assembly the instrument of his future authority, and feigned the most perfect obedience to its commands. But the Levellers, as the fanatics of the army were called, secretly continued their meetings; and at length began to affirm, that the military establishment, as much as any part of the church or state, stood in need of reformation. Several regiments joined in seditious remonstrances and petitions; separate rendezvous were concerted; and every thing tended to anarchy and confusion, when the bold genius of Cromwell applied a remedy adequate to the disease. At a general review of the forces, he ordered the ringleaders to be seized in the face of their companions. He held a council of war in the field; shot one mutineer, confined others, and by his well-timed rigour reduced the whole army to dicipline and obedience'.

Cromwell's power was now too great to permit him to suffer an equal; although the better to accomplish his ambitious purposes, he willingly allowed Fairfax to retain the name of commander-in-chief. But, while the king lived, he was still in danger of finding a master. The destruction of Charles was, therefore, the great object that thenceforth engaged his thoughts. Commotions, he was sensible, would frequently arise, and perhaps a general combination might be formed in favour of a prince who was so revered and beloved by his own party, and whom the majority of the nation began to regard with an eye of affectionate compassion. But how to dispatch him was a question not easy to answer. To murder him privately, beside the baseness of the crime, would expose all concerned in it to the odious epithets of traitors and assassins, and rouse universal indignation. Some unexpected measure, he foresaw, must be adopted, which, coinciding with the fanatical notion of the entire equality of mankind, would bear the semblance of justice, ensure the devoted obedience of the army, and astonish the world by its novelty: but what that should be, he could not yet fully determine.

In order to extricate himself from this difficulty, Cromwell had recourse to the counsels of Ireton; who having grafted the soldier on the lawyer, and the statesman on the saint, thought himself absolved from the ordinary rules of morality in the prosecution of his holy purposes. At his suggestion, Cromwell secretly called at Windsor a council of the chief officers of the army, to deliberate upon the settlement of the nation, and the

1 Rushworth, vol. viii.--Clarendon, vol. v.

future disposal of the king's person. And in that hypocritical conference, after many enthusiastic prayers and fanatical effusions, was first opened the daring counsel of subjecting the king to a judicial sentence, and of rebel subjects bringing their sovereign to the block for his pretended tyranny and mal-administration '.

This resolution being solemnly formed, it became necessary to concert such schemes as would constrain the parliament to adopt it-in other words to lead that assembly from one violent measure to another, till that last act of atrocious iniquity should seem essential to the safety of the leading members. The Levellers were prepared for such a proceeding by frequent sermons from the following passage of Scripture, on which the fanatical preachers of those times delighted to dwell: "Let the high praises of the Lord be in the mouths of his saints, and a twoedged sword in their hands, to execute vengeance upon the heathen, and punishment upon the people; to bind their kings with chains, and their nobles with fetters of iron, to execute upon them the judgments written! This honour have all his saints."

exorbitant.

The conspirators, accordingly, as a first step toward their bloody purpose, instigated the independents, who now had the chief influence in the house of commons, to frame four propositions, by way of preliminaries, which were sent to the king, and to each of which they demanded his positive assent, before they would condescend to treat with him, though they knew that the whole would be rejected. These propositions were altogether Charles, therefore, demanded a personal treaty with the parliament; and desired, that the general terms on both sides should be adjusted, before particular concessions on either side should be insisted on. The republican party in parliament pretended to take fire at this answer, and openly inveighed against the person and government of the king; while Ireton, seeming to speak the sense of the army, under the appellation of many thousands of the godly, said that the king having rejected the four propositions which were essential to the safety and protection of his people, they were freed from all obligations to allegiance, and must settle the nation without consulting so misguided a prince. Cromwell added, that it was expected the parliament would thenceforth rule and defend the kingdom by its own power and resolutions, and no longer accustom the people to

1 Rushworth, vol. viii-Clarendon, vol. v.

hope for safety and government from an obstinate man, whose heart God had hardened'. In consequence of these Jan. 15, arguments, it was voted that no more addresses should 1648. be made to the king, nor any letters or messages received from him; and that it should be accounted treason for any one, without leave of the two houses of parliament, to have the least intercourse with him 2.

By this vote the king was in fact dethroned, and the whole constitution overthrown. And the commons, to support this extraordinary measure, issued a declaration, in which the blackest calumnies were thrown upon the king; as if they had hoped, by blasting his fame, to prepare the nation for the violence intended against his person. By order of the army, he was subjected to close confinement; all his servants were removed, and he was debarred from all correspondence with his friends. In this state of dreary solitude, while he expected every moment to be poisoned or assassinated, he reposed himself with confidence in the arms of that Great Being who penetrates and sustains all nature, and whose chastisements, if received with piety and resignation, he regarded as the surest pledges of favour and affection 3.

The army and parliament did not enjoy in tranquillity that power which they had usurped. The Scots, enraged at the depression of the presbyterian party, had protested against the four propositions, as containing too great a diminution of the king's civil power, and providing no security for religion; and the persons sent to London for this purpose, and who accompanied the English commissioners to the Isle of Wight, had secretly entered into engagements with Charles for arming Scotland in his favour'. Nor was England quiet under its new masters. The people, roused from their delirium, found themselves loaded with a variety of taxes formerly unknown, and scarcely any appearance of law or liberty remaining in the administration of the realm. Many parts of the country were agitated with tumults, insurrections, and conspiracies; and all orders of men were inflamed with indignation at seeing the military prevail over the civil power, and both king and parliament reduced to subjection by a mercenary army.

1 Walker's Hist. of Independency.

2 Rushworth, vol. viii.

3 Hume, vol. vii." Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth," was indeed a text that Charles had much occasion to call to his assistance; and a firm belief in this consolatory doctrine supported him under all his sufferings, and made him triumph even in the hour of death.

✦ Clarendon, vol. v.-Burnet's Mem. of Hamilt.

But, although the different parties among the English seemed to agree in declaring their detestation of military tyranny, the ends which they pursued were so different, that little concert was observed in their insurrections. A jealousy also prevailed between them and the Scots, who had sent a considerable army southward, under the duke of Hamilton; and before the parliament, where the presbyterians had again acquired the ascendant, could conclude a new treaty with the king, Cromwell and his associates, by their vigour and activity, had routed the Scots, and dispersed or subdued all the English insurgents. But the parliament, though deprived of all hopes of prevailing, had still the courage to resist. Holles, the leader of the presbyterians, was a man of great intrepidity; and many others of the party seemed to possess the same unconquerable spirit. It was magnanimously proposed by these bold senators, that the generals and principal officers of the army should, for their disobedience and usurpations, be proclaimed traitors by the parliament'.

The generals, however, were not to be terrified by words. They marched to London, and surrounded the parliament with their forces. Yet the commons attempted, in the face of the army, to finish their treaty with Charles; and it was voted by a majority of forty-six, that the king's concessions were sufficient grounds for proceeding to the settlement of the kingdom. This was the time for the generals to interpose; and they knew it. The next morning, when the commons were to meet, colonel Pride, formerly a drayman, had, by order of his superiors, environed the house with a party of soldiers. He seized in the passage forty-one members of the presbyterian party; about a hundred and fifty others were excluded; and none were allowed to enter but the most furious and determined of the independents, who did not amount to seventy. This remnant, ludicrously called the Rump, instantly reversed the former vote, and declared the king's concessions unsatisfactory 2.

The future proceedings of the parliament, if a fanatical junto entirely under the direction of the army can deserve that honourable name, were worthy of the members who composed it. After having exercised their vengeance on all whom they feared, or who had been engaged in the late insurrections, they determined to close the scene with the public trial and execution of their sovereign. A committee was accordingly appointed to prepare

Rushworth, vol. viii.-Clarendon, vol. v.

2 Rushworth, vol. viii.-Clarendon, vol. v.--Hume, vol. vii.

a charge against the king; and, when it was produced, a Jan. 1, vote passed, declaring it High Treason in a king to levy 1649. war against his Parliament, and appointing a High Court of Justice to try CHARLES STUART for that crime. This vote was sent up to the house of peers, and rejected without one dissentient voice, contemptible as were the few peers that now attended! But the commons were not to be stopped by so small an obstacle. Having first established the principle, that "the people Jan. 4. are, under God, the origin of all just power,"-a maxim

noble in itself, but which, as in the present case, may be perverted to the worst of purposes, they voted, "that the commons of England, assembled in parliament, being chosen by the people, and representing them, have the supreme authority of the nation, and that whatever is enacted and declared law by the commons hath the force of law, without the consent of the king or house of peers '." Then the ordinance for the trial of the king was again read, and unanimously agreed to.

"Should any one have voluntarily proposed," said Cromwell, "to bring the king to punishment, I should have regarded him as the greatest traitor: but since Providence and necessity have cast us upon it, I will pray to God for a blessing on your counsels, though I am not prepared to give you any advice on this important occasion. Even I myself," added he, "when I was lately offering up petitions for his majesty's restoration, felt my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth, and considered this supernatural movement as the answer which Heaven, having rejected the king, had sent to my supplications?!"

Colonel Harrison, the son of a butcher, and the most furious enthusiast in the army, was sent with a strong party to conduct the king to London. All the exterior symbols of sovereignty were now withdrawn; and Charles foresaw that a period would soon be put to his life; yet he could not persuade himself, after all the steps that had been taken, that his enemies really intended to conclude their violences by a public trial and execution.

The form of the trial, however, was soon regulated, and the high court of justice, or rather of iniquity, fully con- Jan. 16. stituted. It sat in Westminister-hall, and consisted of a hundred and thirty-five persons, as named by the commons; but no more than seventy usually attended, and few of these were respectable either in point of birth or of character. Cromwell, Ireton, Harrison, and other officers of the army, some members

1 Parl. Hist. vol. xviii.

2 Id. ibid.