Cromwell’s collection for the Waldensians between the Interregnum and the Restoration (1655–1687)

This article offers a fresh examination of Oliver Cromwell’s 1655 collection on behalf of the Waldensians, a persecuted Protestant minority in the Italian Alps. Reconstructing the appeal, its administration and its troubled afterlife, the study reveals how the initiative became entangled in the political volatility of Interregnum and Restoration London. By tracing the movement of money, the competing claims of intermediaries, and the frictions between metropolitan and continental actors, the article illuminates the unstable architecture of England’s mid seventeenth century Protestant alliances. More broadly, it argues that the episode exposes the improvised, contested and often chaotic character of early modern philanthropic mobilisation, thereby offering new insight into the uneven and frequently messy emergence of what would later be recognised as modern humanitarianism.