Cromwell

The execution of Charles I was followed by the abolition of the monarchy (Firth 232). Cromwell accepted command once he was certain of adequate support from the Government on March 30, 1649. Parliament entrusted him with the combined powers of Lord-Lieutenant and Commander-in-chief (Firth 258). Puritans were eager for the "Reformation of manners", and the Long Parliament had made a beginning by acts enjoining the stricter observance of Sunday, punishing swearing with greater severity, and making adultery a capital offence. Of the Protector's ordinances, one declared dueling "unpleasing to God, unbecoming to Christians, and contrary to all good under government." Parliament confirmed ordinances against dueling, swearing, and cock-fighting, and passed similar acts of its own. One was directed against the vagrants and "idle, dissolute" persons who abounded in all parts of the country. Amongst them, "the bigots of that iron time" included fiddlers and minstrels taken "playing or making music" in taverns, who were declared punishable as "rogues and vagabonds" (Firth 350-351).

The extremely rigid formalists were incapable of seeing anything agreeable in merriment (Ebsworth xvi-xvii). In one particular drollery, Cavalier and Churchman laughed at the extravagance of the Puritan; scarcely foreseeing how grim in power would be those stalwart Ironsides of Cromwell, who savagely haled men and women to prison or to execution: and —believing themselves specially inspired and chosen to bind kings in chains and nobles with links of iron—prayed fiercely before battles, in which they bore down irresistibly upon the foe that had first in ignorance despised them (Ebsworth vi). Several facetious little collections of miscellaneous verse were sponsored by disappointed Royalist wits who hoped by this means to buoy up the spirits of the king's party. Their coarseness and more than occasional obscenity, which posed so great a problem for Victorian editors, probably represented originally a device for mocking the oppressive moral standards of the sanctimonious Saints, whom the Royalists could no longer combat openly (Friedman 285).

When Charles II’s supporters heard rumors in August 1658 that Cromwell was ill, they thought a restoration possible. Charles immediately drafted a declaration and named the protector as the principal actor "in the murther of the king" and for nine years a usurper of "Royall Authority." He commanded Englishman to restore him to power, and so that fear of punishment "not deterre any of them,' he offered full, free, and gracious pardon to all subjects. The only exceptions were "the murthers of the king our father of ever blessed memory" (McMains 127). The Restoration did not occur as quickly as the royalists perhaps expected. Richard Cromwell assumed the protectorship with relative ease. The army and republicans posed a threat to him and in May 1659 prompted his resignation. For a year thereafter, Parliament, supported by the army, ruled (McMains 128).