This is Stuart England The Civil Wars episode two point one hundred and four.
The Rump Resurrected the story of Richard Cromwell's Parliament, or the Third Protectorate Parliament
as it's often called, is an awkward one to shape into a coherent narrative.
At least I'm finding that to be the case. The problem lies in
the multiple overlapping factions battling each other. So I thought I'd set up some
simplified, perhaps oversimplified categories at the outset. This episode is going to center
around three groups. First, the old Civilian faction, which by this point
you can also think of as supporters of Richard Cromwell as Lord Protector. Second,
the Old Army faction, nominally led by Charles Fleetwood, but he was
in an increasingly precarious position, holding less and less influence with the officers who
made up the army. And finally, the Republicans or Rumpers, men like
Arthur Hesselrigg, who dreamed of restoring the Rump, the last true expression of
untrammeled parliamentary sovereignty. The determining factor in this three way battle was the loyalty
of the army officers. Richard Cromwell and his chief spokesman in Parliament, John
Thurlow, had an uneasy relationship with army leaders like Fleetwood. Although the army
and civilian factions had been divided on the future of the Protectorate for more than
a year, the whole system faced an existential crisis. Some kind of reconciliation
had to be achieved if the Protectorate was to survive. The only question was
whether that would mean a largely civilian government with a reduced role for Army grandees,
or a kind of figure head protectorate with Fleetwood and the Army acting as
the real power behind Richard Cromwell. This factional battle was complicated by the work
of the Republicans, who ate away at Fleetwood's influence in the army. The
junior officers of the army, who had never really warmed to Fleetwood, were
targeted by a barrage of pamphlets and back room visits warning that the army grandees
were poor custodians of the Good Old Cause. The loose definition of the good
Old Cause worked to Republican advantage. Here. Army grandees could be variously accused
of abandoning their godly mission, exposing soldiers to lawsuits for their actions over the
past few years, or betraying past sacrifices by restoring the monarchy and placing a
crown on Richard Cromwell's head. The dynamic created a kind of dilemma for Fleetwood.
If he made a deal with the low protector to ensure army leaders like
himself retained power in England, he risked alienating the junior officers in the army
that gave him political influence. Really, it was the same tension that had
always marked all of A Cromwell's career, how to reconcile pragmatic power politics with
the principled red wreck that inspired the troops. As events would demonstrate, Fleetwood
had none of the political skill that his late brother in law had displayed.
Though, to be fair, in the spring of sixteen fifty nine, the
English political world was a treacherous place that would have challenged even the most talented
of statesmen. We'll start the action on the twenty eighth of March sixteen fifty
nine. The same day the House of Commons finally voted to recognize the Other
House as an official partner in Parliament. While on the surface that appeared to
be some welcome progress towards well anything at Westminster, the glacial piece of action
in Parliament was already being overtaken by action elsewhere. That same day, Edmund
Ludlow visited Wallingford House, Charles Fleetwood's headquarters, just day ten minute walk from
Westminster. Since the opening of the Parliament, if not before, Fleetwood had
been hosting regular meetings at Wallingford House, where he and his allies worked out
strategy and conferred with delegates from other combinations or factions. Edmund Ludlow's visit was
a turning point. We know Ludlow as the Republican rumper who was a major
player in Irish politics between the death of Henry Ireton and the arrival of Henry
Cromwell in Dublin. Since then, Ludlow, like other rumpers like Arthur Hussig,
had been marginalized ejected from Ireland for distributing anti Protectorate propaganda. He was
imprisoned upon arrival in England. After repeated fruitless attempts to get Ludlow to recognize
the legitimacy of the Protectorate, Oliver Cromwell eventually gave up and sentenced the troublesome
Republican to a kind of house arrest. With his relations in Essex. There
Ludlow stewed until the opportunity provided by the new Parliament in sixteen fifty nine.
With all the Cromwell out of the way and the Protectorate government in disarray,
Ludlow won a seat in his native Wiltshire and joined Arthur Hessereagan, Thomas Scott,
among others, as rumpers returning to Westminster. Ludlow's invitation to Wallingford House
was a result of growing anxiety within Fleetwood circle. Richard Cromwell was proving more
difficult to intimidate or out maneuver than Fleetwood had anticipated. Though the General gave
most of the credit to John Thurlow and the other civilian advisors who surrounded the
Lord Protector. This Cromwell was no Oliver. The problem was the longer the
battle dragged on, the weaker Fleetwood became. The junior officers who provided the
Army grandees with their power, were growing more and more disillusioned with the Protectorate
as a whole, not just the civilian faction that currently held sway with Cromwell.
Fleetwood needed a way to shore up his support in the army. Ludlow
provided the answer. After all, it was Ludlow and his Republican friends who
were eroding fleetwood influence in the army. Their attacks on the Protectorates state,
as fundamentally incompatible with the nebulous good old Cause, were making Fleetwood's work impossible.
As he was himself tied to the Protectorate regime from its beginnings, the
taint of betrayal fell on him just as much as Richard Cromwell and his civilian
advisers. Fleetwood decided to begin coordinating with the Republicans. Their common immediate goal
up ending the status quo was enough to justify a partnership. The details of
what came next could be saved for tomorrow. Armed with a vague sense of
security on his army flank, Fleetwood moved quickly to put pressure on the Lord
Protector. Just days after opening talks with the Republicans, Fleetwood and John desbro
placed new demands before Richard Cromwell in order to ensure the army's interests were protected
in the current chaotic political environment. The Lord Protector had to call a meeting
of the General council of officers. Such army councils had been crucial in sixteen
forty seven and sixteen forty eight producing the framework of what would become the Commonwealth.
Oliver Cromwell had also used a council of army officers to run the country
after the forced dissolution of the Rump, until a more formal system could be
developed. Of course, behind this appeal to precedent lurked Fleetwood's true purpose.
An army council would provide him with an independent source of power outside of Parliament
or the Lord Protector's inner circle of advisors. How exactly Fleetwood intended to use
that power is not entirely clear. The most likely interpretation is that he hoped
to intimidate the Lord Protector for months. Fleetwood's goal had been to drive the
civilian faction from power and replace advisors like John Thurlow with himself and like minded
allies. In other words, this was an old fashioned court power play that
wouldn't have been out of place in James's day. Think of the Earl of
Southampton trying to leverage his way into power at the expense of the Howards in
the sixteen tens. Or in the sixteen twenties, the Earl of Pembrokes attempt
to use his influence in Parliament to supplant the Duke of Buckingham at court.
The message Fleetwood delivered west straightforward, appease or frustrated soldiers by giving them a
voice in government, or risk losing the one thing that had always held the
regime up, the army. But there was a problem. The example provided
by the Earl of Pembroke is instructive. As you may recall, Pembroke and
his allies in the House of Commons helped engineer the impeachment of the Duke of
Buckingham in sixteen twenty six. But while Pembroke likely saw this as a bit
of power politics, a threat that would force the King to meet his political
demands, the influential Earl didn't exercise complete control over the House of Commons.
Buckingham's impeachment was driven by real grievances. They were more like a wave that
Pembroke was riding on, rather than an instrument he could manipulate. The impeachment
proceedings developed a momentum of their own, leaving Pembroke's plans for a limited cabinet
shuffle in Ruins. Fleetwood was playing a similar game now in the spring of
sixteen fifty nine. In effect, he was warning Cromwell that his administration was
losing the support of the army and that the only men capable of keeping the
officers in line were grandees like himself or John Desbroo. But that was only
half true. Once the Council of Officers was summoned and gave an official sanction
by the Lord Protector, there was no guarantee that Fleetwood would be able to
control its actions. In fact, Fleetwood was introducing an unpredictable new element into
an already unstable situation. Cromwell, seeing he had little choice if he wanted
to maintain the support of the army, acquiesced. On the second of April,
the General Council of Officers convened. Perhaps unsurprisingly considering the ongoing political crisis,
the London area was packed with army men. Some five hundred attended the
first meeting of the Council. Almost immediately it became clear that Fleetwood and Desboro
had miscalculated. When the Council created a committee to draw up a petition outlining
the Army's grievances. Neither of the two grandees were invited to join. There
were the usual complaints about back pay they was out, but the political demands
were provocative. The officers accused the current regime of repeatedly insulting the good Old
Cause, the very principles they had led for. As usual in such petitions,
the Lord Protector himself wasn't blamed. The fault lay with the ever present
evil councilors who surrounded him. The officers pledged to assist Cromwell in plucking the
wicket out of their places. On the surface, this appeared to serve Fleetwood's
purposes. Here was a call to remove his civilian faction rivals from the corridors
of power, exactly what he had assembled the Council of Officers to do.
But the whole idea had been to replace those men with Army grandees like himself.
Considering how quickly Fleetwood and his allies had been marginalized within the council,
how credible could he be as a broker reconciling the army to the government.
There was little evidence that the frustrated officers would entrust Fleetwood to restore the good
old cause. Four days after convening, the officers presented their petition to the
Lord Protector. Two days after that it was read out in Parliament. There
was an eerie sense of deja vous about the whole thing. Once again,
the army was making demands of a parliament. But what authority did the officers
have. The Lord Protector had authorized the gathering of the Officers Council, but
that body had no formal position within the Protectorate Constitution. On the other hand,
the Protectorate Constitution was itself uncertain. Technically, the Humble Petition and Advice
had superseded the Instrument of Government as the law of the land, but neither
document had ever been wholeheartedly confirmed by a Parliament. The closest such measure came
earlier in the current session, when the Humble Petition and Advice was given a
deliberately qualified seal of approval. Faced with the looming threat of the army,
the Parliament acted as its predecessor had back in sixteen forty eight. It ignored
the officers. A formal response to the petition was put off for ten days
while Westminster focused on more pressing matters, and in case that response was too
subtle for the officers to interpret. Those pressing matters were almost uniformly decided against
the interests of the army. Part of this had to do with the makeup
of the Parliament as we saw earlier. As many as half of the members
at Westminster were first time MP's. There was little in the way of factional
organization or coherence. There were voices calling for strict republicanism, a return to
a rump style, absolute parliamentary sovereignty. Some agreed with the army officers that
their priority had to be salvaging the good old cause. Others focused on shoring
up the current regime as the only path towards stability. But thieves were relatively
isolated minorities. Many had come to Westminster with much less narrowly focused goals.
Memories of the rule of the major generals still lingered, fueling a sense that
military government was both expensive and intrusive. As a result, In the days
after the officers presented their petition, discussion turned to the most tangible aspect of
military rule, the taxes that paid for the army. In a span of
ten days, Parliament held up the release of funds from the Excise Office to
investigate collections, refused to raise the value of the assessment, and opened an
investigation into the seizure of property from tax refusers. During the rule of the
Major Generals, far from passing an amnesty for army officers, which the military
had long lobbied for, there was talk of impeachments. The crisis reached its
climax when Parliament turned its attention to William Butler, who had been Major General
of Northamptonshire, Bedfordshire and Huntingdonshire, the countryside north of London. We've met
Butler briefly. He was the major general who violently suppressed a mass Quaker meeting,
which was typical of his tenure as major General. Bahler was notorious for
being aggressive in the persecution of religious radicals like Quakers, and of Catholics too,
which is impressive when you think about it. Among major generals, a
group defined by its puritan anti Catholic fervor, Butler stood out for his aggression
and violence. Bahler was perhaps the most authoritarian of the major generals and was
frequently criticized for his high handed treatment of local elites. He was even criticized
by the Council of state when he arrested the Earl of Northampton on the charge
of failing to pay the decimation tax. Northampton, who was a leading figure
in the Sealed Knot, was hardly a friend of the regime, but the
central government worried about the legality of Butler's actions and reprimanded the Major General.
It was perhaps no surprise then that Butler drew the attention of those in Parliament
who wanted to make sure the major generals never returned as instruments of administration.
He was accused of numerous illegal seizures of property during his tenure as Major General,
and Parliament voted to strip him of his current office as Magistrate. This
was the final straw for the army officers, who feared the precedent Parliament was
setting. If Boler could be removed from his civil office, and perhaps even
drummed out of the army via impeach, then the whole Army's future was in
doubt. How much of this was a product of the rivalry between the civilian
and army factions at the Protectorate wasn't entirely clear, though unsurprisingly, many army
officers read these developments as a direct assault in all likelihood. However, Cromwellians
like John Thurlow were exercising about as much control over Parliament as Fleetwood was over
the Officers Council. Circumstantial evidence for the lack of control the government was exercising
over Parliament came in the form of a series of panicked meetings at Whitehall.
While all this was going on, Richard Cromwell consulted with John Thurlow, Roger
Boyle and bus Rode Whitelock, trying to find a way to de escalate the
crisis before it reached a point of no return. One option was to arrest
Fleetwood circle at Wallingford House, but it was unclear if that would achieve anything
other than inflame the officers. As much as Thurlough, Boil and the others
saw Fleetwood as the enemy, he was hardly the mastermind behind the current crisis.
In fact, removing him might just strengthen the power of the junior officers
and their radical agenda. The other option was to dissolve the Officers Council or
their conflict with Parliament turned violent. This too had the potential to be inflammatory,
but Cromwell hope that Fleetwood and his allies might exercise a calming influence on
the army. If the Lord Protector could guarantee the safety of the Army Grandees
from any retribution against them in Parliament, they might agree to dismantle the Officers
Council. By this point it was clear that Fleetwood and Desbroo had got themselves
into a precarious position. They faced a hostile Parliament and an increasingly unruly officer
corps. They might jump at the chance to climb down from their vulnerable position.
On the eighteenth of April, the Lord Protector announced that the Officers Council
had come to an end. All officers were to return to their units,
many of which were stationed fire from London. The announcement had little effect.
Many officers who had no official Army business in London remained in the city.
The Army's influence over the increasingly unstable political situation would not be neutralized so easily.
That afternoon, the House of Commons locked itself in its chamber for an
emergency debate. By the evening, they produced some declarations of their own.
All meetings of Army officers were banned unless given specific authorization by Parliament and the
Lord Protector The Commons also called on all army officers to make a solemn pledge
not to interrupt Parliament's work. Those who refused must immediately resign. The next
scheduled meeting of the Officers Council went ahead anyway. Two days later, on
the twentieth of April, fleetwoods attempts to exert some kind of control over the
body were fruitless. In fact, the General was more or less ignored dismissed
from the movement he had helped encourage. That night, Fleetwood and Desborough met
with Richard Cromwell. The Lord Protector assured them that he would defend them from
any attempt by Parliament to his act retribution on their persons or property, But
it wasn't clear that Cromwell had any more influence over Parliament than the Grandees had
over the Officers Council. Fleetwood and Desboro begged the Lord Protector to dissolve the
session at Westminster before history repeated itself and Parliament went to war with the army.
In fact, in London, battle lines were already being drawn. The
mayor sided with Parliament, whereas most of the city militia appeared ready to line
up behind the Army. The next day, Cromwell assembled the leading members of
the Civilian Party to advise him. Roger Boyle, Bulstrode, Whitelocke and John
Thurlow were all in agreement. The situation had become untenable. Parliament and the
Army were on a collision course. The only solution was to de escalate by
dissolving Parliament and enforcing the dispersal of the Army Council. As if to prove
that assessment right, that day, Parliament stepped up its attacks on the Army.
The House debated putting the entire Army under the direct control of Parliament and
the Lord Protector, eliminating any pretense that officers controlled their own destiny. This
is one of those moments when events moved far too quickly for individual players to
control them. Late on the twenty first of April, hours after Parliament debated
its control over the Army and Cromwell had been advised to dissolve Parliament, Charles
Fleetwood and his allies gathered at Wallingford House to assess their options. Clearly,
the Lord Protector was unwilling or unable to fulfill his promise of protection. Rumors
were also circulating that this was all a manufactured crisis to neuter the y and
paved the way for a Cromwellian monarchy. Torn between a Lord Protector they couldn't
trust and a wave of army resentment they couldn't control, Fleetwood and his allies
decided to gamble on the army. The important thing was to survive the next
few days. They could worry about the nation's future. Later, late in
the evening, Fleetwood sent it word from Wallingford House. The army was to
gather at Saint James's Palace the following morning. England needed them one last time
to prevent the betrayal of the good old cause. Meanwhile, Lord Protector Cromwell
called on his civilian faction allies to mobilize their forces too. As you know,
despite the label, several of the civilian faction leaders were army men themselves.
But when the sun came up it was clear that the army had rallied
to Fleetwood, not the Lord Protector. The force Cromwell managed to scramble together
at Whitehall consisted of a poultry, two troops of horse, and three companies
of infantry. A message soon arrived from John desbro at Saint James's Palace dissolved
Parliament. He demanded of Cromwell and the army would protect him, a somewhat
sarcastic reversal of the promise the Lord Detector had made two days before. Seeing
no other option, Cromwell agreed to dissolve Parliament later that day. The men
of the Commons refused the summons to hear the Lord Protector's formal address, but
their protest was effectively meaningless. Once again, men with guns trumped parliamentary procedure.
The third Protectorate Parliament had come to a close, like the first two,
dissolved amid acrimony and resentment. On paper, the Wallingford house men had
won a victory. They were in the same position Oliver Cromwell had been in
when he dissolved the Rump in the spring of sixteen fifty three or the nominated
Assembly later that year. But appearances can be deceiving. Where in those cases
Cromwell had been in a strong position to shape what came next. Fleetwood and
desbro had only a precarious grip on the situation. Their goal wasn't really to
overthrow the Protectorate regime, but to replace the Civilian Faction as the dominant players
surrounding the Lord Protector. However, the junior officers who had fueled their coup
had very different objectives. They wanted to defend and restore the good old cause,
and the past few weeks had cast serious doubt and whether the Lord protect
or the Protectorate system as a whole was willing or able to do that.
Almost immediately, two political movements started traveling along separate, even divergent tracks.
Fleetwood and his allies quickly consolidated their power at Whitehall. The Civilian Faction men
who had been Cromwell's closest advisors over the past few weeks were purged from office.
Meanwhile, several men who had been forced into unwilling retirement were restored,
most notably John Lambert. You may recall Oliver Cromwell had removed Lambert from both
political office and the army when he refused to endorse the Humble Petition and Advice.
This process of consolidation was completed with the appointment of Charles Fleetwood as Commander
in Chief, where previously Richard Cromwell had refused to divide that office from that
of Lord Protector. He was now powerless to resist. To all appearances,
the Protectorate State looked poised to undergo yet another bout of constitutional change, though
in a sense it was more a winding back of the clock to sixteen fifty
five. All the decisions that had made since then seemed destined to be reversed.
The major general system and Lambert's original instrument of government were both back on
the table. In effect, the army men had successfully reversed the defeats they
had suffered in the second Protectorate Parliament. But these machinations at Whitehall only told
half the story. While Fleetwood and the Grandees consolidated their power around the Lord
Protector, the junior officers who had made those victories possible drew up their own
plans. The victories on the twenty second of April, the dissolution of Parliament
and the purges of Cromwell's allies from Whitehall truly belonged to the officers as a
whole, not the new Commander in Chief Charles Fleetwood. The Army Grandees were
presenting themselves as friends of the good old Cause because they had no other choice.
While the deals were worked out at Whitehall, the majority of the army
men looked on suspiciously from Saint James's Palace. There they worked out their own
definition of the Good Old Cause that Fleetwood and the others would be judged by.
In this they were heavily influenced by the Republicans and old Rumpers of the
recently dissolved Parliament. As you recall, it had been this radical Republican influence
that the Army grandees had tried to forestall or co opt in the opening days
of the Parliament. Those attempts had quite obviously failed. In a series of
meetings at the end of April and the beginning of May, junior officers conferred
with a host of old rumpers, most prominent among them Arthur Husselerigg, Edmund
Ludlow and Henry Vane. The key demand that emerged from these meetings was the
rebirth of the Rump. Ever since Alvar Cromwell had forcibly and illegally shut down
the Rump Parliament, the principles they had all fought for in the Civil War
had been repeatedly betrayed. Not everyone agreed on what the Good Old Cause was,
but they had a pretty clear sense of what it wasn't the conservative drift
of protectorate politics, the persecution of certain independent sects, and the elevation of
the Cromwells into a kind of royalty. Each of these were betrayals of their
comrades, who had died in the sixteen forties. It had all started with
a shuddering of the rump. Constitutionally speaking, the argument was pretty straightforward.
Cromwell and his goons had never had the legal authority to dissolve the Rump.
Therefore, it had never been dissolved. The Long Parliament, which had been
created in the fall of sixteen forty, was still alive, the only legitimate
political institution in England. By the first week of May, the fault lines
in the new political order were apparent. On the one hand were the Army
grandees, who dominated the last remnants of the protector at state apparatus, personified
in Lord Protector Richard Cromwell, produced to a mere figurehead. On the other
side were the Rump Republicans, some of whom had waited six years to reverse
Aliver Cromwell's coup. Nominally, the army leaders held the power. Fleetwood was
Commander in chief and his allies controlled the Lord Protector as their personal puppet,
but that power was illusory with the prestige of the Protectorate in Tatter's real power
lay with the army. If push came to shove, who would the soldier's
side. With the generals, they were growing increasingly suspicious of or the rump
politicians, who promised fulfillment of the good old cause. Neither side was entirely
confident. A compromise solution was therefore attractive. Over four days, from the
second of May to the fifth, Henry Vane hosted a prolonged conference at his
London residence. He was joined by his fellow rumpers Hesselrigg and Ludlow. Representing
the Army Grandees was a delegation led by John Lambert, the sharpest political mind
among the generals and a man who could sympathize with the long exile from power
the rumpers had suffered through. It quickly became apparent, however, that the
rumpers held all the cards. It was their demands that set the agenda for
the conference, namely the restoration of the rump, which would embody the absolute
sovereignty of Parliament. In other words, the complete dismantling of the protectorate state
that the army men currently controlled. Initially Lambert at his best, who preserved
the system he had helped create. Perhaps Richard Cromwell could be retained as a
figurehead, a face saving gesture to retain some continuity with post rump governance,
or maybe the creation of a Senate to share rule with the House of Commons,
a body populated by senior officers to ensure army leadership had a voice in
the new order. But neither Hasselrig nor Vaine had waited this long just to
compromise on the principle of parliamentary sovereignty. They even rejected Lambert's proposal that army
officers enjoy an amnesty against retribution for their role in the protectorate state. The
most they were willing to offer was their work that the army men would get
a sympathetic hearing in the revitalized Parliament. In the end, Lambert, Fleetwood,
desbro and the others took that relatively scant offer. They had no confidence
that the army would follow them in resisting the return of the rump. In
a sense, they were now looking to the rumpers to protect them from their
own subordinates. On the fifth of May, the deal was struck, and
the following morning, forty two members of the old Rump Parliament retook their seats,
just over six years after they had been removed by Oliver Cromwell's soldiers.
More would come in the following days, bringing the total up to seventy eight,
less than one seventh the total population of the full long Parliament. In
a neat bit of continuity. The first issue the reformed Rump took up was
the same one they had been debating when Cromwell shut them down. New elections.
The Parliament set the date for the seventh of May sixteen sixty one year
in the future, but that still left the same problem that Oliver Cromwell had
never managed to solve, how to hold elections that honored the principle of representative
politics but didn't toss out the existing regime. John Lambert, ever, the
institutional tinker, proposed a solution to the problem, a Senate of godly statesman
who would ensure Parliament as a whole remained true to the principles of the sixteen
forties. This drew the interest of Henry Vane, who saw godly Senate as
a kind of constitutional guarantee of religious freedom, but for idelogs like Arthur Hasseligg,
this was an intolerable limit on the power of the House of Commons.
The issue lay unresolved through the time being. A more immediate concern was the
day to day governance of the nation. Technically, Richard Cromwell was still the
Lord Protector, though the developments of the past few days had effectively stripped him
of all power. But if the Lord Protector didn't exercise executive power, then
who did. A new Council of State was formed, composed of twenty one
members of Parliament, including Hasselrig, Vane and Ludlow, and ten non members,
mostly army officers, chief among them John Lambert, John desbro and James
Barry, who had been Major General in charge of Wales and the Western Borderlands.
Thomas Fairfax was invited to join the Council as well, a gesture and
tended to legitimize the new government in the eyes of the public. But fair
had always been a cautious politician and he wasn't about to break his long held
policy of remaining aloof from politics for the sake of an infant regime of dubious
legitimacy. But with or without the respected General, the new administration was determined
to move forward. That meant disposing of the embarrassing Richard Cromwell. In an
effort to save his regime, Cromwell had spent the past few weeks reaching out
two possible allies outside of London. After all, the city no longer enjoyed
a monopoly on power in the British Isles. George Monk led an army in
Scotland that operated virtually independently from London or Westminster. Richard's brother Henry led his
own national government in Dublin, and Edward Montagu, who had always been a
diehard Cromwell loyalist, commanded England's navy. All three men were potential allies with
the military power to contest the recent coup, but Richard's please went unanswered.
Monk claimed that he was powerless to act. If he ordered his army to
restore Cromwell to power, he would face a mutiny. Whether that was true
or not, it is difficult to say. Monk had always been a difficult
figure to pin down politically. In way, he was perhaps more like Oliver
Cromwell than any of his contemporaries. Whatever his reasons, Monk felt it prudent
to hang back and see what course events took at Westminster. Henry Cromwell's protests
of helplessness are a bit more believable. This was his brother, after all.
Even setting aside any personal loyalty, Henry may have felt, if Richard
Cromwell was deposed it was unlikely the regime that replaced him would have much trust
in that other Cromwell in Ireland. But the younger Cromwell was forced to admit
that he was powerless. His conflicts with the army in Ireland had never really
been resolved. He had wrestled them to a draw in Dublin to the point
that he could exercise independent action in government, but the Irish Army was more
likely to fight for the new regime than ride to the Lord Protector's rescue.
Henry Cromwell announced that if his brother decided to surrender his authority to the new
regime, he would accept it. Two In fact, when Richard was deposed
soon after, Henry resigned his position in Irish government. His replacement turned out
to be his old rival, Edmund Ludlow. Finally, Edward Montagu was perhaps
the one man willing and able to fight for the Cromwellian at it. Unfortunately,
he couldn't be reached in time. In events will be covering. Soon
Montagu was commanding the Protectorate navy off the coast of Denmark. The Northern theater
had once again turned explosive. On the twenty fifth of May, Richard Cromwell
accepted reality and agreed to give up his power as Lord Protector. In exchange,
the new regime agreed to forgive his personal debts and pay him attention.
However, it didn't take long for Cromwell to doubt the good will of his
usurpers, and he fled into French exile. The Protectorate was officially over.
Although it had achieved impressive results on the international stage, the Protectorate state had
never truly established itself at home. Although in theory parliament had always been a
central feature of the system, all attempts to incorporate one into Protectorate governance had
failed. In a sense. Aliver Cromwell had never worked out a permanent solution
to the constitutional problem you found when he shut down the rump. It was
now time to see if the current regime could fare any better. Could they
figure out a way to legally dissolve the rump and call a new session that
was both freely elected and upheld the Prince suppose they had fought for. The
signs were not good. Throughout the summer of sixteen fifty nine. The new
Rump was marred by the same factionalism that had undermined every other parliament before it.
This time the source of the controversy was John Lambert's constitutional program. His
Godly Senate was the only way to restrain the conservative or even royalist tendencies of
a freely elected House of Commons, but Hasselrigg refused to countenance any weakening of
the supremacy of the Commons. The die hard Rumper was caught in an ideological
dilemma. His principles dictated that the only legitimate power was a parliament that represented
the people, but in practice those principles would be abandoned if the people were
allowed a free choice to select their representatives. Paralyzed by this conundrum, Hasselrigg
could provide no suggestions for how to move forward, only opposition to Lambert's program.
The result was a kind of deja vous for anyone who lived through the
dying days of the First Rump. In the spring of sixteen fifty three,
despite the deadline for elections, the Rump was making no progress towards its dissolution
or crafting a workable constitution. A minority of MPs, led by Henry Vane,
argued for Lambert's model, but Arthur Hasselik commanded a majority who opposed it
on principle. The problem was that majority was unable to propose any alternative.
Pretty soon Parliament moved on from the fruitless debate on the future of England and
bickered over more mundane issues. Mundane but not unimportant, and alarmingly for the
army, they always seemed to be getting the short end of the stick.
The Rump moved at a glacial pace when it came to releasing funds for army
pay. Westminster also hollowed out the Commander in Chief title Fleetwood had secured from
Richard Cromwell. The office was ruled temporary, said to expire when the current
session of Parliament ended. This was necessary to prevent Fleetwood from wielding political power
in between the Rump's dissolution and the formation of a new Parliament. But the
army men were less than reassured, especially when the Rump took over much of
the authority that ought to belong to a commander in chief. New officer appointments
were made by a Parliamentary committee, not Fleetwood, and all existing officers were
ordered to turn in their old commissions and received new ones issued by Parliament.
The ostensible goal was to eliminate Cromwellian loyalists from within the officer corps, but
no one missed that it was Parliament, not the Commander in Chief, those
testing the loyalty of the officers. The most heated debate involved the general amnesty
that army officers had been pushing for since the major general system fell apart.
If the army wasn't to enjoy power, at the very least, they needed
guarantees against prosecution or lawsuits. But after seven weeks of argument, the Rump
produced an amnesty bill that was both weak and vague. When John Lambert complained,
Hasselrig replied, you are only at the mercy of the Parliament. Who
are your good friends? Hardly reassuring words. It didn't help that next on
Parliament's docket was a comprehensive Militia Bill, which many army leaders saw as a
ploy to make the army redundant or at the very least entirely subservient to Westminster.
In August, just when the new regime seemed to be at its breaking
point, rumors of a Royalist uprising began swirling around England. Unfortunately, these
states best s Bymaster John Thurlow had been purged with the other Cromwellians. In
the absence of his impressive network, the new regime had no solid information on
the danger they faced. Next time, we'll follow them as they faced their
first external challenge before their many internal challenges had been overcome.