Republic: Britain’s Revolutionary Decade 1649–1660; The Fall: The Last Days of the English Republic

In British political culture, open political division, disunity, and political party took further shape with the Restoration. Nevertheless, the very political act embodied by the Restoration was an act of forgetting, or at least the act of pretending to forget the political past and the cultural shifts that had taken shape under the republican experiment and the Protectorate.The reinstatement of a moderate royalist version of the ancient constitution moved political memory and culture back to 1642 and the beginnings of civil war. Gone was the repudiation of kingly rule and the jettisoning of the House of Lords. King, lords, and commons were reinstated. That other argument embedded in the ancient constitution, that political stability was a key marker of British or English political culture, also took form. Immemorial custom meant incremental change, mediated through the tradition of common law and ancient parliamentary practice. Such a position helped in the act of forgetting what had happened since 1642, and in particular since 1649 (Scott, 391–411).In tandem, a shift in the weight and meaning assigned to the now pervading political vocabulary of English liberties was glossed as a pervading part of the ancient constitution. Instead of that medieval idea, which saw such liberties as a set of ad hoc privileges or rights, given by the crown and sanctioned by custom, the republican experiment, prior to the Restoration, helped underline a different view. The idea of natural rights, of individual freedom grounded in nature and expressed through the ancient constitution and parliamentary representation, may have been new, but it would be presented as a long-held component of the ancient constitution.The reason for beginning a review essay of Alice Hunt’s Republic and Henry Reece’s The Fall with a discussion of the Restoration, as opposed to the English Republic or Commonwealth, is because both interventions consciously eschew or disengage from the myth of the Restoration, of its inevitability, and the glossing of the significance of the republican experiment through the pervading language and idea of the ancient constitution. Each intervention treats the republican experiment without knowledge of the Restoration and thus engages with the English Republic or Commonwealth as a living, viable, and enduring political experiment.Hunt’s intervention is a cultural biography of the Republic, which is told through the lives, opportunities, and experiences of the different individuals involved. In doing so, Hunt does two things, providing an accessible and popular history of the Republic whilst also revealing the emergence of new intellectual, social, and political cultures that the republican experiment allowed. Each chapter concerns one of the years of the republican experiment, which begins in 1649 with the end of the single person rule of the king. Each chapter is built around different vignettes which illustrate, with a light hand, the sense of cultural, intellectual, and political change afoot.In 1649 we hear of the sale of the royal family’s goods and property, including clothing, fabrics, and tapestries in order to raise funds for the fledgling republic. There is a sense of permanent change with the erosion of the mystique of kingship. We also hear of Cromwell in Drogheda and the ratcheting up of the language of antipopery against the Irish. In 1650 John Milton and Marchamont Nedham embody the now permanent consumption of news, and the need to control its consumption, with the formation of the “newspaper” of the Commonwealth, Mercurius Politicus. In 1652 Thomas Hobbes returns to England, with other émigrés, to find the Commonwealth a functional and stable place. Samuel Hartlib’s circle of intellectuals and the curious also takes shape within the freer political circumstances of the Commonwealth.We then move to the Protectorate in 1653 and the ending of the Rump by the hand of Oliver Cromwell. Once again there are interesting vignettes illustrating the climate and shifts in culture. Izaak Walton’s The Compleat Angler comes to represent the political disengagement of moderate royalists and Anglicans now concerned with pastimes and pleasure. Change in political culture is also marked in 1654 with an account of Cromwell’s self-presentation when receiving ambassadors, which expressed the disposition of a chief magistrate, not a king. In 1655 England’s now longstanding engagement with the Caribbean and Jamaica is recounted, again linking long-term shifts in culture, enterprise, and colonialism with the atmosphere of the republican experiment as opposed to an imperialism so readily associated with monarchy.The opening of new possibilities is found in 1656 with Menasseh ben Israel’s “The Humble Petition of the Jews.” Nevertheless, with the Quakers and James Nayler’s entry into Bristol, concerns over social disorder associated with the more radical streams of Protestantism took further root. Here we find the moderate royalist William Davenant, in A Proposition for Advancement of Moralitie, by a New Way of Entertainment of the People, proposing plays as a way of ensuring the correct form of sociability and civility. Such sociability and experimentation developed further in 1657 when we encounter the Anglo-Irish children of the first Earl of Cork, Lord Broghill, the scientist Robert Boyle and his sister Lady Ranelagh, who were all involved in free discussion and the pursuit of knowledge. Broghill associated such possibilities with a republic where kingly virtue no longer overshadowed the virtue and glory of the citizen. Finally, we turn to the offer of kingship to Cromwell and his refusal, which nevertheless saw the embedding of the rituals and ceremony associated with the rule of the Protectorate. When the Restoration arrived, the cultures of the Commonwealth or Republic were firmly rooted.Overall, Hunt provides a very accessible text, which communicates clearly the wider cultural sensibilities of the period and the cultural vitality of the republican experiment, which fed into the Restoration. There is a question, though, which remains outstanding: What is a republic? Res publica for the Elizabethans meant the common good or the commonwealth. With the somewhat chaotic calculations involved in the abolition of monarchy, res publica came to mean an absence of single person rule, which for some Cromwell violated. Such a notion of republic also helped shift the meaning of the tagline of English liberties. Was freedom simply the ability to act within certain agreed limits? Was it the ability to search out knowledge of God? Or was liberty the ability to rule oneself? In answer to the last question, liberty could only be found in a republic where each citizen participated in government. In this manner, the citizen was not subject to the rule of a single individual but to the rule of a collective will. For others a republic could express a mixed polity or form of government, of sovereignty shared between the king, the lords, and the commons, each estate keeping the other in check (Worden, 307–27). Such an idea of republic is the one with which Hunt concludes when referring to the later commentary on England by the French philosopher Montesquieu. With Hunt’s account, however, there isn’t the pervading sense that the idea of a republic, and of political freedom, was much in dispute and much contested.Henry Reece’s The Fall, whilst working from a similar premise in its conscious disconnection from the Restoration, takes a more traditional historiographical approach. Here we have a political history involving the intricate exchanges between key male-historical figures, making political decisions, managing parliament and the army in order to preserve the Commonwealth after Cromwell’s death. The recall of the Rump, the recall of the Long Parliament, and the instituting of a “free parliament” in the form of the Convention Parliament, all suggests, in a narrative seen through the lens of the ancient constitution, a natural and inevitable reversion to immemorial custom and tradition. The main line of argument running through The Fall, however, underlines the contingent nature of historical change and insists that the return of kingly rule was not considered a viable possibility during many of the exchanges and negotiations which took place.The account given of Richard Cromwell is one of miscalculation, but not inevitable demise. Richard’s relationship with the army command was not strained from the beginning and his decision to call a parliament in order to settle issues over finance, and ensure a broad consensus, was not necessarily a miscalculation. Misjudgment at different turns, which saw the Protectorate parliament antagonize the army by pursuing members of the army for past actions, undermined Richard’s position. What followed was The Humble Representation and Petition of the General Council of the Officers. Religious radicalism in the army and the energy of the gathered churches were unleashed. The republican sentiment among certain MPs, namely Henry Vane and Arthur Hesilrige, was stoked. The suspension of the Protectorate Parliament and the restoration of the Rump followed.The same pattern or frame of argument is present in each subsequent political maneuver encountered. The relationship between the army and the Rump was fragile, but at no point was there the suggestion that the recall of the Rump was simply another step on the road to the restoration of the monarchy. The army accepted its subjection to civilian authority in the form of the Rump. Miscalculation by different individuals, however, meant that a fragile relationship, which might have been maintained, collapsed. The issue of indemnity for the army remained the army’s primary concern now that it was willing to be subject to civilian and parliamentary authority. The actions of Hesilrige, who remained suspicious of the army, because of Pride’s Purge, forced the relationship to the point of disintegration. The issuing of the Humble Petition and Addresse by the army, which sought indemnity for past actions, was ignored and Hesilrige moved to accuse General Lambert of treason. The army now acted against the Rump.Here the formation of a Committee of Safety by the army command shifted the political status quo. In the narrative set out, General Monck’s personality and disposition drives the unforeseen conclusion. Monck, as an army officer, was loyal to the institution or authority which appointed him and he chose to be loyal to the Rump. There arose a call for a “free parliament,” partly stoked by a free and fake press. The 23,500 individuals who had subscribed to The Engagement and Remonstrance of the City of London was the invention of Roger L’Estrange. In response, Monck sought stability and he sought to fill the vacant places in the Rump. Unsatisfied that the vacant places would be filled through genuine free elections, he turned to the recall of the Long Parliament on the condition that a free parliament, namely new elections, would follow swiftly afterward.In such an account, it is individual personality which forms the source of political miscalculation and meaningful action. This is an old style of historical argument in its best form. Two other notes emerge. One is deeply Hobbesian in character. The restoration of the monarchy takes place at the point when all other possibilities have been worked through. The Restoration becomes an act that grasps at the only remaining possibility within prevalent political culture and memory, which might result in settled political authority. The Fall at each point underlines how, in the absence of the Protectorate, embodied by Oliver Cromwell, there were two institutional possibilities where political authority might be located: the army and/or some remnant of parliament. Neither in the end had the capacity to work together or the experience to take decisions which would ensure either could assert sufficient political authority. The result was the Restoration.The other note that emerges is the extent to which political culture and institutions had changed, quite fundamentally, since 1642. With Oliver Cromwell’s death, the patterns and frames of action found in the Leveller movement and at Putney all reemerge. The army was an institutional setting for the voice of the radical officer or rank-and-file member. The use of cheap print not only allowed political positions to be disseminated, but petitions were printed that delivered the demands or concerns of part of the political community to parliament to which the political community (at least ostensibly) gave its hand. Despite the disappearance of these forms of political engagement under Oliver Cromwell, when the opportunity arose such political engagement reemerged.Here the more traditional, narrative, and political account given by Reece nicely complements the cultural biography crafted by Hunt. At one level, Reece underlines the sense of commitment to the English Republic and thus its powerful historical presence. As with Hunt, we are not presented with a mere interregnum. Reece illustrates the deep-seated change in political culture and engagement, which would not (and possibly could not) be shelved at the Restoration. Whilst Reece avoids giving a definition of the English Republic, in the exchanges he outlines we do see the hints of the competing visions now present. If we accept in the end that the republican experiment was fragile, what both works certainly underline is that despite its fragility the republican experiment had a depth and presence we need to acknowledge more readily. These two studies provide in-depth and readable accounts that must surely be of interest when looking at post Restoration dramatizations of usurpation, restoration, and republicanism.