A Kingdom Without a King: England’s Revolutionary Experiment

The 1650s presented England with a political paradox unprecedented in European history. After the execution of Charles I in 1649, the nation found itself neither fully transformed nor entirely recognizable. Unlike the later French Revolution’s radical social upheaval, England’s Commonwealth under Oliver Cromwell became an uneasy hybrid—a republic governed by men who had overthrown monarchy yet remained deeply conservative in their social instincts.

This was no Jacobin uprising. The architects of regicide—men like Henry Marten and Arthur Haselrig—were practical gentry who valued order above ideology. They spoke the language of liberty when necessary but harbored no illusions about dismantling England’s legal and social foundations. As diarist John Evelyn discovered during his travels between Royalist exile and Republican England, daily life continued with surprising normality: landowners managed estates, merchants traded, and local magistrates dispensed justice—albeit without bishops or a House of Lords.

The Contradictions of Commonwealth Governance

### Law Amid Revolution

Evelyn’s 1652 robbery ordeal near Bromley Forest reveals the Commonwealth’s unexpected stability. When bandits stole his jewels, the republican justice system proved remarkably efficient: within days, the items were recovered through official channels. The episode demonstrates how England’s new rulers prioritized functional governance over revolutionary purity. Even the regicide John Bradshaw—who presided over Charles I’s trial—issued passports to Royalists like Evelyn, a pragmatism unthinkable in revolutionary Paris decades later.

### The Persistence of Old England

Beneath the surface of political change, traditional power structures endured. Cromwell’s government relied on the same county gentry who had always governed England. Bulstrode Whitelocke, Commissioner of the Great Seal, exemplified this continuity. His diaries show more concern for personal grief (his wife’s death) than constitutional upheaval. Like many Commonwealth leaders, Whitelocke imagined a reformed monarchy rather than its permanent abolition—even suggesting the young Duke of Gloucester as a pliable future king.

Cromwell’s Imperial Vision

### Commerce Over Creed

The Commonwealth’s true revolutionary energy emerged not in domestic policy but foreign affairs. The 1651 Navigation Act—more consequential long-term than regicide—marked England’s aggressive mercantile nationalism. Admiral Blake’s victories over Dutch and Spanish fleets built a maritime empire where Stuart kings had failed. This commercial imperialism, defended by military might, became England’s new raison d’état. As historian Christopher Hill observed, the revolution’s lasting achievement was creating conditions for capitalist expansion—a fact appreciated more by merchants than saints.

### The Puritan Paradox

Cromwell embodied the revolution’s central tension. The devout warrior who quoted Psalms 110 saw himself as England’s Moses, yet his Protectorate increasingly resembled the “Egyptian bondage” he’d overthrown. His 1653 dissolution of the Rump Parliament—complete with armed musketeers—mirrored Charles I’s worst parliamentary abuses. When he declared “You are no Parliament,” the irony was palpable: the man who fought to defend Parliamentary sovereignty now destroyed it with soldiers’ boots.

Legacy of an Unfinished Revolution

### The Conservative Revolution

The Interregnum’s lasting paradox was its limited social transformation. Unlike later revolutions, it redistributed neither land nor power significantly. Gentry like Haselrig protected their class interests while dismantling monarchy. The Levelers’ radical proposals for legal equality were dismissed as dangerously “vague.” England had beheaded a king but preserved the country house culture that sustained aristocratic power.

### Cromwell’s Impossible Dream

The Protector’s failure was ultimately theological. His vision demanded England become a “New Jerusalem,” yet his countrymen preferred stability over sainthood. The Instrument of Government (1653) created a constitutional dictatorship, not godly rule. By 1658, Cromwell’s death revealed the system’s fragility—without his personal authority, the experiment collapsed into the Restoration’s embrace.

Conclusion: England’s Forked Path

The 1650s left England transformed yet unchanged. The execution of a king proved less revolutionary than the emergence of naval power and mercantile policy. Cromwell’s Protectorate became a cautionary tale about the limits of imposed righteousness—a lesson that shaped Britain’s later preference for gradual reform over radical change. In the end, the revolution’s most lasting achievement was negative: proving that England could survive without a crown, a lesson neither forgotten nor fully embraced.