Chapter 14 - republican and restoration britain

Republican Britain (p61)

Several MPs had commanded the Parliamentarian army. Of these, the strongest was an East Anglian gentleman farmer named Oliver Cromwell. He had created a new "model" army, the first regular force from which the British army of today developed.

Instead of country people or gentry, Cromwell invited into his army educated men who wanted to fight for their beliefs.

Cromwell and his advisers had captured the king in 1645, but they did not know what to do with him. This was an entirely new situation in English history. Charles himself continued to encourage rebellion against Parliament even after he had surrendered and had been imprisoned. He was able to encourage the Scots to rebel against the Parliamentarian army. After the Scots were defeated some Puritan officers of the Parliamentarian army demanded the king's death for treason.

The Parliamentarian leaders now had a problem. They could either bring Charles back to the throne and allow him to rule, or remove him and create a new political system. By this time most people in both Houses of Parliament and probably in the country wanted the king back. They feared the Parliamentarians and they feared the dangerous behaviour of the army. But some army commanders were determined to get rid of the king. These men were Puritans who believed they could build God's kingdom in England.

Two-thirds of the MPs did not want to put the king on trial. They were removed from Parliament by the army, and the remaining fifty-three judged him and found him guilty of making "war against his kingdom and the Parliament". On 31 January 1649 King Charles was executed. It was a cold day and he wore two shirts so that the crowd who came to watch would not see him shiver and think him frightened.

King Charles died bravely. As his head was cut from his body the large crowd groaned. Perhaps the execution was Charles's own greatest victory, because most people now realised that they did not want Parliamentary rule, and were sorry that Charles was not still king.

From 1649-1660 Britain was a republic, but the republic was not a success.

Cromwell and his friends created a government far more severe than Charles's had been. They had got rid of the monarchy, and they now got rid of the House of Lords and the Anglican Church.

The Scots were shocked by Charles's execution. They invited his son, whom they recognised as King Charles II, to join them and fight against the English Parliamentary army. But they were defeated, and young Charles himself was lucky to escape to France. Scotland was brought under English republican rule.

Cromwell took an army to Ireland to punish the Irish for the killing of Protestants in 1641, and for the continued Royalist rebellion there. He captured two towns. His soldiers killed the inhabitants of both, about 6,000 people in all. These killings were probably no worse than the killings of Protestants in 1641, but they remained powerful symbols of English cruelty to the Irish.

From 1653 Britain was governed by Cromwell alone. He became "Lord Protector", with far greater powers than King Charles had had. His efforts to govern the country through the army were extremely unpopular, and the idea of using the army to maintain law and order in the kingdom has remained unpopular ever since.

Cromwell's government was unpopular for other reasons. For example, people were forbidden to celebrate Christmas and Easter, or to play games on a Sunday.

When Cromwell died in 1658, the Protectorate, as his republican administration was called, collapsed.

When Charles II returned to England as the publicly accepted king, the laws and Acts of Cromwell's government were automatically cancelled.

Charles managed his return with skill. Although Parliament was once more as weak as it had been in the time of James I and Charles I, the new king was careful to make peace with his father's enemies. Only those who had been responsible for his father's execution were punished. Many Parliamentarians were given positions of authority or responsibility in the new monarchy.

Catholicism, the Crown and the new constitutional monarchy Charles II hoped to make peace between the different religious groups. He wanted to allow Puritans and Catholics who disliked the Anglican Church to meet freely. But Parliament was strongly Anglican, and would not allow this. Before the Civil War, Puritans looked to Parliament for protection against the king. Now they hoped that the king would protect them against Parliament.

Charles himself was attracted to the Catholic Church. Parliament knew this and was always afraid that Charles would become a Catholic. For this reason Parliament passed the Test Act in 1673, which prevented any Catholic from holding public office.

Fear of Charles's interest in the Catholic Church and of the monarchy becoming too powerful also resulted in the first political parties in Britain.

One of these parties was a group of MPs who became known as "Whigs", a rude name for cattle drivers. The Whigs were afraid of an absolute monarchy, and of the Catholic faith with which they connected it. They also wanted to have no regular or "standing" army. In spite of their fear of a Catholic king, the Whigs believed strongly in allowing religious freedom. Because Charles and his wife had no children, the Whigs feared that the Crown would go to Charles's Catholic brother, James. They wanted to prevent this, but they were undecided over who they did want as king.

The Whigs were opposed by another group, nicknamed "Tories", an Irish name for thieves. Generally speaking, however, the Tories upheld the authority of the Crown and the Church. The Whigs were not against the Crown, but they believed that its authority depended upon the consent of Parliament. These two parties, the Whigs and the Tories, became the basis of Britain's two-party parliamentary system of government.

The struggle over Catholicism and the Crown became a crisis when news was heard of a Catholic plot to murder Charles and put his brother Jameson the throne. In fact the plan did not exist. The story had been spread as a clever trick to frighten people and to make sure that James and the Catholics did not come to power. The trick worked. Parliament passed an Act forbidding any Catholic to be a member of either the Commons or the Lords. It was not successful, however, in preventing James from inheriting the crown.

James II became king after his brother's death in 1685. The Tories and Anglicans were delighted, but not for long. James had already shown his dislike of Protestants while he had been Charles's governor in Scotland.

James then tried to remove the laws which stopped Catholics from taking

positions in government and Parliament. He also tried to bring back the Catholic Church, and allow it to exist beside the Anglican Church.

James tried to get rid of the Tory gentry who most strongly opposed him. He removed three-quarters of all JPs and replaced them with men of lower social class.

In spite of their anger, Tories, Whigs and Anglicans did nothing because they could look forward to the succession of James's daughter, Mary. Mary was Protestant and married to the Protestant ruler of Holland, William of Orange. But this hope was destroyed with the news in June 1688 that James's son had been born. The Tories and Anglicans now joined the Whigs in looking for a Protestant rescue.

They invited William of Orange to invade Britain.

William entered London, but the crown was offered only to Mary. William said he would leave Britain unless he also became king. Parliament had no choice but to offer the crown to both William and Mary.

In the 1680s two of the more important theorists, Algernon Sidney and John Locke, had argued that government was based upon the consent of the people, and that

the powers of the king must be strictly limited. The logical conclusion of such ideas was that the "consent of the people" was represented by Parliament, and as a result Parliament, not the king, should be the overall power in the state. In 1688 these theories were fulfilled.

Parliament was now beyond question more powerful than the king, and would remain so. Its power over the monarch was written into the Bill of Rights in 1689. The king was now unable to raise taxes or keep an army without the agreement of Parliament, or to act against any MP for what he said or did in Parliament.

In 1701 Parliament finally passed the Act of Settlement, to make sure only a Protestant could inherit the crown. Even today, if a son or daughter of the monarch becomes a Catholic, he or she cannot inherit the throne.

Scotland and Ireland (p63)

In the 18th century Scotland was still a separate kingdom, although it shared a king with England (James II had been James VII of Scotland). The English wanted

Scotland and England to be united. But the English Act of Settlement was not law in Scotland. While Scotland remained legally free to choose its own king there was a danger that this might be used to put a Stuart back on the throne.

On the other hand, Scotland needed to remove the limits on trade with England from which it suffered economically. In 1707 the union of Scotland and England was completed by Act of Parliament. From that moment both countries no longer had separate parliaments, and a new parliament of Great Britain, the new name of the state, met for the first time. Scotland, however, kept its own separate legal and judicial system, and its own separate Church.

Foreign relations

During the seventeenth century Britain's main enemies were Spain, Holland and France. War with Holland resulted from competition in trade. After three wars in the

middle of the century, when Britain had achieved the trade position it wanted, peace

was agreed, and Holland and Britain cooperated against France.

At the end of the century Britain went to war against France. Britain wanted to limit French power, which had been growing under Louis XIV.

In the war Britain had also won the rock of Gibraltar, and could now control the entrance to the Mediterranean.

The capture of foreign land was important for Europe's economic development.

At this stage Britain had a smaller empire abroad than either Spain or Holland. But it had greater variety. On the east coast of America, Britain controlled about 12 colonies. Of far greater interest were the new possessions in the West Indies, where sugar was grown. Sugar became a craze from which Britain has not yet recovered.

The growing sugar economy of the West Indies increased the demand for slaves.

By 1645, for example, there were 40,000 white settlers and 6,000 Negro slaves in Barbados. By 1685 the balance had changed, with only 20,000 white settlers but 46,000 slaves. The sugar importers used their great influence to make sure that the government did not stop slavery.

During this time Britain also established its first trading settlements in India, on both the west and east coasts. The East India Company did not interfere in Indian politics. Its interest was only in trade. A hundred years later, however, competition with France resulted in direct efforts to control Indian politics, either by alliance or by the conquest of Indian princely states.