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Historical SummarySTERN, dogmatic, honest Oliver Cromwell, leader of the revolutionary forces which overthrew the monarchy, was a reluctant but efficient despot, a first-rate disciplinarian, with a breadth of view and keenness of vision denied to Charles I. Ironically, he who had crushed the Stuart king was forced to do the very things for which the king was put to death. While his ideals were lofty, his execution of them was realistic. "I would have been glad to have lived under any woodside, to have kept a flock of sheep, rather than undertaken such a government as this," he once confessed. Convinced that his whole course was directed by God and that his deeds were crowning mercies of the Most High, Cromwell substituted "divine might" for the "divine right" of the Stuarts. By the spring of 1653 the Long Parliament had been reduced to a "Rump" of about one hundred members. Cromwell charged them with accepting bribes, with nepotism, and with self-interest, drunkenness, and impiety. When the Rump began to discuss a bill providing that vacancies in Parliament should be filled only with the consent of the existing members, Cromwell lost patience. He entered the House with a company of troopers, berated the members, including some of his closest supporters in the past, and drove them out by force. It was an extraordinary scene. The man who had fought for law and order, who deeply believed in government by the people, was forced to close the door to legality and fall back on military dictatorship. The move was not popular. Nor was England during the Commonwealth (1649–1660) a happy land. Cromwell, who gave England her first written constitution, sought to introduce the moral standards of Calvinist Geneva. Theaters were closed as "dens of iniquity," freedom of speech, press, and assembly prohibited, and creative writing accordingly declined from the high Elizabethan level to mediocrity. It was said that none hut the dogs cried when Cromwell died. The nation, as Cromwell himself admitted, longed for the fleshpots of Egypt. With the restoration of the Stuarts, there set in a reaction against Cromwell’s somber and stern Puritanism. In its place came an era of lighthearted licentiousness and corruption, forever amber in hue. The historic scene in which the champion of constitutional liberties resorted to the measures of dictatorship was witnessed by a spectator named Second Earl of Leicester Robert Sydney, whose son, Algernon Sydney, was one of the most distinguished members of the Rump Parliament. His account from the Sydney Papers is given below. Cromwell felt impelled to justify his course, as he had sought to excuse himself after the slaughter in Ireland a few years earlier when 2,000 royalists were put to the sword at Drogheda. On that occasion he had stated: "I am persuaded that this is a righteous judgment of God upon these barbarous wretches, who have imbrued their hands in so much innocent blood; and that it will prevent the effusion of blood for the future." On the occasion of the dissolution of Parliament an eyewitness reported Cromwell to have declared: "It’s you that have forced me to do this, for I have sought the Lord night and day that he would rather slay me than put upon me the doing of this work."
Key QuoteA spectator, Robert Sydney, the second Earl of Leicester, sees a revolutionary leader break up Parliament and inaugurate a military dictatorship: "Take away these baubles!"
R. W. Blencowe
1825
Cromwell Breaks up Parliament
[1653]
Wednesday, 20th April. The Parliament sitting as usual, and being on debate upon the bill [to dissolve itself] with amendments, which it was thought would have been passed that day, the Lord General Cromwell came into the House, clad in plain black clothes, with gray stockings, and sat down, as he used to do, in an ordinary place. After a while he rose up, put off his hat, and spoke; at first and for a good while he spoke to the commendation of the Parliament, for their pains and care of the public good; but afterwards he changed his style, told them of their injustice, delays of justice, self-interest, and other faults.
Then he said: "Perhaps you think this is not parliamentary language; I confess it is not, neither are you to expect any such from me."
Then he put on his hat, went out of his place, and walked up and down the stage or floor in the midst of the House, with his hat on his head, and chid them soundly, looking sometimes, and pointing particularly, upon some persons, as Sir R. Whitlock, one of the Commissioners for the Great Seal; Sir Henry Vane, to whom he gave very sharp language, though he named them not, but by his gestures it was well known that he meant them.
After this he said to Colonel Harrison (who was a member of the House): "Call them in." Then Harrison went out, and presently brought in Lieutenant-Colonel Wortley (who commanded the General’s own regiment of foot), with five or six files of musketeers, about twenty or thirty with their muskets.
Then the General, pointing to the Speaker in his chair, said to Harrison: "Fetch him down."
Harrison went to the Speaker and spoke to him to come down, but the Speaker sat still and said nothing.
"Take him down," said the General.
Then Harrison went and pulled the Speaker by the gown, and he came down.
It happened that day that Algernon Sydney sat next to the Speaker on the right hand; the General said to Harrison: "Put him out."
Harrison spake to Sydney to go out, but he said he would not go out, and sat still.
The General said again: "Put him out."
Then Harrison and Wortley put their hands upon Sydney’s shoulders, as if they would force him to go out. Then he rose and went towards the door.
Then the General went to the table where the mace lay, which used to be carried before the Speaker, and said: "Take away these baubles."
So the soldiers took away the mace, and all the House went out; and at the going out, they say, the General said to young Henry Vane, calling him by his name, that he might have prevented this extraordinary course, but he was a juggler and had not so much as common honesty. All being gone out, the door of the House was locked, and the key with the mace was carried away, as I heard, by Colonel Otley.
Chicago: Robert Sydney, Sydney Papers, ed. R. W. Blencowe in History in the First Person: Eyewitnesses of Great Events: They Saw It Happen, ed. Louis Leo Snyder and Richard B. Morris (Harrisburg, Pa.: Stackpole Co., 1951), Original Sources, accessed November 21, 2024, http://originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=D4QHRHLUGLUCG9Y.
MLA: Sydney, Robert. Sydney Papers, edited by R. W. Blencowe, in History in the First Person: Eyewitnesses of Great Events: They Saw It Happen, edited by Louis Leo Snyder and Richard B. Morris, Harrisburg, Pa., Stackpole Co., 1951, Original Sources. 21 Nov. 2024. http://originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=D4QHRHLUGLUCG9Y.
Harvard: Sydney, R, Sydney Papers, ed. . cited in 1951, History in the First Person: Eyewitnesses of Great Events: They Saw It Happen, ed. , Stackpole Co., Harrisburg, Pa.. Original Sources, retrieved 21 November 2024, from http://originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=D4QHRHLUGLUCG9Y.
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