Cromwellian Protectorate Research Articles

The Politics of Wedding Poetry under the Cromwellian Protectorate: Sir William Davenant and “Hymen’s Policy”

Abstract: This essay presents a reading of Sir William Davenant’s previously unstudied poem “Epithalamium. The Morning after the Marriage of the Earl of Barymore with Mrs. Martha Laurence,” written in October 1656. The poem offers a significant comparison to Andrew Marvell’s near-contemporary wedding song for the marriage of Oliver Cromwell’s daughter Mary. It thereby sheds light on Cromwellian poets’ efforts to formulate a poetic language in which to address the Protectoral court. The essay contextualizes the poem in the political realignment of the Cromwellian regime in 1656–1657. It suggests that Davenant’s paradoxical style attempts to adapt the courtly epithalamium to the minimalistic religious settlement and the principle of toleration for Protestants that underpinned the Cromwellian coalition. In this way, the poem illustrates how the 1650s Davenant can be read as a Cromwellian poet, alongside Marvell, Edmund Waller, and even John Milton, developing his ambitious and idiosyncratic ideas about public festivity and civil religion.

Cromwell’s “spymaster”? John Thurloe and rethinking early modern intelligence

ABSTRACTAs intelligence co-ordinator for the Cromwellian Protectorate, John Thurloe was responsible for securing the new regime against a number of different threats, including Royalist plots and potential uprisings. Through a scholarly rereading of the Thurloe State Papers, this article provides new insights into Thurloe’s intelligence work, and reflects critically on the impact of modern intelligence studies on early modern history. Investigation of the constraints on early modern intelligence, in terms of money, manpower, relationship to the legal system, and legitimacy, reveals how Thurloe actively sought to circumvent limitations, or to turn some of these to his advantage. Analysis of Thurloe’s defence of the ports against the passage of Royalist agents and invasion, an area where he has traditionally attracted criticism, shows a far more sophisticated strategy at work, including his exploitation of security weaknesses to gather more intelligence and disrupting actively a significant number of potential invasion plans.

Petitioning, addressing and the historical imagination: the case of Great Yarmouth, England 1658–1784

ABSTRACTThis article examines the role of loyal addresses, petition-like texts that emerged during the Cromwellian Protectorate in England, as repositories of public memory. It contends that loyal addresses were a particularly mnemonic form of political communication: not only did addresses themselves incorporate historical narratives but their reproduction in contemporary newsbooks facilitated their later collection in compendia and histories of addressing. These volumes in turn gave an overall ‘sense’ or character to public opinion nationally and allowed its shifts to be charted over time. The article uses the case study of an address to Richard Cromwell issued in 1658 from the corporation of Great Yarmouth to demonstrate how this text was redeployed to wage a political campaign against leading magistrates in the town in the 1670s. The address gained renewed political significance in the late eighteenth century, as the interplay of local political and historical interests made its depiction of the influence of religious factions in the borough once again relevant. This local memory in turn fed upon a wider national use of the Cromwellian addresses as an example of political faithlessness and duplicity. Combined, these local and national discussions demonstrated the importance of addresses in defining public opinion and political identity over time.

Reconstructing the Debates of the Protectorate Parliaments: The Pitfalls of J.T. Rutt's Edition of ‘Thomas Burton's’ Diary

Although John Towill Rutt's 1828 edition of the Diary of Thomas Burton remains a key source for the parliamentary history of the Cromwellian Protectorate, remarkably few historians – past or present – have paused to consider its limitations. This article offers the first thorough examination of Rutt's editorial practices to highlight a number of reasons why modern scholars should treat his edition with extreme caution. While touching upon those familiar debates concerning the appropriate use of parliamentary diaries in the early modern period, this article suggests that Rutt's editorial practices add further layers of complexity to how historians should approach his edition of Thomas Burton's diary. By focusing upon the debates of Richard Cromwell's parliament the second half of this article demonstrates how the over‐reliance of scholars upon Rutt's edition has helped to propagate a number of misconceptions about both the membership and nature of that parliament as a whole. The article concludes by recommending that historians approach Rutt's edition with far more care. In particular, it would be far better to return to Burton's manuscript diary and, where possible, to collate it with other surviving parliamentary diaries from this period.

Sparta and the English Republic

In 1659–60, James Harrington and Henry Stubbe, two republican authors, engaged in a bad-tempered pamphlet debate about the constitution of classical Sparta. This took place in the context of political collapse after the fall of the Cromwellian Protectorate, as republicans desperately attempted to devise safeguards which could prevent the return of monarchy. Questions of constitutional form were not always at the forefront of 1650s English republicanism, but Harrington's ideal constitution of ‘Oceana’ brought these questions to the fore in 1659's discussions. Sparta formed a key plank of the ‘ancient prudence’ which supported Harrington's theory, and like Stubbe he drew on Nicolaus Cragius' De Republica Lacedaemoniorum (1593) for evidence, and was attracted to some of the more apparently ‘aristocratic’ elements of the Spartan constitution. However, classical texts and modern scholarly authority, such as Cragius', were not the only ingredients in the English version of the ‘classical republican’ tradition; sixteenth- and seventeenth-century political thinkers and current exigencies also shaped Harrington and Stubbe's arguments. Both Harrington and Stubbe ended up challenging the scholarly and ancient consensus that Sparta was an aristocracy or mixed polity, Harrington reinterpreting it to assimilate it to ‘democracy’, and Stubbe attempting to rehabilitate a model of benign ‘oligarchy’.

Hereditary Succession and the Cromwellian Protectorate: The Offer of the Crown Reconsidered

Historians usually describe the parliamentary offer of the Crown to Oliver Cromwell in 1657 as something of a self-fulfilling prophecy. Throughout the second Protectorate Parliament, plans to create a Cromwellian monarchy were ‘secretly maturing’; the civilian members of parliament (MPs), tired of military rule, were just waiting until the ‘time was right’. While this article does not seek to deny that many MPs were thinking of constitutional change from an early stage, it will demonstrate that the form of settlement first proposed in the opening months of the second protectorate Parliament was very different to the one eventually embodied in the Humble Petition and Advice. Rather than marking a process of inevitable backsliding towards monarchy, the constitutional debates during the opening months of the second Protectorate Parliament can best be understood by consideration of previous succession crises. In their first motions for constitutional reform, MPs did not seek to make Cromwell king; they proposed to make him a hereditary Protector. By February 1657, however, all mention of hereditary government disappeared suddenly; the parliamentary constitution offered to Cromwell the following month centred upon a non-hereditary monarchy. This article will demonstrate that by failing to trace the development of the scheme to make the supreme magistracy hereditary, and the reasons why it was abandoned in early 1657, historians have failed to appreciate both the motives of those who went on to offer the Crown to Cromwell and the flawed nature of the constitution once Cromwell refused that offer in May 1657.

EDWARD HOLBERTON, Poetry and the Cromwellian Protectorate: Culture, Politics and Institutions.

EDWARD HOLBERTON, Poetry and the Cromwellian Protectorate: Culture, Politics and Institutions.

Edward Holberton, Poetry and the Cromwellian Protectorate: Culture, Politics, and InstitutionsPoetry and the Cromwellian Protectorate: Culture, Politics, and Institutions. Edward Holberton. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. Pp. xi+249.

<i>Edward Holberton</i>, Poetry and the Cromwellian Protectorate: Culture, Politics, and Institutions<i>Poetry and the Cromwellian Protectorate: Culture, Politics, and Institutions</i>. Edward Holberton. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. Pp. xi+249.

Poetry and the Cromwellian Protectorate: Culture, Politics, and Institutions, by Edward Holberton

Poetry and the Cromwellian Protectorate: Culture, Politics, and Institutions, by Edward Holberton

The 1549 Rebellions and the Making of Early Modern England, by Andy Wood and, Parliaments and Politics during the Cromwellian Protectorate, by Patrick Little and David L. Smith

<i>The 1549 Rebellions and the Making of Early Modern England</i>, by Andy Wood and, <i>Parliaments and Politics during the Cromwellian Protectorate</i>, by Patrick Little and David L. Smith

Poetry and the Cromwellian Protectorate: Culture, Politics, and Institutions – By Edward Holberton

Poetry and the Cromwellian Protectorate: Culture, Politics, and Institutions – By Edward Holberton

Parliaments and Politics during the Cromwellian Protectorate

Parliaments and Politics during the Cromwellian Protectorate

:Parliaments and Politics during the Cromwellian Protectorate

:<i>Parliaments and Politics during the Cromwellian Protectorate</i>

Patrick Little and David L. Smith. Parliaments and Politics during the Cromwellian Protectorate. Cambridge Studies in Early Modern British History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Pp. xiii+338. $99.00 (cloth).

Patrick Little and David L. Smith. Parliaments and Politics during the Cromwellian Protectorate. Cambridge Studies in Early Modern British History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Pp. xiii+338. $99.00 (cloth).

Parliaments and Politics during the Cromwellian Protectorate. By Patrick Little and David L. Smith (New York, Cambridge University Press, 2007) 338 pp. $99.00

April 01 2009 Parliaments and Politics during the Cromwellian Protectorate. By Patrick Little and David L. Smith (New York, Cambridge University Press, 2007) 338 pp. $99.00 Robert Zaller Robert Zaller Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Scholar Author and Article Information Robert Zaller Online ISSN: 1530-9169 Print ISSN: 0022-1953 © 2009 Massachusetts Institute of Technology and The Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Inc.2009 The Journal of Interdisciplinary History (2009) 39 (4): 571–574. https://doi.org/10.1162/jinh.2009.39.4.571 Cite Icon Cite Permissions Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Search Site Citation Robert Zaller; Parliaments and Politics during the Cromwellian Protectorate. By Patrick Little and David L. Smith (New York, Cambridge University Press, 2007) 338 pp. $99.00. The Journal of Interdisciplinary History 2009; 39 (4): 571–574. doi: https://doi.org/10.1162/jinh.2009.39.4.571 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentAll JournalsThe Journal of Interdisciplinary History Search Advanced Search This content is only available as a PDF. © 2009 Massachusetts Institute of Technology and The Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Inc.2009 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

EDWARD HOLBERTON. Poetry and the Cromwellian Protectorate: Culture, Politics, and Institutions

The key term in Holberton's title is the (prima facie uninspiring) ‘institutions’. By examining poetry and entertainments ‘written for the occasions of embassies, universities, parliaments, mayoral elections, dynastic marriages, and state funerals’, Holberton seeks to show that ‘Protectorate poetry is not as preoccupied with the charisma of [Oliver] Cromwell as some critics have argued’. It should be said that the marriages are those of Cromwell's daughters and the funeral is Cromwell's, while the analysis of the embassy, university, and parliamentary verse has much to do with Cromwell's ambiguous status as ‘Protector’. What Holberton means is a literature which does not portray Cromwell, as simply (in that tired phrase) ‘a king in all but name’, but as a figure ‘who has influence, but by no means complete control, over the Protectorate's infrastructure and matrix of cultural institutions’. The book's claim to originality lies in its series of decentred perspectives, from the vantage-point of very specific and contained historical moments, on the literary culture of Cromwellian rule. This method, Holberton maintains, allows him to avoid the potentially distorting binaries of republican/monarchical in which Protectorate culture tends to be discussed, even (or especially) in major recent studies such as David Norbrook's Writing the English Republic (1999). This is certainly not a book which aspires to be a comprehensive survey: Holberton is not interested in openly hostile literature, whether royalist or republican, but writing on behalf of the Protectorate or which takes a broadly open-minded approach to the possibilities of the Protectorate as an institution.

Parliaments and Politics during the Cromwellian Protectorate By Patrick Little and David Smith

HistoryVolume 94, Issue 314 p. 242-243 Parliaments and Politics during the Cromwellian Protectorate By Patrick Little and David Smith ANDREW J. HOPPER, ANDREW J. HOPPER University of LeicesterSearch for more papers by this author ANDREW J. HOPPER, ANDREW J. HOPPER University of LeicesterSearch for more papers by this author First published: 17 March 2009 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-229X.2009.453_14.xRead the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat No abstract is available for this article. Volume94, Issue314April 2009Pages 242-243 RelatedInformation

Royalism, Print and Censorship in Revolutionary England by Jason McElligottPoetry and the Cromwellian Protectorate: Culture, Politics, and Institutions by Edward Holberton

Royalism, Print and Censorship in Revolutionary England by Jason McElligottPoetry and the Cromwellian Protectorate: Culture, Politics, and Institutions by Edward Holberton

Parliaments and politics during the Cromwellian protectorate

Parliaments and politics during the Cromwellian protectorate

:Parliaments and Politics during the Cromwellian Protectorate.(Cambridge Studies in Early Modern British History.)

:Parliaments and Politics during the Cromwellian Protectorate.<i>(Cambridge Studies in Early Modern British History.)</i>