exclusion from pardon of all the king’s leading adherents, besides
the indefinite establishment of Presbyterianism and the refusal of
toleration to the Roman Catholics and members of the Church
of England.
Meanwhile the failure to come to terms with Charles and provide a settlement appeared to threaten a general anarchy. Cromwell’s moderate counsels created distrust in his good faith amongst the soldiers, who accused him of “prostituting the liberties and persons of all the people at the foot of the king’s interest.” The agitators demanded immediate settlement by force by the army. The extreme republicans, anticipating Rousseau, put forward the Agreement of the People. This was strongly opposed by Cromwell, who declared the very consideration of it had dangers, that it would bring upon the country “utter confusion” and “make England like Switzerland.” Universal suffrage he rejected as tending “very much to anarchy,” spoke against the hasty abolition of either the monarchy or the Lords, and refused entirely to consider the abstract principles brought into the debate. Political problems were not to be so resolved, but practically. With Cromwell as with Burke the question was “whether the spirit of the people of this nation is prepared to go along with it.” The special form of government was not the important point, but its possibility and its acceptability. The great problem was to found a stable government, an authority to keep order. If every man should fight for the best form of government the state would come to desolation. He reproached the soldiers for their insubordination against their officers, and the army for its rebellion against the parliament. He would lay hold of anything “if it had but the force of authority,” rather than have none. Cromwell’s influence prevailed and these extreme proposals were laid aside.
Meanwhile all hopes of an accommodation with Charles were
dispelled by his flight on the 11th of November from Hampton
Court to Carisbroke Castle in the Isle of Wight, his
object being to negotiate independently with the
Scots, the parliament and the army. His action,
Flight of
the king.however, in the event, diminished rather than increased
his chances of success, owing to the distrust of his intentions
which it inspired. Both the army and the parliament gave
cold replies to his offers to negotiate; and Charles, on the 27th
of December 1647, entered into the Engagement with the Scots
by which he promised the establishment of Presbyterianism for
three years, the suppression of the Independents and their sects,
together with privileges for the Scottish nobles, while the Scots
undertook to invade England and restore him to his throne.
This alliance, though the exact terms were not known to Cromwell—“the
attempt to vassalize us to a foreign nation,” to use his
own words—convinced him of the uselessness of any plan for
maintaining Charles on the throne; though he still appears to
have clung to monarchy, proposing in January 1648 the transference
of the crown to the prince of Wales. A week after the
signing of the treaty he supported a proposal for the king’s
deposition, and the vote of No Addresses was carried. Meanwhile
the position of Charles’s opponents had been considerably
strengthened by the suppression of a dangerous rebellion in
November 1647 by Cromwell’s intervention, and by the return
of troops to obedience. Cromwell’s difficulties, however, were
immense. His moderate and trimming attitude was understood
neither by the extreme Independents nor by the Presbyterians.
He made one attempt to reconcile the disputes between the army
and the politicians by a conference, but ended the barren discussion
on the relative merits of aristocracies, monarchies and
democracies, interspersed with Bible texts, by throwing a
cushion at the speaker’s head and running downstairs. On the
19th of January 1648 Cromwell was accused of high treason by
Lilburne. Plots were formed for his assassination. He was
overtaken by a dangerous illness, and on the 2nd of March civil
war in support of the king broke out.
Cromwell left London in May to suppress the royalists in Wales, and took Pembroke Castle on the 11th of July. Meanwhile behind his back the royalists had risen all over England, the fleet in the Downs had declared for Charles, and the Scottish army under Hamilton had invaded the north. Immediately on the fall of Pembroke Cromwell set out to relieve Lambert, who was slowly retreating before Hamilton’s superior forces; he joined him near Knaresborough on the 12th of August, and started next day in pursuit of Hamilton in Lancashire, placing himself at Stonyhurst near Preston, cutting off Hamilton from the north and his allies, and defeating him in detail on the 17th, 18th and 19th at Preston and at Warrington. He then marched north into Scotland, following the forces of Monro, and established a new government of the Argyle faction at Edinburgh; replying to the Independents who disapproved of his mild treatment of the Presbyterians, that he desired “union and right understanding between the godly people, Scots, English, Jews, Gentiles, Presbyterians, Anabaptists and all; . . . a more glorious work in our eyes than if we had gotten the sacking and plunder of Edinburgh . . . and made a conquest from the Tweed to the Orcades.”
The incident of the Second Civil War and the treaty with the Scots exasperated Cromwell against the king. On his return to London he found the parliament again negotiating with Charles, and on the eve of making a treaty which Charles himself had no intention of keeping and Cromwell supports the Remonstrance. regarded merely as a means of regaining his power, and which would have thrown away in one moment all the advantages gained during years of bloodshed and struggle. Cromwell therefore did not hesitate to join the army in its opposition to the parliament, and supported the Remonstrance of the troops (20th of November 1648), which included the demand for the king’s punishment as “the grand author of all our troubles,” and justified the use of force by the army if other means failed. The parliament, however, continued to negotiate, and accordingly Charles was removed by the army to Hurst Castle on the 1st of December, the troops occupied London on the 2nd; while on the 6th and 7th Colonel Pride “purged” the House of Commons of the Presbyterians. Cromwell was not the originator of this act, but showed his approval of it by taking his seat among the fifty or sixty Independent members who remained.
The disposal of the king was now the great question to be decided. During the next few weeks Cromwell appears to have made once more attempts to come to terms with Charles; but the king was inflexible in his refusal to part with the essential powers of the monarchy, or with the Church; and at the end of December it was resolved to bring him to trial. The exact share which Cromwell had in this decision and its sequel is obscure, and the later accounts of the regicides when on their trial at the Restoration, ascribing the whole transaction to his initiation and agency, cannot be altogether accepted. But it is plain that, once convinced of the necessity for the king’s execution, he was the chief instrument in overcoming all scruples among his judges, and in resisting the protests and appeals of the Scots. To Algernon Sidney, who refused to take part in proceedings on the plea that neither the king nor any man could be tried by such a court, Cromwell replied, “I tell you, we will cut off his head with the crown upon it.”
The execution of the king took place on the 30th of January 1649. This event, the turning-point in Cromwell’s career, casts a shadow, from one point of view, over the whole of his future statesmanship. He himself never repented of the act, regarding it, on the contrary, as “one which The execution of Charles I.Christians in after times will mention with honour and all tyrants in the world look at with fear,” and as one directly ordained by God. Opinions, no doubt, will always differ as to the wisdom or authority of the policy which brought Charles to the scaffold. On the one hand, there was no law except that of force by which an offence could be attributed to the sovereign, the anointed king, the source of justice. The ordinance establishing the special tribunal for the trial was passed by a remnant of the House of Commons alone, from which all dissentients were excluded by the army. The tribunal was composed, not of judges—for all unanimously refused to sit on it—but of
