Dismissal of the Rump Parliament

Emerson Kent ^ | April 20, 1653 | Oliver Cromwell

[Regulator]

It is high time for me to put an end to your sitting in this place, which you have dishonored by your contempt of all virtue, and defiled by your practice of every vice.

Ye are a factious crew, and enemies to all good government.

Ye are a pack of mercenary wretches, and would like Esau sell your country for a mess of pottage, and like Judas betray your God for a few pieces of money.

Is there a single virtue now remaining amongst you? Is there one vice you do not possess?

Ye have no more religion than my horse. Gold is your God. Which of you have not bartered your conscience for bribes? Is there a man amongst you that has the least care for the good of the Commonwealth?

Ye sordid prostitutes have you not defiled this sacred place, and turned the Lord's temple into a den of thieves, by your immoral principles and wicked practices?

Ye are grown intolerably odious to the whole nation. You were deputed here by the people to get grievances redressed, are yourselves become the greatest grievance.

Your country therefore calls upon me to cleanse this Augean stable, by putting a final period to your iniquitous proceedings in this House; and which by God's help, and the strength he has given me, I am now come to do.

I command ye therefore, upon the peril of your lives, to depart immediately out of this place.

Go, get you out! Make haste! Ye venal slaves be gone! So! Take away that shining bauble there, and lock up the doors.

In the name of God, go!

[Dr. Franklin]

A point I’ve been thinking about now with Lizard Cheney running around acting like she’s Queen of America, not the meaningless defeated by a landslide Traitor she is.

Congress will never vote for a Constitutional amendment to shorten or limit the lame duck period. That will only happen from an Article V Convention of the State, and that alone is sufficient to have one.

[Regulator]

“these were the guys who banned maypoles. They banned football. They tried to ban celebrating Christmas. Eventually pretty much everybody had had it with these fanatical intolerant killjoys”

Gosh, how terrible. I agree...Killjoys.

But you know, being the descendant of Huguenots, Anabaptist Dunkards, and yes, Anglicans who came here from 1607 to 1743, we remember the Albigensian massacres, the Inquisition, the St. Bartholomews Day Massacre, Matanzas, the Thirty Years War, the list is rather endless...Catholic murders of tens of thousands of “heretics” who simply didn’t agree with some jerk who lives in Italy and wanted to control Europe and the World from his little redoubt.

We started a nice country, it got rather successful using the concepts of independence, religious plurality (something the Catholic “church” still cannot countenance) and government by an elected group of officials, NOT a King picked by again, that guy in Italy. You know...”Divine Right of Kings” and all that, consecrated by El Papa, who currently is just another Hispanic Hegemonist trying to make everyone knuckle under to him and his Conquistador buddies.

Cromwell’s original Instrument of Governance was the first written Constitution of Britain, and is a beginning point for the US Constitution.

Contrary to modern Catholic revisionist history, the United States were not created to restore the Roman Church to primacy. Quite the opposite.

PS - Thanks for the Kennedy’s and the Biden’s! Whatta great contribution to egalitarian government! A sex crazed family of baby faced thugs and a dissolute, decrepit husk!

[ClayinVA]

I would say he improved the breed but just culling one or two doesn’t really do much.

[Regulator]

You are, of course, correct

[ClayinVA]

Cromwell was only in Ireland for a year quelling a rebellion. What the English Kings did during the Irish potato famine was worse.

[mewzilla]

Mine beat you here by a decade.

We come from good stock, eh? :-)

[ClayinVA]

Also, as far as crimes against humanity, Catholics sacked Magdeburg Germany in 1631 during the 30 years war and killed 20,000 out of 25,000 after the gates were breached during a siege. So it’s a high water mark for the period. Drogheda was a lot less than that around 4,000 according to Wikipedia.

[Jacquerie]

Not all kings are absolute.

Glorious Revolution.

[FLT-bird]

“these were the guys who banned maypoles. They banned football. They tried to ban celebrating Christmas. Eventually pretty much everybody had had it with these fanatical intolerant killjoys” Gosh, how terrible. I agree...Killjoys. But you know, being the descendant of Huguenots, Anabaptist Dunkards, and yes, Anglicans who came here from 1607 to 1743, we remember the Albigensian massacres, the Inquisition, the St. Bartholomews Day Massacre, Matanzas, the Thirty Years War, the list is rather endless...Catholic murders of tens of thousands of “heretics” who simply didn’t agree with some jerk who lives in Italy and wanted to control Europe and the World from his little redoubt. We started a nice country, it got rather successful using the concepts of independence, religious plurality (something the Catholic “church” still cannot countenance) and government by an elected group of officials, NOT a King picked by again, that guy in Italy. You know...”Divine Right of Kings” and all that, consecrated by El Papa, who currently is just another Hispanic Hegemonist trying to make everyone knuckle under to him and his Conquistador buddies. Cromwell’s original Instrument of Governance was the first written Constitution of Britain, and is a beginning point for the US Constitution. Contrary to modern Catholic revisionist history, the United States were not created to restore the Roman Church to primacy. Quite the opposite. PS - Thanks for the Kennedy’s and the Biden’s! Whatta great contribution to egalitarian government! A sex crazed family of baby faced thugs and a dissolute, decrepit husk!

I'm not here to defend all the horrible things Catholics ever did. The point is that they were a religious minority and Cromwell and the Roundheads were not ones to recognize individual liberty or to practice religious or any other kind of tolerance. Cromwell was a tyrant backed by Puritan fanatics. If you were anything other than a strict Puritan, England was a place to get the hell out of during the Protectorate. Some "constitution" the Protectorate had. Tell that to the Irish...or the Welsh...or the Scots....or anybody in England who was not a Puritan....or god forbid, anybody who wanted to actually derive any joy from life.

[SunkenCiv]

Bingo. He led a military coup and established the first modern dictatorship ("Lord Protector of the Commonwealth"). When he died, his son inherited the job, was removed by a couple of Cromwell's old henchmen, who in their turn were defeated and put to flight by a nimble noble who'd fought on both sides of the civil war, had served under Oliver Cromwell, and had supported Richard Cromwell. He played the largest single role in the restoration of the monarchy, which led Charles II to return as monarch.

[Red Badger]

Charles II to return as monarch.

New boss....same as the Old Boss.................

[Red Badger]

And the Kings and Queens of England weren’t...................

[madison10]

I have family members with Irish last names, named Oliver Cromwell _______.

Obviously they were Protestant Irish.

[SunkenCiv]

Not at all. His brother James II is generally held responsible for the attempt to re-catholicise the UK, but Charles II (when he wasn't recovering from STIs or bangin' his mistresses) actually began that work, he was just better at it. He didn't survive to bring it to fruition, and James II was booted in favor of his daughter and her husband, the "Glorious Revolution".

As generally happens with gubmint in general, he was chronically short of cash, and did things like introduce an annual lottery (maybe the forerunner of the Irish Sweepstakes, although I'm having some problems scaring up online info), continued the Jacobean practice of selling baronetcies, and juiced the growth of banking in England through crown borrowing.

By the time the dynasty died out, the British Empire had grabbed much of North America and planted colonies here and there throughout the world, finished the buildout of the legendary British navy begun by Henry VIII, and helped reconcile everyone in the empire to the oddball blended constitutional monarchy that continues to this day.

[KC Burke]

Cromwell’s words have been used a number of times. As recently as a few weeks back in opposition to Boris Johnson who had the absurdity to pretend he was unfamiliar with the quote. As a lifelong student of history they have always stirred me for another instance of their usage: The Norway Debate.

The Norway Debate was the two day process the brought down PM Chamberlain and elevated his coalition replacement Winston Churchill

A good account to the debate is in Nicholson’s Diaries that I read in 1966. Check Wikipedia for a summary.

[madison10]

My family could have its own civil/religious war:

Anabaptists (Mennonite)
Catholics (French from Quebec)
Quakers
English Separatists (Mayflower)
Methodist Episcopalian
Presbyterian
Baptist (not too many of those)

[Regulator]

Thanks!

[Pelham]

I suspect that Cromwell is why my Irish ancestors left for America. They were here in Colonial times, on the Delmarva peninsula. The family name, which is unusual, appears in a book of “landed Irish gentry” who had their properties seized by Cromwell. The name appears to be extinct in Ireland so my guess is that the seizure of their estates prompted them to leave for the colonies.

[FLT-bird]

Yep. I get being opposed to absolute monarchy or taxation without representation which Charles II did.

I do not get trying to portray Cromwell or the Puritan fanatic Roundheads as some kind of representatives of freedom. They most certainly were not. They were if anything, more intolerant, brutal and repressive than Charles II ever was.

[sauropod]

Probably a good guess.