his genius was essentially for intrigue, and no one could foresee what turn of affairs might occur to favour him and his partizans. That, as it regarded the third, though it was true, as Clarendon says, many officers contended "that the son could pretend to no right whilst he was alive, yet, if the father were dead, he would presently call himself king, and others would call him so too; "still, admitting this, the objection could not outweigh the advantages of condignly punishing him; that it was necessary to show to kings and to nations, that treason in monarchs should meet with its reward as much as in subjects; that thousands had fallen by the hands of kings on the charge of breach of trust towards them, and that it was necessary for pure and equal justice that kings should suffer for flagrant breach of trust to their people; that Charles had been the cause of the bloody death of thousands, and that his death ought to be placed as a warning against such perpetrations of calamities by kings on their subjects in future; that if the death was due, no fear of inconvenience should suffer them to shrink from demanding it; that if they believed another form of government, or the election of another king, was more deserving of support, it became them, as brave men and Englishmen, to defend and maintain that position at all hazards. This was the conclusion at which they arrived, and the act of the whole people in 1688 confirmed the propriety of their decision to all posterity.
CHAPTER VII.
THE COMMONWEALTH.
The king being put to death, it was necessary that the parliament should immediately determine what sort of government should succeed. Had they been disposed to continue the monarchy, and receive the eldest son of Charles, it was still necessary to take efficient means for obtaining from him, before admitting him to the throne, a recognition of all the rights for which they had striven with his father. The very day, therefore, of the king's execution, the house of commons passed an act, making it high treason for any one to proclaim the prince of Wales, or any other person, king or chief magistrate of England or Ireland, without consent of parliament; and copies of this were immediately despatched to all the sheriffs, to be proclaimed in the counties. That done, they proceeded gradually, but promptly, to develop and complete their design of adopting a republican form of government.
The first step was to deal with the lords. That body, or the miserable remnant thereof, still sate in the upper house, and sent repeated messages to the commons, to which they deigned no reply. The lords, in fact, had become contemptible in the eyes of the whole community. They had sunk and trembled before the genius of the commons. Though strongly inclined to stand by royalty, and though all their interests were bound up with it, though they had been created by royal fiat, and made all that they were by it, in honour, power, and estate, and though it required no great sagacity to perceive that they must fall with it, the king himself having repeatedly assured them that such would be the case, they had neither the policy nor the gratitude to hold together and maintain the fountain of their honour, nor the prescience to perceive their case when the crown must fall, and make a merit of going over bodily to the conquering power. They had gone to pieces, some holding with one side, some with the other; some vacillating betwixt, both changing and rechanging, as the balance turned one way or the other. What was still worse, they had discovered no talent whatever on either side, with most rare exceptions, and these not remarkable, even where they had adopted a side and become partisans. Essex, Warwick, Holland, Hamilton, Newcastle, Northumberland, Ormond, and the rest, what had they done? Fairfax and Montrose, out of the whole body—and Montrose had personally been raised to it—had alone won great names. Fairfax, indeed, independent of Cromwell's hand and head, was respectable, but nothing more. The whole peerage had sunk into contemptible eclipse before the bold and vigorous genius of the commoners. Without, therefore, deigning to answer their messages, on the 5th of February they began to discuss the question as to their retention or abolition, and the next day they voted, by a majority of forty-four to twenty-nine, that "the house of peers in parliament was useless and dangerous, and ought to be abolished; that the privilege of peers, of being freed from arrest, should be declared null and void, but that they might be elected knights or burgesses for the commons."
Henry Marten moved that the word "dangerous" should be omitted, and the word "useless" only be retained; or if the word "dangerous" were retained, it should be only with "not" before it, for the peers were certainly not dangerous, but pitiably useless, and they had now come to see verified what Hollis had told them, that if they would not heartily join in saving the nation, it would be saved without them. An act to this effect was soon after brought in and passed.
On the day following, the 7th, the commons proceeded to a more important question, and voted that it had been found by experience that the office of a king in this nation, or to have the power thereof in any single person, was unnecessary, burdensome, and dangerous to the liberty and safety, and public interest of the nation, and therefore that it should be utterly abolished; and to that purpose an act should be forthwith prepared. This was speedily followed by a vote, on the motion of Henry Marten, that the king's statues at the Royal Exchange and other places should be taken down, and on the places where they stood should be inscribed, "Exit Tyrannus, Regium ultimus, Anno Libertatis Angliæ restitutæ primo, a.d., 1648, January 30 (old style). There was, moreover, an elaborate declaration drawn up, to justify the changing of England into a republic, translated into Latin, French, and Dutch, and ad-
