President and Lord Grey, stands the name of Oliver Cromwell.
He accepted the responsibility of it, justified, defended it
to his dying day. No man in England was more entirely
answerable for the deed than he, 'I tell you,' he said to
Algernon Sidney, 'we will cut off his head with the crown upon
it.' ... Slowly he had come to know--not only that the man,
Charles Stuart, was incurably treacherous, but that any
settlement of Parliament with the old Feudal Monarchy was
impossible. As the head of the king rolled on the scaffold the
old Feudal Monarchy expired for ever. In January 1649 a great
mark was set in the course of the national life--the Old Rule
behind it, the New Rule before it. Parliamentary government,
the consent of the nation, equality of rights, and equity in
the law--all date from this great New Departure. The Stuarts
indeed returned for one generation, but with the sting of the
Old Monarchy gone, and only to disappear almost without a
blow. The Church of England returned; but not the Church of
Laud or of Charles. The peers returned, but as a meek House of
Lords, with their castles razed, their feudal rights and their
political power extinct. It is said that the regicides killed
Charles I. only to make Charles II. king. It is not so, They
killed the Old Monarchy; and the restored monarch was by no
means its heir, but a royal Stadtholder or Hereditary
President."
_F. Harrison,
Oliver Cromwell,
chapter 7._
"Respecting the death of Charles it has been pronounced by
Fox, that 'it is much to be doubted whether his trial and
execution have not, as much as any other circumstance, served
to raise the character of the English nation in the opinion of
Europe in general.' And he goes on to speak with considerable
favour of the authors of that event. One of the great
authorities of the age having so pronounced, an hundred and
fifty years after the deed, it may be proper to consider for a
little the real merits of the actors, and the act. It is not
easy to imagine a greater criminal than the individual against
whom the sentence was awarded. ... Liberty is one of the
greatest negative advantages that can fall to the lot of a
man; without it we cannot possess any high degree of
happiness, or exercise any considerable virtue. Now Charles,
to a degree which can scarcely be exceeded, conspired against
the liberty of his country, to assert his own authority
without limitation, was the object of all his desires and all
his actions, so far as the public was concerned.
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To accomplish this object he laid aside the use of a
parliament. When he was compelled once more to have recourse
to this assembly, and found it retrograde to his purposes, he
determined to bring up the army, and by that means to put an
end to its sittings. Both in Scotland and England, the scheme
that he formed for setting aside all opposition, was by force
of arms. For that purpose he commenced war against the English
parliament, and continued it by every expedient in his power
for four years. Conquered, and driven out of the field, he did
not for that, for a moment lose sight of his object and his
resolution. He sought in every quarter for the materials of a
new war; and, after an interval of twenty months, and from the
depths of his prison, he found them. To this must be added the
most consummate insincerity and duplicity. He could never be
reconciled; he could never be disarmed; he could never be
convinced. His was a war to the death, and therefore had the
utmost aggravation that can belong to a war against the
liberty of a nation. ... The proper lesson taught by the act
of the thirtieth of January, was that no person, however high
in station, however protected by the prejudices of his
contemporaries, must expect to be criminal against the welfare
of the state and community, without retribution and
punishment. The event however sufficiently proved that the
condemnation and execution of Charles did not answer the
purposes intended by its authors. It did not conciliate the
English nation to republican ideas. It shocked all those
persons in the country who did not adhere to the ruling party.
This was in some degree owing to the decency with which
Charles met his fate. He had always been in manners, formal,
sober and specious. ... The notion was every where prevalent,
that a sovereign could not be called to account, could not be
arraigned at the bar of his subjects. And the violation of
this prejudice, instead of breaking down the wall which
separated him from others, gave to his person a sacredness
which never before appertained to it. Among his own partisans
the death of Charles was treated, and was spoken of, as a sort
of deicide. And it may be admitted for a universal rule, that
the abrupt violation of a deep-rooted maxim and persuasion of
the human mind, produces a reaction, and urges men to hug the
maxim closer than ever. I am afraid, that the day that saw
Charles perish on the scaffold, rendered the restoration of
his family certain."
_W. Godwin,
History of the Commonwealth of England
to the Restoration of Charles II.,
book 2, chapter 26 (volume 2)._
"The situation, complicated enough already, had been still
further complicated by Charles's duplicity. Men who would have
been willing to come to terms with him, despaired of any
constitutional arrangement in which he was to be a factor; and
men who had long been alienated from him were irritated into
active hostility. By these he was regarded with increasing
intensity as the one disturbing force with which no
understanding was possible and no settled order consistent. To
remove him out of the way appeared, even to those who had no
thought of punishing him for past offences, to be the only
possible road to peace for the troubled nation. It seemed that
so long as Charles lived deluded nations and deluded parties
would be stirred up, by promises never intended to be
fulfilled, to fling themselves, as they had flung themselves
in the Second Civil War, against the new order of things which
was struggling to establish itself in England."
_S. R. Gardiner,
History of the Great Civil War,
1642-1649, chapter 71 (volume 3)._
ALSO IN:
_John Forster,
Statesmen of the Commonwealth: Henry Marten._
_S. R. Gardiner,
Constitutional Documents of the Puritan Revolution,
pages 268-290._
The following is the text of the Act which arraigned the King
and constituted the Court by which he was tried:
"Whereas it is notorious that Charles Stuart, the now king of
England, not content with the many encroachments which his
predecessors had made upon the people in their rights and
freedom, hath had a wicked design totally to subvert the
antient and fundamental laws and liberties of this nation, and
in their place to introduce an arbitrary and tyrannical
government; and that, besides all other evil ways and means to
bring his design to pass, he hath prosecuted it with fire and
sword, levied and maintained a civil war in the land, against
the parliament and kingdom; whereby this country hath been
miserably wasted, the public treasure exhausted, trade
decayed, thousands of people murdered, and infinite other
mischiefs committed; for all which high and treasonable
offences the said Charles Stuart might long since have justly
been brought to exemplary and condign punishment: whereas also
the parliament, well hoping that the restraint and imprisonment
of his person after it had pleased God to deliver him into
their hands, would have quieted the distempers of the kingdom,
did forbear to proceed judicially against him; but found, by
sad experience, that such their remissness served only to
encourage him and his accomplices in the continuance of their
evil practices and in raising new commotions, rebellions, and
invasions: for prevention therefore of the like or greater
inconveniences, and to the end no other chief officer or
magistrate whatsoever may hereafter presume, traiterously and
maliciously, to imagine or contrive the enslaving or
destroying of the English nation, and to expect impunity for
so doing; be it enacted and ordained by the [Lords] and
commons in Parliament assembled, and it is hereby enacted and
ordained by the authority thereof, That the earls of Kent,
Nottingham, Pembroke, Denbigh, and Mulgrave; the lord Grey of
Warke; lord chief justice Rolle of the king's bench, lord
chief justice St. John of the common Pleas, and lord chief
baron Wylde; the lord Fairfax, lieutenant general Cromwell,
&c. [in all about 150,] shall be, and are hereby appointed and
required to be Commissioners and Judges, for the Hearing,
Trying, and Judging of the said Charles Stuart; and the said
Commissioners, or any 20 or more of them, shall be, and are
hereby authorized and constituted an High Court of Justice, to
meet and sit at such convenient times and place as by the said
commissioners, or the major part, or 20 or more of them, under
their hands and seals, shall be appointed and notified by
public Proclamation in the Great Hall, or Palace Yard of
Westminster; and to adjourn from time to time, and from place
to place, as the said High Court, or the major part thereof,
at meeting, shall hold fit; and to take order for the charging
of him, the said Charles Stuart, with the Crimes and Treasons
above-mentioned, and for receiving his personal Answer
thereunto, and for examination of witnesses upon oath, (which
the court hath hereby authority to administer) or otherwise,
and taking any other Evidence concerning the same; and
thereupon, or in default of such Answer, to proceed to final
Sentence according to justice and the merit of the cause; and
such final Sentence to execute, or cause to be executed,
speedily and impartially.--
{883}
And the said court is hereby and required to chuse and
appoint all such officers, attendants, and other circumstances
as they, or the major part of them, shall in any sort judge
necessary or useful for the orderly and good managing of the
premises; and Thomas lord Fairfax the General, and all
officers and soldiers, under his command, and all officers of
justice, and other well-affected persons, are hereby
authorized and required to be aiding and assisting unto the
said court in the due execution of the trust hereby committed
unto them; provided that this act, and the authority hereby
granted, do continue in force for the space of one month from
the date of the making hereof, and no longer."
_Cobbett's Parliamentary History of England,
volume 3, pages 1254-1255._
ENGLAND: A. D. 1649 (FEBRUARY).
The Commonwealth established.
"England was now a Republic. The change had been virtually
made on Thursday, January 4, 1648-9, when the Commons passed
their three great Resolutions, declaring
(1) that the People of England were, under God, the original
of all just power in the State,
(2) that the Commons, in Parliament assembled, having been
chosen by the People, and representing the People, possessed
the supreme power in their name, and
(3) that whatever the Commons enacted should have the force of
a law, without needing the consent of either King or House of
Peers.
On Tuesday, the 30th of January, the theory of these
Resolutions became more visibly a fact. On the afternoon of
that day, while the crowd that had seen the execution in front
of Whitehall were still lingering round the scaffold, the
Commons passed an Act 'prohibiting the proclaiming of any
person to be King of England or Ireland, or the dominions
thereof.' It was thus declared that Kingship in England had
died with Charles. But what of the House of Peers? It was
significant that on the same fatal day the Commons revived
their three theoretical resolutions of the 4th, and ordered
them to be printed. The wretched little rag of a House might
then have known its doom. But it took a week more to convince
them." On the 6th of February it was resolved by the House of
Commons, "'That the House of Peers in Parliament is useless
and dangerous, and ought to be abolished, and that an Act be
brought in to that purpose.' Next day, February 7, after
another long debate, it was further resolved 'That it hath
been found by experience, and this House doth declare, that
the office of a King in this realm, and to have the power
thereof in any single person, is unnecessary, burdensome, and
dangerous to the liberty, safety, and public interest of the
People of this nation, and therefore ought to be abolished,
and that an Act be brought in to that purpose.' Not till after
some weeks were these Acts deliberately passed after the
customary three readings. The delay, however, was matter of
mere Parliamentary form. Theoretically a Republic since Jan.
4, 1648-9, and visibly a Republic from the day of Charles's
death, England was a Republic absolutely and in every sense
from February 7, 1648-9." For the administration of the
government of the republican Commonwealth, the Commons
resolved, on the 7th of February, that a Council of State be
erected; to consist of not more than forty persons. On the
13th, Instructions to the intended Council of State were
reported and agreed to, "these Instructions conferring almost
plenary powers, but limiting the duration of the Council to
one year." On the 14th and 15th forty-one persons were
appointed to be members of the Council, Fairfax, Cromwell,
Vane, St. John, Whitlocke, Henry Marten, and Colonels
Hutchinson and Ludlow being in the number; nine to constitute
a quorum, and no permanent President to be chosen.
_D. Masson,
Life of John Milton,
volume 4, book 1, chapter 1._
ALSO IN:
_J. Lingard,
History of England,
volume. 10, chapter 5._
_A. Bisset,
Omitted Chapters of History of England,
chapter 1._
ENGLAND: A. D. 1649 (FEBRUARY).
The Eikon Basilike.
"A book, published with great secrecy, and in very mysterious
circumstances, February 9, 1648-9, exactly ten days after the
late King's death, had done much to increase the Royalist
enthusiasm.
'Eikon Basilike: The True Portraicture of His Sacred Majestie
in his Solitudes and Sufferings.--Romans viii. More than
conquerour, &c.--Bona agere et mala pati Regium est.
MDCXLVIII':
such was the title-page of this volume (of 269 pages of text,
in small octavo), destined by fate, rather than by merit, to
be one of the most famous books of the world. ... The book, so
elaborately prepared and heralded, consists of twenty-eight
successive chapters, purporting to have been written by the
late King, and to be the essence of his spiritual
autobiography in the last years of his life. Each chapter,
with scarcely an exception, begins with a little narrative, or
generally rather with reflections and meditations on some
passage of the King's life the narrative of which is supposed
to be unnecessary, and ends with a prayer in italics
appropriate to the circumstances remembered. ... Save for a
few ... passages ... , the pathos of which lies in the
situation they represent, the Eikon Basilike is a rather dull
performance, in third-rate rhetoric, modulated after the
Liturgy; and without incision, point, or the least shred of
real information as to facts. But O what a reception it had!
Copies of it ran about instantaneously, and were read with
sobs and tears. It was in vain that Parliament, March 16, gave
orders for seizing the book. It was reprinted at once in
various forms, to supply the constant demand--which was not
satisfied, it is said, with less than fifty editions within a
single year; it became a very Bible in English Royalist
households. ... By means of this book, in fact, acting on the
state of sentiment which it fitted, there was established,
within a few weeks after the death of Charles I., that
marvellous worship of his memory, that passionate recollection
of him as the perfect man and the perfect king, the saint, the
martyr, the all but Christ on earth again, which persisted
till the other day as a positive religious cultus of the
English mind, and still lingers in certain quarters."
_D. Masson,
Life and Times of John Milton,
volume 4, book 1, chapter 1._
{884}
"I struggled through the Eikon Basilike yesterday; one of the
paltriest pieces of vapid, shovel-hatted, clear-starched,
immaculate falsity and cant I have ever read. It is to me an
amazement how any mortal could ever have taken that for a
genuine book of King Charles's. Nothing but a surpliced
Pharisee, sitting at his ease afar off, could have got up such
a set of meditations. It got Parson Gauden [John Gauden,
Bishop of Exeter and Worcester, successively, after the
Restoration, and who is believed to have been the author of
the Eikon Basilike] a bishopric."
_T. Carlyle,
History of his Life in London,
by Froude, volume 1, chapter 7, November 26, 1840._
ENGLAND: A. D. 1649 (APRIL-MAY).
Mutiny of the Levellers.
See LEVELLERS.
ENGLAND: A. D. 1649-1650.
Cromwell's campaign in Ireland.
See IRELAND: A. D. 1649-1650.
ENGLAND: A. D. 1650 (JULY).
Charles II. proclaimed King in Scotland.
See SCOTLAND: A. D. 1650 (MARCH-JULY).
ENGLAND: A. D. 1650 (SEPTEMBER).
War with the Scots and Cromwell's victory at Dunbar.
See SCOTLAND: A. D. 1650 (SEPTEMBER).
ENGLAND: A. D. 1651 (SEPTEMBER).
The Scots and Charles II. overthrown at Worcester.
See SCOTLAND: A. D. 1651.
ENGLAND: A. D. 1651-1653.
The Army and the Rump.
"'Now that the King is dead and his son defeated,' Cromwell
said gravely to the Parliament, 'I think it necessary to come
to a settlement.' But the settlement which had been promised
after Naseby was still as distant as ever after Worcester. The
bill for dissolving the present Parliament, though Cromwell
pressed it in person, was only passed, after bitter
opposition, by a majority of two; and even this success had
been purchased by a compromise which permitted the House to
sit for three years more. Internal affairs were simply at a
dead lock. ... The one remedy for all this was, as the army
saw, the assembly of a new and complete Parliament in place of
the mere 'rump' of the old; but this was the one measure which
the House was resolute to avert. Vane spurred it to a new
activity. ... But it was necessary for Vane's purposes not
only to show the energy of the Parliament, but to free it from
the control of the army. His aim was to raise in the navy a
force devoted to the House, and to eclipse the glories of
Dunbar and Worcester by yet greater triumphs at sea. With this
view the quarrel with Holland had been carefully nursed. ...
The army hardly needed the warning conveyed by the
introduction of a bill for its disbanding to understand the
new policy of the Parliament. ... The army petitioned not only
for reform in Church and State, but for an explicit
declaration that the House would bring its proceedings to a
close. The Petition forced the House to discuss a bill for 'a
New Representative,' but the discussion soon brought out the
resolve of the sitting members to continue as a part of the
coming Parliament without re-election. The officers, irritated
by such a claim, demanded in conference after conference an
immediate dissolution, and the House as resolutely refused. In
ominous words Cromwell supported the demands of the army. 'As
for the members of this Parliament, the army begins to take
them in disgust. I would it did so with less reason.' ... Not
only were the existing members to continue as members of the
New Parliament, depriving the places they represented of their
right of choosing representatives, but they were to constitute
a Committee of Revision, to determine the validity of each
election, and the fitness of the members returned. A
conference took place [April 19, 1653] between the leaders of
the Commons and the officers of the army. ... The conference
was adjourned till the next morning, on an understanding that
no decisive step should be taken; but it had no sooner
reassembled, than the absence of the leading members confirmed
the news that Vane was fast pressing the bill for a new
Representative through the House. 'It is contrary to common
honesty,' Cromwell angrily broke out; and, quitting Whitehall,
he summoned a company of musketeers to follow him as far as
the door of the House of Commons."
_J. R Green,
Short History of England,
chapter 8, section 9._
ALSO IN:
_J. Forster,
Statesmen of the Commonwealth: Cromwell._
_J. A. Picton,
Oliver Cromwell,
chapter 22._
ENGLAND: A. D. 1651-1672.
The Navigation Acts and the American colonies.
See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1651-1672;
also, NAVIGATION LAWS.
ENGLAND: A. D. 1652-1654.
War with the Dutch Republic.
"After the death of William, Prince of Orange, which was
attended with the depression of his party and the triumph of
the Dutch republicans [see NETHERLANDS: A. D. 1647-1650], the
Parliament thought that the time was now favourable for
cementing a closer confederacy with the states. St. John,
chief justice, who was sent over to the Hague, had entertained
the idea of forming a kind of coalition between the two
republics, which would have rendered their interests totally
inseparable; ... but the states, who were unwilling to form a
nearer confederacy with a government whose measures were so
obnoxious, and whose situation seemed so precarious, offered
only to renew 'the former alliances with England; and the
haughty St. John, disgusted with this disappointment, as well
as incensed at many affronts which had been offered him, with
impunity, by the retainers of the Palatine and Orange
families, and indeed by the populace in general, returned into
England and endeavoured to foment a quarrel between the
republics. .... There were several motives which at this time
induced the English Parliament to embrace hostile measures.
Many of the members thought that a foreign war would serve as
a pretence for continuing the same Parliament, and delaying
the new model of a representative, with which the nation had
so long been flattered. Others hoped that the war would
furnish a reason for maintaining, some time longer, that
numerous standing army which was so much complained of. On the
other hand, some, who dreaded the increasing power of
Cromwell, expected that the great expense of naval armaments
would prove a motive for diminishing the military
establishment. To divert the attention of the public from
domestic quarrels towards foreign transactions, seemed, in the
present disposition of men's minds, to be good policy. ... All
these views, enforced by the violent spirit of St. John, who
had great influence over Cromwell, determined the Parliament
to change the purposed alliance into a furious war against the
United Provinces. To cover these hostile intentions, the
Parliament, under pretence of providing for the interests of
commerce, embraced such measures as they knew would give
disgust to the states. They framed the famous act of
navigation, which prohibited all nations from importing into
England in their bottoms any commodity which was not the
growth and manufacture of their own country. ... The minds of
men in both states were every day more irritated against each
other; and it was not long before these humours broke forth
into action."
_D. Hume,
History of England,
chapter 60 (volume 5)._
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