utmost consternation, and, though a few days before voted the king's concessions unsatisfactory, again took his answer into consideration; and after a violent debate for three days, it was carried by a majority of forty-two, that his Majesty's concessions were a sufficient foundation for the houses to proceed upon in the settlement of the kingdom: but it was then too late. The army had now secured the person of the king, and he was conveyed by a party of horse to Hurst Castle, where he continued till he was conducted to Windsor in order to his trial. The general had marched the army to London; and the next day the presbyterian members were excluded from the house by a military force; and the independent members, who were admitted, voted the king's answer to the propositions not satisfactory. The question now was, what was next to be done? It was high time to settle some form of government, under which the nation was to live. So in order to gain popularity, they declared that parliament should be dissolved on the last day of April following: and that in the mean time they would bring those delinquents to justice, who had disturbed the peace of the kingdom, and put it to such an expence of blood and treasure. But the height of all iniquity and fanatical extravagance yet remained to be acted: it was determined to impeach the king of high treason, as having been the cause of all the blood

spilt during the rebellion. The sovereign was tried and executed by a set of desperate officers of the army, and their dependents.* There was nothing in the common or statute law which could direct or warrant this iniquitous proceeding, they therefore made a new form never before heard of "An high court of justice to try his Majesty for high treason in levying war against his parliament." He fell a sacrifice to ↑ the rage and enthusiasm of the fanatic leaders of the army, who, proceeding from one licentiousness to another, had arrived at an implacable, republican, virulent spirit, regardless of all laws, divine and human. The particulars of the murder of King Charles I. on the 30th of Jan. 1648--9, and his character, need not here be related; they are so fully narrated by Lord Clarendon, Dugdale, and other historians.‡

*

They have been described as a swarm of armed enthusiasts, who outwitted the patriots, out-prayed the puritans, and out-fought the cavaliers." Bishop Warburton's Sermon before the House of Lords, Jan. 30, 1760.

+ Clarendon's Hist. of the Rebellion, vol. iii, b. xi, p. 244. ↑ See a very interesting character of King Charles I. in Warner's Eccles. Hist. of England, vol. ii, pp. 574--577: but the excellent and pious Bishop Horne, in his sermon intitled THE CHRISTIAN KING, has given us a very striking and interesting view of the character of Charles I. as a KING, a CHRISTIAN, and a MARTYR. See Bishop Horne's Works, vol. iii, p. 398.

CHAPTER X.

THE Constitution, having been so much mutilated and reduced in the progress of the rebellion, at the execution of the king was totally dissolved. The small remains of an house of commons prohibited the proclaiming of the Prince of Wales, or any other person whatsoever, under the pain of high treason, and voted the house of lords to be useless, and the office of a king dangerous to the state. The oaths of allegiance and supremacy were abolished, and a new one, called the engagement, was appointed, by which all persons who held any place or office in church or state, were required to swear, "that they would be true and faithful to the government established, without king, or house of peers." The form of government for the future, was declared to be a free commonwealth, of which the executive power was to be lodged in the hands of a council of state of about forty persons, any nine of whom were to take care of the administration for one

year. Such was the foundation of this new government, which neither had the consent of the nation, nor their representatives in parliament. The parliament, as it was, consisted only of about eighty members, all of them independents. And these few members voted the exclusion of all the other members, unless they took the engagement. A licentious, republican, and fanatic army, which had spread an universal terror, had got this extraordinary and excessive power to this parliament, which, consisting of so inconsiderable a number of members, obtained in derision, the appellation of the rump parliament.

*

The Independent interest, by means of the army, now prevailed in and over the parliament: not only the loyal clergy began to suffer afresh "under a new set of tyrants," but even the presbyterians "became fellow-sufferers, and were involved in one common calamity, with those many thousands of ruined loyalists, over whom they had themselves for such a long course of years, lorded it with so much rigour and cruelty."†

* Walker, the author of the History of Independency, first gave them this name, in allusion to a fowl, all devoured but the rump. They were also compared to a man who would never cease to whet and whet his knife, till there was no steel left to make it useful. Dr. Grey and Rapin.

+ Walker's Sufferings of the Clergy, part i, p. 146.

A a

It is not necessary in this work to enter fully into the measures which were taken for settling this usurped government. In such a time of universal confusion, the transactions which concerned then the church and state ought rather to be razed out of the page of history, than particularly related, lest the success of so much villany, dissimulation, and enthusiasm, should in after ages encourage the same horrible and iniquitous factions against the established constitution of church and state.

Now every man was at liberty to profess any principles of religion, and to teach what he professed. Bishop Hall in these distracted times, speaking of those who cause divisions, says, "they have much to answer for to the God of peace and unity, who are so much addicted to their own conceits, and so indulgent to their own interest, as to raise and maintain new doctrines, and to set up new sects in the church of Christ, varying from the common and received truths; labouring to draw disciples after them, to the great distraction of souls, and scandal of christianity: with which sort of disturbers I must needs say this age, into which we are fallen, hath been and is, above all that have gone before us, most miserably pestered: what good soul can be other than confounded, to hear of and see more than a hundred and four score new, and some of them dangerous and blas