Commonwealth of England

The Commonwealth of England was the republican interregnum that ruled the British Isles from 1649 to 1660 after Parliament beheaded Charles I. Declared by the Rump on 19 May 1649 after the Second Civil War, it vested power in Parliament and a Council of State and spent its first years reconquering: Cromwell's New Model Army ground through Ireland and beat the Scots in 1650 to 1652, bringing all three kingdoms under one republic by 1653. That year the army, after dissolving the Rump, handed Oliver Cromwell the Instrument of Government as Lord Protector, and the Commonwealth proper became the Protectorate. Richard Cromwell could not hold his father's sword, the Protectorate Parliament fell and the Rump came back in 1659, and in 1660 the doors opened to Charles II. Eleven years of Interregnum without a king ended with bells and bonfires, and England pretended, for a while, that it had never happened.