As we ponder the abrupt end to Boris Johnson’s premiership, Dr Vivienne Larminie of our Commons 1640-60 section offers a salutary reminder that the sudden collapse of a government is far from unprecedented in British history…
Reporting on events at Whitehall palace on 6 April 1659, weekly newspaper The Publick Intelligencer depicted a harmonious outcome to a potentially dangerous political confrontation. That evening, ‘in one of the publick rooms of audience’, Lieutenant-general Charles Fleetwood and others from the general council of the officers of the armies of England, Scotland and Ireland had presented a petition to Protector Richard Cromwell. The Humble Representation began by stressing the patience and forbearance of forces constituted ‘for the just Rights and Liberties, Civil and Religious of our Countreys, and not as a Mercenary Army’, but went on to state dramatically ‘the crying necessities of the Armies for want of pay’ and their perception of…
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Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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