The Good Old Cause was the name given, retrospectively, by the soldiers of the

New Model Army The New Model Army or New Modelled Army was a standing army formed in 1645 by the Parliamentarians during the First English Civil War, then disbanded after the Stuart Restoration in 1660. It differed from other armies employed in the 1639 t ...

, to the complex of reasons that motivated their fight on behalf of the

Parliament of England The Parliament of England was the legislature of the Kingdom of England from the 13th century until 1707 when it was replaced by the Parliament of Great Britain. Parliament evolved from the Great Council of England, great council of Lords Spi ...

. Their struggle was against King Charles I and the

Royalist A royalist supports a particular monarch as head of state for a particular kingdom, or of a particular dynastic claim. In the abstract, this position is royalism. It is distinct from monarchism, which advocates a monarchical system of gove ...

s during the

English Civil War The English Civil War or Great Rebellion was a series of civil wars and political machinations between Cavaliers, Royalists and Roundhead, Parliamentarians in the Kingdom of England from 1642 to 1651. Part of the wider 1639 to 1653 Wars of th ...

; they continued to support the

English Commonwealth The Commonwealth of England was the political structure during the period from 1649 to 1660 when Kingdom of England, England and Wales, later along with Kingdom of Ireland, Ireland and Kingdom of Scotland, Scotland, were governed as a republi ...

between 1649 and 1660.

Oliver Cromwell Oliver Cromwell (25 April 15993 September 1658) was an English statesman, politician and soldier, widely regarded as one of the most important figures in British history. He came to prominence during the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, initially ...

wrote, in a letter to Sir William Spring in 1643, of the archetypal plain, russet-coated captain who embodies the ideal of republican soldiery (many of those who supported the Good Old Cause were also

Independent Independent or Independents may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Artist groups * Independents (artist group), a group of modernist painters based in Pennsylvania, United States * Independentes (English: Independents), a Portuguese artist ...

s who advocated local congregational control of religious and church matters).

1659–1660

Those who disagreed with expedient political compromises made during the period of

the Protectorate The Protectorate, officially the Commonwealth of England, Scotland and Ireland, was the English form of government lasting from 16 December 1653 to 25 May 1659, under which the kingdoms of Kingdom of England, England, Kingdom of Scotland, Scotl ...

, went back to the Army's own declarations during the wars: to republican pamphlets like those produced by

John Lilburne John Lilburne (c. 161429 August 1657), 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 e ...

, Marchamont Nedham and

John Milton John Milton (9 December 1608 – 8 November 1674) was an English poet, polemicist, and civil servant. His 1667 epic poem ''Paradise Lost'' was written in blank verse and included 12 books, written in a time of immense religious flux and politic ...

. With their discontent, they imagined that there had been a moment of revolutionary purity when all these writers had agreed on something intrinsically republican and good, this entity – shifting depending upon the writer – was often labelled the "Good Old Cause". After the death of

the phrase came into use gradually, passing to and fro in documents and speeches. By April 1659 and for months afterwards it was frequently heard in general discourse and every second or third pamphlet in the booksellers' shops had "The Good Old Cause" on its title-page or running through its text. The phrase was open to interpretation, but in 1659 to its exponents it meant the pure Republican constitution which had been founded on the Regicide and which lasted until Cromwell's dissolution of the

Rump Parliament The Rump Parliament describes the members of the Long Parliament who remained in session after Colonel Thomas Pride, on 6 December 1648, commanded his soldiers to Pride's Purge, purge the House of Commons of those Members of Parliament, members ...

on 20 April 1653. It proclaimed that Cromwell's interim dictatorship and Protectorate had been an interruption of the natural course of things, dexterously leaving it an open question whether that interruption had been necessary or justifiable, but calling on all men, now that Cromwell was dead and his effectiveness gone with him, to regard his rule as exceptional and extraordinary, and to revert to the old

Commonwealth A commonwealth is a traditional English term for a political community founded for the common good. The noun "commonwealth", meaning "public welfare, general good or advantage", dates from the 15th century. Originally a phrase (the common-wealth ...

. In April 1660 General John Lambert tried to raise an army against the restoration of

The Crown The Crown is a political concept used in Commonwealth realms. Depending on the context used, it generally refers to the entirety of the State (polity), state (or in federal realms, the relevant level of government in that state), the executive ...

in favour of the Commonwealth by issuing a proclamation calling on all supporters of the "Good Old Cause" to rally on the battlefield of Edgehill, but he was arrested before arriving at the old battlefield and gathering enough forces to threaten General George Monck, the power behind the restoration movement. In October the same year Daniel Axtell, the officer who had commanded the guard during the Trial of Charles I, went to his execution unrepentant declaring that "If I had a thousand lives, I could lay them all down for the ood OldCause".When asked what he meant by the Cause, Axtell replied "I mean that Cause which we were encouraged to, and engaged in under the parliament, which was for common right and freedom, and against the Surplice and Common-Prayer Book: and I tell you, that Surplice and Common-Prayer Book shall not stand long in England, for it is - not of God" Similarly, Algernon Sidney, before his execution for allegedly being involved in the Rye House Plot in 1683, thanked God for allowing him to die "for that oodOld Cause in which I was from my youth engaged".

Later influence

The "Good Old Cause" became, in the hands of radicals in the 18th and 19th centuries, one of the main supports to agitation within

England England is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is located on the island of Great Britain, of which it covers about 62%, and List of islands of England, more than 100 smaller adjacent islands. It ...

by linking their cause to the cause of the English Civil War radicals. This memory was sustained by the publication of various tracts about the civil war across the 18th Century — Edmund Ludlow's ''Memoirs'' in 1701 by John Toland for instance that sought to radicalise the memory of the English Civil War. Work on the republican imagination includes Jonathan Scott on Algernon Sydney and seventeenth-century republicanism, Nigel Smith on the radical John Streater, and Blair Worden on the memory of the Civil Wars., mentions several works which Blair Worden contributed to. In other he notes that Wotton has written about Algernon Sidney (in ''The Commonwealth Kidney of Algernon Sidney'', JBS 24 (1985), 1–40) and about Edmund Ludlow (in ''Whig History and Puritan Politics: The Memoirs of Edmund Ludlow Revisited'', Historical Research 75 (2002), 209–37).

Notes

References

* * * * * * Attribution: *

1659–1660

Later influence

See also

Notes

References

Further reading