Rump Parliament (England)

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As Rump ( English rump parliament or simply rump ) designated already contemporaries mocking the 1648 from the Long Parliament emerged and by the expulsion of the Presbyterian MPs by Oliver Cromwell reduced British House of Commons .

Emergence

After the victory of the parliamentary troops led by Cromwell in the English Civil War , differences broke out between the members of the Long Parliament, elected in 1640 and still in office, which until then had been masked by the joint fight against King Charles I. Presbyterian MPs negotiated secretly with the defeated king to include him in a new constitutional order. The army, which under Cromwell's leadership had become a force of its own and found strong support in Parliament, spoke out against it.

After his own failed negotiations, Cromwell was already convinced at this point that the king would never deviate from his absolutist ideas of divine grace and that he would revoke concessions to Parliament at the earliest opportunity. He saw the only solution to the constitutional crisis in the execution of the king and the establishment of a republic in order to deprive the royalist and legitimist aspirations of any basis and to avoid another civil war.

When the Presbyterian MPs opposed this, Cromwell had them forcibly evicted from the House of Commons in December 1648. The coup-like operation, known as "purification", was commanded by Army Colonel Thomas Pride and went down in history as Pride's Purge . Cromwell committed the same breach of the constitution with her as the king had committed almost seven years earlier in response to the passing of the Great Remonstrance and which had triggered the civil war.

The resulting rump parliament sentenced Charles I to death in January 1649 for high treason . Already on January 4th, before the execution of the king on January 30th, the rump parliament declared itself to be the bearer of the highest state authority, which could pass laws without the consent of the king or the upper house . On May 19, 1649, Parliament officially proclaimed the republic, henceforth called the Commonwealth of England .

resolution

Although the rump parliament consisted almost entirely of supporters of Cromwell, it subsequently rejected his plans to reorganize the state. In particular, it failed to draft a constitution that would give the new republican order a legal basis. After much hesitation, Cromwell finally called on it to dissolve and pave the way for new elections.

The dissolution of parliament had previously been a right of the king. After his execution, the only legal option that remained was self-dissolution. When the MPs refused to take this route, however, Cromwell appeared on April 20, 1653 with 30 armed men in the rump parliament, which had now shrunk to 100 members, and ordered the MPs to part.

On this occasion he is said to have said a sentence which Winston Churchill made in 1939 to supporters of Arthur Neville Chamberlain's policy of appeasement :

“You have sat here long enough for the little that you have done well. In the name of God, lift yourselves! "

Recall

After the dissolution of the rump parliament, Cromwell tried to develop a workable constitution with the help of the so-called Parliament of the Saints , whose members had been selected by him and the Council of the Army. But this attempt, like all the following, failed, so that Cromwell finally reigned under the title of Lord Protector as a military dictator .

After Cromwell's death, his son Richard proved to be an incompetent successor. The leading politicians and the military of the republic therefore saw the restoration of the monarchy as the only salvation from a new civil war. For this purpose, it was necessary to build on the earlier legitimacy , the only bearers of which remained in the country were the members of the rump parliament. Because they were elected in 1640 on the basis of the last call for tenders issued by Charles I in accordance with the constitution. The rump was called together again in 1660 and finally supplemented by the Presbyterians expelled in 1648. This restored the Long Parliament from 1640. This called on the son of the executed king, who lived in Holland, to return to England. As Charles II, he ascended the English throne in the same year, putting a brief end to the short republican period in the history of England . Only 28 years later the parliamentary monarchy was bloodlessly restored during the "Glorious Revolution".

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