The Overthrow of the Protectorate

Abstract

Abstract Richard Cromwell’s brief tenure of the Protector’s office began auspiciously. The privy council accepted without question that Oliver had nominated him to it, and Fleetwood and the senior army officers in and around London were as prompt to recognize his title. The Lord Mayor and aldermen of London were enthusiastically co-operative, and the proclamation of the new Protector, performed with due pomp, was greeted with warm applause at Whitehall, Westminster, Temple Bar, Cheapside, and the Royal Exchange. In most provincial towns too the proclamation was celebrated with bell-ringing, bonfires, parades, and cannon-fire. Only in royalist Oxford do we hear of students pelting the sheriff and his attendant troops with the tops of carrots and turnips, but that tells us more about the agelessness of student protest (probably directed there mainly against the military) than about the response of the public as a whole. Addresses of loyalty and congratulation poured in during the next three months from at least twenty-eight counties, twenty-four towns (besides London), and half-a-dozen groups of ministers covering a wide religious spectrum, as well as from the fleet and sundry garrisons and other outlying military units.