Democracy: Forged in Blood

It would be nice to be able to say that the English Civil Wars were fought with a clear cut distinction between a tyrannical king and a virtuously democratic Parliament. Unfortunately this cannot be done with any degree of honesty.
All that can be said, really, is that an authoritarian king wanted to rule without Parliament, and an almost equally authoritarian group of Parliamentarians wanted to govern without opposition. War went on for just over six years. The Scotts changed sides a few times and the Irish declared their independence.
In the end a particularly effective Parliamentarian cavalry commander named Oliver Cromwell crushed the royal armies. Charles I was left a prisoner. The anti-royalist army then proceeded to purge parliament (by military force) of all who might oppose the king’s execution. His death warrant was signed by 57 remaining members.
Charles was executed on January 30, 1649. For the first time since the Roman Empire, England had no king. That was a significant development. A governmental body had presumed to pass sentence on and formally execute a king. This, more than any written document or constitution, created a legal precedent that the king’s rule depended not on the grace of God but upon the consent of those he governed. They didn’t put it in words, but the headman’s ax spoke loud.
The next eleven years were a time of governmental confusion. The Rump Parliament, so called after the purge, established a commonwealth. They immediately sent their ablest general, Cromwell, to Ireland to put down the royalists and reestablish English rule.
This he did. For hundreds of years the bitterest curse an Irishman could invoke was to put “the curse of Cromwell on you.” What he did in Ireland has been called genocide by some. (As a radical protestant, Cromwell had a deep hatred of Catholics.) He did indeed leave piles of bodies. But Ireland remained part of the British Empire until 1921.
In 1650, word came that the dead king’s son had made himself king of Stuart country, Scotland. Cromwell left the Irish cleanup to his subordinates and headed to Scotland. That fall he conquered Edinburgh and took thousands of Scottish prisoners. (He didn’t hate Protestant Presbyterians half so much.) The following year he smashed the last Scottish armies. Charles II had to scurry back to France where he remained as a guest of the French—kept as a perpetual threat to England.
The Rump Parliament fuddled about for the next two years, until Cromwell became so annoyed he marched in with forty troops and dissolved it. (Wasn’t there something about Charles doing that back in 1642?) A surviving council declared Cromwell “Lord Protector”. For life.
He began to sign his name, “Oliver P.” (for protector—English monarch’s have always signed their names, “Elizabeth R” or “George R”). People began to call him “Your highness.” A lot of democratic revolutions go this route.
(One of the greatest debts the United States owes to any one is to George Washington—who was offered the chance to become a life-long president, and chose NOT to. His simple of act of going home after two terms is perhaps the greatest gifts this nation has ever received.)
Cromwell’s final gift to England was his untimely death in 1658. (Malaria and kidney stones. ) His son, Richard, was made Lord Protector. He was forced to resign the following May when the English governor of Scotland marched on London and restored the “Long Parliament” to power later in 1659.
Parliament saw no better course of action than to invite the king home again. Back from the Continent came Charles II, arriving in London on his thirtieth birthday, May 29, 1640. He agreed to amnesty for most of those who worked for the Protectorate, but several of the regicides were hanged, drawn and quartered. Others were imprisoned for life. Cromwell (with two of his close colleagues) had his body dug up so he could be formally beheaded. The body was thrown into a pit and Cromwell’s head remained on a pike at Westminster until Charles died.
But once again Parliament had made a king.
And Parliament did deal with a particularly thorny issue—the king’s revenue. Charles I was denied the feudal revenues his father enjoyed and issued a yearly allowance by Parliament. For the rest Charles settled into the hedonist life style “dancing Charlie” was known for. He produced at least a dozen bastards from a variety of mistresses—but no heir.
He fought wars on the side of Protestant Holland, against Holland, sometimes on the side of his cousin, Louis XIV. He was the head of a vehemently Protestant nation who converted to Catholicism on his death bed. London was wracked by plague during his reign, there was a huge fire, and the real British navy got its birth.
The arts flourished, the disputes between Parliament and Stuart continued. At one point Charlie denied responsibility for his actions, saying they were forced on him by his ministers. No English king said a thing like that before! Unlike his father, Charles had more interest in the ladies than in politics. Parliament survived. There were clouds on the horizon—big clouds—but no rain came in his time.
On his deathbed, he apologized for taking so long to die. His brother, the unpopular and Catholic Duke of York, James, succeeded him in 1685.
Now came the rain.