CROMWELL’S FAILED STATE AND THE MONARCHY

Regicide, military dictatorship, war and rumours 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