ABSTRACT
The expulsion of the Rump and the failure of the Nominated Parliament also led to a purge of officials who had held offices under regimes and their replacement by hopefully loyal and committed Cromwellians. For royalist agents, the most significant feature of purge was that the regicide Thomas Scot, an ardent republican, lost his responsibility for counter-security and intelligence. According to Joseph Bampfield, the principal designs of royalist agents were: to raise money for the king's support and use, to prepare parties in all parts of the kingdom to rise against the government, to win over to the Stuart cause some considerable person in the Army, and to assassinate the Lord Protector. Armorer was by no means the only royalist emissary travelling to and fro; as Bampfield informed Thurloe, there were a steadily increasing number of them as the king's more active supporters prepared to challenge the hold on power of the new Cromwellian regime.
