Civil War end = voting reform

Just been watching Cromwell on TV the film about the 'English' Civil War.

Made me wonder - why wasn't that an opportunity for Voting Reform?
No I'm not suggesting OMOV that early. But the idea of Parliamentary supremacy should surely have been followed by a wider plebiscite.
Could something like the 1832 Electoral Reform have happened a couple of centuries earlier, and what to effect??

The problem here is that the parliamentarians really wasn't a popular revolutionary movement, it was in essence a war between one powerful section of the upper class vs another section of the upper class.

Cromwell did pass voting reform - it was reversed after the Restoration (or rather, it was declared that everything that had happened since Charles I was overthrown and executed was legally null and void) and the reason it took so long to get reform going again, not till 1832 in the end, was because of the proto-Godwin argument that 'Cromwell did it, therefore it's wrong!'

The main voting reform was that the rotten boroughs were got rid of and constituencies were apportioned more based on (something much closer to) equal population. The property requirements for voting were harmonised across all county constituencies and borough constituencies, but I'm not sure if they were more liberal than before - they actually might have been less. The religious qualification for voting was also abolished and non-Anglicans could vote, with the exception of Roman Catholics and some of the more extremist sects (arbitrarily defined by the government).

However the franchise adjustment part of the reform was changed back to the old one under Richard Cromwell for the Third Protectorate Parliament in 1658, even before the Restoration, so apparently it was viewed as a failed experiment.

Thande said:

Cromwell did pass voting reform - it was reversed after the Restoration (or rather, it was declared that everything that had happened since Charles I was overthrown and executed was legally null and void) and the reason it took so long to get reform going again, not till 1832 in the end, was because of the proto-Godwin argument that 'Cromwell did it, therefore it's wrong!'.

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James II also altered a lot of Parliamentary Borough Charters, which didn't do anything to make such changes any more respectable.

Weird idea, Charles I dies without the public execution in a way the roundhead leadership can plausably deny.

Charles II proposes a Constitutional monarchy with a parliament elected by manhood suffrage, does deal with army against Cromwell.

Possibly monarchists win such an election

Mikestone8 said:

James II also altered a lot of Parliamentary Borough Charters, which didn't do anything to make such changes any more respectable.

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Good point, that is also true.

Cromwell was far from the tyrant of popular imagination; I mean, my admiration for him is known.

I wonder if Cromwell would have settled for a parliamentary republic in some ALT? I haven't read enough of his biography to decide either way yet.

Sulemain said:

Cromwell was far from the tyrant of popular imagination; I mean, my admiration for him is known.

I wonder if Cromwell would have settled for a parliamentary republic in some ALT? I haven't read enough of his biography to decide either way yet.

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In the end, Cromwell's ideal constitution was always going to be some form of 'Me, Who Does The Telling'->'Everyone Else'. In the long run, it would always have ended up like that: sooner or later he would get impatient with Parliament for not doing what was clearly correct in his eyes and dissolve it or turn it into a rubber stamp. You really need somebody else in power to try to produce actual representative government, which is I think where EdT was going with his 'No Cromwell' TL but which sadly has not yet been completed.

Thande said:

In the end, Cromwell's ideal constitution was always going to be some form of 'Me, Who Does The Telling'->'Everyone Else'. In the long run, it would always have ended up like that: sooner or later he would get impatient with Parliament for not doing what was clearly correct in his eyes and dissolve it or turn it into a rubber stamp. You really need somebody else in power to try to produce actual representative government, which is I think where EdT was going with his 'No Cromwell' TL but which sadly has not yet been completed.

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To be fair, Cromwell was very talented. Shame GARS didn't live longer. Him and Cromwell would have made an interesting pair.

You mean "The Bloodly Man"? 'Tis an amazing story, it's how I got introduced to Cromwell.

Fraser devotes a few pages to Cromwell's planned migration to America.