Copyright   
Home
 From the Civil War to the Restoration, 1645-1660
  The rule of the "Rump Parliament", 1649-1653

The rule of the "Rump Parliament", 1649-1653

So began the Commonwealth. We may take as a Second Period the four years between January, 1649, and April, 1653. The Government during these years was in the hands of the House of Commons which had been returned to the Long Parliament in 1640; but by successive purgings it had been, out of an original total of four hundred and ninety members, "winnowed, sifted, and bought to a handful" (The words arc Cromwell's) of some ninety members. This Rump Parliament, as it was called, governed England with an authority wich no assembly in England, before or since, has possessed (Of course the " Rump " had no claim whatsoever to be considered representative of the nation. Neither the towns nor country districts of four counties, of which Lancashire was one, had any representatives at all; Wales had only three, and London one). With no monarchy and no House of Lords to control it-they were both abolished after the king's execution-it could pass what laws it pleased, pursue whatever policy suited it, and it could not be legally dissolved except of its own free will. It entrusted the administration of the country to a Council of State of forty-one, the great majority of which were members of the "Rump", and to various committees, on each of which sat persons with special knowledge of the particular branch of administration committed to it.

The authority of the " Rump" Parliament really rested, of course, on the support of Fairfax, Cromwell, and the New Model Army; and it was chiefly for that reason that it suppressed its enemies with such success. The Extremists first of all seemed formidable after the king's execution. But Cromwell was no Leveller or Fifth - Monarchy man, and he saw the danger of such opinions. "We must break them," he said, "or they will break us", and he suppressed with great energy a mutiny in the New Model Army. Ireland was the next scene of Cromwell's activity. Nearly all parties in that country had combined, after the execution of Charles I, to support his son; how Cromwell conquered Ireland, however, is described elsewhere.

Scotland was to be the next country visited by Cromwell. There were two parties in Scotland. On the one hand, Montrose wanted a rising of pure Royalists to be organized in the Highlands. On the other hand, Argyll wanted Charles II to adopt the Covenant, and to impose Presbyterianism upon all his three kingdoms. Montrose, publicly disowned but secretly encouraged by Charles, did attempt to raise the Highlands. But he was beaten by Leslie, captured, and hanged in his "red scarlet coat" in the Grassmarket at Edinburgh (May, I650) ("The leader of warlike men," it has been said, "swift and secret in his onslaught, the poet, the cavalier, the soul of air and fire, the foremost to head a forlorn hope, at last the forsaken victim of a forsaken cause, Montrose is for ever dear to the imagination"). Meantime, in the same month that Montrose was executed, Charles agreed to the terms of Argyll; Presbyterianisr was to be imposed in the king's dominions, and in all Scottish affairs Charles was to refer to the General Assembly and the Scottish Parliament. Shortly afterwards Charles landed in Scotland.

Chronology
copyright by uuo-ununoctium.info