Chapter XXVI.
The Commonwealth And Cromwell (1649-1653).
King Charles I. had not yet been lowered into his tomb, when, on the 7th of February, the House of Commons, reduced by successive purifications to a hundred members, voted an Act reading thus: "It has been proved by experience, and this House declares, that the office of king is in this country useless, and dangerous to the liberty, security, and good of the people; henceforth to be abolished." The House of Lords had been suppressed on the day previous. A Council of State was entrusted with executive power. It was composed of forty-one members, amongst whom were the three leaders of the army—Fairfax, Cromwell, and Skippon—with five former peers. Nearly all the others belonged to the House of Commons.
A disagreement sprang up at the outset. The new councillors were asked to sign a declaration approving what had been done regarding the trial of the king and the abolition of the monarchy as well as in the House of Lords. Twenty-two members of the council refused to sign. They promised to serve faithfully the government of the House of Commons, the only power remaining, but without expounding their views upon acts which they disapproved in different degrees. Cromwell perceived that the regicides could not govern alone. He came to an agreement with Sir Henry Vane, the most sincere, the most able, and the most visionary of the republican statesmen. Sir Henry had refused to take part in the trial of the king, but he consented to sit in the council of state, provided that the past should not be referred to. The presidency was conferred upon Bradshaw. He took, as Latin secretary, one of his cousins who had recently maintained, in an eloquent pamphlet, that it was right to summon to trial "a tyrant or a bad king, as well as to depose him and put him to death after having duly convicted him." This was the poet Milton.
The Republic was founded and its government was being organized, but the country submitted without accepting it. Nearly four months elapsed before it could be proclaimed in the City of London. It had been found necessary to change the Lord Mayor, and the aldermen absented themselves upon the day of the solemn publication. "What was being done was against my conscience and my oaths," said Sir Thomas Sumes, when summoned to answer for his absence at the bar of the House. "My heart was not in this work," said Richard Chambers. Great difficulty was experienced in finding aldermen to replace them. Everywhere the same ill-feeling was manifested. Two years after the establishment of the Commonwealth, Parliament was compelled to entrust to the parishes the task of destroying all emblems recalling the monarchy. The clergy on all hands refused to take the oath of fidelity to the new power, and the government did not dare to give the name of the "Commonwealth of England" to a new frigate launched in the port of London in presence of the assembled council of state. "It was considered," wrote the Minister of France, M. de Croullé, to Cardinal Mazarin, "that if this ship were to perish, as all vessels are liable to do, it would be a bad omen."
The republican government, so shackled in its course, held in its hands some of the most eminent royalist leaders: the Duke of Hamilton, the Earls of Holland and Norwich, Lord Capel, Sir John Owen—valiant remnants of the last struggles of the civil war, who for several months had all been prisoners. Scarcely had the High Court, which condemned Charles I., completed its task when a fresh tribunal was formed, still under the presidency of Bradshaw, to try those who had fought for him until the last moment, and of whom the greater number were to follow him to the scaffold.
The Court began its sitting upon the 5th of February. The five accused men represented different shades of the royalist party. The Duke of Hamilton, a great nobleman and a politician of the court; Lord Holland, a frivolous and corrupt courtier; Lord Norwich, a true cavalier, complaisant, jovial, and devoted to the king; Sir John Owen, a worthy country gentleman, courageous and simple-minded; finally, Lord Capel, a model of all the firm and grave virtues, as independent as he was faithful. All five were condemned to death. The Duke of Hamilton immediately received not only an offer of his life, but of the return of his former office if he would make revelations upon the past. "If I had as many lives as I have hairs upon my head," said the duke, "I would sacrifice them all rather than ransom them by so shameful a bargain." When Sir John Owen heard his sentence pronounced, he made a low bow to the court. "It is a very great honor to a poor gentleman of Wales," he said, "to lose his head with such noble lords:" and he added with an oath, "I was afraid they would have hanged me."
Everything was tried in order to obtain from Parliament the pardon of the condemned. The appeal of the Duke of Hamilton and Lord Holland was rejected; Lord Norwich and Sir John Owen were pardoned; the latter, at the instigation of Hutchinson, who observed to Ireton, "I am going to speak for this poor gentleman, who is alone and without friends." There remained Lord Capel, the object of passionate solicitude and the most active proceedings on the part of his family. His appeal was discussed before Parliament. Cromwell rose, dwelling more especially upon the virtues of Lord Capel. "My affection for the public interest, however, weighs down my private friendship," he said. "I cannot but tell you that you have now to decide whether you will preserve the most bitter and implacable enemy you have. I know Lord Capel very well; he will be the last man in England who will abandon the royal cause; he has great courage, ability, and generosity; as long as he shall live, whatever may be his position, he will be a thorn in your side; for the well-being of the commonwealth I feel compelled to vote against his petition." It was rejected.