For a brief period in the 17th century, during the Wars of the Three Kingdoms from the impeachment and execution of Charles I in 1649 to the Irish Restoration in May 1660, there was no 'King of Ireland'. After the Irish Rebellion of 1641, Irish Catholics, organised in Confederate Ireland, still recognised Charles I, and later Charles II, as legitimate monarchs, in opposition to the claims of the English Parliament, and signed a formal treaty with Charles I in 1648. However, in 1649, the Rump Parliament, victorious in the English Civil War, executed Charles I, and made England a republic, or "Commonwealth". The Parliamentarian general Oliver Cromwell came across the Irish Sea to crush the Irish royalists, temporarily uniting England, Scotland, and Ireland under one government, and styling himself "Lord Protector" of the three kingdoms (see also Cromwellian conquest of Ireland). After Cromwell's death in 1658, his son Richard emerged as the leader of this pan-British Isles republic, but he was not competent to maintain it. The Parliament of England at Westminster voted to restore the monarchy, and in 1660 King Charles II returned from exile in France to become King of England, King of Scotland and King of Ireland.
