Interregnum
Scrope's regiment was one of those selected by lot for the expedition for the reconquest of Ireland (20 April 1649); but early in May 1649 they mutinied, refused to go to Ireland, and demanded the re-establishment of the representative council of agitators which had existed in 1647. On 15 May Cromwell and Fairfax surprised the mutineers at Burford, and the ringleaders were tried by court-martial and shot.
Scrope's regiment henceforth disappears from the army lists, and the soldiers composing it were probably drafted into other regiments. Scrope himself was made governor of Bristol (October 1649), a post which he held till 1655. In 1655 Bristol Castle and other forts there were ordered to be demolished, in pursuance of a general scheme for diminishing the number of garrisons in England, though Ludlow asserts that Bristol was selected because Cromwell did not dare to "trust a person of so much honour and worth with a place of that importance".
In May 1655 Scrope was appointed a member of the council established by the Protector for the government of Scotland, at a salary of £600. a year. He did not distinguish himself as an administrator, and appears to have spent as much time as he could out of Scotland. During the political revolutions of 1659–60 he apparently remained neutral.
Read more about this topic: Adrian Scrope
Famous quotes containing the word interregnum:
“Postmodernism is, almost by definition, a transitional cusp of social, cultural, economic and ideological history when modernism’s high-minded principles and preoccupations have ceased to function, but before they have been replaced with a totally new system of values. It represents a moment of suspension before the batteries are recharged for the new millennium, an acknowledgment that preceding the future is a strange and hybrid interregnum that might be called the last gasp of the past.”
—Gilbert Adair, British author, critic. Sunday Times: Books (London, April 21, 1991)