Ch. 33 - Oliver Cromwell

BEFORE sunset on the memorable day on which King Charles the First
was executed, the House of Commons passed an act declaring it
treason in any one to proclaim the Prince of Wales - or anybody
else - King of England. Soon afterwards, it declared that the
House of Lords was useless and dangerous, and ought to be
abolished; and directed that the late King's statue should be taken
down from the Royal Exchange in the City and other public places.
Having laid hold of some famous Royalists who had escaped from
prison, and having beheaded the DUKE OF HAMILTON, LORD HOLLAND, and
LORD CAPEL, in Palace Yard (all of whom died very courageously),
they then appointed a Council of State to govern the country. It
consisted of forty-one members, of whom five were peers. Bradshaw
was made president. The House of Commons also re-admitted members
who had opposed the King's death, and made up its numbers to about
a hundred and fifty.

But, it still had an army of more than forty thousand men to deal
with, and a very hard task it was to manage them. Before the
King's execution, the army had appointed some of its officers to
remonstrate between them and the Parliament; and now the common
soldiers began to take that office upon themselves. The regiments
under orders for Ireland mutinied; one troop of horse in the city
of London seized their own flag, and refused to obey orders. For
this, the ringleader was shot: which did not mend the matter, for,
both his comrades and the people made a public funeral for him, and
accompanied the body to the grave with sound of trumpets and with a
gloomy procession of persons carrying bundles of rosemary steeped
in blood. Oliver was the only man to deal with such difficulties
as these, and he soon cut them short by bursting at midnight into
the town of Burford, near Salisbury, where the mutineers were
sheltered, taking four hundred of them prisoners, and shooting a
number of them by sentence of court-martial. The soldiers soon
found, as all men did, that Oliver was not a man to be trifled
with. And there was an end of the mutiny.

The Scottish Parliament did not know Oliver yet; so, on hearing of
the King's execution, it proclaimed the Prince of Wales King
Charles the Second, on condition of his respecting the Solemn
League and Covenant. Charles was abroad at that time, and so was
Montrose, from whose help he had hopes enough to keep him holding
on and off with commissioners from Scotland, just as his father
might have done. These hopes were soon at an end; for, Montrose,
having raised a few hundred exiles in Germany, and landed with them
in Scotland, found that the people there, instead of joining him,
deserted the country at his approach. He was soon taken prisoner
and