Fifth Monarchists
Encyclopedia
The Fifth Monarchists or Fifth Monarchy Men were active from 1649 to 1661 during the Interregnum, following the English Civil War
English Civil War
The English Civil War was a series of armed conflicts and political machinations between Parliamentarians and Royalists...

s of the 17th century. They took their name from a prophecy in the Book of Daniel
Book of Daniel
The Book of Daniel is a book in the Hebrew Bible. The book tells of how Daniel, and his Judean companions, were inducted into Babylon during Jewish exile, and how their positions elevated in the court of Nebuchadnezzar. The court tales span events that occur during the reigns of Nebuchadnezzar,...

 that four ancient monarchies
Four monarchies
The four kingdoms refers to four monarchies, or world empires, described in dreams and visions in the Book of Daniel of the Hebrew Bible. The actual term "four kingdoms" occurs once, found in Daniel 8:22. These four kingdoms are described in different ways throughout Daniel, beginning with chapter...

 (Babylonian, Persian, Macedonian, and Roman) would precede Christ
Christ
Christ is the English term for the Greek meaning "the anointed one". It is a translation of the Hebrew , usually transliterated into English as Messiah or Mashiach...

's return. They also referred to the year 1666 and its relationship to the biblical Number of the Beast
Number of the Beast
The Number of the Beast is a term in the Book of Revelation, of the New Testament, that is associated with the first Beast of Revelation chapter 13, the Beast of the sea. In most manuscripts of the New Testament and in English translations of the Bible, the number of the Beast is...

 indicating the end of earthly rule by carnal human beings. They were one of a number of nonconformist dissenting groups
English Dissenters
English Dissenters were Christians who separated from the Church of England in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries.They originally agitated for a wide reaching Protestant Reformation of the Established Church, and triumphed briefly under Oliver Cromwell....

 that emerged around this time.

Overview

Around 1649, there was great social unrest in England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 and many people turned to Oliver Cromwell
Oliver Cromwell
Oliver Cromwell was an English military and political leader who overthrew the English monarchy and temporarily turned England into a republican Commonwealth, and served as Lord Protector of England, Scotland, and Ireland....

 as England's new leader. The Parliamentary victors of the First English Civil War failed to negotiate a constitutional settlement with the defeated King Charles I
Charles I of England
Charles I was King of England, King of Scotland, and King of Ireland from 27 March 1625 until his execution in 1649. Charles engaged in a struggle for power with the Parliament of England, attempting to obtain royal revenue whilst Parliament sought to curb his Royal prerogative which Charles...

. Members of Parliament and the Grandees in the New Model Army
New Model Army
The New Model Army of England was formed in 1645 by the Parliamentarians in the English Civil War, and was disbanded in 1660 after the Restoration...

, when faced with Charles's perceived duplicity, tried and executed
Regicide
The broad definition of regicide is the deliberate killing of a monarch, or the person responsible for the killing of a monarch. In a narrower sense, in the British tradition, it refers to the judicial execution of a king after a trial...

 him.

Government through the King's Privy Council
Privy Council of the United Kingdom
Her Majesty's Most Honourable Privy Council, usually known simply as the Privy Council, is a formal body of advisers to the Sovereign in the United Kingdom...

 was replaced with a new body called the Council of State
English Council of State
The English Council of State, later also known as the Protector's Privy Council, was first appointed by the Rump Parliament on 14 February 1649 after the execution of King Charles I....

. Due to fundamental disagreements within a weakened Parliament, this new body was dominated by the Army. There was a considerable political ferment in the country, much of it religiously conditioned, and no lack of proposals for alternative forms of government to replace the old order. These ranged from Royalists who wished to place King Charles II
Charles II of England
Charles II was monarch of the three kingdoms of England, Scotland, and Ireland.Charles II's father, King Charles I, was executed at Whitehall on 30 January 1649, at the climax of the English Civil War...

 on the throne, to men like Oliver Cromwell, who wished to govern with a Parliament voted in by an electorate determined by property ownership, similar to that enfranchised before the civil war, to the Levellers
Levellers
The Levellers were a political movement during the English Civil Wars which emphasised popular sovereignty, extended suffrage, equality before the law, and religious tolerance, all of which were expressed in the manifesto "Agreement of the People". They came to prominence at the end of the First...

, influenced by the writings of John Lilburne
John Lilburne
John Lilburne , also known as Freeborn John, was an English political Leveller before, during and after English Civil Wars 1642-1650. He coined the term "freeborn rights", defining them as rights with which every human being is born, as opposed to rights bestowed by government or human law...

, who wanted parliamentary government based on an electorate constituted of every head of household (normally though not necessarily male as was acknowledged in the Putney Debates
Putney Debates
The Putney Debates were a series of discussions between members of the New Model Army – a number of the participants being Levellers – concerning the makeup of a new constitution for England....

), through to other groups with smaller followings like the Fifth Monarchists, Gerrard Winstanley
Gerrard Winstanley
Gerrard Winstanley was an English Protestant religious reformer and political activist during the Protectorate of Oliver Cromwell...

 and the Diggers, the Ranters, and the Society of Friends
Religious Society of Friends
The Religious Society of Friends, or Friends Church, is a Christian movement which stresses the doctrine of the priesthood of all believers. Members are known as Friends, or popularly as Quakers. It is made of independent organisations, which have split from one another due to doctrinal differences...

 (Quakers).

These were not political parties as that term is understood today, but groups clustered around one or more beliefs, some of the believers attaching themselves to more than one group. Although the pre-war establishment had been split by the Civil War, both of the opposing main factions regarded all radical groups as agitators for change, and they are described as such in the Historical Collections of John Rushworth
John Rushworth
John Rushworth , English historian, was born at Acklington Park in the parish of Warkworth, Northumberland, England. He compiled a series of works called Historical Collections , concerning the period of history covering the English Civil Wars throughout the 17th century.-Background:John Rushworth...

 that document events of the early period, and by the Journals of the House of Commons which cover the period of the Republic itself.

The Fifth Monarchists were a group of believers in a geopolitical theory which maintained that four world rulers
Four monarchies
The four kingdoms refers to four monarchies, or world empires, described in dreams and visions in the Book of Daniel of the Hebrew Bible. The actual term "four kingdoms" occurs once, found in Daniel 8:22. These four kingdoms are described in different ways throughout Daniel, beginning with chapter...

 had already come and gone according to the prophecies of Daniel 2 in the Old Testament
Old Testament
The Old Testament, of which Christians hold different views, is a Christian term for the religious writings of ancient Israel held sacred and inspired by Christians which overlaps with the 24-book canon of the Masoretic Text of Judaism...

. This text recounts a prophetic dream by Nebuchadnezzar, in which the previous empires had been Babylonian, Persian, Grecian
Greece
Greece , officially the Hellenic Republic , and historically Hellas or the Republic of Greece in English, is a country in southeastern Europe....

 and Roman
Roman Empire
The Roman Empire was the post-Republican period of the ancient Roman civilization, characterised by an autocratic form of government and large territorial holdings in Europe and around the Mediterranean....

; the last empire, they concluded, would be established by the returning Jesus as King of kings and Lord of Lords to reign with his saints on earth for a thousand years. The Fifth Monarchists saw themselves as those saints of that soon to be dawning millennium
Millennialism
Millennialism , or chiliasm in Greek, is a belief held by some Christian denominations that there will be a Golden Age or Paradise on Earth in which "Christ will reign" for 1000 years prior to the final judgment and future eternal state...

. Among prominent Fifth Monarchists were Thomas Harrison, Christopher Feake
Christopher Feake
Christopher Feake was an English Independent minister and Fifth-monarchy man. He was imprisoned for maligning Oliver Cromwell in his preaching. He is a leading example of someone sharing both Leveller views and the millenarian approach of the Fifth Monarchists...

, Vavasor Powell
Vavasor Powell
Vavasor Powell was a Welsh Nonconformist Puritan preacher, evangelist, church leader and writer.-Life:He was born in Knucklas, Radnorshire and was educated at Jesus College, Oxford...

, John Carew
John Carew (regicide)
John Carew , from Antony, Cornwall, was one of the regicides of King Charles I.Elected MP for Tregony in 1647, he was a prominent member of the Fifth Monarchy Men who saw the overthrow of Charles I as a divine sign of the second coming of Jesus and the establishment of the millennium a thousand...

, John Rogers and Robert Blackborne, Secretary of the Admiralty
Admiralty
The Admiralty was formerly the authority in the Kingdom of England, and later in the United Kingdom, responsible for the command of the Royal Navy...

 and later of the British East India Company
East India Company
The East India Company was an early English joint-stock company that was formed initially for pursuing trade with the East Indies, but that ended up trading mainly with the Indian subcontinent and China...

.

Fifth Monarchists believed that the timing of the events of the Interregnum were significant because the calendar year 1666 loomed large on the near horizon. The number 666 had been identified in the Book of Revelation
Book of Revelation
The Book of Revelation is the final book of the New Testament. The title came into usage from the first word of the book in Koine Greek: apokalupsis, meaning "unveiling" or "revelation"...

 with the ultimate human despot
Despotism
Despotism is a form of government in which a single entity rules with absolute power. That entity may be an individual, as in an autocracy, or it may be a group, as in an oligarchy...

 to rule the world, but who would be replaced by the second coming of the Messiah
Messiah
A messiah is a redeemer figure expected or foretold in one form or another by a religion. Slightly more widely, a messiah is any redeemer figure. Messianic beliefs or theories generally relate to eschatological improvement of the state of humanity or the world, in other words the World to...

; this only added to the belief that the Fifth Monarchy was about to begin.

English Commonwealth and Protectorate

A number of Fifth Monarchists took a leading part in the events of the time. Thomas Harrison and John Carew were Commissioners (Judges) at the trial of Charles I and signed the death warrant. Following Charles' death, Oliver Cromwell set up the Commonwealth
Commonwealth of England
The Commonwealth of England was the republic which ruled first England, and then Ireland and Scotland from 1649 to 1660. Between 1653–1659 it was known as the Commonwealth of England, Scotland and Ireland...

 as a more pure form of government to replace the existing monarchy. Cromwell had not intended it, but not too long after establishing the Commonwealth, he dismissed the Parliament, and in effect, became a military dictator. The Fifth Monarchists were also a significant opponent to the Rump Parliament and leading Fifth Monarchists like Vavasor Powell were annoyed at the Rump's failure to renew certain pieces of legislation, such as the Propagation of the Gospel in Wales, because they believed that the Rump was not fulfilling what the Fifth Monarchists perceived to be its aim, that is to turn England into a more 'godly' nation. Leading Fifth Monarchists also had an influence on Oliver Cromwell, as it was Thomas Harrison's idea to introduce the Nominated Assembly (Barebones Parliament
Barebones Parliament
Barebone's Parliament, also known as the Little Parliament, the Nominated Assembly and the Parliament of Saints, came into being on 4 July 1653, and was the last attempt of the English Commonwealth to find a stable political form before the installation of Oliver Cromwell as Lord Protector...

) as a body of religious men. However this was not completely the case as a large proportion of the assembly were conservative-minded gentry like Sir Anthony Ashley-Cooper. This influence on Cromwell did not last however, as just six months after he had created the Nominated Assembly, Cromwell dissolved it in favour of Lambert's more conservative Instrument of Government.

The Republican governments of England were introduced after the English Civil War during the Interregnum (1649–60). The Commonwealth (1649–53) was founded on the execution of Charles I in 1649, and was followed by the two Protectorates of Oliver Cromwell (1653–58), and his son Richard Cromwell the first (1658–59). The Commonwealth was briefly revived (1659–60), before the restoration of the monarchy
English Restoration
The Restoration of the English monarchy began in 1660 when the English, Scottish and Irish monarchies were all restored under Charles II after the Interregnum that followed the Wars of the Three Kingdoms...

 in the person of Charles II in May 1660.

Nominated Assembly and Protectorate

After the forcible dissolution of the Rump Parliament
Rump Parliament
The Rump Parliament is the name of the English Parliament after Colonel Pride purged the Long Parliament on 6 December 1648 of those members hostile to the Grandees' intention to try King Charles I for high treason....

 by Oliver Cromwell, the Grandees of the Army Council of Officers were reluctant to authorise free elections because they were aware that the members returned by the traditional constituency would return Presbyterians and Royalists as well as their own sympathisers. They were not at all sure that the majority would be any more compliant than the Rump. Major-General Thomas Harrison, who had commanded the troop which aided Oliver Cromwell in dissolving the Rump, suggested that there be a ruling body based upon the Old Testament Sanhedrin of 70 selected "Saints", which was based on his beliefs, as a Fifth Monarchist, that the rule of the Saints would usher in the reign of Christ on Earth. A modified version of this proposal was accepted by Cromwell and the Council of Officers and less than a month after the dissolution of the Rump, during May 1653, letters in the name of the Lord-General and the Army Council were sent to Congregational churches in every county in England to nominate those they considered fit to take part in the new government. The total number of nominees was one hundred and forty, one hundred and twenty-nine from England, five from Scotland and six from Ireland.

The arrest of Feake and Powell was sufficient for a time to dampen their ardour, but many of the delegates to Barebone's Parliament were from congregations with Fifth Monarchist sympathies. This assembly, which met from July until December 1653, was the high water mark of Fifth Monarchist influence on national politics. Fearing their ultra-radical ideas, which crystallised in an attack on tithes, the conservative faction led by Major-General John Lambert
John Lambert (general)
John Lambert was an English Parliamentary general and politician. He fought during the English Civil War and then in Oliver Cromwell's Scottish campaign , becoming thereafter active in civilian politics until his dismissal by Cromwell in 1657...

, supported by the use of troops to deny access to the radical factions, engineered a vote for the dissolution of the assembly, which was passed on 12 December 1653. The collapse of the radical consensus which had spawned the Nominated Assembly led to the Grandees passing the Instrument of Government in the Council of State
English Council of State
The English Council of State, later also known as the Protector's Privy Council, was first appointed by the Rump Parliament on 14 February 1649 after the execution of King Charles I....

 which paved the way for Cromwell's Protectorate
The Protectorate
In British history, the Protectorate was the period 1653–1659 during which the Commonwealth of England was governed by a Lord Protector.-Background:...

. The Fifth Monarchists were horrified at the establishment of Cromwell's Protectorate and plotted to overthrow the regime. Two plots were uncovered and broken up in 1657 and 1659.

Restoration

After the Restoration
English Restoration
The Restoration of the English monarchy began in 1660 when the English, Scottish and Irish monarchies were all restored under Charles II after the Interregnum that followed the Wars of the Three Kingdoms...

 on 14 October 1660 Major-General Thomas Harrison was the first person to be found guilty of the regicide
Regicide
The broad definition of regicide is the deliberate killing of a monarch, or the person responsible for the killing of a monarch. In a narrower sense, in the British tradition, it refers to the judicial execution of a king after a trial...

 of Charles I
Charles I of England
Charles I was King of England, King of Scotland, and King of Ireland from 27 March 1625 until his execution in 1649. Charles engaged in a struggle for power with the Parliament of England, attempting to obtain royal revenue whilst Parliament sought to curb his Royal prerogative which Charles...

. He had been the seventeenth of fifty-nine commissioners (judges) to sign the death warrant of the king in 1649. He was the first regicide to be hanged, drawn and quartered
Hanged, drawn and quartered
To be hanged, drawn and quartered was from 1351 a penalty in England for men convicted of high treason, although the ritual was first recorded during the reigns of King Henry III and his successor, Edward I...

 because he was considered by the new government to represent a continued real threat to the re-established order. This threat was realised when on 6 January 1661, 50 Fifth Monarchists, headed by a wine-cooper named Thomas Venner
Thomas Venner
Thomas Venner was a cooper and rebel who became the last leader of the Fifth Monarchy Men, who tried unsuccessfully to overthrow Oliver Cromwell in 1657, and subsequently led a coup in London against the newly-restored government of Charles II...

, made an effort to attain possession of London in the name of "King Jesus." Most of the fifty were either killed or taken prisoner, and on 19 and 21 January, Venner and ten others were hanged, drawn and quartered for high treason
High treason
High treason is criminal disloyalty to one's government. Participating in a war against one's native country, attempting to overthrow its government, spying on its military, its diplomats, or its secret services for a hostile and foreign power, or attempting to kill its head of state are perhaps...

.

The failure of Venner's Rising led to repressive legislation to suppress non-conformist sects. Although some physical events such as the Great Plague of London
Great Plague of London
The Great Plague was a massive outbreak of disease in the Kingdom of England that killed an estimated 100,000 people, 20% of London's population. The disease is identified as bubonic plague, an infection by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, transmitted through a flea vector...

 and the Great Fire of London
Great Fire of London
The Great Fire of London was a major conflagration that swept through the central parts of the English city of London, from Sunday, 2 September to Wednesday, 5 September 1666. The fire gutted the medieval City of London inside the old Roman City Wall...

 continued to encourage belief in "the end of the world" ruled by carnal human beings; the doctrine of the sect either died out, or became merged in a milder form of Millenarianism
Millenarianism
Millenarianism is the belief by a religious, social, or political group or movement in a coming major transformation of society, after which all things will be changed, based on a one-thousand-year cycle. The term is more generically used to refer to any belief centered around 1000 year intervals...

.

See also

  • Religion in the United Kingdom
    Religion in the United Kingdom
    Religion in the United Kingdom and the states that pre-dated the UK, was dominated by forms of Christianity for over 1,400 years. Although a majority of citizens still identify with Christianity in many surveys, regular church attendance has fallen dramatically since the middle of the 20th century,...

  • 17th century denominations in England
    17th century denominations in England
    A large number of religious denominations emerged during the early-to-mid-17th century in England. Many of these were influenced by the radical changes brought on by the English Civil War, subsequent execution of Charles I and the advent of the Commonwealth of England...


External links

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