The Period of the Republic of England

The English Republic (Commonwealth of England) is portrayed as a period of extraordinary national power followed by a rapid restoration of royal authority and public deference to monarchy. The novel’s historical account sets the republic’s military and maritime reach against the political reversal of 1660, while Linnæus, Lord Clancharlie’s continued allegiance to republican principles gives that reversal a personal cost: exile, dispossession, and ridicule.

Power and international reach

The account presents the republic as having emerged from internal political upheaval with England’s influence greatly expanded. It credits the government with strengthening Britain’s position against European rivals: Germany had been overcome with the aid of the Thirty Years’ War, France humbled amid the Fronde, and Spain weakened with the assistance of the Duke of Braganza. Oliver Cromwell is described as having checked Mazarin, while treaties placed the Protector’s name above that of the King of France. These claims establish the period’s governing contrast: republican rule is associated not with national weakness but with a state able to make its power felt abroad.

That power is especially visible at sea. The account recalls attacks on Algiers and Tunis, the conquest of Jamaica, the humbling of Lisbon, and the extension of English influence in Barcelona and Portugal. It also describes the English fleet’s victory over Martin Happertz van Tromp on 10 August 1653, and represents England as having cleared Spanish, Dutch, and Venetian naval power from different seas. The Navigation Act and England’s maritime reach are presented as mutually reinforcing: possession of the sea-coast and command of ocean routes made the republic a formidable commercial and political power. In this retrospective telling, the ocean is not merely a setting but the means by which England asserted its standing in the world.

Republican government and liberty

The republic’s significance in the narrative is not confined to war or commerce. Cromwell’s stated ambition, as recounted in the book, was for the Republic of England to be respected like the Republic of Rome. The passage also associates republican rule with freedom of speech and of the press: people could speak publicly and print without control or censorship. Its account of the period therefore joins external strength to a domestic political claim, setting the republic against the established order of European monarchy, which the Stuarts had formed part of.

The novel does not treat the restoration of the republic as an uncomplicated triumph. It presents its achievements through a retrospective voice that soon turns to the reception of those achievements after the monarchy returns. This structure makes the period’s political meaning depend partly on what follows: the same changes once associated with liberty and national power are later recast as errors, while royal government is praised as a return to order. The shift in public judgment becomes part of the history being told, not a neutral measure of the republic’s record.

The reversal of 1660

The year 1660 is identified as a decisive turning point. The narrative describes a country eager to leave republican politics behind, welcoming Charles II’s Declaration of Breda and treating the restoration of royalty as a recovery from political disorder. The accompanying account of national feeling is pointedly ironic: people are represented as dismissing ideas such as rights, liberty, progress, and citizen participation, preferring to leave government to a prince and devote themselves to private enjoyment. The narrator’s irony draws attention to how quickly political convictions can be redescribed as folly when power changes hands.

The restoration is also presented as a reordering of cultural judgment. In the account, Dryden is admired while Shakespeare is despised, and Milton is treated with contempt. The arrangement of literary reputations is set beside the new political hierarchy: Charles II stands above Cromwell, just as Dryden is placed above Shakespeare. The pairing suggests that the return to royal government is narrated as a return to supposedly correct taste as well as to political order. The passage exposes the interests behind that claim by presenting it as the confident language of people celebrating the settlement that has restored their preferred authorities.

Linnæus, Lord Clancharlie and republican allegiance

The period’s political reversal is embodied in Linnæus, Lord Clancharlie, who remains abroad rather than submit to the restored order. The narrative recalls the declaration drawn up by Parliament in 1650, in which a person promised fidelity to the republic without king, sovereign, or lord. Linnæus, Lord Clancharlie’s adherence to that declaration is given as the reason he lives outside the kingdom. His position is therefore tied to a specific political commitment, not simply to private dislike of the new regime.

The passage places that commitment against the efforts of others to reinterpret it. Some had supposed that Linnæus, Lord Clancharlie, was only pretending to belong to the republican side so that he could undermine it on behalf of the king. When he persists in republicanism, observers instead call him stubborn, foolish, or a traitor to his class. The narrator emphasizes the imbalance underlying those judgments: he has abandoned the winning side for the defeated, losing political privileges, title, country, and domestic home without gaining any material advantage. His course makes the period’s central reversal personal. What the restored order calls disloyalty is also fidelity to the people and principles that the new settlement has displaced.