Our Rump passed through three stages in its political progress. Preparatory to the trial of the sovereign, the anti-monarchical party constituted the minority in “the Long Parliament:” the very name by which this parliament is recognised seemed a grievance to an impatient people, vacillating with chimerical projects of government, and now accustomed, from a wild indefinite notion of political equality, to pull down all existing institutions. Such was the temper of the times, that an act of the most violent injustice, openly performed, served only as the jest of the day, a jest which has passed into history. The forcible expulsion of two hundred of their brother members, by those who afterwards were saluted as “The Rump,” was called “Pride’s Purge,” from the activity of a colonel of that name, a military adventurer, who was only the blind and brutal instrument of his party; for when he stood at the door of the Commons, holding a paper with the names of the members, he did not personally know one! And his “Purge” might have operated a quite opposite effect, administered by his own unskilful hand, had not Lord Grey of Groby, and the door-keeper,—worthy dispersers of the British senate!—pointed out the obnoxious members, on whom our colonel laid his hand, and sent off by his men to be detained, if a bold member, or to be deterred from sitting in the house, if a frightened one. This colonel had been a drayman; and the contemptible knot of the Commons, reduced to fifty or sixty confederates, which assembled after his “Purge,” were called “Colonel Pride’s Dray-Horses.”
It was this Rump which voted the death of the sovereign, and abolished the regal office, and the House of Peers—as “unnecessary, burdensome, and dangerous!” Every office in parliament seemed “dangerous,” but that of the “Custodes libertatis Angliæ,” the keepers of the liberties of England! or rather “the gaolers!” “The legislative half-quarter of the House of Commons!” indignantly exclaims Clement Walker—the “Montagne” of the French revolutionists!
The “Red-coats” as the military were nicknamed, soon taught their masters, “the Rumpers,” silence and obedience: the latter having raised one colossal man for their own purpose, were annihilated by him at a single blow. Cromwell, five years after, turned them out of their house, and put the keys into his pocket. Their last public appearance was in the fleeting days of Richard Cromwell, when the comi-tragedy of “the Rump” concluded by a catastrophe as ludicrous as that of Tom Thumb’s tragedy!
How such a faction used their instruments to gather in the common spoil, and how their instruments at length converted the hands which held them into instruments themselves, appears in their history. When “the Long Parliament” opposed the designs of Cromwell and Ireton, these chiefs cried up “the liberty of the people,” and denied “the authority of parliament:” but when they had effectuated their famous “purge,” and formed a House of Commons of themselves, they abolished the House of Lords, crying up the supreme authority of the House of Commons, and crying down the liberty of the people. Such is the history of political factions, as well as of statesmen! Charles the Fifth alternately made use of the Pope’s authority to subdue the rising spirit of the Protestants of Germany, or raised an army of Protestants to imprison the Pope! who branded his German allies by the novel and odious name of Lutherans. A chain of similar facts may be framed out of modern history.
The “Rump,” as they were called by every one but their own party, became a whetstone for the wits to sharpen themselves on; and we have two large collections of “Rump Songs,” curious chronicles of popular feeling![327] Without this evidence we should not have been so well informed respecting the phases of this portentous phenomenon. “The Rump” was celebrated in verse, till at length it became “the Rump of a Rump of a Rump!” as Foulis traces them to their dwindled and grotesque appearance. It is pourtrayed by a wit of the times—
| The Rump’s an old story, if well understood, ’Tis a thing dress’d up in a parliament’s hood, And like it—but the tail stands where the head shou’d! ’Twould make a man scratch where it does not itch! They say ’tis good luck when a body rises With the rump upwards; but he that advises To live in that posture, is none of the wisest. |
Cromwell’s hunting them out of the House by military force is alluded to—
| Our politic doctors do us teach, That a blood-sucking red-coat’s as good as a leech To relieve the head, if applied to the breech. |
In the opening scene of the Restoration, Mrs. Hutchinson, an honest republican, paints with dismay a scene otherwise very ludicrous. “When the town of Nottingham, as almost all the rest of the island, began to grow mad, and declared themselves in their desires of the king;” or, as another of the opposite party writes, “When the soldiery, who had hitherto made clubs trumps, resolved now to turn up the king of hearts in their affections,” the rabble in town and country vied with each other in burning the “Rump;” and the literal emblem was hung by chains on gallowses, with a bonfire underneath, while the cries of “Let us burn the Rump! Let us roast the Rump!” were echoed everywhere. The suddenness of this universal change, which was said to have maddened the wise, and to have sobered the mad, must be ascribed to the joy at escaping from the yoke of a military despotism; perhaps, too, it marked the rapid transition of hope to a restoration which might be supposed to have implanted gratitude even in a royal breast! The feelings of the people expected to find an echo from the throne!
“The Rump,” besides their general resemblance to the French anarchists, had also some minuter features of ugliness, which Englishmen have often exulted have not marked an English revolution—sanguinary proscriptions![328] We had thought that we had no revolutionary tribunals! no Septembrisers! no noyades! no moveable guillotines awaiting for carts loaded with human victims! no infuriated republican urging, in a committee of public safety, the necessity of a salutary massacre!