Fifth Monarchists

The Fifth Monarchists, or Fifth Monarchy Men, were a Protestant sect which advocated Millennialist views, active during the 1649 to 1660 Commonwealth of England.^[1] Named after a prophecy in the Book of Daniel that Four Monarchies would precede the Fifth or establishment of the Kingdom of God on earth, the group was one of a number of Nonconformist sects that emerged during the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. Perhaps its best known adherent was Major-General Thomas Harrison, executed in October 1660 as a regicide, while Oliver Cromwell was a sympathiser until 1653.

Members believed the execution of Charles I in January 1649 marked the end of the Fourth Monarchy, and viewed both the institution of the Protectorate in 1653 and the 1660 Stuart Restoration as preventing the coming of the Fifth. The belief this justified military action meant they were actively persecuted by both regimes, and never became a mass movement. Many of their remaining leaders were executed after participating in Venner's Rising of January 1661, and the group dissolved.

Along with millenarianism and Antinomianism, many of the religious views advocated by Fifth Monarchists were common to other Non-Conformists, notably Anabaptists. As a group, they were primarily united by shared political beliefs, rather than being a sect with a distinctive and coherent doctrine.^[2]