Author Description

This third volume on Oliver Cromwell covers the years 1653 to 1655, and traces Cromwell's emergence as the ruler of his country, and as an international statesman. In December 1653, after the collapse of Barebone's parliament, a short-lived experiment in radical Puritan rule, Cromwell becameLord Protector under a new constitution designed by the army, the Instrument of the Government. The volume traces the failure of Cromwell's attempt to win assent for that constitution from the parliament of 1654, and describes the royalist plotting which led to the rising under Colonel Pe nruddockin March 1655. The insurrection prompted Cromwell to entrust the government of the regions to his Major-Generals, in whose rule the military character of the Protectorate was at its most obvious. Abroad, a series of hard-won treaties, with France and with Protestant powers, paved the way for thewar with Spain which began in the autumn of 1655. The volume ends at a point when Cromwell perhaps enjoyed greatest power, but the least support.