Why Choosing the Supposedly Correct Side is Difficult, Part 4

Charles I is executed. The English Civil War continues...

Oliver Cromwell: Somewhat less nutty

than his supporters.

English Civil War, Part II

Cromwell takes over as Lord Protector. After which, the Congregationalists (little personal churches) and Presbyterians (national church) get together in Parliament to pass as many laws as they can think of telling people how to think and behave.

Interestingly enough, many of these laws are rarely enforced since Cromwell's cronies (judges, magistrates, etc.) are far more interested in getting paid than telling people how to live.

Cromwell dies. The world falls apart. England's king--Charles I's son--is invited to return. He is understandably pro-Catholic. Would any prince continue to support the religious fanatics that executed his dad? Okay, some of them would; Charles II doesn't. 

Accusations and conspiracy theories and paranoia and hysteria rampage on...until the English get sick of the whole thing and ask William and Mary to step in. They do. Separation of church and state moves remorselessly and inevitably forward.

Who Won?

No monarch was ever this interesting.

The Presbyterians and the Congregationalist didn't exactly come out ahead. England stayed mostly Protestant but it wasn't a particular type of Protestantism (high church Anglicanism is the religion of the monarch and it's...not any particular type of Protestantism). 

Catholics eventually made a come back. True diversity (not current faux "the people in this group CLAIM diverse beliefs while all spouting exactly the same dogma" diversity) flourished. 

In the end, one can believe that the ordinary person who thought that God was loving and that executing kings was bad and that somebody should have paid the army and that going to the theatre is good (however much the plays might offend somebody's sensibilities): that person might have come out ahead in the long run.

Or at least that person's grandchild--if one starts with the upheaval of Henry VIII's break with the Catholic Church all the way to the Glorious Reformation when the boring kings and queens arrived in England. There were probably a few peaceful decades in there somewhere.