Apologies for the excessive quoting, but Theodore Roosevelt just writes so well on what a tragedy the Restoration was:
The King and his followers then took revenge on the dead body of the man whose living eyes they had never dared to face. The bones of Cromwell, of his mother, and of Ireton, were disinterred and thrown into a lime-pit; and the head of the great Protector was placed on a pole over Westminster Hall, there to stand for twenty years.
The skull of the mighty crown-grasper, before whose untamable soul they had shuddered in terror, was now set on high as a target for the jeering mockery of all who sang the praises of the line of libertines and bigots to whom the English throne had been restored. For twenty-eight shameful years the Restoration lasted; years of misgovernment and persecution at home, of weakness abroad, of oppression of the weak, and obsequious servility to the strong; years when the Court of England-devoid of one spark of true greatness of any kind-was a scene of tawdry and obscene frivolity. Then, once again, the principles for which, in the last analysis, Cromwell and the Puritans stood, triumphed; the Dutch stadtholder came over the narrow seas to ascend the throne of England; and once more the current of her national life set toward political, intellectual, and religious liberty.
Also, another quote to build on CrabCake's point:
Oliver surely strove to live up to his lights as he saw them. He never acted in levity, or from mere motives of personal aggrandizement, and he saw, with sad, piercing eyes, the dangers that rolled around the path he had chosen. He acted as he did because he conscientiously felt that only thus could he meet the needs of the nation. He said to the second Protectorate Parliament: "I am a man standing in the place I am in; which place I undertook, not so much out of hope of doing any good, as out of a desire to prevent mischief and evil--which I did see was imminent on the nation (for we were running along into confusion and disorder, and would have necessarily run into blood)."
We are often told that the best of all possible governments would be a benevolent despotism. Oliver's failure is a sufficient commentary upon this dictum of the parlor doctrinaires. There never has been, and probably never will be, another despotism where the despot so sincerely strove to do, for a people capable of some measure of freedom, better than they themselves would have done with that freedom. The truth is, that a strong nation can only be saved by itself, and not by a strong man, though it can be greatly aided and guided by a strong man.
Slightly off topic here, but while I am partial to the consideration of William III as a reasonable revival of the Protectorate in some ways, it gets into some problematic territory. Especially when you consider the fact that William's mother was a daughter of Charles I and his wife was a granddaughter thereof as well and this is the origin of both of their claims to the throne. Furthermore, the dynamics of the Orangist faction in the Netherlands relative to their opponents makes any such allegories between William III and the Protectorate problematic as well, especially seeing as how the 1650s were bad times for both the Stuart and Orange families, as the "royalist" or "more royalist" faction in an "anti-Royalist" period in both countries. Lastly, it must be remembered that while William III did in fact sign off on Parliamentary authority to determine the King and the declaration of rights, these aren't necessarily reflections of his personal views. His priority and and interest was securing England as an ally against France and taking the English throne helped to ensure that, and the concessions made to achieve that were secondary concerns to him.
What I think the Glorious Revolution represents, was the confluence of events and interests aligning to allow for the successful melding of the two opposed political traditions of Monarchy and Liberty into a combination that would endure for centuries, albeit with the former being steadily eroded over time. There are some similarities with how the Orleanists tried to meld the French Monarchy with the Revolutionary traditions and had conditions been more favorable and the timing been better, it might have worked.
I do agree with Roosevelt about Cromwell being of higher character than Napoleon, at least in the time period referenced as such.
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