Commonwealth of England survives to the present day
- Thread starter ximmer
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Alcsentre Calanice
Gone Fishin'
Surely, if the French and the Dutch managed to found a republic, the British should able to do it.
And we shouldn't forget that Cromwell wasn't a ruthless dicator, or maybe he was, but not completly: he was also a loyal republican and enacted Britain's sole written constitutions.
And we shouldn't forget that Cromwell wasn't a ruthless dicator, or maybe he was, but not completly: he was also a loyal republican and enacted Britain's sole written constitutions.
I don't see why not. A possible p.o.d. could be the army backing the Levellers during the Putney debates. With the ordinary man getting the vote including the soldiers of the New Model Army it would be much harder for the Puritans to muck things up and it should be possible to avoid the Commonwealth becoming a dictatorship. After all there can be no Rule Of The Major Generals if the ordinary soldiers back the Parliament they voted for, and attempting to remove rights won on the battlefield won't end well.
I love this idea.
What might the storm of butterflies blowing over Europe and the rest of the world look like?
Slight technical problem; Parliament's armies were the regional forces that had been variously recruited by local lords and grandees, the men Cromwell described as old decayed serving men and tapster's sons, the New Model was picked from the best of them and came out of the winnowing process overwhelmingly Puritan Independent.
It was not that the army had leveller tendencies as a whole, but a high majority of levellers came from or had chosen to fight in the army- and the parliament was very largely Presbyterian. The franchise at the time was tiny, and there are people like Christopher Hill who consider that the army was more representative of the people.
There was a natural fault there that opened over the issue of what to do with the king, and ended in pride's purge and the effective overthrow of parliament by the army.
If at Putney the radicals' spokesmen, Wildman, Lilburne, Bedfordshire man and all, had managed to persuade the leadership of the army to a more complete and drastic solution (no doubt through copious quantities of biblical quotations), instead of moderate measures which ultimately led nowhere, there would have been a military coup against the elected parliament with the king still in play;
further mass violence would probably have followed immediately, in a bizarre combination of king and parliament against the New Model and what of the logistic superiority of parliament it could still retain by force of arms. The army would have no legitimacy, be a collection of rootless fanatics, although highly motivated and competent ones.
They would not be without a chance, although the country would likely lose in either case.
It was not that the army had leveller tendencies as a whole, but a high majority of levellers came from or had chosen to fight in the army- and the parliament was very largely Presbyterian. The franchise at the time was tiny, and there are people like Christopher Hill who consider that the army was more representative of the people.
There was a natural fault there that opened over the issue of what to do with the king, and ended in pride's purge and the effective overthrow of parliament by the army.
If at Putney the radicals' spokesmen, Wildman, Lilburne, Bedfordshire man and all, had managed to persuade the leadership of the army to a more complete and drastic solution (no doubt through copious quantities of biblical quotations), instead of moderate measures which ultimately led nowhere, there would have been a military coup against the elected parliament with the king still in play;
further mass violence would probably have followed immediately, in a bizarre combination of king and parliament against the New Model and what of the logistic superiority of parliament it could still retain by force of arms. The army would have no legitimacy, be a collection of rootless fanatics, although highly motivated and competent ones.
They would not be without a chance, although the country would likely lose in either case.
Alcsentre Calanice
Gone Fishin'
I sense that the levellers are only a little minority in the republican movement and I don't think that they could have won against the monarchists and the republicans - that would've led to a quicker restoration of the king.
No, I'm conviced that you have to find a way to preserve both the Commonwealth AND Cromwell - indeed, it isn't the poorest choice: at least he never tried to become king himself, so you can maintain the republic with him. Just, he has to live longer, at least long enough to realize that his son is completly incapable (maybe the illness afflicting Oliver in OTL could instead kill Richard).
The big what is: who is the republican and talented successor for Cromwell?
As to the butterflies in Europe and in the world: Britain's rise to power would follow the same lines as OTL. weather commonwealth or kingdom - interesting fact, you would need no Act of Union, since the Commonwealth was already the Commonwealth of England, Scottland and Ireland.
Another interesting effect would be that all contries oriented towards Westminster system today would likely follow the Protectorate system: a strong president instead of a weak monarch, an unicameral parliament and an executive state council.
There is very little republican movement outside the Levellers, and what is is even further away from the mainstream- Ranters, Fifth Monarchy Men, a shower of millenarian loonies for the most part.
Parliament wasn't Republican in any credible sense, at least not more of it than the tiny fraction which was still there at the end when it came time to sign Charles' death warrant.
It began as a faction fight among the establishment for them, and a high proportion thought it had gone too far by 1647. Look at the attempts to come to some kind of accommodation with the King.
What is happening is that an initially religious conflict is putting down pragmatic roots; almost no-one in England or the (dis) United Kingdom as a whole began as a republican except the Levellers, and they too took their inspiration from biblical roots, with some folk memory mixed in.
Even the men who cut the king's head off, almost all (except maybe Rainsborough) began as moderate reformers with a strong religious streak. Without they are drawn outwards by that religious impulse, there's no way to get them to a republican platform.
At the historic Putney Debates, Cromwell and the rest of the leadership of the New Model present basically shouted down the extremists in favour of a moderate, reforming course, which only by accident and repeated proof of bad faith on Charles' side broke into open regicide.
Expedient followed expedient after that, and Cromwell- who had trained as a lawyer in his youth, his father's death had meant he inherited without finishing his degree- could think of no other means of holding the law of England together except that which it was already shaped around, a head of state- a king, or at most a placeholder for one. He had no plan and no platform, save blundering through.
A republican successor is somewhat pointless; the entire point of doing away with the king and listening to the extremists would be that the system changes. There would be a new parliament called, on the expanded franchise as insisted on by the Levellers, and who that would elect- who knows?
Bet on Ned Ludlow, maybe. He was one of the few Levelling- minded men who remained on good terms with Cromwell, his second in command in Ireland (which was a popular cause in England at the time, now matter how immoral the facts on the ground call it out as being), and a politician and a survivor. He would be a good bet for the second Lord Protector of the Commonwealth, and the first Protector to actually be elected.
Butterflies, though. Look at the Anglo- Dutch Wars, intervention in the fronde. England was a military republic, and would have it's wars- so much of Charles II's reign happened the way it did because he was locked into a course started by the commonwealth, not the other way around; which he tried to mitigate and bring to a neat end, but could not quite achieve.
That would only continue and intensify. You're as likely to get a Second Hundred Years' War.
Parliament wasn't Republican in any credible sense, at least not more of it than the tiny fraction which was still there at the end when it came time to sign Charles' death warrant.
It began as a faction fight among the establishment for them, and a high proportion thought it had gone too far by 1647. Look at the attempts to come to some kind of accommodation with the King.
What is happening is that an initially religious conflict is putting down pragmatic roots; almost no-one in England or the (dis) United Kingdom as a whole began as a republican except the Levellers, and they too took their inspiration from biblical roots, with some folk memory mixed in.
Even the men who cut the king's head off, almost all (except maybe Rainsborough) began as moderate reformers with a strong religious streak. Without they are drawn outwards by that religious impulse, there's no way to get them to a republican platform.
At the historic Putney Debates, Cromwell and the rest of the leadership of the New Model present basically shouted down the extremists in favour of a moderate, reforming course, which only by accident and repeated proof of bad faith on Charles' side broke into open regicide.
Expedient followed expedient after that, and Cromwell- who had trained as a lawyer in his youth, his father's death had meant he inherited without finishing his degree- could think of no other means of holding the law of England together except that which it was already shaped around, a head of state- a king, or at most a placeholder for one. He had no plan and no platform, save blundering through.
A republican successor is somewhat pointless; the entire point of doing away with the king and listening to the extremists would be that the system changes. There would be a new parliament called, on the expanded franchise as insisted on by the Levellers, and who that would elect- who knows?
Bet on Ned Ludlow, maybe. He was one of the few Levelling- minded men who remained on good terms with Cromwell, his second in command in Ireland (which was a popular cause in England at the time, now matter how immoral the facts on the ground call it out as being), and a politician and a survivor. He would be a good bet for the second Lord Protector of the Commonwealth, and the first Protector to actually be elected.
Butterflies, though. Look at the Anglo- Dutch Wars, intervention in the fronde. England was a military republic, and would have it's wars- so much of Charles II's reign happened the way it did because he was locked into a course started by the commonwealth, not the other way around; which he tried to mitigate and bring to a neat end, but could not quite achieve.
That would only continue and intensify. You're as likely to get a Second Hundred Years' War.