Oliver Cromwell and the Rule of the Puritans in England

by C. H. Firth

Three days after the passing of the Remonstrance, Charles returned to Whitehall. He came back resolved to make no further concessions, and to rid himself of the parliamentary leaders under the form of law. Their relations with the Scots during the late war, their attacks on his royal power, and the changes they sought to make in the constitution were sufficient in his opinion to prove them guilty of high treason. His first step was to remove the guards round the House; his next, to ingratiate himself with the City; his third, to place a trusty ruffian in command of the Tower. When the Commons petitioned for the restoration of their guard, Charles told them that, on the word of a king, their security from violence should be as much his care as the preservation of his own children. On the day the House received this answer, Charles sent the attorney-general to impeach five members, and a sergeant-at-arms to arrest them.[^[6]] The Commons refused to give them up. The next day he came to arrest them in person, with four hundred armed men at his back, but found the birds flown, and faith in the royal word fled too (January 4, 1642). The House of Commons adjourned to the City, which refused, as the House itself had done, to surrender the accused members. Petitioners poured in from the country in thousands to support their representatives, and it was evident that the feeling of the nation was overwhelmingly on the side of the Parliament. The King’s coup d’état had completely failed. On the 11th of January, the House of Commons returned to Westminster, while the King left London to avoid witnessing their triumph.

Charles had not intended to act treacherously, and believed that his actions were perfectly legal, but it was natural that the parliamentary leaders, refusing to trust him, should press with renewed vigour for the control of the armed force. Cromwell felt this as strongly as his leaders, and three days after the return to Westminster he moved for a committee to put the kingdom in a posture of defence (January 14th). The motion was a little premature. It was necessary, Pym felt, that the two Houses should act together, and the Lords were slow to move. It was not till Pym told them that unless they would join the Commons in saving the kingdom the Commons would save the kingdom without them, that the Upper House gave way. In February, they passed the bill for the exclusion of the bishops, and joined in the demand for the control of the militia. In March, they united with the Commons in a vote to put the kingdom in a posture of defence by authority of both Houses.

For the present, however, both King and Parliament were unwilling to appeal to arms: the King strove to gain time in order to gain strength; the Parliament still hoped that the King would grant the securities they sought. So for six months they argued and negotiated, each appealing to the nation by declarations and counter-declarations, and preluding by these paper skirmishes the opening of real hostilities. Charles had two policies which he followed alternately, each of which demanded time for its success. The one was the policy of the Queen and the courtiers; the other was the policy of Hyde and the constitutional Royalists. The Queen’s policy was active preparation for the inevitable war, regardless of any constitutional doctrines that stood in the way. Help was to be sought from France, or Denmark, or the Prince of Orange, and a port was to be secured, in which foreign troops could be landed. Hyde’s policy was that the King should remain passive, that he should “shelter himself wholly under the law,” granting anything which the law obliged him to grant, and denying anything which the law enabled him to deny and his position made it inexpedient to concede. “In the end,” said Hyde, “the King and the Law together would be strong enough for any encounter that might happen.”

Neither the King’s character nor his position made it possible for him to adopt an entirely consistent policy. Some concessions he was obliged to make, either to conciliate public opinion by a show of yielding, or to gain time for his preparations for war. He withdrew the impeachment of the Five Members; he removed the governor of the Tower; he temporised about the Militia Bill; he even consented to the exclusion of the bishops from the House of Lords. Sorely against his own conscience was the latter concession granted, but the Queen insisted upon it, and to secure her safe passage to the continent Charles yielded. She bore with her to Holland the crown jewels to be pawned to provide arms and ammunition, and when she had sailed Charles took his way to Yorkshire to gather his friends around him and to secure the indispensable seaport. As he journeyed north, a deputation met him at Newmarket, and renewed the petition for the militia. But the necessity for concessions was past, and he refused even a temporary grant. “By God,” he cried, “not for an hour! You have asked that of me in this, was never asked of a king, and with which I will not trust my wife and children.”

When the King reached York, he set in operation an attempt to get possession of Hull. It was not only the most convenient port for the landing of succours from Holland and Denmark; it was also the great arsenal where the arms and munitions collected for the Scottish war had been stored. On April 23rd, Charles appeared before Hull with three hundred horsemen and demanded admission. But Sir John Hotham, the Governor, drew up the drawbridge, and taking his stand on the wall refused to admit the King. After proclaiming him a traitor, Charles rode away.

While the policy which the Queen had urged met with failure, the policy of which Hyde was the advocate gained for Charles adherents every day. Opinion veered to the King’s side. The change was mainly due to the ecclesiastical policy of the Parliament, for those who loved the Church feared to see its liturgy and its government delivered up to the rough hands of a Puritan Parliament and a synod of Puritan divines. But Hyde’s skilful advocacy did much to further the reaction. The declarations he wrote for the King, with their fluent, florid rhetoric, and their touches of humour and sarcasm, were far more effective than the ponderous legal arguments published by the Parliament. More was due to the art with which he represented the King as the guardian of the constitution, and the Parliament as its assailant. Pym’s panegyric of the law was turned against Pym himself. The King was made the champion of “the known laws of the land,” against revolutionists who wished to make the long-established rights of king and subject dependent on a vote of the House of Commons. He was made the defender of the “ancient, equal, happy, well poised, and never-enough-commended constitution,” against those who sought to introduce “a new Utopia of religion and government.”

That the Parliament was claiming new powers and the King standing on old rights it was impossible to deny, and it was difficult for the Parliament to prove the necessity which justified its demands. They could intimate the “fears and jealousies” which made them distrust the King, but the reality of their grounds for distrusting him is proved by evidence which they could only conjecture, and which later historians were to bring to light.

A mere argumentative victory could do nothing to solve the question the English nation had to decide. It was no longer a dispute whether the law gave certain powers to King or Parliament, but whether King or Parliament was to be sovereign. In the Nineteen Propositions which formed the Parliament’s ultimatum, they demanded all the branches of sovereignty for themselves. The control of foreign policy, of ecclesiastical policy, of the army and the navy, the appointment of ministers, councillors, and judges, the right to punish and the right to pardon, were all included. Government, in short, was to be carried on by persons chosen by the Parliament, instead of persons chosen by the King. The King might reign, but henceforth he should not govern.

In that sense Charles understood the Nineteen Propositions.

“These being passed” he answered, “we may be waited upon bareheaded, we may have our hand kissed, the style of majesty continued to us, and the King’s authority declared by both Houses of Parliament may still be the style of your commands, we may have swords and maces carried before us, and please ourselves with the sight of a crown and sceptre, but as to true and real power we should remain but the outside, but the picture, but the sign of a king.”