A history of England

by Charles Oman

If the Long Parliament had halted here, we should owe it nothing but thanks and praise. Unfortunately, however, it soon began to press on from redressing national grievances to pandering to party animosities. Most of its leading members were Puritans, and of them a majority was formed by those who had left the Church and taken to Presbyterianism. These Nonconformists were burning to revenge themselves on the Church of England for the tyranny which Laud and the Court of High Commission had exercised over them. The first symptom of their wrath was a bill for excluding the bishops from the House of Lords; this was afterwards enlarged into a scheme for abolishing the bishops altogether, and reorganizing the Church on a Presbyterian basis. In this form it was popularly known as the "Root-and-Branch" Bill, from a term used in a great London petition in its favour.

Split in the Parliamentary party.

This sweeping party measure at once threw all the moderate men in the House, who remained loyal Churchmen, though they were also constitutional reformers, into a violent opposition to the majority. After much fierce debating, Pym and his friends passed the second reading by a small majority (138 to 105) in May, 1641. The third reading was bitterly debated all through the summer, but never carried through; in face of the danger of splitting the party of reform, the promoters of the bill wisely dropped it (August, 1641). But they never succeeded in reuniting the Churchmen to themselves in the firm alliance that had existed before. Men like Lord Falkland, Edward Hyde, John Colepepper, and others of equally liberal views, began to doubt the wisdom of continuing to act with a party which was tending to appear more like a synod of fanatics than a committee of constitutional reformers.

Position of the king.

It was the appearance of this split in the Parliament that first brought some comfort to the disconsolate Charles. After giving a weak and insincere assent to every bill that was sent up to him in the summer, he began to pluck up his heart in the autumn of 1641. It was now his cue to assume the position of a constitutional king, and to accept the present position of affairs. But in his heart he was, no doubt, beginning to dream of ridding himself of his oppressors by the aid of the Church party and the moderate men. He spent the autumn in a visit to Scotland, where he endeavoured to conciliate the Covenanters by granting every request that they laid before him. But, at the same time, he was in secret negotiation with those of the Scottish nobles who disliked the domination of the Kirk, and was endeavouring to build up a Royalist party in the land.

The Irish Rebellion.

It was while Charles lay in the north that there burst out troubles in Ireland, which were fated to do him no small harm. The iron hand of Strafford had kept the Irish down for a space, in spite of all the wrongs and injustice which he had committed. When Strafford, however, was gone, the wrath of the oppressed natives boiled over, with all the more vigour because of this cruel repression. In October, 1641, there broke out a great national and religious rebellion, such as had not been seen since the days of Elizabeth. The old Irish clans rose to cast out and slay the English colonists. The Anglo-Irish Catholics of the Pale took arms at the same time, not to make Ireland independent, but to compel the king to take off all laws against Romanism, and turn the island into a Catholic country. In the North of Ireland, where the plantation of Ulster had worked the cruelest wrongs, the rising was attended with horrible atrocities. The natives, headed by Sir Phelim O'Neil, a distant kinsman of the old Earls of Tyrone, slew some 5000 of the unarmed colonists in cold blood. Many thousands more died from cold and starvation, being cast out of their dwellings and hunted away naked in the cold autumn weather. Unhappily for the king, the rebels thought it wise to give out that they acted by his permission in taking arms, and that they only struck at the English Parliament and the Protestant religion. Phelim O'Neil even showed a letter purporting to come from Charles, and bearing the royal seal of Scotland, where the king at that moment was staying. It was a forgery, and the seal was taken from an old deed; but the English Puritans would believe anything of Charles, and jumped to the conclusion that he was guilty of fostering the rising, and therefore of authorizing the massacre.

The Grand Remonstrance.

Under the stress of the news from Ireland, the Long Parliament reassembled in the winter of 1641-42, in no amiable frame of mind. They signalized their reassembly by putting forth the "Grand Remonstrance," a kind of historical summary of all the illegalities which Charles had committed since his accession, followed by a list of their own reforms already carried out, and a scheme for further reforms to come. These last were to include a bill to make the king choose no ministers or officials save such as Parliament should recommend to him, another for the complete suppression of Romanism, and a third for the "reformation" of the Church of England in the direction of pure Protestantism, that is, of extreme Puritanism. The first half of the "Remonstrance" passed the Commons with little opposition, but the last clauses, which practically bound the House to abolish Episcopacy and turn the Established Church into a Presbyterian Kirk, were hotly opposed by all the moderate party. In the end they passed by a narrow majority of eleven. But the victory of the Puritans involved a complete schism in the House. All the Church party now resolved that they would go no further; they would rather trust the king, in spite of all his faults, than the fanatical Presbyterians. For the first time in his life, Charles found himself allied to a powerful party in the Lower House.

Attempted arrest of the five members.