Thomas Venner

This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.

Thomas Venner was born around 1608 in Littleham, Devon, and worked as a cooper in London before emigrating to New England in 1637; he returned to England some years later and became the last leader of the Fifth Monarchists, a movement that expected the imminent arrival of Christ's fifth monarchy and, in Venner's own reading, saw armed action as a way to help bring it about by force rather than waiting for it to arrive on its own.

In April 1657 Venner led an attempted rising against Oliver Cromwell's government, assembling armed followers at Mile End under a banner reading Who Shall Rouse Him Up, a call to action aimed squarely at a government Venner and his followers judged to have fallen short of the godly rule the fifth monarchy demanded. The plot had, however, been infiltrated by John Thurloe, Cromwell's intelligence chief, before it could proceed.

Venner was arrested and held without trial in the Tower of London for about two years, a lengthy imprisonment that removed him from action but did not end his commitment to the cause. His release left him free to attempt a second rising once political circumstances changed, a plan he carried out within months of Cromwell's own government finally coming to an end.

This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.

After Oliver Cromwell's death and the Restoration of Charles II, Thomas Venner led a second and shorter armed rising in London, beginning 6 January 1661, roughly four years after his first attempt had been broken up by government infiltration before it could properly begin. This second rising held out for four days against government forces before being defeated, a brief but genuine armed confrontation rather than a plot stopped in advance as the 1657 attempt had been.

Venner was executed by hanging, drawing and quartering on 19 January 1661, near the Fifth Monarchist meeting house in Swan Alley, alongside other insurgents taken in the same rising. He remained defiant at his trial rather than seeking leniency, declaring that Christ himself was the true leader of the uprising, a statement that placed the responsibility for the rising beyond himself and onto the fifth monarchy he had spent years working to bring about.

His execution closed out a career that ran from a Devon born cooper's ordinary trade through emigration to New England and back, to two armed risings against two different English governments, each one aimed at the same conviction that the promised fifth monarchy of Christ and the saints was near enough to be brought about by force rather than simply awaited.