Oliver Cromwell died on 3 September 1658. In one respect, his passing was exceedingly well timed: like the calling of the first Protectorate Parliament, it coincided with the anniversary of his astonishing victories at Dunbar and Worcester. In all other regards, however, the Lord Protector's departure from the world could not have been less opportune. To his son Richard, whom on his deathbed he had nominated as his successor, to the Council of State, to his erstwhile comrades in the New Model Army, and to all who had thrown in their lot with the English Commonwealth he left a terrible mess.

Earlier there had been, so many think, a way out. Had Cromwell turned his back on his own past, we are sometimes told – had he purged the officer corps of the New Model Army, removed from active service all those inclined to think that their sacrifices and God-given victories on the field of the sword sanctioned military interference in the political realm, and then reconfigured the army as a professional force, as Thomas Hobbes upon his return to England no doubt hoped he would – he could have accepted the crown offered him by the Second Protectorate Parliament in 1657, and then he might have achieved the settlement that in the event eluded him. By this expedient, he might even have given his hapless elder son a fighting chance. Englishmen could much more easily stomach a new dynasty than a new regime.