24. Republic

Who could imagine that England could ever be a republic? And yet for eleven years it became one.

Still, it would be a serious mistake to confuse 'republic' with 'democracy'. It swiftly became clear, as Oliver Cromwell rose to the summit of power - a power he never sought for personal satisfaction but saw as a necessary chore to take the country in a godly direction - that it was going to become something far closer to a despotic regime. A limited one, without the persecution of opponents you might expect, but not by any means a state based on the consent of the governed. That, the hope of some including, most notably, the Levellers, was not going to happen.

Illustration: Cromwell turns out the Rump Parliament because of its corruption, 1653
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Music: Bach Partita #2c by J Bu licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives (aka Music Sharing) 3.0 International License