Fifth Monarchists

The Fifth Monarchists or Fifth Monarchy Men were active from 1649 to 1660 during the Interregnum, following the English Civil Wars of the 17th century. They took their name from a prophecy in the Book of Daniel that four ancient monarchies (Babylonian, Persian, Macedonian, and Roman) would precede the kingdom of Christ. They also referred to the year 1666 and its relationship to the biblical Number of the Beast indicating the end of earthly rule by carnal human beings. They were one of a number of nonconformist dissenting groups that emerged around this time.

Overview

The Fifth Monarchists were one of many groups of Christian believers during and after the English Civil War whose theological beliefs challenged the more mainstream ideas of the day. Specifically, they believed in a geopolitical theory which maintained that four world rulers had already come and gone according to the prophecies of Daniel 2 in the Old Testament. This text recounts a prophetic dream by Nebuchadnezzar. The previous empires of which he dreamed were interpreted to have been Babylonian, Persian, Grecian and Roman; the last empire, the Monarchists concluded, would be established by the returning Jesus as King of Kings and Lord of Lords to reign with his saints on earth for a thousand years. The Fifth Monarchists saw themselves as those saints of that soon to be dawning millennium. Among prominent Fifth Monarchists were Thomas Harrison, Christopher Feake, Vavasor Powell, John Carew, John Rogers and Robert Blackborne, Secretary of the Admiralty and later of the British East India Company.