Republic

The waiting is over. The soldiers on each side have finally marched into position, carrying their long pikes which they now lower to create an impenetrable wall of spikes.

Many of the men are past their prime: stooped and with grey hair. They do not look strong, but they are well fed, even fat. For how long they will be able to fight remains to be seen.

Matchlock guns fire sporadically with a flash of fire but the men don’t even flinch. They’ve seen this all before, many times.

A figure in a plumed hat rides up and down the line encouraging his men. There are whispers that this is Charles I himself, or possibly Oliver Cromwell, it’s quite hard to tell.

Then - at last - the command is given:

“CHARGE!”

A cheer from the pikemen and they trundle off down the hill, to do battle against the enemy.

A few fall - this is war after all - and lie down comfortably on the green grass.

Charles I - or maybe Oliver Cromwell - wanders over to see how they are getting on.

It’s Newbury, and we are witnessing one of the most important battles of the civil war¹ from which the Roundheads will eventually, after much huffing and puffing, emerge victorious.

It is being re-enacted by the Sealed Knot Civil War historical reenactment society and I am watching proceedings as a teenager. It is from these childhood memories that my impression of the English Civil War is mainly formed: out of shape, middle-aged men pushing at each other ineffectually with long sticks.

Perhaps for this reason I haven’t bothered much with the batch of English Civil War period history books that have come out recently.

But I have just finished reading Republic: Britain’s Revolutionary Decade by Alice Hunt and my mental image of the period - quaint but a little boring - has been comprehensively knocked down and trampled in the mud.

It is a much much more interesting and exciting time than I had given it credit for.

What’s in the book?

Hunt starts the story in 1649 - when Charles I was executed by parliament - and ends eleven years later in 1660 - when his son Charles II was invited back to England by parliament to be king.

Each chapter covers a single year - often in some detail - with military and political shenanigans, but also religious, literary and scientific shenanigans too.

A selection of the topics covered is:

☘️ Oliver Cromwell’s invasion of Ireland
⚔️ Charles II’s invasion of England from Scotland and defeat at Worcester 1651
🪶 Cromwell’s appointment as Lord Protector (but not king)
🗺️ The writing of Paradise Lost by John Milton
🫨 The genesis of the Quakers
👋 Cromwell dismissing parliament (multiple times)
⚗️ Scientific experiments of Boyle and Hook
🕍 Jewish people officially accepted in England for the first time in 300 years
🎭 Romance writing and England’s first opera
⛵ The conquest of Jamaica (and fiasco at Hispaniola)
🚶 The writing of Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan
👑 Death of Cromwell and the return of Charles II

As you can see there is a lot going on!

The devil of Drogheda

One episode I was particularly curious to read about was the invasion of Ireland by Cromwell. This event has echoed down the centuries, and my mental image was of Cromwell’s army rampaging across the length and breadth of Ireland setting fire to everything they came across. This turns out to be not quite right.

The military campaign itself was fairly limited, with two towns captured after a siege: Drogheda and Wexford. The captures were deliberately brutal with Cromwell ordering that every man bearing arms in the towns to be killed when the two places were stormed - and there were accusations that many not bearing arms were also murdered.

But it was a far cry from the Mongol style rampage that I had expected.

Perhaps this is another example of the pen defeating the sword, because while Cromwell was (I would argue) measured in his physical brutality, his printed comments were much less restrained.

Here he is addressing the Irish in his writing:

You are a part of Antichrist, whose Kingdome the Scripture so expresly speakes should be layed in blood, yea in the blood of the Saints; you have shed great store of it already; And ere it be long, you must all of you have blood to drinke; even the dreggs of the cup of the fury and wrath of God, which will be powred out unto you.

Oliver Cromwell, a Declaration of the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland

You are not going to forget this sort of thing in a hurry.²

I suspect another reason why Cromwell looms large in the Irish consciousness is that the consequences of his invasion were so far reaching. Hunt tells us that in the years after the invasion Irish Catholics who once owned 60% of the land were left with just 20%.

Jamaica

One other episode that I found particularly interesting was the conquest of what is now Jamaica, which was at that time a Spanish colony.

After a short but aggressive naval war with the Dutch was over, the English found themselves with a huge number of ships to hand and plenty of spare soldiers too. They launched this armada at Hispaniola (now Haiti and the Dominican Republic) in 1655 expecting gold, glory and godly assistance.

However the attack was a fiasco. Landing in an isolated spot that lacked food, water, and shade, but was well supplied with mosquitos and pathogens, their attack on the capital city was a disaster. Many soldiers died.

The commanders decided that the smaller and much less well defended Jamaica would have to do instead, as a consolation prize. They duly invaded, starting the association between Britain and Jamaica that lasts to this day.³

Finding Paradise Lost

These two stories highlight the strong connections between Britain as a republic and the world we live in today. I was continually surprised to discover how much we can trace back to this period.

I can’t resist just one more example: Paradise Lost, by John Milton. Milton was propagandist and chief letter writer of the Cromwellian regime, and fully embedded in the project of making England and Britain a godly nation, free of tyrannical kings (and Catholicism).

In 1660, the year Charles II was invited back to be king, Milton started writing. Telling the story of the fall of Satan and the fall of man, Paradise Lost has captured the imaginations of readers for more than three hundred years since - and is rooted firmly in this decade:

... both Charles I and Oliver Cromwell often seem to lurk awkwardly behind some of the poem’s [Paradise Lost] descriptions of an overbearing, king-like God. The poem’s cries for liberty and warnings against the ‘easy yoke / Of servile pomp’, unreasoned obedience and unthinking subservience resonate so powerfully because they are also the cries of Milton about his own time.

Alice Hunt, Republic

I had never really been able to get to grips with Paradise Lost, to my disappointment, knowing how much others enjoy it. But since reading Republic I have found it more approachable, likeable even.⁴

Knowing more about the context in which Milton was writing - and his ardent republicanism - makes Satan, railing against a tyrannical God, a much more ambiguous figure and revealed a sense of humour in Milton that I hadn’t hitherto expected: if humour it be.

What happens next

For me, Republic’s fundamental success is bringing the past back as a lived-in, moment to moment ‘present’.

When Cromwell set off for Ireland no-one knew if he would prevail. When the Hispaniola expedition weighed anchor, who was to say that they wouldn’t sweep through the Caribbean?

And:

Only weeks before Charles II was invited to return to England, many still thought that a restoration was inconceivable.

Alice Hunt, Republic

Reading the Republic gives you this sense of uncertainty and jeopardy, fear and muddling through - what it might have felt like to live through this time.

As Hunt reminds us: it is only with the benefit of hindsight that this period becomes an interregnum.

Conclusion

An excellent book, which embeds you the reader deeply in the 1650s: a time of fallen kings, divisive and divided parliaments, and a ‘striving self scrutiny’ - people both ordinary and great trying to make sense of their purpose on earth and relationship with the divine.

It is a drama we have been acting out ever since.

According to the Newbury tourist board. ↩︎
It was not just Cromwell who was violently anti (catholic) Irish, Hunt observed that these views were shared across much of the English political class. In this context Cromwell himself was not conspicuous and occasionally tried to push for “more moderate treatment” in the period after the conquest. ↩︎
Hunt also tells us that Jamaica “was the first British colony to be seized by force from another European coloniser.” ↩︎
It probably also helps that I am listening to the audio version rather than trying to read it myself! ↩︎