Cromwell S Failed State And The Monarchy

Regicide, military dictatorship, war and rumors of war, opposition from all sides and collapse of a 'failed state': such is the story of Oliver Cromwell's unique experiment in the governance of Britain, following the English-British Civil Wars. The British state of the Three Kingdoms of England, Scotland and Ireland were united in the Protectorate, with Cromwell as Lord Protector, 1649 to 1660, but collapsed under the weight of huge turbulence and problems from all sides - political and religious, constitutional, foreign military and naval threat, even from the Dutch, the Protectorate's natural ally. Finally, with Cromwell's death in 1658 - the 'heroic' Cromwell - and succession of the hapless Richard Cromwell, the 'failed state' collapsed with the restoration of the Stuart dynasty, in 1660 and royal, aristocratic and gentry rule.

'A compelling and wry narrative of one of the most intellectually thrilling eras of British history' Guardian. ***************** SHORTLISTED FOR THE CUNDILL HISTORY PRIZE 2020 England, 1651. Oliver Cromwell has defeated his royalist opponents in two civil wars, executed the Stuart king Charles I, laid waste to Ireland, and crushed the late king's son and his Scottish allies. He is master of Britain and Ireland. But Parliament, divided between moderates, republicans and Puritans of uncompromisingly millenarian hue, is faction-ridden and disputatious. By the end of 1653, Cromwell has become 'Lord Protector'. Seeking dragons for an elect Protestant nation to slay, he launches an ambitious 'Western Design' against Spain's empire in the New World. When an amphibious assault on the Caribbean island of Hispaniola in 1655 proves a disaster, a shaken Cromwell is convinced that God is punishing England for its sinfulness. But the imposition of the rule of the Major-Generals – bureaucrats with a penchant for closing alehouses – backfires spectacularly. Sectarianism and fundamentalism run riot. Radicals and royalists join together in conspiracy. The only way out seems to be a return to a Parliament presided over by a king. But will Cromwell accept the crown? Paul Lay narrates in entertaining but always rigorous fashion the story of England's first and only experiment with republican government: he brings the febrile world of Oliver Cromwell's Protectorate to life, providing vivid portraits of the extraordinary individuals who inhabited it and capturing its dissonant cacophony of political and religious voices. ***************** Reviews: 'Briskly paced and elegantly written, Providence Lost provides us with a first-class ticket to this Cromwellian world of achievement, paradox and contradiction. Few guides take us so directly, or so sympathetically, into the imaginative worlds of that tumultuous decade' John Adamson, The Times. 'Providence Lost is a learned, lucid, wry and compelling narrative of the 1650s as well as a sensitive portrayal of a man unravelled by providence' Jessie Childs, Guardian.

A stunning collection of essays and memoir from twice Booker Prize winner and international bestseller Hilary Mantel, author of The Mirror and the Light

Although he styled himself 'His Highness', adopted the court ritual of his royal predecessors, and lived in the former royal palaces of Whitehall and Hampton Court, Oliver Cromwell was not a king - in spite of the best efforts of his supporters to crown him. Yet, as David Horspool shows in this illuminating new portrait of England's Lord Protector, Cromwell, the Puritan son of Cambridgeshire gentry, wielded such influence that it would be a pretence to say that power really lay with the collective. The years of Cromwell's rise to power, shaped by a decade-long civil war, saw a sustained attempt at the collective government of England; the first attempts at a real Union of Britain; the beginnings of empire; a radically new solution to the idea of a national religion; atrocities in Ireland; and the readmission to England of the Jews, a people officially banned for over three and a half centuries. At the end of it, Oliver Cromwell had emerged as the country's sole ruler: to his enemies, and probably to most of his countrymen, his legacy looked as likely to last as that of the Stuart dynasty he had replaced.

Thomas Cromwell, chief architect of the English Reformation, served as minister of Henry VIII from 1531 to 1540, the period during which more political and religious reform was accomplished than at any other time in Henry's thirty-seven-year reign. Thus the momentous events of the 1530s are generally (but not universally) attributed to Cromwell's agency. Cromwell has been the subject of close and continuous attention for the last half century, with positive appraisal of his work and achievements as the scholarly norm. In this classroom biography--the first in a generation and the only one now in print--that judgment is largely accepted, though it is combined with earlier and more critical assessments that view Cromwell as a disciple of Machiavelli. One distinguishing feature of this study is its overview of Machiavellian thought, along with its overview of Marsilian thought. Marsilius of Padua, fourteenth-century political philosopher and author of Defensor Pacis, is widely recognized as the source of Cromwell's reformation ideas; but nowhere is Marsilius explicated. The same is true of Machiavelli--never explicated though said to be (by Reginald Pole, cousin of Henry and cardinal of the church) the source of Cromwell's ideas on statecraft. A second distinguishing feature of the book is its inclusion of an introductory chapter that situates Cromwell in the sixteenth century and shows his connection to important events, characters, and ideas. Thus, while the book is a biography, its focus is broader and its uses more various.

Hezekiah Haynes was shaped by the Puritanism of his father’s network and experienced emigration to New England as part of a community removing themselves from Charles I’s Laudianism. Returning to fight in the British Civil Wars, Haynes rose to become Cromwell’s ruler of the east of England, tasked with bringing about a godly revolution, and in rising to prominence he became the centre of his own developing political and religious network, which included a kin link to Cromwell himself. As one of Cromwell’s Major-Generals Haynes was tasked with security and a reformation of manners, but he was hampered by the limits of the early modern state and Cromwell’s own contradictory political and religious ideas. The Restoration saw Haynes imprisoned in the Tower before emerging to return to the community in which he had been raised, and continuing the links with some of those he had worked with for Cromwell and the kin he had left behind in New England in dealing with the norms of early modern life. This book will appeal to specialists in the area and students taking courses on early modern English and American history, as well as those with a more general interest in the period.

In this paper, which launches the Headstart History Papers series, Sir Geoffrey Elton, formerly Regius Professor of Modern History at Cambridge University, sets out the essence of his thought on Thomas Cromwell and the challenges to which his views have been subjected. He reviews the career of Cromwell and considers the impact he had on politics in the 1530s.