THE LONG PARLIAMENT
1640–1642
The Long Parliament met at Westminster on November 3, 1640. Most of its
members, even as Cromwell himself, had sat in the Parliament of the
preceding May, but they came together now in a different temper, and
with far greater power in their hands. Charles could not venture to
dissolve them so long as the Scottish army was encamped on English soil.
“No fear of raising the Parliament,” wrote a Scot, “so long as the lads
about Newcastle sit still.”
There were three things which the Long Parliament was resolved to do.
The first was to release the sufferers from arbitrary government; the
second, to punish the men by whose hands the King had sought to
establish his arbitrary power; the third, to amend the constitution so
that arbitrary rule should be impossible hereafter. Pym’s long
experience in Parliaments made him the undisputed leader of the popular
party, and his maxim was that it was not sufficient to remove
grievances, but necessary to pull up the causes of them by the roots.
A master of parliamentary tactics in days when party discipline was
unknown, Pym retained his ascendancy until the day of his death. But he
remained to the end a great party leader rather than a great statesman.
He was too much of a partisan to understand the feelings of his
opponents, too closely attached to precedents and legal formulas to
perceive the new issues which new times brought. When it was necessary
to leave the beaten road, he was incapable of finding fresh paths. Pym
was the chief orator of his party as well as its guiding spirit. In
long, methodical expositions of the grievances of the nation, he pressed
home the indictment against arbitrary government with convincing force.
But sometimes he rose to a grave and lofty eloquence, or condensed the
feeling of the hour in brief, incisive phrases that passed current like
proverbs.
Hampden came next to Pym in authority with the House and had a far
greater fame outside it. Ship-money had made him famous. “The eyes of
all men were fixed on him as their _patriæ pater_, and the pilot that
must steer their vessel through the tempests and rocks that threatened
it.” A poor speaker, but clear-sighted, energetic, and resolute, “a
supreme governor over all his passions and affections,” he was a man who
swayed others in council, and whom they would follow when it came to
action.
[Illustration:
JOHN PYM.
(_From a miniature by Cooper._)
]
Next to these in importance came St. John—Hampden’s counsel in the
Ship-money case, and the ablest of the opposition lawyers,—Holles and
Strode,—men who had suffered for their boldness in the Parliament of
1629,—and Rudyard, whose oratory had gained him renown in still earlier
Parliaments. Of the younger men, the most prominent were Nathaniel
Fiennes and Sir Henry Vane, notorious for their advanced religious
views, and Sir Arthur Haslerig and Harry Marten, equally notorious for
their democratic opinions. The headquarters of the popular party was Sir
Richard Manly’s house in a little court behind Westminster Hall, where
Pym lodged. There, while Parliament was sitting, Pym, Hampden, and a few
others kept a common table at their joint expense, and during their
meetings much business was transacted. Cromwell, as the cousin of
Hampden and St. John, was doubtless one of this group. Though he was
known to the party in general only as a rather silent country squire who
had been a member of the two last Parliaments, it is evident that he had
some reputation for business capacity. During the first session of the
Long Parliament, he was specially appointed to eighteen committees, not
counting those particularly concerned with the affairs of the eastern
counties, to which the member for Cambridge was naturally added.
Cromwell’s first intervention in the debates of the House was on
November 9, 1640, when the grievances of the nation and the wrongs of
those who had suffered under Star Chamber and High Commission were being
set forth at large. He rose to deliver a petition from John Lilburn, a
prisoner in the Fleet, and how he looked and spoke is recorded in Sir
Philip Warwick’s memoirs.
“The first time I ever took notice of him,” says Warwick, “was in
the beginning of the Parliament held in November, 1640, when I
vainly thought myself a courtly young gentleman; for we courtiers
valued ourselves much on our good clothes. I came into the House one
morning, well clad, and perceived a gentleman speaking whom I knew
not, very ordinarily apparelled; for it was a plain cloth suit which
seemed to have been made by an ill country tailor; his linen was
plain, and not very clean, and I remember a speck or two of blood
upon his little band, which was not much larger than his collar; his
hat was without a hatband; his stature was of a good size; his sword
stuck close to his side; his countenance swollen and reddish; his
voice sharp and untunable, and his eloquence full of fervour. For
the subject matter would not bear much of reason, it being in behalf
of a servant of Mr. Prynne’s, who had dispersed libels against the
Queen for her dancing, and such like innocent and courtly sports;
and he aggravated the imprisonment of this man by the Council-table
unto that height that one would have believed the very government
itself had been in great danger by it. I sincerely profess it much
lessened my reverence unto that great council, for he was very much
hearkened unto.”
When the grievances of the nation had been heard and the petitions of
individual sufferers referred to committees, the Long Parliament turned
to punish the King’s ministers. Charles himself was never mentioned but
with great honour, as a King misled by evil counsellors, who had
prevented him from following the dictates of his native wisdom and
goodness. In the interests of both King and subjects, argued Rudyard,
these evil advisers must be removed and punished. As the Bible said:
“Take away the wicked from the king and his throne shall be
established.”
Accordingly Strafford was arrested and impeached, just as he was himself
about to accuse the parliamentary leaders of high treason for
encouraging and aiding the invasion of the Scots (November 11th). A
month later, Laud followed Strafford to the Tower. Windebank, the
Secretary of State, and Lord Keeper Finch, likewise accused, fled beyond
the seas. Two more bishops and six judges were impeached and imprisoned,
while all monopolists were expelled from the House of Commons. It seemed
“a general doomsday.” Strafford was the first to suffer, and his trial
in Westminster Hall riveted all eyes.
It was not only as “the great apostate to the commonwealth,” the
oppressor of the English colonists in Ireland, the moving spirit of the
unjust war against the Scots, that Strafford was accused. The essence of
the charge against him was that he had endeavoured by words, acts, and
counsels to subvert the fundamental laws of England and Ireland, in
order to introduce an arbitrary and tyrannical government. In him seemed
incarnate the rule of arbitrary will as opposed to the reign of law
which the Parliament strove to restore. Pym’s speeches against Strafford
are, throughout, a glorification of the reign of law. “Good laws,” he
said, “nay, the best laws, were no advantage when will was set above
law.” All evils hurtful to the State were comprehended in this one
crime.
“The law is that which puts a difference betwixt good and evil,
betwixt just and unjust. If you take away the law, all things will
fall into a confusion. Every man will become a law to himself,
which, in the depraved condition of human nature, must needs produce
great enormities. Lust will become a law, envy will become a law,
covetousness and ambition will become laws; and what dictates, what
decisions such laws will produce, may easily be discerned in the
government of Ireland.”
Nor was the substitution of arbitrary power for law hurtful to subjects
only.
“It is dangerous to the King’s person, and dangerous to his Crown.
If the histories of those Eastern countries be pursued, where
princes order their affairs according to the mischievous principles
of the Earl of Strafford, loose and absolved from all rules of
government, they will be found to be frequent in combustions, full
of massacres and of the tragical ends of princes.”
Strafford struggled to show that the offences proved against him did not
legally amount to high treason. Parliament through the Attainder Bill
answered that it was necessary for the safety of the State to make them
treasonable. “To alter the settled frame and constitution of
government,” said Pym, “is treason in any state. The laws whereby all
other parts of a kingdom are preserved would be very vain and defective,
if they had not a power to secure and preserve themselves.”
Charles was anxious to save Strafford’s life, but his blundering
interventions during the course of the trial ended in failure. When it
was discovered that the King’s agents were plotting to get possession of
the Tower and to bring the English army up from Yorkshire to overawe the
Parliament, the Earl’s fate was sealed. Pressed by both Houses to yield,
and threatened by the London mob if he refused, Charles assented to the
Bill of Attainder, and on May 12, 1641, Strafford was beheaded.
Side by side with the prosecution of the King’s evil advisers went on
the work of providing against arbitrary government in the future. The
extraordinary courts which had been the instruments of oppression were
swept away. Down went the Star Chamber and the High Commission Court,
the Council of the North, and the Council of Wales and the Marches. The
Tonnage and Poundage Act declared that henceforward it was illegal to
levy customs duties without a parliamentary grant. The extension of the
forests was prohibited, the exaction of knighthood fines forbidden, and
Ship-money declared unlawful. Henceforward to govern without a
Parliament was to be as impossible as to tax without a Parliament. On
February 15, 1641, Charles assented to the Triennial Act, which bound
him to call a Parliament every third year, and provided machinery for
its convocation, if he neglected to summon it at the appointed time. On
May 11th, he assented to a second act, which prohibited him from
dissolving the present Parliament, or even proroguing it save by its own
consent.
Cromwell had taken no part in the prosecution of Strafford, for he was
neither an orator nor a lawyer, but his name is closely associated with
one of these constitutional changes. The origin of the Triennial Act was
a bill introduced by Strode for reviving the old law of Edward III. by
which a Parliament must be summoned every year. On December 30th,
Cromwell moved its second reading, and he was one of the committee from
whose deliberations it finally issued as a bill for summoning a
Parliament every three years. In ecclesiastical affairs, he was more
prominent by far. On constitutional questions, the popular party had
been almost unanimous, but on religious questions its unanimity ended.
The general aim of its leaders was to subject the Church to the control
of the State as represented by Parliament, instead of leaving it to the
authority of the King as its “supreme governor.” But while some desired
to abolish the Prayer-book, and to make the doctrine of the Church more
frankly Calvinistic, others wished merely the abolition of a few
offensive formulas or ceremonies. On Church government there was the
same diversity of opinion. A few wished to maintain bishops as they
were, a few to abolish them altogether; the majority desired to retain
Episcopacy, but to limit the power of the bishops. Hence the popularity
of Ussher’s plan for a limited Episcopacy, in which every bishop was to
be assisted and controlled by a council of diocesan clergy. As yet there
was no party in Parliament which proposed to introduce Presbyterianism
or Independency, but those who wished for the complete extirpation of
Episcopacy were very numerous. In the Commons, Fiennes and Sir Henry
Vane were for its abolition, “root and branch,” and Hampden afterwards
joined them. Amongst these “root and branch” men was Cromwell, and he
was more closely connected with the attack on the Church than with any
other part of the proceedings of the Long Parliament. The only one of
his letters which belongs to this period shows his interest in religious
questions. It is addressed to a bookseller, and asks for a copy of the
printed “reasons of the Scots to enforce their desire of uniformity in
religion.” “I would peruse it,” he writes, “against we fall upon the
debate, which will be speedily.”
The only recorded speech of Cromwell in these ecclesiastical discussions
was delivered on February 9, 1641, about the question whether a petition
for the total abolition of Episcopacy, signed by fifteen thousand
citizens of London, should be referred to a committee. A member urged
its rejection, arguing that the bishops were one of the estates of the
realm, and a part of the constitution. Equality (or, as he termed it,
“parity”) in the Church would lead to equality in the State. Cromwell
stood up, and very bluntly denied his inferences and suppositions, on
which “divers interrupted him and called him to the bar.” Pym and Holles
defended him, and he was allowed to continue.
“Mr. Cromwell went on and said: ‘He did not understand why that
gentleman that last spake should make an inference of parity from
the Church to the State, nor that there was any necessity of the
great revenues of bishops. He was more convinced touching the
irregularity of bishops than even before, because like the Roman
hierarchy they would not endure to have their condition come to a
trial.’”
In May, Cromwell took another opportunity of attacking the bishops. The
Commons had passed a bill excluding clergymen in general from holding
secular office either as judges, councillors, or members of the House of
Lords, and the Upper House showed a resolution not to pass it. On this
the “root and branch” men replied with a bill for the abolition of
bishops altogether, which Sir Edward Dering, a noted speaker, was
persuaded to introduce. Afterwards Dering repented and explained. “The
Bill,” he said, “was pressed into my hands by Sir Arthur Haslerig, being
then brought to him by Sir Henry Vane and Mr. Oliver Cromwell.”
The “root and branch” bill never got farther than committee, but its
introduction further accentuated the division in the popular party. A
section, headed by Hyde and Lord Falkland, severed themselves definitely
from their former friends. Naturally conservative in temper, they were
satisfied with the reforms already achieved, and were more willing to
trust the King with the constitution than Parliament with the Church.
Before the end of the session, Hyde was in communication with the King,
and a party of constitutional Royalists based on the defence of the
Church was in process of formation. Charles was equally determined to
maintain the Church, and full of schemes for regaining his lost power.
The prospect of obtaining support in the House of Commons itself
increased his confidence of ultimate success, and in August he set out
for Scotland, hoping to win the Scottish nobility to his side, and to
use one kingdom against the other.
In October, 1641, when the second session of the Long Parliament began,
the position of affairs was greatly altered. The popular party was
weakened by its differences on the religious question, and the division
was rapidly spreading to the nation. At the same time, the parliamentary
leaders had lost, through the withdrawal of the Scottish army, the
military force which had protected them from an attempted _coup d’état_.
That the fear of such a stroke on the King’s part was by no means
groundless, the news from Scotland proved. It was rumoured that with the
King’s sanction a party of royalist soldiers had plotted to seize
Hamilton and Argyle, whose hasty flight from Edinburgh had alone saved
their lives. On the top of this came the news of a rebellion in Ireland,
of an attempt to surprise Dublin Castle, and of a massacre of the
English colonists in Ulster. The rebellion spread daily, and as tattered
fugitives straggled into Dublin, each with his story of murder and
pillage, the excitement in England rose to fever heat. It came to be an
article of faith that fifty thousand Englishmen had been barbarously
murdered, and some said 150,000.
To modern historians the Irish rebellion seems only the natural result
of the English system of governing Ireland, but to contemporary
Englishmen it came like a bolt from the blue. The native Irish were
embittered and impoverished by the confiscations of the last sixty
years, and filled with fury and fear by Strafford’s intended plantation
of Connaught. Now that the Puritans were in power, the complete
suppression of the Catholic religion, only threatened before, seemed
imminent and inevitable. The impeachment of Strafford and his most
trusted counsellors had crippled the strong Government which Strafford
had built up, and the disbanding of his army had filled the country with
men trained to arms. The opportunity for a successful revolt had come at
last, and it was no wonder that the Irish seized it. At its beginning,
the rebellion of October, 1641, was a rising of the native Irish with
the object of recovering the lands from which they had been expelled. It
broke out first in the six counties of Ulster, planted in the reign of
James I., and next in Wicklow, the most recent of the later plantations.
But bloody and barbarous as the rebellion was, no general massacre was
either planned or carried out. The first object of the rebels was simply
to drive the colonists from their houses and lands, and in the process
some were murdered, and all plundered. The number of persons killed in
cold blood during the first month or two of the rebellion probably
amounted to about four thousand, and perhaps twice as many perished from
hardships and destitution.
To English Puritans, the only possible explanation of the rebellion was
that it was the natural result of Popery. On December 4, 1641, the Long
Parliament passed a resolution that they would never consent to any
toleration of the Popish religion in Ireland, or in any other of his
Majesty’s dominions. Equally fatal was the resolve that the funds for
the reconquest of Ireland should be raised by fresh confiscations of
Irish land, and the assignment of two and a half million acres for the
repayment of those who advanced the money. One vote turned a local
insurrection into a general rebellion; the other made the rebellion an
internecine war.
Both parties in Parliament approved of these votes. A public
subscription was opened, to which members of Parliament and merchants of
London contributed freely. “Master Oliver Cromwell,” who knew nothing of
Irish history, thought the plan wise and just, and put his name down for
£500, which was about one year’s income. He shared the general ignorance
of his contemporaries about the causes of the rebellion, and believed
the prevalent exaggerations about the massacre.
“Ireland,” he told the Irish clergy eight years later, “was once
united to England. Englishmen had good inheritances, which many of
them had purchased with their money; they and their ancestors, from
you and your ancestors. They had good leases from Irishmen, for long
times to come; great stocks thereupon; houses and plantations
erected at their own cost and charge. They lived peaceably and
honestly among you. You had generally equal benefit of the
protection of England with them; and equal justice from the laws,
saving what was necessary for the State, out of reasons of State, to
put upon some people apt to rebel upon the instigation of such as
you. You broke this union. You unprovoked put the English to the
most unheard-of and barbarous massacre (without respect to sex or
age) that ever the sun beheld. And at a time when Ireland was in
perfect peace.”
To reconquer Ireland an army had to be raised at once, and it was
impossible for the parliamentary leaders to trust the King with its
control. Less than six months before, Charles had plotted to bring up an
army to overawe their debates. In his recent journey to Scotland he had
again been tampering with the officers of the same army, and its
disbandment had only just been effected. If they gave him a new army,
who could doubt that before six months were over he would be turning it
against the Parliament? Pym had no doubts, and, on November 6th, he
brought forward an address saying that unless the King would employ such
ministers as Parliament approved “they would take such a course for the
securing of Ireland as might likewise secure themselves.” And while Pym
proposed to seize upon the executive power as far as Ireland was
concerned, Cromwell proposed to lay hands on it in England also. On
November 6th he carried a motion that the two Houses should vote to the
Earl of Essex power to command all the train-bands south of the Trent,
and that those powers should continue till this Parliament should take
further order. A month later, Haslerig brought in a militia bill, which
gave a general appointed by the Parliament the supreme command of all
the train-bands in England. The question whether the King or the
Parliament should command the armed forces of the nation was thus
definitely raised.
In the same November the Long Parliament appealed to the nation for
support. The Grand Remonstrance set forth all the ills the nation had
suffered in the fifteen years of the King’s reign, and all the
Parliament had done in the last twelve months to remove them. It pointed
out the obstacles which hindered them in their task, and announced what
they hoped to do in the future. The root of every evil was a malignant
design to subvert the fundamental laws and principles upon which the
religion and justice of the kingdom were based. Let “the malignant party
be removed,” and the reformation of Church and State could be completed.
The Remonstrance bade the nation judge whether its representatives had
been worthy of its confidence, and asked it to continue that confidence.
It brought war nearer, not because it was an indirect indictment of the
King, but because the ecclesiastical policy set forth in its last
clauses divided the nation into two camps. In them the House declared
its intention of taking in hand the work of church-reform, and demanded
the calling of a general synod of divines to aid it in the task. Over
these clauses of the Remonstrance the debate was long and bitter
(November 22nd). When it passed by but eleven votes, and the majority
proposed its printing, it seemed as if the Civil War would begin at
once, and on the floor of the House. Members protested, and shouted, and
waved their hats, and some took their sheathed swords in their hands as
if they waited for the word to draw them. “I thought,” said an
eye-witness, “we had all sat in the valley of the shadow of death; for
we, like Joab’s and Abner’s young men, had catched at each other’s
locks, and sheathed our swords in each other’s bowels.”
When the tumult was allayed, and the members went home, Cromwell’s
whispered words to Falkland showed how much that night’s decision meant.
“If the Remonstrance had been rejected,” he said, “I would have sold all
I had the next morning, and never seen England more; and I know there
are many other honest men of the same resolution.”
Three days after the passing of the Remonstrance, Charles returned to
Whitehall. He came back resolved to make no further concessions, and to
rid himself of the parliamentary leaders under the form of law. Their
relations with the Scots during the late war, their attacks on his royal
power, and the changes they sought to make in the constitution were
sufficient in his opinion to prove them guilty of high treason. His
first step was to remove the guards round the House; his next, to
ingratiate himself with the City; his third, to place a trusty ruffian
in command of the Tower. When the Commons petitioned for the restoration
of their guard, Charles told them that, on the word of a king, their
security from violence should be as much his care as the preservation of
his own children. On the day the House received this answer, Charles
sent the attorney-general to impeach five members, and a
sergeant-at-arms to arrest them.[6] The Commons refused to give them up.
The next day he came to arrest them in person, with four hundred armed
men at his back, but found the birds flown, and faith in the royal word
fled too (January 4, 1642). The House of Commons adjourned to the City,
which refused, as the House itself had done, to surrender the accused
members. Petitioners poured in from the country in thousands to support
their representatives, and it was evident that the feeling of the nation
was overwhelmingly on the side of the Parliament. The King’s _coup
d’état_ had completely failed. On the 11th of January, the House of
Commons returned to Westminster, while the King left London to avoid
witnessing their triumph.
Footnote 6:
The “Five Members” were Pym, Hampden, Holles, Haslerig and Strode.
Charles had not intended to act treacherously, and believed that his
actions were perfectly legal, but it was natural that the parliamentary
leaders, refusing to trust him, should press with renewed vigour for the
control of the armed force. Cromwell felt this as strongly as his
leaders, and three days after the return to Westminster he moved for a
committee to put the kingdom in a posture of defence (January 14th). The
motion was a little premature. It was necessary, Pym felt, that the two
Houses should act together, and the Lords were slow to move. It was not
till Pym told them that unless they would join the Commons in saving the
kingdom the Commons would save the kingdom without them, that the Upper
House gave way. In February, they passed the bill for the exclusion of
the bishops, and joined in the demand for the control of the militia. In
March, they united with the Commons in a vote to put the kingdom in a
posture of defence by authority of both Houses.
For the present, however, both King and Parliament were unwilling to
appeal to arms: the King strove to gain time in order to gain strength;
the Parliament still hoped that the King would grant the securities they
sought. So for six months they argued and negotiated, each appealing to
the nation by declarations and counter-declarations, and preluding by
these paper skirmishes the opening of real hostilities. Charles had two
policies which he followed alternately, each of which demanded time for
its success. The one was the policy of the Queen and the courtiers; the
other was the policy of Hyde and the constitutional Royalists. The
Queen’s policy was active preparation for the inevitable war, regardless
of any constitutional doctrines that stood in the way. Help was to be
sought from France, or Denmark, or the Prince of Orange, and a port was
to be secured, in which foreign troops could be landed. Hyde’s policy
was that the King should remain passive, that he should “shelter himself
wholly under the law,” granting anything which the law obliged him to
grant, and denying anything which the law enabled him to deny and his
position made it inexpedient to concede. “In the end,” said Hyde, “the
King and the Law together would be strong enough for any encounter that
might happen.”
Neither the King’s character nor his position made it possible for him
to adopt an entirely consistent policy. Some concessions he was obliged
to make, either to conciliate public opinion by a show of yielding, or
to gain time for his preparations for war. He withdrew the impeachment
of the Five Members; he removed the governor of the Tower; he temporised
about the Militia Bill; he even consented to the exclusion of the
bishops from the House of Lords. Sorely against his own conscience was
the latter concession granted, but the Queen insisted upon it, and to
secure her safe passage to the continent Charles yielded. She bore with
her to Holland the crown jewels to be pawned to provide arms and
ammunition, and when she had sailed Charles took his way to Yorkshire to
gather his friends around him and to secure the indispensable seaport.
As he journeyed north, a deputation met him at Newmarket, and renewed
the petition for the militia. But the necessity for concessions was
past, and he refused even a temporary grant. “By God,” he cried, “not
for an hour! You have asked that of me in this, was never asked of a
king, and with which I will not trust my wife and children.”
When the King reached York, he set in operation an attempt to get
possession of Hull. It was not only the most convenient port for the
landing of succours from Holland and Denmark; it was also the great
arsenal where the arms and munitions collected for the Scottish war had
been stored. On April 23rd, Charles appeared before Hull with three
hundred horsemen and demanded admission. But Sir John Hotham, the
Governor, drew up the drawbridge, and taking his stand on the wall
refused to admit the King. After proclaiming him a traitor, Charles rode
away.
While the policy which the Queen had urged met with failure, the policy
of which Hyde was the advocate gained for Charles adherents every day.
Opinion veered to the King’s side. The change was mainly due to the
ecclesiastical policy of the Parliament, for those who loved the Church
feared to see its liturgy and its government delivered up to the rough
hands of a Puritan Parliament and a synod of Puritan divines. But Hyde’s
skilful advocacy did much to further the reaction. The declarations he
wrote for the King, with their fluent, florid rhetoric, and their
touches of humour and sarcasm, were far more effective than the
ponderous legal arguments published by the Parliament. More was due to
the art with which he represented the King as the guardian of the
constitution, and the Parliament as its assailant. Pym’s panegyric of
the law was turned against Pym himself. The King was made the champion
of “the known laws of the land,” against revolutionists who wished to
make the long-established rights of king and subject dependent on a vote
of the House of Commons. He was made the defender of the “ancient,
equal, happy, well poised, and never-enough-commended constitution,”
against those who sought to introduce “a new Utopia of religion and
government.”
That the Parliament was claiming new powers and the King standing on old
rights it was impossible to deny, and it was difficult for the
Parliament to prove the necessity which justified its demands. They
could intimate the “fears and jealousies” which made them distrust the
King, but the reality of their grounds for distrusting him is proved by
evidence which they could only conjecture, and which later historians
were to bring to light.
A mere argumentative victory could do nothing to solve the question the
English nation had to decide. It was no longer a dispute whether the law
gave certain powers to King or Parliament, but whether King or
Parliament was to be sovereign. In the Nineteen Propositions which
formed the Parliament’s ultimatum, they demanded all the branches of
sovereignty for themselves. The control of foreign policy, of
ecclesiastical policy, of the army and the navy, the appointment of
ministers, councillors, and judges, the right to punish and the right to
pardon, were all included. Government, in short, was to be carried on by
persons chosen by the Parliament, instead of persons chosen by the King.
The King might reign, but henceforth he should not govern.
In that sense Charles understood the Nineteen Propositions.
“These being passed” he answered, “we may be waited upon bareheaded,
we may have our hand kissed, the style of majesty continued to us,
and the King’s authority declared by both Houses of Parliament may
still be the style of your commands, we may have swords and maces
carried before us, and please ourselves with the sight of a crown
and sceptre, but as to true and real power we should remain but the
outside, but the picture, but the sign of a king.”
On the other side, their demand, as it presented itself to the minds of
the Parliamentarians, was rather defensive than aggressive in its
intention. Without this transference of sovereignty, they held it
impossible to transmit to their descendants the self-government they had
received from their ancestors.
“The question in dispute between us and the King’s party,” says
Ludlow, “was, as I apprehended, whether the King should govern as a
god by his will and the nation be governed by force like beasts; or
whether the people should be governed by laws made by themselves,
and live under a government derived from their own consent.”
Only the sword could decide. On July 4th, Parliament appointed a
Committee of Safety; on July 6th, they resolved to raise ten thousand
men; on July 9th, they appointed the Earl of Essex their general. The
King set up his standard at Nottingham on August 22nd.
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