In January 1647, Charles
I fled to Scotland
where he was captured and handed over to the parliamentary army. The
king was imprisoned in Hampton Court, but in November 1647 he escaped
and managed to raise another army. This time Charles was able to persuade
the Scots to fight on his side.
In August 1648 Cromwell's
parliamentary army defeated the Scots and once again Charles was taken
prisoner. Now that Parliament was in
control of England its members began to argue amongst themselves.
Most Members of Parliament were Presbyterians.
These men were willing to share power with the king. Presbyterians
also had strong feelings
on religion. They disapproved of other puritan groups such as the
Anabaptists, Quakers
and Congregationalists and
wanted them suppressed.
The other major group
were called the Independents. They
tended to be followers of the religious groups that the Presbyterians
wanted to suppress. The Independents argued for a policy of religious
toleration. Some Independents also wanted to bring an end to the monarchy.
The Independents had a
strong following in the parliamentary army. Afraid of their power,
Presbyterian
members of the House
of Commons tried to disband
the army. The soldiers were furious, especially as Parliament made
no effort to pay them the wages that were due to them. The army decided
to take action. The Presbyterians were expelled from Parliament. With
the Independents now in control, it was decided to put Charles
I on trial as
a traitor. In 1649 Charles was found guilty and executed outside his
Whitehall Palace.
The Independents
now passed a series of new laws. The monarchy, the House
of Lords and the Anglican church
were abolished. Lands owned by the royal family and the church were
sold and the money was used to pay the parliamentary soldiers. The
Independents also kept their promise regarding
religious toleration. People were no longer fined for not attending
their local church. However, everyone was still expected to attend
some form of religious worship on Sundays.
Although the House
of Commons continued to meet, it was the army that controlled
England. In December 1653, the army decided that Oliver
Cromwell should become England's new ruler. Some officers wanted
him to become king but he refused and instead took the title Lord
Protector of the Commonwealth. However, Cromwell had as much power
as kings had in the past. When the House of Commons opposed his policies
in 1655, he closed it down.
Cromwell now imposed military
rule. England was divided into eleven districts. Each district was
run by a Major General. The responsibilities of these Major-Generals
included maintaining order, collecting taxes, granting poor relief
and imposing Puritan morality. In some districts bear-baiting, cock-fighting,
horse-racing and wrestling were banned. Betting and gambling were
also forbidden. Large numbers of ale-houses were closed and fines
were imposed on people caught swearing. In some districts, the Major-Generals
even closed down theatres.
On 3 September 1658, Oliver
Cromwell died. A few months previously, Cromwell had announced
that he wanted his son, Richard Cromwell,
to replace him as Lord Protector of the Commonwealth. The English
army was unhappy with this decision. While they respected Oliver as
a skillful military commander, Richard was just a country farmer.
In May 1659, the generals forced Richard to retire from government.
Parliament and the leaders
of the army now began arguing amongst themselves about how England
should be ruled. General George Monck,
the officer in charge of the English army based in Scotland, decided
to take action, and in 1660 he marched his army to London.
When Monck arrived he reinstated
the House of Lords and the Parliament of
1640. Royalists were now in control of Parliament. Monck
now contacted Charles
II, who was living
in Holland. Charles agreed that if he was made king he would pardon
all members of the parliamentary army and would continue with the
Commonwealth's policy of religious toleration. Charles also accepted
that he would share power with Parliament and would not rule as an
'absolute' monarch as his father had
tried to do in the 1630s. This information was passed to Parliament
and it was eventually agreed to abolish the Commonwealth and bring
back the monarchy.
(1)
John
Milton, The Tenure of Kings and
Magistrates (1649)
Surely they that shall
boast, as we do, to be a free nation, and not have in themselves the
power to remove or to abolish any governor supreme, or subordinate,
with the government itself upon urgent causes, may please their fancy
with a ridiculous and painted freedom, fit to cozen babies; but are
indeed under tyranny and servitude, as wanting that power which is
the root and source of all liberty, to dispose and economise in the
land which God hath given them, as masters of family in their own
house and free inheritance. Without which natural and essential power
of a free nation, though bearing high their heads, they can in due
esteem be thought no better than slaves and vassals born, in the tenure
and occupation of another inheriting lord, whose government, though
not illegal or intolerable, hangs over them as a lordly scourge, not
as a free government - and therefore to be abrogated.
Though perhaps till now
no protestant state or kingdom can be alleged to have openly put to
death their king, which lately some have written and imputed to their
great glory, much mistaking the matter, it is not, neither ought to
be, the glory of a Protestant state never to have put their king to
death; it is the glory of a Protestant king never to have deserved
death. And if the parliament and military council do what they do
without precedent, if it appear their duty, it argues the more wisdom,
virtue, and magnanimity, that they know themselves able to be a precedent
to others; who perhaps in future ages, if they prove not too degenerate,
will look up with honour and aspire towards these exemplary and matchless
deeds of their ancestors, as to the highest top of their civil glory
and emulation; which heretofore, in the pursuance of fame and foreign
dominion, spent itself vaingloriously abroad, but henceforth may learn
a better fortitude - to
dare execute highest justice on them that shall by force of arms endeavour
the oppressing and bereaving of religion and their liberty at home:
that no unbridled potentate or tyrant, but to his sorrow, for the
future may presume such high and irresponsible licence over mankind,
to havoc and turn upside down whole kingdoms of men, as though they
were no more in respect of his perverse will than a nation of pismires.
(2)
John
Lilburne,
Richard Overton and
Thomas Prince, Englands New Chains Discovered (March, 1649)
If our hearts were not
over-charged with the sense of the present miseries and approaching
dangers of the Nation, your small regard to our late serious apprehensions,
would have kept us silent; but the misery, danger, and bondage threatened
is so great, imminent, and apparent that whilst we have breath, and
are not violently restrained, we cannot but
speak, and even cry aloud, until you hear us, or God be pleased otherwise
to relieve us.
Removing the King, the
taking away the House of Lords, the overawing the House, and reducing
it to that pass, that it is become but the Channel, through which
is conveyed all the Decrees and Determinations of a private Council
of some few Officers, the erecting of their Court of Justice, and
their Council of State, The Voting of the People of Supreme Power,
and this House the Supreme Authority: all these particulars, (though
many of them in order to good ends, have been desired by well-affected
people) are yet become, (as they have managed them) of sole conducement
to their ends and intents, either by removing such as stood in the
way between them and power, wealth or command of the Commonwealth;
or by actually possessing and investing them in the same.
They may talk of freedom,
but what freedom indeed is there so long as they stop the Press, which
is indeed and hath been so accounted in
all free Nations, the most essential part thereof, employing an Apostate
Judas for executioner therein who hath been twice burnt in the hand
a wretched fellow, that even the Bishops and Star Chamber would have
shamed to own. What freedom is there left, when honest and worthy
Soldiers are sentenced and enforced to ride the horse with their faces
reverst, and their swords broken over their heads for but petitioning
and presenting a letter in justification of their liberty therein?
If this be not a new way of breaking the spirits of the English, which
Strafford and Canterbury never dreamt of, we know no difference of
things.
(3)
Gerrard
Winstanley,
The Law of Freedom (1652)
Kingly government governs
the earth by that cheating art of buying and selling, and thereby
becomes a man of contention his hand is against every man, and every
man's hand against him. And take this government at the best, it is
a diseased government and the very City Babylon, full of confusion,
and if it had not a club law to support it there would be no order
in it, because it is the covetous and proud will of a conqueror, enslaving
the conquered people.
This kingly government
is he who beats pruning hooks and ploughs into spears, guns, swords,
and instruments of war; that he might take his younger brother's creational
birth-right from him, calling the earth his, and not his brother's,
unless his brother will hire the earth of him; so that he may live
idle and at ease by his brother's labours.
Indeed this government
may well be called the government of highwaymen, who hath stolen the
earth from the younger brethren by force, and holds it from them by
force. He sheds blood not to free the people from oppression, but
that he may be king and ruler over an oppressed people....
Commonwealth's government
governs the earth without buying and selling and thereby becomes a
man of peace, and the restorer of ancient peace and freedom. He makes
provision for the oppressed, the weak and the simple, as well as for
the rich, the wise and the strong. He beats swords and spears into
pruning hooks and ploughs. He makes both elder and younger brother
freemen in the earth.
(4)
Gerrard
Winstanley,
The Law of Freedom (1652)
When public officers remain
long in place of judicature they will degenerate from the bounds of
humility, honesty and tender care of brethren, in regard the heart
of man is so subject to be overspread with the clouds of covetousness,
pride, vain glory. For though at first entrance into places of rule
they be of public spirit, seeking the freedom of others as their own;
yet continuing long in such a place, where honours and greatness is
coming in, they become selfish, seeking themselves and not common
freedom; as experience proves it true in these days, according to
this common proverb, Great offices in a land and army have changed
the disposition of many sweet-spirited men.
And nature tells us that
if water stands long it corrupts; whereas running water keeps sweet
and is fit for common use. Therefore as the necessity of common preservation
moves the people to frame a law, and to choose officers to see the
law obeyed, that they may live in peace: so doth the same necessity
bid the people, and cries aloud in the ears and eyes of England, to
choose new officers and to remove old ones, and to choose state officers
every year.
The Commonwealth hereby
will be furnished with able and experienced men, fit to govern, which
will mightily advance the honour and peace of our land, occasion the
more watchful care in the education of children, and in time will
make our Commonwealth of England the lily among the nations of the
earth.
(5)
Oliver
Cromwell commenting on the activities
of the Levellers
and the Diggers
(1649)
What is the purport of
the levelling principle but to make the tenant as liberal a fortune
as the landlord. I was by birth a gentleman. You must cut these people
in pieces or they will cut you in pieces.
(6)
John
Milton, The Ready
and Easy Way to Establish a Free Commonwealth (1660)
If we prefer a free government,
though for the present not obtained, yet all those suggested fears
and difficulties, as the event will prove, easily overcome, we remain
finally secure from the exasperated regal power, and out of snares;
shall retain the best part of our liberty, which is our religion,
and the civil part will be from these who defer us, much more easily
recovered, being neither so subtle nor so awful as a king reinthroned.
Nor were their actions less both at home and abroad, than might become
the hopes of a glorious rising commonwealth: nor were the expressions
both of army and people, whether in their public declarations or several
writings, other than such as testified a spirit in this nation, no
less noble and well-fitted to the liberty of a commonwealth, than
in the ancient Greeks or Romans. Nor was the heroic cause unsuccessfully
defended to all Christendom, against the tongue of a famous and thought
invincible adversary; nor the constancy and fortitude, that so nobly
vindicated our liberty, our victory at once against two the most prevailing
usurpers over mankind, superstition and tyranny, unpraised or uncelebrated
in a written monument, likely to outlive detraction, as it hath hitherto
convinced or silenced not a few of our detractors, especially in part
abroad.
After our liberty and
religion thus prosperously fought for, gained, and many years possessed,
except in those unhappy interruptions, which God hath removed; now
that nothing remains, but in all reason the certain hopes of a speedy
and immediate settlement for ever in a firm and Besides this, if we
return to kingship, and soon repent (as undoubtedly
we shall, when we begin to find the old encroachment coming on by
little and little upon our consciences, which must necessarily proceed
from king and bishop united inseparably in one interest), we may be
forced perhaps to fight over again all that we have fought, and spend
over again all that we have spent, but are never like to attain thus
far as we are now advanced to the recovery of our freedom, never to
have it in possession as we now have it, never to be vouchsafed hereafter
the like mercies and signal assistances from Heaven in our cause,
if by our ungraceful backsliding we make these fruitless; flying now
to regal concessions from his divine condescensions and gracious answers
to our once importuning prayers against the tyranny which we then
groaned under; making vain and viler than dirt the blood of so many
thousand faithful and valiant Englishmen, who left us this liberty,
bought with their lives; losing by a strange after-game of folly all
the battles we have won, together with all Scotland as to our conquest,
hereby lost, which never any of our kings could conquer, all the treasure
we have spent, not that corruptible treasure only, but that far more
precious of all our late miraculous deliverances; treading back again
with lost labour all our happy steps in the progress of reformation,
and most pitifully depriving ourselves the instant fruition of that
free government, which we have so dearly purchased, a free commonwealth.
(7)
Edmund
Ludlow, Memoirs of Edward
Ludlow (c. 1680)
In the mean time the Major-Generals
carried things with unheard of insolence in their several precincts,
decimating to extremity whom they pleased, and interrupting the proceedings
at law upon petitions of those who pretended themselves aggrieved;
threatening such as would not yield a
ready submission to their orders, with transportation to Jamaica
or some other plantations in the West Indies; and suffering
none to escape their persecution, but those that would
betray their own party, by discovering the persons that
had acted with them or for them.
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