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Written British constitution

I think you'd just want any kind of revolution or any event that disrupts the status quo and Parliament in particular.

The events leading up to the 1832 reform act are probably your best bet for this. You have the Days of May as the "closest Britain came to revolution", and it's not too much of a stretch to say that you have the King not be on board with the nuclear option of stacking the Lords with Whig Peers, so Tory Peers block the reform bill, so no reform happens, so all hell breaks lose.

I think as @Turquoise Blue mentioned to me previously, this doesn't even neccessarily mean the Monarchy ends per se, but I think you would get a much neutered one at best or a republic at worse (for the monarchs), and in both of those outcomes I think you see some sort of codified constitution.
 
Agreeing with @Lilitou that a written constitution would be an outcome of a revolution- or at least a major disruption as in Gordon Banks. The current system has far too much inertia (such as practices like parliamentary voting by telling in separate parts of the building outside the chambre is defended as having a useful purpose) that arriving at a point where it was just peacefully agreed to write a constitution is very unlikely.
 
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I could see something akin to the recent Chilean constitutional rewrite: not quite a revolution, but a protest movement so strong and resilient it forces the existing political class to agree to a constitutional write up process, followed by an election delivering a mandate for ratifying it.
 
Jackson Lennock said:
It sort of has one, but it merely requires a majority to amend.

Aspects of the 'unwritten constitution' aren't that dissimilar from how how American *expectations* or *norms* surrounding the Constitution (federalism, separation of powers, rules and procedures of the United States House and Senate).
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Sure, but the idea here is to give an impulse to formalize it into one document that's seen as constitutional, even if it remains amendable by majority.
 
Nyvis said:
Sure, but the idea here is to give an impulse to formalize it into one document that's seen as constitutional, even if it remains amendable by majority.
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Even the US Constitution sort of isn't this, given it's been amended 27 times. Parliament could in theory pass an act calling for a formal organization of British Constitutional legislation into a single Treatise, but that'd be tricky.

The US has several quasi-constitutional super-statutes which operate in a not dissimilar way as British Constitutional enactments. The Judiciary Act of 1789, the Rules Enabling Act of 1934, The Social Security Act of 1935, The Administrative Procedure Act of 1946, The Federal Tort Claims Act of 1946, The Civil Rights Acts (1866, 1957, 1964, 1965, 1968, and 1992), etc. They're super-statutes that operate in the background and serve as legal defaults unless some other statute explicitly says otherwise.

Compare to the Magna Carta of 1215, the English Bill of Rights of 1689, the Claim of Right Act of 1689, the Acts of Union of 1707, the Acts of Union of 1800, the Reform Act of 1867, Franchise Act of 1885, the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1922, Representation of the People (Equal Franchise) Act 1928, Scotland Act of 1998, the Constitutional Reform Act of 2005, Wales Act of 2017, etc. The Good Friday Agreement and European Treaties and Brexit Treaties also constitute such a thing; as does every grant of home rule and independence to dominions and colonies. All go to the nature of the British constitutional structure.

One cannot have a functioning written Constitution which checks a majoritarian legislative body absent a truly independent judiciary with Constitutional Review authority [which the UK hasn't had until 2009]. If the written thing can be amended by a simple majority, what's the point of having a constitutional convention to begin with?
 
Jackson Lennock said:
Even the US Constitution sort of isn't this, given it's been amended 27 times. Parliament could in theory pass an act calling for a formal organization of British Constitutional legislation into a single Treatise, but that'd be tricky.

The US has several quasi-constitutional super-statutes which operate in a not dissimilar way as British Constitutional enactments. The Judiciary Act of 1789, the Rules Enabling Act of 1934, The Social Security Act of 1935, The Administrative Procedure Act of 1946, The Federal Tort Claims Act of 1946, The Civil Rights Acts (1866, 1957, 1964, 1965, 1968, and 1992), etc. They're super-statutes that operate in the background and serve as legal defaults unless some other statute explicitly says otherwise.

Compare to the Magna Carta of 1215, the English Bill of Rights of 1689, the Claim of Right Act of 1689, the Acts of Union of 1707, the Acts of Union of 1800, the Reform Act of 1867, Franchise Act of 1885, the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1922, Representation of the People (Equal Franchise) Act 1928, Scotland Act of 1998, the Constitutional Reform Act of 2005, Wales Act of 2017, etc. The Good Friday Agreement and European Treaties and Brexit Treaties also constitute such a thing; as does every grant of home rule and independence to dominions and colonies. All go to the nature of the British constitutional structure.

One cannot have a functioning written Constitution which checks a majoritarian legislative body absent a truly independent judiciary with Constitutional Review authority [which the UK hasn't had until 2009]. If the written thing can be amended by a simple majority, what's the point of having a constitutional convention to begin with?
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The Netherlands Constitution explicitly prohibits judicial review.
 
Jackson Lennock said:
Even the US Constitution sort of isn't this, given it's been amended 27 times. Parliament could in theory pass an act calling for a formal organization of British Constitutional legislation into a single Treatise, but that'd be tricky.
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Yeah but the amendments are additions to the same text, at least in theory.

Jackson Lennock said:
Even the US Constitution sort of isn't this, given it's been amended 27 times. Parliament could in theory pass an act calling for a formal organization of British Constitutional legislation into a single Treatise, but that'd be tricky.

The US has several quasi-constitutional super-statutes which operate in a not dissimilar way as British Constitutional enactments. The Judiciary Act of 1789, the Rules Enabling Act of 1934, The Social Security Act of 1935, The Administrative Procedure Act of 1946, The Federal Tort Claims Act of 1946, The Civil Rights Acts (1866, 1957, 1964, 1965, 1968, and 1992), etc. They're super-statutes that operate in the background and serve as legal defaults unless some other statute explicitly says otherwise.

Compare to the Magna Carta of 1215, the English Bill of Rights of 1689, the Claim of Right Act of 1689, the Acts of Union of 1707, the Acts of Union of 1800, the Reform Act of 1867, Franchise Act of 1885, the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1922, Representation of the People (Equal Franchise) Act 1928, Scotland Act of 1998, the Constitutional Reform Act of 2005, Wales Act of 2017, etc. The Good Friday Agreement and European Treaties and Brexit Treaties also constitute such a thing; as does every grant of home rule and independence to dominions and colonies. All go to the nature of the British constitutional structure.

One cannot have a functioning written Constitution which checks a majoritarian legislative body absent a truly independent judiciary with Constitutional Review authority [which the UK hasn't had until 2009]. If the written thing can be amended by a simple majority, what's the point of having a constitutional convention to begin with?
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I'm French. The various French republics have always been constitutional in nature but judicial review has only been a thing since the 5th republic, and I still wouldn't call it independent. Even US judicial review (probably the most famous case of it) exists at the good will of the legislature because it's based more on tradition than on an explicit power of the supreme court.

The point of a convention would be to write up all the bases, assuming a radical event soured people on just adding, amending or selectively striking out existing law. It can then be amended freely from there, but the work of an entirely new constitutional base is very large and parliament has a lot of business as usual to care about so it can't dedicate itself to writing a new constitutional order full time. Its structure may also not be perceived to be the best to reflect the stakeholders in the writing of a new constitution.
 
US Judicial Review is so powerful because the legislature and executive have divided authority and have incentive to treat the third branch as co-equal and deserving of respect, because it's useful to have the Court as a tiebreaker. The US, meanwhile, has very little division of its national judiciary.

France has a separation of power, but since the Fifth Republic has been President-heavy in ways that even US presidents might blush, and its judiciary is divided. Almost all US Federal Courts have the authority to review statutes for their constitutionality, but my understanding is that aside from the Constitutional Council French Courts do not.

If you want the British to have a radical event, then have the Chartists overthrow the monarchy. Otherwise, the British will do what they've (almost) always done - adjust the system piecemeal and gradually over time.
 
Jackson Lennock said:
US Judicial Review is so powerful because the legislature and executive have divided authority and have incentive to treat the third branch as co-equal and deserving of respect, because it's useful to have the Court as a tiebreaker. The US, meanwhile, has very little division of its national judiciary.

France has a separation of power, but since the Fifth Republic has been President-heavy in ways that even US presidents might blush, and its judiciary is divided. Almost all US Federal Courts have the authority to review statutes for their constitutionality, but my understanding is that aside from the Constitutional Council French Courts do not.

If you want the British to have a radical event, then have the Chartists overthrow the monarchy. Otherwise, the British will do what they've (almost) always done - adjust the system piecemeal and gradually over time.
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Even in this context, the current 'justiceocracy' is pretty novel no?
 
Roger II said:
Even in this context, the current 'justiceocracy' is pretty novel no?
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In the US?

It takes a long time for the settled expectation/habit of following the judiciary to settle in, and it took a lot of fluking to be honest. It's also as much a product of the American Court learning when to slow its roll and avoid freaking people out as it is anything else.

Between Marbury v. Madison (1804) and Dred Scott (1852) the Court didn't strike down a single Federal Law. That was followed up with Lincoln and Grant reshaping the Court through the normal appointments process.
Hughes finessed the end of the Lochner era with the Nebbia (1934) and West Coat Hotel (1937) decisions and got a sort of united slap-down of Roosevelt. That was followed up by a changing of who was on the court through the normal appointments process.

While I personally think the flack at the Warren Court's leftiness is overblown, filibustering Fortas and Nixon/Ford getting five appointments definitely was a pressure release valve. But the more conservative shift on issues of crime and federalism was also occurring *before* Nixon came in, since Harlan, Black, White, and Stewart weren't as excited as some of the others on various matters of Criminal Procedure. Often, the emergence of new issues breaks old left-right scrambles on the Court. The Nixon appointees pursued a center to center right path on racial issues (southern desegregation good, northern more hands off; more conservative on criminal law; tried to push back a bit on federalism stuff; didn't really undo most of what the Warren Court *did*, it just prevented where it was *going*) and got into trouble in an area that hadn't even been a partisan split yet: abortion, religion, and women's rights. But the bigger matter is, once the discontented get their people appointed, they tend to not want the institution destroyed.

By the 80s, Congress created new Courts of Appeals and narrowed the Supreme Court's jurisdiction. Justice Rehnquist even lobbied Congress heavily to reduce the Supreme Court's mandatory docket. The Liberal Warren Court would have been aghast at this, since it viewed the federal judiciary as a guarantor of liberty - but the Conservative Rehnquist Court (including most of its liberal members) preferred a lighter workload and understood that dealing with fewer cases meant fewer chances at accidentally pissing people off.

Honestly, the hyper-politicization of who gets *onto* the Court, coupled with the normal replacement process, and each side getting a crack at nominating people, and each side wanting to preserve the institution itself for their own ends, plus the Court itself over time getting better at knowing when to calm down and restrain itself, has led to the Court getting more authority over time. But there've been cases where that really was at risk (jurisdiction stripping in the 70s/80s, the proposed creation of a Court of Appeals below the Supreme Court but above the Circuits, Court packing, many Eisenhower advisors encouraging him not to enforce Brown v. Board, etc.).
 
I've actually thought a separate Court of Appeals and jurisdiction stripping would be a good idea just for splitting out workloads and establishing a clearer distinction between ordinary statutory adjudication and the kind of political weirdness inherent to constitutional adjudication would be a good idea for a while now. Essentially you'd have a Court of Federal Appeals (basically works like a circuit court that other circuit courts answer to) and a separate Court of Constitutional claims/*SCOTUS*that handles constitutional questions and has a more tailored appointment process (20 year terms with staggered appointments, multipartisan committee recommendations, likely a requirement of either advanced training in law or political science at the PhD level or a minimum amount of appellate and trial experience, and so forth)
 
Most of the suggestions above are about a written constitution resulting from a revolution, but the opposite seems possible as well - quite a few establishment people backed the 1832 Great Reform Act because "Finality Jack" Russell and others assured them that this was absolutely definitely the last change ever. So some might have called for it to be set in stone that this was the case - of course, storing up a lot more problems for later attempts at reform?

Another option might be if the People's Budget affair had escalated even further and the Lords had been overthrown/replaced/etc., that seems like a possible time that a constitution might be written as well.
 
Thande said:
Most of the suggestions above are about a written constitution resulting from a revolution, but the opposite seems possible as well - quite a few establishment people backed the 1832 Great Reform Act because "Finality Jack" Russell and others assured them that this was absolutely definitely the last change ever. So some might have called for it to be set in stone that this was the case - of course, storing up a lot more problems for later attempts at reform?

Another option might be if the People's Budget affair had escalated even further and the Lords had been overthrown/replaced/etc., that seems like a possible time that a constitution might be written as well.
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What does a Liberal Constitution which was written before WW1 even look like?
 
A much earlier possibility exists for a British constitution - though how long it lasts is another matter.

There was a degree of a written constitution for 'Britain' (England , plus the militarily occupied Scotland and Ireland) in the creation of the 'Instrument of Government' in December 1653 to legitimise Oliver Cromwell's then almost new regime . (He had thrown out the last part of the legal English Parliament, the 'Rump' of the Long Parliament's House of Commons ie those MPs who had supported him in regicide in 1649, in April 1653 and governed with a Council of State nominated by himself and the other generals of the New Model Army in April- December. They had had a tame, nominated not elected House of Commons too, from July, but this ended in 'moderates vs religious radicals' deadlock and wouldn't pass any useful laws so he persuaded its moderate element led by the Speaker to 'voluntarily' abdicate power to him and dissolve itself and sent in the troops to evict any radical MPs who resisted this and tried to stage a sit-in. This left OC, as head of the army, and his nominated Council as the only effective power in the country and the need for a constitutional and legal figleaf to avoid driving panicking or angry social conservatives (ex-Parliamentarians as well as Royalists) to turn against the 'dictatorship' impelled the resultant creation of a new constitution - even if it was drawn up by army officers not MPs or judges and was then enforced on the three kingdoms of England, Scotland and Ireland.

Cromwell's main Army deputy General John Lambert and his friends then drew up a formal written constitution , the Instrument of Govt, giving most of the old royal powers to a 'Lord Protector' (ie the regent who until 1649 served as acting head of state and chaired the Privy Council and signed laws if the monarch was under-age or insane) and settign up a new Privy Council and a House of Commons who had various other powers , legally defined for the first time - but with all ex-Royalists banned from the Commons for a fixed period of time so they could not overturn this settlement and vote for a Stuart monarchy to be restored instead. Rumour had it that various moderate Cromwellians wanted the full legal protection of having a 'traditional' ie more lawful monarchy as the Head of State, not a general with a 'regent' title , instead so anti-Cromwell judges could not refuse to accept his laws, with OC as King, but Cromwell refused this as 'God had shown His disapproval of monarchy ' by letting Charles I be defeated then executed so restoring any King would earn divine wrath. OC turned an offer of monarchy down when the constitution was revised in 1657, but regained most of the King's effective powers.

Cromwell was in practice reliant on the support of the army to stay in power until he died in 1658 and many constitutionalist MPs and moderate officers who had backed Parliament in 1642-6 in the war but wanted a reined-in, legally constrained monarchy in 1646-9 not a republic, and those republicans who backed him in 1649-53 but were furious at him closing down the Commons in April 1653, never forgave him. They all boycotted his regime; but after he died and his son Richard, the second Lord Protector, was sacked by the army high command for trying to rein in military influence in spring 1659 there was a chance to create a new constitution. The Rump - ie those 1642-9 Parliamentarian MPs who had backed regicide in 1649 so the generals could trust them not to want Richard to be King or the army to be shut down - was recalled and the army co-operated with them for a while, but this broke up over MPs trying to assert civilian control over the army and reduce the latter's size and power. The MPs wanted it put in Acts of Parlt that they, ie elected civilians, not the army ran GB and they could shut down the army if it treated them like OC had done in 1653 - and this extended to a legally guaranteeable constitution to keep the army in its place.

The army generals then shut down the Commons again, which caused anger in London and over much of England and mutinies by more moderate officers - then General Monck brought in the army in Scotland to force the English army, which was breaking up in disarray over what to do, to restore the Commons in Jan 1660. Monck then purged the army to get rid of his rivals and those radicals who were prepared to fight him or save a republic from any talk of restoring a monarchy. The latter was not yet definitely Charles II, as there was talk of putting Richard Cromwell back in power, but C II had more support ie all the Royalists and (as he was the legitimate heir to the throne) conservative judges and those who feared another civil war . The longer the impasse went on, the more MPs were inclined to stop the fear of another civil war and accept Charles II back if he would promise to avoid revenge on his father's enemies.

The talks about a new constitution which followed ended in reality in no conditions being imposed on Charles II 's return, probably in the haste to get a quick solution and stop the threat of military mutinies or a religious radical revolt breaking out -and the Royalists, who Monck needed as a solid bloc of 'law and order' supporters who would help him against radical threats, seem to have held out successfully for avoiding any legal constitution to rein in the Royal powers. Charles II made vague promises of no revenge (which were soon broken, albeit at the wishes of MPs and Royalist peers and army veterans rather than by him alone) and governing wisely, incl a 'moderate' and 'inclusive' Anglican State Church - but nothing was written down and enshrined in a body of laws and promises which he had to sign and swear to on oath before he landed in England (or at his coronation). Possibly Monck was naive not to demand it, and his moderate ex-1640s Parliamentarian allies who were still in a strong position in spring 1660 did not do so either - and once the King was back in power most of them were shoved aside in politics by the Royalists. Even if there had been a constitution, a later Parliament full of Royalists out for revenge could have altered it . But in 1659-60 there was talk of putting senior moderate Cromwellians and army men in the House of Lords (abolished 1649 as 'useless') if it was restored, in order to add to non-Royalist votes there and help to rein in the Commons. This might have given MPs pause and helped to keep a constitution in being - and in 1689 the next 'revolution' when James II was kicked out did lead to written Acts of Parlt which William and Mary had to sign up to, and a muddled 'half constitution' consisting of various Parlt Acts.

So GB almost had a constitution in 1653/ 1657 (with or without a long-term Cromwell monarchy) and again in 1659-60 (with Charles II) - and if the machinations of politics plus luck had turned out differently either possibility was on the cards, albeit probably with changes later on. A less anti-monarchy OC, less republican generals' pressure on him in 1653-7 or on the Rump in 1659, or a stronger ex-Cromwellian/ Parliamentarian stand in the spring 1660 talks might well have produced a 'start' down this road, and the habit caught on helped by a less vindictive and authoritarian Restoration Stuart govt.
 
I wonder if a way to get what you want @heraclius is 1) Charles I catching a lucky break and dying before he has a chance to get tried and executed making Cromwell less anti-monarchy and/or 2) the republican/monarchist faction compromising by picking a random Stuart relative who is less likely to have bad blood about their dad being offed and more likely to go "oh hey, a free crown and assurances that Parliament will do all the actual work" and/or 1) making Ch. II much less vindictive (because instead of "Cromwell killed my dad" it's "Cromwell sort of made some mean comments about my dad after he fell off his horse and broke his neck", which has the bonus of making the end of the civil war a bit less messy assuming a lot of royalist forces collapse or defect without Ch. I as a standard-bearer)
 
There were in fact 2 near-misses for option 2, though neither had much elite support within the Cromwellian regime where it mattered ie among the generals who could veto it - as the generals were said to have confronted Cromwell walking in St James' Park, London when he was considering taking the crown in 1657 and threatened either a coup or not intervening if their radical junior officers mutinied. In some time around 1651, probably after Charles II and the Scots had invaded England and been defeated at the battle of Worcester, Cromwell held a secret 'summit' with moderate, mainly civilian advisers and considered putting Charles I's youngest, third son , Henry duke of Gloucester (b 1640, d 1660) on the throne as a puppet-king to keep the moderate Royalists and legalists on side by having a Stuart king. As Henry was under-age power would rest with a regent (probably OC himself) and the Privy Council, which would be stuffed full of Cromwellians with those hard-line Royalists who had been imprisoned or exiled banned from office. Charles' eldest son (Charles II, b 1630) and second son (the future James II, b 1633) had been on the battlefields against the Parliamentary cause so they could be barred from the throne by Act of Parlt for 'treason to the state'. This was only kicking the issue of Royalist revenge fears down the road until Henry was an adult and did not need a regency and/or until Roys were allowed back into Parlt - but hopefully by that time feelings might have cooled and the majority of the elite rallied to the new regime. Senior pro-republic lawyers and future Cromwellian councillors backed the idea but OC cooled off about it and gave up on it, allowing Henry (who had been in Parlt custody since 1646 when his eldest brother fled abroad, shuffled around country houses owned by pro-Parlt peers) to go abroad .

The second case was only highlighted at the Restoration, in a claim by the senior pro-Parlt Irish landowner the Earl of Broghill (Munster region) that when he was close to OC as a moderate republican in the mid-1650s he suggested that he and his friends negotiate for Charles II to marry one of Cromwell's daughters and be recalled as King with OC as his commander in chief . That way, C II would get his throne back and have reasons to keep his father-in-law as an ally and hopefully there would be a personal union in a Stuart-Cromwell king in the next generation. The Royalists would have to accept it as the legal king would pardon and be allied to OC, and OC and his moderate republican allies would have their careers and possessions guaranteed; the regicides of 1649 who C II was determined to punish were mostly religious or secular radical officers, some of whom had attacked OC for becoming Head of State, so he could abandon them. Only OC and a few of his close allies would need to be pardoned for regicide. But OC turned it down - apparently saying that Charles II was so promiscuous ('damnably debauched') that he would soon be betraying his new wife and would cause a worse political mess if he did so.
 
Yea I was thinking the "it's free throne estate" idea more for like very late in Cromwell's life if and when it becomes glaringly obvious that Richard can't fill his dad's shoes.
 
It's ironic that the Cromwells as a potential 'royal' dynasty faced the same problem as the Stuarts (with James II and VII) and assorted other royal families - your dynasty and your state are likely to get in a mess sooner or later if you stick rigorously to the rule of 'next male genealogical heir always inherits, regardless of ability'. The early British Isles Gaelic kingdoms in both Ireland and Scotland had a safer way of inheritance, ie by nominating a close male relative who need not be the eldest son in the current king's lifetime - this was usually a brother or cousin who was already adult and experienced. The eldest son of a king usually had to wait until his uncle or his father's cousin died , but could be named as the latter's heir when this arrnagement was set up. The title of designated heir to the throne was a special one in Ireland - 'tanaist', now used for the Deputy PM. Some of the early Anglo-Saxon kingdoms in England appear to have done this too, and in both Ireland and constituent kingdoms in Scotland it was normal pre-1100 to rotate the kingship among several different sub-lines of the royal family. Some of the Arab kingdoms in the Middle East still do this, eg Jordan and some of the Gulf states.

In the case of the Cromwells, both OC's deceased eldest son Oliver (d of fever while serving as an officer in the Civil War in 1644, aged about 25) , who is on record as being a 'godly' Puritan idealist with more initiative of his own than Richard, and his third son Henry ( d 1674), who was made governor of Ireland in the mid-1650s, were more strong-willed and 'political than Richard, the second son. Oliver junior had been an officer in the war whereas Richard was too young , so if he had lived he would have had more military support as a fellow-soldier; Henry was a political moderate who stood up to the Catholic-baiting religious radical republicans in his army command in Ireland and purged some of them. But in 'legal' terms it was more normal and constitutionally correct to pass the throne, or indeed the Protectorship, to the next heir, so OC chose Richard as his nominated heir in 1657 despite his lack of training in politics (OC's fault?) or political skills. Richard had until then been living as a quiet country gentleman on his father-in-law's estate outside Winchester in Hampshire, and though he was nominally in the Council of State and had other offices too in 1657-8 he made next to no impact - and was seen by the contemptuous generals as a ' puppet' of the wiliest of OC's civilian councillors, his intelligence chief and foreign minister John Thurloe. In fact , until the reform of the constitution in 1657 the Protectorate was not hereditary and the next Protector would be chosen by the Council and Parliament - so technically they could have chosen Henry C or one of the stronger generals, eg John Lambert , or else OC's daughter's husband Charles Fleetwood, a Baptist radical (and ex-gov of Ireland )and a religious enthusiast but not a very strong or competent leader.

Lambert could have avoided the OTL internal army feuding if he had been chosen as heir in 1653-7 (he resigned in 1657 in a dispute with OC who he felt was too close to the conservative lawyers and Thurloe ), and he was also a republican who wanted a strong and moral leadership but no king . In 1660 he was to try to stop the Restoration by force and end up locked up on an island in Plymouth Harbour by Charles II for life as a potential menace. Had OC died or been assass by (genuinely dangerous) republican dissidents in this period, eg a plot to shoot him as he opened Parlt in 1656, Lambert might have been chosen as heir, as the man of the moment and very popular with the troops, and lasted as Protector for decades if he had the luck and the skill - he was born 1619 so 20 yrs younger than OC. Or Henry could have been chosen. That way, would we get an elected (if by a small elite not popularly) Head of State in GB in the 1660s at the head of a continuing New Model Army and an uneasy Cromwellian/moderate Royalist alliance, with Charles II shut out and living as a pensioner of the disliked ultra-Catholic monarch Louis XIV in France (his cousin)? In this case, I have speculated that we would have a sort of GB equivalent of the Dutch 'Stadtholder' as head of state - and in case of an Anglo-French rivalry this would push Britain and the Dutch state together as allies. That way, the great Dutch leader and defier of Louis XIV, Charles II's nephew William III, would be a popular ally of the Protectorate - and could he as a part-Stuart end up reunifying the British factions if he was elected as Head of State after Lambert ? A different route to the 'Glorious Revolution' of 1688 and an Anglo-Dutch Stuart-Orange monarchy?
 
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