English Council of State

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The English Council of State, later also know as the Protector's Privy Council, was first appointed by the Rump Parliament on 14 February 1649 after the execution of King Charles I.

Charles's execution on 30 January was delayed for several hours so that the House of Commons could pass an emergency bill to make it an offence to proclaim a new King and to declare the representatives of the people, the House of Commons, as the source of all just power. This in effect abolished the Monarchy and the House of Lords.

The Council of State was appointed by Parliament on 14 February and 15 February 1649, with further annual elections. The Council's duties were to act as the Executive of the country's government in place of the King and the Privy Council. It was to direct domestic and foreign policy and to ensure the security of the English Commonwealth. Due to the disagreements between the New Model Army and the weakened Parliament it was dominated by the Army.

The Council held its first meeting on 17 February 1649 "with [Oliver] Cromwell in the chair". This meeting was quite rudimentary, "some 14 members" attending, barely more than the legal quorum of nine out of forty-one councillors elected by Parliament. The first elected president of the council, appointed on 12 March, was John Bradshaw who had been the President of the Court at the trial of Charles I and the first to sign the King's death warrant.

The members of the first council were the Earls of Denbigh, Mulgrave, Pembroke, Salisbury, Lords Grey and Fairfax, Lisle, Rolle, Oliver St. John, Wilde, Bradshaw, Cromwell, Skippon, Pickering, Masham, Haselrig, Harrington, Vane jun, Danvers, Armine, Mildmay, Constable, Pennington, Wilson, Whitelocke, Martin, Ludlow, Stapleton, Hevingham, Wallop, Hutchinson, Bond, Popham, Valentine Walton, Scot, Purefoy, Jones.^[1]

At the start of the Protectorate, ten days after the dissolution of the Rump Parliament on April 20, 1653, Cromwell told the Council that it no longer existed and together with the Council of Officers, instituted a new Council of State. With the failure of the Barebones Parliament, the Council was re-modelled with the Instrument of Government to become something much closer to the old Privy Council advising the Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell. Constitutionally between thirteen and twenty-one councillors were elected by Parliament to advise the Protector, who was also elected by Parliament. In reality Cromwell relied on the Army for support and chose his own councillors.

The replacement constitution of 1657, the pseudo-monarchical Humble Petition and Advice, authorised 'His Highness the Lord Protector'; to choose twenty-one Councillors and the power to nominate his successor. Cromwell recommended his eldest surviving son Richard Cromwell, who was proclaimed the successor on his father's death on September 3, 1658 and legally confirmed in the position by the newly elected Third Protectorate Parliament on January 27, 1659.

After the reinstatement of the Rump Parliament (May 7, 1659) and the subsequent abolition of the position of Lord Protector, the role of the Council of State along with other interregnum institutions becomes confused as the instruments of state started to implode. The Council of State was not dissolved until 28 May 1660, when King Charles II personally assumed the government in London.