CHAPTER 14: REPUBLICAN AND RESTORATION BRITAIN

1. REPUBLICAN BRITAIN
Several MPs commanded the Parliamentarian army. Of these, the strongest was an East
Anglian gentleman farmer named Oliver Cromwell. He had created a new “model” army.

Cromwell and his advisers had captured the king. Charles himself continued to encourage
rebellion against Parliament even after he had surrendered and had been imprisoned.

The Parliamentarian leaders had a problem. They could either bring Charles back to the throne
and allow him to rule or remove him and create a new political system. By this time most
people in both Houses of Parliament and probably in the country wanted the king back. They
feared the Parliamentarians and they feared the dangerous behaviour of the army. But some
army commanders were determined to get rid of the king. These men were Puritans who
believed they could build God´s kingdom in England.

Two-thirds of the MPs did not want to put the king on trial. They were removed from
Parliament by the army, and the remaining fifty-three judged him and found him guilty of
making “war against his kingdoms and the Parliament”. King Charles was executed.

Britain was a republic, but the republic was not a success. Cromwell and his friends created a
government far more severe than Charles´s had been. They had got rid of the monarchy, and
they now got rid of the House of Lords and the Anglican Church.

The Scots were shocked by Charles´s execution. They invited his son, to join them and fight
against the English Parliamentary army. But they were defeat, and young Charles himself was
lucky to escape to France. Scotland was brought under English republican rule.

Cromwell took an army to Ireland to punish the Irish for the killing of Protestants, and for the
continued Royalist rebellion there. He captured two towns and they killed the inhabits of both.
They remained powerful symbols of English currently to the Irish.

The army remained the most powerful force in the land. Disagreements between the army and
Parliament resulted in Parliament´s dissolution. Many in the army held what were thought to
be strange beliefs. A group called “Levellers” wanted a new equality among all men. they
wanted Parliament to meet every two years and for most men over the age of twenty-one to
have the right to elect MPs to it. They also wanted complete religious freedom, which would
have allowed the many new Puritan groups to follow their religion in the way they wished.

Britain was governed by Cromwell. He became “Lord Protector, with far greater powers than
King Charles had had. His efforts to govern the country through the army were extremely
unpopular and the idea of using the army to maintain law and order in the kingdom has
remained unpopular for other reasons. Cromwell´s government was unpopular for other
reason. For example, people were forbidden to celebrated Christmas and Easter, or to play
games on a Sunday.

When Cromwell died, the Protectorate collapse. Cromwell had hoped that his son, would take
over when he died. But Richard Cromwell was not a good leader and the army commanders
soon started to quarrel among themselves. One of these decided to act. He marched to
London, arranged for free elections and invited Charles II to return to his kingdom. The
republic was over.

When Charles II returned to England as the publicly accepted king, the laws and Acts of
Cromwell´s government were automatically cancelled.

Charles managed his return with skill. Although Parliament was once more as weak as it had
been in the time of James I and Charles I, the new king was careful to make peace with his
father´s enemies. Only those who had been responsible for his father´s execution was
punished. Many Parliamentarians given positions of authority or responsibility in the new
monarchy. Charles shared his father´s belief in divine right.

2. CATHOLICISM, THE CROWN AND THE NEW

Charles himself was attacked to the Catholic Church. Parliament knew this and was always
afraid that Charles would become a Catholic. For this reason, Parliament passed the Test Act,
which prevented any Catholic from holding public office. Fear of Charles’s interested in the
Catholic Church and of the monarchy becoming too powerful also resulted in the first political
parties in Britain.

One of these parties was a group of MPs who become known as “Whigs”, they were afraid of
an absolute monarchy, and of the Catholic faith with which they connected it. They also
wanted to have no regular or “standing” army. In spite of fear of a Catholic king, the Whigs
believed strongly in allowing religious freedom.

The Whigs were opposed by another group nicknamed “Tories”. They upheld the authority of
the Crown and the Church, and were natural inheritors of the “Royalist” position. The Whigs
were not against the Crown, but they believed that its authority depended upon the consent
of Parliament. These two parties, became the basis of Britain’s two-party parliamentary system
of government.

The struggle over Catholicism and the Crown became a crisis when news was heard of a
Catholic plot to murder Charles and put his brother James on the throne. In fact, the plan did
not exist. The story had been spread as clever trick to frighten people and to make sure that
James and the Catholics did not come to power. Parliament passed an Act forbidding any
Catholic to be a member of either the Commons or the Lords.

James II became king after his brother´s death. James had already shown his dislike of
Protestants while he had been Charles´s governor in Scotland. His soldiers had killed many
Presbyterian men, women and children. This period is still remembering in some parts of
Scotland as the “killing times”.

James then tried to remove the laws which stopped Catholics from taking positions in
government and Parliament. He also tried to bring back the Catholic Church, and allow it to
exist beside the Anglican Church. But Parliament was very angry, particularly the Tories and
Anglicans who had supported him against the Whigs.
James tried to get rid of the Tory gentry who most strongly opposed him. He tried to bring
together the Catholics and the Puritans, now usually called “Nonconformist” because they
would not agree with or “conform” to the Anglican Church.

In spite of them agree, Tories, Whigs and Anglicans did nothing because they could look
forward to the succession of James´s daughter, Mary. Mary was protestant and married to the
Protestant ruler of Holland, William of Orange. But this hope was destroyed with the news that
James´s son had been born. The Tories and Anglicans now joined the Whigs in looking a
protestant recue.

They invited William of Orange to invade Britain. It was a dangerous thing for William to do,
but the was already at war which France and he needed the help of Britain’s wealth and armed
forces. At this important moment James´s determination failed him. It seems he actually had
some kind of mental breakdown.

William entered London, but the crown was offered only to Mary. William said he would leave
Britain unless he also became the king. Parliament had no choice but to offer the Crown to
both William and Mary.

However, while William had obtained the crown Parliament had also won an important point.
Parliament had decided that James II had lost his right to the crown. It gave as its reason that
he had tried to undermine “the constitution of the kingdom by breaking the original contract
between King and Pope”. Since the restoration of Charles II, there had been a number of
theories about the nature of government. Two of the more important theorists, Sidney and
Locke, had argued that government was based upon the consent of the people, and that the
powers of the king must be strictly limited. The logical conclusion of such ideas was that the
“consent of the people” was represented by Parliament.

The Glorious Revolution, as the political results of the events of 1688 were called, was
completely unplanned and unprepared for. Its power over the monarch was written into the
Bill of Rights. The king was now unable to raise taxes or keep an army without the agreement
of Parliament or to act against any MP for what he said or did in Parliament.

Parliament finally passed the Act of Settlement, to make sure only a Protestant could inherit
the crown. It stated that if Mary had no children the crown would pass to her sister Anne. If
she also died without children, it would go to granddaughter of James I, who had married the
German elector of Hanover, and her children. The Act of Settlement was important, and has
remained in force ever since. Even today, if a son or daughter of the monarch becomes a
Catholic, he or she cannot inherit the throne.

3. SCOTLAND AND IRELAND

Scotland was still a separate kingdom, although it shared a king with England. The English
wanted Scotland and England to be united. But the English, Act of Settlement was not law in
Scotland. While Scotland remained legally free to choose its own king there was a danger that
this might be used to put a Stuart back on the throne. Scotland might renew its Auld Alliance
with France, which was now England’s most dangerous European enemy.

On the other hand, Scotland needed to remove the limits on trade with England from which it
suffered economically. The English Parliament offered to remove these limits if the Scots
agreed to union with England. The Scots knew that if they did not agree there was a real
danger that an English army would once again march into Scotland. The union of Scotland and
England was completed by Act of Parliament. From that moment both countries no longer had
separate parliaments, and a new parliament of Great Britain met for the first time. Scotland
kept its own separate legal and judicial system and its own separate Church.

In Ireland the Catholicism of James II had raised the hopes of those who had lost their lands to
the Protestant settlers. When he lost his throne in England, James naturally thought that
Ireland would make a strong base from which to take back his throne. Ha landed in Ireland,
with French support.

In Dublin a Catholic parliament immediately passed an Act taking way all the property of
Protestants in Ireland. Thirty thousand Protestants locked themselves in the city of
Londonderry. After fifteen weeks, English ships arrived bringing fresh supplies and the struggle
for Londonderry was over. The battlecry of the Protestants of Londonderry “No Surrender!”
has remained to this day the cry of Ulster Protestantism.

King William landed in Ireland and defeat James’s army at the River Boyne. James left Ireland
from France a few days later, and never returned to nay of his kingdoms. With the battle of the
Boyne the Protestant victory was complete.

4. FOREING RELATIONS
During the seventeenth century Britain’s main enemies were Spain, Holland and France. War
with Holland resulted from competition in trade. After three wars in the middle of the century,
when Britain had achieved the trade position it wanted, peace was agreed, and Holland and
Britain cooperate against France.

At the end of the century Britain went to war against France. This war partly because William
of Orange brought Britain into the Dutch struggle with French. But Britain also wanted to limit
French power. The British army won several important victories over the French.

France accepted limits on its expansion, as well as a political settlement for Europe. It accepted
Queen Anne instead of James II’s son as the true monarch of Britain. In the war Britain had
also won the rock of Gibraltar, and could now control the entrance to the Mediterranean.

The capture of foreign land was important for Europe’s economic development. At this stage
Britain had a smaller empire abroad that either Spain or Holland. But I had greater variety. On
the east coast of America, Britain controlled about twelve colonies. Of far greater interest
were the new possessions in the West Indies, where sugar was grown.

The growing sugar economy of the West Indies increased the demand for slaves. During this
time Britain also established its fist trading settlements in India, on both the west and the east
coasts. The East India Company did not interfere in India politics; its interest was only in trade.