The English Republic and Religion

From History Today (available now online at least):

The English republic was rooted in the religious and political idealism of its visionaries, administrators and apologists. As Bernard Capp demonstrated, in England’s Culture Wars (2012), the new regime set about a comprehensive programme of moral and social reform. The Cromwellian vision for a godly nation was energetically pursued, though it achieved more in some areas than in others. New laws made adultery a capital crime. Popular pastimes, including drinking and horse racing, were carefully controlled. The legislation promoted a ‘reformation of manners’ that was reflected in a new republican aesthetic. The visual culture, as in Robert Walker’s portraits of the leaders of the new regime, and public oratory on major state occasions, such as the sermon preached by John Owen at the funeral of Henry Ireton, promoted personal religion, moral sobriety and civic responsibility as the virtues that would enable and sustain the revolutionary regime. 

But fashions in the court were changing. The move, in 1653, from Commonwealth to Protectorate alienated the most ideological republicans, who felt that the transition to a single office of leader was betraying the aspirations of ‘generation 1649’. In 1657 some of those who had supported the Protectorate blanched at the offer of the crown that was made to Cromwell in its second constitution. At the same time, the regime’s growing number of critics began to notice that the programme for a reformation of morals seemed to focus more on the disruptive habits of the lower orders than on the recreations of the new elites. While local magistrates pressed hard against popular music and dancing, the Cromwellian court was slowly returning to these traditional festivities. In November 1657, the French ambassador noted a ‘different spirit’ in Whitehall, at the wedding of Cromwell’s youngest daughters, ‘dances having been held there again during these past days, and the preachers of the older times are withdrawing from it’.

The subtitle of Capp's book is Puritan Reformation and its Enemies in the Interregnum, 1649-1660.

Read the rest of "The End of the English Republic" by Crawford Gribben, Professor of History at Queen’s University Belfast and the author of John Owen and English Puritanism: Experiences of Defeat (Oxford University Press, 2016) while you can (before it moves behind the paywall!)