This book is driven by the sense that while the Cromwellian ‘kingship crisis’—the debates surrounding the offer of the crown to Oliver Cromwell in 1657, and the ramifications of his refusal to accept a new title—has received scholarly attention, much less work has been done on the print culture surrounding the affair. As such, Woodford seeks to shine a light on a body of contemporary literature, from both supporters and opponents of the lord protector, which might permit a more coherent understanding of contemporary reactions to Cromwellian power, both inside and outside government, and a more thorough appreciation that this represented a very real public issue. That the book is only partially successful reflects the fact that the initial premise is only partly justifiable.

Where Woodford's book is at its best is in dealing with the “kingship crisis,” most particularly when dealing with the problems posed by the surviving evidence relating to the debates involving Cromwell and the “kinglings” in the spring of 1657. On this issue extremely interesting evidence is presented about the difficulties involved in reconstructing the views of both sides, and a convincing case is made that previous scholarship has been hampered by the way in which Cromwell's modern editors have treated the accounts of his speeches, in ways which involve paying insufficient attention to subtle but important differences between various surviving versions. Woodford also contributes to our understanding by addressing the possibility that the most accessible contemporary account of the kingship debates—a pamphlet from 1660 called Monarchy Asserted—was produced by people who had a vested interest in portraying Cromwell and the Cromwellian regime, and thus themselves, as conservatives and traditional monarchists, and in distancing all concerned from the taint of “religious fanaticism” (30). On these issues, Woodford demonstrates the benefits of a careful comparison and contextualization of the various sources, and it is thus something of a pity that this aspect of the book—the most impressive and original—was not more substantial. It is hard to avoid the conclusion, indeed, that Woodford has only really begun a process of rethinking the surviving evidence about the kingship debates, which needs fuller treatment.

That this feels like a missed opportunity reflects in part the fact that Woodford arguably fails to do real justice to the evidence about the “kingship crisis.” In looking beyond the evidence about the debates that took place behind closed doors, therefore, Woodford is less than entirely sure-footed in his treatment of texts like the official government newspaper, Mercurius Politicus. Thus, while he is right to note that the government did not promote kingship actively in the public domain, despite having the mechanisms with which to do so, it is less than entirely convincing to suggest that the regime and its publicists were waiting for Cromwell to accept the crown, and fearful of publicizing Cromwell's reactions because of their “sectarian tone” (54). Indeed, while Woodford finds it ironic that the supporters of kingship did so little to publicize their ideas, it would probably have been useful to subject Politicus to a somewhat closer reading. This is because Nedham—and perhaps the Cromwellians with whom he associated—may be thought to have addressed kingship in a series of “editorials” which took the form of letters from “Utopia” or “Oceana” in early 1657. Such material was certainly cryptic, and its meaning is not entirely clear, and yet it is certainly plausible to argue that, while there is certainly mileage in the idea that Cromwellians sought to present a united front, and to conceal evidence of Cromwell's uncertainty, Nedham was at least prepared to express veiled support for kingship ahead of the crucial debates.

A more important reservation about the book, however, relates to the fact that it concentrates overwhelmingly on wider debates during the 1650s, in terms of prose and poetry by “Cromwellian” writers, former royalists and religious radicals. This is a pity, in part, because much of this material is familiar, and it might have been useful to concentrate more obviously on those authors who have been relatively neglected, like John Hall of Richmond, and John Lineall, rather than on characters like Nedham and James Harrington, where Woodford has less new to say. Beyond this, it might be argued that “Cromwellian” is a rather blunt term for an odd mixture of authors—employed writers, suitors, associates and supporters of one kind or another—and that there is little reason to be surprised to find a wide range of attitudes toward the protector and his constitutional position and title.

Most importantly of all, Woodford's book suffers from the slippage between the kingship crisis (of 1657), as well as the wider issue about whether or not to return to an explicitly kingly constitution (from 1649 onwards), and the issue of “monarchical power,” which relates to attitudes towards Cromwell's position and power within the protectoral government. Woodford recognizes at the outset that the latter has “nothing to do with Cromwell's title,” but rather “expresses the dominance that he held over the rest of the government” (15), and yet in the main body of the book there is a real (and problematic) tendency to equate Cromwellian power with monarchical power, including some odd statements about how Cromwell behaved “royally” (115), and effectively to associate responses to Cromwellian power with reactions to kingship, even though it is perfectly clear that contemporaries were able to distinguish between power and titles fairly clearly.

In the end, therefore, too much of this book deals with contemporary responses to Cromwellian power—which can only more or less plausibly be described as monarchical—rather than living up to the promise of a substantial treatment of the issue of, and debates around, kingship. This is a shame, because the latter is the more interesting topic, and it is also the one where Woodford is at his best.