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Paul Lay: What Revolution? What Republic? Oliver Cromwell and his Times
March 1, 2025 @ 4:00 pm – 5:00 pm
England, 1651. Oliver Cromwell has defeated his royalist opponents in two civil wars, executed the Stuart king Charles I, laid waste to Ireland, and crushed the late king’s son and his Scottish allies. He is master of Britain and Ireland.
But Parliament, divided between moderates, republicans and Puritans of uncompromisingly millenarian hue, is faction-ridden and disputatious. By the end of 1653, Cromwell has become ‘Lord Protector’. Seeking dragons for an elect Protestant nation to slay, he launches an ambitious ‘Western Design’ against Spain’s empire in the New World.
Paul Lay is the author of Providence Lost: the Rise and Fall of the Cromwellian Protectorate which was shortlisted for the Cundhill History Prize. He is Senior Editor of www.engelsbergideas.com and a former Editor of History Today. He is a Research Fellow in History at the University of St Andrews, Senior Research Fellow in Early Modern History at the University of Buckingham and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.
£15 Friends or £20 non Friends.
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