Richard Cromwell was born in Huntingdon, in 1626. He was the third son of Oliver Cromwell, and the second Lord Protector of England, Scotland and Ireland, for little over eight months, from September 3, 1658 until May 25, 1659. Richard Cromwell’s enemies derisively referred to him as Queen Dick, for his seeming inability to act in a decisive manner.

Upon his father’s death, Richard Cromwell succeeded him as Lord Protector. at first his accession was acclaimed with general favor both at home and abroad. Dissensions, however, soon broke out between the military faction and the civilians. A group of army officers petitioned for the appointment of a soldier as commander-in-chief rather than the new Protector, who unlike Oliver had not won their trust and loyalty in battle.

The 13-man Council of State, which Richard Cromwell had inherited from his father, was divided between a military group headed by Charles Fleetwood and a civilian group headed by John Thurloe. The army officers were suspicious of Thurloe’s influence over Richard and there were clashes over the possible appointment of new councillors, though in fact Richard made no new appointments to the Council during his Protectorship. Also, Army discontent had increased because pay had fallen into arrears as the Protectorate’s financial crisis deepened. Richard met senior army officers and attempted to win them over. Although he insisted upon retaining supreme command and the power to issue commissions, he appointed Fleetwood lieutenant-general and pledged that he would do all he could to clear arrears of pay.

Richard’s tactful and firm approach quietened the army for a time and won him the support of several senior officers, including Major-Generals Whalley, Goffe and Howard. In order to raise much-needed finances, Richard was obliged to call a new parliament. The Third Protectorate Parliament assembled in January 1659. Richard gave an impressive opening speech and, after several weeks’ debate, MPs endorsed the authority of the Protectorate. By early April 1659, it appeared that Richard Cromwell was firmly established as Oliver’s successor. However, the Protectorate régime was vehemently opposed by republican "Commonwealthsmen" who worked to spread disaffection against Richard amongst the soldiers.

When rumors spread that an army plot was to seize Richard Cromwell at Whitehall, Major-General Howard offered to arrest the leading conspirators. But, once again, Richard succeeded in calming the situation at a face-to-face meeting with senior officers. However, Parliament began debating the re-organisation of the army and the formation of a new militia. Under this provocation, Fleetwood and Disbrowe demanded Parliament’s dissolution. When Richard refused to comply, the Grandees called the soldiers stationed around London to a rendezvous at St James’s. Richard called upon the army to rally to him at Whitehall, but the soldiers unanimously followed their officers.

Thus, the Third Protectorate Parliament was dissolved on April 22, 1659, leaving the Council of Officers in control of the government as Richard was held under house arrest at Whitehall Palace. But Fleetwood and Disbrowe were unable to resist the demands of junior officers and republicans for the recall of the Rump Parliament, which Oliver Cromwell had dismissed in 1653. Then Parliament reassembled on May 7, 1659 and voted to abolish the Protectorate. With no clear lead from Richard, the English armies stationed in Scotland, Ireland and Dunkirk and the fleet all accepted the change of regime. Richard’s resignation of the Protectorship was read in Parliament on May 25, 1659.

Richard Cromwell retired into private life and, in the summer of 1660, he left his wife and family in England and went into exile on the Continent. Regarded as a dangerous person by the Restoration government, he remained abroad until 1680. On his return to England, he lived quietly at Cheshunt in Hertfordshire, under the assumed name of John Clarke until his death in July 1712.

Oliver Cromwell was born on April 25, 1599, in Huntingdon, England, to Elizabeth and Robert Cromwell. The social status of Cromwell’s family at his birth was relatively low within the gentry class as his father was one of 10 siblings who survived into adulthood. His father’s inheritance was limited to a house in Huntingdon and a small amount of land. As a young boy Oliver Cromwell attended Huntingdon Grammar School, and later he went on to study at Cambridge University. But Immediately after his father’s death, he left in 1617 without taking a degree.

Charles I was born in Fife on November 19, 1600. He was the second son of James I of England and Anne of Denmark. Charles I became heir to the throne on the death of his brother, Prince Henry, in 1612, and he succeeded as the second Stewart King of England, in 1625 upon the death of his father James I. Controversy and disputes beset Charles throughout his reign. They eventually led to civil wars, first with the Scots in 1637, and later in England from 1642 to 1648. The wars deeply divided people at the time.

The new Prince of Wales was greatly influenced by his father’s favourite, George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham. The two of them travelled incognito to Spain in 1623 to reach agreement on the long-pending Spanish Match between Charles and Infanta Maria Anna of Spain, the daughter of King Philip III of Spain. The trip ended badly, however, as the Spanish demanded that Charles convert to Roman Catholicism and remain in Spain for a year after the wedding as a sort of hostage to ensure England’s compliance with all the terms of the treaty. Charles was outraged, and upon their return in October, he and Buckingham demanded that James I declare war on Spain.

Charles I was reserved (he had a residual stammer), self-righteous and had a high concept of royal authority, believing in the divine right of kings. He was a good linguist and a sensitive man of refined tastes. He spent a lot on the arts, inviting the artists Van Dyck and Rubens to work in England, and buying a great collection of paintings by Raphael and Titian. Charles I also instituted the post of Master of the King’s Music, involving supervision of the King’s large band of musicians; the post survives today.His expenditure on his court and his picture collection greatly increased the crown’s debts. Indeed, crippling lack of money was a key problem for both the early Stuart monarchs.

In May 1625 Charles married Henrietta Maria, the French King Louis XIII’s sister, nine years his junior. Many members of Parliament were opposed to his marriage to Henrietta Maria, a Roman Catholic, fearing that Charles would lift restrictions on Roman Catholics and undermine the official establishment of Protestantism. Although he stated to Parliament that he would not relax restrictions relating to recusants, he promised to do exactly that in a secret marriage treaty with Louis XIII. The couple were married in person on 13 June 1625, in Canterbury. Charles was crowned Charles I in February 1626 at Westminster Abbey. Charles and Henrietta had seven children, with three sons and three daughters surviving infancy.

With his support of a controversial ecclesiastic, Richard Montagu, distrust of Charles’s religious policies increased. In a pamphlet, Montagu had argued against the teachings of John Calvin, thereby bringing himself into disrepute amongst the Puritans. After a Puritan member of the House of Commons, John Pym, attacked Montagu’s pamphlet during debate, Montagu requested the king’s aid in another pamphlet. Charles made the cleric one of his royal chaplains, increasing many Puritans’ suspicions as to where Charles would lead the Church.

Charles I‘s primary concern during his reign was foreign policy. The Thirty Years’ War, originally confined to Bohemia, was spiralling out of control into a wider war between Protestants and Catholics in Europe. In 1620, Frederick V, Elector Palatine, the husband of Charles’s sister Elizabeth, had lost his hereditary lands in the Palatinate to the Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand II. Having agreed to help his brother-in-law regain the Palatinate, Charles declared war on Spain, hoping to force the Catholic Spanish King Philip IV to intercede with the Emperor on Frederick’s behalf.

Preferring an inexpensive naval attack on Spanish colonies in the New World, Parliament hoped that the capture of the Spanish treasure fleets could finance the war. Charles I, however, wanted more aggressive, and more expensive, action on the Continent. Parliament only voted to grant a subsidy of £140,000; an insufficient sum for Charles. Moreover, the House of Commons limited its authorization for royal collection of tonnage and poundage (two varieties of customs duties) to a period of one year, although previous sovereigns since 1414 had been granted the right for life. In this manner, Parliament could keep a check on expenditures by forcing Charles to seek the renewal of the grant each year. Charles’s allies in the House of Lords, led by the Duke of Buckingham, refused to pass the bill. Although no Parliamentary authority for the levy of tonnage and poundage was obtained, Charles continued to collect the duties by force.

Due to Buckingham’s incompetent leadership, the war against Spain went badly. Despite Parliament’s protests, Charles refused to dismiss him, dismissing Parliament instead, provoking further unrest by trying to raise money for the war through a tax levied without Parliamentary consent. Although partially successful in collecting the tax, Charles let the money dribble away in yet another military fiasco led by Buckingham.

Summoned again in 1628, Parliament adopted a Petition of Right, calling upon the King to acknowledge that he could not levy taxes without Parliament’s consent, impose martial law on civilians, imprison them without due process, or quarter troops in their homes. Charles I assented to the petition, but he continued to claim the right to collect customs duties without authorization from Parliament. Then, in August 1628, Buckingham was assassinated. Although the death of Buckingham effectively ended the war and eliminated his leadership as an issue, it did not end the conflicts between Charles and Parliament over taxation and religious matters.

In 1629, after a disagreement with the House of Commons. Members read a three resolutions against Charles I, one of them declared that anyone who paid taxes not authorised by Parliament would be reputed a betrayer of the liberties of England. the provocation was too much for Charles, who dissolved parliament the same day. Immediately, he made peace with France and Spain. The following eleven years, during which Charles ruled without a Parliament, have been known as both the Eleven Years Tyranny or simply as the Personal Rule.

But Charles I still had to acquire funds in order to maintain his treasury. To raise revenue without reconvening Parliament, Charles first resurrected an all-but-forgotten law called the "Distraint of Knighthood," promulgated in 1279, which required anyone who earned £40 or more each year to present himself at the King’s coronation to join the royal army as a knight. Relying on this outdated statute, Charles fined all individuals who had failed to attend his coronation in 1626. Later, Charles I reintroduced an obsolete feudal tax known as ship money, which proved even more unpopular.

Charles I wanted to divert the Church of England away from Calvinism in a more traditional and sacramental direction. This goal was shared by his main political adviser, Archbishop William Laud who started a series of unpopular reforms in an attempt to impose order and authority on the church. Laud attempted to ensure religious uniformity by dismissing non-conformist clergymen and closing Puritan organizations. To punish those who refused to accept his reforms, Laud used the two most feared and most arbitrary courts in the land, the Court of High Commission and the Court of Star Chamber. The former could compel individuals to provide self-incriminating testimony, whilst the latter could inflict any punishment whatsoever. Under Charles’s reign, defendants were regularly hauled before the Court without indictment, due process of the law, or right to confront witnesses, and their testimonies were routinely extracted by the Court through torture.

Although the first years of the Personal Rule were marked by peace in England, to some extent due to tighter central control, Charles I faced numerous difficulties when he attempted to impose his religious policies in Scotland. The King ordered the use of a new Prayer Book modelled on the English Book of Common Prayer, which was resisted by many Presbyterian Scots, who saw the new Prayer Book as a vehicle for introducing Anglicanism to Scotland. So, in 1639 the First Bishops’ War broke out, and Charles sought to collect taxes from his subjects, who refused to yield any further. Charles’s war ended in a humiliating truce in June of the same year. In the Pacification of Berwick, Charles agreed to grant his Scottish subjects civil and ecclesiastical freedoms.

The Short Parliament: Disputes regarding the interpretation of the peace treaty between Charles and the Church of Scotland led to further conflict. To subdue the Scots, Charles needed more money; therefore, he took the fateful step of recalling Parliament in April 1640. Although Charles offered to repeal ship money, and the House of Commons agreed to allow Charles to raise the funds for war, an impasse was reached when Parliament demanded the discussion of various abuses of power during the Personal Rule. As both sides refused to give ground on this matter, Parliament was dissolved in May 1640, less than a month after it assembled. Thus, the Parliament became known as the Short Parliament.

The Long Parliament: Charles attempted to defeat the Scots, but failed miserably. The humiliating Treaty of Ripon, signed after the end of the Second Bishops’ War in October 1640, required the King to pay the expenses of the Scottish army he had just fought. Charles took the unusual step of summoning the magnum concilium, the ancient council of all the Peers of the Realm, who were considered the King’s hereditary counsellors. The magnum concilium had not been summoned for centuries. On the advice of the peers, Charles summoned another Parliament, which, in contrast with its predecessor, became known as the Long Parliament, which assembled in November 1640 under the leadership of John Pym, and proved just as difficult for Charles as the Short Parliament.

Charles viewed the members of Parliaments as dangerous rebels trying to undermine his rule. However, To prevent the King from dissolving it at will, Parliament passed the Triennial Act, to which the Royal Assent was granted in February 1641. The Act required that Parliament was to be summoned at least once every three years, and that when the King failed to issue proper summons, the members could assemble on their own. Charles was forced into one concession after another. He agreed to bills of attainder authorizing the executions of Thomas Wentworth and William Laud. Ship money, fines in destraint of knighthood and forced loans were declared unlawful, and the hated Courts of Star Chamber and High Commission were abolished. Although he made several important concessions, Charles improved his own military position by securing the favour of the Scots. He finally agreed to the official establishment of Presbyterianism; in return, he was able to enlist considerable anti-parliamentary support.

In November 1641, the House of Commons passed the Grand Remonstrance, a long list of grievances against actions by Charles’ ministers that were asserted to be abuses of royal power Charles had committed since the beginning of his reign. The tension was heightened when the Irish rebelled against Protestant English rule and rumours of Charles’s complicity reached Parliament. An army was required to put down the rebellion but many members of the House of Commons feared that Charles might later use it against Parliament itself. The Militia Bill was intended to wrest control of the army from the King, but Charles refused to agree to it.

Parliament intended to impeach his Catholic Queen, Henrietta Maria, Charles responded by entering the Commons in a failed attempt to arrest five Members of Parliament, who had fled before his arrival. Parliament reacted by passing a Militia Bill allowing troops to be raised only under officers approved by Parliament. Finally, in August 1642 at Nottingham, Charles raised the Royal Standard calling for loyal subjects to support him (Oxford was to be the King’s capital during the war). The Civil War had begun.

The Battle of Edgehill in October 1642 showed that early on the fighting was even. Broadly speaking, Charles retained the north, west and south-west of the country, and Parliament had London, East Anglia and the south-east, although there were pockets of resistance everywhere, ranging from solitary garrisons to whole cities. However, the Navy sided with Parliament, which made continental aid difficult, and Charles lacked the resources to hire substantial mercenary help.

Parliament had entered an armed alliance with the predominant Scottish Presbyterian group under the Solemn League and Covenant of 1643, and from 1644 onwards Parliament’s armies gained the upper hand – particularly with the improved training and discipline of the New Model Army. The Self-Denying Ordinance was passed to exclude Members of Parliament from holding army commands, thereby getting rid of vacillating or incompetent earlier Parliamentary generals. Under strong generals like Sir Thomas Fairfax and Oliver Cromwell, Parliament won victories at Marston Moor in 1644 and Naseby in 1645.

The capture of the King’s secret correspondence after Naseby showed the extent to which he had been seeking help from Ireland and from the Continent, which alienated many moderate supporters. In May 1646, Charles placed himself in the hands of the Scottish Army, who handed him to the English Parliament after nine months in return for arrears of payment – the Scots had failed to win Charles’s support for establishing Presbyterianism in England. Charles did not see his action as surrender, but as an opportunity to regain lost ground by playing one group off against another; he saw the monarchy as the source of stability and told parliamentary commanders ‘you cannot be without me: you will fall to ruin if I do not sustain you’.

In Scotland and Ireland, factions were arguing, whilst in England there were signs of division in Parliament between the Presbyterians and the Independents, with alienation from the Army, where radical doctrines such as that of the Levellers were threatening commanders’ authority. Charles’s negotiations continued from his captivity at Carisbrooke Castle on the Isle of Wight, to which he had ‘escaped’ from Hampton Court in November 1647, and led to the Engagement with the Scots, under which the Scots would provide an army for Charles I in exchange for the imposition of the Covenant on England.

This led to the second Civil War of 1648, which ended with Oliver Cromwell’s victory at Preston in August. The Army, concluding that permanent peace was impossible while Charles lived, decided that the King must be put on trial and executed. In December, Parliament was purged, leaving a small rump totally dependent on the Army, and the Rump Parliament established a High Court of Justice in the first week of January 1649.

On 20 January, Charles was charged with high treason against the realm of England. Charles refused to plead, saying that he did not recognise the legality of the High Court (it had been established by a Commons purged of dissent, and without the House of Lords – nor had the Commons ever acted as a judicature). The King was sentenced to death on January, 1649. Three days later, Charles was beheaded on a scaffold outside the Banqueting House in Whitehall, London.

The King asked for warm clothing before his execution: "the season is so sharp as probably may make me shake, which some observers may imagine proceeds from fear. I would have no such imputation". His final words were ‘I go from a corruptible to an incorruptible Crown, where no disturbance can be.’
The King was buried on February 9 at Windsor, rather than Westminster Abbey, to avoid public disorder. To avoid the automatic succession of Charles I’s son Charles, an Act was passed on January 30 forbidding the proclaiming of another monarch. On February 7 1649, the office of King was formally abolished.

James I was born on June 19, 1566, in Edinburgh Castle, Scotland. James ruled Scotland as James VI from 1567 when he was nine years old, succeeding his mother Mary. On March 24, 1603, he was crowned James I King of England, succeeding Elizabeth I, the last Tudor monarch, ushering in the Stewart dynasty in England. He ruled England, Scotland and Ireland for 22 years, often using the title King of Great Britain, until his death at the age of 58.

Brown Bess is a nickname for the British Army’s Land Pattern Musket and its derivatives. This musket was used in the era of the expansion of the British Empire and acquired symbolic importance at least as significant as its physical importance, as it was in use for over a hundred years with many incremental changes in its design. These versions include the Long Land Pattern, Short Land Pattern, India Pattern. The exact origin of this musket nickname has become obscured over the years. One explanation states that the name came from the color of the walnut stock. Prior to the “Brown Bess”, stocks were painted black.