Cromwell And The Parliament
The Parliament of England had defeated and put an end to the king; it
remained for Cromwell to put an end to the Parliament. "The Rump," the
remnant of the old Parliament was derisively called. What was left of
that great body contained little of its honesty and integrity, much of
its pride and incompetency. The members remaining had become infected
with the wild notion that they were the governing power in England, and
the disbanding of the army. They had not yet learned of what stuff
Oliver Cromwell was made.
A bill had been passed, it is true, for the dissolution of the
Parliament, but in the discussion of how the "New Representative" was to
be chosen it became plainly evident that the members of the Rump
intended to form part of it, without the formality of re-election. A
struggle for power seemed likely to arise between the Parliament and the
army. It could have but one ending, with a man like Oliver Cromwell at
the head of the latter. The officers demanded that Parliament should
immediately dissolve. The members resolutely refused. Cromwell growled
his comments.
"As for the members of this Parliament," he said, "the army begins to
take them in disgust."
There was ground for it, he continued, in their selfish greed, their
interference with law and justice, the scandalous lives of many of the
members, and, above all, their plain intention to keep themselves in
power.
"There is little to hope for from such men for a settlement of the
nation," he concluded.
The war with Holland precipitated the result. This war acted as a
barometer for the Parliament. It was a naval combat. In the first
meeting of the two fleets the Dutch were defeated, and the mercury of
Parliamentarian pride rose. In the next combat Van Tromp, the veteran
Dutch admiral, drove Blake with a shattered fleet into the Thames. Van
Tromp swept the Channel in triumph, with a broom at his mast-head. The
hopes of the members went down to zero. They agreed to disband in
November. Cromwell promised to reduce the army. But Blake put to sea
again, fought Van Tromp in a four days' running fight, and won the
honors of the combat. Up again went the mercury of Parliamentary hope
and pride. The members determined to continue in power, and not only
claimed the right to remain members of the new Parliament, but even to
revise the returns of the elected members, and decide for themselves if
they would have them as fellows.
The issue was now sharply drawn between army and Parliament. The
officers met and demanded that Parliament should at once dissolve, and
let the Council of State manage the new elections. A conference was held
between officers and members, at Cromwell's house, on April 19, 1653. It
ended in nothing. The members were resolute.
"Our charge," said Haslerig, arrogantly, "cannot be transferred to any
one."
The conference adjourned till the next morning, Sir Harry Vane engaging
that no action should be taken till it met again. Yet when it met the
next morning the leading members of Parliament were absent, Vane among
them. Their absence was suspicious. Were they pushing the bill through
the House in defiance of the army?
Cromwell was present,--"in plain black clothes, and gray worsted
stockings,"--a plain man, but one not safe to trifle with. The officers
waited a while for the members. They did not come. Instead there came
word that they were in their seats in the House, busily debating the
bill that was to make them rulers of the nation without consent of the
people, hurrying it rapidly through its several stages. If left alone
they would soon make it a law.
Then the man who had hurled Charles I. from his throne lost his
patience. This, in his opinion, had gone far enough. Since it had come
to a question whether a self-elected Parliament, or the army to which
England owed her freedom, should hold the balance of power, Cromwell was
not likely to hesitate.
"It is contrary to common honesty!" he broke out, angrily.
Leaving Whitehall, he set out for the House of Parliament, bidding a
company of musketeers to follow him. He entered quietly, leaving his
soldiers outside. The House now contained no more than fifty-three
members. Sir Harry Vane was addressing this fragment of a Parliament
with a passionate harangue in favor of the bill. Cromwell sat for some
time in silence, listening to his speech, his only words being to his
neighbor, St. John.
"I am come to do what grieves me to the heart," he said.
Vane pressed the House to waive its usual forms and pass the bill at
once.
"The time has come," said Cromwell to Harrison, whom he had beckoned
over to him.
"Think well," answered Harrison; "it is a dangerous work."
The man of fate subsided into silence again. A quarter of an hour more
passed. Then the question was put "that this bill do now pass."
Cromwell rose, took off his hat, and spoke. His words were strong.
Beginning with commendation of the Parliament for what it had done for
the public good, he went on to charge the present members with acts of
injustice, delays of justice, self-interest, and similar faults, his
tone rising higher as he spoke until it had grown very hot and
indignant.
"Your hour is come; the Lord hath done with you," he added.
"It is a strange language, this," cried one of the members, springing up
hastily; "unusual this within the walls of Parliament. And from a
trusted servant, too; and one whom we have so highly honored; and
one----"
"Come, come," cried Cromwell, in the tone in which he would have
commanded his army to charge, "we have had enough of this." He strode
furiously into the middle of the chamber, clapped on his hat, and
exclaimed, "I will put an end to your prating."
He continued speaking hotly and rapidly, "stamping the floor with his
feet" in his rage, the words rolling from him in a fury. Of these words
we only know those with which he ended.
"It is not fit that you should sit here any longer! You should give
place to better men! You are no Parliament!" came from him in harsh and
broken exclamations. "Call them in," he said, briefly, to Harrison.
At the word of command a troop of some thirty musketeers marched into
the chamber. Grim fellows they were, dogs of war,--the men of the Rump
could not face this argument; it was force arrayed against law,--or what
called itself law,--wrong against wrong, for neither army nor Parliament
truly represented the people, though just then the army seemed its most
rightful representative.
"I say you are no Parliament!" roared the lord-general, hot with anger.
"Some of you are drunkards." His eye fell on a bottle-loving member.
"Some of you are lewd livers; living in open contempt of God's
commandments." His hot gaze flashed on Henry Marten and Sir Peter
Wentworth. "Following your own greedy appetites and the devil's
commandments; corrupt, unjust persons, scandalous to the profession of
the gospel: how can you be a Parliament for God's people? Depart, I say,
and let us have done with you. In the name of God--go!"
These words were like bomb-shells exploded in the chamber of Parliament.
Such a scene had never before and has never since been seen in the House
of Commons. The members were all on their feet, some white with terror,
some red with indignation. Vane fearlessly faced the irate general.
"Your action," he said, hotly, "is against all right and all honor."
"Ah, Sir Harry Vane, Sir Harry Vane," retorted Cromwell, bitterly, "you
might have prevented all this; but you are a juggler, and have no common
honesty. The Lord deliver me from Sir Harry Vane!"
The retort was a just one. Vane had attempted to usurp the government.
Cromwell turned to the speaker, who obstinately clung to his seat,
declaring that he would not yield it except to force.
"Fetch him down!" roared the general.
"Sir, I will lend you a hand," said Harrison.
Speaker Lenthall left the chair. One man could not resist an army.
Through the door glided, silent as ghosts, the members of Parliament.
"It is you that have forced me to this," said Cromwell, with a shade of
regret in his voice. "I have sought the Lord night and day, that He
would rather slay me than put upon me the doing of this work."
He had, doubtless; he was a man of deep piety and intense bigotry; but
the Lord's answer, it is to be feared, came out of the depths of his own
consciousness. Men like Cromwell call upon God, but answer for Him
themselves.
"What shall be done with this bauble?" said the general, lifting the
sacred mace, the sign-manual of government by the representatives of the
people. "Take it away!" he finished, handing it to a musketeer.
His flashing eyes followed the retiring members until they all had left
the House. Then the musketeers filed out, followed by Cromwell and
Harrison. The door was locked, and the key and mace carried away by
Colonel Otley.
A few hours afterwards the Council of State, the executive committee of
Parliament, was similarly dissolved by the lord-general, who, in person,
bade its members to depart.
"We have heard," cried John Bradshaw, one of its members, "what you have
done this morning at the House, and in some hours all England will hear
it. But you mistake, sir, if you think the Parliament dissolved. No
power on earth can dissolve the Parliament but itself, be sure of that."
The people did hear it,--and sustained Cromwell in his action. Of the
two sets of usurpers, the army and a non-representative Parliament, they
preferred the former.
"We did not hear a dog bark at their going," said Cromwell, afterwards.
It was not the first time in history that the army had overturned
representative government. In this case it was not done with the design
of establishing a despotism. Cromwell was honest in his purpose of
reforming the administration, and establishing a Parliamentary
government. But he had to do with intractable elements. He called a
constituent convention, giving to it the duty of paving the way to a
constitutional Parliament. Instead of this, the convention began the
work of reforming the constitution, and proposed such radical changes
that the lord-general grew alarmed. Doubtless his musketeers would have
dealt with the convention as they had done with the Rump Parliament, had
it not fallen to pieces through its own dissensions. It handed back to
Cromwell the power it had received from him. He became the lord
protector of the realm. The revolutionary government had drifted,
despite itself, into a despotism. A despotism it was to remain while
Cromwell lived.
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