Commonwealth of England to them, as part of what is now referred to as the Third English Civil War. In 1653, after the forcible dissolution of the Rump Parliament, the Army Council adopted the Instrument of Government which made Oliver Cromwell Lord Protector of a united "Commonwealth of England, Scotland and Ireland", inaugurating the period now usually known as the Protectorate. After Cromwell's death, and following a brief period of rule under his son, Richard Cromwell, the Protectorate Parliament was dissolved in 1659 and the Rump Parliament recalled, the start of a process that led to the restoration of the monarchy in 1660.
Thomas Saunders (born 1626) Thomas Saunders (born 1626) Thomas Saunders (1626 – c. 1670) was an English landowner and politician who sat in the House of Commons in 1660. Saunders was the son of John Saunders of Reading and Woolstone in Berkshire (the latter now in Oxfordshire) and his wife Margaret Evelyn, daughter of John Evelyn of Godstone, Surrey. He succeeded his father in 1638 and purchased the estate of Mongewell Park in Oxfordshire, across the River Thames from Wallingford, also in Berkshire (but now in Oxfordshire). In 1660, he was elected Member of Parliament for Wallingford in a by-election to the Convention Parliament.