The Crime of Caste in Our Country

by Benjamin Rush Davenport

The shouts of about 100,000 “Common People,” gathered on Black Heath, June 12, 1381, reverberated through the valley of Richard II. The vast horde poured into London, seized the Tower of London, put to death the Archbishop of Canterbury and others, and spared the cowering and cowardly King Richard II., only on his promise to abolish slavery and grant their demands.

That, my good and would-be lords and barons, is but another evidence of the Anglo-Saxon blood and its resentment of insult when offered to the female members of the race. Women ever have occasioned, in the Anglo-Saxon bosom, just and righteous indignation when insulted. The slights, sneers, and snubbing of the women of America by the snobs and sham aristocrats produced the reappearance of the same traits of character as led Watt Tyler and his horde of peasants to London. The women of America had become Democratic, and the result of their influence upon the voters of our country was revealed, November 8th, in an unmistakable manner.

James I. (1603-1625), the first Stuart to reign in England, was stubborn, conceited, weak, slovenly, dissipated, and cowardly. In his reign was first heard the prattle about “the divine right of kings, and the passive obedience of the subject.” He ostentatiously opposed his will to that of the people, and during his reign was in constant conflict with Parliament. He was obliged to beg the House of Commons for money, and that body adopted the principle, now one of the cornerstones of the British Constitution, that “a redress of grievances must precede a granting of supplies.”

Charles I. (1625-1649), the son of James I., was more refined and held more exalted ideas of his prerogatives; he repeatedly broke his promises made to the people; his reign was one long struggle with Parliament.

He was not as frivolous and false as his son Charles II., but James I., his father, had brought the idiotic doctrine of the divine right of kings into England along with the rest of his peculiar Stuart eccentricities,—for eccentric it was to the Anglo-Saxon people, who had forced from John the Magna-Charta at Runnymede before the amalgamation of the Norman and Saxon into one homogeneous race had been completed; who, while there still existed internal dissensions and race distinction, had been united upon the one great subject for which the Anglo-Saxon people, best and bravest representatives of the Aryan race, have ever fought—the equality of man in the representation in the legislation of the people.

Strange to the ear of the masses was the doctrine of the Stuart, that the king was one of the Lord’s anointed and could do no wrong. They had seen kings do wrong when cursed with a wrong-doer as king, and supported any aspirant to the crown of England, no matter how slender may have been the thread of his claim thereto. Richard II. had played the autocratic ruler. Englishmen had resisted by espousing the cause of the first claimant who appeared upon the field. The assumption by the Stuarts of a divine right was the first stab that they gave to their own existence as the ruling House of an Anglo-Saxon people. Charles I. reaped where James I. had sown. The English people had forgiven before the bad faith of their sovereign, as they have since. They have endured the waste of their money because the Anglo-Saxon, whence we Americans derive the source of blood and laws, has not his tender spot upon the pocketbook, but in his heart, his home, his pride, believing himself, each man, equal to any other man.

In 1628, Parliament wrested from Charles I. the famous Petition of Rights, the second great charter of English liberty. It forbade the kings to levy taxes without the consent of Parliament, to imprison a subject without trial, or to billet soldiers in private houses. As usual, Charles disregarded his promises, and then for eleven years ruled like an autocrat.

During that period no Parliament was convoked, a thing unparalleled in English history. Buckingham having been assassinated by a Puritan fanatic, the Earl of Stafford and Archbishop Laud became its royal advisers. The Earl contrived a plan for making the king absolute. All who differed from Laud were tried in the High Commissioner’s Court, while the Star Chamber Court fined, whipped, and imprisoned those who spoke ill of the king’s policy or refused to pay the money he illegally demanded. The bitter persecution of the Puritans drove them to America. In Scotland, Charles carried matters with a high hand. Laud attempted to abolish Presbyterianism and introduce a liturgy. The Scotch rose en masse, and signed (some of them with their own blood) a covenant binding themselves to resist every innovation directed against their religious rights. Finally, an army of Scots crossed the border into England, and Charles was forced to assemble the famous “Long Parliament” (1640), which lasted twenty years. The old battle was renewed. Stafford, and afterward Laud, were brought to the block; the Star Chamber and High Commissioners’ Courts were abolished, and Parliament voted that it could not be adjourned without its own consent. Charles attempted to arrest five of the leaders of Parliament in the House of Commons itself. They hid in the City of London, whence a week later they were brought back to the House of Commons in triumph. Charles hastened Northward, and unfurled the royal banner. For a time his supporters swept everything before them.

Then arose Oliver Cromwell, a man of the “Common People,” who, with his Ironsides regiment at Marston Moor (1644), drove the cavaliers pell-mell from the field. Nasby (1645) was the decisive contest of the war. Cromwell swept the field, and the royal cause was irrevocably lost. Charles fled to the Scots, who gave him up to the Parliament; but the army of the “Common People,” led by Cromwell, soon got him into its possession, and he was condemned to death on the charge of treason, and was beheaded.