“The Empire of your Virtues Reacheth Far”: Oliver Cromwell and the Imperial Protectorship

Abstract

This paper looks at the ways in which the Cromwellian Protectorate sought novel extensions of executive power though the canny use of the office of the Lord Protector. I argue that the Protectorate sought to rekindle previous efforts to develop an English imperium with the capturing of Jamaica which, far from being a consolation prize of the Western Design scheme, provided an opportunity to develop both merchant commercial interests and religio- political hegemony. I draw these threads together with a discussion of the kingship debates and an assessment of the Protectorate’s developing ideology. I argue that Cromwell functioned less as a "king in all but name" and more as an "emperor" in all but name seeking the powers of the Roman dictator along the way. For the Protectorate, the legal limits, defined through tradition and the precedent of the trial against Charles I, made it a less expansive and therefore less attractive office than that of the Lord Protector. Cromwell, while debating the offer of the crown understood these limits and the refusal of the office may have been a strategic mechanism for enhanced power in the office of Lord Protector that was not available to a king. To contextualize this period, I analyse the court poetry of Edmund Waller and Payne Fisher, the radicalism of Anna Trapnell, and the cultural impact of the 1652 solar eclipse amongst other works of political and legal importance.