The revolution that killed the king, abolished the monarchy, and inaugurated a Commonwealth had been accomplished by a small group of men. Between 1649 and 1653, a remnant of the Long Parliament, the Rump, relied on the army to shield it from its enemies while trying to reform society and the church. Oliver Cromwell helped the nascent republic to survive by suppressing opposition to it and then forcibly dissolving the Rump in April 1653. His “Barebones” Parliament, composed of 140 pious men (like Praisegod Barebones) selected by Cromwell, broke down in discord after sitting for only six months. The dissolution of this nominated legislature in December 1653 led to the setting up of a Protectorate in which executive authority was vested in Cromwell, the Lord Protector, and a Council of State. In 1657, with political instability increasing the appeal of monarchy, constitutional traditionalists offered Cromwell the crown. He declined the title of king but accepted the right to nominate his successor. Following his death in 1658, his son Richard presided for a while over a lackluster government that hastened the return of the Stuarts. In eleven years venerated institutions had been toppled like dominoes only to be returned to play; vulnerable men, even learned doctors, felt similarly toyed with by the erratic, perilous fortune of politics.

The minutes of the College of Physicians for 1649 are terse. Examining and handling disputes with unlicensed practitioners dominate the records. There is no reference to war, regicide, or the establishment of a new government under the aegis of Oliver Cromwell, only a brief mention of thanks to Alderman Stephen Eastwick for defending the College privileges before the militia of London in a tax dispute. The two medically-related guilds were also cautiously muted in their response to the outcome of the Civil War. The execution of King Charles I went unrecorded by the Clerk of the Apothecaries’ Society, only meriting an order replacing the royal arms at the society’s hall with those of the Commonwealth, and the Barber-Surgeons revised their oath to delete allegiance to the king and his successors. Given the widespread consequences of the change in authority that occurred in mid-seventeenth-century Britain, one might expect to find similar alterations in other aspects of English life, including medicine. All three medical associations evidently anticipated some repercussions from the new regime, none more than the College of Physicians.