The Collapse of the Old Order

In the tumultuous months following the execution of Charles I in January 1649, England stood at a precipice. The words of Henry Marten in Parliament echoed through the halls of power: “Whatever our ancestors were, or whatever they did or suffered, or were forced to submit to, we are the men of the present age, and ought to be absolutely free from all kinds of exorbitancies, molestations, or Arbitrary Power.” This was more than rhetoric—it was a revolutionary manifesto. Across the country, old statutes were repealed, symbols of monarchy defaced, and institutions dismantled.

The case of young Isaac Archer near Colchester illustrates this iconoclasm. His father William took a knife to an image of Charles I, scraping away the king’s likeness—a small but telling act of rebellion. Parliament, now purged of its conservative elements, went further, abolishing the House of Lords as “useless and dangerous,” an “unnecessary burden” threatening the people’s liberty. The Great Seal of the Realm, once the instrument of royal authority, was recast with a new inscription: “The First Year of Freedom by God’s Blessing Restored, 1648.”

The Void and the Theorists

With the monarchy and aristocracy swept aside, England faced a profound question: what would fill this political vacuum? The situation fascinated thinkers like Thomas Hobbes, who saw parallels between this governmental void and the scientific debates about vacuums in nature. In 1644, Italian physicist Evangelista Torricelli had demonstrated the existence of a vacuum using mercury in a glass tube—a discovery that divided scientists between “vacuists” and “plenists.” Hobbes, a plenist, found England’s power vacuum just as unnatural and dangerous as the concept of empty space in physics.

Hobbes’ solution, articulated in his 1651 masterpiece Leviathan, shocked his former royalist allies. He argued for submission to any authority capable of maintaining order—even the regicide Parliament. This pragmatic stance, combined with his materialist philosophy, made him suspect in all quarters. As Edward Hyde lamented, Hobbes had “sported with the truths which other men reverenced,” undermining both royalist mystique and religious orthodoxy.

The Cult of the Martyred King

While Hobbes grappled with political theory, royalists cultivated a potent counter-revolutionary mythology. Eikon Basilike (“The Royal Portrait”), purportedly Charles I’s spiritual autobiography, became a publishing phenomenon—with 35 English editions in 1649 alone. Its frontispiece, designed by William Marshall, presented Charles as a martyr: a kneeling figure bathed in celestial light, his earthly crown exchanged for a heavenly one. Palm trees and storm-tossed rocks reinforced the message of eternal virtue triumphing over temporal adversity.

This propaganda campaign proved astonishingly effective. Even as the Commonwealth’s leaders proclaimed a new era of liberty, many Englishmen clung to relics of the dead king—bloodstained cloth, locks of hair, and especially his “sacred” book. The government’s attempts to suppress Eikon Basilike only fueled its popularity, revealing deep reservoirs of monarchist sentiment.

Milton’s Republican Crusade

Faced with this royalist resurgence, the Commonwealth turned to John Milton. Already renowned for his defenses of free speech and divorce, Milton now took up his pen against the cult of Charles I. His Tenure of Kings and Magistrates (February 1649) offered a robust justification for regicide, arguing that rulers derived power from the people and forfeited it through tyranny. When Charles raised his standard at Nottingham in 1642, Milton contended, he had effectively abdicated.

Appointed Secretary for Foreign Tongues, Milton later authored Eikonoklastes (“The Image Breaker”), a point-by-point rebuttal of Eikon Basilike. His scathing prose compared Charles to a vulture lamenting lost carrion—a far cry from the saintly image royalists promoted. Yet Milton’s efforts couldn’t match the emotional pull of the king’s martyrdom. As he admitted, Eikonoklastes was a work of duty rather than conviction.

The Saints and the Fifth Monarchy

Amid this ideological warfare, radical millenarians saw Charles’ execution as apocalyptic sign. With bishops abolished and the monarchy gone, some believed England was becoming the “Fifth Monarchy” prophesied in the Book of Daniel—God’s final kingdom on earth. Preachers like Christopher Feake proclaimed that Christ himself would soon rule through his English saints.

This fervor alarmed more conservative republicans. The Rump Parliament and Council of State, though revolutionary by 1642 standards, now seemed hesitant to radicals demanding deeper reforms. To royalists, of course, these institutions were illegitimate from the start—a “rump” of the true Parliament purged by Cromwell’s soldiers in 1648.

Legacy of the Interregnum

The Commonwealth’s experiment ended in 1660 with the Restoration, but its questions endured. Hobbes’ theories about sovereignty, Milton’s defenses of popular authority, and even the radicals’ millenarian dreams continued to influence political thought. The execution of Charles I established that English kings ruled by consent, not divine right alone—a principle that would resurface in 1688’s Glorious Revolution.

The Interregnum also demonstrated the power of political symbolism. Just as royalists crafted Charles into a martyr, republicans developed their own iconography—the recast Great Seal, Cromwell’s austere portraits, and Milton’s soaring prose. These competing narratives revealed a truth Hobbes understood: politics depends as much on imagination as on force.

In the end, England’s republican moment proved fleeting, but its tensions—between order and liberty, tradition and innovation, realism and idealism—remain central to modern democracy. The vacuum left by Charles’ execution forced a nation to confront fundamental questions about power and legitimacy that still resonate today.