Oliver Cromwell (1599–1658) was the appointed Lord Protector of England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland in the 1650s. Like many of the low-level English gentry he circulated amongst, he was a Puritan, wanting to cleanse the Church of England of its Catholic elements and fearing King Charles I for his comparative religious tolerance. While many similarly minded people sailed to New England to get away from Charles, Cromwell remained among the majority who stayed in England to eventually take up arms against their monarch. He proved to be a successful general, and his military victories brought him religious and political power: by the time Charles I was beheaded in 1649, Cromwell was the obvious dictator of the British Isles. Critically, however, he refused the title of monarch, choosing instead to be “Lord Protector.” It was a vague term that meant merely that he did not want to be called a king or rule as a tyrant, yet it would make him a model in opposition to monarchy. Perhaps his most influential act as Lord Protector was to draft an Instrument of Government in 1653, Britain's only experiment with a written constitution. His first Parliament was elected by church congregations but proved a failure. Thus, he called for another, the Protectorate Parliament, which sat for the first time in September 1654. This one was elected on a basis similar to those of prerevolutionary parliaments but was smaller in size and elected with a somewhat wider franchise. Although it was English, the Protectorate Parliament included delegates from Scotland and Ireland, both conquered by forces under Cromwell's leadership.