The Protectorate
The Protectorate, officially the Commonwealth of England, Scotland and Ireland, was the British republic that lasted from 16 December 1653 to 25 May 1659. The kingdoms of England, Scotland, and Ireland, with their associated territories were joined together in the Commonwealth of England, governed by a Lord Protector, the head of state. It began when Barebone's Parliament was dissolved, and the Instrument of Government appointed Oliver Cromwell as Lord Protector of the Commonwealth. Cromwell died in September 1658 and was succeeded by his son Richard Cromwell.
Richard resigned in May 1659 due to his inability to control either the Army or Parliament. He was replaced by the English Committee of Safety, which dissolved the Third Protectorate Parliament, and reseated the Rump Parliament dismissed by his father in April 1653. This marked the end of the Protectorate, with the Rump acting as the legislature and the English Council of State as the executive.
Background
Since 1649 until the Protectorate, England, Ireland and later Scotland had been governed as a republic by the Council of State and the Rump Parliament. The Act declaring England to be a Commonwealth, which established England, together with "all the Dominions and Territoryes thereunto belonging", as a republic, had been passed on 19 May 1649, following the trial and execution of Charles I in January of that year. All of Ireland came under the same governance after the successful Cromwellian conquest of Ireland with the appointment of a Parliamentary military governor in Dublin.On 20 April 1653, after learning that Parliament was attempting to stay in session despite an agreement to dissolve and having failed to come up with a working constitution, Cromwell, with the backing of the Grandees in the Army Council, marched soldiers into the debating chamber and forcibly ended the Rump's session.
Within a month of the Rump's dismissal, Oliver Cromwell, on the advice of Thomas Harrison and with the support of other officers in the Army, sent a request to Congregational churches in every county to nominate those they considered fit to take part in the new government. On 4 July a Nominated Assembly, nicknamed the "Assembly of Saints" or Barebone's Parliament after one of its members, took on the role of more traditional English Parliaments. However, it proved just as difficult for the Grandees to control and was in addition a subject of popular ridicule, and so on 8 December, MPs who supported Cromwell engineered its end by passing a dissolution motion at a time of day at which the house usually had few members in attendance. Those who refused to recognise the motion were forcibly ejected by soldiers.
The collapse of the radical consensus that had spawned the Nominated Assembly led to the Grandees passing the Instrument of Government in the Council of State, which paved the way for the Protectorate.
Rule of Oliver Cromwell
After the dissolution of Barebone's Parliament, John Lambert put forward a new constitution known as the Instrument of Government, closely modelled on the Heads of Proposals. It made Cromwell Lord Protector for life to undertake "the chief magistracy and the administration of government". He had the power to call and dissolve parliaments but was obliged under the Instrument to seek the majority vote of the Council of State. However, Cromwell's power was also buttressed by his continuing popularity among the army, which he had built up during the civil wars and subsequently prudently guarded. Cromwell was sworn in as Lord Protector on 16 December 1653.England and Wales: the Major-Generals
The First Protectorate Parliament met on 3 September 1654, and after some initial gestures approving appointments previously made by Cromwell, began to work on a moderate programme of constitutional reform. Rather than opposing Parliament's bill, Cromwell dissolved it on 22 January 1655. After a royalist uprising, led by Sir John Penruddock, Cromwell, influenced by Lambert, divided England into military districts ruled by Army Major-Generals, who answered only to him. The fifteen major generals and deputy major generals, called "godly governors" were central not only to national security but also to Cromwell's moral crusade. The generals supervised militia forces and security commissions, collected taxes and ensured support for the government in the English provinces and in Wales. Commissioners for securing the peace of the commonwealth were appointed to work with them in every county. While a few of the commissioners were career politicians, most were zealous Puritans who welcomed the major-generals, with open arms and embraced their work with enthusiasm. However, the major-generals lasted less than a year. Many feared that they threatened their reform efforts and authority. The major-generals' position was further harmed by a tax proposal by Major General John Desborough to provide financial backing for their work, which the Second Protectorate Parliament, instated in September 1656, voted down for fear of a permanent military state. Ultimately, however, Cromwell's failure to support his men by sacrificing them to his opponents caused their demise. Their activities between November 1655 and September 1656 had, however, reopened the wounds of the 1640s and deepened antipathies to the regime.Scotland and Ireland
By the end of 1653, the Protectorate was in the unique position of being the first government in history to be in control of the entirety of the British Isles. The scope of the Instrument of Government extended to the governance of Scotland and Ireland; it provided for representatives from Scotland and Ireland, as well as England and Wales, to sit in Parliament in London.The regime's policy towards Ireland and Scotland initially had three components: secure the recent conquest of those countries with armies of occupation; punish those who had opposed the English conquest; reshape both countries in the image of England. Barry Coward observed:
Scotland
Following the defeat of the Scottish army in the Anglo-Scottish war of 1650 to 1652 the Scottish government was dissolved and the English Parliament absorbed the kingdom of Scotland into the Commonwealth. Military rule was imposed, with 10,000 English troops garrisoned across the country to quell the threat of local uprisings. Negotiations between commissioners of the English Parliament and the deputies of Scotland's shires and burghs began to formalise the incorporation of Scottish legal and political structures into the new British state. Under the terms of the Tender of Union, a declaration of the English Parliament proclaimed in Scotland in 1652, the Scottish Parliament was permanently dissolved and Scotland was given 30 seats in the Westminster Parliament. In 1654, the Council of State issued an "Ordinance for uniting Scotland into one Commonwealth with England", which would be called the "Commonwealth of England, Scotland and Ireland". This remained the legal basis of the union until the Ordinance became an Act of Union under the Second Protectorate Parliament on 26 June 1657.Initially, the country was run by eight English commissioners. In 1655 Lord Broghill was appointed as President of a new Council for Scotland which was part of an attempt to recast the government along civilian lines and to begin to win over the major landholders to the regime. The council was made up of six Englishmen and two Scots.
Ireland
With the completion of the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland in 1653, the Protectorate implemented the Rump Parliament's Act for the Settlement of Ireland 1652 which directed that large numbers of the Irish population be executed and that most Catholic property owners should lose their lands and be made to relocate to the west of the country. The English army of occupation stood at 9,000 in 1657, although it had been reduced significantly from its 1649 complement of 35,000. The Instrument of Government specified that Ireland was entitled to 30 seats in the Parliament in London, the same number as Scotland. Initially, the country was ruled on behalf of the Protectorate by Cromwell's son-in-law, Charles Fleetwood, a military governor with the title Lord Deputy of Ireland, and a group of hard line radical parliamentary commissioners. As in Scotland, a more moderate policy was adopted in 1655. In that year, Cromwell sent his son, Henry, to Ireland who assumed control over the country and adopted a more conciliatory approach to the country's administration.North American colonies
England's overseas possessions in this period included Newfoundland, the New England Confederation, the Providence Plantation, the Virginia Colony, the Province of Maryland and islands in the West Indies. Cromwell soon secured the submission of these and largely left them to their own affairs, intervening only to curb other Puritans who had seized control of Maryland Colony at Severn battle, by his confirming the former Roman Catholic proprietorship and edict of tolerance there. Of all the English dominions, Virginia was the most resentful of Cromwell's rule, and Cavalier emigration there mushroomed during the Protectorate.Foreign policy
During this period, Oliver Cromwell also faced challenges in foreign policy. The First Anglo-Dutch War, which had broken out in 1652, against the Dutch Republic, was eventually won by Admiral Robert Blake in 1654. Having negotiated peace with the Dutch, Cromwell then proceeded to engage the Spanish Empire in warfare through his Western Design. That involved secret preparations for an attack on the Spanish colonies in the Caribbean and resulted in the invasion of Jamaica, which then became an English colony. The Lord Protector became aware of the contribution the Jewish community made to the economic success of the Netherlands, now England's leading commercial rival. Cromwell's toleration of private worship of non-Puritans led to his encouragement of Jews to return to England, 350 years after their banishment by Edward I, in the hope that they would help speed up the recovery of the country after the disruption of the Civil Wars.In 1655 a crypto-Jew known as Simón de Casseres proposed to Cromwell a plan to take over Spanish-rule Chile with only four ships and a thousand men. However English plans to engage in Chile came into fruition only in 1669, with John Narborough's expedition.
After the Battle of the Dunes, the town of Dunkirk was awarded by France to the Protectorate. It would be sold back to France by Charles II in 1662.