7 Oliver Cromwell 7acknowledged its new king. The campaign proved diffi-
cult, but he defeated the Scots with an army inferior in
numbers at Dunbar on September 3, 1650. A year later,
when Charles II and the Scots advanced into England,
Cromwell destroyed that army at Worcester, the battle
that ended the civil wars.
Cromwell became lord protector, ruling the three
nations of England, Scotland, and Ireland with the advice
and help of a council of state and a Parliament. Before
Cromwell summoned his first Protectorate Parliament on
Sept. 3, 1654, he and his Council of State passed more than
80 ordinances embodying a constructive domestic policy.
His aim was to reform the law, to set up a Puritan Church,
to permit toleration outside it, to promote education, and
to decentralize administration. In spite of resistance from
some members of his council, Cromwell readmitted Jews
into the country. He concerned himself with education,
founded a college at Durham, and saw to it that grammar
schools flourished as they had never done before. In for-
eign affairs, Cromwell raised his country’s status once
more to that of a leading European power and concluded
the Anglo-Dutch War.
When Cromwell’s first Parliament met, he had justi-
fied the establishment of the Protectorate as providing for
“healing and settling” the nation after the civil wars. A rad-
ical in some directions, Cromwell now adopted a
conservative attitude because he feared that the over-
throw of the monarchy might lead to political collapse.
Vociferous republicans, who became leaders of this newly
elected Parliament, were unwilling to concentrate on leg-
islation, questioning instead the whole basis of Cromwell’s
government. He required all members of Parliament, if
they wished to keep their seats, to sign an engagement to
be faithful to a protector and Parliament and to promise