The Tripartite Wizarding Commonwealth of England, Scotland and Ireland, at the time referred to as simply the Commonwealth and now known as the Old Commonwealth, was the official name of the wizarding government of Great Britain and Ireland from 1649 to 1660; the first structured government body in Britain, and the true precursor to the modern Ministry of Magic. It rose from the English Wizarding Revolution, where a conglomerate of powerful wizarding families, led by Salomon Lestrange, took control of the Wizards' Council and created a unified, structured government in place of the old, ineffective council.