The final months of England’s only republic, from 1658 to 1660, may be the most consequential yet least understood in its past. For a nation obsessed with the long history of its monarchy this is no coincidence. The Restoration of King Charles II in 1660 cast the eleven years of ‘Interregnum’ that preceded it after the Civil Wars as an aberration; a temporary diversion on England’s pre-ordained monarchical path to be swiftly forgotten. This ingrained narrative is the target of fresh, rigorous revisionism by Henry Reece in his new history, The Fall: Last Days of the English Republic, which aims to ‘liberate our understanding of republican rule from its eclipse by the Restoration’. There is no ‘high road’ to Restoration in its dense yet lively pages, but a realistic account of very human chaos shaped by individual agency and contingency.
Beginning with Oliver Cromwell’s death in September 1658, Reece argues that the Protectorate of his son and successor Richard Cromwell had a far greater chance of success than his soubriquet ‘Tumbledown Dick’ suggests. Indeed it was the most stable regime of this turbulent period. The problems Richard faced – lack of finance, handling the reduced but still powerful army – were surmountable. In fact the moderate, unthreatening Richard, too young to have taken part in the divisive Civil Wars, offered a clean slate. He called the freest and fullest Parliament since 1640 and won a broad base of support. But, in a pattern repeated throughout this story, unnecessarily provocative actions splintered uneasy alliances. After a series of political mis-steps, Richard was forced to abdicate in May 1659.
Successive regimes likewise hinged on slim miscalculations with old grudges resurfacing to prevent the strong coalitions the had initially won the war for Parliament reforming to keep the republic afloat. The restored Rump Parliament (which had been forcibly dissolved by Oliver Cromwell in 1653) began well but the baleful leadership of Sir Arthur Haselrige forced a breach with the army in October. The army’s Committee of Safety which replaced it lasted only two months before toppling at the seizure of the Portsmouth garrison by exiled MPs. The Rump returned in January 1660 and the enigmatic General Monck marched his troops down to London to impose his will upon it ultimately, but not inevitably, paving the way for the King’s Restoration in May. Thus, Reece notes as a ‘nice irony’ to England’s comfortable, consensual self-image, it was two military coups which returned monarchy to these shores. An undignified, often dangerous, scramble for royal pardon followed.
Political inertia not entrenched monarchism had enabled the republic to fail, and it is this failure that is the true historical turning point of 1660. The people by then longed for ‘settlement’ above all else. As the philosopher James Harrington wailed ‘For the nation to be still upon the cast of a die… is a dreadful state of things.’ As Reece concludes this tremendous book: ‘Enthusiasm for the return of Charles Stuart did not contribute to the collapse of the republic; it was a result of its fall’.
The Fall: Last Days of the English Republic by Henry Reece is published by Yale University Press.
