3. England was a republic for the next 11 years.
Well, what came next for England was over a decade of being a republic, a period known as the Commonwealth. The Rump Parliament declared that ‘the commons in Parliament assembled, being chosen by and representing the people, have the supreme power in this nation’. That all sounds well and good, but for most people the Commonwealth was a thoroughly miserable time. The Puritans, chief among them Oliver Cromwell, who dominated matters and became Lord Protector in 1653, set about a rigorous campaign of censorship. Churches were smashed, rival religious sects oppressed, and the theatres were closed down altogether.
The Commonwealth really wasn’t a lot of fun: adultery was punishable by death, taverns and brothels were closed, and swearing was banned. And, ironically, Cromwell was guilty of many of the same things as his hated predecessor. Before being named Lord Protector, he marched into Parliament with his army, called the MPs ‘sordid prostitutes… intolerably odious to the whole nation’, and shut it down. He then installed his own carefully-chosen MPs, who elected him Lord Protector, and insisted on being called ‘Your Highness’ and sitting on a throne. Cromwell died in 1658, and everyone breathed a collective sigh of relief.
