Protectorate

Protectorate. The Protectorate was established on 16 December 1653 when Oliver Cromwell became head of state as lord protector. Since his power rested on a formidable army, whose officers had devised the Protectorate's constitution, the Instrument of Government, his regime has often been called a military dictatorship. The description needs to be qualified. The restraints imposed by the Instrument were considerable, and Cromwell welcomed them. Serving officers were always outnumbered by civilians on his council, and formed only a tiny minority among the justices of the peace, to whom local government had been restored. The size of the army was progressively reduced; the numbers stationed in England and Wales varied between 11,000 and 14,400. With rare exceptions, the rule of law was well respected, and political prisoners were extremely few. Religious liberty officially stopped short of ‘popery or prelacy’, but in practice was broad.

Cromwell's first Parliament refused to ratify the constitution and proceeded to frame one of its own; he dissolved it in January 1655. Shortly afterwards, Penruddock's rising gave his military councillors a temporary ascendancy, and the result was the regime of the major-generals. These officers did not supersede the local magistracy in their eleven districts, but their duties went far beyond suppressing royalist conspiracy and they were much resented, not least for their inferior birth. Their regime was running down, however, long before Parliament terminated it by refusing to legitimize the levy on the royalist gentry (the ‘decimation’) which paid for it.

This second Protectorate Parliament (1656–8), from which the council excluded over 100 elected members, reflected a growing division between conservative civilians and supporters of the military. Led by the former, it presented Cromwell with a new constitution, the Humble Petition and Advice, naming him as king and restoring other more traditional ways. His senior officers strongly opposed it, but Cromwell accepted it, though without changing his title of Protector. Their influence thereafter diminished, and Lambert, author of the Instrument of Government, was forced into retirement after refusing the new councillor's oath. Cromwell resumed his policy of healing old wounds, but died on 3 September 1658. His son Richard's Protectorate lasted only eight months, not so much because he was personally inadequate—his one Parliament gave his government more support than either of Oliver's had done—as because the disgruntled military ‘grandees’ were bent on recovering their old political influence. By bringing Richard down, they wrecked the ‘Good Old Cause’ that they professed to serve.

Austin Woolrych