created. Cromwell turned out over a hundred of its most moderate members and terrified the remainder. A sham court of justice was established to try and to condemn the King. Charles, of course, refused to acknowledge that any court had any power to try him; and he met his death on January 30, 1649, with perfect serenity and courage. The very men who did the deed were terrified at what they were doing.
Was Charles a martyr?Charles was a martyr, a martyr for the English Church and its government by bishops, a martyr for our beautiful and dear Prayer Book. But the fact that he was a martyr did not make him a good King or a good man.
What is to be put in his place?Yet, though Charles had often overridden the law, and, if he had got back to power, would have done so again, what had the Army and the dregs of the Long Parliament to put in his place? They confiscated and sold to new owners much of the land of those who had fought for the King. The ‘Commonwealth’ or Republic.They set up a sort of Republic which they called ‘The Commonwealth’, with a Council of State, and a single House of Parliament, in fact the ‘Rump’ of the Long Parliament, as witty cavaliers called it. They abolished the House of Lords the day after they had murdered the King. In reality they had abolished Law, Order, and the old natural Constitution; and all their efforts for the next eleven years to put anything artificial in its place were hopeless failures. The Rule of the Sword.The one real fact left in England was the Army; this meant the Rule of the Sword, the worst of all conceivable tyrannies, however good the men may be who wield that Sword.
They were good men who wielded it. Cromwell was a man of the most lofty character, and so were many of
