Vickipedia

FIFTH MONARCHY MEN. Among the strange and whimsical forms of opinion which the religious and political fermentation of the 17th c. brought to the surface of society, and embodied in the shape of religious sects, were those of the Fifth Monarchy Men. The date which has been assigned to their first appearance is 1654.

Notwithstanding the ridicule with which they have often been overwhelmed, there seems nothing in their tenets more objectionable than we find in those of many of the other sects of the period, and there is no reason to believe that the practices of their leaders exceeded in absurdity, or equalled in impiety, those of Robbins, Reeve, Muggleton, and other apostles of the Ranters. In common with most persons who hold the literal interpretation of prophecy, they believed in the four great monarchies of Antichrist marked out by the prophet Daniel; and quite consistently with Christian orthodoxy, they added to them & fifth�viz., the kingdom of Christ on earth. So far, there was nothing peculiar in their views. But their error was twofold. 1st. They believed in the immediate, or at least in the proximate, advent of Christ (a tenet which was common to them with the early church); and 2d. They held that the fulfilment of God’s promise to this effect must be realized by the forcible destruction of the kingdom of Antichrist. Every obstacle which opposed itself to the setting up the Messiah’s throne was to be thrown down, and what these obstacles were was a question for the solution of which the only criterion which presented itself was their own fanatical prejudices and hatreds. It is obvious that such doctrines in such times must have given rise to practical as well as speculative disorder. The Fifth Monarchy Men became extinct as a sect shortly after the Restoration; a fact which, by depriving them of exponents of their own body, may have exposed them to misrepresentation (Marsden’s History of the Later Puritans, p. 387). In politics, the Fifth Monarchy Men were republicans of the extremest section; and when their conspiracy to murder the Protector, and revolutionize the government, was discovered in 1657, their leaders, Vennar, Grey, Hopkins, &c., were imprisoned in the Gate House till after the Protector’s death. Amongst their arms and ammunition which was seized, was found a standard exhibiting a lion couchant, supposed to represent the lion of the tribe of Judah, with the motto, ‘Who will rouse him up?’�Neal’s Puritans, vol. iv. p. 186. See also Carlyle’s Cromwell’s Letters and Speeches, vol. iii. p. 31.