Full Transcript for Oliver Cromwell Hits CTRL+Z

committee he would not build Jericho again. The title of protector, he says, will do the job as well as king. Then comes the morning of May 8th at the banqueting house, and the answer the committee has waited two days for. Within three weeks, the Commons strike the word King out and write Lord Protector in its place. When Widrington brings the paper back and says the House wants consent with only the name changed, Cromwell agrees on the spot. The document he accepts, though, still lets him name his own successor. It requires a parliament at least every three years and bans any tax for which the commons have not voted. Its religion clause lets Protestants worship in their own way, but the freedom stops at Catholics and at anyone who wants the old Church of England run by bishops. Cromwell is installed on june twenty sixth in Westminster Hall in the coronation chair, which the church next door lent for the day. An eyewitness named Edmund Prestwick writes down the table of pink Genoa velvet, the Bible, sword, and gold scepter laid on it, and the purple robe he wore lined with ermine. After Woodrington gives him the oath on the Bible, the heralds proclaim Cromwell Lord Protector of England, Scotland, and Ireland. The hall shouts Long live his Highness three times. That same morning, the Commons pass an act of union, giving Scotland thirty seats at Westminster. Lambert had refused the new oath two days before the ceremony, so in the middle of July, Cromwell orders him to resign his commissions. Lambert agrees, and then rides home to Wimbledon to attend to his wife, his ten children, and his garden. People have started calling the protector's oldest son Prince Richard, a country gentleman of thirty one who hunts and often runs up debts. The younger son, Henry, governs Ireland from Dublin as Lord Deputy. Across the water, Charles Stewart is living at Bruges on a Spanish allowance with his brother James and an army of exiles. In June of sixteen fifty eight, Cromwell's troops assist the French in defeating Spain in the sand hills outside Dunkirk, with James leading the exiles on the losing side. As a result, the keys of the town go to Cromwell's ambassador in Paris, Sir William Lockhart. In August of sixteen fifty eight, the Cromwell's favorite daughter, Elizabeth Claypole, dies of cancer at only twenty eight years old. Cromwell himself is already sick with the malaria he's carried since his thirties. He has Elizabeth buried in Henry VII's chapel at Westminster Abbey just after midnight. And then, on Friday, September third, the anniversary of his victories at Dunbar and Worcester, he dies at Whitehall. Secretary of State Thurlow writes to Henry in Dublin that all he can do is bow his head and accept it as God's will. To add to the mystique around Cromwell, a violent storm struck England that night. Richard Cromwell is proclaimed Lord Protector the next day. Oliver's body goes privately into a vault at the east end of Henry VIII's chapel two weeks before

the public funeral. What London sees at Somerset House that autumn is a wooden effigy with a wax face in royal robes with a scepter, a globe, and notably a crown. The procession takes seven hours to cover little more than a mile behind a coffin that is more than likely empty. The diarist John Eveland watches it pass and writes it was the joyfulest funeral he ever saw, because the only ones crying were the dogs. Richard's first parliament meets in January of sixteen fifty nine, with the state about two million pounds in debt and the soldiers owed back pay. Fleetwood's officers meet at Wallingford House, his London home. and decide the Parliament has to go. In April, Desborough walks into Whitehall and tells Richard to dissolve it, which he does the next day. The rump, or what is left of the Parliament that tried the King, comes back within three weeks and votes the Protectorate out of existence. Richard's letter of resignation says he cares more about the peace of the country than about his own interests. Lambert shuts the rump out of Westminster that October, But the commander in Scotland, George Monk, refuses to go along. Monk crosses the River Tweed at Coldstream on New Year's Day with 5,000 soldiers and 2,000 cavalry. Lambert's unpaid troops understandably refuse to fight him. By spring, a new parliament has voted to bring Charles Stewart home. Fearing for his life under the restoration of a monarchy, Lambert breaks out of the Tower of London in April, but his horse bogs down in a field near Daventry. Coincidentally, The officer who catches him there is Colonel Ingoldsby, the cousin who told Cromwell to take the crown. George Monk is the first man to greet Charles on the beach at Dover, and four days later the new king rides into London on his thirtieth birthday. The new parliament votes in December to dig up Cromwell, his son in law Henry Irton, and John Bradshaw, the judge who presided at the king's trial. A Mason gets fifteen shillings for lifting the three coffins out of the abbey floor. On january thirtieth, sixteen sixty one, twelve years to the day after the king's head came off outside the banqueting house, the three bodies are hanged at Tyburn until four in the afternoon. Then they're beheaded and dumped in a pit under the gallows. The heads then went up on twenty foot oak poles on the roof of Westminster Hall, with Bradshaw in the middle, Cromwell on the right, and Ireton on the left. Samuel Peeps walks past them a week later and and writes them into his diary. And here is where we press Ctrl Z. From here, unless otherwise noted, everything I describe is the alternate timeline. It's the morning of Friday, May 8th, 1657, at the banqueting house, and Cromwell decides to accept the title of king. He walks the length of the hall to the committee that's waited two days for his answer. He accepts the humble petition and advice as the House wrote it, he tells them, the title included. Then he turns to Secretary of State Thurlow with two instructions. The first is to carry his answer to the Commons before the officer's petition comes up for debate, so the House gets the acceptance before it hears the objection. The regiments around London are the ones close enough to march on Whitehall. So the second instruction is to see that they are the first paid from the one million pounds per year the Constitution set aside for the Army and Navy. Thurlow writes to Cromwell's son Henry in Dublin that afternoon that his father has taken the title. Desborough, a general who is also Cromwell's brother in law, Told him that week that he would quit the army if the title were king. So he comes to Whitehall the next morning and hands in his commission. Fleetwood made the same threat, but he's married to Cromwell's daughter, Bridget, so he keeps his command. The officer's petition against the crown carries thirty-three signatures. By the time Thurlow calls those officers in, one by one through the summer, their regiments have already been paid. So when each man is offered a choice between an oath to King Oliver and his discharge, The vast majority of them swear an oath. The Commons set the date for June 26th and send to the Abbey for the coronation chair. A council orders a crown from a goldsmith in the city of London. In February, about a hundred officers stood in Whitehall and told Cromwell to refuse the title. The chief engraver at the mint, Thomas Simon, cuts the stamps three months later for a new coin with Oliver's head on one side, the mark of a monarch. The Latin around the rim says Oliver, by the grace of God, King of England, Scotland, and Ireland. On the day of the coronation, the chair stands under a canopy at the south end of Westminster Hall. In front of it is a table covered in pink Genoa velvet with a Bible, a sword, and a gold scepter laid out on it. Cromwell comes in from the council room with three generals carrying the long back of his robe. The Earl of Warwick walks ahead of him carrying the sword of state. While the Lord Mayor carries the one for the city of London. The Speaker Widrington gives Cromwell the oath on the Bible. Then he lifts the crown off a velvet table and sets it on Cromwell's head. The heralds call for silence and then proclaim him Oliver, King of England, Scotland, and Ireland. The hall shouts Long live the King three times. On Oliver's left stands the Dutch ambassador, and on his right the French one, with Prince Richard, Fleetwood, and another son in law, John Claypole, behind him. Lambert drafted the constitution that this one replaces, but he loudly refuses to swear an oath to a king. So in July, Cromwell orders him to resign and he goes home to Wimbledon. Of the three generals who oppose the crown, Fleetwood is now the only one left in the army. For the past three years, Thurlow has run the post office. His clerks open any letters that leave England for the Spanish Netherlands. France, the provinces Spain rules in what is today Belgium. Given Charles

Stewart's residency there, the vast majority of royalists' letters head to this region. So in July, they start reading what the Royalists are writing to Bruges about the coronation. The only two newspapers allowed to print in England are the governments, Mercurius Politicus and the Public Intelligencer. Both carry the proclamation to every market town in the kingdom. Charles Stewart has called himself King of England since his father's execution eight years prior. At Bruges, he and his advisor Edward Hyde read in the public intelligencer that a second man has been crowned under that title in Westminster Hall. Under the new constitution, the king names his own successor. Oliver named his elder son the week after the coronation. So the same month, now Prince Richard rides to Oxford to be installed as Chancellor of the University, his first public duty as heir. John Wilkins, the head of Wadham College and Richard's uncle by marriage, walks him around the university. Wilkins married Cromwell's sister Robina the year before. Richard ends his tour to club Wilkins runs at the college. Its members are scientists, doctors, and mathematicians who meet to show each other experiments and then give talks on what they've found. Two of them are a young astronomer named Christopher Wren and a chemist named Robert Boyle. That November, King Oliver marries two of his daughters into the old nobility. Francis marries Robert Rich at Whitehall. The groom's grandfather is the Earl of Warwick, that was the man who carried the sword at the coronation. And his daughter Mary marries Viscount Falkenburg at Hampton Court, eight days after her sister. The old noble families will sit in an upper house summoned by a king. So, when Oliver calls the new house together in December, Warwick and Falkenburg both take seats in it. Early in sixteen fifty eight in Yorkshire, A royalist named Sir Henry Slingsby tries to bribe the officers of the Hall Garrison into switching to Charles, but they just report him to Thurlow. Remember, there's a big difference between conspiring against a king and conspiring against a Lord Protector. Whitelock told Cromwell the law of 1352 had no definition of a protector, but it covers a king. So, Thurlow charges Slingsby with treason under that law. and a jury at Westminster Hall finds him guilty. Slingsby's nephew Falkenberg, who also happens to be Cromwell's son in law we just spoke about, asks the king for the old man's life, but Oliver refuses. Slingsby is beheaded on Tower Hill on June eighth. Four days before that, seven English regiments under Sir William Lockhart, Cromwell's ambassador in Paris, hold the left of the French line in the sand hills outside Dunkirk. James, Charles Stewart's brother, leads two cavalry charges at them, but two of his three battalions of exiles turn and run. Spain loses roughly five thousand soldiers, either captured or killed, and the exiled royals are dealt yet another defeat. Within two weeks, the French king hands Lockhart the keys of Dunkirk at the town gate. The Constitution Oliver swore to gives Catholics in England no freedom of worship. Dunkirk is a Catholic town though, so Lockhart As its new English governor, lets the people keep going to their own churches. This is the one town under Oliver's rule where they can worship openly. That August, same as in the real timeline, Oliver's favorite daughter, Elizabeth Claypole, dies of cancer, and by the end of the month, the king himself is gravely ill. The malaria he contracted in his 30s comes back on top of a kidney infection. He dies at Whitehall on Friday, September 3rd. Thurlow solemnly writes to Henry in Dublin. That all he can do is bow his head and accept it as God's will. And right on cue, a violent storm crosses England that night. The Constitution Oliver swore to lets the king choose his successor, and he had named Richard the year before, so there's no vote that needs to be held here. By the next morning, Thurlow has the proclamation drafted. The heralds read it at Whitehall Gate and in the city of London, proclaiming the new king as Richard IV. Oliver's body is embalmed for a state funeral, but the work fails and the corpse begins to rot. So Richard has his father buried quietly in the vault at the east end of Henry VII's chapel on the night of November 10th, two weeks before the funeral. The crowds at Somerset House file past a wooden effigy with a wax face in place of the body. It wears the purple robe from Westminster Hall and the crown Widrington set on his head only 16 months before. Two weeks later, The procession to the abbey takes seven hours to cover a mile behind a coffin with no body in it. Fleetwood, the one general of the three left in the army, walks as the chief mourner. At Whitehall, the king is Richard IV. Charles Stewart moved his court from Bruges to Brussels in February, and now at twenty eight years old, he lives there on the allowance the King of Spain grants him. Richard's government owes about two million pounds, and the soldiers have back pay coming. So when Richard IV rides to Westminster on January 27, 1659, to open the first parliament of his reign, the speech Thurlow has written for him asks for money. Thurlow leads the king's supporters in the commons, so within the month, the House grants Richard enough to pay the army. The army's officers want the parliament gone before it turns its attention to them. So all through the first weeks of April, they meet at Wallingford House, Fleetwood's London home, and draw up a demand that the king dissolve it. Richard answers on April 21st with an order under his own seal that strips Fleetwood of his command. His cousin Ingoldsby, the colonel who told Cromwell to take the crown two years earlier, carries it to Wallingford House and reads it to the officers' faces. Richard himself rides to St. James's, where the regiments stand in ranks. with the pay chests on carts behind him. The colonels know what the Treason Law of thirteen

fifty two says about a man who raises an army against the king. So with the chests in front of them, they march their regiments back to quarters. Fleetwood, with no command left, goes home to Stoke Newington, a village north of the city of London, and stays there for the rest of his life. Oliver founded a college in the old cathedral buildings at Durham two years before, with a provost, twelve fellows, and twenty four scholars. Oxford and Cambridge, the only two universities England has had since twelve nine, petitioned to keep it from granting degrees. But the morning after the army backs down, Richard signs the grant that has sat on the council table since winter, making Durham a university over their objection. In November, Charles Stewart rides to Fuente Ravia, a town on the border between France and Spain. The chief ministers of the two countries, Cardinal Mazarin and Don Luis de Haro, are there signing a peace treaty on an island in the river. Charles asks both men for an army to put him back on the English throne. France is allied to England, so Mazarin says no and sends him back to Brussels by way of his mother's house outside of Paris. Arrows king just made peace after twenty four years of war, so he keeps Charles' allowance going. But he can't offer any soldiers. A year later, on november twenty eighth, sixteen sixty, Christopher Wren, the astronomer from the Oxford Club, gives a lecture at Gresham College in the city of London. Afterward, twelve of his listeners stay behind to found a society in London to carry on the club's experiments. Richard's uncle by marriage, John Wilkins, is one of the twelve, and so is the chemist Robert Boyle. Richard visited that club at Wadham College five years before. So when Wilkins brings him a charter for the London Society in July of 1662, the king signs it immediately. The group calls itself the Royal Society, and its motto is Nulius Inverba, Latin for take no man's word for it. Holding Dunkirk costs money every year, but the commons keep voting it. So the same summer, Richard sends more soldiers to the town where Lockhart is now governor. The London banker who keeps its accounts, a man named Edward Backwell, ships the garrison's pay across the Channel. Dutch ships have been carrying cargo in and out of England's colonies against the law of 1651 called the Navigation Act. That law reserves the colonies' trade to ships owned and crewed by Englishmen. So in the spring of 1664, Richard orders his admiral, Edward Montague, to seize the Dutch colony on the Hudson River. Montague brings the fleet into the harbor of New Amsterdam, currently known as New York, in August. The Dutch governor hands the town over rather than see it bombarded. The terms Montague signs let the inhabitants stay in their houses and keep the Dutch name of the town. The Dutch answer that seizure, though, with two years of war at sea against England. At Breda, in the summer of 1667, they sign a treaty that leaves the town in English hands and keeps Suriname on the coast of South America. For themselves. Louis XIV of France is pushing his armies into the Spanish Netherlands. Richard was at war with the Dutch over New Amsterdam four years before, but against Catholic France, he wants Protestant allies. So in 1668, his envoys sign an alliance with the Dutch Republic and Sweden to stop Louis. Louis marches on the Republic itself in 1672, so Richard sends Montague's ships to sail beside the Dutch fleet and keeps the Dunkirk. Garrison in place. On July 4th, with French troops inside the country, the Dutch leaders named William of Orange, a prince of only 21 years of age, their stadholder. The office makes him the head of the Dutch government and commander of its army, the same post his family held a generation ago. Richard signs a treaty with him that winter to keep that alliance going. Richard's brother Henry dies at 46 years old in March of 1674 at Wiccan, a village in Cambridgeshire, after 16 years as the king's governor in Ireland. He governed under the Act of 1652, which took most of the land from its Catholic owners and gave it to Protestant soldiers and settlers. Richard keeps that settlement in force, so Catholics hold eight or nine acres out of every 100 in the country. Charles Stewart dies at Brussels on February 6. 1685, at 54, unmarried. The Constitution Oliver swore to bars Catholic worship in England, and Charles's brother James has followed that religion for 16 years. Even so, James has proclaimed himself king in a chapel at Brussels, so Richard, now fifty-eight, orders his warships into the channel to watch the ports of the Spanish Netherlands. Richard's son, Prince Oliver, Dies childless in 1705 at 49, so the king names his daughter Elizabeth heir in her brother's place. She was born the year after Parliament beheaded the king. Richard outlives his son by seven years. He dies at 85 on July 12, 1712, after 53 years and ten months on the throne. His body goes into his father's vault. The heralds proclaim his daughter, Queen Elizabeth II. At Whitehall Gate the next morning. The vault at the east end of Henry VIII's chapel now holds two kings. England keeps Dunkirk and New Amsterdam, and for the first time in more than a hundred years a queen is on the throne. Elizabeth II is sixty-two years old when she's crowned in Westminster Hall in 1712, in the same coronation chair her grandfather sat in fifty-five years prior. The Bible, the sword, and the gold scepter from Oliver's coronation are all on the table. The Speaker of the House of Commons sets the crown on her head the way Whidrington did for Oliver. The heralds proclaim her Queen of England, Scotland, and Ireland. Queen Elizabeth reigns for 19 years and outlives her brother and both of her sisters. When she dies in 1731 at 81 years old, her body goes into the vault at the east end of Henry VII's chapel, right beside her father and her grandfather. Now Elizabeth names no successor, so Parliament passes an act giving

the crown to the nearest heir. That happens to be a 32 year old man named Thomas. Who is the grandson of Richard's younger brother Henry, who had ruled Ireland? Thomas will reign for 17 years. Thomas's wife, Mary, gives birth to a son in 1742 and names him Oliver. And when Thomas dies in 1748 at 49 years old, his six-year-old son takes the throne as Oliver II. Now a child cannot govern, so Parliament makes his mother regent, meaning she rules in his name until he's old enough to do it himself. Mary's only 39 when she takes this job, and she lives to 104 and dies in 1813, in the 65th year of her son's reign. Oliver II reigns for 73 years, longer than any king of England before him. In 1776, the 13 colonies along the American coast declare their independence from Him. The colony around New Amsterdam, the town Montague took from the Dutch in 1664, is among those that declare its independence. The war that follows ends with his ministers recognizing the United States. When Oliver II dies in 1821 at 79, his body goes again into the family's vault at the east end of Henry the Seventh's chapel. His only surviving child is a daughter named Elizabeth, who was born in 1777. And in 1801 married a man named Thomas Russell. Parliament passed an act that year giving Russell and their children her surname rather than his, so the royal house gets to keep the name Cromwell instead of reverting to Russell. At forty-four, she's crowned Elizabeth III. Her son takes the throne as Oliver III when she dies in 1849 after a reign of twenty-eight years. The House of Cromwell at this point. has held the throne for three hundred and sixty nine years. Today, the King is Oliver V. The kingdom's written constitution is the humble petition and advice, the same paper the Commons carried to the banqueting house for the first King Oliver. Under it, Parliament is met at least once every three years from sixteen fifty seven until today. England has had no bishops since Parliament abolished them in sixteen forty six, So every seat in the upper house at Westminster belongs to a member the king names and the commons approve. Scotland's members have sat in the same parliament since the Act of Union passed on the morning of the first coronation. Visitors to the banqueting house on Whitehall stand under the ceiling the Flemish painter Peter Paul Rubens made for it in the sixteen thirties. In that room, Oliver Cromwell told a committee of parliament he would take the crown. Durham has given degrees to since the spring Richard IV made it a university. And the Royal Society continues to work under the charter he signed in July of 1662. Dunkirk, on the coast of France, has belonged to England since the day Lockhart took the keys at the town gate. The city, at the mouth of the Hudson River in the United States, is still called New Amsterdam. Elizabeth Claypole is buried in Henry the Seventh Chapel at Westminster Abbey, where her father put her in August of 1658. Oliver, Richard, Elizabeth, and

all of the other monarchs who followed them lie in the vault at the east end of the same chapel. In the real timeline, Cromwell told his officers in March of 1657 that the title of king was simply a feather in a hat. In the alternate timeline, that title is the reason his son stays on the throne for 53 years. The story everyone likes to tell is that Cromwell turned down the crown. But the only part he refused was the actual word king. The document he accepted on May 25th. Gave him the right to name his successor 1.3 million pounds a year and a second House of Parliament filled with his own nominees. A noblewoman of the time, Lady Conway, wrote that Parliament had built a monarchy that would pass from father to son and only changed the ruler's title to protector. The wax effigy that lay in state at Somerset House six weeks after his death wore a crown. Everyone in the story assumed the army would decide the question. Cromwell himself told Fleetwood on the morning of May 8th that he wouldn't take the crown without the officers' consent. In the alternate timeline, the officers get a king without being asked. When they meet at Wallingford House two years later, the soldiers have been paid since the coronation. Under the law of 1352, raising an army against a king is treason, so they take their regiments back to quarters. In the real timeline, Richard lost the office in less than nine months because the same officers made him dissolve Parliament. Charles Stewart came home because the army that had kept him out spent the winter of 1659 split between Lambert and Mock. He sold Dunkirk to France for five million livres two years later. Richard's letter of resignation in May of 1659 said he cared more about the peace of the country than about his own interests. In the alternate timeline, The same man signs the order that strips Fleetwood of his command and rides to St. James's with the paychests behind him. The real Richard died on July 12, 1712, at 85, under the name John Clark in a lodging at Chesant in Hertfordshire. In the alternate timeline, King Richard IV dies on the same day, at the same age, but after 53 years and 10 months ruling England. In 1689, England got a king chosen by its parliament, a Dutch stadtholder named William of Orange, whose family Cromwell had barred from office in Holland 35 years prior. The last man in the family to carry the Cromwell name, an Oliver born in 1742, built a mansion at Chesant Park and died in 1821, leaving one daughter. The house was torn down in 1970, and the land is now a public park and a golf course. In the alternate timeline, that man is King Oliver II, and the daughter is Queen Elizabeth III. Cromwell's head stayed on its pole above Westminster Hall for more than 20 years. Sydney Sussex College in Cambridge buried it in 1960 and has kept the spot secret. In the alternate timeline, Oliver has lain undisturbed in the vault at the east end of Henry VII's chapel for 367 years. In ours, the stone set in the Abbey floor in nineteen forty nine reads The burial place of Oliver Cromwell sixteen fifty eight to sixteen sixty one. Decisions don't get do-overs, but on this show they do. If you like the show, please rate and subscribe wherever you happen to be listening. And if you like it, tell a friend or two. Until next time, I'm Kevin Perez Allen. Thanks for hitting Control-Z with me. Control-Z Rewritten is hosted, written, researched, edited, and produced by me, Kevin Perez Allen. If you have a coin flip decision from history you want to see reversed on a future episode, find the show on Patreon. That's ZTRLZ Rewritten, all one word, and leave it.