The execution of Charles I. was followed by the abolition of monarchy. On February 6, 1649, the House of Commons voted that the House of Lords was useless and dangerous, and that it ought to be abolished. On February 8th, it resolved that the office of a king was unnecessary, burdensome, and dangerous to the liberty, safety, and public interest of this nation. Acts abolishing both followed, and on May 19th a third Act established the English Republic. “England,” it declared, “shall henceforth be governed as a Commonwealth, or a Free State, by the supreme authority of this nation, the representatives of the people in Parliament, and by such as they shall appoint and constitute as ministers under them for the good of the people.” Henceforth all writs were to run in the name of the Keepers of the Liberty of England, and the Great Seal was to bear the picture of the Parliament with the legend, “In the first year of Freedom by God’s blessing restored.”
233Exactly what they meant by “a Free State” the founders of the Republic did not explain. Hobbes and Harrington agreed in defining the new government as an oligarchy. A pamphleteer praised it as an aristocracy. But the principles on which it was ostensibly based were the principles of democracy. In their resolutions of January 4, 1649, the House of Commons had declared that the people were, under God, the original of all just power, and had based their claim to override the Lords on that ground. In their declaration of the reasons for establishing a republic, they asserted that kings were officials, instituted by agreement amongst the people they governed, whom the people had therefore a right to dethrone in case of misgovernment. Milton, who became one of the Secretaries of the Council of State, echoed the same principles. In his Tenure of Kings and Magistrates, he asserted “that all men were naturally born free, being the image and resemblance of God Himself,” and anticipated Rousseau in tracing the origin of government to a social contract. Yet, in spite of democratic professions, the Republic was simply the rule of the Long Parliament under a new name. All the power which the King and the three estates of the realm had formerly possessed, the little remnant of the House of Commons claimed as its own. All the checks which the existence of King and Lords, or the share of the Church in legislation, had once imposed, were now swept away. The one new institution established was simply a further development of that system of government by committees which the Civil 234War had made necessary. The Council of State was neither a senate nor a cabinet; it possessed no power either to balance or to control the Parliament, but was only an annually elected committee, to which the Parliament had entrusted executive and administrative duties. Of the forty-one persons composing it, all but ten were members of the Parliament itself.
Thus the Long Parliament possessed an authority which no political assembly in England has ever possessed before or since. Its power of legislation was unlimited. It exercised the executive power indirectly through the Council, and directly through its own resolutions. By interference with private suits, and by the appointment of committees with quasi-judicial functions, it also exercised the judicial power. Its sovereignty was undivided and uncontrolled.
“This was the case of the people of England at that time,” said Cromwell, eight years later, “the Parliament assuming to itself the authority of the three estates that were before. It had so assumed that authority that if any man had come and said, ‘What rules do you judge by?’ it would have answered, ‘Why, we have none. We are supreme in legislature and judicature.’”
What made this authority still more burdensome was that there was no prospect of its ever ending. Instead of sitting for about seven months in the year, as Parliaments do now, it sat all the year round, never taking more than three or four days’ holiday. Moreover, by the Act of May 11, 1641, it could not be adjourned, prorogued, or dissolved, 235save by its own consent, and though the King, who had passed the act, was dead, it was held to be still in force. So, in Cromwell’s phrase, the country was governed by “a perpetual Parliament always sitting.”
Although the claims of the Long Parliament had reached their highest, the theory on which they rested had ceased to be in accordance with facts. “The Commons of England in Parliament assembled,” said the resolution of the House on January 4, 1649, “being chosen by and representing the people, have the supreme power in this nation.” But the House was never less representative than at the moment when it passed this vote. By the expulsion of royalist members during the war, and of Presbyterians in 1648, it had been, as Cromwell said, “winnowed, and sifted, and brought to a handfull.” When the Long Parliament met in November, 1640, it consisted of about 490 members; in January, 1649, those sitting, or at liberty to sit, in the House were not more than ninety. Whole districts were unrepresented. In the list of sitting members given in a contemporary pamphlet, there were none from the counties of Herefordshire, Hertfordshire, Cumberland, and Lancashire, or from any borough within their limits. Wales was represented by three persons, and London by but a single citizen. In later years, a few readmissions and a few new elections swelled the total of sitting members to about 125, but at no date between 1649 and 1653 was the Long Parliament entitled to say that it represented the people. Its power rested not on popular consent, but on the 236support of the army, and on the superstitious reverence which Englishmen paid even to the shadow of a Parliament.
Politically the all-important question was how long the army would continue to maintain this remnant of the Long Parliament in power. The agreement between the two covered a fundamental difference in their political views. The army regarded the maintenance of the existing assembly as a temporary expedient. The Parliament looked upon itself as a legitimate sovereign with an indefeasible right to rule. By a Free State, the army meant a democracy, and could not understand a republic without republican institutions. Above all it demanded that the new State should be based on a written constitution defining the rights of the governed and the powers of the government. In the Agreement of the People, drawn up in January, 1649, it sketched the outlines of the republic it desired. The Long Parliament was to come to an end in April, 1649. All ratepayers assessed to the relief of the poor, and every man not a menial servant or a pauper, were to have votes. Electoral districts were to be made more equal. Parliaments were to be elected every two years, and not to sit for more than six months in the year, and a Council of State was to hold power when they were not sitting. If the State chose, it might provide for the maintenance of a national Church, but with the exception of Popery and prelacy, all forms of Christianity were to be tolerated. Finally, as a safeguard against arbitrary power, certain fundamental rights were 237enumerated with which no government might interfere: freedom from impressment, equality before the law, and freedom of worship.
The constitutional scheme of the army was presented to the Parliament on January 20, 1649. They did not ask that it should be imposed on the nation by law, but that it should be tendered to the nation for acceptance. It was to be circulated, somewhat as a petition, amongst the people for signatures, and if most of the supporters of the cause approved of it, steps were to be taken to give it effect. The Parliament received the Agreement with thanks, and laid it aside.
April, 1649, passed and they showed no sign of dissolving. Their feeling on the subject of a new Parliament was well expressed by Harry Marten in 1650. Marten compared the Commonwealth to the infant Moses. When Moses, he said, was found amongst the bulrushes and brought to Pharaoh’s daughter, she took care to find out the child’s mother, and to commit him to her to nurse. The Commonwealth was an infant, of weak growth and very tender constitution; nobody was so fit to nurse it as the mother who brought it forth, and till it had obtained more years and vigour they should not trust it to other hands.
In 1649, there was much to be urged in favour of this view. At home and abroad the young Republic was surrounded by enemies. In England it was threatened by Royalists, Presbyterians, and Levellers; in Europe it had no friends. The execution of Charles I. had excited universal horror amongst 238foreigners. There was indeed no prospect of the general league of European potentates to punish regicide, for which Royalists hoped, but both governments and peoples were hostile. In Russia, the Czar imprisoned English merchants and confiscated their goods. In Germany, Sweden, and Denmark, ministers preached sermons denouncing the English sectaries, and proving that there was no necessary connection between Protestantism and king-killing. In the United Provinces, where republicans might have expected sympathy, public opinion was equally incensed against them. The States-General addressed Charles II. as King, condoled with him on the death of his father, and allowed Rupert to equip his fleet in Dutch ports. They refused to give audience to Strickland, the English agent in Holland, and declined to recognise the new State. In May, 1649, a special ambassador from England, Dr. Dorislaus, was murdered by Scottish Royalists at The Hague, and though the Dutch Government promised redress, popular feeling secured the escape of the murderers. Much of this hostility was due to the influence of the Stadtholder, William II., whose marriage with Mary, daughter of Charles I., had made the House of Orange the one firm friend of the House of Stuart. William II. helped his brother-in-law with money and advice, and would have done more if he had been able. But Holland, the richest and most powerful of the seven provinces, was opposed to the warlike schemes of the Stadtholder and wished to remain at peace with England.
In France, the King’s death made every Englishman 239unpopular. The war with Spain and the distractions of France itself prevented Mazarin from assisting Charles II., but he would not recognise the Republic. The relations of England and France grew rapidly worse. The French Government forbade the importation of English draperies; the English replied by prohibiting French wines, woollen goods, and silks. French privateers and even government ships attacked English commerce, and during 1649 and 1650 took English shipping to the amount of five thousand tons, and goods worth half a million. Naturally English merchants made reprisals on French trade. Diplomatic intercourse came to a stop; one French agent was ordered to leave England, a second was turned back at the coast, and a third was dismissed almost as soon as he arrived in the country.
The hostility of France made Spain comparatively friendly. It did not recognise the Republic, but its ambassador kept up unofficial intercourse with the Council of State, and its Government maintained a real neutrality between English parties. It waited till the permanence of the new government should be assured, and in the meantime declined to help a claimant whose chances of restoration seemed precarious. Cottington and Hyde, the ambassadors whom Charles II. sent to Spain, were received with coldness, and their petitions for assistance rejected. On the other hand, Ascham, the agent of the Commonwealth, was murdered by English Cavaliers as soon as he reached Madrid (May 27, 1650), and only one of his murderers was punished. “I envy those 240gentlemen,” said the Spanish prime minister, “for having done so noble an action.” Political necessity might force Spain to preserve friendly relations with the Commonwealth, but the feeling of subjects and rulers alike was as hostile as that of the French.
In England itself, the reaction which began when the King became a captive was increased by the manner of his death. Ten days after the execution, there appeared in print the Eikon Basilike—the portraiture of King Charles in his solitude and sufferings. The book was really written by Dr. Gauden, but no Cavalier doubted that it contained the King’s thoughts and feelings set down by his own hand. It inspired Royalists with more fervid loyalty; converted the wavering, and touched even the indifferent. The mob began to believe that Charles had been the best of monarchs, and the meekest of martyrs. He was no longer the perfidious tyrant of politicians, but the man with the mild voice and mournful eyes whom dramatists were to glorify. Milton complained that the people, “with a besotted and degenerate baseness of spirit, except some few who yet retain in them the old English fortitude and love of freedom, are ready to fall down flat and give adoration to the image and memory of this man, who hath offered at more cunning fetches to undermine our liberties and put tyranny into an art, than any British king before him.” In his Eikonoklastes, he undertook to shatter the idol of “the inconstant, irrational, and image-doting rabble,” but failed altogether.
For the moment, the royalist party was too weak 241to be a serious danger. In Holland and in France, a crowd of ruined noblemen and battered soldiers waited impatiently for the chance of striking another blow against their conquerors. Already Montrose was enlisting men in Northern Europe for a fresh descent on Scotland. In his lines to the dead King, he had promised to avenge his death.
“I’ll sing thine obsequies in trumpet sounds,
And write thine epitaph in blood and wounds.”
Other exiles, with an eye to profit as well as vengeance, took to privateering. From the Irish ports, from the Isles of Man, Jersey, and Scilly, issued swarms of privateers, who infested the Channel and plundered English merchantmen. Nor were more distant seas secure. A few months later Prince Rupert, with what was left of the royal fleet, took a number of prizes in the Atlantic, made a sudden raid into the Mediterranean, intercepted homeward-bound ships off the Azores, and even spread havoc in West Indian waters. “We plough the seas for a subsistence,” wrote one of his officers, “poverty and despair being our companions, and revenge our guide.”
At home, however, the Royalists were crushed and subdued. Some of their leaders were prisoners; others had suffered under the Republic’s High Court of Justice. As a rule, the penalties inflicted on the defeated party were limited to pecuniary fines. Early in the war, the Parliament had resolved to sequestrate all the property of those in arms against it. Subsequently it adopted the plan of compounding 242with delinquents; that is, allowing a Royalist to redeem his estate on paying a certain proportion of its value. These compositions varied in amount from one-half to one-tenth of the capital value of the property, and were determined according to the position and the criminality of the owner. Under this system, large sums were raised to pay the expenses of the war, but it was less effective as a means of raising revenue than as a method of punishing Royalists. A country gentleman who had melted his plate and felled his oaks to succour the King found himself forced to raise money when money was scarce and land had immensely fallen in value. The fixing of his fine was a long and cumbrous process, and till it was fixed his estate was under sequestration. If he failed to pay his instalments at the right time, or was found to have understated his property, there came a re-assessment of the fine, or a fresh sequestration of the estate. He might long as fervently as ever to see the day when the King would enjoy his own again, but, disarmed and impoverished as he was, he could do little to bring it nearer. Yet many Cavaliers were willing to risk their lives again in the attempt. This section of the party maintained an active correspondence with the exiled Court, and by 1650 a central royalist council was established with agents in every county. But the most sanguine plotters admitted that without some assistance from abroad the party in general was “too extremely awed” to take up arms.
In England their possible allies against the government were the Presbyterians and the Levellers. 243The Presbyterians were numerous, rich, and powerful. Their strength lay in London, in the large towns, and in Lancashire, but most of the middle classes and the bulk of the beneficed clergy belonged to their party. The Presbyterian clergy had protested loudly against the King’s trial; many of them preached against the Republic, and some were bold enough to pray for Charles II. They condemned the Commonwealth as “an heretical democracy,” and refused the engagement to be faithful to it which Parliament imposed. But beyond this passive resistance few of them went. Cordial co-operation between Presbyterians and Royalists was impossible, for the desires of the parties differed widely. What the Presbyterians wanted............