The English free state or republic (1649–53) has always been seen as a failure, which almost no one outside the small coterie of its leaders genuinely wanted or actively supported. Historians have also belittled the importance of the political thought of the republican period. They have explored John Milton’s and Marchamont Nedham’s writings in defence of the republic but have mainly focused on de facto arguments that the free state could demand obedience because it offered peace and security. The Introduction explains how scholars have failed to properly examine the political thought of the period and have underestimated its breadth and depth. It also argues that, once we explore the pamphlet literature published during the free state, we can appreciate the importance of these pamphleteers’ political thinking. The aim is to offer a complete reassessment of the political thought of the English free state and to map the terrain of what it was possible to think.

The English free state ended in failure in the spring of 1653 when Oliver Cromwell dissolved the Rump parliament, which was soon replaced by the unelected Nominated Assembly. In December 1653, this Assembly abdicated its authority to Cromwell, who became the Lord Protector under the Instrument of Government, England’s first written constitution. This failure has led historians to write the free state off as a terrible mistake, which almost no one outside the small coterie of its leaders genuinely wanted or actively supported. Throughout this book, I have questioned this standard interpretation and tried to show that numerous people eagerly came forth in the defence of the free state and that its political thought was far more important than has hitherto been assumed.

Chapter 3 revisits the republicanism of the free state. Historians have disagreed about the extent and nature of republican thinking during the free state. Some historians have attached little importance to republicanism, claiming that it was inconspicuous, that ‘republican ideology played only a minor role’ and that it only properly emerged after the free state. Other historians have challenged such arguments and have accentuated the republican arguments in favour of the free state. Taking its cue from such historians, the chapter demonstrates that republican defences of the free state were loud and clear from the beginning of 1649 until 1652. It was repeatedly argued that only a free state could guarantee liberty. The chapter also points out the seriousness with which many royalists, Presbyterians and other enemies of the free state took its republicanism. They questioned every aspect of republicanism; for them, a free state was a disastrous form of state and, more importantly, the idea that it safeguarded liberty was a hollow sham.

When England was declared to be governed as a free state, parliament stopped short of defining its precise constitutional form. Although historians, once again, had paid almost no attention to it, there was a lively debate amongst the supporters of the free state about its precise constitutional form, whether it was an aristocracy or democracy. Chapter 4 explores the aristocratic arguments for the free state. The aristocratic defenders of the free state, following a traditional line of argument, argued that, whereas a democracy denoted the direct rule of all the people, in an aristocracy sovereign power was in the hands of the few. Since in the English free state sovereign power was exercised by the House of Commons, it was, for these aristocrats, in the hands of a few, and the free state was, accordingly, an aristocracy. However, the free state was also presented by Ephraim Elcock as an Aristotelian politeia, a perfect mixture of oligarchy and democracy. According to Elcock, in the free state, ‘the peoples election of their Delegates is Democratical, the Government of these Deligates is Oligarchical, they being chosen out of the wealthiest of every County’.

Chapter 5 turns to the democratic defences of the free state. Whereas the aristocratic portrayals began immediately after the establishment of the free state, a democratic argument for the free state started to be developed only towards the end of 1649. Soon, however, numerous pamphleteers argued that the free state was a democracy, and, for them, it was a good thing too. This is one of the first times in early-modern European political thought that democracy was openly defended as a viable constitutional form. The aristocrats saw the free state as a golden mean between monarchy and democracy, but the democrats distinguished between a good and bad democracy and argued that their constitutional preference was a good democracy, which was a mean between monarchy and a bad democracy or anarchy. Moreover, both sides wrote in support of the free state and thus defended the supremacy of a unicameral representative institution. For the democrats, a bad democracy was the people’s direct rule, but a good democracy was based on a representative institution. The upshot is that this was the first time in the history of political thought that democracy was conceived in representative terms.

The central theme of Chapter 2 is anti-monarchism. The chapter shows that during the free state monarchy was widely thought to be the worst form of government. Monarchy entailed tyranny and the concomitant slavery of the people. However, an even more powerful anti-monarchical argument rose to prominence during the free state. Based largely on 1 Samuel 8, numerous advocates of the free state maintained that monarchy was against God and thus both idolatrous and sinful. Already in early December 1648, a radical pamphlet, Light shining in Buckingham-shire, equated kingship with the devil. But the argument that monarchy was a sin and idolatry became particularly vociferous during the Engagement controversy. It was argued repeatedly that monarchy, as a form of government, was against God’s express will. Such an argument led to the conclusion that monarchy was finished in England and would soon be so elsewhere in Europe as well.

Chapter 1 demonstrates that a key argument in justifying the establishment of the free state was the claim that the people or their representatives were entitled to alter the form of government. Earlier historians had paid no attention to this argument. The chapter first discusses the emergence of this argument in pre-revolutionary England and then traces its development in the 1640s. The question of the people’s, or their representatives’, right to change the form of government was thrown into sharp relief in late 1647 when the Levellers put forward their proposal for a novel constitution. The question was discussed in the famous Putney debates, and an argument for the right to alter the constitution was widely advanced from the autumn of 1648 onwards. It was based on the idea of popular sovereignty, that all public authority emanated from the people and that whoever exercised that authority only held it by trust. Some protagonists argued that the people could change the form of government when the king forfeited his trust, but many others insisted more radically that the people could do the same whenever they so wanted.