Interregnum

The Lord Protector’s move on Jamaica transformed Britain’s early empire.

Behind the serious face of the Lord Protector lay a man with a taste for terrible puns, pillow fights and unseemly practical jokes. 

Maurice Ashley describes how Cromwell and the Levellers both believed in freedom of conscience and political reform; but character and circumstances divided them.

Critics of Cromwell, both British and foreign, have long continued to “find what they were looking for” in the records of his career and character. Some have denounced him as a hypocritical tyrant; others have described him as the finest type of middle-class Englishman. Once at least, writes D.H. Pennington, he has been acclaimed as “the greatest Englishman of all time”.

Both the religious and the secular celebration of Christmas was forbidden by the English Puritan republic, but by no means everywhere with success.

Michael Howard records the relish with which Oliver Cromwell ended a particularly famous session in the House of Commons.

The Lord Protector stood down on May 25th, 1659.

Graham Goodlad surveys the variety of interpretations offered by historians of Cromwellian rule in the 1650s.

Patrick Little asks why Parliament offered the infamous regicide the crown of England, to what extent he was tempted to take it – and why he finally turned it down.

James Robertson investigates the Lord Protector’s ambitious plans for war with Spain in the Caribbean.