The seething unrest of the army found expression in the creation of a regular political organization to oppose the organized Parliament. The officers formed a Council, and the rank and file chose delegates, two for each company or troop, known as “agitators.” In short, the army became an organized political body whose scarcely acknowledged function was to control or supersede the Parliament; just as, prior to the outbreak of the American Revolution, Committees of Correspondence were formed, in the various colonies, out of which there sprang the Continental Congress, which superseded the loyalist colonial legislatures.
Cromwell, like every other great leader who rises in a period of storm and convulsion, could partly direct the forces around him, and in part had to be directed by them. He did not sympathize with the extreme position of the army about the King—the “man of blood,” as the Puritan zealots called him, whose life they already demanded; nor yet with their radical political aspirations. But it was the army alone through which he could act, which gave him his strength; and in return he was the one man who could in any way check or control it, for its loyalty to, and admiration of, the great leader at whose hands it had drained the cup of victory, were the only emotions strong enough to offset its fierce zeal for its own theories of Church and State.
Cromwell was most earnestly desirous of getting a working compromise between the King, the Presbyterian Parliament, and the Independent army; a compromise which would allow the King to reign, exercising such executive powers as the Parliament felt he should possess, and which should leave the supreme control to Parliament, but with sufficient guarantees for political and religious freedom to insure justice to the Independents and the soldiers. He strove so hard to accomplish his purpose as to excite angry mutterings against himself among his own followers in the army; and the first steps of the impending revolution were seemingly taken by him only because he was irresistibly pushed onward by the army itself. When, however, he had once made up his mind that there was no other path possible, he trod it as a leader, with all his wonted firmness and decision.
The effort for reconciliation was hopeless, chiefly because the King was an utterly impossible person with whom to deal. He had many bitter foes; but they could not prevail against him until he convinced some of his would-be friends that he was absolutely and utterly untrustworthy. He never for a moment entertained the idea of accepting his defeat, of abandoning the effort to rule as a despot, and of acting with good faith toward the people. His purpose was to play off the Presbyterians, together with the Scotch, against the Independents; as he wrote to a friend, he hoped to get either the one party or the other “to side with me for extirpating one another, and I shall be really King again.”
Meanwhile, the Presbyterian Parliament was determined not to tolerate the “sectaries” of the Congregationalist and Baptist Churches, and was drawing closer and closer to the Scotch Covenanters, who were even more intolerant; and finally it grew ready to accept the King himself on almost any terms, if it could overcome the army.
But the army could not be overcome. It had perfected its political organization, and had begun to work through Ireton—Cromwell’s other self. The army was genuinely reluctant to break with the Parliament, for, after all, it was deeply permeated with the English respect for law and order; and in the elections to fill the vacancies in the House, very many Independents—men like Ireton, Fairfax, and Blake, the after-time admiral—had been returned, so that there was in the Parliament a party which strongly sympathized with the army.
General Sir Thomas Fairfax.
From the Portrait by Robert Walker at Althorp.
By permission of Earl Spencer, K.G.
The majority in Parliament, however, remained steadfast in its own views, and by its refusal to give the soldiers their arrears of pay it added a very tangible, material grievance to those of an ethical character. In January, 1647, the Scottish army delivered King Charles to the agents of the Parliament, and quitted England, having received part of the sum of money due them.
The most complicated and devious negotiations followed between the King, the Parliament, and the army. Cromwell tried to get the army in touch with the Parliament, but found the Parliament hopelessly obstinate. He tried to get it in touch with the King, but found the King hopelessly false. Yet, neither could the King and Parliament come together. Then the army threatened mutiny, whereupon the Parliament began to negotiate for bringing back the Scottish force to overawe the New Model, and attempted the disbandment of the latter. The army struck back with great decision and sent Cornet Joyce to seize the person of the King and take him away from the Presbyterians. Parliament attempted to proceed with the disbandment of the army, but was forced to abandon the effort when it became evident that to pursue it meant war. No one knew quite what the outcome would be, or, indeed, what his own course would be.