Establishment of the Protectorate

During these years the Rump Parliament and its Council of State had been nominally the ruling power, though the real power lay in the hands of Cromwell and the army. Cromwell began to grow impatient with the parliament, and charged it with neglecting its business, and with spending its time talking instead of doing. After many attempts to arrange a compromise, he felt that the time had come to act. On April 20, 1653, he entered the House, and, after listening to the debate for a few minutes, rose and charged the members with delaying public business. “You are no parliament," he said; “I will put an end to your sitting." Calling his soldiers to help him, he drove out the members, bade one of his followers remove the mace from the table, and, passing out, locked the doors behind him. The last trace of legal form was thus removed and the supremacy of the army was revealed.

What form of government should take the place of the Rump Parliament was a question debated for many days by Cromwell and the other leading men. Finally they proposed a representative assembly of the "godly men" of England, the members of which should be nominated by the Congregational (Independent) churches in each county and these nominations confirmed by the officers of the army. This strange body, the Nominative Parliament, or, as it was familiarly called, the Barebones Parliament, met on July 4, 1653, at Westminster. It declared itself a true parliament, elected a council of state, appointed committees, and passed a number of acts of reform. As might have been expected, however, from a body so constituted, the Barebones Parliament soon became involved in quarrels on religious subjects and proved its utter inability to govern. Finally the army, thoroughly dissatisfied with the work of the new body, forced its Members to disperse; and thus an unfortunate experiment was brought to an end.

Meanwhile the officers of the army had drawn up a new constitution, which was called the Instrument of Government (1654). It provided for a head, the Protector, and for a parliament elected once in three years by all men possessing property worth £300. The powers of the Protector and of parliament were carefully defined and limited, and a council was established to act during the months when parliament was not in session. The most striking provision of the new constitution was the high property qualification, which, by limiting the right to vote to the men of moderate wealth, showed the army's distrust of the mass of the people.

OLD HOUSE IN CHESTER.

The inscription over the balcony reads "God's Providence is mine Inheritance." This was placed there in 1652, in commemoration of the escape of the house from the ravages of a plague.

Cromwell accepted the Instrument of Government in 1654, and assumed the title of Protector; and for six years thereafter the government of England was a protectorate.

Cromwell's Work as Protector

The ordinances which were issued at this time, dealing with the reorganization and strengthening of the kingdom, show the Protector to have been a statesman of large powers. He completed the union of England, Ireland, and Scotland, and worked out the representation of each county in the English parliament. He reorganized the treasury; reformed the penal code, by decreasing the number of crimes for which a man could be hanged; attempted to reform men's manners, by forbidding duelling, cock-fighting, horse-racing, and gambling, and by requiring a more fit observance of Sunday; encouraged free schools, and strengthened the universities. That which he did to improve the dispensing of justice cannot be too highly praised. Yet nearly all his measures, being in advance of the time, were repealed after his death and find no place in the statute book of England.

More important, because more permanent, was his foreign policy. By this he sought to accomplish three things: (1) to protect and unite the Protestants of Europe; (2) to develop English commerce wherever possible; and (3) to thwart all attempts of the Stuarts to regain their throne. From one purpose he never deviated,—to make England the leader of Protestantism and the greatest commercial power in the world. In 1654, as we have already seen, he made peace with the Dutch on terms which yielded to England the supremacy of the sea, and compelled the Hollanders to give up their support of the Stuarts, and also made treaties with Denmark and Portugal. In 1655 he tried to arrange a treaty with Sweden, hoping to create thereby a league of the Protestant states of Northern Europe; and, although he failed in his main object, he succeeded in effecting a commercial arrangement with Sweden which had the important result of rendering English shipping more secure and extending English commerce in the Baltic.

Cromwell found it difficult to arrange England's relations with France and Spain. These two Continental powers had been at war since 1635, when Richelieu declared war against Spain and took part in the Thirty Years' War as the surest way of defeating his enemy. Cromwell was uncertain with which of these powers it would be best to make an alliance. France was supporting the Stuarts, and Spain was England's old-time enemy. In either case, Cromwell was determined to obtain advantages for England. Spain refused his demand that English merchants in Spanish ports should be free from the interference of the Inquisition, and that English colonists and traders should trade freely in the Spanish West Indies. “ This is to ask for my master's two eyes," said the Spanish minister. Cromwell sent, therefore, a secret expedition under Admiral Penn, William Penn's father, to the West Indies, and tried to extend England's colonial empire by annexing Spanish islands and cutting off Spanish trade.' At the same time he sent Blake into the Mediterranean to win respect there for the English flag. Spain, much irritated, began zealously to champion the cause of the Stuarts, and endeavored to stir up civil war in England. The expedition sent out under Penn failed in its object, only Jamaica being captured. Blake, however, entered on a career which is only equalled by that of his great predecessor, Drake. By a wholesome use of threats and gunpowder, he overawed the Deys of Algiers and Tunis, and taught the men of the Barbary States to respect England's power. In 1655, when Spain, thoroughly aroused, actually declared war against England, Blake captured a Spanish treasure-fleet, and sent to England over £600,000 in gold and silver. Shortly afterward he destroyed sixteen Spanish galleons in the harbor of Cadiz.

These events made inevitable an alliance between England and France, and on March 23, 1657, a treaty was signed. Prince Charles had already left France, in 1654, but now his friends also were forced to withdraw. As a preliminary to the treaty, Cromwell demanded of the French minister, Mazarin, that he compel the duke of Savoy to stop the slaughter of the Protestants of Piedmont, which had aroused the indignation of the English Protestants, and had called forth from Milton one of his finest sonnets. Cromwell fulfilled his part of the treaty, and on June 4, 1658, helped the French to win a victory at Dunkirk, whereby the Spanish were beaten, the cause of Prince Charles was rendered hopeless so far as aid from Spain was concerned, and Dunkirk was handed over to the English.

The results of this policy may be briefly stated. Cromwell failed in his attempt to create a great Protestant league, because the day for such a league had gone by. The religious wars were over, and political questions were interesting men's minds. He cannot be said to have shown great foresight in making an alliance with France against Spain, for he aided thereby a growing state that was destined to be the greatest of England's rivals in the years to come. In his commercial and colonial policy he accomplished his grandest work; for by making treaties of commerce, breaking the commercial supremacy of the Dutch, winning a foothold in Jamaica in the West Indies, and endeavoring to colonize that island by transporting thither emigrants from the New England colonies,' he laid the foundations, not only for England's leadership in commerce, but also for her great colonial empire. Charles II, when he came to the throne, set aside the great majority of Cromwell's measures, but he did not tamper with his colonial schemes, knowing that they represented the wishes and interests of the English people.