THE COMMONWEALTH
1649-1653
[Sidenote: Dangers of the Commonwealth.]
The news of the king's death was received throughout Europe with a
thrill of horror. The Czar of Russia chased the English envoy from his
court. The ambassador of France was withdrawn on the proclamation of the
Republic. The Protestant powers of the Continent seemed more anxious
than any to disavow all connexion with a Protestant people who had
brought their king to the block. Holland took the lead in acts of open
hostility to the new power as soon as the news of the execution reached
the Hague. The States-General waited solemnly on the Prince of Wales,
who took the title of Charles the Second, and recognized him as
"Majesty," while they refused an audience to the English envoys. Their
Stadtholder, his brother-in-law, the Prince of Orange, was supported by
popular sympathy in the aid and encouragement he afforded to Charles;
and eleven ships of the English fleet, which had found a refuge at the
Hague ever since their revolt from the Parliament, were suffered to sail
under Rupert's command, and to render the seas unsafe for English
traders. The danger however was far greater nearer home. In Scotland
even the zealous Presbyterians whom Cromwell had restored to power
refused to follow England on its rejection of monarchy. Argyle and his
fellow-leaders proclaimed Charles the Second as king on the news of his
father's death; and at once despatched an embassy to the Hague to invite
him to ascend the throne. In Ireland the factions who ever since the
rebellion had turned the country into a chaos, the old Irish Catholics
or native party under Owen Roe O'Neill, the Catholics of the English
Pale, the Episcopalian Royalists, the Presbyterian Royalists of the
North, had at last been brought to some sort of union by the diplomacy
of Ormond; and Ormond called on Charles to land at once in a country
where he would find three-fourths of its people devoted to his cause.
[Sidenote: England and the Commonwealth.]
Of the dangers which threatened the new Commonwealth some were more
apparent than real. The rivalry of France and Spain, both anxious for
its friendship, secured it from the hostility of the greater powers of
the Continent; and the ill-will of Holland could be delayed, if not
averted, by negotiations. The acceptance of the Covenant was insisted
on by Scotland before it would formally receive Charles as its ruler,
and nothing but necessity would induce him to comply with such a demand.
On the side of Ireland the danger was more pressing, and an army of
twelve thousand men was set apart for a vigorous prosecution of the
Irish war. But the real difficulties were the difficulties at home. The
death of Charles gave fresh vigour to the Royalist cause; and the
loyalty which it revived was stirred to enthusiasm by the publication of
the "Eikon Basilike," a work really due to the ingenuity of Dr. Gauden,
a Presbyterian minister, but which was believed to have been composed by
the king himself in his later hours of captivity, and which reflected
with admirable skill the hopes, the suffering, and the piety of the
royal "martyr." For a moment there were dreams of a rising, which had to
be roughly checked by the execution of the Duke of Hamilton and Lords
Holland and Capell, who had till now been confined in the Tower. But the
popular disaffection was a far more serious matter than these Royalist
intrigues. It was soon plain that the revolution which had struck down
Parliament and monarchy alike was without sanction from the nation at
large. The government of the country had been provided for by the
creation of a Council of State, consisting of forty-one members selected
from what was left of the Commons, and who were entrusted with full
executive power at home and abroad. But if the Rump consented to profit
by the work of the soldiers, it showed no will to signify its approval
of it. A majority of the members of the Council declined the oath
offered to them at their earliest meeting, pledging them to an approval
of the king's death and the establishment of the Commonwealth. In the
nation at large the repudiation of the army's work was universal. Half
the judges retired from the bench. Thousands of refusals met the demand
of an engagement to be faithful to the Republic which was made from all
beneficed clergymen and public functionaries. It was not till May, and
even then in spite of the ill-will of the citizens, that the Council
ventured to proclaim the Commonwealth in London.
[Sidenote: Designs of the Rump.]
It was plain that England had no mind to see her old parliamentary
liberties set aside for a military rule. But in truth the army itself
never dreamed of establishing such a rule. Still less did it dream of
leaving the conduct of affairs in the hands of the small body of members
who still called themselves the House of Commons, a body which numbered
hardly a hundred, and whose average attendance was little more than
fifty. In reducing it by "Pride's Purge" to the mere shadow of a House
the army had never contemplated its continuance as a permanent assembly:
it had, in fact, insisted as a condition of even its temporary
continuance that it should prepare a bill for the summoning of a fresh
Parliament. The plan, put forward by the Council of Officers is still
interesting as the basis of many later efforts towards parliamentary
reform. It advised a dissolution in the spring, the assembling every two
years of a new Parliament consisting of four hundred members, elected by
all householders rateable to the poor, and a redistribution of seats
which would have given the privilege of representation to every place of
importance. Paid military officers and civil officials were excluded
from election. The plan was apparently accepted by the Commons, and a
bill based on it was again and again discussed. But it was soon
whispered about that the House had no mind to dissolve itself. Whatever
might be the hopes of the soldiers or their leaders, the shrewder
statesmen who sate at Westminster knew that the country was eager to
undo the work that had been done; and that the first effort of a
fairly-chosen Parliament would be to put an end to the Commonwealth and
to religious liberty. Their aim therefore was to gain time; to continue
their rule till what they looked on as a passing phase of national
feeling had disappeared, and till the great results which they looked
for from their policy both at home and abroad had reconciled the nation
to the new system of government. In a witty paraphrase of the story of
Moses, Henry Marten was soon to picture the Commonwealth as a new-born
and delicate babe, and hint that "no one is so proper to bring it up as
the mother who has brought it into the world." Secret as this purpose
was kept, suspicions of it no sooner stole abroad than the popular
discontent found a mouthpiece in John Lilburne, a brave, hot-headed
soldier, and the excitement of the army appeared in a formidable mutiny
in May. But the leaders of the army set all suspicion aside. "You must
cut these people in pieces," Cromwell broke out in the Council of State,
"or they will cut you in pieces"; and a forced march of fifty miles to
Burford enabled him to burst with Fairfax on the mutinous regiments at
midnight, and to stamp out the revolt.
[Sidenote: Cromwell in Ireland.]
But resolute as he was against disorder, Cromwell went honestly with the
army in its demand of a new Parliament; he believed, and in his harangue
to the mutineers he pledged himself to the assertion, that the House
purposed to dissolve itself. In spite of the delays thrown in the way of
the bill for a new Representative body Cromwell entertained no serious
suspicion of the Parliament's design when he was summoned to Ireland by
a series of Royalist successes which left only Dublin in the hands of
the Parliamentary forces. With Scotland threatening war, and a naval
struggle impending with Holland, it was necessary that the work of the
army in Ireland should be done quickly. The temper too of Cromwell and
his soldiers was one of vengeance, for the horror of the alleged
massacre remained living in every English breast, and the revolt was
looked upon as a continuance of the massacre. "We are come," he said on
his landing, "to ask an account of the innocent blood that hath been
shed, and to endeavour to bring to an account all who by appearing in
arms shall justify the same." A sortie from Dublin had already broken up
Ormond's siege of the capital; and feeling himself powerless to keep the
field before the new army, the Marquis had thrown his best troops, three
thousand Englishmen under Sir Arthur Aston, as a garrison into Drogheda.
Cromwell landed in Ireland on the fifteenth of August 1649; and his
storm of Drogheda in September was the first of a series of awful
massacres. The garrison fought bravely, and repulsed the first attack;
but a second drove Aston and his force back to the Mill-Mount. "Our men
getting up to them," ran Cromwell's terrible despatch, "were ordered by
me to put them all to the sword. And indeed, being in the heat of
action, I forbade them to spare any that were in arms in the town, and I
think that night they put to death about two thousand men." A few fled
to St. Peter's church, "whereupon I ordered the steeple to be fired,
where one of them was heard to say in the midst of the flames: 'God damn
me, I burn, I burn.'" "In the church itself nearly one thousand were put
to the sword. I believe all their friars were knocked on the head
promiscuously but two," but these were the sole exceptions to the rule
of killing the soldiers only. At a later time Cromwell challenged his
enemies to give "an instance of one man since my coming into Ireland,
not in arms, massacred, destroyed, or banished." But for soldiers there
was no mercy. Of the remnant who surrendered through hunger, "when they
submitted, their officers were knocked on the head, every tenth man of
the soldiers killed, and the rest shipped for the Barbadoes." "I am
persuaded," the despatch ends, "that this is a righteous judgement of
God upon these barbarous wretches who have imbrued their hands in so
much innocent blood, and that it will tend to prevent the effusion of
blood for the future."
[Sidenote: Charles and the Scots.]
A detachment sufficed to relieve Derry and to quiet Ulster; and Cromwell
turned to the south, where as stout a defence was followed by as
terrible a massacre at Wexford. A fresh success at Ross brought him to
Waterford; but the city held stubbornly out, disease thinned his army,
where there was scarce an officer who had not been sick, and the general
himself was arrested by illness. At last the tempestuous weather drove
him into winter quarters at Cork with his work half done. The winter of
1649 was one of terrible anxiety. The Parliament was showing less and
less inclination to dissolve itself, and was meeting the growing
discontent by a stricter censorship of the press and a fruitless
prosecution of John Lilburne. English commerce was being ruined by the
piracies of Rupert's fleet, which now anchored at Kinsale to support the
Royalist cause in Ireland. The energy of Vane indeed had already
re-created a navy, squadrons of which were being despatched into the
British seas, the Mediterranean, and the Levant; and Colonel Blake, who
had distinguished himself by his heroic defence of Taunton during the
war, was placed at the head of a fleet which drove Rupert from the Irish
coast, and finally blockaded him in the Tagus. But even the energy of
Vane quailed before the danger which now broke on England from the
Scots. "One must go and die there," the young king cried at the news of
Ormond's defeat before Dublin, "for it is shameful for me to live
elsewhere." But his ardour for an Irish campaign cooled as Cromwell
marched from victory to victory; and from the isle of Jersey, which
alone remained faithful to him of all his southern dominions, Charles
renewed the negotiations with Scotland which his hopes from Ireland had
broken. They were again delayed by a proposal on the part of Montrose to
attack the very Government with whom his master was negotiating; but the
failure and death of the Marquis in the spring of 1650 forced Charles to
accept the Presbyterian conditions; and while an army was raised in the
North, the young king prepared to cross to his Scottish dominions.
[Sidenote: Cromwell in Scotland.]
Dismayed as they were, the English leaders resolved to anticipate the
danger by attacking the new enemy in his own home; but the Lord-General
Fairfax, while willing to defend England against a Scotch invasion,
scrupled to take the lead in an invasion of Scotland. The Council
recalled Cromwell from Ireland, but his cooler head saw that there was
yet time to finish his work in the west. During the winter he had been
busily preparing for a new campaign, and it was only after the storm of
Clonmell and the overthrow of the Irish army under Hugh O'Neill in the
hottest fight the army had yet fought, that he embarked for England. The
new Lord-General entered London amidst the shouts of a great multitude;
and in July 1650, but a month after Charles had landed on the shores of
Scotland, the English army crossed the Tweed fifteen thousand men
strong. But the terror of his massacres in Ireland hung round its
leader, the country was deserted as he advanced, and he was forced to
cling for provisions to a fleet which sailed along the coast. The Scotch
general, Leslie, with a larger force, refused battle, and lay
obstinately in his lines between Edinburgh and Leith. A march of the
English army round his position to the slopes of the Pentlands only
brought about a change of the Scottish front; and as Cromwell fell back
baffled upon Dunbar, Leslie encamped upon the heights above the town,
and cut off the English retreat along the coast by the seizure of
Cockburnspath. His post was almost unassailable, while the soldiers of
Cromwell were sick and starving; and their general had resolved on an
embarkation of his forces when he saw in the dusk of evening signs of
movement in the Scottish camp. Leslie's caution had at last been
overpowered by the zeal of the preachers, and on the morning of the
third of September the Scotch army moved down to the lower ground
between the hillside on which it was encamped and a little brook which
covered the English front. Leslie's horse was far in advance of the main
body, and it had hardly reached the level ground when Cromwell in the
dim dawn flung his whole force upon it. "They run, I profess they run!"
he cried as the Scotch horse broke after a desperate resistance, and
threw into confusion the foot who were hurrying to its aid. Then, as the
sun rose over the mist of the morning, he added in nobler words: "Let
God arise, and let His enemies be scattered! Like as the mist vanisheth,
so shalt Thou drive them away!" In less than an hour the victory was
complete. The defeat at once became a rout; ten thousand prisoners were
taken, with all the baggage and guns; three thousand were slain, with
scarce any loss on the part of the conquerors. Leslie reached Edinburgh,
a general without an army.
[Sidenote: Break with Holland.]
The effect of Dunbar was at once seen in the attitude of the
Continental powers. Spain hastened to recognize the Republic, and
Holland offered its alliance. But Cromwell was watching with anxiety the
growing discontent at home. He was anxious for a "settlement." He knew
that for such a settlement a new Parliament was necessary, and that
England would never consent to be ruled against her will by the mere
rump of members gathered at Westminster. Yet every day made it plainer
that it was their purpose to continue to rule her. The general amnesty
claimed by Ireton and the bill for the Parliament's dissolution still
hung on hand; the reform of the courts of justice, which had been
pressed by the army, failed before the obstacles thrown in its way by
the lawyers in the Commons. "Relieve the oppressed," Cromwell wrote from
Dunbar, "hear the groans of poor prisoners. Be pleased to reform the
abuses of all professions. If there be any one that makes many poor to
make a few rich, that suits not a Commonwealth." But the House was
seeking to turn the current of public opinion in favour of its own
continuance by a great diplomatic triumph. It resolved secretly on the
wild project of bringing about a union between England and Holland, and
it took advantage of Cromwell's victory to despatch Oliver St. John with
a stately embassy to the Hague. His rejection of an alliance and Treaty
of Commerce which the Dutch offered was followed by the disclosure of
the English proposal of union. The proposal was at once refused by the
States; and the envoys, who returned angrily to the Parliament,
attributed their failure to the posture of affairs in Scotland. Charles
was preparing there for a new campaign. Humiliation after humiliation
had been heaped on the young king since he landed in his northern realm.
He had subscribed to the Covenant; he had listened to sermons and
scoldings from the ministers; he was called on at last to sign a
declaration that acknowledged the tyranny of his father and the idolatry
of his mother. Hardened and shameless as he was, the young king for a
moment recoiled. "I could never look my mother in the face again," he
cried, "after signing such a paper"; but he signed. He was still however
a king only in name, shut out from the Council and the army, with his
friends excluded from all part in government or the war. But he was
freed by the victory of Dunbar. "I believe that the king will set up on
his own score now," Cromwell wrote after his victory, as he advanced to
occupy Edinburgh while the royal forces fell back upon Stirling and
Perth. With the overthrow of Leslie in fact the power of Argyle and the
narrow Presbyterians whom he led came to an end. Hamilton, the brother
and successor of the Duke who had been captured at Preston, brought back
the Royalists to the camp, and Charles insisted on taking part in the
Council and on being crowned at Scone.
[Sidenote: Worcester.]
Master of Edinburgh, but foiled in an attack on Stirling, Cromwell
waited through the winter and the long spring of 1651, while intestine
feuds broke up the nation opposed to him, and while the stricter
Covenanters retired sulkily from the king's army on the return of the
"Malignants," the Royalists of the earlier war, to its ranks. With
summer the campaign recommenced, but Leslie again fell back on his
system of positions, and Cromwell, finding his camp at Stirling
unassailable, crossed into Fife and left the road open to the South. The
bait was taken. In spite of Leslie's counsels Charles resolved to invade
England, and call the Royalist party again to revolt. He was soon in
full march through Lancashire upon the Severn, with the English horse
under Lambert hanging on his rear, and the English foot hastening by
York and Coventry to close the road to London. "We have done to the best
of our judgement," Cromwell replied to the angry alarm of the
Parliament, "knowing that if some issue were not put to this business it
would occasion another winter's war." At Coventry he learned Charles's
position, and swept round by Evesham upon Worcester, where the Scotch
king was encamped. Throwing half his force across the river, Cromwell
attacked the town on both sides on the third of September, the
anniversary of his victory at Dunbar. He led the van in person, and was
"the first to set foot on the enemy's ground." When Charles descended
from the cathedral tower to fling himself on the division which remained
eastward of the Severn, Cromwell hurried back across the river, and was
soon "riding in the midst of the fire." For four or five hours, he told
the Parliament, "it was as stiff a contest as ever I have seen"; for
though the Scots were outnumbered and beaten into the city, they gave no
answer but shot to offers of quarter, and it was not till nightfall that
all was over. The loss of the victors was as usual inconsiderable. The
conquered lost six thousand men, and all their baggage and artillery.
Leslie was among the prisoners: Hamilton among the dead. Charles himself
fled from the field; and after months of strange wanderings and
adventures made his escape to France.
[Sidenote: Activity of the Parliament.]
"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 to be
purchased by a compromise which permitted the House to sit for three
years more. Internal affairs were almost at a deadlock. The Parliament
appointed committees to prepare plans for legal reforms or for
ecclesiastical reforms, but it did nothing to carry them into effect. It
was overpowered by the crowd of affairs which the confusion of the war
had thrown into its hands, by confiscations, sequestrations,
appointments to civil and military offices, in fact the whole
administration of the State; and there were times when it was driven to
a resolve not to take any private affairs for weeks together in order
that it might make some progress with public business. To add to this
confusion and muddle there were the inevitable scandals which arose from
it; charges of malversation and corruption were hurled at the members of
the House; and some, like Haselrig, were accused with justice of using
their power to further their own interests. 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. In
February 1652 the Amnesty Bill was forced through after fifteen
divisions. A Grand Committee, with Sir Matthew Hale at its head, was
appointed to consider the reform of the law. A union with Scotland was
pushed resolutely forward; eight English Commissioners convoked a
Convention of delegates from its counties and boroughs at Edinburgh,
and, in spite of dogged opposition, procured a vote in favour of the
proposal. A bill was introduced which gave legal form to the union, and
admitted representatives from Scotland into the next Parliament. A
similar plan was proposed for a union with Ireland.
[Sidenote: War with Holland.]
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; a
"Navigation Act," prohibiting the importation in foreign vessels of any
but the products of the countries to which they belonged, struck a fatal
blow at the carrying trade from which the Dutch drew their wealth; and
fresh debates arose from the English claim to salutes from all vessels
in the Channel. In May 1652 the two fleets met before Dover, and a
summons from Blake to lower the Dutch flag was met by the Dutch admiral,
Tromp, with a broadside. The States-General attributed the collision to
accident, and offered to recall Tromp; but the English demands rose at
each step in the negotiations till war became inevitable. The army
hardly needed the warning conveyed by the introduction of a bill for its
disbanding to understand the new policy of the Parliament. It was
significant that while accepting the bill for its own dissolution the
House had as yet prepared no plan for the assembly which was to follow
it; and the Dutch war had hardly been declared when, abandoning the
attitude of inaction which it had observed since the beginning of the
Commonwealth, 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
demand 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."
There was just ground, he urged, for discontent in their selfish greed
of houses and lands, the scandalous lives of many, their partiality as
judges, their interference with the ordinary course of law in matters of
private interest, their delay of law reform, above all in their manifest
design of perpetuating their own power. "There is little to hope for
from such men," he ended with a return to his predominant thought, "for
a settlement of the nation."
[Sidenote: Blake.]
For the moment the crisis was averted by the events of the war. A
terrible storm had separated the two fleets when on the point of
engaging in the Orkneys, but Ruyter and Blake met again in the Channel,
and after a fierce struggle the Dutch were forced to retire under cover
of night. Since the downfall of Spain Holland had been the first naval
power in the world, and the spirit of the nation rose gallantly with its
earliest defeat. Immense efforts were made to strengthen the fleet; and
the veteran, Tromp, who was replaced at its head, appeared in the
Channel with seventy-three ships of war. Blake had but half the number,
but he at once accepted the challenge, and throughout the twenty-eighth
of November the unequal fight went on doggedly till nightfall, when the
English fleet withdrew shattered into the Thames. Tromp swept the
Channel in triumph, with a broom at his masthead; and the tone of the
Commons lowered with the defeat of their favourite force. A compromise
seems to have been arranged between the two parties, for the bill
providing a new Representative was again pushed on; and the Parliament
agreed to retire in the coming November, while Cromwell offered no
opposition to a reduction of the army. But the courage of the House rose
afresh with a turn of fortune. The strenuous efforts of Blake enabled
him again to put to sea in a few months after his defeat; and in
February 1653 a running fight through four days ended at last in an
English victory, though Tromp's fine seamanship enabled him to save the
convoy he was guarding. The House at once insisted on the retention of
its power. Not only were the existing members to continue as members of
the new Parliament, thus depriving the places they represented of their
right of choosing representatives, but they were to constitute a
Committee of Revision, and in this capacity to determine the validity of
each election and the fitness of the members returned.
[Sidenote: The Parliament driven out.]
A conference took place between the leaders of the Commons and the
officers of the Army, who resolutely demanded not only the omission of
these clauses, but that the Parliament should at once dissolve itself,
and commit the new elections to a Council of State. "Our charge,"
retorted Haselrig, "cannot be transferred to any one." The conference
was adjourned till the next morning, on an understanding that no
decisive step should be taken; but it had no sooner reassembled on the
twentieth of April 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 Commons. He sate down quietly in
his place, "clad in plain grey clothes and grey worsted stockings," and
listened to Vane's passionate arguments. "I am come to do what grieves
me to the heart," he said to his neighbour, St. John; but he still
remained quiet, till Vane pressed the House to waive its usual forms and
pass the bill at once. "The time has come," he said to Harrison. "Think
well," replied Harrison, "it is a dangerous work!" and Cromwell listened
for another quarter of an hour. At the question "that this bill do
pass," he at length rose, and his tone grew higher as he repeated his
former charges of injustice, self-interest, and delay. "Your hour is
come," he ended, "the Lord hath done with you!" A crowd of members
started to their feet in angry protest. "Come, come," replied Cromwell,
"we have had enough of this"; and striding into the midst of the
chamber, he clapt his hat on his head, and exclaimed, "I will put an end
to your prating!" In the din that followed his voice was heard in broken
sentences--"It is not fit that you should sit here any longer! You
should give place to better men! You are no Parliament." Thirty
musketeers entered at a sign from their General, and the fifty members
present crowded to the door. "Drunkard!" Cromwell broke out as Wentworth
passed him; and Marten was taunted with a yet coarser name. Vane,
fearless to the last, told him his act was "against all right and all
honour." "Ah, Sir Harry Vane, Sir Harry Vane," Cromwell retorted in
bitter indignation at the trick he had been played, "you might have
prevented all this, but you are a juggler, and have no common honesty!
The Lord deliver me from Sir Harry Vane!" The Speaker refused to quit
his seat, till Harrison offered to "lend him a hand to come down."
Cromwell lifted the mace from the table. "What shall we do with this
bauble?" he said. "Take it away!" The door of the House was locked at
last, and the dispersion of the Commons was followed a few hours after
by that of their executive committee, the Council of State. Cromwell
himself summoned them to withdraw. "We have heard," replied the
President, John Bradshaw, "what you have done this morning at the House,
and in some hours all England will hear it. But you mistake, sir, if you
think the Parliament dissolved. No power on earth can dissolve the
Parliament but itself, be sure of that!"