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Keay's history is not a chronological story of the Interregnum, but instead focuses on 9 individuals who played significant roles during that time (you can see them listed in the Gumble's Yards' review linked above, so I won't relist them here). Aside from those featured characters there were plenty of curious side-paths to take as well.
There is arguably no better perspective on Irish affairs than that of William Petty, who went to Ireland as the army’s physician-general, before undertaking the mapping of the country (the Down Survey). This is a fascinating account in its own right, but at the same time it sheds light on an often-overlooked aspect of 17th-century Anglo-Irish history; if it were possible to single out one particular highlight from this book, then this would probably be it.The book is fascinating on the dilemma the Republic faced which was that while there was a coalition which agreed on deposing Charles II (and even a relatively large group that felt his execution was inevitable) there was almost no consensus on how to replace him – from an alternative monarchy, to a military regime, to a parliamentary democracy – with multiple shades of each, or on what form of religious settlement was appropriate. Viscerally compelling. The Last Royal Rebel is the very best sort of historical work. It is based on the meticulous use of an eclectic array of primary sources, and represents substantial painstaking and well-documented research. The action, intrigue, romance, and suspense drive the reader relentlessly toward the stirring conclusion. Deft, confident, deeply learned and provocative, underpinned by an extraordinary sense of the landscape and the architecture … Anna Keay traces with fierce intelligence the remarkable and restless lives’ Rory Stewart Dr Michael Wheeler is a Visiting Professor of English at the University of Southampton and a former Lay Canon of Winchester Cathedral.
Overall, a different and panoramic but very readable perspective of Britain without a crown as a Restless Republic As it transpired, ending the monarchy was relatively easy: the challenge proved to be to come up with an alternative system of government that worked. It was opposition to Charles I (and not, in every quarter, opposition to the monarchy itself) that had united the differing factions and interests, but in the years that followed it was only Oliver Cromwell who held the regime together. The religious divides of the period are exemplified through the story of the Fifth Monarchist visionary Anna Trapnell. Her experiences, like those of Winstanley, demonstrate how the ‘men of property’ feared anyone who threatened the status quo, and any religious tolerance extended no further than to those whom the state considered ‘Godly’. The later Stuart paintings in the Suffolk Collection’ English Heritage Historical Review, I, 2006, pp. 62-74For me, this is history as it should be written: wide ranging, thoughtful, thought provoking and a fun read. Keay has chosen a handful of individuals to represent this period, and has made a gloriously imaginative selection. Anna is a Trustee of the Royal Collection Trust and Pilgrim Trust, a Governor of Bedales School, a Non-Executive Director of Big Yellow Group PLC and an Ambassador of the Weald & Downland Living Museum. She is also a Visiting Professor at Birmingham City University and has been awarded an Honorary Doctorate in Letters by the University of East Anglia. an exceptional book about an exceptional time… Keay brilliantly conveys what it was like to live amid the contrasts and contradictions, the heady optimism and the bleak despair, of that tumultuous age … A triumph. It is hard to imagine a better introduction to the volatile world of the 1650s’ John Adamson, author of The Noble Revolt Fans of Hilary Mantel are bound to enjoy this new biography of a figure from a fascinating period. Keay provides a lively account of the licentious Restoration court . Ambitious and scholarly . Enjoyable, and should do for the Stuarts what Mantel has done for the Tudors’ Charles II and the reconstruction of monarchy’ in Marcello Fantoni, George Gorse and Malcolm Smuts,eds., The Politics of Space: Courts in Europe and the Mediterranean, c. 1500-1750. Bulzoni, 2009
Fascinating and readable account of the turbulent years between the execution of Charles I in 1649 and the Restoration of the Stuart monarchy in 1660. Anna Keay uses short biographies of people who became public figures in that period - for example a Royalist aristocrat, a religious ‘prophetess’, a gifted and opportunistic journalist, a doctor who turned his talents to surveying - and links them to the political and military upheaval of the Interregnum.Discovering the stories of a religious group wanting to return to the land, a grand lady on the losing side holding onto her lands and titles, a newspaper man who feels so modern, and finding out a man who we should all know along side the name Cromwell.
John Bradshaw, a solicitor from Cheshire who became president of the parliamentary commission to try king Charles I in 1649. Oliver Cromwell’s Protectorate – the British nations’ only foray into republicanism – receives too little popular attention. It is often referred to obliquely as the Interregnum: a failed experiment and an interruption to the otherwise smooth course of monarchical history. The reasons for this can well be imagined. Modern-day monarchists consider the Republic – in reality a theocratic military dictatorship with no correspondence to modern democracy – a bogeyman to be brought out whenever constitutional monarchy is criticised. Modern-day republicans are understandably irritated and embarrassed that history’s best chance to permanently dissolve hereditary monarchy resulted in martial law, infighting, and – as we see in Restless Republic – a pseudo-monarchy in the form of a hereditary Protectorate. Anna Trapnel, a Puritan evangelical (Fifth Monarchist), who became politicised against Cromwell’s regime despite it allowing religious toleration, as it still didn’t go far enough The Restless Republic is the story of the extraordinary decade that followed. It takes as its guides the people who lived through those years. Among them is Anna Trapnel, the daughter of a Deptford shipwright whose visions transfixed the nation. John Bradshaw, the Cheshire lawyer who found himself trying the King. Marchamont Nedham, the irrepressible newspaper man and puppet master of propaganda. Gerrard Winstanley, who strove for a Utopia of common ownership where no one went hungry. William Petty, the precocious scientist whose mapping of Ireland prefaced the dispossession of tens of thousands. And the indomitable Countess of Derby who defended to the last the final Royalist stronghold on the Isle of Man.What did this change mean for the people of England, winners and losers in the civil war? Using a series of contemporary men and women as vantage points, The Restless Republic charts extraordinary story of the republic of Britain. Ranging from the corridors of Westminster to the common fields of England, from the radicals in power to the banished royalists and from the dexterous mandarins to the trembling religious visionaries the book will illuminate a world in which a new ideology struggled to take root in a scarred landscape. It is the story of what happened when a conservative people tried revolution.
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