A 15-month period (1655-57) of direct military government, in conjunction with Oliver Cromwell, during the Protectorate. Military rule was imposed with the help of a 'decimation tax' of 10 per cent on all royalists, and the regime imposed stringent restrictions on those it considered to be enemies of the state, as well as trying to lead a period of moral reform.
Rule of the Major-Generals
Fact of the Day
James I punished one person who had been unwilling to extend him credit by ordering the offender to attend on him - by walking behind the royal procession as they progressed from London to Carlisle (a distance of about three hundred miles).
Quote of the Day
"Total abstinence is so excellent a thing that it cannot be carried to too great an extent. In my passion for it I even carry it so far as to totally abstain from total abstinence itself.
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~ Mark Twain
On This Day
41 Claudius was proclaimed Roman Emperor by the Praetorian Guard.
1327 Edward II was deposed by his wife, Isabella, and her lover, Roger Mortimer. They replaced him with his 10 year old son, Edward III, and for three years they ruled through him.
1533 King Henry VIII secretly married the newly-pregnant Anne Boleyn, even though he was still married to Catherine of Aragon.
1554 Thomas Wyatt gathered 4000 men in Kent, starting the Wyatt Rebellion against Queen Mary and her choice of Spanish husband.
1627 Father of modern chemistry, Robert Boyle, was born in Lismore, County Waterford, Ireland.
1942 Thailand declared war on the United States and Britain following intensive bombing by the Allies.
1945 The German offensive campaign in the Ardennes, which came to be known as the Battle of the Bulge, ended in Allied victory.