was called the Self-denying Ordinance, which forbade any member of Parliament to be also an officer in the army. As the chief Presbyterian generals were also members of Parliament, this made them give up their posts in the army. Cromwell was also a member of Parliament, but he was such a good general that he was allowed to remain as an officer. A new set of officers were appointed. The General was to be Fairfax, and the Lieutenant-General Cromwell. The army after this change was called the New Model.

10. End of the First Civil War and the Negotiations with the King. The New Model met the king in 1645 at Naseby, and defeated him utterly. The next year his condition was hopeless. He rode off to the Scots and surrendered himself to them. They wanted him to set up a Presbyterian church government in England. As he would not do this they gave him up to the English Parliament, which lodged him at Holmby House in Northamptonshire. He had not been long there when the English army quarrelled with the Parliament. The Presbyterians in Parliament wanted to send the soldiers home without paying them. The soldiers said that they would not go home without being paid, and they also said. that they had fought for their religion, and that they would remain armed till they were sure that they would be allowed to worship as they thought right. They marched to London and turned some of the leading Presbyterians out of Parliament. The army was now master of England. Before this it had taken possession of the king, and had lodged him at Hampton Court. The officers offered to allow the worship of the

Church of England to be set up again, provided that no one was compelled to attend it who did not wish to do so, and that full religious liberty was granted to all Protestants. Charles would not hear of this, and soon afterwards he escaped to the Isle of Wight.

11. The Second Civil War and the Execution of Charles I. Charles was not allowed to remain at large. He was lodged in Carisbrook Castle, near Newport. Persons were sent by the Parliament to negotiate with him. While Charles was arguing with

them in a friendly way, he was preparing for a second civil war. In the spring there was an insurrection in his favour in Wales, in Kent, and in Essex. A Scotch army, this time taking his part, invaded the north of England. Charles himself tried to escape from Carisbrook by getting out of a barred window at night, but he found that the bars were too close for him to slip the whole of his body through, and after this he was more closely watched than he had been before. Fairfax put down the insurrection in Kent and Essex. Cromwell put it down in Wales and then marched northwards and caught the Scots at Preston, where he defeated them entirely. The soldiers came back from their victory with anger in their hearts against Charles. They felt that he had tricked them by raising war against them at a time when words of peace were in his mouth. They resolved to bring him to trial. To do this they wanted to find a court to sit in judgment on him. None of the judges would do anything of the kind. Parliament would not make a new court. The soldiers turned out about ninety members of the House of Commons, and those who were left did as they wished and voted that there should be a High Court of Justice to try the king. The House of Lords refused to have anything to do with the matter, and they were turned out too. When Charles was summoned before the new court he refused to answer. He said that it had no right to try him. He was nevertheless condemned to death, and his head was cut off on a scaffold outside the windows of his own palace at Whitehall.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

THE COMMONWEALTH AND THE

PROTECTORATE.

(1649-1660.)

1. The Commonwealth.

The Government of England was now to be a Commonwealth; that is to say, there was to be no king. The country was to be ruled by a Council of State chosen year by year by the body called the Parliament. In this Parliament, however, there was no House of Lords, and the House of Commons consisted of little more than a hundred members who had remained sitting, whilst the rest had either left Westminster to fight for the king in the course of the war, or had been turned out at different times by the soldiers.

2. Cromwell in Ireland. In the first year of the Commonwealth Cromwell was sent to Ireland. Ever since the rebellion in Ulster, eight years before, Ireland had been full of bloodshed. Cromwell came to restore peace. There was a brutal slaughter by his orders of the defenders of Drogheda, and another brutal slaughter, not by his orders, of the defenders of Wexford. Others carried on the work which he had begun. The lands of Irishmen were given over to English and Scottish settlers, and thousands of Irish were driven away from their homes to live as well as they could in the desolate regions of Connaught. There was peace in Ireland, but peace

which was produced by mere conquest without justice was not likely to last long.

3. The War with Scotland. The next year Cromwell had to lead his army to Scotland. The Scots were shocked at the execution of the late king, and they sent for his son, whom they crowned as Charles II. Cromwell was shut up at Dunbar between the sea and the hills on which the Scottish army lay. He could not fight and he could not get away. One day the Scottish army came down towards him. Early the next morning he fell upon it. 'Let God arise, let his enemies be scattered,' he cried as his troopers, never conquered yet, plunged into the ranks of their enemies. The Scots turned and fled, and the victory was won. Cromwell gained Edinburgh, but he did not gain all Scotland. In the next year, 1651, a Scottish army, taking young Charles with them, slipped past him and invaded England. They marched steadily southwards, calling on the English Royalists to join them. Cromwell was at their heels, and he caught them at Worcester, where he scattered them to the winds. 'The dimensions of this mercy,' he wrote,' are above my thoughts. It is, for aught I know, a crowning mercy.' Cromwell was right. As long as he lived, neither Scots nor Royalists ever lifted up their heads again in England. The young king escaped to the Continent. At one time he hid himself in an oak whilst Cromwell's troopers were riding underneath.

4. Expulsion of the Long Parliament.-The few members who called themselves a Parliament did not govern England well. They were fond of giving