Previous chapter | Next chapter | Socialism: Index | Works | William Morris Archive
PREPARATIONS FOR REVOLUTION—ENGLAND
WE must here say a few words about the meaning of the great struggle which took place in England between the King and the Parliament. The King, Charles I., aimed at completing the monarchical absolutism begun by the Tudors, while at the same time his course was clearer to him, because the old feud between nobles and King had quite died out, and, as before said, the nobles, from being powerful and often refractory feudal vassals, had become mere courtiers whose aims and interest were identified with those of the monarch. On the other side stood the bourgeoisie, who had thriven 115 enormously on the growing commerce, were becoming powerful, and aiming not merely at social and economical freedom, but also at supremacy in the State. To the bourgeoisie also adhered the yeomen and the major part of the country squires, to which group Cromwell himself belonged.
The struggle began on the Parliamentary side with the assertion of the rights of Parliament, and the profession of an almost pedantic devotion to the quasi-historical constitution, which was, nevertheless, in the main a figment of the period. Perhaps the most constitutional act of the rebels was the trial of the King for his life, one precedent, at least, for which existed in the condemnation of Edward II. But as the Parliamentary struggle gave place to civil war, and it became clear that the rebels would be worsted unless the bourgeoisie were given the leading part, this sham-historical constitutionalism gave place first to republicanism, with an infusion of theocracy, and finally to the dictatorship of the victorious