649 1649 THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE 559 of all just power, and that the House of Commons, being chosen by the people, formed the supreme power in England, having no need of either king or House of Lords. Never was constitutional pedantry carried further than when this declaration was issued by a mere fragment of a House which, even if all its members had been present, could only claim to have represented the people some years before. On January 6 a special High Court of Justice was constituted by the mutilated House of Commons alone, for the trial of the king. On January 19 Charles was brought up to Westminster. Only the sternest opponents of Charles would consent to sit on the Court which tried him. Of 135 members named, only 67 Execution of King Charles I., January 30, 1649: from a contemporary broadside. were present when the trial began. Fairfax was amongst those appointed, but he absented himself, and when his name was called, his wife cried out, "He is not here, and will never be; you do wrong to name him." 24. The King's Trial and Execution. 1649.-Charles's accusers had on their side the discredit which always comes to those who, using force, try to give it the appearance of legality. Charles had all the credit of standing up for the law, which, in his earlier life, he had employed to establish absolutism. He refused to plead before the Court, on the ground that it had no jurisdiction over a king. His assailants fell back on the merest technicalities. Instead of charging him with the intrigues to bring foreign armies into England, of which he had been really guilty, they accused him of high treason against the nation, because, forsooth, he had appeared in arms against his subjects in the first Civil War. The Court, as might have been expected, passed sentence against him, and, on January 30, he was beheaded on a scaffold in front of his own palace at Whitehall. 25. Results of Charles's Execution. 1649.-With the king's execution all that could be permanently effected by his opponents had been accomplished. When the Long Parliament met, in November 1640, all Englishmen had combined to bring Charles to submit to Parliamentary control. After the summer of 1641 a considerable part of the nation, coming to the conclusion that Charles was ready to use force rather than to submit, took arms against him to compel him to give way. Towards the end of 1647 a minority of Englishmen, including the army, came to the conclusion that it was necessary to deprive Charles of all real power, if the country was not to be exposed to constantly recurring danger whenever he saw fit to re-assert his claims to the authority which he had lost. In 1648 a yet smaller minority came to the conclusion that security could only be obtained if he were deprived of life. In depriving the king of life all had been done which force could do. The army could guard a scaffold, but it could not reconstruct society. The vast majority of that part of the nation which cared about politics at all disliked being ruled by an army even more than it had formerly disliked being ruled by Charles, and refused its support to the new institutions which, under the patronage of the army, were being erected in the name of the people. CHAPTER XXXVI THE COMMONWEALTH AND PROTECTORATE. 1649-1660 LEADING DATES The Establishment of the Commonwealth Cromwell in Ireland Battle of Dunbar Battle of Worcester The Long Parliament dissolved by Cromwell The Second Protectorate Parliament The Long Parliament a Second Time The Declaration of Breda Meeting of the Convention Parliament Sept. 3, 1654, to Jan. 22, 1655 Dec. 26, 1659, to March 16, 1660 Resolution that the Government is by King, Lords, April 4, 1660 April 14, 1660 May 1, 1660 1. Establishment of the Commonwealth. 1649.—It was not to be expected that the men in Parliament or in the army by whom great hopes of improvement were entertained should discover that they had done all that it was possible for them to do. They believed it to be still in their power to regenerate England. The House of Commons declared England to be a Commonwealth, 'without a king or House of Lords,' and, taking the name of Parliament for itself, appointed forty-one persons to be a Council of State, charged with the executive government, and renewed annually. Most members of the Council of State were also members of Parliament; and, as the attendance in Parliament seldom exceeded fifty, the Councillors of State (if they agreed together) were able to command a majority in Parliament, and thus to control its decisions. Such an arrangement was a mere burlesque on Parliamentary institutions, and could hardly have existed for a week if it had not been supported by the ever-victorious army. In the army, indeed, it had its opponents, who, under the name of Levellers, called out for a more truly democratic government; but they had no man of influence to lead them. Cromwell had too much common sense not to perceive the difficulty of establishing a democracy in a country in which that form of government had but few admirers, and he suppressed the Levellers with a strong hand. In quiet times, Cromwell would doubtless have made some attempt to place the constitution of the Commonwealth on a more satisfactory basis, but for the present it needed to be defended rather than improved. 2. Parties in Ireland. 1647-1649.—In Ireland the conjunction formed at the end of 1641 between the Catholic lords and the native Irish broke down in 1647. Rinuccini, the Papal Nuncio (see p. 550), discovered that Ireland could only be organised to resist English Puritanism under the authority of the Papal clergy, as there was not sufficient union amongst the Irish themselves to admit the existence of lay national institutions. He was unable to carry his idea into effect. Ormond, the king's Lord-lieutenant, who was himself a Protestant, left Ireland, and handed over Dublin to the Parliamentary troops under Michael Jones, rather than see it in the hands of Rinuccini and the Celts. Even the Catholic lords objected to become the servants of a clerical State, and Rinuccini, baffled on every side, was obliged to return to Italy. In September, 1648, Ormond returned to Ireland, where he soon afterwards entered into a close alliance with the Catholic lords, who were to receive religious toleration, and in return to defend the king. After the king's execution, Charles II. was proclaimed in Ireland. Ormond, having now an army in which Irish Catholics and English Royalist Protestants were combined, hoped to be able to overthrow the Commonwealth both in Ireland and in England. 3. Cromwell in Ireland. 1649-1650.-To Cromwell such a situation was intolerable. His Puritan zeal led him to regard with loathing Ormond's league with the Catholics, and he was too thorough an Englishman not to resolve that, if there was to be a struggle, England must conquer Ireland, and not Ireland England. On August 15 he landed at Dublin. On September 11 he stormed Drogheda, where he put 2,000 men to the sword, a slaughter which was in strict accordance with the laws of war of that day, which left garrisons refusing, as that of Drogheda had done, to surrender an indefensible post, when summoned to do so, to the mercy or cruelty of the enemy. Cromwell had a half-suspicion that some farther excuse was needed. "I am persuaded," he wrote, "that this is a righteous judgment of God upon those barbarous wretches who have imbrued their hands in so much innocent blood; and that it 1650 DROGHEDA AND DUNBAR 563 will tend to prevent the effusion of blood for the future-which are the satisfactory grounds to such actions, which otherwise cannot but work remorse and regret." At Wexford, where the garrison continued to defend itself after the walls had been scaled, there was another slaughter. Town after town surrendered. In the spring of 1650 Cromwell left Ireland. The conquest was prosecuted by his successors, Ireton and Ludlow, with savage effectiveness; and when at last, in 1652, the war came to an end, a great part of three out of the four provinces of Ireland was confiscated for the benefit of the conquering race. The Catholic landowners and other persons who had borne arms against the Parliament were driven into the wilds of Connaught, to find there what sustenance they could. 4. Montrose and Charles II. in Scotland. 1650.-In 1650 Cromwell's services were needed in Scotland. In the spring, Montrose reappeared in the Highlands, but was betrayed, carried to Edinburgh, and executed as a traitor. On June 24 Charles II. landed in Scotland, and, on his engaging to be a Presbyterian king, found the whole nation ready to support him. Fairfax declined to lead the English army against Charles, on the plea that the Scots had a right to choose their own form of government. Cromwell had no such scruples, knowing that, if Charles were once established in Scotland, the next thing would be that the Scots would try to impose their form of government on England. Cromwell, being appointed General in the room of Fairfax, marched into Scotland, and attempted to take Edinburgh; but he was out-manœuvred by David Leslie (see p. 549), who was now the Scottish commander, and, to save his men from starvation, had to retreat to Dunbar. 5. Dunbar and Worcester. 1650-1651.-Cromwell's position at Dunbar was forlorn enough. The Scots seized the passage by which alone he could retreat to England by land, whilst the mass of their host was posted inaccessibly on the top of a long hill in front of him. If he sailed home, his flight would probably be the signal for a rising of all the Cavaliers and Presbyterians in England. The Scots, however, relieved him of his difficulties. They were weary of waiting, and, on the evening of September 2, they descended the hill. Early on the morning of the 3rd, Cromwell, crying "Let God arise; let His enemies be scattered," charged into their right wing before the whole army had time to draw up in line of battle, and dashed them into utter ruin. Edinburgh surrendered to him, but there was still a large Scottish army on foot, and, in August 1651, its leaders, taking Charles with them, |