The Protectorate The Protectorate The Protectorate was the period during the Commonwealth (or, to monarchists, the Interregnum) when England and Wales, Ireland and Scotland were governed by a Lord Protector as a republic. The Protectorate began in 1653 when, following the dissolution of the Rump Parliament and then Barebone's Parliament, Oliver Cromwell was appointed Lord Protector of the Commonwealth under the terms of the Instrument of Government. In 1659 the Protectorate Parliament was dissolved by the Committee of Safety as Richard Cromwell, who had succeeded his father as Lord Protector, was unable to keep control of the Parliament and the Army. This
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.