Establishment of a Republic

Immediately after the execution of the king, the Rump Parliament appointed a council of state and voted to abolish the office of king, on the ground that it was unnecessary, burdensome, and dangerous to liberty. It abolished also the House of Lords as useless, and dangerous to the people of England. On May 19, 1649 to complete its work, it proclaimed the republic, or commonwealth; and on the great seal placed the legend, “In the first year of freedom by God's blessing restored."

From the monarchy of 1640, England had passed through reform and civil war to the republic of 1649. But Cromwell and the Independent leaders had no intention of going further. They wanted no democratic republic. When the army presented to the Rump Parliament its constitutional scheme, the Agreement of the People, modified and expanded; that body swept it aside without consideration. This plan, which provided for a representative parliament elected by all the people, is famous because it outlined a democratic government similar to certain governments that had already been established by representatives of the same party in Rhode Island and Connecticut, in America. But England was in no condition to make constitutional experiments ; she needed a powerful governing body to meet the dangers that threatened her, and found it in the Rump Parliament, which consisted of about one hundred men, and had more actual power than ever had a Tudor or Stuart sovereign. But a government controlled by such an absolute body was bound to be a kind of despotism.

Dangers confronting the Republic

The execution of the king had excited a feeling of horror both at home and abroad. Never had such an event occurred in the history of Europe. The republic had not a friend among the foreign powers, and at home it was opposed by the royalists on one side and the democrats, or Levellers, on the other. Ireland was in revolt; Scotland had already proclaimed Prince Charles, son of Charles I, as her king; and the royalists of England were preparing to cooperate with the Irish and Scots. The moment was critical, for an invasion from Ireland or Scotland might lead to the overthrow of the republic.

The republic first turned its attention to the uprising in Ireland. On August 13, 1649, Cromwell landed in Dublin, and the combination of Munster Protestants and Irish Catholics proved powerless in the presence of his well-disciplined and well-officered force. Drogheda was taken in September, Wexford in October, and in each case the garrisons were massacred without mercy. Cromwell justified these acts, not only as a revenge for the massacre of 1641 and as permissible under the rules of war, but also as a necessary act to save England from an invasion. The Irish held out for a year longer; but, meanwhile, "Ireland was devastated from end to end, and a third of its population perished during the struggle." Having subdued the Irish people by this brutal method, Cromwell set about restoring order and prosperity. He confiscated two-thirds of the Irish lands and settled English colonists upon them; he endeavored to suppress Roman Catholicism and to introduce Protestantism; and he undertook to administer justice impartially. Furthermore, he allowed Ireland free trade with England, and later admitted English colonists in Ireland to representation in the English parliament. But in the end his policy proved a failure in almost every particular.

The scene of battle now shifted from Ireland to Scotland. Here both the government and the royalists, though irreconcilable in matters of religion, agreed in denouncing the execution of Charles I, and supported the claims of his son. The Scottish commissioners, however, refused to take up arms in behalf of Prince Charles until he should accept the Covenant and promise to impose Presbyterianism on England. During the negotiations, Montrose, hoping to save his prince from these conditions, flew to arms. In April, 1650, the royalists, led by Montrose, were defeated at Carbisdale, and the leader himself was captured and hanged, a gallant martyr to the cause of a faithless prince. Charles did not raise a finger to save his brave ally, but continued his negotiations and accepted the Covenant with as few compunctions as he had shown in sacrificing Montrose. Charles possessed sagacity and astuteness, but he was indolent and deceitful and a consummate actor. He deceived the Scots in order to win the support, not only of the Scottish Presbyterians, but of the Scottish national party as well.

But the cause of the prince was hopeless. At Dunbar (September, 1650), Cromwell defeated David Leslie and occupied Edinburgh. The Presbyterians lost ground. In their place arose the national party, who crowned Prince Charles at Scone (January, 1651), and continued the struggle. But at Worcester (September 3, 1651) Cromwell crushed the Scottish army, which had audaciously invaded England, and in so doing destroyed, not only the hopes of the Scottish royalists, but the independence of Scotland as well. After many romantic adventures, the prince reached the Continent and took up his residence first in Paris and afterward in Holland. General Monk, entering Scotland, completed the reduction of that kingdom. Scotland was united to England, and later the Scots found representation in the English parliament.

While Cromwell was winning victories on land, Blake, with the navy, was sweeping royalist privateers from the seas. He drove Prince Rupert from Portugal, broke up the royalist rendezvous in the Channel and Scilly Islands, and captured the Isle of Man. Sir George Ayscue, with another fleet, reduced to submission Barbadoes and other islands of the West Indies; and special commissioners sent to America received the allegiance of Virginia and Maryland, both royalist colonies.

Cromwell's victory at Worcester and the successes of Blake not only relieved the republic of danger, but also increased immensely its prestige among the foreign powers.

English Commerce and the Dutch War

Now that England had little to fear from the royalists,.Cromwell began to shape a definite policy for the government, the most important part of which related to commerce and the colonies. The expansion of England which had begun under Elizabeth and James I had been checked by the civil war; but in the meantime Holland, freed from war with Spain by the truce of 1608, was rapidly becoming the mistress of the world's commerce. The Dutch had gained control of the fisheries in the North Sea; they had monopolized the trade in America and the West Indies, as well as in the East ; they had gained possession of the Baltic trade and were preventing the English from obtaining such things as timber, tar, and hemp, which were needed for the building up of the English navy. In the East they had driven the English out of the Spice Islands and had forced them to confine their trade to India and other parts of the mainland. England's commercial expansion therefore demanded that the Dutch supremacy be overthrown.

Cromwell began the attack, first in an ordinance of 1650, and afterward in the famous navigation act of 1651, which provided that no goods of the growth or manufacture of Asia, Africa, or America should be imported into England or any of her colonies, except in ships owned and manned by Englishmen. This navigation act would have led to war, even had other causes been wanting; for Holland would not give up her trade without a struggle, and England was determined to enforce the act. But there were other causes for hostility between the two countries. The Dutch sympathized with the Stuarts, because their stadtholder, William II of Orange, had married the daughter of Charles I. An English agent, Dr. Dorislaus, had been murdered at The Hague by Scotch royalists and the murderers had gone unpunished. And lastly, a project for a treaty, which England presented to the Dutch government, had been rejected.

The war, which broke out in 1652 and lasted till 1653, was entirely a naval struggle, with Blake on one side and the Dutch Admiral Von Tromp on the other. It injured the Dutch trade and led to a serious financial crisis in Holland. Blake won three naval victories in 1653, which so discouraged Holland, already suffering from the loss of her trade, that she gave up the struggle. In April, 1654, a treaty was finally arranged, whereby England was to receive compensation for all losses, and the claims advanced in the navigation act were tacitly recognized. In the same year a treaty was signed with Denmark, which admitted England to the Baltic, and with Portugal, which strengthened England's hold in India. As events were to show, the Dutch were far from beaten; but from 1654 may be dated the decline of the commercial supremacy of Holland and the beginning of that of England. Cromwell's greatest achievement was to give England a prominent place in the commercial world.