Part 78

At the request of Parliament, the King had all justices serve during their good behavior instead of serving at the King's will, which had been the practice for ages. This increased the independence of the judiciary.

The rack was used for the last time in 1640 before the Long Parliament met. It was used to torture a rioter before hanging.

Men were still pressed to death for failure to plead, pickpockets still executed for the first offence, and husband murderers still burned.

- - - Chapter 16 - - -

- The Times: 1642-1660 -

For four years, there was civil war between the King, backed generally by the upper class, the established church, and most of the gentry, against the Parliamentarians, backed generally by middle class yeomen, town dwellers, some of the gentry, most of the great corporations, the City of London, the ports, the seamen, and the Navy. Oxford University was royalist, and Cambridge University was Puritan in sympathy. Archery was not used, having become just sport by 1633. Flint-lock pistols, which relied on flint striking steel to ignite the powder, as well as swords were used by horsemen in the civil war. Footmen were musketeers using a match lock with a cord boiled in vinegar as the match and dressed in leather doublets and an iron-pot headpiece, or pikemen with long wooden poles with spearheads of iron or steel and short swords, and dressed in armor. This was the last time armor was used. The Parliamentarians wore orange scarves to distinguish themselves from their enemy. Cromwell, who had a natural aptitude for military matters, selected for his troops, Puritan zealots with a Puritan code of behavior which included no drinking or swearing. He selected horsemen based on ability rather than social class. He was regarded as one of the leaders of the Independents, who wanted total abolition of the monarchy and of the aristocracy. When made a leader of the New Model Army, Cromwell dressed all his foot men in red with only the facings being regimental colors. The New Model Army had been assembled because there had been disagreement about policy among the members of Parliament who held commissions. Almost all members gave up their commissions. For their continued support, many wives and also prostitutes put on men's clothing and followed the troops. They nursed the wounded. Those many wives who stayed at home pleaded and answered in court; petitioned to the House of Commons, e.g. for release of debtors from prison, high taxes, lack of work, and arbitrary government; and made other public appearances. Puritan and royalist newspapers printed the news at least once weekly. Poet John Milton pled for civil and religious freedom, freedom of social life, and freedom of the press. He stated: "Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely, according to conscience, above all liberties."

The Mayor and citizens of London were given authority in 1642 to fortify all highways leading to the city and levy a tax on inhabitants for this purpose. When London was deprived of coal during the war, trees and flowers again flourished there.

Officers and seamen in navy ships were authorized in 1642 to take one-third of all prize goods captured, the other two-thirds going to the state.

Parliament approved certain persons to set forth ships at their own expense to defend the realm in 1643. They were allowed to keep any ships, goods, ammunition, or moneys they seized.

Saltpeter men were appointed by Parliament in 1643 and later times to search and dig for saltpeter in pigeon houses, stables, and outhouses, but not dwelling, shops, or milkhouses. They had to repair any damage done to the contentment of the owners.

Complaints were made to Parliament that there were scandalous and ill-affected fomenters of the civil war and disobeyers of the ordinaries of Parliament and deserters of their ordinary places of residence. These complaints were made by members of the University of Cambridge, students, clergy in surrounding counties, and schoolmasters. So a committee was established in 1643 to investigate and sequester their lands and goods, excepting one- fifth of the estate for the wife and children.

When Charles was captured in 1646, the episcopacy of the bishops was abolished. When Parliament was about to reinstate Charles as king with weakened powers and establish a Presbyterian state church, the soldiers, who were religious Independents and who still had not been fully paid (the infantry pay was 18 weeks in arrears and the cavalry 43 weeks) despite plans to disband them, spontaneously took the King by force. They demanded liberty of conscience to practice their own religion and their pay. Cromwell sided with the army and then became leader of the House of Commons. Charles dissembled in his negotiations with the army generals. He felt freed from his promises as soon as the pressure was removed. The army could not forgive Charles' duplicity and deceitfulness and insisted upon his death as the only way to bring peace. Cromwell gave up hope on negotiations with Charles when he intercepted a letter by Charles to his Queen decreeing the final doom of the army adherents in favor of the Scottish Presbyterians. During protracted negotiations over months between the army and Parliament over a new constitution, a renewed support for the King, which was inspired by him, necessitated a second civil war to put down this revolt and subdue its Scot supporters. Eventually the army took control of Parliament by force, only allowing the few members who agreed with them on the trial of the King into Parliamentary meetings. So Charles was tried in 1649, found guilty of "an unlimited and tyrannical power to rule according to his will, and to overthrow the rights and liberties of the people ... which by the fundamental constitutions of this kingdom were reserved on the peoples' behalf in the right and power of frequent and successive parliaments or national meetings in council", and maintaining a war against his subjects, which amounted to treason. To prevent his adherents from trying to reinstate him, he was condemned to death and beheaded in January 1649.

Parishes had to give maintenance to maimed soldiers and provision for the livelihood to the wives and children of killed soldiers. Masters of apprentices who became soldiers had to take them back as apprentices without loss for their absence in defense of the Commonwealth. Masters who received considerable loss by the absence of their apprentices received reasonable satisfaction from the public stock.

To pay for the civil war, an assessment tax on the yearly value of rents, annuities, and offices was often levied. The main burden of this tax fell on the gentry rather than the merchants and smaller men of property, as previous taxes had. An excise tax, a tax on consumption, was begun on ale and beer and then extended to meat, salt, starch, soap, and paper. It was gradually extended to many goods. The excise taxes were paid, as was the customs tax, by manufacturers on goods made in England and by foreign manufacturers on goods at the ports.

From 1640-60, Royalists were purged from Oxford and a group of Baconians moved into the university behind Parliamentary armies. At the two universities, books were no longer chained to the bookcases. The universities were freed from taxation.

After the civil wars, Cromwell led the country. He was a military, political, and religious leader. He had become a Puritan zealot after a youth of gambling, drinking, debauchery, and rioting. He believed that military success was a reflection of divine favor and he regarded himself as one the few elect preordained for salvation. Those in power in the new Commonwealth tended to explain their regime in terms of popular consent, and the takeover from Charles I as due to his breaking of a contract with the people.

Most people dressed in Puritan fashion. A Puritan's favorite readings were the Old Testament, Epistles of St. Paul, and Switzerland's John Calvin.

Wealth and prosperity steadily increased in spite of the civil wars. During Cromwell's tenure, there was a marked revival of economic prosperity. By the mid-1600s, landlords had been able to shorten their leases so that a lease of twenty-one years was the predominant form of landholding.

Patent protection was given in 1642 to the inventors of a device for salvaging ships' goods and cannons from the seas for seven years. With it they could convert to their own use one half and items retrieved, the other half going to the Navy and Parliament. Patent protection was given in 1650 to George Manby on his new invention for boiling liquors and making salt with less coal and wood and iron, lead, and copper for fourteen years. Patent protection was given in 1651 to Jeromy Buck for melting iron, lead, tin, copper, brass, and other metals with coal without burning charcoal, for fourteen years.

Dutchman Stevinus showed that the pressure at the bottom of a column of liquid is proportional to the height of the column, and not to its bulk, about 1634. He also studied oblique forces, and the balancing of such that could bring about "stable equilibrium".

Evangelista Torricelli, an Italian student of Galileo, discovered in 1643 that any fluid will be supported at a definite height, according to its relative weight, as compared with air. He realized that a mercury column, 30 inches in height, in a long glass tube inverted in a cup of mercury, was being supported by air pressure exerted on the mercury in the cup. When he observed that this height changed with the weather, he had invented the mercury barometer. His creation of a vacuum, above the mercury in the tube, astonished philosophers, who had thought that nature abhored a vacuum and would prevent it.

Blaise Pascal, a French mathematician, physicist, and religious philosopher, constructed a calculator in 1644 to assist his father, who was involved in local administration, in tax computations. Around 1646, he proved his law that pressure applied to a confined liquid is transmitted undiminished through the liquid in all directions regardless of the area to which the pressure is applied. Around 1653, he laid the foundations for the theory of probabilities, including the creation of "Pascal's Triangle" of coefficients of (a=b) raised to the nth power.

Jean Ray from France concluded from his experiments that every piece of material has a given weight, including air and fire.

The Merchant Adventurers were incorporated again in 1643 to have a monopoly. It was required to admit into membership for 100 pounds anyone free of London and bred as a merchant, and for 50 pounds any non-inhabitant of London. The penalty for trading for one who was not free of the corporation was forfeiture of his goods.

In 1648, the House of Commons abolished the monarchy and in 1649 the House of Lords. Also in 1649 it declared that England "should thenceforth be governed as a commonwealth and free state by the supreme authority of this nation, the representatives of the people in Parliament." It made a new constitution.

John Milton defended the Commonwealth as superior to the monarchy because it could not deteriorate into tyranny in his books: "First Defense of the People of England" in 1651, and "Second Defense" in 1654. He lauded Cromwell as great in war and great in peace, and exemplifying the principle that "nature appoints that wise men should govern fools".

Thomas Hobbes, the son of a clergyman, and tutor to students, wrote "Leviathan" in 1651 on his theory of sovereignty. Hobbes thought that states are formed as the only alternative to anarchy, barbarism, and war, so that supremacy and unity of a sovereign power is essential to a civilized life and the protection of the citizenry. A sovereign may be a man or body of men as long as his or its authority is generally recognized. There must be a social contract among the citizenry to obey a certain sovereign. To avoid religious conflict, there must be a complete subordination of the church to the state and the religion of a state must be dependent upon its secular sovereign. Hobbes thought that knowledge of the world came through experience and not reason alone. Only matter exists, and everything that happens can be predicted in accordance with exact, scientific laws. He regarded human societies as purely mechanical systems set in motion by human desires. He saw self interest as the mainspring of moral law. Conflicting self interests transformed into a lawful system of agreements. Hobbes opined that all power really originated in the people and that the end of all power was for the people's good.

On the other hand, James Harrington, who wrote "The Commonwealth of Oceana" in 1656, opined that a stable society depended on a direct relationship between the distribution of property and political power; no one with property worth more than 2,000 pounds should be allowed to acquire more and property should be divided among children. A senate of mature property owners were to make and debate the laws while an assembly elected by universal suffrage was to vote on them because "a popular assembly without a senate cannot be wise and a senate without a popular assembly will not be honest". A third of the Senate would turn over every year. John Milton defended the execution of the King in "The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates" in which he maintained that the people may "as often as they shall judge it for the best either to choose him or reject him or depose him, though no tyrant, merely by the liberty and right of freeborn men to be governed as seems to the best". He also wrote in favor of liberty of the press. Ordinary speech found its way into prose writing.