Five years later and Charles was a prisoner, to die in 1649 on the scaffold. That same year monarchy and the House of Lords were abolished by law; the Established Church had already fallen before the triumphant arms of the Puritans.
Then, in 1653, the House of Commons itself fell—expelled by Cromwell; and the task of the Lord Protector was to fashion a constitution that would work.[[55]] What happened was the supremacy of the army. Parliament, attenuated and despised, contended in vain against the Protector. On Cromwell's death, and the failure of his son, Richard, the army declared for Charles II., and there was an end to the Commonwealth.
The Democratic Protest—Lilburne
In all these changes the great mass of the people had neither part nor lot; and the famous leaders of the Parliamentary Party, resolute to curtail the absolutism of the Crown, were no more concerned with the welfare of the labouring people than the barons were in the time of John. The labouring people—generally—were equally indifferent to the fortunes of Roundheads and Cavaliers, though the townsmen in many places held strong enough opinions on the matters of religion that were in dispute.[[56]]
That the common misery of the people was not in any way lightened by Cromwell's rule we have abundant evidence, and it cannot be supposed that the substitution of the Presbyterian discipline for episcopacy in the Church, and the displacement of Presbyterians by Independents, was likely to alleviate this misery.
Taxation was heavier than it had ever been before, and in Lancashire, Westmorland, and Cumberland the distress was appalling.
Whitelocke, writing in 1649,[[57]] notes "that many families in Lancashire were starved." "That many in Cumberland and Westmorland died in the highways for want of bread, and divers left their habitations, travelling with their wives and children to other parts to get relief, but could find none. That the committees and Justices of the Peace of Cumberland signed a certificate, that there were 30,000 families that had neither seed nor bread-corn, nor money to buy either, and they desired a collection for them, which was made, but much too little to relieve so great a multitude."
Cromwell, occupied with high affairs of State, had neither time nor inclination to attend to social reform. Democracy had its witnesses; Lilburne and the Levellers made their protest against military rule, and were overpowered; Winstanley and his Diggers endeavoured to persuade the country that the common land should be occupied by dispossessed peasants, and were quickly suppressed.
Lilburne was concerned with the establishment of a political democracy, Winstanley with a social democracy, and in both cases the propaganda was offensive to the Protector.
Had Cromwell listened to Lilburne, and made concessions towards democracy, the reaction against Puritanism and the Commonwealth might have been averted.[[58]]