January 1660A broad movement for a free parliament unites royalists, Presbyterians, the apprentices of London, and the only coherent army left in England.
December 1659Assailed on multiple fronts, the Committee of Safety simply dissolves. Without any other immediate options, England (for the third time) turns to the Rump.
1659Having run out of ideas, England once again turns to the men of the Rump parliament, who Oliver Cromwell had banished from Westminster six years earlier.
January 1658Oliver Cromwell (who is the Lord Protector, definitely not the King) seeks to control the House of Commons through the new "Other House" (which is definitely not the House of Lords).
1657Thirty years after the Duke of Buckingham's French alliance failed in spectacular fashion, Oliver Cromwell and the Protectorate once again outdo their Stuart predecessors.
1657Rival Cromwellian factions in parliament (who had disagreed on just about everything so far) once again split on a final question - whether to make the Lord Protector a King.
1657The Second Protectorate Parliament gathers, but rather than heeding Cromwell's call to confirm the existing constitution, the men at Westminster re-open fundamental questions of religion and money.
1656A new radical religious group (the Quakers) suffers an internal power struggle, which threatens to de-stabilize the new parliament gathering at Westminster.
1656It's election season for the Second Protectorate Parliament, and English voters use the opportunity to contemplate the meaning of republicanism, and how to reconcile liberty in Britain with slavery in the New World.
1656While Oliver Cromwell and his friends re-make the English state, a collection of eccentric academics and amateur enthusiasts re-make the field of natural philosophy.
1656The Lord Protector, an Amsterdam Rabbi, and a merchant in the underground Jewish community of London seek to reverse a 350 year old ban on Jews in England.
1654-5The Protectorate state draws up plans for the most ambitious amphibious campaign in English history, and the first step in conquering a global empire.
Spring 1655An underground network of royalists seek to take advantage of instability within the Protectorate regime, but find that they are hampered by internal divisions of their own.