In his haste to expel the Rump which had failed so badly, Cromwell and the Army officers came up with a temporary expedient. The Nominated assembly would be chosen from the most sober, Godly and intelligent of society, they would do the job of reform the Rump had failed to do, set up proper elections, and then retire once more, their job done. The Commonwealth would be restored and set on the right path. Well; that was the idea.

Download Podcast - 418 Barebones (Right Click and select Save Link As)

Transcript

Last time everyone we heard about the events and reasons for the dramatic blowing of Cromwell’s gasket and his angry dissolution of the Rump in April 1653. And we had a poll afterwards, which as per normal I thoroughly loved; especially all your comments, thank you for taking part. The summary I think is that the vast majority agree that Cromwell had not planned and worked towards seizing power – more than 80% of you thought that, so pretty definitive. Quite a few of you pointed out that such a binary choice removed a lot of the nuance which was probably there; it’s highly likely Cromwell’s dissatisfaction and feeling he could do a better job was growing for some time for example. Well, maybe we can have another before too long, it was lots of fun.

Well however impulsive, the dissolution of the Rump was effectively a second military coup, by an army and its general who believed that at Dunbar and through the civil wars, their blood had earned them a right to a new worlds marked by religious toleration – though only for protestants mind – and for a reformed state. Many of the Rumpers they dismissed thought very firmly that the army was nowt but the servant of the Commons or parliament and that they, representatives of the sovereignty people, should define that future, and who could argue with that. But it appears they had had their chance and failed sadly. But the idea would live on in the Good Old Cause.

Let me just reflect briefly non the Rumpish period of the Republic. They are accused of gross incompetence and failure. Reform had faltered and got almost nowhere, often sunk by lawyers who from being my good guys when up against the clerics, are now my bad guys, opposing any kind of legal reform in their profession. Taxes were sky high, and England and Ireland and Scotland and Wales and indeed Loughborough groaned under their general rubbishness. Paulucci, yet another Venetian ambassador – what would historians do without ambassadors’ reports? – [ET voice] Paulucci phoned home:

What has been most remarked is the slight emotion or rather the indifference with which this action was viewed by the populace, who for the most part seemed pleased and especially satisfied by a step which gives hope of relief and better management in everything

It is a bit of a harsh judgement. The Rump were right to worry about the kind of parliament an election could bring, certainly if it was the kind of election which the UN would monitor, raise their blue hats and declare themselves satisfied with; the idea of a Republic based on the sovereignty of the Commons was taking root and they did not want to see this young, delicate flower die. In fact the level of corruption they were accused of is pretty unfair – there were dishonest speculators who made a nefarious bundle, and sadly Arthur Haselrigg was one, and such as this brought shame on the Republic thereby. But as Blair Worden describes – there were far too many warring personalities amongst the Rumpers, looking to exploit any wrong doing for political ends to allow many to get away with much. And interestingly in administration there’s a significant move towards salaries to pay officials, rather than given them the accepted right to bleeding a job for perks. This was a good step towards actually removing corruption.

On more good stuff – they ran three wars pretty well, getting resources where it was needed, and even dropped the monthly assessment taxes a bit. Where they signally failed was to show people that they were making the world a better place; the Act of Oblivion was too limited to really heal the nation, and almost all reforms ran into the sand. They set up a nasty policy in Ireland – though they were also in hock to the adventurers act from 1642, but nonetheless this is on them. And they imposed a bunch of pretty eye watering laws in the moral reformation department – death for Adultery? Steady on Guv’.

So as I say they were unloved and people were glad to see the back of them and look forward to the return of good times; one bunch in Wolverhampton even put up a Maypole and started dancing ‘to express their joy’.[1]

Cromwell himself later recalled

There was not so much as the barking of a dog, or any general or visible repining

And on the door of the House of Commons, a wag pinned a note saying

This house is to be let, now unfurnished

Boom, and if you will, ‘tish.

Well, what happens in the immediate aftermath of the kicking of the Rump, suggests Cromwell had simply reached the end of his tether, and had experienced a bout of spontaneous combustion. Because there was no plan. And so he and the Council of Officers of the Army all now met up to look at each other with worried frowns and furrowed brow – what next bro?

Here I need to introduce Thomas Harrison and John Lambert. They should be reasonably well known to you; we’ve seen Thomas singing his way into battle with a psalm om his lips at Langport, a natty dresser who accompanied Charles from Hurst to London. A very prominent Fifth Monarchist, confidently expecting the rule of the saints to appear any moment. John Lambert, the most talented general after Cromwell, a thinker less concerned with the rule of the Saints, and more the rule of the people. These too are in opposition; and once again, Cromwell will walk the line, and try to reconcile. For Harrison, the dissolution was all perfect; he didn’t believe in elected parliaments, that was the rule of the people and just got in the way of the real objective – the rule of God. Therefore Cromwell should recreate the Jewish Sanhedrin of 70 and they would be henceforth be the government, charged with turning England into a ready receptacle for the coming glory, implementing the kind of moral reformation required. The words ‘wild-eyed enthusiasm’ get used these days in connection with Harrison. Funnily enough, the Fifth Monarchists attracted a lot of women to their ranks, I think probably because they were able to speak freely on religious matters, and hopefully we’ll have time for the stories of Anna Trapnel. Anna had been causing quite a stir, with the visions she had received, and the prophecies she gave while in a trance; in one of which God apparently indicated that Oliver Cromwell would be a modern Gideon, which I think was a good thing.

Anyway that’s Thomas Harrison, mad keen for reformation. John Lambert is a much more subtle figure, much more secular. He carried a flame in his heart for the chances that had been missed – Ireton’s Heads of Proposals, or the Agreement of the People.

Cromwell’s objective was find a path that avoided a military dictatorship, but also a government that would be safe from the religious tyranny of a Presbyterian National church; or indeed the more extreme enthusiasms of the Fifth Monarchists. Cromwell was himself a millenarian, believing a time of transformation would come, but he thought it would happen in God’s own good time, there was no forcing it like the Fifth Monarchists seemed to think. Again, it was sober community that floated his boat, the parish, preacher and congregation sitting in their allotted places listening respectfully. But of course he felt that people should be free to choose their own congregation, church and minister, not have one forced on them.[2]

So, the path he steered the Council towards was a two part temporary arrangement. There would now be a temporary Nominated assembly of 140, chosen by Army Officers, but with rules to limit the number of serving officers and avoid domination by any one religious sect. Rank was not a consideration. The role of the nominated Assembly was not to be a parliament of saints as Harrison wished; it had the role of getting that reform done that the Rump had failed to implement, define the rules of an election, and hold those elections and dissolve itself before November 1654, to hand power back to the people. There would be a Council of State, elected by that Nominated assembly as an executive.

Ever since it started to meet in June 1653, this nominated assembly has been rubbished and ridiculed far and wide. Cromwell himself would beat himself up about it, and describe it as

a tale of my own weakness and folly

Clarendon is one of my favourite characters of the Revolutionary period, and if Charles and Pym had taken his advice we’d not have been in this state. But he was undeniably snooty. So he pronounced the assembly

A pack of weak, senseless fellows; much the major part of them consisted of inferior persons, of no quality or name, artificers of the meanest trades, known only for their gifts in praying and preaching.

Conversely they have been presented as a bunch of religious fanatics, a flavour of which is communicated by the peerless name given to them, at the time I think, after a London anabaptist preacher and leather seller – Praise God Barebones. It is known as the Barebones parliament. It gave rise to one of my favourite footnotes of all time; I don’t know if you collect footnotes from history books, if you do get in touch. Here’s my personal favourite from Antonia Fraser

The story that Praisegod had two brothers – christ-came-into-this-world-to-save Barbone, and If-Christ-had-not-died-though-hadst-been damned Barebone (familiarly shortened to Damned Barebone) has not been substantiated.

Magnificent. Absurdity delivered with true academic froideur. My hat, Antonia, my hat is off to you.

In fact, although there was earth under more fingernails than the impeccably groomed parliaments of Stuart rule, the gentry were well represented. There were 6 representative from Scotland, 6 from Ireland and 128 from England and Wales; of those 128, 117 were JPs, 40 plus had been to university, and similar numbers to an Inn of Court. It might be thought that Harrison would have stuffed it with his own Fifth Monarchists – but in fact there were no more than 12 – though they do appear to have been a noisy and opinionated bunch.

And while their reputation is one of failure – plot spoiler – they set about reformation with some enthusiasm; very high attendance record, far higher than the Rump. It set up committees considering a wide range of those issues that had faltered – tithes, financial administration, prisons, trade and corporations, law reform and the advancement of learning. They did indeed set out to change the world. They made some quick decisions too; they would reform and codify the law so that it was possible to cope with, they would reform tithes, reform the excise – and would delete the court of Chancery. That last one set chins wobbling; partly because if it was really deleted, then Dickens wouldn’t have been able to write Bleak House, but mainly because it affected the management of property rights; and was a lucrative source of lawyers’ fees – so they fought it to the death. So quite soon there was a right old barney going on and factionalism rose like a phoenoix from the ashes of its rump.

And tithes ! I mean it is difficult to under emphasise how important the question of tithes was, it was a monster. So look give me a few seconds. Tithes were an age old tax, 10% of movable goods, to maintain a parish priest. Over the centuries it had become corrupted; for many reasons. The most egregious issue was that over the years landowners had acquired the right to chose the minister; which also meant they got their grubby little mitts on their tithe; they were supposed to pass it on to the minister. But of course if they appointed a cheap and impoverished curate, they could keep the rest. Which they did; 40% of tithes were controlled by lay people. The right to choose the minister was called an Advowson – a fact that will hopefully come in handy for some village quiz. People actually traded in advowsons, they sold the right to appoint the vicar – because then they could trouser some of the tithes.

Anyway even more than that was the principle of the thing; if you don’t believe in a national church and follow a different church – why should you pay towards something you have no intention of attending, and think is teaching tripe? Believe you me, tithes were big and will remain one of the biggest issues in local politics well into the 19^th century.

Cromwell hoped Harrison would deliver on his rhetoric. He was appointed to lead various committees and expected not only to talk the talk of reform but to walk the walk; but no statutes emerged from his committee. Turns out Harrison was a big picture man – he had no patience with the nitty gritty, none of the hard graft that makes real change happen; and he was not ept at the politics. Instead he seems to have spent his time bigging up war against the Dutch; on the grounds they were all far too rich and interested in pictures and things, so they had betrayed God’s trust. And look maybe the Dutch were the fourth empire that needed destroying before the fifth monarchy could arrive, not the Stuarts. Either way:

The Dutch must be destroyed and we shall have heaven on earth

Good Lord. Generally the Fifth Monarchist were becoming disenchanted with the whole Barebones thing. When asked for her prophetic opinion on the Assembly, Anna Trapnell replied

That little good should be done to the nation by their sitting

Cromwell also was losing heart. He had maintained a strict policy of standing aloof from the Assembly to avoid accusations that it was just he driving the bus. He had opened the Assembly with wild enthusiasm, and frankly by gushing. His two hour speech, on a steaming hot day, talked of the hope that now the best had been called, a new world was in the offing.

Truly you are called by God to rule with him, and for him

The reality was becoming painfully different; faction and discord.  Furthermore, the whole context in which the Barebones parliament was taking place was one still of war and rebellion – in Scotland, Ireland and of course there’s a war on with the Dutch. So let us turn to those areas first.

 

 

 

In Ireland, the policy of the transplantation of Catholic Landowners who could not demonstrate active support of the protestant regime, in line with the Rump’s Act of Settlement of August 1652, was starting to be implemented. Control of the country was effectively now in the hands of the military; Lieutenant General Charles Fleetwood had been appointed in September 1652 to be Governor there, though he was surrounded by other military commanders. Fleetwood held uncompromising views on the implementation of the policy, and even favoured the mass transplantation of all Irish. In general, the one bright spot in the military’s attitude was to honour all the articles under which surrenders had taken place, which usually included the right of Catholics to retain their land and property; but even here on occasion there were exceptions, such as Galway where all Catholics were forced out.

Cromwell had a lot of personal affection for him Fleetwood since he was now his son in law having married Bridget; but he was not convinced he had the aptitude for the task; in March 1653 he had sent his son, Henry Cromwell to have a look at the lay of the land. Henry was only 25, but was obviously a likely kind of lad; he came home with dire warnings about the situation at the top; the government was dominated by highly opinionated and merciless Baptists, the Old Protestants who knew what was what were excluded from decision making; Fleetwood, he said, was in thrall to his army officers, who, outside of those surrender articles were inclined to apply an extreme interpretation of the Act of Settlement[3].

It would take Cromwell time to respond to that assessment; for the moment, Ireland remained in the grip of chaos and Tory raids, between which Irish villages were trapped, pressurised by commanders to inform on the bandits. They were in that classic dilemma, as one commentator remarked, if they didn’t inform

The English hang them, if they do, the Irish kill them[4]

Before the transplantations could begin though, decisions were needed, and as the Barebones assembly fought on over tithes and law reform, Cromwell and the Council of State made those decisions, then passed by the Barebones as the Act of Satisfaction in 1653. That act declared the rebellion ended; commanded the Irish government to survey the land so that the demands of Adventurers who had loaned money, and the Soldiers who were to be paid in land, could be satisfied. I assume that is what the word Satisfaction refers to.

The Act of Settlement had defined penalties for most Catholic Landowners to lose between 1 and 2 thirds of their land; this new act defined where the land they retained would be held – it would not be the estates they had traditionally lived on and cared for, often for hundreds of years; it would be in the west of Ireland, in Connacht and Clare. Although the date of May 1654 for the transplantation was set, it was obviously unachievable – because before that a survey was needed of all the land; and on 25^th December 1654, one William Petty, a brain box from Hampshire and Oxford, was commissioned in Dublin to do that work. The act had nothing to say about mass plantation of the non landholding Irish; whether this turned into a process of ethnic cleansing still hung in the balance, in the hands of Fleetwood and his advisers in Dublin.

In order to move our attention to Scotland, we should start by going to France, and catching up on Charles the Pretender. I’ll stop this now and  call him king Charles, just to make the point that at this stage he has been proclaimed king only in Scotland. But Whatever. Anyway, Charles the poor lamb was leading an increasingly aimless life.  He was trapped at Mum’s court at the Louvre, without more than a few beans to rub together, mainly little more than a few sous his Mum slipped him from her pension from the French crown. His own court of exiles remained around him, of whom the most influential was Edward Hyde still; but all these exiles were a bit like a bunch of ferrets in a sack, biting and tearing at each other in their misery.

It was an unhappy period for Charles, he was aimless and messed about. His little brother James had tried to win a bride in France to get some cash, failed, since he wasn’t a great catch prospects wise, and then gone into the French army. Which he absolutely loved. He was physically brave, and the life of a soldier suited him perfectly. In later life all he could remember of this time was a series of battles and sieges.

Charles also decided that marriage would be a good idea and he set his sights high, none higher. Anne Marie Louise was the daughter of the Duc de Orleans, and heiress in her own right to 5 duchies and the odd principality or two you know how it is. She was about 25 now, and fresh from her triumphs of capturing Orleans during the Fronde, and turning a cannon on Turenne in Paris from the Bastille. She and Charles got on pretty well – apparently Anne Marie appreciated his love for enthusiastic dancing to violins, and even seems to have enjoyed the oak tree story. But she saw a man stripped, for the moment, of ambition; at least for a time, the fire had gone out.[5] Or that is to say it had gone out in a political sense; in other ways it was full steam ahead –  Lucy Walter, Elizabeth Boyle, Eleanor Byron, and Charlotte Pegge, would not only all have affairs with him, but also illegitimate children[6].

Nonetheless, Charles did still harbour hopes, and at his side was one John Middleton, a Scottish covenanter, but also Engager, a general who had fought with him at Worcester. He had been jailed, but escaped the Tower of London in his wife’s clothing. Seriously, that Tower is as leaky as on old sieve. Anway, in France he was made the Scottish commander in chief. Which meant naff all basically until in November 1652 a letter arrived, from Angus MacDonald of Glengarry, asking for help for a rising in the Highlands. Well Middleton and a group around Charles talked long and hard, and decided they should link Glengarry up with another rebellious Earl – Glencairn. Glencairn you see was a lowland royalist, and his leadership would give any rebellion a chance to become national.

Well, Glencairn was, slightly reluctantly accepted by the growing number of rebellious Highland chiefs, and the rebellion – was on. But, until the king’s personal representative, John Middleton, arrived, the trouble they caused was limited and localised as they build support, but  it grew and grew – to the point where it was claimed they had 9,000 men under arms. Robert Lilburne, the Acting Governor blew hot and cold about the threat presented by the growing rebellion; but he clearly had a problem asserting control. There were numerous guerrilla style attacks and Lilburne did not feel comfortable even with his army of occupation of 12,500. Glencairn issued a declaration pushing all the patriotic Scot buttons – glory of resisting all comers, calling on Bruce and Wallace, and accusing the English of having

Reared up a monstrous republic, built with the bones and cemented with the blood of their dread sovereign

There were multiple reasons for the support Glencairn gathered; though one crucial supporter the did not win over was Argyll, who’d signed an accommodation in August 1652 with the Commonwealth – about which is son was livid, and would join the rebels. Very broadly, of course there was a lot of resistance to rule by the English, but also things hadn’t been finished off. The Tender of Union had been renegotiated at the request of Scottish delegates, then debated by the Rump, then lost by its dissolution, and then debated in Barebones – but on hearing the trouble shelved once more. So it hadn’t been fully enacted. The biggest single problem with this was that none of the country’s leaders – Magnates and Lairds – knew who would be prosecuted for treason, and who was safe. As a result, everyone was nervous, no one was relaxed, no one could mopve on, emotionally. And without the Act of Union there were few compensating benefits – such as free trade.

So trouble brewing then in the Highlands, which bring us to the third major source of trouble in 1653 – the small matter of a war with Europe’s most powerful naval and trading nation – the Netherlands. When we left it, the Dutch had been in control of the narrow seas, but in February 1653 Blake’s victory in the Battle of the Channel, or the Battle of Portland, had knocked the Dutch back. The war of words hotted up; the English depicted the Dutch as Frogs living in their marshlands, while a Dutch woodcut riffed off the traditional characterisation of the English as having devils’ tails; a brave and noble Dutch sailor was shown wielding the same axe as had killed Charles to chop the tails of English dogs.[7]

Well sticks and stones and all that, let’s get it on! Both countries had invested in their fleets, but Harry Vane and Rump particularly so, and Robert Blake had codified and changed the rules of engagement for captains, to stop them charging off after prizes when they should be fighting the enemy. Portland had been a great win, but there’d still been disorganisation; and so a new set of sailing and fighting instructions were issued to keep fleets together in storms and battle; Blake’s aim was for fleets to fight as a coherent unit, not a bunch of individuals, and this was another step towards that aim.

Pay had been increased; though to be fair, the Navy was still not as attractive as the merchant fleet where you could earn much more and had a better than evens chance of actually being paid on time. So Impressment was necessary to keep the numbers of seamen up, and that was more unpopular than words can wield the matter. In October 1653 there was a large scale mutiny that marched all the way from the dockyards at Chatham in Kent into Westminster with a petition. Some of them happened to meet and attack Oliver Cromwell and George Monk out for a walk, but they’d picked on a pair not easy to intimidate and been fought them off.[8]

But despite that, the investment in more frigates was now coming on line; and in the London docks, ship launches were becoming a common occurrence, and something of an event. In 1652, John Evelyn, the royalist, diarist and botanist came to Deptford to see one

I saw the Diamond & Ruby launched in the docks at Deptford, carrying 48 bronze cannon each; Cromwell & his grandees present

He’d go again in 1655 to see the 80 gun ship the Naseby launched, and noted the figurehead:

In the prow was Oliver on horseback, trampling 6 nations under foot

The fleet was starting to become a national institution. As satirist Ned Ward would later write:

Scarce can a royal ship be sooner built and launch’d from the stocks but straight way we have 10,000 pictures of her, drawn and dispersed around the island by some or other dawber of signposts

Seamen either shared in the national treasure thing or were portrayed at the most unreliable of all possible lovers. One ballad, the Mad Marriage or the Female Fancy of Deptford was designed to warn every woman of the dangers, all about a sailor who abandoned a servant girl after having, and I quote,

By consent rummidged her hold

The ballad doesn’t end well it was a cautionary tale.

Anyway enough of this tittle tattle, back to battle! So, suffice to say that by June 1653, when a squadron commanded by George Monk and Robert Blake was attacked off the Suffolk coast by the great Dutch Admiral, Maarten Tromp, the scene was set. In numbers the fleets were evenly matched. On the first day it was a stalemate, both fleets in line ahead formation blasting away with broadsides. On the second day 3^rd June 1653, Tromp decided to revert to traditional Dutch tactics – line abreast, get in close and board, to take their lower weight of ordinance of the equation. He had chosen the wrong tactic on the wrong day. As they turned to engage, an Ancient Mariner remarked

Down dropt the breeze, the sails dropt down, ‘Twas sad as sad could be;. And we did speak only to break. The silence of the sea!

Except there was no silence, because the English maintained their discipline, and their line ahead and as the Dutch struggled to reach them they were hammered. When the Dutch turned to flee, the English ships were released from their line and went a-hunting. Tromp managed to regain port at Texel having lost 20 ships, 11 of them captured. So many Dutch died, that the locals on the shore reported that

‘the tide ever brings in abundance of arms and legs, and dismembered bodies’[9]

Ewe. The Battle of Gabbard was a stonking victory for the English Navy; and it embedded the tactic of line ahead formation in English naval tactical thinking; until warships would begin to be called ships of the line. Monk now sat in his flagship, the Resolution, with a blockading fleet, preventing any trade and shipping into the Texel. Nothing went in, nothing came out and if they did they were captured or sunk. The Dutch economy went into freefall. There was mass unemployment, looms stood empty. In July the Dutch sent out feelers for peace; Cromwell was still obsessed by the idea of a union of the leading protestant powers. Let us create a new country he pleaded, and combine our countries’ names – we can call it The Netherglands.

…

Actually he didn’t say that at all but thanks to the listener who suggested it, and I hope I have redeemed myself.

But Cromwell’s obsession with union did indeed sink the talks, and so in July Tromp sought to bring the English to battle where they would have a critical disadvantage – and on the night of 30^th July he thought he’d managed it. Off the coast near the Dutch town of Scheveningen he captured the weather gage, appearing upwind of Monk. Aboard the good ship Brederode, Tromp attacked.

It was a titanic battle. Around 130 ships on both sides, watched with growing horror by thousands of Dutch citizens on the coast, as the sea was covered with broken spars and wood, dead bodies all the marks of destruction as the fleets battered it out.  Four times the fleets passed through their lines, pounding at each other as they went. It was brutal. Quite early in the battle, a sharpshooter in William Penn’s ship, high in the rigging, looked down on the deck of the Brederode and saw the famous Tromp. He shot, he scored, Tromp was hurried downstairs before looking to camera and saying

It is all over, O Lord, be merciful to me and thy poor people.

His flag on the ship was not lowered to keep the hero’s death secret; and so the Dutch fought on. But ship after ship went down, until the English would claim 20 to 30 sunk or captured and 1300 prisoners. A group of Dutch merchants bottled it first. Fleeing to the north, and the Dutch fleet fled back to port. Afterwards, Tromp was given at enormous funeral in Delft, and his son Cornelius took up the sea captain mantle for the family. The reputation of the Stuart supporting Organists was badly damaged in the Republic. It was a bad defeat; but meanwhile the English were so battered they were forced back to port to refit – so despite defeat for the Dutch, the blockade was lifted.

Scheveningen was a massive victory for the navy and for Blake’s methods. But it also changed the balance of power in the Netherlands and with the lifting of the blockage allowed peace overtures to be made again. Cromwell seems to have finally come to the understanding that the Netherglands was never going to be a thing, and so surely the Nominated Assembly would be able to now find a way to build a peace.

Well actually no. Fired on by the Fifth Monarchist and enthused by incompetence, talks continued to fail, and added to the general sense of failure – this was a peace everybody wanted. And anyway there was hardly a quorum left in the assembly. The debate on tithes had become toxic. A more moderate proposal to allow individuals to exempt themselves and pay to the state for the funding of puritan speakers was scuppered. This and a vote to abolish chancery completely lost the support of the landed so-called moderates. Meanwhile, London was in a frenzy of preaching. Fifth Monarchist were holding weekly mass meetings, demanding continuation of war against the Dutch and railing against everyone and everything in power, council, army, parliament uncle tom cobbly and all.

In vain Cromwell organised meetings and sat with their preachers and a range of moderate divines, patiently trying to persuade them that all those who professed to follow Christ should try to work together in mutual understanding. Even his political skills failed. Next week came the report that Fifth Monarchist preachers had turned on Cromwell

Calling him the man of sin, the old dragon, and many other scriptural ill names

So that didn’t work. Moderate members were increasingly demotivated and staying away from the Assembly completely. Attendance fell and fell until it was down to only 49 of the 140 members.

So chaos and faction and disillusionment. Again.

Let me take you to South West London, and the manor of Wimbledon. It had once belonged to HM, but confiscated of course, and bought by Major General John Lambert from the state in 1652. The Barebones parliament represented a defeat for Lambert’s desire for a proper constitution based on Ireton’s Heads of Proposals that he’d help work up in 1647. So he retired to Wimbledon, where he spent his time with his wife, a fellow scion of Yorkshire, Frances Lister, from just down the road where Lambert had been brought up. There it was said, he spent his time

dressing his flowers in his garden and working at the needle with his wife and his maids

And Lambert was to be known for his gardens, particularly his tulips; which became an object of mockery for his opponents, who called him Knight of the Golden Tulip. I have to say as insults go it’s not terrible – I have been called worse things myself.

Anyway, when he wasn’t tending his tulips or his needlework, John Lambert was writing a constitution, called the Instrument of Government, and he was plotting with his army friends who shared his desire for a stable, more representative form of government, the sort of thing they always thought would be a positive outcome from the wars, and would be solid enough to last. This nominated assembly was getting nowhere, and was becoming dominated by religious loonies and radicals. By November, Lambert was ready and took his plans to Cromwell and pressed them on him. Lambert wanted Cromwell to dissolve the assembly by force, and implement a new government, based on a proper constitution – led by a chief executive, called a, let me see now, called a …what’s that name? Oh – a king.

Cromwell refused point blank. He would not be a king. He would not dissolve the assembly by force. So Lambert went home, and he and his allies watched and waited as the parliament and Fifth monarchist sank further and further in the public opinion. Until they thought the time right. And they plotted with moderate members of the Assembly. And, frankly, I am ashamed to admit it  – they schemed gentle listener, they schemed.

So, on the morning of 12^th December, as soon as the assembly was open, well before most members turned up, suddenly the house was as full as it had ever been, packed with moderate MPs. Very few of the radicals were there by then, many still at the mass Prayer meetings. One after the other moderate MPs rose to pour scorn on the radicals. They thundered that since the Nominated Assembly had clearly failed to live up to the expectations of the people – it should abdicate, right now. The speaker of the day was the venerable Francis Rous, and without putting it to the question he stood, picked up the mace and led 80 MPs out of the chamber, leaving 30 discombobulated radicals in their seats.

Rous and the moderates wound their way through the streets to Whitehall and to Cromwell. And there handed a resignation letter. Cromwell appears to have been surprised at the turn of events; but without 80 of its members, the Barebones parliament could not survive. So he accepted it, though he did whine a bit and complain that it laid a heavy burden on him.

So, another parliament crashed and burned. And fingers point to Lambert for manipulating the downfall of the Nominated assembly; it was not simply a random accumulation of annoyance. Because Sparkling and fresh from his tulip planting and needlepoint, John Lambert had a plan. He had his new Constitution. He knew Cromwell was interested despite himself. He would manoeuvre Cromwell into a position with a title he could accept – that of Lord Protector.

We will hear about this next constitutional experiment, and one of the world’s earliest codified constitutions shortly. Until that time, I would like to thank you all for listening, thank you for commenting especially on our fun poll, and wish you all the very best of luck for the following week.

[1] Hunt, Alice: ‘Republic’, p154

[2] Woolrych, A: Britain in Revolution’, p542

[3] Keay, A: ‘Restless Republic’, p228

[4] O Siochru, M: ‘God’s Executioner’, p232

[5] Hutton, R: Charles II’, p75

[6] Seward, P: ODNB Charles II

[7] Jackson, C: ‘Devil-land’, p330

[8] Lincoln, M: ‘London and the Seventeenth Century’, pp156-163

[9]  Wilson, Ben. Empire of the Deep: The Rise and Fall of the British Navy (p. 295). Orion. Kindle Edition.