Lesson Plan: Tumbledown Dick

A teaching companion to the Time Rhymes story on the Cromwellian Protectorate (1653-1659), the succession of Richard Cromwell on 3 September 1658 and his deposition by the New Model Army 264 days later, and the parallel succession of Mojtaba Khamenei to the Supreme Leadership of the Islamic Republic of Iran on 9 March 2026 under pressure from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Designed for upper-secondary or first-year undergraduate use in courses on early-modern English political history, comparative constitutional history, contemporary Iran, or the political theology of clerical and republican regimes.

Learning objectives

By the end of this lesson, students will be able to:

1. Reconstruct the chronology of the Cromwellian Protectorate from Oliver Cromwell's elevation as Lord Protector (16 December 1653) through his refusal of the crown (13 April 1657), Richard Cromwell's succession (3 September 1658), Richard's resignation (25 May 1659), and the Restoration of Charles II (29 May 1660).

1. Explain Khomeini's doctrine of velayat-e faqih (the guardianship of the Islamic jurist) as set out in his nineteen 1970 Najaf lectures, and the explicit anti-monarchical commitment of the 1979 Iranian Revolution.

1. Compare the structural function of the New Model Army in the deposition of Richard Cromwell with the structural function of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in the elevation of Mojtaba Khamenei.

1. Evaluate whether the Iranian succession of 9 March 2026 should be read as a Cromwell-style transitional moment, as a Romanov-style consolidation, or as something structurally novel.

Section 1: The English Commonwealth

The English Commonwealth was declared on 19 May 1649, four months after the execution of King Charles I on 30 January 1649. It was the only avowedly republican regime in English history. After four years of unsettled rule by the Rump Parliament, Oliver Cromwell dissolved the Rump on 20 April 1653 and assumed personal authority. On 16 December 1653 he was sworn in as Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland and Ireland under the Instrument of Government.

Discussion:

• The Instrument of Government (December 1653) was the first written constitution in English history. Read its text alongside the Humble Petition and Advice (1657). What changed in three and a half years, and why?

• Read Christopher Hill's God's Englishman: Oliver Cromwell and the English Revolution (1970) on the political and religious tensions within the Protectorate. How seriously did Cromwell's regime take its own republican principles?

• The execution of Charles I was the founding regicide of the Commonwealth. Read C. V. Wedgwood's A Coffin for King Charles (1964) on the trial and execution. To what extent was the execution itself a kind of constitutional refoundation?

Section 2: Oliver Cromwell refuses the crown

In February 1657 the Second Protectorate Parliament drafted the Humble Petition and Advice, offering Oliver Cromwell the crown of England, the right to nominate his successor, and a new Other House (a quasi-House of Lords). Cromwell thought about the offer for two months. On 13 April 1657, in a hall at Whitehall, he refused the title of King. He told the parliamentarians: "I would not seek to set up that which Providence hath destroyed, and laid in the dust." Three weeks later, on 8 May 1657, he accepted a revised version of the Petition without the title of King but with all the substantive prerogatives, including the right to nominate his successor. He selected his eldest surviving son, Richard.

Discussion:

• Why did Cromwell refuse the title of King but accept its substance? Read Roger Howell, Cromwell (1977) and Blair Worden, The Rump Parliament (1974). How important was the title itself, separate from the powers it carried?

• Why did Cromwell nominate his son rather than a senior military commander (Fleetwood, Lambert, or Monck)? Compare with the way Khomeini nominated Khamenei in 1989 rather than a member of his own family.

• The Humble Petition's right of nomination meant that the Protectorship had become, in everything but its name, an elective hereditary office. Read S. R. Gardiner's History of the Commonwealth and Protectorate on the 1657 settlement. Was the Protectorate by 1658 already a monarchy in everything but name?

Section 3: Richard Cromwell's 264 days

Oliver Cromwell died on 3 September 1658 at Whitehall Palace, aged fifty-nine. Richard Cromwell took office as Lord Protector the same day, aged thirty-one. He had no military command, no political base, and no record of his own. The New Model Army, the institution Oliver had used to crush the king, regarded the son as an inadequate inheritance. On 6 April 1659 the army's general council of officers at Wallingford House presented a petition demanding higher taxes. On 12 April Parliament attempted to impeach Major-General William Boteler. The army interpreted the impeachment as a civilian attempt to dismantle military authority. On 22 April the army dissolved Richard's Parliament. On 7 May the army recalled the Rump Parliament that Oliver had himself dissolved six years earlier. On 25 May 1659, after the Rump agreed to pay his debts and provide a pension, Richard Cromwell delivered a formal letter resigning as Lord Protector. He had ruled for 264 days. The Royalist pamphleteers gave him the nickname Tumbledown Dick.

Discussion:

• Why was Richard Cromwell unable to command the loyalty of the New Model Army? Read Austin Woolrych, Britain in Revolution 1625-1660 (2002), Chapter 23, on the political collapse of the Protectorate.

• Compare Richard Cromwell's lack of military command with Mojtaba Khamenei's lack of religious credentials. Both inherited an office for which they were structurally underqualified. What does the underqualified-successor problem tell us about anti-monarchical regimes?

• The Rump Parliament's recall on 7 May 1659 effectively returned the constitution to its 1653 form. Was this a restoration of the Commonwealth or the beginning of its dissolution? Read Ronald Hutton, The Restoration: A Political and Religious History of England and Wales 1658-1667 (1985).

Section 4: The Restoration

Eleven months after Richard's resignation, General George Monck, the parliamentary commander of the New Model Army in Scotland who had spent the previous year quietly negotiating with the exiled Stuart court at Breda, marched his Coldstream Regiment of Foot from Scotland into London. He secured the capital in early February 1660 and convened the Convention Parliament. The Declaration of Breda, issued by the exiled Charles II on 4 April 1660, promised a general pardon, religious toleration, payment of the army's arrears, and the settlement of land disputes by Parliament. The Convention Parliament invited Charles II to return. On 29 May 1660, Charles II re-entered London on his thirtieth birthday. The English Commonwealth was over.

Discussion:

• Read the Declaration of Breda and the Convention Parliament's resolution of 8 May 1660 declaring that Charles II had reigned since the moment of his father's death. How did the Restoration handle the eleven-year hiatus, constitutionally?

• Compare General Monck's role with the role the IRGC may yet play in Iran. Both are armies that built their legitimacy on the destruction of the previous monarchy; both have, or had, the structural capacity to restore it. Read John Buchan's Oliver Cromwell (1934) on Monck and Tim Harris's Restoration (2005).

• The Stuart restoration produced a far less absolute monarchy than the Stuart kingship before 1649. Read Mark Knights, Politics and Opinion in Crisis 1678-81 (1994) on the post-Restoration constitution. What had the Commonwealth changed permanently, even though it failed institutionally?

Section 5: Khomeini's doctrine

Between 21 January and 8 February 1970, while exiled in the Iraqi shrine city of Najaf, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini delivered nineteen lectures to his students on velayat-e faqih (the guardianship of the Islamic jurist). The lectures were transcribed by his students and published as Islamic Government: Governance of the Jurist. The book argued that political authority in an Islamic state belonged not to a hereditary monarch but to the most learned clerics, selected by other clerics on the basis of scholarship and moral standing. Monarchy, Khomeini argued explicitly, was a "system of unbelief." The book became the founding text of the 1979 revolution that overthrew the Pahlavi dynasty.

Discussion:

• Read selected lectures from Islamic Government: Governance of the Jurist (the Iran Chamber Society translation is widely available). How is the religious authority of the faqih distinct from monarchical authority? Why is the distinction load-bearing for the Islamic Republic's claim to legitimacy?

• Khomeini's earlier 1941/1943 book Secrets Revealed (Kashf al-Asrar) had endorsed a more limited role for the clergy and had not called for an Islamic government in the velayat-e faqih sense. Read Hamid Algar's commentaries on the doctrinal evolution. How did Khomeini's thought change between 1943 and 1970, and why?

• The 1979 Iranian Constitution institutionalised velayat-e faqih in Articles 5 and 107. Read those articles and the 1989 amendments. How well does the constitution accommodate (a) succession from a Supreme Leader to a non-relative chosen on religious merit (Khomeini to Khamenei, 1989), and (b) succession from a Supreme Leader to his own son (Ali Khamenei to Mojtaba, 2026)?

Section 6: The 2026 succession

Ali Khamenei was assassinated on 28 February 2026 during the 2026 Iran war. From 3 to 8 March 2026 the Assembly of Experts held a five-day election under what Iran International described as "repeated contacts and psychological and political pressure" from IRGC commanders. On 9 March 2026 Mojtaba Khamenei, the son of Ali Khamenei, was announced as the third Supreme Leader and elevated to the rank of grand ayatollah, even though his religious credentials had not previously qualified him for the rank. Ali Khamenei had reportedly opposed his son's succession for decades, fearing it would antagonise parts of the religious and political establishment that categorically reject hereditary or dynastic succession. On 11 May 2026 Mojtaba made his first public appearance since the war began, issuing "new and decisive directives" for military operations.

Discussion:

• Map the structural similarities with the Cromwellian succession. Both regimes were founded on explicit anti-monarchical doctrine. In both, the founder's chosen successor either is or becomes the founder's relative. In both, a praetorian army (the New Model Army; the IRGC) plays the decisive role in maintaining or threatening the regime.

• Map the structural disanalogies. Oliver Cromwell designated Richard. Ali Khamenei opposed Mojtaba's succession; the elevation happened despite his objection, after his death. The Cromwellian Protectorate lasted six years; the Islamic Republic has lasted forty-seven. Richard Cromwell faced an army that had its own institutional interest in returning to constitutional government; Mojtaba Khamenei faces an army whose institutional interest is in keeping him in office.

• Reza Pahlavi, the exiled crown prince, lives in the United States and has set out four principles for a transitional Iran in a March 2026 60 Minutes interview. Compare his position with that of Charles II in exile at Breda in 1659-60. What are the structural conditions for restoration, and which of them apply in 2026?

Section 7: The closing question

The Time Rhymes story closes: "The pamphleteer who chose the words Tumbledown Dick did not know that the King would land at Dover within twelve months, and that the Commonwealth would end within thirteen. The pamphleteer was guessing. The guess was right."

Discussion (closing):

• Counterfactual: if Oliver Cromwell had nominated Lambert or Fleetwood rather than his son, would the Protectorate have survived past 1659? If the Assembly of Experts had elected a different cleric (Mohammad Mojtaba Eslami of Mashhad; Sadeq Larijani; another candidate) rather than Mojtaba in March 2026, what would the structural position of the Islamic Republic look like?

• The Cromwellian Protectorate is sometimes taught as an example of the impossibility of republican rule in a society without a strong republican tradition. Iran's Islamic Republic has lasted forty-seven years and has developed institutional and ideological depth that the Protectorate did not. Is the Cromwell parallel the right one? Or is the Romanov 1913 Tercentenary parallel a better one?

• If you had to write the analogous closing question for a future Time Rhymes story written in 2076, what would it say?

Suggested further reading

The English Commonwealth and Protectorate:

• Austin Woolrych, Britain in Revolution 1625-1660 (2002)

• Christopher Hill, God's Englishman: Oliver Cromwell and the English Revolution (1970)

• Blair Worden, The Rump Parliament (1974) and The English Civil Wars 1640-1660 (2009)

• Ronald Hutton, The Restoration: A Political and Religious History of England and Wales 1658-1667 (1985)

• C. V. Wedgwood, A Coffin for King Charles: The Trial and Execution of Charles I (1964)

Richard Cromwell:

• Earl M. Hause, Tumble-Down Dick: The Fall of the House of Cromwell (1972)

• The Cromwell Association, biographical resources at cromwell-museum.org

Khomeini and the Islamic Republic:

• Ruhollah Khomeini, Islamic Government: Governance of the Jurist (1970)

• Hamid Algar, Roots of the Islamic Revolution (1983)

• Said Amir Arjomand, After Khomeini: Iran Under His Successors (2009)

The 2026 Iran succession:

• Use the evidence manifest from the Time Rhymes story for primary news sources on Mojtaba Khamenei's elevation, the IRGC's role in the Assembly of Experts vote, and the Reza Pahlavi 60 Minutes interview.

• Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, "Who Will Be Iran's Next Supreme Leader?" (March 2026)

• Foreign Affairs, "The New Khamenei" (2026)

• Time, "Iran's Supreme Leader No Longer Reigns Supreme" (21 April 2026)