“You have sat too long for any good you have been doing lately. … Depart, I say; and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!” With these words, General Oliver Cromwell ordered the English Parliament, called “the Rump” because it was all that remained after the last legitimate Parliament elected in 1640 had been purged of dissident members, disbanded at the point of the sword.
The English Civil War between those supporting the Stuart dynasty of Charles I and the forces of Parliament had raged from 1642 to 1648. It ended with Parliament seemingly in control but under pressure from the New Model Army that had brought it to power. In December 1648, army officers carried out an expulsion of those members of Parliament it deemed insufficiently hard-line in dealing with the imprisoned King Charles, arresting some and forbidding others to sit. The representative body that remained was dubbed the “Rump Parliament.”
The Rump had been instrumental in reshaping the religious and political landscape of Britain. They had agreed that Charles should be tried for treason (a decision that led to the king’s execution in January 1649). The monarchy itself and the House of Lords had been extinguished and a republic titled the Commonwealth of England had been set up. They had abolished the requirement that all worship must be in an Anglican church, allowing some forms of Protestantism to flourish while cracking down on extremists such as Quakers and Ranters. They mandated a government licence to preach and tried to enforce sexual morality with stiff penalties against adultery or fornication.
“It is high time for me to put an end to your sitting in this place, which you have dishonored by your contempt of all virtue, and defiled by your practice of every vice,” Cromwell said.
“Ye are a factious crew, and enemies to all good government. Ye are a pack of mercenary wretches, and would like Esau sell your country for a mess of pottage, and like Judas betray your God for a few pieces of money. Is there a single virtue now remaining amongst you? Is there one vice you do not possess? Ye have no more religion than my horse. Gold is your God. Which of you have not bartered your conscience for bribes? Is there a man amongst you that has the least care for the good of the Commonwealth?”
He continued: “Ye sordid prostitutes have you not defiled this sacred place, and turned the Lord’s temple into a den of thieves, by your immoral principles and wicked practices? Ye are grown intolerably odious to the whole nation. You were deputed here by the people to get grievances redressed, are yourselves become the greatest grievance. Your country therefore calls upon me to cleanse this Augean stable, by putting a final period to your iniquitous proceedings in this House; and which by God’s help, and the strength he has given me, I am now come to do.
“I command ye therefore, upon the peril of your lives, to depart immediately out of this place. Go, get you out! Make haste! Ye venal slaves be gone! So! Take away that shining bauble there [the Speaker’s Mace], and lock up the doors. In the name of God, go!”
The body that Cromwell appointed to replace the Rump was supposed to be filled only by godly Protestants, nominated by high-ranking officers with the advice of the Puritan clergy. To some, this new Parliament was called “the Assembly of Saints” but more popularly it came to be known as “Barebone’s Parliament” after one of its more famous members, Praise-God-and-Flee-Fornication Barebone (brother of the equally wonderfully named Fear-God Barebone or, according to another source, Rise-Up-and-Tell-the-Glory-of-Emmanuel Barebone or, according to yet another source, Christ-Came-Into-The-World-To-Save-Thee Barebone and Unless-Jesus-Christ-Had-Not-Died-For-Thee-Thou-Hadst-Been-Damned Barebone. The latter was known locally simply as Damned Barebone).
That body would soon be replaced by a governing protectorate with Oliver Cromwell in charge.
