The Protectorate saw various attempts, especially by Oliver Cromwell and his army allies, to use Parliament as a means to introduce radical religious reforms. These included efforts to improve the quality of the ministry and to extend liberty of conscience more widely. However, all three Protectorate Parliaments contained numerous members who sought a much more structured national church with penalties for those who refused to conform to it, and who therefore wished to frustrate the more libertarian aspects of the army's religious agenda. In the bitter debates that ensued about liberty of conscience, and particularly over the cases of John Biddle and James Nayler, the collision between Cromwell's religious vision and the attitudes and preferences of many within the Protectorate Parliaments became starkly apparent. This chapter will examine the causes and consequences of that collision, and the ways in which it destabilised the Protectorate Parliaments and forced changes within the Protectorate.

THE FIRST PROTECTORATE PARLIAMENT

The heart of the problem lay in Cromwell's desire to use a body designed as ‘the representative of the whole realm’ to advance what remained a minority agenda, ‘liberty of conscience’. In the end his wish to liberate the godly proved incompatible with the determination of many members to prevent the spread of heresies and blasphemies. The principal source of disagreement between Cromwell and a majority of members seems not to have been over whether religious reform was necessary, but over what sort of religious reform was desirable.