History Forum / General / British History / November 2007

O.K.

Fair Enough.

Thanks.

DSH

"David" <dsalo@softhome.net> wrote in message
news:27472d9b-8dd0-4606-951e-e1d67fa25c55@j44g2000hsj.googlegroups.com...

On Nov 27, 11:50 pm, "D. Spencer Hines" <pant...@excelsior.com> wrote:

Well, no, I don't have a citation exactly, but I can mention
Cromwell's Great Seal (a semi-illegible image of which can be found
here http://www.hants.gov.uk/record-office/gallery/images/gallery11.jpg
and a more legible sketch of which can be found here
http://www.yeomenoftheguard.com/cromwellscotland.jpg) which reads
"Olivarius, Dei gra[tia] Reip[ublicae] Angliæ, Scotiæ, Hiberniæ &c.
Protector"; to which may be compared Old Noll's "Instrument of
Government" which can be found here
http://www.constitution.org/eng/conpur097.htm
and which gives his style as "Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of
England, Scotland, and Ireland", which I take to be evidence that the
English understood _res publica_ to be the formal equivalent of their
_commonwealth_.

And if state documents are preferred, even prior to the Protectorate,
John Milton, who was the Latin secretary of the Commonwealth, referred
to the Parliament in foreign dispatches as "Parlamentum reipublicæ
Angliæ" as for instance seen here:
http://books.google.com/books?id=G-ewXjmqXDQC&pg=PA788,
and the corresponding English letters use "The Parliament of the
Commonwealth of England" as for instance here
http://books.google.com/books?id=G-ewXjmqXDQC&pg=PA599, et passim in
both cases.  Milton's authority, both as a representative of the
Commonwealth's government, and as a 17th-century Latinist, should be
pretty high.