You know I had high hopes for Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell, I really did. In my head I
always sort of lumped him in with Maximilian Robespierre, and my Robespierre video is one
of my absolute favorites. I thought they were each a forward-thinking guy who leapt into action and
spearheaded the revolution against the king for the sake of liberty and democracy but then became
corrupted, a hypocrite who fashions himself into a king in all but name and becomes a fanatical
tyrant with weird religious ideas like banning fun and love and Christmas! But actually… no.
You might have noticed, last time we talked about King Charles I, the king who went to
war against the parliament and got his head cut off, and Mr. Lord Protector here only had his
name come up once in passing. That’s because… well, he wasn’t that important to the story.
Now that puts me in an awkward spot, because I think England’s experiment with getting rid of the
monarchy is really interesting, but I don’t want to talk about the guy who was in charge. So you
know what? I’m not gonna. Because he’s overrated and I think I can get away with it. As a matter
of fact, I've said his name once in this video and that's the last time you're gonna hear it! Ladies
and gentlemen, the life’s work of you-know-who, as told by eight people I think are more interesting.
[intro]
Charles the First was the one who started all this mess, and it went something like this:
Charles: “I need money” Speaker: “Okay get rid of the guy who burnt
through our savings to get the navy drunk” Charles: “No!”
Charles: “I need money” Speaker: “Okay, first of all
you still need to get rid of that guy, second of all we know you’ve been issuing war bonds,
you’re not allowed to arrest people for not buying them,
that’s not how war bonds work.” Charles: “Shut up!”
Charles: “I need money!” Speaker: “Look we’re willing
to work with you, but every time we hand you a deal you do illegal
shenanigans behind our backs!” Charles: “You’re under arrest!”
Charles: “I need money!” Speaker: “No! Not until you stop arresting us,
and stop using loopholes to tax people without us, stop trying to abolish parliament, stop hiring
terrible advisors, stop making the Church -” Charles: “Guards!”
Parliament and the king went to war, and parliament won. But even in defeat,
negotiating with Charles was like talking to a brick wall. And everybody wanted something
different from him – The Scottish, the English, the parliament, the army,
the officers, the soldiers, the levellers, the agitators, the presbyterians, episcopalians,
mammalians, canids, Catholics, Puritans, and Bobby from Worcester
Bobby: “The Flying Spaghetti Monster is real! Embrace his noodly appendages!”
But someone’s gotta be in charge before anyone can
start negotiating with the King. Or… not negotiating with the king.
Lord General Thomas Fairfax was a veteran from before the civil war,
the army’s commander-in-chief and soon to be the most powerful man in Britain,
however briefly. He’s been watching as his fellow soldiers grow more and more radical.
Ireton: “My fellow generals! Charles refuses to negotiate and refuses to give the people
what they demand, he’s buying time for his next opportunity to ignite war!”
All: “Hear hear!” Ireton: “And yet! Parliament,
who still has not paid us, who still has not listened to our demands,
the demands of their people, still they insist on negotiation! Why
do they bother to appease the king who committed treason against his people?!”
All: “Hear hear!” Ireton: “I’ll tell you
why! Because they intend to put him on his throne without an ounce of accountability!”
All: [upset noises] Ireton: “The time has
come! We rose up against the king, let’s rise up against the parliament!”
Fairfax: “Order! Order! You’re going to write them a strongly worded letter and that’s final!”
Fairfax: “Gentlemen of Parliament, I have this strongly worded letter for you. Please,
we mustn’t negotiate with the king-” Speaker: “Yes yes, we’ll have a look
when we’re done negotiating with the king” Fairfax: “No, that’s the whole point-”
Speaker: “Go back to sharpening your muskets why don’t you”
Colonel Thomas Pride, a brewer before the start of the war, was the man sent
to Westminster when General Fairfax gave the order to purge parliament. He dismissed
parliament’s regular guards, and stood outside the chamber to detain 180 MPs and arrest 45.
MP: “You’re no better than King Charles! Y-you can’t do that!”
Pride: “Or what, are you gonna start a civil war against the army?”
And thus the parliament was purged, what’s left of it became known as the
Rump Parliament, which put King Charles I on trial and sentenced him to death.
Charles II was the oldest son of King Charles I. At one point parliament had considered making him
king when his father refused to negotiate, but after the purge, Charles I was dead and
England was set on this whole republic thing. But Ireland and Scotland didn’t get the memo,
they still wanted Charles II to be their king, causing England to declare war on both kingdoms.
Scotland tells Charles, “We’ll support your claim as king if you make presbyterianism
the official religion” Charles II: “You’ll
support my claim as king no matter what!”
“No, we’ll support your claim as king if you make presbyterianism the official religion”
Charles says okay. That meant a bunch of Charles most experienced, episcopalian soldiers either
weren’t allowed or didn’t want to fight in the army, so it was
just Scotland against England, and Scotland lost, but Charles II escaped into exile.
Lord Deputy Ireton, whom you might remember as being the one so keen to end negotiations with
the first King Charles, had been promoted to Lord Deputy of Ireland. Unlike England and Scotland,
Ireland was still majority Catholic. And Ireton was more or less given free reign to do whatever
he wanted to the Pope-lovers, so when guerilla fighters started giving him trouble he burned down
their food supplies. Sorry, did I say their food supplies? I mean all the food in several counties,
triggering a famine that killed twenty to forty percent of the Irish population.
So that’s all of the royalist/monarchist threats taken care of
Back in London, Major General Thomas Harrison was not happy with the way parliament was running
things. Even after Colonel Pride’s Purge, once the king was dead, factions began to form and bicker
with each other, elections still had not been scheduled, it was clear England needed a new form
of government but parliament couldn’t agree on anything, and so they were disbanded by the army.
It wasn’t just a new government that England so desperately needed,
there were all sorts of religious questions in the air as well. After all,
the king of England was also the head of the church of England,
at least when he still had a head. And to Harrison, this was especially important. He
was part of a growing movement that saw the death of the monarchy as one of the final steps before
the return of Christ and the end of the world. And only the chosen ones could lead the way.
And who were the chosen ones? No one knew exactly, but Harrison had an idea. Why not
kill three birds with one parliament? Create a new parliament,check, with members chosen based
on their religious credentials and virtuous personalities that could guide the country
spiritually, check, who could also become the saints that would usher in the end of days, check!
Harrison: “We’ll call it…
the parliament of saints!” Lambert: “So we just need to
find a few dozen MPs who are… so holy they’re better than the ten commandments? Where are we
going to find even one person like that?” Harrison: “You’re lookin at him”
Against all odds Harrison makes his ideas a reality, except go figure,
the parliament invented by the guy who wanted to shepherd in the end of days, well it quickly
came to light that that idea attracted a lot of other people with similar beliefs,
and the army wasn’t ready to turn England into an apocalyptic death cult just yet.
Enter Major General John Lambert,
a successful military officer who had his own idea for how to run the government:
Lambert: “Hey! Remember how we were gonna negotiate with Charles I?”
All: “Uh-huh, yeah” Lambert: “How we all would’ve been happy
if he’d just accepted a constitution?” All: “Aye, uh-huh, I ‘member”
Lambert: “Why don’t we just get rid of these religious nuts, get a new parliament,
and then pick someone who’ll sign the constitution to replace Charles?”
All: “...sure, okay!” Lambert: “Awesome! I wrote up
a constitution yesterday, please welcome your new king - I mean, Lord Protector, Mister -”
The Lord Protector was a position designed to have less power than a king,
with a few checks and balances, but it was still a lifetime position, something that might have
been a positive if you were worried about some fringe movement like those apocalypse people
coming to power all of a sudden. But that means they have to be careful about who they pick,
so they settle on an army commander that everybody already knew. He was a top general,
fought in all three kingdoms, pretty darn successful, served in parliament,
politically savvy, not too radical, pretty much the kind of pragmatic compromise pick
you’d come up with if you just needed somebody to not burn down the country for a hot sec.
John Smith was an average English citizen who was happy not to be on fire. Politically
everything was much the same as before, just replace the word king with Lord Protector and
Privy Council with Council of State, and shift the balance of power a little bit.
There was even a house of Lords again after they abolished it, but they didn’t know what
to call it so for several years there was the House of Commons and the Other House.
The main difference was the 15 districts led by military governors to put down royalist uprisings
And internationally, did the Lord Protector make a big difference? Uh… England fought a
little war with the Netherlands because of some mercantilist law
they passed during the civil war stopping people from trading with their colonies,
but the First Anglo-Dutch War was pretty much just spicy diplomacy.
There was one big thing that changed for Mr. Smith. You might’ve heard stories
about Christmas being banned because the Lord Protector was an old stick in the mud
who hated children and laughter, but those sorts of Puritanical laws were passed by
the many Puritans in parliament throughout the decade, when the movement was having its heyday.
But for all the talk of stability,
the Lord Protector didn’t stick around long, and all would soon change again
George Monck was the military officer who succeeded Fairfax as head of the army. The
king who wasn’t a king got malaria and refused to take his medicine because it was invented by
a filthy Jesuit heathen. Surprise surprise, just before he died he nominated his son as
the next Lord Protector. Monck believes in passing down the torch, but a lot of people
don’t like this kid and the fact that he has nowhere near the credentials of his father.
In fact, Jon Lambert (you remember Lambert, dontcha?) he kicks the kid out of office,
dissolves whatever parliament was currently in session, and brings back the Rump Parliament
from right after Colonel Pride’s Purge. Monck does not like how unstable this government is becoming,
he’d rather there be a more stable, long-lasting form of government,
something like the - what’s this? A letter from King Charles II offering
him a bunch of money to support a Royalist uprising! Monck mulls it over and decides
Monck: “Okay, here I am!” Monck: “to… put
down this rebellion! Good work Lambert!”
Lambert then does away with parliament altogether because they tried to reign
in the army, and everyone knows it’s the army that controls parliament,
not the other way around. No one is allowed to enter Westminster,
Lambert tells them all “We’re doing a Republic and we’re doing it my way!”
Monck takes up the cause of parliament and defeats
Lambert in battle! He then restores the o.g. o.g. Parliament, from before Pride’s Purge,
the one that wanted to negotiate with Charles. And he comes to them with a plan.
MP: “George, we appreciate it, but whatever new thing you’re trying to sell us on-”
Monck: “That’s just it. I’m not selling you on anything new.”
That was when Charles II received a mysterious message.
(sound of a party horn, insert on letter) James: “Congratulations… you are hereby
named King of England?”
Charles: “What can I say sometimes these things just work themselves out”
The revolution had ended in the most British
way I could imagine. The king didn’t triumphantly reconquer the kingdom,
society didn’t collapse into anarchy, there was no foreign intervention, everyone just
decided they couldn’t be bothered and politely asked to do things the old way again. The End.