we are compelled to maintain them, "not only by the example of our ancestors, whose blood was often spent in vain for the recovery of their freedoms, suffering themselves through fraudulent accommodations to be still deluded of the fruit of their victory, but also by our own woeful experience, who, having long expected and dearly earned the establishment of those certain rules of government, are yet made to depend for the settlement of our peace and freedom, upon him that intended our bondage and brought a cruel war upon us."

This manifesto was signed by nine regiments of horse and seven of foot. Had Roger Williams and Samuel Adams put their heads together, could the outcome have been better? "The power of this and all future Parliaments of this nation is inferior only to theirs who chuse them, and extends, without the consent of any other person or persons, to the enacting, altering, and repealing of laws, to appointments of all kinds, to making war and peace, to treating with foreign states," no exception to be made but in the matter of religion, that to be intrusted to no human power, but each man to choose as his conscience may dictate.

Who the man was who formulated so finely these utterances, no one can say. They came from the rank and file: under some one of those steel headpieces worked the brain that outlined this noble polity, in which there was no place for King, Lord, or Prelate, because the People was to be Sovereign. The leaders felt uneasy. Cromwell could not yet go so far; Ireton now rejected it with indignation.1

1 Godwin: History of the Commonwealth, II, p. 451.

Reluctance of

subscribe.

At a meeting convened in November to establish harmony between chiefs and soldiers, when the latter rejected a statement in which the leaders to the name and essential prerogatives of a King were provided for, Ireton abruptly departed, declaring that such a matter must not be touched upon. Vane, too, no doubt at this time was appalled at such extreme ideas. Both Court, Presbytery, and Prelacy were hateful, but Royalty and an Upper House seemed too potent and deeply rooted to be disturbed. How untried and chimerical the scheme of a republic, in which all precedents were to be disregarded and tradition to be sacrificed! From whom, too, did the ideas emanate? from men of no social importance, from Levellers, fanatical, haughtily insubordinate, discountenanced by every class in society hitherto held to be respectable!

The prayer

Ironsides.

But at such times men think quickly. The leaders took the ideas of the rank and file, and before the year ended the chiefs and the soldiers were one. December 22, the shortest day meeting of the of the dark English winter, a public reconciliation took place amid fasting and prayer. Together they sought the Lord from nine in the morning until seven at night, Cromwell and Ireton among others praying fervently and pathetically. The assembly came forth hand in hand, and the condition of union was that Charles Stuart, that man of blood, should be called to account.1

1 Guizot: History of English Revolution, p. 388, American ed.; also Life of Young Sir Henry Vane, pp. 281, 282.

CHAPTER X.

THE ENGLISH COMMONWEALTH.

Commonwealth, 1649.

Oliver Cromwell, Protector, 1653.

Civil war of 1648.

Richard Cromwell, Protector, 1658.

DURING the year 1648, a struggle took place in England in which the Ironsides won a victory against tremendous odds. The King, in the hands of his captors, seeking to draw advantage from the distractions which prevailed among them, at last leagued himself secretly with the Presbyterians of Scotland, promising them indulgence for their form of worship and an extirpation of the party of tolerance, if by their help he could come again to the enjoyment of his own. The warfare which followed was more desperate than that of the earlier civil war. The King was not in the field, and the disposition to spare was far less. To the Scotch, the English Presbyterians joined themselves in multitudes, men who till now had fought stubbornly for the Houses; while the old Cavaliers, whether Catholic or Anglican, rode forth again in actual combat, or with sword on thigh only waited for a favorable moment. But the Independents, now thoroughly united, were without fear, and matchless both in the field and in counsel. While Vane headed off plots at Westminster, Ireton and Fairfax, and above all Cromwell, smote with a warlike efficiency scarcely ever paralleled. Royalism

in Wales was trampled under foot. In Southern England, the King's cause, fiercely fought for about London, went down utterly at last in the fall of the stronghold of Colchester, in Essex; while Colchester Cromwell, in midsummer, with an army and Preston. small but perfect, sweeping in long detour from Western Wales to Central England, then far north into Lancashire, untouched by heat or fatigue, fell upon the flank of the invading Scots, and, eight thousand against twenty thousand, swept them from the earth at the battle of Preston. At the end of the summer all resistance had ceased; the Ironsides were masters of England, and their hands were hard. Presently the programme of the victors was announced. The captains now stood thoroughly with their men and with the chiefs at St. Stephen's.

strance.

The Grand Army Remonstrance,1 written by Ireton, is the long and carefully prepared work of a scholar and lawyer. Though addressed The Grand to the House of Commons, it was intended Army Remonto express to the nation the position of the Army, and the plan they meant to pursue. The attempt to treat with the King was solemnly denounced; "though the Lord had again laid bare his arm, and that small Army which they had ceased to trust, and had well-nigh deserted and cast off, had been enabled to shiver all the banded strength of a second English insurrection, aided by Scotland, even after the rebuke from God, were they not pursuing the same phantom of accommodation?" The principle was laid down that the "Representative Council of Parliament" must be supreme;

1 Rushworth, VII, pp. 1297-98, 1311-12, 1330. Whitlocke, II, p. 436.

that any form of monarchy must be regarded as a creation of that freely elected council for special ends and within special limits; and that the monarch, if in any way derelict, could justly be called to account. It was urged that Charles deserved to be so called to account. If there were any hope of amendment, he might be treated tenderly. "If there were any good evidence of a proportionable remorse in him, and that his coming in again were with a new or changed heart, his person might be capable of pity, mercy, and pardon, and an accommodation with him, with a full and free yielding on his part to all the aforesaid points of public and religious interest in contest, might, in charitable construction, be just, and possibly safe and beneficial." But the King had been utterly faithless, it was urged, and continued to be so. In a passage showing how thoroughly they penetrated the King's falseness, it was declared that even now, after his complete second ruin, he was plotting and prevaricating, while secretly expecting aid from the Irish rebels. "Have you not found him at this play all along, and do not all men acknowledge him most exquisite at it?" At length came the immediate demands, and, first, that the King might be brought to justice; that his heirs, the boys afterward to be Charles II and James II, should return to England and submit themselves completely to the judgment of the nation; and that a number of the chief instruments of the King in the wars should be brought with him to capital punishment. All obdurate delinquents were to undergo banishment and confiscation of property, and all claims of the Army to be fully satisfied. In the prospective demands, with which