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The Fifth Monarchy Men: Politics and the Millennium

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Leo F. Solt
Leo F. Solt
Affiliation:
Indiana University
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Extract

Of the Puritan sects which proliferated in Cromwellian England, the Fifth Monarchy Men were distinctive because of the extreme political implications which they drew from their deep commitment to millennialism. Sometimes called “millenaries” by their fellow countrymen, or “anabaptists” by continental observers, this sects wanted to set up the kingdom of Jesus Christ for His thousand-year rule by the Saints. Its members hoped to realize their quest for a religious utopia by making the old kingdoms of the Stuarts into new saintly kingdoms of the Lord. In order to carry out this idea, several of the leading Fifth Monarchy spokesmen urged Oliver Cromwell to convoke a “Jewish Sanhedrin” or Parliament of Saints which first assembled in June, 1653.

Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 30 , Issue 3 , September 1961 , pp. 314 - 324
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1961

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References

1. The starting point for a treatment of the Fifth Monarchy Men is the book by Brown, Louise Fargo, The Political Activities of the Baptists and Fifth Monarchy Men in England During the Interregnum (Washington, 1912).Google Scholar

2. On the quest for a religious utopia see Mannheim, Karl, Ideology and Utopia, translated by Wirth, Louis and Shils, Edward (New York, n.d.), pp. 211 ffGoogle Scholar; Niebuhr, H. Richard, The Kingdom of God in America (New York, 1937), p. 49Google Scholar; Tuveson, Ernest L., Millennium and Utopia (Berkeloy, California, 1949).Google Scholar

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20. “But one word more, and that is this; That though it is true, that usually Saints know the voice of Christ, and are able to say certainly, this is (or this is not) the voice of Christ. I say, though it be thus usually with them, yet there are some cases, in which they are uncertaine; and some truths about which they can neither say, that it is truth, or that it is not truth” (Cary, op. cit., p. 47).

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