Scots crossed the border, price of an army which finally crossed the border early in July, 1648. As public evidence of the fact that all hope of reconJuly, 1648; ciliation between the independents and the king was now at vow of the an end, the New Model, before setting out to meet the threatNew Model ened invasion, gathered in a solemn prayer-meeting, and came upon the eve of invasion; after "The Remon to the commons 20; "to a very clear and joint resolution on many grounds at large then debated amongst us, that it was our duty, if ever the Lord brought us back again in peace, to call Charles Stuart, that man of blood, to an account for the blood he has shed and mischief he has done to his utmost, against the Lord's cause embodied, and people in this poor nation."1 True to its resolve, the victory, in army, when peace was restored, after asserting the doctrine afterwards known as "the sovereignty of the people," destrance;" manded, in "The Remonstrance of the Army" completed by Ireton, "that the capital and grand author of our troubles, the person of the king, . . . may be speedily brought to justice for the treason, blood, and mischief he is therein guilty." presented On the 20th of November the council of officers presented the remonstrance to the commons; on the 1st of December November Charles was sequestered and carried off from the Isle of Wight to Hurst Castle, in Hampshire, and the next day the army entered London. It only remained for the military power which now dominated the city to subject the houses to its complete control, and when they declined to accept the invitation presented by the council of officers to dissolve themselves, a purging process was agreed upon which Colonel Pride, at the head of a troop of soldiers, executed on the 6th of December by forbidding the entrance into the house of those whose names appeared upon a list prepared beforehand. In that way one hundred and forty-three members were removed, forty-seven of whom were subjected to confinement, while ninety-six others who offered no resistance were simply turned three reso- away and forbidden to take their places. The "Rump" of a lutions parliament that thus remained as a mere veil for the power the Rump of the sword claimed to be sovereign in three resolutions, January 4, adopted on the 4th of January, 1649, which declared "That the Pride's purge; adopted by 1649; 1 Allen's Narrative, Somers' Tracts, vol. vi. p. 500. 2 Adopted in the general council of officers held at St. Albans, November 18, 1648. 8 A True and Full Relation, E. pp. 475, 476; Parl. Hist., vol. iii. pt. i. p. 248. The prisoners were promptly released on their parole to make no attempt to return to the house. people are, under God, the original of all just power: that the commons of England, in parliament assembled, being chosen by and representing the people, have the supreme power in this nation; that whatsoever is enacted or declared for law by the commons in parliament assembled hath the force of law, and all the people of this nation are concluded thereby, although the consent and concurrence of king or house of peers be not had thereunto."1 Two days later this body, which had ceased high court of justice to be representative, passed the act 2 creating the high court constituted of justice, to consist of one hundred and thirty-five commis- the 6th; sioners, who were to exercise the functions of both judge and jury in the trial of the king. On the 20th Charles appeared Charles before this tribunal, which sat in Westminster Hall under the refused to presidency of John Bradshaw, and challenged its authority by refusing to plead ; on the 27th a formal and final sentence was read declaring that he should be beheaded as a traitor; on the 29th the signing of his death warrant was completed under pressure; and on the next day he met his doom robed executed in a royal dignity which did not bend even at that dreadful on the 30th. door through which he passed into the presence of the Eternal Father. 1 Commons' Journals, vol. vi. pp. 110, III. 2 Ibid., vol. vi. p. 113; State Trials, vol. iv. p. 1046. The name of Ordinance had been dropped. 3 At its first meeting on January 8, only fifty-two members appeared. 4 State Trials, vol. iv. pp. 1069, 1070, 1074. 5 These are the dates as fixed by Mr. Gardiner, Hist. of the Great Civil War, vol. iv. pp. 307–317, and notes. plead the 20th; Results of the out of a great broken into four distinct stages: CHAPTER IV. THE COMMONWEALTH AND PROTECTORATE. I. THERE is no good reason to believe that a single memrevolution ber of the great popular majority which gathered at St. Steunforeseen; phen's upon the meeting of the Long Parliament imagined for a moment that the revolution then set in motion under legal forms would culminate in the execution of the king, and in the substitution of a republican system for the ancient constituthey arose tion. That entirely unforeseen result suddenly arose out of a great religious and political upheaval which is broken into four upheaval, distinct stages, each one of which was the natural, possibly the inevitable, sequence of the preceding. When Pym, as the leader of the popular party, undertook to settle once and for all the vital principle that the supreme powers of the state are vested in parliament as against the crown, and that as between the houses themselves the ultimate sovereignty resides in the popular branch of the legislature,1 he contemplated no more than such a readjustment of the constitutional forces as would fix the centre of gravity of the state in the representative chamber. The first stage of the revolution consisted of the efforts made in that direction by the popular party while acting as a during first whole, and striking as one man against abuses which were ten months permanently removed through the measures adopted during the first ten months of the Long Parliament. The second ment; stage began after the first recess, when the triumphant prothe struggle gress of the popular party was checked by a division in its own that ended ranks as to the disposition to be made of the episcopal office, the first, embracing reforms made of Long Parlia the second, with the adoption of the Grand Remon strance; one faction contending for its entire abolition, the other for the retention of the bishops with diminished powers and subject to parliamentary jurisdiction. The latter claim, maintained by the old Puritan party within the church, triumphed in the memorable struggle over the Grand Remonstrance, whose adoption was accepted as a settlement of the fact that the estab 1 See above, p. 300. over the system; the triumph over the lishment, while retaining episcopacy in a modified form, would tolerate neither the Laudian element within its pale, nor the sectaries who gathered without in separate conventicles. The the third, the triumph third stage began when the Root-and-branch party, which in- of the pres sisted upon the entire abolition of episcopacy, was able to byterian enforce its ideas through a political alliance with the Scots, episcopal who demanded, as the price of military aid to the parliamentary cause, the acceptance of the Covenant, and the substitution of the presbyterian for the episcopal system in the Church of England. That concession, reluctantly made by Pym and his followers as a political necessity, did nothing, however, to advance the cause of religious toleration. The presbyterian party, which thus came into possession of the state church, refused to relinquish one tittle of its right to embrace the whole nation in its fold, and to dictate to all their faith and form of worship. The fourth and last stage of the revolution began the fourth, when the whole dissenting body of sectaries resolved to band of the indetogether for the assertion of congregational independence pendents against the scheme of legal uniformity pressed upon them presbythrough the state church by the presbyterian majority dominant in parliament. This combined opposition of the sectaries, all indegenerally designated as Independents, first assumed a definite pendent and formidable shape when all of its various elements were combined united by Cromwell and Fairfax in that strange army and par- well in liament in one known as the New Model, whose corner-stones Model; were social and religious toleration. Into the ranks of that organization entered every shade of dissident opinion, not only religious but political. There it was that the religious independent was converted into the political independent; there the levelit was that the levellers appeared as an organized republican organized association, ready to substitute for the ancient constitution republican which had developed without design a commonwealth of the saints based on abstract principles. As early as October, 1647, the levellers had embodied their new conception of govern- "The Agreement ment in the draft of a constitution, entitled "The Agreement of the of the People," 1 which proposed, first, that the constituencies People;" should be "more indifferently proportioned according to the 1 "An Agreement of the People for a firm and present peace," etc. (E. 412, 21), presented to the council of the army, October 28, 1647, and printed in terians; elements by Crom the New lers as an association; prototype of all American constitutions; number of inhabitants;" second, that the existing parliament should be dissolved on September 30, 1648; third, that all future parliaments should be triennial; fourth, that a single elected chamber should be supreme in all things not "expressly or impliedly reserved by the represented to themselves." This prototype of all constitutions, state and federal, as they exist to-day in the United States,1 was to draw its authority from a direct acceptance by the people, who reserved to themselves, by express constitutional limitations upon the powers granted, certain rights, among which the agreement pointedly named the absolute right to religious liberty and due process of law. This republican ideal, destined to such a marvellous expansion, which the levellers, under the lead of Lilburne, persistently pressed completed upon the leaders of the army, was finally completed in a modiJanuary 15, fied form by the council of officers on the 15th of January, presented 1649, and by them presented five days later to the house of commons; commons, who agreed to consider it so soon as "the necessity 1649, and to the army resolved to retain the Rump, which pro sovereignty of the people, speaking through a of the present weighty and urgent affairs would permit." 2 It was clearly understood, however, that with that part of this programme which suggested that the Rump should yield to another body elected on more popular principles, its members had no possible sympathy. The army therefore resolved to retain for the moment this fragment of an assembly, which it had purged of its presbyterian elements, as a veil for the power of the sword, and as a link, however weak, with the past. By its voice the sovereignty of the people was proclaimed, and the claimed the ancient constitution practically abolished by the resolutions, adopted on the 4th of January, 1649, which declared that the enactments of the commons alone should have the force of law, single although the consent and concurrence of king or house of peers be not had thereunto."3 Two days later the same assembly, unaided by any precedent in the history of nations, created the tribunal under whose judgment the king passed to his doom. 2. The house of commons, which at the beginning of the Long Parliament consisted of five hundred and six members, had now dwindled to a mere shadow; at the largest republican constitution division which took place during the month that followed the king's death, only seventy-seven members were present to re2 Commons' Journals, vol. vi. p. 122. 8 See above, p. 339. chamber. The Rump cleared the way for the first 66 1 Cf. Bryce's American Commonw., pt. ii.; Gardiner, vol. iii. p. 387. |