people are, under God, the original of all just power: that the commons of England, in parliament assembled, being chosen by and representing the people, have the supreme power in this nation; that whatsoever is enacted or declared for law by the commons in parliament assembled hath the force of law, and all the people of this nation are concluded thereby, although the consent and concurrence of king or house of peers be not had thereunto." 1 Two days later this body, which had ceased high court of justice to be representative, passed the act creating the high court constituted of justice, to consist of one hundred and thirty-five commis- the 6th ; sioners, who were to exercise the functions of both judge and jury in the trial of the king. On the 20th Charles appeared Charles before this tribunal, which sat in Westminster Hall under the plead the presidency of John Bradshaw, and challenged its authority by 20th; refusing to plead; on the 27th a formal and final sentence was read declaring that he should be beheaded as a traitor; on the 29th the signing of his death warrant was completed under pressure; and on the next day he met his doom robed executed in a royal dignity which did not bend even at that dreadful on the 30th. door through which he passed into the presence of the Eternal Father.

Results of the

CHAPTER IV.

THE COMMONWEALTH AND PROTECTORATE.

I. THERE is no good reason to believe that a single memrevolution ber of the great popular majority which gathered at St. Steunforeseen; phen's upon the meeting of the Long Parliament imagined for

they arose out of a

great

a moment that the revolution then set in motion under legal forms would culminate in the execution of the king, and in the substitution of a republican system for the ancient constitution. That entirely unforeseen result suddenly arose out of a great religious and political upheaval which is broken into four upheaval, distinct stages, each one of which was the natural, possibly the inevitable, sequence of the preceding. When Pym, as the leader of the popular party, undertook to settle once and for all the vital principle that the supreme powers of the state are vested in parliament as against the crown, and that as between the houses themselves the ultimate sovereignty resides in the popular branch of the legislature,1 he contemplated no more than such a readjustment of the constitutional forces as would

broken into four distinct stages:

embracing

made

fix the centre of gravity of the state in the representative chamthe first, ber. The first stage of the revolution consisted of the efforts reforms made in that direction by the popular party while acting as a during first whole, and striking as one man against abuses which were ten months permanently removed through the measures adopted during the first ten months of the Long Parliament. The second ment; stage began after the first recess, when the triumphant prothe struggle gress of the popular party was checked by a division in its own

of Long Parlia

the second,

that ended with the adoption of the Grand Remon

ranks as to the disposition to be made of the episcopal office, one faction contending for its entire abolition, the other for the retention of the bishops with diminished powers and subject to parliamentary jurisdiction. The latter claim, maintained by the old Puritan party within the church, triumphed in the memorable struggle over the Grand Remonstrance, whose adoption was accepted as a settlement of the fact that the establishment, while retaining episcopacy in a modified form, would tolerate neither the Laudian element within its pale, nor the sectaries who gathered without in separate conventicles. The the third, third stage began when the Root-and-branch party, which in- of the pressisted upon the entire abolition of episcopacy, was able to byterian enforce its ideas through a political alliance with the Scots, episcopal who demanded, as the price of military aid to the parliamentary system; cause, the acceptance of the Covenant, and the substitution of the presbyterian for the episcopal system in the Church of England. That concession, reluctantly made by Pym and his followers as a political necessity, did nothing, however, to advance the cause of religious toleration. The presbyterian party, which thus came into possession of the state church, refused to relinquish one tittle of its right to embrace the whole nation in its fold, and to dictate to all their faith and form of worship. The fourth and last stage of the revolution began the fourth, when the whole dissenting body of sectaries resolved to band of the indetogether for the assertion of congregational independence pendents against the scheme of legal uniformity pressed upon them presbythrough the state church by the presbyterian majority dominant in parliament. This combined opposition of the sectaries, all indegenerally designated as Independents, first assumed a definite pendent and formidable shape when all of its various elements were combined united by Cromwell and Fairfax in that strange army and par- well in liament in one known as the New Model, whose corner-stones Model; were social and religious toleration. Into the ranks of that organization entered every shade of dissident opinion, not only religious but political. There it was that the religious independent was converted into the political independent; there the levelit was that the levellers appeared as an organized republican organized association, ready to substitute for the ancient constitution republican which had developed without design a commonwealth of the saints based on abstract principles. As early as October, 1647, the levellers had embodied their new conception of govern- "The ment in the draft of a constitution, entitled "The Agreement of the of the People," 1 which proposed, first, that the constituencies People;" should be "more indifferently proportioned according to the

number of inhabitants; " second, that the existing parliament should be dissolved on September 30, 1648; third, that all

future parliaments should be triennial; fourth, that a single elected chamber should be supreme in all things not "expressly or impliedly reserved by the represented to themselves." This prototype prototype of all constitutions, state and federal, as they exist

of all

American to-day in the United States,1 was to draw its authority from a

constitutions;

direct acceptance by the people, who reserved to themselves, by express constitutional limitations upon the powers granted, certain rights, among which the agreement pointedly named the absolute right to religious liberty and due process of law. This republican ideal, destined to such a marvellous expansion, which

the levellers, under the lead of Lilburne, persistently pressed completed upon the leaders of the army, was finally completed in a modi1649, Januaryds, fied form by the council of officers on the 15th of January, presented 1649, and by them presented five days later to the house of commons; commons, who agreed to consider it so soon as "the necessity

to the

army resolved to retain the Rump,

of the present weighty and urgent affairs would permit." It was clearly understood, however, that with that part of this programme which suggested that the Rump should yield to another body elected on more popular principles, its members had no possible sympathy. The army therefore resolved to retain for the moment this fragment of an assembly, which it had purged of its presbyterian elements, as a veil for the power

of the sword, and as a link, however weak, with the past. By which pro- its voice the sovereignty of the people was proclaimed, and the claimed the ancient constitution practically abolished by the resolutions,

sovereignty of the people, speaking through a

single chamber.

adopted on the 4th of January, 1649, which declared that the enactments of the commons alone should have the force of law, "although the consent and concurrence of king or house of peers be not had thereunto." Two days later the same assembly, unaided by any precedent in the history of nations, created the tribunal under whose judgment the king passed to his doom.

2. The house of commons, which at the beginning of the Long Parliament consisted of five hundred and six memrepublican bers, had now dwindled to a mere shadow; at the largest constitution division which took place during the month that followed the king's death, only seventy-seven members were present to re2 Commons' Journals, vol. vi. p. 122. 8 See above, p. 339.

the execuvested in

tive power

a council

defined;

cord their votes.1 And yet by the sole authority of this Rump of a parliament the monarchy was overthrown, and the first crude and tentative republican constitution that appeared in its stead was set up. In order to clear the ground for the by abolishing monerection of the new structure a vote was taken on the 7th of archy and February, which abolished the monarchy as " unnecessary, bur- the house densome, and dangerous for the freedom, safety, and public February 7; interest of the people of this nation," 2 and at the same time the house of peers was swept away as "useless and dangerous." On the same day a council of state was voted "to be henceforth the executive power," 8 and on the 14th, the fortyone members of whom it was composed were elected by a fe separate vote on each name, and the body thus constituted was elected by the house; charged under "the orders of the house" with the direction its duties of the military and naval forces, the collection of the revenue, the preservation of the internal peace through the police power, the supervision of trade, internal and external, the administration of the colonies, and the negotiation of treaties with foreign nations. The powers of the admiralty vested in this council powers were delegated to a committee of which Vane was the head, admiralty and by its authority the command of the fleet which added so the council; much to the glory of the republic passed to Popham, Dean, and Blake. Upon the threshold of its labors the new executive council, composed in the main of members of the house and of five peers, some of whom put themselves in the category of the former by accepting places as elected representatives, divided against itself when the house demanded of each member an oath approving of the execution of the king and of the abolition of the monarchy and the house of lords. As a the oath settlement of the controversy, Cromwell and his friends, who the new promptly took the oath, agreed to a compromise, which modified régime by the demand to a promise of adhesion to the existing order of republic things, and to the future government of the nation "by way king or of a republic without king or house of peers." 8 The council peers;"

5

of the

vested in