External links
- . Dictionary of National Biography . London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1885–1900.
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John Streater (died 1687) was an English soldier, political writer and printer. An opponent of Oliver Cromwell, Streater was a "key republican critic of the regime" [1] He was a leading example of the "commonwealthmen", one division among the English republicans of the period, along with James Harrington, Edmund Ludlow, and Henry Nevile. [2]
He was in the Parliamentary forces from 1642, seeing action at the Battle of Edgehill and Battle of Newbury. [3] He served in the Parliamentary army in Ireland, as a quarter-master and engineer.
He made a direct reply in 1653, "Christ must come before Christmas, or else he will come too late", to Cromwell's supporter Thomas Harrison, who said that Cromwell sought not for himself but that "King Jesus might take the sceptre". [4] This comes from James Heath, Flagellum: or, the Life and death, birth and burial of Oliver Cromwell (1663), and is considered "rather dubious" by Austin Woolrych.
In 1654 he started a serial publication, Observations Historical, Political. and Philosophical. It ran for 11 issues, from 4 April to 4 July. It argued for annual elections. [5] Taking the form of commentary on the Politics of Aristotle, it broached many topics such as censorship, free speech and right of assembly, with views on the family and criticism of the paternalist theories of divine right. [6]
Streater has been seen as taking radical ideas, such as those suppressed with the Levellers, onto a new plane:
... Streater was making his republicanism occupy the space filled in the 1640s by Leveller ideas. The older generation of Levellers struggled to reach his position by incorporating ideas from classical republicanism. [7]
He fell into considerable trouble for his opposition to Cromwell, but found a protector in John Desborough. [8] He was arrested under a writ of Parliament, and argued a habeas corpus case, unsuccessfully, but using Sir Edward Coke's approach. [9] A pamphleteer publicised the case (1654). [10] His eventual release in early 1654 was because Parliament was dissolved. [11]
In the political confusion of 1659, he argued once more a republican line: against tweaking the Protectorate, against single-person rule, against forms of Senate or "standing council". [12] He also was commissioned as a colonel by Parliament. [13]
He published The Commonwealth of Oceana in 1656. [14]
With John Macock he styled himself a printer to Parliament in 1659 and 1660. [15] After the Restoration he became a successful commercial printer, in particular with titles by Nicholas Culpeper from the backlist of Peter Cole who committed suicide in 1665. [16] [17] He had a specific exemption from the 1662 Act regulating publishers. [18]
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The Commonwealth was the political structure during the period from 1649 to 1660 when England and Wales, later along with Ireland and Scotland, were governed as a republic after the end of the Second English Civil War and the trial and execution of Charles I. The republic's existence was declared through "An Act declaring England to be a Commonwealth", adopted by the Rump Parliament on 19 May 1649. Power in the early Commonwealth was vested primarily in the Parliament and a Council of State. During the period, fighting continued, particularly in Ireland and Scotland, between the parliamentary forces and those opposed to them, in the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland and the Anglo-Scottish war of 1650–1652.
The Fifth Monarchists, or Fifth Monarchy Men, were a Protestant sect which advocated Millennialist views, active during the 1649 to 1660 Commonwealth of England. Named after a prophecy in the Book of Daniel that Four Monarchies would precede the Fifth or establishment of the Kingdom of God on earth, the group was one of a number of Nonconformist sects that emerged during the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. Perhaps its best known adherent was Major-General Thomas Harrison, executed in October 1660 as a regicide, while Oliver Cromwell was a sympathiser until 1653.
John Milton was an English poet and intellectual. His 1667 epic poem Paradise Lost, written in blank verse and including over ten chapters, was written in a time of immense religious flux and political upheaval. It addressed the fall of man, including the temptation of Adam and Eve by the fallen angel Satan and God's expulsion of them from the Garden of Eden. Paradise Lost elevated Milton's reputation as one of history's greatest poets. He also served as a civil servant for the Commonwealth of England under its Council of State and later under Oliver Cromwell.
Oliver Cromwell was an English statesman, politician, and soldier, widely regarded as one of the most important figures in the history of the British Isles. He came to prominence during the 1639 to 1653 Wars of the Three Kingdoms, initially as a senior commander in the Parliamentarian army and latterly as a politician. A leading advocate of the execution of Charles I in January 1649, which led to the establishment of The Protectorate, he ruled as Lord Protector from December 1653 until his death in September 1658. Cromwell remains a controversial figure due to his use of the army to acquire political power, and the brutality of his 1649 campaign in Ireland.
John Lilburne, also known as Freeborn John, was an English political Leveller before, during and after the English Civil Wars 1642–1650. He coined the term "freeborn rights", defining them as rights with which every human being is born, as opposed to rights bestowed by government or human law. In his early life he was a Puritan, though towards the end of his life he became a Quaker. His works have been cited in opinions by the United States Supreme Court.
The Protectorate, officially the Commonwealth of England, Scotland and Ireland, is the period from 16 December 1653 to 25 May 1659 during which England, Wales, Scotland, Ireland and associated territories were joined together in the Commonwealth of England, governed by a Lord Protector. It began when Barebone's Parliament was dismissed, and the Instrument of Government appointed Oliver Cromwell Lord Protector of the Commonwealth. Cromwell died in September 1658 and was succeeded by his son Richard Cromwell.
John Lambert was an English Parliamentarian general and politician. Widely regarded as one of the most talented soldiers of the period, he fought throughout the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, and was largely responsible for victory in the 1650 to 1651 Scottish campaign.
The Rump Parliament was the English Parliament after Colonel Thomas Pride commanded soldiers to purge the Long Parliament, on 6 December 1648, of those members hostile to the Grandees' intention to try King Charles I for high treason.
John Dixwell, alias James Davids, c. 1607 to 18 March 1689, was an English lawyer, republican politician and regicide. Born in Warwickshire, during the Wars of the Three Kingdoms he held various administrative positions in Kent on behalf of Parliament, and approved the Execution of Charles I in January 1649. Under the Commonwealth, he served as Governor of Dover Castle, and was a member of the English Council of State.
The Good Old Cause was the name given, retrospectively, by the soldiers of the New Model Army, to the complex of reasons that motivated their fight on behalf of the Parliament of England.
Major-General Robert Overtonc. 1609 to 1678, was a member of the landed gentry from Yorkshire, who fought for Parliament during the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, and reached the rank of Major General in 1652. A committed republican and religious Independent who sympathised with the Fifth Monarchists, like others with similar views he opposed the establishment of The Protectorate, and was held in the Tower of London from 1655 to 1659.
The Interregnum was the period between the execution of Charles I on 30 January 1649 and the arrival of his son Charles II in London on 29 May 1660 which marked the start of the Restoration. During the Interregnum, England was under various forms of republican government.
The Commonwealth of Oceana, published 1656, is a work of political philosophy by the English politician and essayist James Harrington (1611–1677). The unsuccessful first attempt to publish Oceana was officially censored by Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell (1599–1658). It was eventually published, with a dedication to Cromwell.
Henry Robinson was an English merchant and writer. He is best known for a work on religious toleration, Liberty of Conscience from 1644.
Politics were an important part of John Milton's life. Milton enjoyed little wide-scale early success, either in prose or poetry, until the production of his later, controversial political works starting with The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates and Eikonoklastes.
William Mew (Mewe) was an English clergyman, a member of the Westminster Assembly. He is known also for a drama, Pseudomagia, and for the contribution to beekeeping of the design for a transparent hive.
Christopher Feake (1612–1683) was an English Independent minister and Fifth-monarchy man. He was imprisoned for maligning Oliver Cromwell in his preaching. He is a leading example of someone sharing both Leveller views and the millenarian approach of the Fifth Monarchists. His violence was exclusively verbal, but he wrote against the Quakers.
Edmund Chillenden was an English soldier, known as an agitator and theological writer. At different times he was a Leveller and a Fifth Monarchist.
John Clarke, also known as John Clark, John Clerk, and John Clerke, was an English politician and Justice of the Peace who sat in the House of Commons from 1653 through 1660, and was a colonel in the Parliamentary army between 1651 and 1659.
John Hall (1627–1656), also known as John Hall of Durham, was an English poet, essayist and pamphleteer of the Commonwealth period. After a short period of adulation at university, he became a writer in the Parliamentary cause and Hartlib Circle member.
