Even in the army
sprang up the Levellers, who wished to abolish monarchy and aristocracy,
and to level all ranks to one. To each religious party, there was a
political character, ranging from High Church and the divine right of
kings, to absolute levellers in Church and State. This disintegrating
process threatened not only civil war, with well-defined parties, but
entire anarchy in the realm of England. It was long resisted by the
conservative men of all opinions. At length the issue came: the king was a
prisoner, without a shadow of power.
The parliament was still firm, and would have treated with the king by a
considerable majority; but Colonel Pride surrounded it with two regiments,
excluded more than two hundred of the Presbyterians and moderate men; and
the parliament, thus _purged_, appointed the High Court of Justice to try
the king for treason.
Charles I. fell before the storm. His was a losing cause from the day he
erected his standard at Nottingham, in 1642, to that on which, after his
noble bearing on the scaffold, the masked executioner held up his head and
cried out, "This is the head of a traitor.
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