The Fifth Monarchists or Fifth Monarchy Men were active from 1649 to 1661 during the Interregnum, following the English Civil Wars of the 1600s. They took their name from a belief in a world ruling kingdom to be established by a returning Jesus in which the year 1666 and its numerical relationship to a passage in the Biblical Book of Revelation indicating the end of earthly rule by carnal human beings.

Brief history

The Fifth Monarchy Men were a group of believers in the geopolitical theory that four other world rulers had already come and gone according to the prophecies of the Biblical Book of Daniel chapter 2 and verse 44 regarding a prophetic dream by Nebuchadnezzar. The previous empires had been Assyrian; Persian; Grecian and Roman, The last empire would be established by the returning Jesus as king of kings and lord of lords to reign with his saints on earth for a thousand years. The Fifth Monarchy Men saw themselves as those saints of that soon to be dawning millennium.

One of the leaders of the Fifth Monarchy Men was Major-General Thomas Harrison, the son of a Newcastle-under-Lyme butcher. Other prominent members were Christopher Feake , Vavasor Powell, John Carew and John Rogers .

Current events

With the regicide of Charles I, the abolition of the House of Lords, and the establishment of first the Commonwealth and then The Protectorate of Oliver Cromwell, it was as if the slate had been wiped clean and a new form of government was waiting to be established in England. When the English Republic began to undergo a seemingly never-ending series of changes, its state of constant fluidity began to create the circumstances where the ideas of the Fifth Monarchy Men could flourish.

Compounding these current events was their timing, since the calendar year of 1666 loomed large on the near horizon. Because the number 666 had been identified in the Biblical Book of Revelation with the ultimate human despot to rule the world, but who would be replaced by the second coming of Jesus as the Messiah, it only added to the belief that the fifth monarchy was about to begin.

Political agitation

During the period of the republic many new groups emerged to agitate for further change. These were not political parties as that term is understood today, but groups clustered around one or more beliefs and some of the believers attached themselves to more than one group. The government of the day regarded all of them as agitators for change, which is how they are described within the Historical Collections of John Rushworth that document events of the early period, and by the Journals of the House of Commons which cover the period of the republic itself. Two of the better known groups from this period are the Levellers and the Diggers.

Arrest and retaliation

The arrest of Feake and Powell, two of the most violent of their number, was sufficient for a time to dampen their ardour. They had supporters in the Barebones Parliament (July-December 1653) but their political power peaked in 1653 with the Nominated Assembly , where many of the delegates were from congregations with Fifth Monarchy sympathies. They were horrified at the establishment of Cromwell's Protectorate and plotted to overthrow the regime. Two plots were uncovered and broken up in 1657 and 1659.

After the Restoration on October 14, 1660 Major-General Thomas Harrison was the first person to be found guilty of the regicide of Charles I. He had been the seventeenth of fifty nine commisioners (judges) to sign the death warrent of the king in 1649. He was the first regicide to be hanged, drawn and quartered because he was considered by the new government to still represent a real threat to the re-established order. This threat was realised when on January 6, 1661, 50 Fifth Monarchists, headed by a wine-cooper named Thomas Venner, made an effort to attain possession of London in the name of "King Jesus." Most of the fifty were either killed or taken prisoner, and on January 19 and 21, Venner and ten others were hanged, drawn and quartered for high treason.

The failure of Venner's Rising led to repressive legislation to suppress non-conformist sects. Although some physical events such as the plague and the Great Fire of London continued to encourage belief in "the end of the world" ruled by carnal human beings; the doctrine of the sect either died out, or became merged in a milder form of Millenarianism.

See also

• Religion in the United Kingdom
• English Dissenters
• John Lilburne
• Gerrard Winstanley

External links

• Fifth Monarchists or Fifth Monarchy Men

Reference

• Fifth Monarchy Men: Study in Seventeenth Century English Millenarianism by Bernard Capp ISBN 057109791X