Public School History of England and Canada/England/Chapter 16
CHAPTER XVI.
THE CIVIL WAR.
1. Charles I.—Unlike his father, Charles was dignified and kingly in manner and appearance, with a grave, intelligent countenance, and a reserved but gracious manner. In his family, he was a faithful husband and an affectionate father. As a man, he was free from many of the vices of princes, and was sincerely attached to the English Church. But it did not take his Parliament and people long to find out that he was headstrong, obstinate, and insincere; and, like his father, filled with the notion that he ruled by Divine Right. His great vice was falsehood; he would make solemn promises to his parliaments when in a strait, and then break them as soon as he thought himself out of danger. So in spite of his kingly manners, and his good private life, he was a much worse king than James I.
2. Early Troubles.—Charles soon got into a quarrel with his Parliament, which disliked the influence Buckingham had over him. Charles asked his first Parliament for a large sum to carry on the war, but instead of giving him what he wanted, it granted him less than half, and besides refused to give him, for more than a year, a tax called ‘Tonnage and Poundage.” It had been the custom to grant this tax (which was so much on every tun of beer and wine, and on every pound of certain other articles) to the king for life, and Charles was so angry at Parliament that he soon afterwards dissolved it, when it began to enquire into Buckingham’s conduct.
Buckingham now thought he would make himself and the king popular by sending a fleet to Spain to attack Cadiz. The expedition was not well equipped, and when it reached Cadiz Bay, the men, who went on shore, got drunk and had to be taken back to their vessels in a helpless condition. The fleet then returned to England, after failing to take some Spanish treasure-ships expected from America. So this expedition, from which the king and Buckingham hoped so much, ended in leaving them heavily in debt, and forced Charles to call another Parliament in 1626.
When Charles’ second Parliament met, Sir John Eliot, a noble patriot, who spoke words which stirred the hearts of his fellow-members, moved to have Buckingham impeached for wasting the king’s revenues. The Commons were proceeding with the impeachment when Charles, to save his favourite, once more dissolved Parliament.
3. Forced Loans.—Charles now tried to get money without asking his Parliament’s consent. He had much need of it, for urged by Buckingham, he had begun a war against France in aid of the French Protestants of La Rochelle. So he began to levy tonnage and poundage, and to force people to lend him money although he had no intention of ever paying it back. In this way he collected a large sum, although many refused to pay and were punished in various ways. Some were fined and imprisoned, others were forced into the army and navy, or had soldiers billeted in their houses. In this way Buckingham got money enough to raise an army and fleet to go to La Rochelle, where the English were so badly defeated and suffered so heavy a loss that they had to return home.
4. Petition of Right.—Parliament now had to be summoned to get supplies, and when it met, it at once began to complain of the way the king had collected money and imprisoned those who had refused to pay his forced loans. Sir John Eliot was again the chief spokesman, and under his guidance Parliament drew up a “Petition of Right,” in which they demanded of the king that no man should be asked for a loan without consent of Parliament; that no man should be sent to prison without cause being shown; that soldiers should not be billeted in private houses, and that martial law should cease. The king did not want to agree to this petition, but he was so much in need of money that he finally yielded. On June 7, 1628, the Petition of Right became law, and the people were so delighted that they rang the bells and lighted great bonfires. Parliament, too, granted Charles the money he wanted; but it did not cease its attack on Buckingham, who now began to prepare another expedition for La Rochelle. This disturber of the peace of the nation was, however, to trouble them no longer. When on the point of leaving Portsmouth for France, he was stabbed to the heart by one John Felton, who had a private grudge against him, and blamed him for all England’s woes. The king wept at the loss of his favourite, but the people rejoiced and praised Felton for the deed.
5. Sir John Eliot.—Buckingham, whom all thought the cause of the king’s bad government, was dead, yet matters did not mend. The king soon ceased to be bound by the Petition of Right, and began once more to raise money by illegal means, just as if he had never promised to wait the consent of his parliament. He also caused his people anxiety by making William Laud, Bishop of London. Laud wanted to bring the English Church nearer to the Roman Catholic in its form of worship, and he taught that Charles ruled by Divine Right, and could do as he wished without asking the consent of his people. What with Laud’s efforts to make changes in the Church, and Charles’ arbitrary rule, there was much fear among the Puritans lest England should lose her religion and her freedom. So when Parliament met in 1629, there was great excitement, and Eliot demanded that the custom-house officers who had taken away the goods of a member of Parliament should be punished. Charles sent down an order to Parliament to adjourn. Parliament refused, and to prevent the speaker or chairman from leaving his place, two members held him down while Eliot put a strong resolution to vote, condemning, as a traitor, any one who would make any changes in religion, or who should pay or take custom duties without consent of Parliament. The vote had scarcely been taken when the king’s guard appeared and broke up the session. A few days later Charles dissolved Parliament and sent Eliot to the Tower, where three years and a half after he died, killed by the close confinement of prison life. Charles knew that Eliot was dying from the effects of imprisonment; yet he refused to release him.
6. Wentworth and Laud.—For eleven years Charles now ruled without a parliament. Weston was his Treasurer; Wentworth, who had deserted his old friends, was his chief adviser; while Laud, who became Archbishop of Canterbury, ruled the Church. Perhaps Charles did not, at first, intend to go so long without a parliament; but as the years passed he found it easier to have his own way without a parliament than with one. He had made peace with France, and Weston was a careful treasurer, so his expenses were light. Times, too, were better, and with the revival of trade came an increased revenue from customs; and Charles found it not at all difficult to make ends meet now that there was no war. The courtiers thought that the people were content to be governed in this way, and laughed when any one talked of the king’s illegal rule. Wentworth, who formerly had stood by Eliot and Hampden for the Petition of Right, now aimed at making the king absolute. He wanted to raise a standing army, and force Parliament to do the king’s will. The king was afraid to try such means, so Strafford (as Wentworth was now called) had himself appointed Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, where he proposed to show Charles how a land could be ruled by fear. While Strafford was in Ireland he made the Irish Parliament do whatever he willed, and so ruled that there was peace and order under his heavy hand. He allowed no tyranny but his own, and raised a standing army, which could be used, if necessary, in England against the English. In every possible way he sought to create ill-feeling between the Irish and the English settlers in Ireland, and the fruits of this policy were soon to appear. One good thing he did he introduced the culture of flax and the manufacture of linen, an industry that has been very successful in Ireland.
In the meantime Laud was emptying the pulpits of Puritans, and filling them with new men who taught the doctrine of the Divine Right of Kings, and who believed in his ideas of public worship. This made the English people very anxious, for religion was more to them than civil liberty. Charles greatly increased the power of the Star Chamber Court, which was now used to fine and punish men who would not submit to his tyranny. Laud, to carry out his plans in the Church, used another arbitrary tribunal, the High Commission Court, before which the clergy who would not preach and do as he wished were brought and punished. The Puritans were very strict in keeping Sunday, and would not allow any games or amusements on that day. This gave Laud a chance to annoy them. He induced Charles to order the clergy to announce from the pulpits that games and sports were to be practised on Sunday after the Church service was over. Hundreds of honest ministers refused to do his bidding, and were driven from their pulpits. The Puritans began to despair of recovering their religious freedom, and thousands during these dark days left England forever, and settled in New England. Not Puritans alone, but Roman Catholics found homes in the wilds of North America. In 1634, Lord Baltimore founded the colony of Maryland, where one of the first laws was that religious liberty should be allowed to all.
7. Ship-money.—Charles now found a new way of raising money. A fleet was needed in the English channel to protect English trade, but Charles had no money to equip one. A lawyer told him that it was once the custom for the coast towns to provide ships, and the king saw in the suggestion a means of keeping up a fleet and army without any expense to himself. He, therefore, commanded the people living in the coast towns to provide him with ships. The next step was to get them to pay him money to equip a fleet, and then as the people living inland were benefited by this fleet protecting England’s shores, he called upon them, also, to pay a tax. When John Hampden, who lived in Buckinghamshire, refused to pay, he was brought before the king’s judges, who decided by a vote of seven to five, that the king had a right to collect this tax, although the Petition of Right said no tax could be levied without the consent of Parliament. Hampden lost his case, but his refusal to pay roused the people to a sense of their danger.
8. Laud and Scotland.—How long Charles would have ruled without a parliament, we know not, had not Laud by his excessive zeal brought him into conflict with the Scotch. Wentwerth who was in Ireland, and Laud had been writing letters to each other, and laying a plan by which the king was to be made absolute in the State, and the Puritans and Presbyterians were to be forced to submit to Laud’s rule in the Church. This scheme which they called ‘‘Thorough,” proposed that a standing army should be raised, and by it all opposition to the king’s will crushed out. Wentworth was carrying out part of this plan in Ireland, and Laud was anxious to try the rest in Scotland. So he persuaded Charles to appoint bishops in Scotland, and to order that a Prayer-Book, much like the English Prayer-Book, should be used in all the Scotch churches. The Scotch did not use any Prayer-book, and when an attempt was made to read the new service in a church in Edinburgh, an old woman, Jenny Geddes, threw her stool at the preacher's head, and there was a riot, during which the preacher was driven out. When Charles heard of this he commanded the Scotch to submit; but, instead of that, they signed the National Covenant, whereby they solemnly swore to defend their religion against all its enemies. Not content with that they gathered an army, and when Charles marched north to punish them, they at once crossed the Border, prepared to give him battle. Charles now found himself in a strait. His army would not fight against the Scotch, and he had to return to London. He sent for Strafford from Ireland to help him, and when Strafford came he advised Charles to call Parliament to get money for an army, and then went back to Ireland for his own troops.
9. The Short Parliament.—When Parliament met in April, 1640, it was in no hurry to give the king the money he wanted. It began to complain of Charles’ illegal taxes, and refused to make a grant until its grievances were redressed. In the meantime the Scotch were quietly waiting in the north of England to see what was going to be done. Charles was very angry at Parliament and dissolved it, after it had sat three weeks. He then went against the Scotch with all the men he could gather; but his soldiers would not fight, and he had to make terms with the Scotch by promising them a large sum of money.
10. The Long Parliament.—To get this money, he called the famous ‘‘Long Parliament,” in Nov. 1640, a Parliament which was not legally dissolved until after nineteen years had passed. It immediately began to undo, as far as possible, all the wrongful acts the king, Wentworth, and Laud had committed since the last Parliament had met. By one act it abolished the Star Chamber Court, the High Commission Court, and all other courts that had no right to exist. It then proceeded to punish Strafford and Laud for the bad advice they had given the king and for their tyrannical acts. Strafford was at first impeached by the Commons for treason; and when the impeachment seemed likely to fail, because it was hard to prove he had broken the law of treason, he was attainted, that is, a law was made condemning him to die, and causing his family to lose his title and property. Charles was asked to sign the bill of attainder, and at first refused, for he had promised Strafford he would not allow a hair of his head to be injured. But when the queen urged him to sign, seeing how the people gathered in angry crowds before the palace, and when Strafford sent word to his master not to spare him, Charles yielded. Strafford was at once executed, and the throngs that came to see the great traitor die went home rejoicing. Laud did not meet his fate till 1645, four years later.
11. The Grand Remonstrance.—Parliament was not content with removing the men who gave the king bad advice. It sought to prevent bad government in the future, and to make sure that Parliaments should be called it passed a ‘‘Triennial Act,” by which it was ordered that a Parliament should meet, at least once in every three years. But through its fear of being dissolved, it went too far, and made Charles consent to a bill decreeing that Parliament should not be dissolved without its own consent. It passed laws against illegal taxation, and condemned the decision the judges had given in the case of Hampden and ship-money. The chief leaders in Parliament of those opposed to the king were Pym and Hampden; but a party arose that thought the king was being harshly treated, and that Parliament was exceeding its rightful authority. Pym and his followers wanted to take the command of the army and navy, and the appointment of great officers in the State, out of the king’s hands, as they could no longer trust him. These demands caused a great many to go over to the king’s side, and such moderate men as Lord Falkland and Edward Hyde became leaders of a party which wished to keep the king from acts of tyranny, and yet leave him his ordinary power and authority. Thus we see that now there were two parties in Parliament, and as time passed the feeling between them became very bitter. This feeling was increased by terrible news from Ireland. When Strafford returned to England, he left no one behind strong enough to keep peace, and to prevent the English and Irish from flying at each other’s throats. A dreadful massacre took place in 1641, in which the English settlers, being few in number suffered most. The Irish leaders said that they were acting, under Charles’ authority. This was not true, but many people believed it. This they did the more readily because Charles was very cool and unconcerned when the news of the rising and massacre reached him.
Pym and Hampden, seeing what a strong following Charles had in Parliament, determined to rouse the nation by bringing in a bill called the ‘‘Grand Remonstrance,” in which all the king’s misrule was recited, and a demand made for parliamentary control of appointments. An excited debate followed and lasted all day, after which, by the small majority of, eleven, the ‘‘Grand Remonstrance” was passed.
12. Attempt to Seize the Five Members.—Charles was very angry when he heard of what had been done, and urged, it is said, by the queen, went down to Westminster with a company of Guards and armed gentlemen, to seize five of the leading members of the Commons—Pym, Hampden, Hollis, Haselrig, and Strode. Fortunately, the news of his coming was brought to Parliament, and when he entered the House he saw that the men he wanted had escaped. They had taken refuge in the City of London, where they were protected by armed train-bands and apprentice boys. The next week they returned to their seats in triumph, escorted by the citizens, who were strongly on the side of Parliament, and against the king, as Charles, some time before, had fined the city heavily because its people had built outside the limits allowed by law.
13. Civil War Begins.—And now it was clear that war was nigh at hand. Charles left London, and the queen went to Holland to collect arms, and raise money, taking the crown jewels with her for that purpose. In August, 1642, the king raised his standard at Nottingham, and called upon his friends to rally around it. He sent some men to seize the arms and ammunition in Hull, but Pym had given instructions to the governor of that city to close the gates, and so Parliament was able to begin the struggle with a supply of war material ready to hand.
The king was supported by most of the nobles, gentry, and clergy, while Parliament had the great mass of the middle classes, the small farmers, merchants, and artisans on its side. The north and west were with the king, and the east and south with Parliament. The King’s followers were called ‘‘Cavaliers,” because many of them were skilled horsemen and accustomed to arms. They wore their hair long, whereas the Puritans who fought in the Parliamentary army had theirs cropped close to the head, and so were called ‘‘Roundheads.” The king had the best soldiers, but Parliament had the most money and the great advantage of having the rich city of London at its back. During the strife there were two Parliaments: the king’s at Oxford, to which most of the peers went, and the Long Parliament at Westminster, composed of a majority of the Commons.
The early battles were favourable to the king; partly because his troops under his dashing nephew, Prince Rupert, were good horsemen and used to arms; and partly because the Parliamentary general, Earl Essex, was afraid to push the king too far. Two little skirmishes in 1642, at Powick Bridge and Edgehill, were somewhat against Parliament, and Charles’ forces for a time threatened London.
14. Principal Events of the War.—The war was carried on in many quarters at the same time. The king was very successful in Cornwall and Devon; and Fairfax, the parliamentary general in the north, was hard pressed by the royalists. In a skirmish at Chalgrove Field, 1643, Hampden was killed, and in the same year, in a battle at Newbury, Lord Falkland fell, crying, ‘‘Peace, peace.” Town after town passed into the hands of the king, and great fear was felt for London itself. Pym now sent Sir Henry Vane to Scotland, and by agreeing to accept Presbyterianism as the form of church government in England, obtained the aid of a Scotch army. The ‘‘Solemn League and Covenant,” as this bargain was called, had scarcely been signed when Pym died.
And now appeared on the scene one of the greatest men England ever had. Oliver Cromwell, a stern, brave, Puritan gentleman-farmer of Huntingdonshire, had been for some time in Parliament and had watched the growing evils in the government of the country. When the war broke out he formed a regiment of horse which became known as ‘‘Cromwell’s Ironsides,” on account of the severe drill through which it passed. They were not common soldiers, but gentlemen farmers and sturdy yeomen who fought for their religion and freedom, and not for pay: Cromwell saw that the only way to fight the king was to match his cavaliers with strong men who knew what they were fighting for, and loved the cause of religion and freedom. It was not long before Cromwell had a chance to show what his ‘‘Ironsides” could do. For in 1644, at Marston Moor, in Yorkshire, Fairfax, aided by the Scots and Cromwell, met and scattered the king’s troops under Prince Rupert. This was the first great battle of the war, and Cromwell proved that his ‘‘Ironsides” were more than a match for Rupert’s cavalry.
Cromwell now pressed to have the army reorganized, and succeeded in getting Parliament to pass a ‘‘Self-Denying Ordinance,” by which members of Parliament were not allowed to command in
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the army. Fairfax was made commander-in-chief, and by special permission Cromwell was allowed to remain with him. Strict discipline was now enforced in the army, and the ‘‘New Model,” it was called, in a short time, proved how wise was Cromwell’s advice and leadership by utterly defeating the king in a decisive battle at Naseby in Northamptonshire. This battle really ended the war, for Charles now fled to Wales, and thence to the Scotch army at Newark, where he hoped to be kindly treated. Parliament would have allowed the king to come back had he been willing to surrender the command of the army for twenty years, and to accept Presbyterianism as the form of religion in England. But Charles would not consent, so the Scotch gave him up to Parliament in return for the payment of £400,000 due them as expenses.
15. Trial and Execution of Charles I.—When Charles came back he was well treated, and might have been restored to the throne had he acted with sincerity towards Parliament and the army. He thought that they could not get along without him, and hoped by taking advantage of the quarrels between the officers and Parliament to recover all his lost authority. In consequence of one of these quarrels, the army seized the king, and offered to put him back on the throne, on much more reasonable terms than had been offered by Parliament. Charles pretended to treat with the officers, but at the same time was stirring up another civil war, hoping through the aid of the Scotch and Irish, to be able to make his own terms. Suddenly he escaped from the army and made his way to the Isle of Wight, where he was captured and imprisoned. Several risings took place in his favor, but they were soon crushed. Then the army sternly resolved that it would bring ‘‘Charles Stuart, that man of blood” to account for all the misery he had brought on the land. Parliament was purged of the members who would not consent to bring the king to trial; and then a tribunal of sixty-three men was formed, with Bradshaw a famous lawyer at its head, to solemnly impeach the king. Before this stern court, Charles was brought, and called to answer to charges of treason and murder. In these last trying moments Charles maintained all the dignity of a king, and refused to defend himself before judges having no legal authority. Nevertheless the trial went on, and having heard the evidence, the court condemned the king to die. Nine days later, on a scaffold outside a window of Whitehall Palace. Charles Stuart, calmly and bravely laid his head on the fatal block, Jan. 30, 1649.