Parliamentary party consisted of two factions, the Presbyterians and the Independents; the
Presbyterians desired to preserve a State Church, but to abolish bishops; the Independents agreed
with them about bishops, but held that each congregation should be free to choose its own
theology, without the interference of any central ecclesiastical government. The Presbyterians, in
the main, were of a higher social class than the Independents, and their political opinions were
more moderate. They wished to come to terms with the king as soon as defeat had made him
conciliatory. Their policy, however, was rendered impossible by two circumstances: first, the king
developed a martyr's stubbornness about bishops; second, the defeat of the king proved difficult,
and was only achieved by Cromwell's New Model Army, which consisted of Independents.
Consequently, when the king's military resistance was broken, he could still not be induced to
make a treaty, and the Presbyterians had lost the preponderance of armed force in the
Parliamentary armies. The defence of democracy had thrown power into the hands of a minority,
and it used its power with a complete disregard for democracy and parliamentary government.
When Charles I had attempted to arrest the five members, there had been a universal outcry, and
his failure had made him ridiculous. But Cromwell had no such difficulties. By Pride's Purge, he
dismissed about a hundred Presbyterian members, and obtained for a time a subservient majority.
When, finally, he decided to dismiss Parliament altogether, "not a dog barked"--war had made
only military force seem important, and had produced a contempt for constitutional forms. For the
rest of Cromwell's life, the government of England was a military tyranny, hated by an increasing
majority of the nation, but impossible to shake off while his partisans alone were armed.
Charles II, after hiding in oak trees and living as a refugee in Holland, determined, at the
Restoration, that he would not again set out on his travels. This imposed a certain moderation. He
claimed no power to impose taxes not sanctioned by Parliament. He assented to the Habeas
Corpus Act, which deprived the Crown of the power of arbitrary arrest. On occasion he could
flout the fiscal power of Parliament by means of subsidies from Louis XIV, but in the main he
was a constitutional monarch. Most of the limitations of royal power originally desired by the
opponents of Charles I were conceded