On the abolition of the nama•chy, the position of the Commonwealth was extremely perilous. It was torn asunder by partisan strife, and it was without a friend in Europe. Scotland. alienated by the execution of the King and hostile to the dominant Independent and military party, pro claimed Charles 11. King, not only of Scotland, lint of England and Ireland as well. Ireland de manded immediate attention, for the Second Civil War had its counterpart there, and a coalition of the various parties had all but driven the Parlia mentary forces out of the island. entill well accepted the command of the fortes destined for its reconquest on March 10, 1649, and landed at Dublin, August 13, with three regiments. At Drogheda, 'being in the heat of action,' he ordered the famous massacre of the garrison of 2S00 1111`11, •hiell had refused to capitulate (September). This was in accordance with the strict rules of war of the time, though it had not keen put into practice in England. Cromwell explained that it was a just punishment for the outrages of 1641, which he looked upon as entirely wanton and without provocation. The immediate inilitary effect of the massacre was advantageous, since for a tune town after town surrendered with little resistance, but its unfortunate political tdrect lasts until the present day. At. Wexford there was another massacre, though not by Cromwell's order. In May, 1650, the resistance was so nearly broken that C'roinwell left the completion of the conquest to his successors, Ireton and Ludlow, and hastened back to confront the danger from the side of Scotland. He swept away with impa tience Eairfax's legal objection that the Scots had a right to choose their own King. for lie saw clearly that England must either coerce the Scots or he coerced by them. lie defeated one Scotch army at Dunbar, Sep tember 3, 1650, and another, commanded by Charles II. iu person, exactly 'tile year later at Worcester. While he hail to be on his guard from this time forth against plots and uprisings, Worcester marks the end of armed re.sistanee to his rule. He brought Scotland and Ireland for the Protestant part of Ireland) into legislative union with England, the first union of the three kingdoms, and gave them free trade and a Letter administration of justice, but the taxes to support the English garrisons were heavy. In addition, Ireland groaned under the attempt to transplant her Catholic. population. or, as the plan was after wards modified, her Catholic land-owmers, to the wilds of Connaught in order to make way for English settlers. Cromwell's treatment of Ire land was pitifully harsh, but it was caused prin cipally by his complete ignorance of Irish affairs, though his ignorance was not greater than that of his countrymen.
The problem which now confronted the leaders of the Commonwealth was the substitution of a permanent constitutional government in the place of the provisional Rump, The withdrawal of the Cavalier party on the outbreak of the Civil War, and the expulsion of the Presbyterian members in the l'ride's Purge, had left only sixty or seventy members in habitual attendance in Parliament, whose power depended solely upon the support of the victorious army. Not only had they made themselves very unpopular by their harsh 1111'11.111VS, but they refused to give way to a newly elected and more truly representative Parliament which the army desired, unless they were made members of the new Parliament without election, and clothed with power to exclude undesirable new members. especially those of royalist sympathies. In the course of the prolonged dispute, they were guilty of what Cromwell considered a breach of good faith, whereupon he angrily dissolved them on April 20, 1651, to the great satisfaction of the English notion. According to Cromwell's view. the army was the only constitutional authority left standing, and as the head of the army, he and his officers constituted the Nominated or Bare bones Parliament (q.v.) of 149 members (of whom five represented Scotland; and six Ireland) , who had been nominated for the purpose by the Con gregational churches. This Parliament soon showed such a readiness to adopt radical and im possible measures, and was so torn asunder by party strife, that when the Moderates rose, early on the morning of December 12, 1653, and voted its dissolution, Cromwell was greatly relieved, though he had no previous knowledge of the con spiracy. The officers thereupon adopted a written
Constitution, called the Instrument of Govern ment (q.v.), which is of great interest from the point of view of institutional history, under which Cromwell, on December 10. assumed the title of Protector. An elected Parliament of one House was provided for, whose powers were de fined by the Instrument. The first Parliament which met under its provisithis, on September 3, 1054, is of great importance to a correct under standing of the Protector's treatment of his Par liaments. He invited a revision of the instru ment, but in the debates on it the Parliament showed signs of making itself perpetual, of taking away liberty of conscience, and of reducing both the army and the Protector to its exclusive con trol, thus breaking down the balance of power between the Protector and Parliament which the Instrument had sought to establish. Cromwell interfered by force and excluded from the House all who refused to sign an agreement not to alter the instrument in these 'four fundamentals.' This incident is crucial in the appreciation of Cromwell's Parliamentary difficulty. It should be remembered that he was never, like Pym and Hampden, a champion of Parliamentary institu tions as such, but rather of Puritanism. He op posed the King. not because he believed in the rights of the majority, a conception foreign to his point of view, but because he was opposed to the Laudian ecclesiastical system. There is therefore nothing inconsistent in his opposing a Parliament which was trying to make itself supreme, or which was endangering religious tol eration and the highest interests of Puritanism. Furthermore, his demands were moderate, for, says Mr. Gardiner. "his four fundamentals have been accepted by the Nation and are at this day as firmly rooted in its conscience as Parliamen tary supremacy itself." The problem was in soluble in his day, for the reason that there was no nation standing back of both Protector and Parliament to which appeals might be made, partly because the nation was disaffected, and partly because it was not sufficiently educated in political thought. Cromwell dissolved the Parliament without coming to an agreement with it, and without receiving the necessary supplies. In the year following, l'enruddock's rising drove the Protector to acts as illegal as any of which Charles 1. had been guilty. He divided England into ten military districts, over which he placed major-generals, with extensive police powers baeked by military force, the estates of royalists being taxed by his own arbitary power to support the scheme. It was a success as a police meas ure, but the nation groaned when Cromwell used this method to enforce a stricter standard of Puritan morality than the people were ready to accept. The foreign wars made new supplies necessary, and in 1656 the Protector called his last Parliament, from which his council first ex cluded one hundred undesirable members. Upon the discovery of a plot against the Protector's life. Pa rliantent drew up a new Constitution called the Humble Petition and Advice, pro riding for an Upper House and offering Crom well the title of King. Cromwell hesitated for some weeks, but finding the title unpopular kith the army, he at last declined. it. The Petition and Advice was then passed with the title Pro tector substituted for that of King, and was adopted in place of the Instrument of Govern ment. Upon the second session of the Parlia ment in January, 11;58, it was found that the promotion of Cromwell's supporters to the House had given the republicans a majority in the Lower House. They not only insisted upon revising the Constitution anew, but were form ing conspiracies of a dangerous sort, whereupon Cromwell dissolved them. February 4. He had failed to transform the military into a civil State.