[Sidenote: Strafford's Death. Death of Laud.]
The execution of the Archbishop swiftly followed, then the abolition of the Star Chamber, and of the High Commission Court; then a bill was passed requiring that Parliament be summoned once in three years, and a law enacted forbidding its dissolution except by its own consent.
They were rapidly nearing the conception that Parliament does not exist by sanction of the King, but the King by sanction of Parliament.
What could be done with a King whom no promises could bind—who, while in the act of giving solemn pledges to Parliament in order to save Strafford, was perfidiously planning to overawe it by military force? The attempted arrest of Hampden, Pym, and three other leaders was part of this "Army Plot," which made civil war inevitable. The trouble had resolved itself into a deadly conflict between King and Parliament. If he resorted to arms, so must they.
If Hampden stands out pre-eminent as the Champion who like a great Gladiator fought the battle of civil freedom, Pym is no less conspicious in having grasped the principles on which it must be fought. He saw that if either Crown or Parliament must go down, better for England that it should be the crown. He saw also, that the vital principle in Parliament lay in the House of Commons. If the King refused to act with them, it should be treated as an abdication, and Parliament must act without him, and if the Lords obstructed reform, then they must be told that the Commons must act alone, rather than let the Kingdom perish.
This was the theory upon which the future action was based. Revolutionary and without precedent it has since been accepted as the correct construction of English Constitutional principles.
[Sidenote: Oliver Cromwell.]
Better would it have been for Charles had he let the ship sail, which was to have borne Hampden and his Cousin, Oliver Cromwell, toward the "Valley of the Connecticut." He recalled the man who was to be his evil genius when he gave that order. Cromwell could not so accurately have defined the constitutional right of his cause as Pym had done, nor make himself its adored head as was Hampden; but he had a more compelling genius than either. His figure stands up colossal and grim away above all others from the time he raised his praying, psalm-singing army, until the defeat of the King's forces at Naseby (1645), the flight of the King and his subsequent surrender.
It was at this time that Cromwell began to manifest as much ability as a political as he had done as a military leader. Hampden had fallen on the battlefield, Pym was dead, he was virtual head of the cause. Perhaps it needed just such a terrible, uncompromising instrument, to carry England over such a crisis as was before her. Not overscrupulous about means, no troublesome theories about Church or State—no reverence for anything but God and "the Gospel."
When Parliament halted and hesitated at the last about the trial of the King, it was the iron hand of Cromwell which strangled opposition, by placing a body of troops at the door, and excluding 140 doubtful members. A Parliament, with the House of Lords effaced, and with 140 obstructing members excluded, leaving only a small body of men of the same mind, sustained by the moral sentiment of a Cromwellian Army,—can scarcely be called a Representative body; nor can it be considered competent to create a Court for the trial of a King! It was only justifiable as a last and desperate measure of self-defence.