The Digger Movement in the Days of the Commonwealth

upon earth, to exercise the same of himself, and not either by express commission immediately and personally received from God, or else by authority derived at the first from their

of his own personal power, whose feeble and shifty foreign policy was determined only by considerations for his own family interests, who intrigued with France against Spain, with Spain against France, with both against Holland, and with Holland against both, and with France, Spain, Holland, and Rome against his own subjects, with English Presbyterians against English Independents, with English Independents against English Presbyterians, and with Irish Catholics and Scotch Presbyterians against both English Presbyterians and Independents, and who yet succeeded in deceiving nobody but himself, and in satisfying nobody, not even himself; a king whose love was far more dangerous than his hate, a worthy patron of a Buckingham, a Goring, or of a Laud, but unworthy the genius of a Shaftesbury or the loyal services of a Verney, a Montrose, or a Worcester; a king, in short, treacherous to his friends, faithless to his word, who went to his wedding and came to his throne with a lie on his lips,24:1 whom, again to use the words of Macaulay,24:2 "no law could bind, and whose whole gove

of Parliament,"25:1 were, however, not easily to be intimidated. Despite a Royal order to adjourn, the House of Commons of 1629, holding the Speaker by force in the Chair, supported the immortal Eliot in his last assertion of English liberty, and by successive resolutions declared that whosoever shall bring in innovations in religion, or whosoever shall counsel or advise the taking and levyin

Later in the year, Charles' attempt to alter the ecclesiastical constitution and form of public worship in Scotland led, first to discontent, then to riot, and finally to open rebellion. As a direct consequence, the King, in April 1640, was compelled to call what from its brief duration is known as the Short Parliament, in which, thanks to the Parliamentary tactics of Hampden, the design of the Court Party, to obtain supplies without redressing grievances, was constitutionally thwarted. On the manifestation of its determination to redress wrongs and to vindicate

and imprisoned; those whom the King had employed as instruments of oppression were called to account for their conduct; the Star Chamber, the Court of High Commission and the Council of York, were abolished; ship-money was declared illegal, and the judgement in Hampden's case was annulled; the victims of the recent religious persecutions were set at liberty, and conducted through Lo

is to say, men who never go to the bottom of any difficulty," as Gardiner expresses it,-by whose aid the above changes had been effected, were inclined to pause, if not to retrace their steps. Under these circumstances the popular leaders in the House of Commons, in November 1641, framed and passed the Great Remonstrance, which was practically an address to the nation, to justify their past action and to appeal for further support. In this famous document all the oppressive and ar

without giving a hint of his intentions to the constitutional Royalists he had so recently called to his councils, and whom he had faithfully promised to consult on all matters relating to the House of Commons, he sent down his Attorney-General to impeach the leading members of the House, Pym, Holles, and Haselrig, at the bar of the House of Lords, on a charge of high treason. As Macaulay well says,28:1 "It would be difficult to find in the whole history of England such an instance of

the one fixed for their return to St. Stephen's under the protection of the trained bands of London, the King left Whitehall, to return to it only to pay the dire penalty for his past offences. Both sides now actively prepared for the inevitable struggle. Owing to Pym's forethought, the Tower was blockaded, and the two great arsenals of Hull and Portsmouth secured for the Parliament. Owing to the

s to continue to be wielded by a king whose temporal jurisdiction was to be limited only by ancient laws interpreted by judges of his own creation and removable at his pleasure, or by the representatives of the nation in Parliament assembled? It was left to the Model Army to remind the members of the Long Parliament that their power, as that of "all future representatives of this nation, is inferior only to th

m his grasp. It was this that made the Civil War inevitable. It was this that rendered constitutional government, government by discussion, government by compromise, impossible. It was this well-grounded and repeatedly confirmed distrust of the King that, after years of war and repeated and sincere negotiations, negotiations which only served still further to reveal his duplicity, made the execution of the King unavoidable. As the judicial Gardiner well says,30:1 in summing up the causes which led to this most solemn, impressive, and instructive event in the whole history of England-"The situation, complicated

intellectual men of all shades of religious beliefs, and of none, equally distrusted Presbyterianism, and feared that the free play of intellectual life would be as much endangered by the rule of the presbyters as by the rule of the bishops. We should, however, do well to remember that at the outbreak of the war most of the great Parliamentary leaders, including Pym, Hampden, and even Cromwell, had no deep-rooted objection to Episcopacy as a form of Church government, provided only that it was controlled by Parliament, and allowed the fullest possible liberty of conscience. They all shared Pym's expressed conviction that "the greatest liberty of the kingdom is religion," and

refused to entrust their conscience to pope, to bishop, or to presbyter, the extreme adherents of both these systems were probably equally insensible. And yet it was precisely such men who were to come to the front during the coming struggle, and who, under the guidance of their great leader, were to become the champions of that great democratic principle of toleration, of liberty of conscience, which was the one leading principle of his life.31:2 It was precisely

esses it-"Men who longed for religious toleration with a stern conviction were impatient of parliamentary majorities working for uniformity." To their opponents, more especially to those of the strict Presbyterian school, toleration may have seemed of the devil, incompatible with individual salvation, and injurious alike to Church and to State; to the Independents, on the other hand, it was a necessary condition of continued existence. They had no desire to establish a State Church of their own; they were not prepared to deny that at least "a public way of instructing the nation" might be necessary; but they

back again in peace, to call Charles Stuart, that man of blood, to account for the blood he had shed, and mischief he had done to his utmost, against the Lord's cause and people in these poor nations."33:2 It was such men who, on December 6th, 1648, to save the kingdom from a new war or from a peace destructive of everything they had fought for,33:3 purged the House of Commons of its "malignant" members; and who cut the Gordian knot of the difficulties that beset the nation by bringing the King, who seemed to them to stand in the way of any and every satisfactory settlement, to trial and execution (January 30th, 1649). Moreover, it w

's Essays, "J

the recusants at home." In the autumn of the same year, on his betrothal to Henrietta Maria, sister to the King of France, he solemnly sw

Loc

ional History,

04. See Gardiner's History of Engla

vol. vii.

Loc

8, the petitioners address the House of Commons as "the supreme authority of England," and desire it so to consider itself. They complain that the Commons have declared their intention not to alter the ancient government of King, Lords and Commons

s presented to the Council of the Army, October 28th, 1647. Reprinted

the Civil War,

he Civil War, vol

the Civil War,

ee App

eople for a firm and present

Letters and Speeches, part i

story of the Civil War

een and guarded against such a continge