It began when Barebone's Parliament was dissolved, and the Instrument of Government appointed Oliver Cromwell as Lord Protector of the Commonwealth.

Within a month of the Rump's dismissal, Oliver Cromwell, on the advice of Thomas Harrison and with the support of other officers in the Army, sent a request to Congregational churches in every county to nominate those they considered fit to take part in the new government.

However, it proved just as difficult for the Grandees to control and was in addition a subject of popular ridicule and so on 8 December, MPs who supported Cromwell engineered its end by passing a dissolution motion at a time of day at which the house usually had few members in attendance.

The collapse of the radical consensus that had spawned the Nominated Assembly led to the Grandees passing the Instrument of Government in the Council of State, which paved the way for the Protectorate.

After the dissolution of Barebone's Parliament, John Lambert put forward a new constitution known as the Instrument of Government, closely modelled on the Heads of Proposals.

[1] The First Protectorate Parliament met on 3 September 1654, and after some initial gestures approving appointments previously made by Cromwell, began to work on a moderate programme of constitutional reform.

After a royalist uprising, led by Sir John Penruddock, Cromwell, influenced by Lambert, divided England into military districts ruled by Army Major-Generals, who answered only to him.

The generals supervised militia forces and security commissions, collected taxes and ensured support for the government in the English provinces and in Wales.

The major-generals' position was further harmed by a tax proposal by Major General John Desborough to provide financial backing for their work, which the Second Protectorate Parliament, instated in September 1656, voted down for fear of a permanent military state.

[6][7] Negotiations between commissioners of the English Parliament and the deputies of Scotland's shires and burghs began to formalise the incorporation of Scottish legal and political structures into the new British state.

[11] In 1655 Lord Broghill was appointed as President of a new Council for Scotland which was part of an attempt to recast the government along civilian lines and to begin to win over the major landholders to the regime.

[16] Initially, the country was ruled on behalf of the Protectorate by Cromwell's son-in-law, Charles Fleetwood, a military governor with the title Lord Deputy of Ireland, and a group of hard line radical parliamentary commissioners.

[18][19] The Lord Protector became aware of the contribution the Jewish community made to the economic success of the Netherlands, now England's leading commercial rival.

Cromwell's toleration of private worship of non-Puritans led to his encouragement of Jews to return to England, 350 years after their banishment by Edward I, in the hope that they would help speed up the recovery of the country after the disruption of the Civil Wars.

He summoned a Parliament in 1659, but the republicans engaged in "endless obstruction and filibustering", attacked the "quasi-monarchal" aspects of the Protectorate and "condemned Oliver's rule as a period of tyranny and economic depression".

[28] After Richard Cromwell was removed from power by the Grandees of the New Army, the Rump Parliament was instated and soon after was replaced by the Committee of Safety and Council of State under the authority of Charles Fleetwood.

On 4 April 1660, Charles II proclaimed the Declaration of Breda, which granted a pardon for all crimes committed during the Civil War and the Interregnum to those who recognized him as the lawful king.

[30] According to Derek Hirst, outside of politics and religion, the 1640s and the 1650s saw a revived economy characterized by growth in manufacturing, the elaboration of financial and credit instruments and the commercialization of communication.

In high culture, important innovations included the development of a mass market for music, increased scientific research and an expansion of publishing.