This is Stuart England The Civil Wars Episode two point one hundred and nine.
A free Parliament. On the thirtieth of December sixteen fifty nine, Thomas Fairfax
visited Murston Moore, the wild meadow outside of York where he had won his
most famous victory fifteen years earlier. He was likely in a contemplative mood,
not just because of the memories the old battlefield threw up, but also because
of why he had returned. Fairfax was joined by almost two thousand men.
They were drawn to Murston Moore that day through a mixture of frustration at the
months of chaos produced by the coops and counter coops at Westminster, and the
personal reputation and charisma of Thomas Fairfax, one of the few war heroes left
who was untainted by the grubby politics of the day. How Fairfax intended to
solve England's predicament wasn't exactly clear. The rallying cry that had brought out the
crowd consisted of a vague call for a free and open parliament. Fairfax carefully
avoided making any claims, but what kind of settlement that parliament would or should
produce? Some took comfort in the idea of a free parliament as a panacea
for all of England's troubles. As you may recall, a similar attitude had
accompanied the short Parliament of sixteen forty the first after eleven years of Charles the
First's personal rule. The initial long parliament elections were more than twenty years in
the past, and it was hoped that a parliament renewed through its connection to
the people would magically erase the resentments and divisions that had taken hold of England.
But other software Fax's ambiguity in more strategic terms, Since sixteen forty nine,
the leaders of the Commonwealth had tried just about every constitutional arrangement imaginable.
They had all failed. The only option left was to go back to what
had worked in the past monarchy. But to openly call for the return of
the Stuarts would be politically explosive and just lead to yet more rounds of civil
war. From this perspective, those who called for a free parliament were Royalists
in all but name. England would have to be gradually guided towards that inevitable
solution. For now, the name of the king could not be spoken.
Men like Fairfax had to rely on carefully coded language. However, cynically want
to be about the campaigned for a free parliament in the winter of sixteen fifty
nine sixteen sixty. It's clear that the message resonated with the people of England.
The regime run out of the Committee of Safety, had totally failed to
deliver anything resembling a free parliament, and so was disintegrating in the face of
universal popular opposition. Over Christmas, the torch passed to the newly restored Rump
Parliament. But while this transfer of power was widely celebrated as a step in
the right direction, the Rump men faced close scrutiny. England's current condition was
as much their fault as it was the doing of the army men who had
just been displaced. Would the Rump, in its third try, finally lead
England towards salvation. The answer to that question would in some sense be determined
by the men who followed Thomas Fairfax to Marston Moore. At the end,
news from London took time to reach the North, so events in Yorkshire were
a bit out of date. The enemies that Fairfax and his followers sought to
neutralize were the Armies, of the Committee of Safety the provisional Government, Charles
Fleetwood, surrendered a few days earlier. But as we saw a last episode,
Fleetwood had acted without consulting his ally John Lambert, who commanded the majority
of the regime soldiers in the North. The Committee of Safety might be dead
in London, but it was alive and well and well armed in the North.
If Lambert could score a decisive victory, he might easily turn south with
overwhelming force and restore military rule. Fairfax's goal was to prevent that outcome.
His rising just outside York was meant to compliment the army George Monk had assembled
on the Scottish border. By distracting Lambert and drawing defectors away from his armies,
Fairfax hoped to clear the path from Monk to march into England. Ideally,
it would be a bloodless victory against a regime it was already collapsing from
within. The original plan was her Fairfax to initiate the Yorkshire Rising on the
first of January, time to coincide with Monk's army crossing the border. But
in the days leading up to the New year, word got out and Lambert's
forces moved to respond, Robert Lilburn, the general who had been holding the
North for the Committee of Safety since its inception, rushed to York to suppress
the rising. Fairfax therefore moved up to start date so his network of allies
wouldn't be disrupted by preemptive arrests. The result was yet another standoff. Lilburn
held York while Fairfax assembled his insurrection outside the city's walls, but it was
clear that Lambert and Lilburn were fast losing control of the situation. A significant
number of Fairfax's followers were defectors from Lilburn's garrison and that of John Lambert's army
stationed at nearby Rippon. The people of York sided with Fairfax as well,
making life very uncomfortable for Liliburn's garrison. Lilburn's only hope was that Lambert could
bring his much larger army to York and relieve his beleaguered troops, but despite
being just twenty miles away, Lambert was paralyzed, partly because he wasn't sure
which threat was greater, fairfaxes Workshire rising or Monk's invading army, which had
crossed into England as scheduled on New Year's Day. But Lambert faced even bigger
problems than indecision. His men hadn't been paid in weeks, and for the
average soldier, Monk and Fairfax were hardly enemies. The army camp at Rippon
was racked by defections and desertions, and was in no condition to march anywhere,
either to York or the Scottish border. On the second of January,
Lilburn accepted reality and surrendered York to Fairfax. Lambert's army simply dissolved. The
Committee of Safety had been defeated politically a few days earlier in Westminster, and
now it was annihilated militarily in Yorkshire. On the eleventh of January, Monk
rode into York and enjoyed the hospitality of Thomas Fairfax. Their victory was all
the sweeter for having been, as planned bloodless. At Westminster, the newly
restored rump was uncertain how to view these northern developments. The elimination of John
Lambert's army was welcome news. It had been entirely possible that the general would
have marched south to reverse Charles Fleetwood's capitulation. Restoring the Committee of Safety by
military but in a sense, Monk had merely replaced Lambert as the leader of
an army capable of exercising power independently from Westminster. Sure, Monk had publicly
expressed support for the Rump, and as recently as the twenty ninth of December
had pledged to follow directives from Parliament, but three days later he crossed the
border into England without anyone's authorization. Arthur Hasselrigg tried to put the best face
on affairs, inviting Monk to come to London to help sort out England's future,
but as one historians noted, this was a bit like a man ordering
his dog to do what it was already in the process of doing. More
indicative of the Rump's anxieties was the decision to send a delegation to join Monk's
march. Nominally this was to coordinate their actions, but in reality the delegation,
led by Hasselrigg's close ally Thomas Scott, was intended to monitor the General
and keep a close eye on his actions. After his stay in York,
Monk continued south at a leisurely pace, stopping in Leicester almost two weeks later.
There on the twenty third of January, he offered the Rump and other
public reassurance of his intentions. A restoration of the Stewart monarchy was impossible.
Monk explained England could never return to a single established church, and the confiscation
of church, crown and Royalist property couldn't be reversed. Too many powerful men
had invested too much in the redistribution of land. Any attempt to untie those
knots would just lead to more civil war. But Monk's pronouncements were hardly reassuring
for rumtmen like Casselig. This was far from a full throated defense of the
principles behind the current regime. Monk's argument was practical rather than ideological. In
fact, the less trusting men at Westminster thought they detected a troubling subtext in
Monk's words. While on the surface he claimed that royalism was a dead end,
his announcement could be seen as a roadmap, laying out the problems any
Stewart restoration would have to solve. Monk's actual intentions at this juncture are impossible
to determine, but it was obvious to everyone that a restoration of the monarchy
was at least on the table. It's likely that Monk saw monarchy as a
plausible option, perhaps England's best option at this point, but that was not
something he could openly admit, mostly because the men of his army had dedicated
their lives to a war against monarchy. Monk's officers were personally loyal to him,
but there were lines they would not cross for their general, at least
for now. If Monk had decided on the restoration of the Stuarts by this
point, or at least that it was a real option worth pursuing, he
realized that it involved a delicate balancing act. The men who had affested interest
in the status quo, the guys who benefited from the reorganization of the Church
and England's lands that Monk referenced at Leicester, they were the ones who had
to be convinced it was the only way to achieve the restoration of the Stuarts
without setting off another round of civil war. Now, before getting into how
Monk proposed to lead England's Commonwealth men back to the world of monarchy, it's
worth dwelling on why the General increasingly saw the Stuarts as the answer to the
nation's problems. We've already approached this from the perspective of Monk's political views.
More than anything, he prioritized England's national unity and power, and since the
death of Oliver Cromwell, the various permutations of non monarchical rule had failed miserably
on those scores. But why had the Stewards suddenly emerged as a viable alternative.
Monk was responding to a widespread popular movement within England. The people were
calling for a restoration, and Monk felt it was a call that the nation's
leaders could not afford to ignore, but of crucial importance at this early juncture
in the opening months of sixteen sixty The restoration the people were calling for was
not a restoration of the monarchy, at least not directly. Rather, the
demand, repeated all across the country, was for the restoration of a free
parliament. As I mentioned earlier in sixteen forty, when Charles the First called
for the first parliamentary elections in more than a decade, there was an outpouring
of optimism about what parliaments could achieve. The power of parliaments to unite the
people of England to their king and solve the nation's problems took on an almost
mythical dimension, while in sixteen sixty it had almost been twenty years since England's
on nationwide elections to a parliament unrestricted by purges or tests of political loyalty,
and the long parliament those elections produced had not been truly representative of England ever
since the Royalist MP's abandoned Westminster in sixteen forty two. In other words,
the suffering England had gone through over the past eighteen years was not the absence
of a king, but the absence of a free parliament. As historian Blair
Warden puts it, the restoration was the restoration of parliament before it was the
restoration of the king. The key advantage the free Parliament movement provided is that
it allowed for Royalists and Presbyterians to adopt a common language. Since his earliest
sixteen forty six, the Presbyterians and Royalists had attempted to build an alliance that
would neutralize the more dangerous elements thrown up by the Civil War, but their
efforts were constantly undermined by distrust and irreconcilable differences on matters of the church or
constitutional politics. After the Civil War. When the Presbyterians tried to pin Charles
the First down on a compromise settlement, he repeatedly frustrated them with delays and
equivocations. When Charles the Second invaded England in sixteen fifty one, many Presbyterians
stood aloof Horrified by the hardcore royalists, the exiled king surrounded himself with.
Subsequent years, Royalist and Presbyterian insurgents within England were often at loggerheads. When
one group rose up in rebellion, the others stood aside or sometimes actively undermined
the effort. But the popular calls for a free parliament, fueled by frustration
and the coups and countercoups at Westminster, provided a bridge for the Royalist Presbyterian
divine. In a sense, George Booth had seen the opportunity first. His
uprising in sixteen fifty nine had not called for a return of the Stuarts or
a specific religious or constitutional settlement. Instead, Booth claimed to be fighting for
a free parliament. What that parliament decided to do about England's troubles was its
own business. In effect, this was an ideology all its own, a
parliament that was truly representative of England and truly free could not fail to deliver
peace and stability. Seizing on the opportunity, Presbyterian and Royalist leaders agreed to
join the chorus calling for a free parliament. Both sides agreed to avoid getting
into too much detail about what system a free parliament might impose. Royalists downplayed
the role of the king in any future settlement and merely argued that they would
support as legitimate whatever a free parliament decided. Presbyterians followed suit, proclaiming the
legitimizing power of a free parliament while avoiding any detailed plans for a decentralized Calvinist
Church or constitutional constraints on the king. Even men who had been more recently
tossed aside by the turmoil in the capital through their support behind a free parliament.
Roger Boyle, the die hard Cromwellian, remained opposed to the monarchy,
but he conceded, whatever such a parliament shall enact, we shall actively or
passively obey. Richard Norton, an MP who had been purged in sixteen forty
eight, claimed that if a free parliament decided to invite the Turk to Whitehall
to rule over England, he would recognize the decision as lawful and legitimate.
For the Royalists, it was a dramatic shift in tactics for those who still
remembered the outbreak of the Civil War eighteen years earlier. It was an odd
twist of fate that victory might finally come in the form of a popular campaign
for a free parliament, or, as Blair Warden puts it, royalist leaders,
having failed to beat parliamentarianism, joined it. But for one Royalist this
was the outcome he had long predicted for years. Edward Hyde had insisted that
the restoration of the monarchy could only come about by English means, not via
Scottish, Irish or continental military power. A popular call for a free parliament
may not have been exactly how Hyde drew it up, but he urged Charles
to see this as the greatest opportunity the Steward cause had seen since the Civil
War. Guided by Hyde, Charles made his own, carefully calibrated contribution to
the free parliament movement from exile. The King announced that he would treat a
fully free parliament as a partner in governance, taking its resolutions very seriously,
but he meticulously avoided, saying that he would be legally bound by the advice
of such a parliament. Emboldened by the adoption of the language of a free
parliament by leading Presbyterians, Royalists, and even some independence like Roger Boyle,
the movement only grew as Monk marched towards London. When the restored Rump sent
commissioners into the provinces to oversee the collection of the assessment, they met sullen
resistance. The Rump may have been an improvement on the military rule of the
Committee of Safety, but it wasn't a free parliament, the only institution capable
of authorizing tax collection. Late January saw tax strikes or other disturbances in Bristol,
Gloucester, Canterbury and several other towns. The Apprentices of Exeter took to
the streets, demanding a free parliament, or at the very least a return
of the members who had been purged in sixteen forty eight. In Kent,
Royalists and Presbyterians joined together in protests calling for the return of the purged members.
They were suppressed and their leaders arrested by soldiers loyal to the Rump,
But in Northamptonshire, the authorities were powerless to stop the leading gentlemen of the
county from banning together to call for a free parliament. Once assembled. They
even sent out delegates to the neighboring counties to organize the movement there. A
similar organization emerged out of the gentry in Cornwall too. This had a spiraling
effect in the countryside. The more tax collections were obstructed, the less money
the Rump had to pay its soldiers, and desperate or undiscipline soldiers only fueled
greater resentments against the Rump. Some units, forcibly requisitioned food from civilians,
others were billeted in people's homes to save money, one of the grievances that
had sparked the civil war against the Stuarts, But the biggest threat face in
the Rump came much closer to home in London. Resistance in the city had
played an important role in the collapse of the Committee of Safety, and although
some leaders in London's government were sympathetic to the Rump, for the apprentices who
had led the protests, hassel Riggs purged House of Commons was a far cry
from the free parliament they had demanded. In fact, by this point the
calls for a free Parliament coming from London were growing more and more indistinguishable from
a call for restored Stuart Manrchy. The apprentices in particular had come to see
traditional politics as the only path forward. While their fathers were remembered the sixteen
thirties as a time of royal tyranny and loudie and repression, many young men
had never known anything but turmoil and revolution. The mythology of centuries of stability
provided by the partnership between the King and Parliament exerted a powerful draw or.
As historian Blair puts up, what did that generation know of monarchy except that
under it the nation had not endured what had come to suffer without it.
With the Rump's military resources in disarray, the regime didn't have any confidence that
it could impose its will in the city. But the military situation in London
was about to change. As tensions between Westminster and the city grew more heated.
In late January and early February, George Monk's army finally came into view.
The fragile Rump regime was in the midst of an existential crisis, the
outcome of which would entirely depend on Monk. As Monk neared London at the
beginning of February sixteen sixty, his plan of action was likely taking a more
coherent shape. Although it's impossible for historians to uncover firm evidence on the general's
plans, informed speculation allows us to paint a rough picture. By this point,
the only long term path to stability was a freely elected parliament that would
almost certainly deliver some form of restored monarchy. Beginning with that assumption, Monk's
goal was to find a way to bring that about with the minimum amount of
turmoil in the immediate term. Monk therefore had to maintain several distinct, even
contradictory balancing acts. First, he wanted to avoid any kind of royalist triumphalism.
The restoration of the monarchy could not take the form of some kind of
affirmation of the divine right of kings. That would only re energize the forces
that had sparked the civil war in the first place. Second, Monk had
to bring his own officers over to his line of thinking. His men trusted
him, but almost by definition they were adamantly opposed to the monarchy. Some
would never be convinced to accept the return of the king on any terms.
The trick was to convince a critical mass of his officers that there was no
other viable option. Until that was achieved, Monk couldn't risk any outward sign
that he supported a restoration. Third, Monk needed the support of London.
Since the death of Oliver Cromwell, no regime had enjoyed the unambiguous support of
the city, and it showed Arthur Hasselrigg had been cheered in the streets when
he restored the rump, but that popularity was conditional on continued progress towards a
free parliament. The people of London had already seen too many politicians who offered
promises but few results. If Monk wanted to oversee England's return to normalcy,
he'd have to be convincing. The final group Monk worried about were the members
of the Long Parliament who had been purged in sixteen forty eight. That's because
at this point the only legitimate path to a free parliament seemed to be the
return of those excluded members. They had the numbers to swamp Hastlerig and his
allies and do what the rumpers had always refused to, dissolved their session and
call for new elections. But in order for the plan to work, Monk
had to be sure that the returning members followed the script. They knew as
well as anyone that a free Parliament would likely mean the return of the Stewards.
Would they really have the stomach for him? When combined, the disparate
elements of Monk's plan created a cumulative challenge. Not only did Monk have to
somehow upend the Republic without alienating his men or handing England over to hardline royalists,
but he had to do so while winning the support of London and convincing
a host of exiled Presbyterian MP's to dance to his tune. Some of these
groups had mutually exclusive goals and expectations, so Monk couldn't afford to be too
explicit about his intentions. He had to rely on multiple groups to read between
the lines and for events to subtly reshape opinions in real time. Luckily,
Monk enjoyed a significant degree of leverage. The rump regime was losing control of
England, especially London, and Monk's army was the only instrument capable of holding
things together. The general took full advantage. Before entering London, Monk paused
his march at Saint Albans and delivered a set of conditions to Westminster. He
demanded a thorough reorganization of the army, not only the dispersal of all units
but his own, from the area around London, but also the wholesale transfer
of officers to new units. The goal was to break the close ties between
officers and men, limiting the ability of any other commander to organize military or
political power. Hasselag attempted to haggle, but Monk refused to budge. In
light of the uncertain loyalties of so many army units, it was imperative that
London and Westminster be guarded by men who could be trusted. In effect,
Monk was demanding him monopoly on military power in the capital. While Parliament debated
Monk's terms, a perfectly timed example of how they had no choice emerged in
London. The Common Council, replenished by elections just weeks earlier, formally called
for the return of excluded members to Parliament free elections in a reorganization of the
London militia, taking authority away from Westminster and putting it in the hands of
the municipal government. The Rump quite accurately read this as a challenge to its
legitimacy as a parliament Hasselrig used his nominal authority over the military to order troops
into the city to bring the Common Council to heal. The result was a
disaster. The Common Council was not intimidated, and the apprentices openly mocked the
soldiers. Even worse, the soldiers themselves didn't seem all that willing to carry
out Parliament's orders. Many of them hadn't been paid in months, and morale
was rock bottom. London continued to be defiant the handful of allies the Rump
did have in the city, like the former mayor John Ireton, discovered nooses
laid outside their doors an ominous warning. Over two thousand soldiers in the London
area mutinied, mainly due to lack of pay. Some called for a free
parliament, others for the return of the King, John Lambert or anyone who
would give them regular pay. The handful of officers who were vocally loyal to
the Rump received death threats from their men. By the second of February,
the Rump was desperate enough to send a midnight courier to Saint Albans, begging
Monk to enter the city immediately. A somewhat self satisfied General Monk received the
summons, then went back to sleep he could complete the first phase of his
plan. The following day. On the third of February, Monk led five
thousand, eight hundred men into Westminster. Neither the Rump nor the people of
London, nor for that matter, his own men. Knew his intentions,
but militarily speaking, the General now had a monopoly over both Westminster and London.
Three days later, Monk addressed Parliament. He brushed aside house rats demand
that he formally take his position on the Commission overseeing the military. Although not
explicitly challenging the Rump's authority, Monk would continue to operate independently. Monk also
rejected demands that he swears the new oath of office the Rump had drafted.
Some couldn't help, but note that the oath Monk was refusing included a pledge
to never support the restoration of the stewards Monk explained his refusal in more practical
terms, however, Parliament should stop wasting its time on the endless reworking of
oaths and focus on re establishing peace and stability in England. Monk's performance was
carefully calibrated. He seemed to leave the door open for a restoration of the
monarchy, but studiously avoided contradicting his earlier claims that he would never support one.
He also showed a willingness to defy Rump leaders like Hasselring to their faces,
but remained confident that this wouldn't spark a confrontation. The Rump needed him
to subdue London and everyone knew it. Hasselrig fumed but remained silent. But
just as importantly, Monk had not challenged the Rump's authority. He had merely
offered advice. Whatever happened next would be the Rump's choice, and the Rump's
responsibility, not his. Monk already had his eye on the second phase of
his operation, London. The city provided both opportunities and dangers. Popular sentiment
on the streets of London and in the Common Council was pushing for a free
Parliament, an outcome Monk now regarded as the solution to England's problems. But
whereas some in London may have been willing to achieve that goal through a popular
uprising, Monk was more circumspect. The only way to hold legitimate elections was
for them to be sanctioned by Parliament, even in the rump's current form,
or once the excluded members returned. Monk therefore faced a challenge how to maintain
the confidence of the Rump until a legal dissolution could be secured without alienating the
people of London or his own officers. It was perhaps the most delicate balancing
act of Monk's whole months long operation, and the General didn't have much time
to come up with a solution. Two days after his audience at Westminster,
London's Common Council took its most provocative action yet. In a lengthy session on
the eighth of February, the Council debated whether or not the current Parliament had
the legal authority to collect taxes in the city. This, of course,
was a direct challenge to the Rump's authority, but it also posed a serious
threat in immediate practical terms without financial support from London in the form of taxes
or loans. The National government could not long survive. The conflict between Westminster
and London had reached its breaking point. The Rump issued orders to General Monk
march into London, arrests the leaders of the Brewing Insurrection, dissolved the Common
Council, and destroy the gates and other fortifications that any future rebels might use
to defend the city. These directives put Monk in an awkward position. If
he carried them out, he'd have difficulty winning the support of London in any
future settlement. What's more, even if he bowed to Parliament's demands, many
of his men might not. They had not marched all this way just to
be the goon squad for an unrepresentative Rump, as it suppressed a popular movement
calling for free parliaments. But if Monk refused, it had most likely set
off a confrontation with the Rump that he wasn't yet prepared for. In fact,
Hasserig may have deliberately constructed the orders as a kind of test, was
Monk with them or against them, pulled in multiple directions at once. Monk's
response was typically opaque. Monk did marches men into London, that day and
arrested nine of the eleven men the Rump had identified as ringleaders. When Hasselric
heard the news, he celebrated, proclaiming all is our own. He will
be honest. But as the day dragged on, it became clear that Monk
had only partially completed his mission. Despite the arrests, he did not dissolve
the Common Council, nor did he destroy London's defensive capabilities, as Parliament had
demanded. The next day, the tenth of February, Hassig's joy turned to
fury. Monk hadn't passed the test after all. The Rump began drawing up
a new test for the General. Westminster demanded the Monk recognized Parliament's seven man
Army Commission, in effect surrendering the de facto control of the Army that the
General currently enjoyed. Monk himself was one of the seven men on the commission,
but there was little doubt that true power would lie with Hasselrig. As
if to prove that point, Hasseig opposed all attempts to entice Monk with softer
terms, an amendment that made Monk's presence on commission meetings a necessity for a
quorum to be reached was rejected, the general would get no special favors.
While the Rump prepared its loyalty tests, Monk conferred with his officers. Several
expressed their discomfort with the work they've been asked to do in London. Some
even threatened to resign if Monk continued to follow such orders from the Rump.
Whatever Monk's original timetable, if he had one, the pressure from his officers
forced him to move immediately. The following morning, the eleventh, he assembled
his officers and showed them a letter to Parliament he had drafted overnight. It
denounced the use of the army to suppress the people of London, naming it
a grievance. Then came the real bombshell. Monk's letters set an ultimatum before
the Rump either dissolve itself an issue writs for free elections by the seventeenth of
February, six days away, or else it was the point of no return
everyone had been waiting for. Monk traveled to Guildhall and before a packed Common
Council declared that he and his men were standing with the city. One way
or another, there would be free elections soon the celebrations began almost immediately.
Not since Prince Charles returned from Madrid in sixteen twenty three had the city seeing
such an outpouring of joy and relief. For months, the concept of free
elections had taken on any kind of magical property, the ability to resolve all
of England's problems, and now finally someone with the power to make it happen
was actually doing something. In one day, Monks secured for himself the support
of both London and his officers. He even succeeded in his other goal of
tempering the enthusiasm of diehard Royalists. While all this was going on, Edward
Massey was in Bristol trying to turn the free Parliament movement there into an avowidly
Royalist insurrection. He was having some success, too, building on the frustration
many felt that the lack of progress towards their goal, But when news of
Monk's ultimatum reached Bristol, Massey's campaign fell apart. The grievances he had been
exploiting simply disappeared overnight. The mood in the city changed from frustration to optimism.
Under Monk's watchful eye. Parliament might fix itself. There was no longer
any need to resort to the violent insurrection. Royalist agents like Edward Massey called
for. The only ingredient in Monk's rest that remained uncertain was Parliament itself.
How would Westminster react to his ultimatum? Perhaps predictably, Arthur Hasselrig ignored the
General's demands. He had stood up to Oliver Cromwell without compromising on his principles.
He wasn't about to bow to George Monk. There were signs of wavering
elsewhere in Parliament, though, While officially ignoring Monk's ultimatum, the rump quietly
began discussing its dissolution and fresh elections, but this by no means meant the
Rump was caving. Westminster did turn to the issue of elections, however,
the free part of the equation was noticeably absent from debate. The writs they
drafted laid out a narrowly restricted electorate. Those barred from voting included anyone whose
land had been sequestered by the state and their sons, as well as anyone
who had advocated for a single Chief magistrate since sixteen forty eight or refused the
various oathes of office Parliament had produced. These terms not only disenfranchised Royalists or
even suspected Royalists, but they could also be applied to Cromwellians who had argued
for the Lord Protector as a kind of chief magistrate. Meanwhile, Monk himself
had recently refused to take the Rump's new oath of office, a fact that
was not lost on either him or the men drawing up the rents. The
Rump might be speeding up its timetable for elections, but it was not even
bothering to meet Monk halfway. This had the potential to upset Monk's game plan.
Free elections imposed at gunpoint by an army was not the legal path to
stability. Monk hadn't mind. Luckily, the General had one more card to
play. You may recall that earlier I said Monk required the aid of four
distinct groups to pull off his plan. So far, he had succeeded in
winning over three of them, his officers London and the Royalists, who were
now willing to take their chances in free elections rather than risk another insurrection.
The final group were the MPs, who had been excluded by the purge of
sixteen forty eight. They were the secret ingredient capable of overcoming the likes of
Hasselag in the rump. In a sense, Monk reversed the role the army
had played in sixteen forty eight. Back then, these soldiers had used their
power to execute an illegal purge of the nation's representatives. Now, just over
eleven years later, the army would be used to enforce the return of those
MPs to the seats that were theirs by legal right. In the days after
Monk issued his ultimatum, he barely paid any attention at all to the Rump.
Their resistance was thoroughly predictable, and Monk had no intention of compromising or
haggling with him. Instead, the General arraigned several meetings with the excluded members
even before the deadline of the seventeenth of February. Monk's goal was to ensure
that the men who had been purged in sixteen forty eight, mostly Presbyterians,
followed his script once they were restored. Monk was aware that many of them
had been working towards a treaty with the late Charles the First when they were
purged. In fact, that was part of the reason for the purge in
the first place. He also knew that more recently a group of Presbyterians had
been in contact with the exiled king and had even been involved in the uprisings
of the previous year. Monk warned the excluded members that he would not reinstate
them just so they could complete that work and restore the Stuart Marchie. He
wasn't denying the possibility of a restoration, but it could only come after fresh
elections. The job of the excluded members was simple. They were there to
march into Westminster and do what the rump had repeatedly refused to do, dissolved
the long Parliament and call for new elections unfettered by partisan restrictions. On the
morning of the twenty first of February, four days after the deadline had passed,
Monk gathered seventy three of the excluded members at Whitehall. He reminded them
of their responsibility to England. They were to take their seats and vote to
dissolve the session as quickly as possible. Monk even provided them with a date
for the new parliament to open, the twentieth of April, two months away.
When the assembled members agreed, Monk escorted them on a brisk walk to
the Palace of Westminster. There they surprised and outnumbered the rumpmen. True to
form, the excluded members wasted no time using their majority to reshape the government.
A new Council of State was elected, from which Rumper leaders like Arthur
Hassig were excluded. Stepping in as President of the new Council was Arthur Annesley,
the son of Lord mount Norris, the new English administrator who Thomas Wentworth
had one sentenced to be executed, and himself an MP who had been purged
in sixteen forty eight. Annesley's view of politics and the current crisis closely aligned
with Monks, likely the reason he was selected. The newly revitalized Parliament also
set about reorganizing England's military hierarchy. Monk was named both Commander in Chief of
the Land Forces and General at Sea, a rank he had once held during
the Dutch warm Monks shared overall command of the navy with Edward Montagu, no
friend of the Rump and a man we've already seen in contact with the exiled
Royalist camp. Parliament also issued new commissions to reliable men in the provinces to
secure control over the county militias. Generally, these appointments favored the traditional county
elite over Republican ideal lucks. The most obvious indication of the change came in
Cheshire, where one of the militia commissions was given to George Booth, the
man who had led an uprising against the state less than a year earlier.
Now free from his incarceration in the Tower of London, Booth helped prepare his
home county for elections, which was the culmination of all this state consolidation by
the previously excluded now included members. Free elections, which had been on the
lips of men and women through England for almost a year, were finally a
reality. Ritz went out for a new session to gather in April. The
news spark celebrations even greater than the ones that greeted monks speech at Guildhall less
than two weeks earlier. Samuel Peeps, who began recording a diary that January,
noted that the boys in London streets stopped saying kiss my ars and replaced
the phrase with kiss my Parliament, a cheeky reference to the demise of the
Rump. Although I've framed the events of this episode as a kind of master
plan engineered by George Monk, its important highlight the popular reaction the fall of
the rump and the promise of a free parliament produced. Monk harnessed the spirit
of the moment, but his options were also constrained by it. The decision
he made that England's future lay with a free parliament and most likely a restored
monarchy, was motivated by his recognition that it was the only acceptable outcome for
an increasing number of men and women. That dynamic of Monk harnessing popular enthusiasm
but also being restrained by it, only became more obvious in these celebrations of
February and March, because while the free Parliament movement had proved tremendously effective in
uniting a broad spectrum from London apprentices to exiled royalist aristocrats, the time was
fast approaching when the concept of a free parliament would have to move from abstract
ideal to a body of men tasked with producing a grand constitutional settlement. Next
night, we begin that process.