The king’s trial took place at the end of January. The Court of Justice was composed of members of Parliament, civilians, and army officers. There was little enthusiasm for the work that had to be done. No more senior judge than John Bradshaw could be found to preside, and he wore a hat ringed with iron in fear of assassination. The charges against the king, however politically correct, had little legal basis, and Charles deftly exposed their weakness, but, like Strafford before him, Charles was to be sacrificed to the law of necessity if not the law of England. On January 30, 1649, at the wall of his own palace, Charles I was beheaded. A witness recorded in his diary, “Such a groan went up as I had never before heard.”
John Bradshaw, mezzotint by an unknown artistCourtesy of the trustees of the British Museum; photograph, J.R. Freeman & Co. Ltd.
Commonwealth and Protectorate
The execution of the king aroused hostility not only in England but also throughout Europe. Regicide was considered the worst of all crimes, and not even the brilliance of John Milton in The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates (1649) could persuade either Catholic or Protestant powers that the execution of Charles I was just. Open season was declared against English shipping, and Charles II was encouraged to reclaim his father’s three kingdoms.
Despite opposition and continued external threats, the government of the Commonwealth was declared in May 1649 after acts had been passed to abolish the monarchy and the House of Lords. Political power resided in a Council of State, the Rump Parliament (which swelled from 75 to 213 members in the year following the king’s execution), and the army. The military was now a permanent part of English government. Though the soldiers had assigned the complex tasks of reform to Parliament, they made sure of their ability to intervene in political affairs.
At first, however, the soldiers had other things to occupy them. For reasons of security and revenge, Ireland had to be pacified. In the autumn of 1649, Cromwell crossed to Ireland to deal once and for all with the Irish Confederate rebels. He came first to Drogheda. When the town refused to surrender, he stormed it and put the garrison of 3,000 to the sword, acting both as the avenger of the massacres of 1641 (“I am persuaded that this is a righteous judgement of God upon those barbarous wretches who have imbrued their hands in so much innocent blood”) and as a deliberate instrument of terror to induce others to surrender. He repeated his policy of massacre at Wexford, this time choosing not to spare the civilian population. These actions had the desired effect, and most other towns surrendered at Cromwell’s approach. He departed Ireland after nine months, leaving his successors with only a mopping-up operation. His reputation at a new high, Cromwell was next put in charge of dealing with those Scots who had welcomed Charles I’s son, Charles II, to Scotland and who were soon to crown him at Scone as king of all of Great Britain and Ireland. Although outnumbered and in a weak defensive position, Cromwell won a stunning victory in the Battle of Dunbar on September 3, 1650. A year later to the day, having chased Charles II and a second Scottish army into England, he gained an overwhelming victory at Worcester. Charles II barely escaped with his life.
Oliver Cromwell, painting by Robert Walker; in the National Portrait Gallery, London.Courtesy of The National Portrait Gallery, London
Victorious wars against the Irish, Scots, and Dutch (1652) made the Commonwealth a feared military power. But the struggle for survival defined the Rump’s conservative policies. Little was done to reform the law. An attempt to abolish the court of chancery created chaos in the central courts. Little agreement could be reached on religious matters, especially on the vexing question of the compulsory payment of tithes. The Rump failed both to make long-term provision for a new “national church” and to define the state’s right to confer and place limits on the freedom of those who wished to worship and gather outside the church. Most ominously, nothing at all had been done to set a limit for the sitting of the Rump and to provide for franchise reform and the election of a new Parliament. This had been the principal demand of the army, and the more the Rump protested the difficulty of the problem, the less patient the soldiers became. In April, when it was clear that the Rump would set a limit to its sitting but would nominate its own members to judge new elections, Cromwell marched to Westminster and dissolved Parliament. The Rump was replaced by an assembly nominated mostly by the army high command. The Nominated Parliament (1653) was no better able to overcome its internal divisions or untangle the threads of reform than the Rump. After five months it dissolved itself and returned power to Cromwell and the army.
The problems that beset both the Rump and the Nominated Parliament resulted from the diversity of groups that supported the revolution, ranging from pragmatic men of affairs, lawyers, officeholders, and local magistrates whose principal desire was to restore and maintain order to zealous visionaries who wished to establish heaven on earth. The republicans, like Sir Henry Vane the Younger, hoped to create a government based upon the model of ancient Rome and modern Venice. They were proud of the achievements of the Commonwealth and reviled Cromwell for dissolving the Rump. But most political reformers based their programs on dreams of the future rather than the past. They were millenarians, expecting the imminent Second Coming of Christ. Some were social reformers, such as Gerrard Winstanley, whose followers, agrarian communists known as Diggers, believed that the common lands should be returned to the common people. Others were mystics, such as the Ranters, led by Laurence Claxton, who believed that they were infused with a holy spirit that removed sin from even their most reprehensible acts. The most enduring of these groups were the Quakers (Society of Friends), whose social radicalism was seen in their refusal to take oaths or doff their hats and whose religious radicalism was contained in their emphasis upon inner light. Ultimately, all these groups were persecuted by successive revolutionary governments, which were continually being forced to establish conservative limits to individual and collective behaviour.
Cromwell, OliverOliver Cromwell.© Matthew Corrigan/Shutterstock.com
The failure of the Nominated Parliament led to the creation of the first British constitution, the Instrument of Government (1653). Drafted by Maj. Gen. John Lambert, the Instrument created a lord protector, a Council of State, and a reformed Parliament that was to be elected at least once every three years. Cromwell was named protector, and he chose a civilian-dominated Council to help him govern. The Protectorate tackled many of the central issues of reform head-on. Commissions were appointed to study law reform and the question of tithes. Social legislation against swearing, drunkenness, and stage plays was introduced. Steps were taken to provide for the training of a godly ministry, and even a new university at Durham was begun.