The Evolution of an Empire: A Brief Historical Sketch of England Part 7

The King saw the whole fabric of tyranny crumbling before his eyes. He was overawed and dared not refuse his signature to the fatal paper. It is said that as Strafford pa.s.sed to the block, Laud, who was at the window of the room where he too was a prisoner, fainted as his old companion in cruelty stopped to say farewell to him.

There were a few moments of silence, then,--a wild exultant shout. "His head is off--His head is off."

[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 pa.s.sed 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 Const.i.tutional principles.

[Sidenote: Oliver Cromwell.]

Better would it have been for Charles had he let the s.h.i.+p 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 const.i.tutional 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 G.o.d 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.

[Sidenote: Death of Charles I., 1649]

Charles wins back some of our sympathy and esteem by dying like a brave man and a gentleman. He conducted himself with marvellous dignity and self-possession throughout the trial, and at the end of seven days, laid his head upon the block in front of his royal palace of Whitehall.

That small body of men, calling itself the "House of Commons," declared England a "Commonwealth," which was to be governed without any King or House of Lords. Cromwell was "Lord Protector of England, Scotland and Ireland." He scorned to be called King, but no King was ever more absolute in authority. It was a righteous tyranny, replacing a vicious one.

There was no longer an eager hand dipping into the pockets of the people, compelling the poor to share his scanty earnings with the King.

There was safety, and there was prosperity. But there was rage and detestation, as Cromwell's soldiers with gibes and jeers, hewed and hacked at venerable altars and pictures, and insulted the religious sentiment of one-half the people. Empty niches, mutilated carvings, and fragments of stained gla.s.s, from

"Windows richly dight, Casting a dim religious light,"

show us to-day the track of those profane fanatics.

[Sidenote: Long Parliament Dispersed.]

When the remnant of the House of Commons calling itself a Parliament was not alert enough in its obedience, Cromwell marched into the Hall with a company of musketeers, and calling them names neither choice nor flattering, ordered them to "get out," then locked the door, and put the key into his pocket. Such was the "dissolution" of a Parliament which had been strong enough to overthrow a Government, and to send a King to the scaffold! This might be fittingly described as a _personal_ Government!

He was loved by none but the Army. There was no strong current of popular sentiment to uphold him as he carried out his arbitrary purposes; no engines of cruelty to fortify his authority; no "Star Chamber" to enforce his order. Men were not being nailed by the ears to the pillory, nor mutilated and branded, for resisting his will. But the spectacle was for that reason all the more astonis.h.i.+ng: a great nation, full of rage, hate and bitterness, but silent and submissive under the spell of one dominating personality.

He had no experience in diplomatic usages, no skilled ministers to counsel and warn, but by his foreign policy he made himself the terror of Europe; Spain, France, and the United Provinces courting his friends.h.i.+p, while Protestantism had protection at home and abroad.

That the man who did this had a commanding genius, all must be agreed.

But whether he was the incarnation of evil, or of righteousness, must ever remain in dispute. We shall never know whether or not his death, in 1658, cut short a career which might have pa.s.sed from a justifiable to an unjustifiable tyranny.

[Sidenote: Charles II., 1660.]

A fabric held up by one sustaining hand, must fall when that hand is withdrawn. Cromwell left none who could support his burden. Charles II., who had been more than once foiled in trying to get in by the back door of his father's kingdom, was now invited to enter by the front, and amid shouts of joy was placed on the throne.

CHAPTER X.

Time brings its revenges. The instinct for beauty, and for joy and gladness, had been for twenty-one years repressed by harshly administered Puritanism. There was a thrill of delight in greeting a gracious, smiling king, who would lift the spell of gloom from the nation. Charles did this, more fully than was expected. Never was the law of reaction more fully demonstrated! The Court was profligate, and the age licentious. The reign of Charles was an orgy. When he needed more money for his pleasures, he bargained with Louis XIV. to join him in a war upon Protestantism in Holland, for the consideration of 200,000 pounds!

We wonder how he dared thus to goad and prod the British Lion, which had devoured his Father. But that animal had grown patient since the Protectorate. England treated Charles like a spoiled child whose follies entertained her, and whose misdemeanors she had not the heart to punish.

[Sidenote: Act of Habeas Corpus, 1679.]

The "Roundheads," who had trampled upon the "Cavaliers," were now trampled upon in return. But even at such a time as this the liberties of the people were expanding. The Act of "Habeas Corpus" forever prevented imprisonment, without showing in Court just cause for the detention of the prisoner.

[Sidenote: Death of Charles II., 1685.]

The House of Stuart, those children of the Guises, was always Catholic at heart, and Charles was at no pains to conceal his preferences. A wave of Catholicism alarmed the people, who tried to divert the succession from James, the brother of the King, who was extreme and fanatical in his devotion to the Church of Rome. But in 1685, the Masks and routs and revels were interrupted. The pleasure-loving Charles, who "had never said a foolish thing, and never done a wise one," lay dead in his palace at Whitehall, and James II. was King of England.

[Sidenote: Milton and Bunyan.]

Three names have illumined this reign, in other respects so inglorious.

In 1666 Newton discovered the law of gravitation and created a new theory of the Universe. In 1667 Milton published "Paradise Lost," and in 1672 Bunyan gave to the world his allegory, "Pilgrim's Progress."

There was no inspiration to genius in the cause of King and Cavaliers.

But the stern problems of Puritanism touched two souls with the divine afflatus. The sacred Epic of Milton, sublime in treatment as in conception, must ever stand unique and solitary in literature; while "Pilgrim's Progress," in plain homely dish served the same heavenly food. The theme of both was the problem of sin and redemption with which the Puritan soul was gloomily struggling.

The reign of James II. was the last effort of royal despotism to recover its own. He tried to recall the right of Habeas Corpus;--to efface Parliament--and to overawe the Clergy, while insidiously striving to establish Papacy as the religion of the Kingdom. Chief Justice Jeffries, that most brutal of men, was his efficient aid, and boasted that he had in the service of James hanged more traitors than all his predecessors since the Conquest!

The names Whig and Tory had come into existence in this struggle. Whig, standing for the opponents to Catholic domination, and Tory for the upholders of the King. But so flagrantly was the Catholic policy of James conducted, that his upholders were few. In three years from his accession, Whig and Tory alike were so alarmed, that they secretly sent an invitation to the King's son-in-law, William, Prince of Orange, to come and accept the Crown.

[Sidenote: James II. Deposed.]

William responded at once, and when he landed with 14,000 men, James, paralyzed, powerless, unable to raise a force to meet him, abandoned his throne without a struggle and took refuge in France.

[Sidenote: William and Mary, 1689-1702.]

The throne was formally declared vacant and William and Mary his wife were invited to rule jointly the Kingdom of England, Ireland and Scotland (1689).

The House of Stuart, which seems to have brought not one single virtue to the throne, was always secretly conspiring with Catholicism in Europe. Louis XIV., as the head of Catholic Europe at this time, was the natural protector of the dethroned King. His aim had long been, to bring England into the Catholic European alliance, and, of course, if possible, to make it a dependency of France. A conspiracy with Louis to accomplish this end occupied England's exiled King during the rest of his life.

[Sidenote: Battle of Boyne, 1690.]

But European Protestantism had for its leader the man who now sat upon the throne of England. In fact he had probably accepted that throne in order to further his larger plans for defeating the expanding power of Louis XIV. in Europe. Broad and comprehensive in his statesmans.h.i.+p, n.o.ble and just in character, an able military leader, England was safe in his strong hand. Conspiracies were put down, one French army after another, with the despicable James at its head, was driven back; the purpose at one time being to establish James at the head of an independent Kingdom in Catholic Ireland. But that would-be King of Ireland was humiliated and sent back to France by the battle of Boyne Battle of Boyne (1690).

[Sidenote: Bill of Rights]

As important as was all this, things of even greater moment were going on in the life of England at this time. As a wise householder employs the hours of suns.h.i.+ne to repair the leaks revealed by the storm, just so Parliament now set about strengthening and riveting the weak spots revealed by the storms which had swept over England.