Tree of Liberty

"For the people — and truly I desire their liberty and freedom as much as anybody whomsoever — but I must tell you that their liberty and their freedom consists in having of government those laws by which their life and their goods may be most their own. It is not for having a share in government, sirs; that is nothing pertaining to them. A subject and a sovereign are clean different things."

—King Charles the Martyr, at the scaffold at Whitehall Palace before his execution, 30 January 1649.

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The Royal Oak is the English oak tree within which King Charles II of England hid to escape the Roundheads following the Battle of Worcester in 1651. The story was popular after the Restoration, and is remembered every year in the English traditions of Royal Oak Day. In 1660, Parliament declared 29 May a public holiday "to be for ever kept as a day of thanksgiving for our redemption from tyranny and the King's return to his Government, he entering London that day."

The arms of Oliver Cromwell, "Lord Protector" of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland, and Ireland displays a white lion on a black field.