SECTION IX
THE INTERREGNUM

The documents of the years 1642-60, though relatively few, are entitled to 
occupy a section by themselves because they represent a period unique in 
English history. Civil conflict and revolutionary government mark off the 
Interregnum as a gap in an otherwise unbroken story of constitutional 
growth, and impart to the pertinent documents a novelty that will be obvious 
even to the beginning student.

The war not only compelled the adoption of such practical measures as those 
placed under nos. 100 and 101, but also inspired the condemnation of the 
king and the abolition of the monarchical system (nos. 104, 106, 107). At 
the same time these revolutionary enactments called forth arguments for 
their justification and induced the parliamentary leaders to make noteworthy 
experiments in constructive reform. For the first and only time in English 
history, the state was given a written constitution — the Instrument of 
Government, led up to by a number of suggestions (among them nos. 102, 103, 
105) and eventually amended by the Humble Petition and Advice in 1657. 
Short-lived as it was, this work of political innovation deserves careful 
study — if for no other reason, because it somewhat anticipated such 
measures as the great Reform Act of 1832. To the Commonwealth and 
Protectorate were also due the first governmental union of England, Wales, 
Scotland, and Ireland; the first establishment within them of even partial 
religious toleration; and the first practical recognition of economic 
solidarity between the mother country and the colonies — by the Navigation 
Act of 1651. Therefore, when viewed in perspective from the present day, the 
acts of the Interregnum have their place in the institutional development of 
England.

By the year 1642 it was already an established tradition for Englishmen to 
be interested in all phases of government. The Interregnum, being an age of 
violent partisanship and of revolutionary change, naturally roused that 
interest to a new height. The result was a profusion of memoirs, diaries, 
books, and pamphlets of all sorts. Among them are many works — especially 
those of John Milton, James Harrington, and Thomas Hobbes — that occupy 
commanding places in the history of political thought.

Much of this literature, as well as the contemporary activity in practical 
government and administration, is treated in the following monographs: E. 
Jenks, The Constitutional Experiments of the Commonwealth; T. C. Pease, The 
Leveller Movement; G. P. Gooch, English Democratic Ideas in the Seventeenth 
Century; and C. H. Firth, The House of Lords during the Civil War. The 
constitutional history of the Interregnum also falls within the scope of 
more general books, such as Gardiner's History of the Great Civil War and 
History of the Commonwealth and Protectorate; Firth's Last Years of the 
Protectorate; and the numerous biographies of Oliver Cromwell. The two 
standard collections of pertinent sources are Gardiner, Constitutional 
Documents of the Puritan Revolution, and Firth and Rait, Acts and Ordinances 
of the Interregnum.