that it did all right to last as long as it did given the sheer novelty in an English context. I know we've talked about Roman and Venetian and Dutch precedents, but given the novelty in an English context, in a British archipelagic context, and also given the sheer complexity and violence of the civil wars that had happened before, to survive for that long is no mean achievement. But yeah, I mean ultimately it didn't last that long. So you know, any, any discussion of success has to be qualified by the fact that it, it only lasted 11 years.
- [67:17]
Dr. Miranda Maylands
Well, I think that's right and I think we have to say just from a practical point of view, yes, it fails, but I don't think it was destined to fail. I don't think we should assume that it would never have worked or it could never have found a form in which it could have worked.
- [67:31]
Professor Ronald Hutton
Worked.
- [67:31]
Dr. Miranda Maylands
I think that's an important point. And the other important point is that, you know, there are the change that comes in the 1650s, that, that breathing space that happens after the Civil War which allows all these new ideas and new thoughts and new experiments may have been very chaotic at the time, but I think it did leave a lasting legacy. And certainly the, the monarchy that returns in 1660 isn't the same beast in the same way and when we get to 1688 and the glorious Revolution and a lot of what was being done in the 40s and the 50s, a lot of those changes are in the front of people's minds in terms of making lasting constitutional change at that point.
- [68:07]
Professor Ronald Hutton
I agree completely that had George Monk not been in charge of Scotland, the republic could have lasted a lot longer. So it can be put down to as much contingency as that one figure. Wrong place, wrong time for the republic. I think that there are two other ways in which you can credit the republic with real achievement. The first is the example, the precedence that it provides. Some of the writings and declarations of the republic ring down the centuries and inform later events such as the American Revolution. But also I think that the Republican years have the effect of holding open the divisions of the Civil War, preventing a healing that might have occurred with a more conservative settlement in the late 1640s in such a way as to make us a much more exciting and in many ways in the end, a much more stable country. For one thing, it allows the diversity of Protestant opinion to flourish so that by 1660 it can neither be accommodated within the old system nor exterminated, although both were tried but failed. Second, we've been in many ways a two party system system ever since in that Cavalier and Roundhead turn into Whig and Tory and then that goes on down the centuries and that is the foundation, the dynamic of the stabilization of disagreement which we've achieved since the late 17th century. So I would suggest that in many ways much of the future success story of, of the British depends upon that short lived republic.
- [69:54]
Host / Moderator
Given that, and I ask this to finish a slightly lighthearted question, if that's the case, if the 1650s did have this important impact and was such an exciting period of history, why has it not captured the public imagination more? I mean, obviously these books are going to change that, but I think a nation.
- [70:14]
Dr. Miranda Maylands
I think we have a psychological block on the period. I think we don't know how to fit it into our neat national story of kings and queens, the. The wooden ruler we all have at school. William, William, Henry, Stephen, Henry, Richard, John, etc. And, and we don't even know what to call it. Is it a commonwealth? Is it the interregnum? Oliver Cromwell sometimes makes it into lists of heads of state or monarchs, sometimes he doesn't. Recent series of Penguin biographies. He makes the cut. But his jacket cover for his book is black and all the others are white. So even if he's in the club, he's not quite a fully paid up member. And I think also we struggle with the fact that the Restoration did happen. The Restoration casts a terribly long shadow. Charles Second brings in this, you know, act of indemnity and oblivion and makes it illegal to even talk about the Civil War. And there is this state sponsored amnesia which I think to an extent we're still living with and we're still, we're still battling with today.
- [71:07]
Dr. Jonathan Healey
It's also, I mean, it's incredibly complicated and there is a sort of, sort of previous conversation notwithstanding, an excellence, points respected. But there is a sort of view of British history that it's continuous and there's a sort of gradual development over time and this period is a sort of, you know, it's a back alley in that story. I think in, in some that's, that's the view of it. And I don't think, you know, for the reasons that we've just discussed, I think that's the, the correct view. But it means that it's, you know, it doesn't fit into the narrative, if you like as well. There's also, I mean, yeah, Cromwell's not a very attractive character in some ways, and yet it is partly him who's sort of personally kind of pushing. You know, we, we can't think about the Republican leaders in the way that Americans have often felt about their Founding Fathers. I think that's probably a good thing actually, because we tackle them as kind of, you know, problematic individuals. And that's, that's, that's good as a historian, but it's quite hard to see heroes and villains. And I think once you do start seeing heroes and villains in this period, I think you've sort of lost a bit of understanding of it. But yeah, it's complicated. There's a huge amount of nuance. There's a lot of obscure constitutional principles at stake. You know, are we really as vested in reform of the Court of Chancery as people were at the time? Or tithe reform, for example? But I mean, I still think it's brilliant. I think it's, it's stirring, it's exciting, it's, it's fascinating, it's complicated.
- [72:34]
Dr. Miranda Maylands
Just your point on the American Founding Fathers is a really interesting one because I always think that if the Protectorate had endured, if Oliver Cromwell had lived longer and the Republic had endured, that he might have then had the status for us nationally of a George Washington figure. He's a very Washington figure, Oliver, as the, the general turned the head of state, turned the leader, but also, as you say, I think the king comes back anyway. So I think there's this sense among us, maybe a weary public, of, well, we need to bother with that 11 years, particularly because it's all reversed and the king comes back. So in a sense, why do we need to get to grips with it?
- [73:06]
Host / Moderator
Ronald, I come to you for the final thought.
- [73:09]
Professor Ronald Hutton
Well, let's not downplay too much the national memory of this period. In many ways, its misfortune is to hide behind Oliver Cromwell, be in his shadows. He's the only statesman of the century to have a statue outside the Houses of Parliament in the BBC 2000, Greater Britain's the Millennium Pearl. He came in ahead of any other head of state in British history and he's a movie star with some regularity. I think that once you remove Cromwell, everything is too confusing for people. If I aim at one thing when I'm lecturing upon the British Republic, it is to make it intelligible to an audience in 50 minutes. But ultimately, again, it's not really a failure because in the 19th, 20th century narrative of our national history, it's a prelude to the victory of democracy and toleration in the 1680s. It may be a generational thing, but I was brought up with the Victorian idea that British liberty was a fairy princess rescued by a dashing set of Knights in 1688-9. And everything that is good about us follows from that. So really, the republic is not so much a failure as unfinished business.
- [74:31]
Host / Moderator
Well, thank you all very much for your time today explaining the British Republic and its eventual end in about 50 minutes.
- [74:44]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
My thanks to my illustrious panel of Professor Ronald Hutton, Dr. Jonathan Healy and Dr. Miranda Maylands for joining me for this episode. And just a reminder, you can also watch our discussion when you subscribe to historyhit.com next time in our special series, the Restoration gets Underway Proper when Charles Stuart returns to England as King Charles ii, I'll be looking in depth at his life and reign and not a few scandals and and mistresses. With contributions from a host of historians drawn from the Not Just the Tudors archive. Thank you for listening to this episode of Not Just the Tudors from History Hit. Thank you also to my researcher Max Wintool, my producer Rob Weinberg, and to Amy Haddow, who edited this episode. We are always eager to hear from you, including receiving your brilliant ideas for subjects we can cover. So do drop a us a line at notjusthetors@historyhit.com and I look forward to joining you again for another episode. Next time on Not Just the tutors from history hit.
- [75:57]
Dr. Jonathan Healey
Hey listeners, meet Russell.
- [75:59]
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