25. Protectorate

In the 1650s, power concentrated in England into fewer and fewer hands, until in the end a Lord Protector was appointed and - surprise, surprise, since he dominated the Army Council which appointed him - Oliver Cromwell got the job.

As it happens, a (somewhat cowed) parliament worked alongside him, so in a sense England had reached the point which parliament had sought before the Civil Wars: shared authority between a single ruler and itself. But most of the people running the system remained the same as before, or at least of the same class and mentality, and there had been no real revolutionary change. So it isn't hard to see that the republic would slide back into monarchy once Cromwell had died.

This episode also looks at a couple of lasting legacies, however: Jews allowed back into England, and the triumphant bursting of coffee onto the scene. Long before tea...

Illustration: Interior of a London Coffee-house, 17th century
Anonymous: Unknown author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Music: Bach Partita #2c by J Bu licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives (aka Music Sharing) 3.0 International License