Early Modern England 1485-1714: A Narrative History (59 page)

The Presbyterian MPs, however, reached a quite different conclusion from the Second Civil War. Surely, now, chastened by a second defeat, Charles would be ready to negotiate? On the morning of December 5, 1648, Parliament voted 129–83 to resume discussions with the king. For the army, which had been forced to fight this king a second time, the vote was the last straw. The next morning, December 6, Colonel Thomas Pride (d. 1658) positioned his men outside the House of Commons, refused entrance to those who had voted for treating with the king, arrested some 45 of the Presbyterian leaders, and secluded another 186. A further 86 members protested this coup, which became known as
Pride’s Purge
, by withdrawing. Although many MPs later drifted back, this still left only about 200 MPs, less than half the original, to make up a reduced House of Commons; in fact, over the next few weeks, the fate of the Crown and nation would be decided by an average attendance of only about 70. Soon, the few remaining Lords ceased to attend their house. The resulting rump of a Parliament no longer represented even the original supporters of the parliamentary cause, let alone the entire kingdom.

But the
Rump Parliament
, as it soon came to be called, knew what it had to do. In January, it set up a High Court of Justice to try the king on a charge of high treason. This statement is, on the face of it, a logical absurdity. Allegiance in a monarchy is always paid to the person of the king. How could Charles have been guilty of treason against himself? They got around this problem by alleging that the king had violated not statute law or even common law but a more fundamental principle, part of the Ancient Constitution, as expressed in his coronation oath. The legislation establishing the court read as follows:

Whereas it is notorious that Charles Stuart, the now King of England …, hath had a wicked design totally to subvert the ancient and fundamental laws and liberties of this nation, and in their place to introduce an arbitrary and tyrannical government, and that … he hath prosecuted it with fire and sword, levied and maintained a cruel war in the land against the Parliament and kingdom, whereby the country hath been miserably wasted, the public treasure exhausted, trade decayed, thousands of people murdered, and infinite other mischiefs committed.
¹⁴

Put simply, the king was charged with committing treason against the Ancient Constitution and, by levying cruel war against them, the English people. This was, of course, a revolutionary idea. At its heart was a notion relatively new to early modern Europe: that the king had a responsibility not only to God but to the people over whom he ruled; that should he fail in that responsibility, he could be tried by the representatives of the people and, if found wanting, removed from office. These principles and their implications would have earth-shattering effects not only in England but abroad over the next century and a half.

In the meantime, King Charles could not, of course, agree. When the trial convened in Westminster Hall on January 20, 1649, he immediately went to the heart of the matter by questioning the court’s jurisdiction and refusing to plead. After all, the law, in a monarchy, is always the king’s law; the courts are his courts. How, therefore, could any court put the king on trial?

I would know by what authority – I mean lawful – there are many unlawful authorities in the world – thieves and robbers by the highways – but I would know by what authority I was brought from thence and carried from place to place, and I know not what. And when I know what lawful authority, I shall answer. Remember, I am your King – your lawful King.
¹⁵

In fact, Parliament had already answered this: on 4 January they had resolved that “the people are, under God, the original of all just power; that the Commons of England, in parliament assembled, being chosen by and representing the people, have the supreme power in the nation.”
¹⁶
This was parliamentary sovereignty, a flat denial of the divine right of kings. But it was every bit as fictional, as the king noted on the 22nd, in language oddly reminiscent of Colonel Rainsborough’s:

Certainly you never asked the question of the tenth man in the kingdom, and in this way you manifestly wrong even the poorest ploughman if you demand not his free consent; nor can you pretend any colour for this your pretended commission without the consent of the major part of every man in England of whatsoever quality or condition.
¹⁷

Refusing to recognize the court’s authority, Charles stood or sat impassively and disdainfully, but with great dignity, as the prosecution sought to make its case. The spectacle must have been impressive: the largest medieval hall in England packed to the rafters with spectators. At its south end, on several tiers of red velvet benches sat the commissioners: assorted army officers, MPs, and gentlemen, presided over by a heretofore obscure judge, John Bradshaw (1602–59). Before them sat an array of lawyers and clerks, all in black. At the north end and in the upper galleries, crowds of spectators, held back by wooden rails and soldiers in their red coats. On the other side of a hastily constructed wooden partition, in a makeshift dock in the middle of the hall, the magnetic object of all eyes, a solitary figure in black, but for the brilliant blue and silver of the Star and Garter – the king. Given his refusal to plead or make a case, the verdict was a foregone conclusion. King Charles was found guilty of high crimes and misdemeanors against the people of England. On January 27 he was condemned to death by beheading. At this point he demanded to speak, but Parliament was not about to let him do so now. Instead, 59 commissioners signed the most notorious death warrant in English history.

Years earlier, upon losing the first English Civil War, Charles I had stated “that if I cannot live as a king, I shall die like a gentleman.”
¹⁸
He now set about to do precisely that. The night before his execution, the king burned his papers and saw his youngest children for the last time.
¹⁹
The next morning, January 30, 1649, he rose and, after asking about the weather outside, put on an extra shirt for the walk across St. James’s Park to the scaffold: ever concerned with the dignity of his appearance, Charles did not want to create an impression of fear by shivering. He was escorted by armed guard through the park to the Banqueting House at Whitehall – one of those expensive building projects of his father’s which had so alienated the English taxpayer. One wonders what he thought as he walked through the hall under its magnificent ceiling – a depiction of his father’s apotheosis in heaven by Peter Paul Rubens – and thus the sort of expensive art project which had proved controversial in his own ill-fated reign. At the end of his walk was an open window facing west; outside it a scaffold draped in black, at the center of which was the block (see
plate 16
). Beyond and below stood a crowd of ordinary Londoners, held back by soldiers. The king emerged into the gray light of the January day and asked to speak, but, dogged by his weak voice and bad luck to the last, he was inaudible. He then turned to his archbishop of Canterbury, William Juxon (1582–1663), and remarked that the executioner sent him “from a corruptible to an incorruptible crown.”
²⁰
Turning back to the block, he knelt down, said a brief prayer, and, in a signal worked out with the henchman beforehand, stretched out his hands. The axe fell and, as was customary, the executioner raised the late king’s dismembered head for all to see.
²¹
It is said that at this sight, which normally elicited cheers, the crowd uttered a deep groan.

And well they might, for the events of that January day would have grave consequences for all members of the English polity. For the first time in their history, the English people – or at least
some
English people – had judicially and publicly murdered their king. Such an act violated the Great Chain, Divine Right, and a thousand years of sermons and royal propaganda. And this was only the beginning of the demolition of the old world. On March 17, Parliament abolished the kingly office; two days later they abolished the House of Lords. And so, on May 19, 1649, England was declared a commonwealth, that is, a republic.

The Radical Hydra?

To the framers of the revolution, the clearing away of so much of the old order must have been exhilarating, opening up new possibilities for reform, even a fundamental reconstruction of English society. But it was also frightening. Remember that according to the doctrine of the Great Chain, none of its links could be broken without incurring God’s wrath and political, social, and religious chaos. The problem for the gentry – or that part of it which supported the Rump – was to maintain the rest of the Chain and so prevent that chaos. Put another way, having engineered a revolution which benefited themselves, they now had to ensure that the revolution stopped before other groups sought the same benefits. Like Henry VIII throwing a man down from a high tower (see chapter 3), they had to make him stop before he hit the ground.

Plate 16
The execution of Charles I. Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.

This would be all the more difficult because in opposing the king, the parliamentary gentry and urban oligarchy had been forced to do something unprecedented: to attract, rather than simply commandeer, the loyalties and assistance of the common people who had fought in the army and elsewhere. They had made the people partners in their revolution and, in the process, encouraged them to question and even overthrow authority. That questioning had been voiced in a relatively free press. Though Parliament appointed a government censor in 1643, he only became effective once Cromwell became lord protector ten years later (see below). In the meantime, domestic newspapers appeared for the first time, and the number of political and religious pamphlets published each year mushroomed. One surviving collection alone, assembled by the London bookseller George Thomason (ca. 1602–66), holds nearly 23,000 items from 1641 to 1662. Most of these productions were traditional and conservative in sentiment: Charles I’s purported last thoughts and meditations,
Eikon Basilike
(1649), was a runaway bestseller. But many were not, and some expressed opinions that had never previously been allowed into print. John Milton celebrated this flowering of ideas in
Areopagitica
(1644), the classic defense of free speech. But social and religious conservatives were aghast. Presbyterian Thomas Edwards (ca. 1599–1648), in his encyclopedic
Gangraena
(1646), diagnosed these radical ideas as so many sicknesses of the body politic, deluding the people into claiming rights and embracing philosophies and lifestyles heretofore unknown.

In fact, it was only natural that ordinary people, having helped to dislodge the top of a centuries-old hierarchical structure, would question why they should have to stay at the bottom. Put simply, the common farmers and artisans who made up the victorious parliamentary armies now wanted a piece of the pie; or, to use a more contemporary metaphor, having unseated one rider, they did not want to hoist another on their backs. This feeling could only have been exacerbated by current economic and social conditions. The harvests of 1649–51 were as bad as those of the 1590s; taxes were higher than they had ever been under Charles I; plague and disease ran rampant, spread, ironically, by the very army which had been formed to protect the people’s liberties.

The army spread not only disease but also, on a more positive note, Leveller ideas about political change. After the king’s trial and execution, the possibilities for radical reform seemed especially promising. One leading Leveller, John Lilburne (1615?–57), made a career out of provoking the government with his incessant calls for a wider franchise, religious toleration, free speech, law reform, and individual rights, all of which he summarized in one ringing, radical phrase: “the Sovereignty of the People.” On occasion, several thousand Londoners, men and women, would take to the streets wearing Leveller-green ribbons, demanding these rights, or sign petitions for the release of Lilburne and other imprisoned Levellers. But the Leveller moment was urban-based and short-lived. In the spring of 1649 the Rump suppressed a second round of army agitation by arresting the Leveller leaders, executing the leading agitators, and buying off the rank-and-file by paying some arrears. Lilburne spent most of the next decade in prison or exile before dying in 1657, convinced that “posterity … shall reap the benefit of our endeavours, what ever shall become of us.”
²²
In fact, Leveller arguments would take centuries to bear fruit and some remain so radical as to be unrealized today. But the fact that they could be aired at all reveals that the revolution’s framers had opened a Pandora’s box of new ideas when they deposed the king. This becomes even clearer if we look at religion.