After the end of the Civil War, Oliver Cromwell became Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Ireland and Scotland on 16 December 1653. He was in effect the country’s all-powerful monarch. Alistair Lexden discussed the short-lived Cromwell dynasty in a letter published in TLS: The Times Literary Supplement on April 28.
Sir,-- “Why”, asks Diane Purkiss in her review of David Horspool’s Oliver Cromwell: The Protector, “does Oliver Cromwell deserve to count as royalty?” (April 14). As Lord Protector he possessed more power than the Stuarts and lacked only the formal title. “He could not”, he said in 1657, “with a good conscience accept the title of king” which was readily offered to him. But His Highness accepted the monarch’s hereditary status; on his death in 1658 the de facto uncrowned kingship passed to his son Richard who resembled many in the legitimate royal line by being utterly unfitted for it. After the Stuart restoration in 1660, this inoffensive man settled in Cheshunt, Hertfordshire, under the name of Clark, dying peacefully in his bed in 1712 at the age of eighty-six.
Alistair Lexden
House of Lords, London SW1