adopted a constitu own; statesman Joyce seized the ; who constituted collectively a kind of lower house, whose resolves were moderated by an upper council composed of the staff officers.1 Thus equipped for action under a constitution of its own, the army was now ready as a corporate entity to enter upon the enforcement of the peculiar religious and Ireton its political ideas which its organization embodied. The leading leading statesman of this strange army and parliament in one was Ireton, to whom Cromwell had married his daughter a year before, and who now stood as his representative, since his exclusion from his command by reason of a vote taken in the commons on the 8th of March, 1647. While the army was thus nominally under the political direction of Ireton, the fruitless discussion of its rights, which he set forth with great spirit, was suddenly suspended on the 4th of June by the tak ing away from the parliamentary commissioners of the king by Joyce at the head of five hundred troopers, to whom he coolly person of pointed when Charles asked his authority for his act. The storm of indignation that broke upon Cromwell by reason of his complicity 2 with this plot at a time when he was assuming to act as mediator between the parties drove him to seek a shelter with the New Model, which on June 12 marched towards London. Three days later the council of officers put forth "The Declaration of the Army" as its first deliberate programme attempt at a political programme, and that was promptly folJune 15; lowed by charges against eleven members of the house, who were accused of stirring up strife between the parliament and the army, and of a design to reopen the civil war. While the house was bold enough to reject the army's political scheme, the eleven members were forced to withdraw under pressure from their accusers. Turning then from the parliament to the captive king, the army, under the guidance of Cromwell and Ireton, opened up a direct negotiation, in the course of which was submitted to Charles a basis of settlement formuto the king; lated by Ireton in a skeleton paper entitled, "The Heads of the king June 4; army put forth its first political eleven members forced to withdraw from the house; the heads of the proposals submitted See Dr. Murray in The New English 1 As to the origin of this council in supported the agitators in their demand for the purging of the house. 2 For the evidence on that point, see Gardiner, Hist. of the Great Civil War, pp. 266, 272, and notes. 8 Lords' Journals, vol. ix. p. 269. 4 Rushworth, vol. vi. p. 570. mob forced parliament army; the Proposals." This plan of reform demanded that parliament, to be elected every three years, should nominate all the great officers of state, and control the army and navy for a period of ten years; that all coercive power should be withdrawn from the clergy without the abolition of the episcopal office; that all acts enforcing the prayer-book, the Covenant, and attendance at church should be repealed; that belief and worship should be free to all, even to Roman Catholics; that the house of commons should be reformed by a fairer distribution of seats and electoral rights; that taxation should be equalized and legal procedure simplified; that a host of judicial, political, and commercial privileges should be abolished; and finally that an act of oblivion should be passed from which only seven royalist "delinquents" were to be excepted. At this point a London it was that the alarm excited in London by the prospect of the indethe triumph of this advanced and tolerant programme impelled pendents in a mob to burst upon the two houses, and to put them under to fly to the such coercion that the two speakers, together with eight independent peers and fifty-seven independent members, deemed it necessary to take refuge with the army, where they were enthusiastically received on the 3d of August.2 As a natural which soon consequence the New Model at once marched upon the city, them to which they entered in triumph on the 6th, and after restoring the independent members to their places again, insisted upon the expulsion of the eleven who, during the recent excitement, had been recalled. Under the military pressure to which Cromwell now subjected the houses, a sufficient number of the presbyterian members were forced to withdraw to insure for a moment only a bare independent majority. In the midst of Charles these stirring scenes Charles was actively planning for a royal- November ist rising and for a Scotch invasion, and in the hope of giving II, only to begin to them his personal direction, he escaped from his captors on a fresh the 11th of November and proceeded to the Isle of Wight, ment; only there to begin a fresh imprisonment. Thus baffled in his effort to lead the second civil war in person, he undertook its direction from his place of confinement, and before the end of year he finally stipulated with the Scottish commissioners for the establishment of presbyterianism in England, as the the 1 Const. Documents, p. 232. 2 Rushworth, vol. vii. pp. 743-751. See "The Engagement and Addi tional Articles," December 26, 27, restored their places; escaped imprison 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 away and forbidden to take their places. The "Rump" of a lutions parliament that thus remained as a mere veil for the power adopted by the Rump of the sword claimed to be sovereign in three resolutions, adopted on the 4th of January, 1649, which declared "That the Pride's purge; three reso January 4, 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. 1 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." 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 presidency of John Bradshaw, and challenged its authority by 20th; 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. 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. refused to plead the Results of the revolution they arose 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 member 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 constitution. 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 betweer. 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 embracing reforms 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 ranks as to the disposition to be made of the episcopal office, - 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 the first, made of Long Parlia the second, that ended with the adoption of the Grand Remon strance; 1 See above, p. 300. |