After the dissolution of the Rump Parliament, Oliver Cromwell and the Council of Officers decide on a new government. A new assembly - not an elected parliament - would be summoned, ordered to carry out the reforms long neglected by the Rump and to prepare a new parliament. It is given sixteen months to do this.

It won't last six months.

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This episode could not have been written without the following works:

• Martyn Bennet, Oliver Cromwell, 2006.
• Michael Braddick (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of the English Revolution, 2015.
• John Coffey, 'Religious Thought', in Michael Braddick (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of the English Revolution, 2015.
• Barry Coward, The Cromwellian Protectorate, 2002.
• Jonathan Healey, The Blazing World, 2023.
• Anna Keay, The Restless Republic, 2022.
• John Morrill (ed.), The Letters, Writings, and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell, Vol 2: 1 February 1649 to 12 December 1653, 2023
• John Kenyon and Jane Ohlmeyer, The Civil Wars: A Military History of England, Scotland, and Ireland, 1638-1660.
• Alan MacInnes, The British Revolution, 1629-1660, 2004.
• Ian Gentles, The New Model Army: Agent of Revolution, 2022.
• Leo F. Solt, 'The Fifth Monarchy Men: Politics and the Millenium', Church History, 30, 3, 1961.
• Jonathan Fitzgibbons, "'To settle a governement without somthing of Monarchy in it": Bulstrode Whitelocke’s Memoirs and the Reinvention of the Interregnum', The English Historical Review, 137, 586, 2022, 655-691.

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