Commons 1640-1660

Of the three parliaments of the Cromwellian Protectorate, the second is arguably the most dramatic. This parliament was dominated by two immediate crises: the need to provide money for the state to maintain a large army and navy to fight an expensive war against Spain; and also the need to legitimise a government founded on a military constitution (the Instrument of Government of 1653) that had never been approved by parliament.

On the expulsion of the Rump Parliament on 20 April 1653 by Oliver Cromwell, lord general of the army, supreme power in the nation rested with Cromwell himself. An assembly was called which first met in July, and which adopted the title of parliament, even though none of its members was elected. It began life as a radical assembly, which pursued reforming legislation of which Cromwell at that point in his career approved.

The Short Parliament was so called because it sat for less than a month. It was Charles I’s fourth Parliament, and was summoned by him late in 1639 after a period of some eleven years in which he had governed without recourse to the two Houses – a period referred to as the Personal Rule. After his experiences with his last Parliament the king had been reluctant to call another, and remained so in 1639. However, since 1637 he had been locked in violent dispute with his subjects in Scotland after trying to foist on them a new, and in their eyes ‘popish’, prayer book.