Even after expelling the torpid Rump Parliament by force in 1653, and assuming the title of Lord Protector under Britain’s first written constitution, The Instrument of Government, Cromwell struggled with his parliaments. Desperate measures, including the exclusion of around a hundred MPs before the meeting of the Second Protectorate Parliament in 1656, failed to bring that assembly to heel. Cromwell was particularly alarmed when that same parliament gave rein to its religious intolerance,...
