[6, pp.245-246] bourgeoisie was frightened by the growth of the people s activity and the Parliament was dissolved in 1653. England was to be ruled by a council of officers who established military dictatorship and Cromwell was declared its Protector. Actually it meant the abolition of the republic and the end of the bourgeois revolution in England. From 1653 Britain was governed by Oliver Cromwell alone.the 3 rd period of the revolution saw the victory of the bourgeoisie and gentry block over the system of feudal absolutism on the one hand and over the democratic forces on the other. Lord Protector (as Cromwell was now called) did much of what the king was guilty of: when the Parliament of 1654-1655 made a feeble attempt to question his system of dictatorship he dissolved it; he did the same with the Parliament of 1656-1658; when the workers and peasants attempted uprisings, he suppressed them. He differed from the king though, for he did everything in his power to secure the ultimate victory of the bourgeoisie and gentry.latter, however, were ungrateful: the bourgeoisie and the gentry wanted monarchy back. So the Parliament of 1656 offered him the crown. Thinking of what the army officers would say, Cromwell refused, for a military dictatorship like his could not disregard the army, and the army did not want monarchy. regime was losing mass support, and the support of the merchants and bourgeoisie was not enough for they formed a minority of the population. The Spanish war, popular with the merchants so far, was becoming injurous to trade, and its costs were prohibitive; in the form of taxes they heavily fell upon the shoulders of the masses. There was famine that lasted from 1658 to 1661. [3, pp. 108-109]
.5 The Restoration of the Monarchy in Britain (1660-1688)
.5.1 The First Political Parties - the Whigs and the Toriesin 1658 Cromwell died, the Protectorate, as his republican administration was called, collapsed. By that time some of the traits that characterized monarchy had been restored in England. The offer of the crown that Cromwell refused and of hereditary title that he had not refused (his son Richard, however, was so far inferior to him in intelligence and will-power that he very soon lost every claim to the title) were sure signs , as well as the tendency to restore the House of Lords. The peasant movement in the country-side was growing. The upper layers of the bourgeoisie were badly scared. In the face of the growing democratic movement both the Independents and the Presbyterians were inclined to see eye to eye with the emboldened royalists when it came to debating whether monarchy should be restored. The Army was no longer the monolithic organization it used to have been; a group of generals joined the nobles and the upper layers of the bourgeoisie, the Parliament of 1660 that was convened to settle the issue had the royalists in the majority so it decided that power was to belong to the king, the lords and the commons. May 1660 Charles II was crowned. The Restoration showed that the nobles and the upper layers of the bourgeoisie could not do without monarchy in the face of the growing democratic movement. It also showed that the democratic forces, demoralized in the years of Cromwell s Protectorate, were too weak and disorganized to resist the restoration of monarchy. [3, p.110] Charles II returned to England as the publicly a...
