Were the Commonwealth and Protectorate doomed from the start?

[00.00]

One of the big questions, which is often asked of historians discussing Britain in the 17^th Century, is Were the Republic, and then the Protectorate, doomed from the outset?  Could they have survived and prospered, with the result that Britain, today, would have a very different constitution?

We asked historian, David J Appleby, an authority on the post-conflict Restoration period, to address this question.   He talks to publisher, Mike Gibbs.

[00.38]

QUESTION:  I am somewhat perplexed.  Some of the historians we’ve spoken to when putting these programmes together have said ‘look, the Commonwealth and Protectorate were doomed from the start’.  Is that actually true?

ANSWER:  I’d say not necessarily! Just because we know in hindsight that the Commonwealth and Protectorate regimes failed doesn’t mean that it was inevitable that the republican experiment would fail, or that the monarchy would be restored.

I think where that comes from though, and having said all that, I can’t help thinking about what happened to the Sovereign of the Seas, the flagship of Charles I’s royal navy. Several months after the King’s execution in January 1649, England and Wales started to be ruled by the new executive of the embryonic republic, which was known as the Council of State. Now, one of the Council’s first orders was that all royal insignia be removed from public buildings and from the ships of the fleet, and replaced with the arms of the new Commonwealth.

[01.42]

Now, replacing ships’ carvings, and painting over panels, and stitching new flags – that’s simple enough – but the Council tried to do something more than that: it tried to change the name of the flagship from the Sovereign to the Commonwealth. The Sovereign was the most powerful warship on the planet, so it had become a national icon since its launch in 1637, and that means that the name-change would’ve been a huge symbolic triumph for the Commonwealth had the Council brought it off. But it’s strange, the new name just didn’t stick. The fact that people continued to use the old royal name just shows that it was always going to be an uphill task to change the monarchical mindset of the English and Welsh population, so I think that’s where this idea comes from about the Commonwealth was doomed from the start.

[02.36]

QUESTION:    So, if the Commonwealth and Protectorate regimes weren’t doomed from the start,  why did they fail?

ANSWER:      Ooph!  To even begin to answer that question I think we need to go back to the start of the Civil Wars.

The side which won the Civil Wars – the side we call ‘Parliament’ – wasn’t a united or coherent party. What it actually was, was a confused, shifting alliance of different factions. Most active parliamentarians were Puritans of some kind or another – but there were many different shades of Puritanism, with very different visions for the future.

[03.18]

The most obvious struggle within the parliamentarian alliance, if I can call it that, was between Presbyterians and Independents. The Presbyterians wanted a centralised, disciplined, godly, Protestant Church of England. Now, Independents, by contrast, envisaged a nation of autonomous godly Protestant congregations, all worshipping according to their conscience, and not being told what to do by bishops or by presbyters. These two sides, Presbyterian and Independent, initially cooperated during the First Civil War, because of their mutual fear and loathing of Catholicism, and their mutual dissatisfaction with Charles I.

[03.58]

Now, that’s one split, but after the fighting started, the parliamentarians started to split along another axis, between the ‘peace’ party (who wanted to negotiate a settlement with King Charles, and end the fighting) and the ‘war’ party (who argued that he would only submit to political and religious reform once his armies were beaten).  And, this is where it gets complicated, because there were Presbyterians and Independents on both sides of this particular divide. So, much as socially conservative Presbyterians, like Zouch Tate and Sir William Waller, disagreed with Independents like Oliver Cromwell and Henry Ireton over religion, all four supported the logic of the ‘war party’.

And there’s another axis of division: the parliamentarian alliance was riven with social tensions.  And here we have again Independents like Cromwell and Ireton agreeing with their Presbyterian rivals that politics and the constitution were matters for men of property, and no concern of the common people.

[05.02]

So, gentlemen like Cromwell and Ireton were just as alarmed as the Presbyterians by growing calls for greater democracy.  That’s the kind of views expressed by Levellers such as Lt Col John Lilburne and Colonel Thomas Rainsborough.  And these radical views had began to infiltrate the New Model Army fairly quickly, as can be seen by soldiers’ demands at the Putney Debates in 1647, and that’s where Ireton basically told the soldiers’ elected delegates that only men of property were entitled to have political views. One veteran replied to that ‘I wonder we were so deceived’, but I really like Colonel Rainsborough’s response that was even more emphatic:

“…I think it’s clear, that every man that is to live under a government ought first by his own consent to put himself under that government; and I do think that the poorest man in England is not at all bound in a strict sense to that government that he hath not had a voice to put himself under.”

[Source: The Clarke Papers, ed. C. H. Firth.]

[06.02]

This kind of radicalism fed into royalist propaganda that the parliamentarians were trying to turn the world upside down. And, as I say, it even alarmed conservative parliamentarians – particularly Presbyterians, so not just royalists, it alarmed quite a few parliamentarians as well. These kind of fears motivated many Presbyterians to defect to the royalist side, and to fight for Charles I in the Second Civil War of 1648. And even Radicals, like John Lilburne, were shocked when the King was put on trial for his life in January 1649.

These divisions over the Regicide would have really serious implications for the future of the Commonwealth and Protectorate.

[06.45]

QUESTION:    Are you saying that the trial and execution of Charles I was a major reason for the failure of the Commonwealth and Protectorate?

ANSWER:       Absolutely! It meant that the republic would be built on very shaky foundations from the start. The trial came about because a junto of Independent MPs and the New Model Army finally lost patience with Charles.  They had a point, because since surrendering in 1646, the King had used the negotiations to exploit those tensions between and within the New Model Army, Parliament, and their Scottish Covenanter allies.

So, Charles considered himself answerable only to God. But many officers and soldiers in the New Model Army pointed out that God had now given Parliament victory in two Civil Wars. So they argued that when Charles had plunged the country into a Second Civil War in 1648, he had defied God. So, evoking the Bible, they labelled him ‘the Man of Blood’, and demanded that he answer for all the death and suffering.

[07.50]

This was going too far for most parliamentarians, let alone royalists and neutrals. I think even Cromwell and radical MPs in Parliament hesitated to go down this path, but they eventually sided with the Army. So, Cromwell and his friends were a relatively small junto, but backed up by the muscle of the Army.

[08.14]

Now, in 1648, December, Colonel Pride’s regiment surrounded the Houses of Parliament, and accosted arriving MPs. Only those considered well-disposed to the Army were allowed to pass. The result was that only about 70 MPs now sat in the Commons (out of around 400) and this gave the junto complete control of this purged ‘Rump Parliament’.  It ensured that these tame MPs would vote to put the King on trial for treason.

Now, everyone knew that the House of Lords would overturn this vote. which is why on 4 January 1649 the rump of MPs in the Commons made a revolutionary declaration:

“That the people are, under God, the original of all just power: that the Commons of England, in Parliament assembled, being chosen by and representing the people, have the supreme power in this nation; that whatsoever is enacted or declared for law by the Commons in Parliament assembled, hath the force of law, and all the people of this nation are concluded thereby, although the consent and concurrence of King or House of Peers be not had thereunto.’

[Commons Journal, iv, pp. 110-111.]

[09.34]

Now, this sounds reasonable, it sounds democratic, it sounds perhaps even noble to our twenty-first century ears, but in 1649 it was political dynamite. Detractors protested that the Rumper MPs didn’t represent the people, they accused them of seeking to destroy the traditional English constitution which in fact was effectively what they were trying to do.

Even the junto seems to have been nervous about the turn of events. We know about the numerous prayer meetings held by Cromwell, New Model Army officers and Rumper MPs at this time.  Those weren’t simply because they were devout Puritans. They genuinely were worried and they genuinely wanted God’s reassurance that they were doing the right thing.

[10.17]

 To this day, the single most symbolic item of the Crown Jewels is a simple little anointing spoon. This spoon was used to anoint King Charles III in May 2023, just as it was used to anoint Charles I four centuries ago. That spoon was said to be ancient even when first listed among the Crown Jewels in 1349. Some say it was first used at Edward the Confessor’s coronation.

[10.46]

Now, I bring that up because it flags up two problems for this future republic: firstly, republicans had to overcome the entrenched belief that the monarch was God’s anointed representative. Secondly, they had to deal with the fact that England had been a hereditary monarchy since Saxon times.  These two factors had created this national mindset, this mental inertia, that was always going to be difficult to counter.

As we know, the decision was taken to hold the King’s trial in public (the junto was resolved to conduct the trial ‘in full view of God and man’). But it backfired. Whatever historians might say about Charles’ abilities as a ruler, his defence of the monarchy and condemnation of his accusers was all the more devastating because it was conducted in public.

[11.39]

Now, Charles refused to recognise the legality of the court. And it has to be admitted that he was right: it wasn’t legal.  Now, of course, the junto had little option but to act as they did; the constitution and legal system was framed to favour the Crown. But the fact remains that in putting Charles I on trial, the junto had dispensed with the law and the constitution, and relied on naked military might.

And that’s what the King observed at his trial:

‘[I]f power without law may make laws, may alter the fundamental laws of the kingdom, I do not know what subject he is in England that can be sure of his life, or anything he calls his own.’

[A Perfect Narrative of the Whole Proceedings of the High Court of Iustice (London, 1648), p. 8.]

[12.20]

Now, this was powerful, undeniable, political logic. And worse was to come for the new republic because Charles’s calm courage on the day of his execution became the stuff of legend. The manner of his death would fill royalists with a visceral hatred of the republic, and it would discourage moderates from associating with it as well.  So, the martyr cult of ‘Charles of blessed memory’ would thereafter prove a powerful weapon for all the opponents of the Commonwealth and Protectorate regimes.

[12.54]

QUESTION: Against all this, did England immediately become a republic on Charles’ death?

ANSWER: That’s an interesting thing.  No, it didn’t. Charles’s youngest children were in Parliament’s custody, and Charles was very worried that after his death the junto would make his youngest son Henry, Duke of Gloucester, a puppet king, and there’s reason to believe that this was seriously considered.

Some historians have argued that the trial had been a negotiating ploy, that the junto never intended to kill the King or get rid of the monarchy. There may be something in that, as Charles’s judges don’t seem to have had a clear plan of action after the Regicide.

[13.32]

The Rump public didn’t abolish the institution of monarchy for some weeks after Charles’ death. It was March before it abolished the House of Lords. The Commonwealth, that’s the republic, and the Council of State was formally instituted almost four months after Charles’s execution.

And I think therein we have another seed of failure because, having looked hesitant and uncertain at the start, the political leaders of the new Commonwealth thereafter tended to improvise and react to events, rather than formulate a coherent strategy. To put it simply, they seem to have made policy on the hoof.

[14.37]

QUESTION: So why do you think that they lacked a coherent strategy?

ANSWER: It has to be said that the Army’s Lord General, Thomas Fairfax, strongly disapproved of the Regicide and he was thereafter looking for any excuse to resign.  And on the other side of the coin, meantime the Levellers had tried to get the New Model Army to mutiny.  They attempted to capitalise on soldiers’ dismay that several regiments were going to be sent to Ireland.  There were some scattered risings in May 1649, but these were quickly suppressed, and Cromwell had some Leveller mutineers shot as an example.

[14.44]

QUESTION: So, after centuries of a monarch ruling Britain, was it straightforward, was it expected, that the King would be returned?

ANSWER: I really don’t think so.  Popular history over the last 300 years has been heavily influenced by royalist PR spin, and the Restoration, there are some very able journalists who are selling this, for example, with General George Monck.  I mean, this is a guy who actually started as a Royalist, switched to Parliament, served Cromwell loyally.  He is portrayed as this saviour of the monarchy and this guy who was always loyal to the Monarch, and that’s simply not true.  So, there’s a very powerful PR story built up around Charles II’s return, and we’ve got these images of maypoles and people all saying we’re all happy now because we can dance round maypoles, the fountains are flowing with wine, and things like that.

[15.42]

A lot of this is PR spin.  The reality is that the country is very divided now, and one of the important things to remember is that, think about the life expectancy of those times, a lot of people in 1660 would not have lived under a monarchy in their adult lives, or at least not under a functioning monarchy in their adult lives.  So, the monarchy would not be a familiar and a natural state of affairs to them.  They would be in considerable flux.  So, the monarchy, the Crown, was very fragile when it returned, and Charles II was very conscious of this, and his advisors, people like Clarendon and Sir Edward Nicholas that we talked about, were very conscious of this, so they’re always on the alert for any plots or any uprisings, of which there are some, there are some attempts.

[16.33]

So, it has made a difference.  It’s presented as an Interregnum, it’s presented as a gap, it’s presented, even by some leading historians, as a ‘blip’ if you like, and people then got back to normal.

One of the legacies, I suppose, of the Commonwealth is that it did question what is normal for us, what is normal for England and, by extension, for Britain?  What is the normal constitution?  What is the normal state of politics?  Everything was thrown up in the mix there.

[17.02]

QUESTION: But if the new Commonwealth was so unpopular, at home and abroad, why didn’t it disintegrate immediately?

ANSWER: Do you know, I’m sure that’s a question Charles II asked himself whilst he was hiding in that oak tree after his army had been destroyed by Cromwell at Worcester on 3 September 1651.

Charles II didn’t really invade England in 1651; he and his predominantly Scottish army were chased into England. But, nevertheless, Charles expected that the old English royalists and Presbyterians would rise to support him.  As it happened, the English didn’t rise in any great numbers; in fact, the Commonwealth was able to keep the country remarkably quiet, whilst sending thousands of county militia to reinforce Oliver Cromwell (who had by now replaced Fairfax as Lord General).

[17.53]

I would say Worcester in 1651 was really the high-water mark of the Commonwealth – although that high-water mark was principally due to Cromwell and the New Model. It’s a question – why didn’t the English population support Charles II in 1651?  I think the English population didn’t support Charles II because of war-weariness for starters.  I think there is also fear of the highly efficient New Model Army. I think dislike of the Scots is another reason as well.  Don’t forget, there had been lots of Scottish armies, particularly in the north of England, and also the Commonwealth journalists had skilfully depicted Charles II’s march into England as a foreign Scottish invasion, so there was a PR campaign by the republic as well.

[18.38]

And, of course, the King’s defeat at Worcester demoralised the royalists exiled around Europe.  For that, I can’t think of anyone more devoted to the monarchy than Sir Edward Nicholas, he was Secretary of State to both Charles I and Charles II. But when Sir Edward Nicholas passed on news of Worcester to his close friend and fellow Privy Counsellor, Lord Christopher Hatton, you could tell that he was clearly aghast that so few English and Welsh had joined Charles II’s banner. And even this fanatical royalist was so gloomy about the chances of a restoration that he was considering giving up:

“It is conceived that upon the glorious victory Cromwell and his masters will become less rigorous than formerly to those that are under their subjection. And if they do so, it is believed all men will come in and submit to them. I know some men of good condition in the Low Countries that intend to go now and make their peace, if they may be permitted upon good security to live quietly without taking any oaths imposed upon them. I pray favour me with your advice what course you would have me to take, who, by my long attendance and with even insupportable contempt, have wasted myself and my poor fortune even to the last.”

[Sir Edward Nicholas to Christopher, Lord Hatton, Antwerp, 19 September 1651. Quoted in C. E. Green, ‘Charles II and the Battle of Worcester’, English Historical Review, v (1890), pp. 114-18.]

[20.09]

Presbyterians gradually started to return to help run central and local government. They started to think, the Presbyterians, ‘well, this is going to be the future’.  And as Sir Edward predicted, even some royalist exiles began to return to England, all of which suggests that with better planning, and a little bit of luck the Commonwealth might well have survived.

[20.33]

QUESTION: So, from this high-water mark, where did it all go wrong?

ANSWER: Well, again, the Commonwealth faced so many problems, it’s difficult to know where to begin to answer that question. Internally, even the relatively small clique of civil and military rulers at the centre just couldn’t agree on what sort of republic they wanted.  So you have, for example, Sir Arthur Haselrig, he wants a republic based on the Ancient Roman senate; so in other words, he wants a country which is ruled by the patrician elite.  He is opposed by someone like Major-General Edmund Ludlow who wants a more popular democratic republic, and you have others sitting on the Council estate like Cromwell himself.  Cromwell didn’t really seem sure what he wanted, so this is indecision.

This indecision was unfortunate because it tended to leave provincial rulers slightly to their own devices. To be sure, the machinery of law and order had started up again, but the policies pursued by county justices varied enormously, as did their competence and honesty. So, it is all the more unfortunate that you have this, this indecision, this inconsistency, at the same time as you have to remember that that the Commonwealth had inherited a war-ravaged economy.  And think – war is expensive, but civil war, civil war is doubly expensive.

[21.56]

Any regime would have struggled given the catastrophic loss of trade, and the extensive property destruction that had happened during the Civil Wars.  And think about this:  aside from thousands of dead householders, thousands more had returned from the wars maimed and unable to resume their trade. Relatively few of the war veterans who petitioned for financial assistance were professional soldiers.  Don’t think of them as soldiers; they were farmers, they were weavers, blacksmiths, cobblers, carpenters, agricultural labourers. These were no longer fit for work, so they couldn’t contribute to the economy.  In fact, they would be a burden on the economy.  So, the official state burden of veteran and widow pensions and parish dole just gives a glimpse of the problem.  You think of the fact that thousands of families spent their time and money during the 1650s and beyond caring for invalids and orphans.  That all contributed to depress the domestic economy for a decade or so.

[22.58]

And then added to that, since 1645 there had been a professional army, the New Model Army, which cost money.  It had also been one which had acquired the taste and confidence to intervene in politics. I always think of Sean Kelsey’s quote here, he says: “Conflict between soldiers and civilians ruined every attempt at settlement after 1649.” This didn’t change when Cromwell seized power in 1653.

[23.26]

QUESTION: So here again we come to a conundrum which we’ve heard a lot of historians discuss, and that is why did Cromwell seize power? Was it just personal ambition, or was he trying to save the republic?

ANSWER: I mean, for all that’s been written about him, and by him, Cromwell still remains an enigma. I think he’d lost patience with the ineffective Rump Parliament. The Commonwealth he saw was probably less respected in 1653 than it had been even in 1649, and a sign of this lost patience was that Cromwell acted very soon after MPs voted to remain in power for a further three years rather than call an election.  Also, this Army pay had again fallen seriously into arrears, and that weighed heavily with Cromwell and his fellow generals.  It’s difficult to control an army which doesn’t have pay.

[24.20]

I don’t get the feeling that Cromwell was driven by personal ambition.  He was certainly accused of it, at the time and ever since, but I don’t think he was driven by personal ambition. He did attempt to save the republic.  He selected – and that’s the operative word, ‘selected’ – a new pan-British Parliament, which included, say, Scottish representatives for example.  That was known as the Barebones Parliament. But the MPs were nominated by Army commanders, they weren’t elected, so the Barebones Parliament had all of the drawbacks of its predecessor, the Rump, and more because it was very clearly the creature of the Army, so it didn’t take long for the MPs to give up and just to hand power back to Cromwell.

[25.03]

QUESTION: That raises the question, was the Protectorate a continuation of the republic, or a military dictatorship?

ANSWER: I mean, given that Cromwell relied on the Army to keep him in place, it’s got to be said that the Protectorate was effectively a military dictatorship.  But, having said that, I mean Cromwell couldn’t do exactly as he wanted, so his various parliaments sometimes did go against his wishes, and he could certainly never ignore the Army’s wishes. That became most evident when the Army forced him to refuse the offer to become king.  Having said that, of course, as Lord Protector he did become ‘king in all but name’. So, the Protectorate can’t really be called a republic I would say.

[25.48]

I think the Protectorate was more efficient than the Commonwealth, not just because Cromwell surrounded himself with very talented people, so you’ve got John Thurloe, Secretary of State, who was a superb spymaster; you’ve got Robert Blake who was prominent among an excellent crop of admirals;  you’ve got George Monck was a highly competent governor of occupied Scotland; you’ve got William Lockhart who negotiated a remarkable military alliance with France; and you’ve got Cromwell’s son, Henry, who was an efficient (and actually well-regarded) Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, so it’s more efficient.

But, in some respects the Protectorate was even more fragile than the Commonwealth had been. So, it was necessary for Cromwell to maintain a huge army (that was about 50,000 men at its peak), and not just to police England, but to occupy Ireland, Scotland and the Caribbean, for example.

[26.42]

And Cromwell continued the Commonwealth’s policy of building up the navy.  He had to that to secure English interests in the Atlantic world, to protect maritime trade, to aid foreign policy. It’s all to do with national security.   Now, the main reason that France, Catholic France, entered into alliance in 1657 was that it was impressed by Cromwell’s armed forces. But if you think, the crushing taxation required to maintain these forces really alienated the general public.   There is also, you have to say, that attempts by certain members of the administration, not so much Cromwell, but certain members of the administration attempted to impose a godly reformation of manners, that added to that general sense of dissatisfaction.

[27.27]

As king in all but name, it was easy for royalists to portray Cromwell as an ambitious usurper, and to personalise the struggle.  And, indeed, on the other side, you have Radicals such as John Lilburne who accused him of betraying the principles for which parliamentarians had gone to war, and that is freedom from tyranny, and the liberty of the people.  Then you’ve got Presbyterians divided, some hate him, some support him.

Now, it’s no longer fashionable to say that the survival of the Protectorate depended on Cromwell’ health. But much did depend on his charismatic leadership, and, after his death, things did deteriorate. The New Model grandees, having selected Richard Cromwell as Oliver’s successor, found him unwilling to be their puppet.  They thought they had elected a pliant nice guy, and he didn’t want to be their puppet, but he wasn’t powerful enough to build up his own powerbase, if you like, so he resigned in May 1659, and in the vacuum caused by Richard’s resignation, the Rump was brought back again, and even the New Model had now divided into factions. So again, we have disunity and disunity normally means failure, and that’s what it did in this case.

[28.38]

QUESTION: That means that it must have been very easy for the royalists to bring an end to the republic?

ANSWER: Well, the straight answer to that is that the royalists didn’t bring an end to the republic. The end of the republic was principally due to the intervention of the Presbyterians – those who had always opposed Cromwell, who detested ‘government of the sword’, and also those Presbyterians (like George Monck) who had supported him and served him.

George Monck has got the reputation of having restored Charles II to his throne, but it’s often forgotten that, initially, he tried to save the republic by supporting the Rump Parliament, and it quickly became evident to him that the restoration of the Stuart monarchy offered the best chance of restoring political stability.  That’s normally the key to a lot of Presbyterians is political stability.  They will normally go for whichever regime they think offers that.

[29.33]

At the start of this conversation, we talked about the Commonwealth’s failure to rebrand the Sovereign of the Seas.  And it’s an interesting contrast, that in May 1660, you’ve got Charles II and the royal retinue sailing from Scheveningen in the Netherlands to Dover.  They are sailing in the Naseby, the ship called the Naseby, and the name of that ship was changed to The Royal Charles en route, in the middle of the Channel. Charles II and the Duke of York then went and sat in the great cabin of what was now the Royal Charles, and they changed the names of all the Commonwealth’s ships. It probably took them less than an hour, and those names stuck.

So, that doesn’t mean that the Commonwealth and Protectorate were doomed to failure, but it kind of shows that they were always likely to fail.

[30.20]

QUESTION: So we have the end of a failed government, a failed regime, but did the Commonwealth and Protectorate actually leave a legacy?

ANSWER: I think it left several legacies, some of these are positive and some negative. The most obvious legacy is that the events of 1649 proved that it was possible to set up a republic.  If you think about the countries which were, to a certain extent, inspired by the English example, and that’s most notably France and America, there are places in America named after parliamentarians.  There’s Hampden in Ohio, for example. The survival of those republics, the French and American republics, obviously they’ve had their moments, shows that, given the right conditions, there is an alternative to hereditary monarchical government, so that was certainly one legacy and a worldwide legacy at that.

[31.17]

QUESTION: And I guess the $64,000 question then, David, is could the Republic have survived?

ANSWER: I don’t think it could have survived after Cromwell, Oliver Cromwell, that is, because the New Model Army in particular was split amongst so many factions and so many interest groups.  So, I think it’s that disunity.  I think it isn’t popular nowadays to say that it didn’t survive Cromwell, but he was the glue that held it all together, and while he was there, by his kind of force of personality, if you like, and also by the people that he gathered around him that he trusted, there was a small group that he actually trusted, then he could keep it together.  I don’t think, certainly Richard Cromwell didn’t have the personality or the powerbase to emulate his father, and that’s why they chose him, you know.  The New Model Army general chose him because they thought he could be manipulated, Richard Cromwell could be manipulated.  It’s interesting, they didn’t choose Henry Cromwell.  Now, that could be interesting because Henry Cromwell was a chip off the old block.  I mean, I suspect they thought that Henry Cromwell was too much like his Dad and they didn’t want to have him in power because that would mean that he would control things, whereas Richard didn’t.

[32.32]

 QUESTION: Thanks so much.  This has been a really fascinating discussion.  It’s given us a tremendous chronological overview, but more importantly deep insights, I think, into the realities of the failure of the republic.  Thank you very much indeed.

ANSWER: My pleasure.

[32.56]

You can listen to more programmes about the Republic and the Protectorate as well as the restoration of the monarchy on our Spotify and Apple podcast channels, or by visiting our website, worldturnedupsidedown.co.uk.  Here you’ll find talks and interviews with other distinguished historians of the 17^th century about the great names such as Oliver Cromwell and King Charles, the lives of ordinary men and women whose world was turned upside down by war and political change, and the religious divisions between the three kingdoms of England, Scotland and Ireland that left families destitute.   

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