The next Parliament was not only angry, it was defiant and unscrupulous.  It resolved on revolution, and determined to put the King himself aside.  It began with vigorous measures, and impeached both Laud and Strafford,—­doubtless very able men, but not fitted for their times.  It decreed sweeping changes, usurped the executive authority, appealed to arms, and made war on the government.  The King also on his part appealed to the sword, which now alone could settle the difficulties.  The contest was inevitable.  The nation clamored for reform; the King would not grant it; the Parliament would not wait to secure it constitutionally.  Both parties were angry and resolute; reason departed from the councils of the nation; passion now ruled, and civil war began.  It was not, at first, a question about the form of government,—­whether a king or an elected ruler should bear sway; it was purely a question of reforms in the existing government, limiting of course the power of the King,—­but reforms deemed so vital to the welfare of the nation that the best people were willing to shed their blood to secure them; and if reason and moderation could have borne sway, that angry strife might have been averted.  But people will not listen to reason in times of maddening revolution; they prefer to fight, and run their chances and incur the penalty.  And when contending parties appeal to the sword, then all ordinary rules are set aside, and success belongs to the stronger, and the victors exact what they please.  The rules of all deadly and desperate warfare seem to recognize this.

The fortune of war put the King into the hands of the revolutionists; and in fear, more than in vengeance, they executed him,—­just what he would have done to their leaders if he had won.  “Stone-dead,” said Falkland, “hath no fellow.”  In a national conflagration we lose sight of laws, even of written constitutions.  Great necessities compel extraordinary measures, not such as are sustained either by reason or precedents.  The great lesson of war, especially of civil war, is, that contending parties might better make great concessions than resort to it, for it is certain to demoralize a nation.  Heated partisans hate compromise; yet war itself generally ends in compromise.  It is interesting to see how many constitutions, how many institutions in both Church and State, are based on compromise.

Now, it was amid all the fierce contentions of that revolutionary age,—­an age of intense earnestness, when the grandest truths were agitated; an age of experiment, of bold discussions, of wild fanaticisms, of bitter hatreds, of unconquerable prejudices, yet of great loftiness and spiritual power,—­that the star of Oliver Cromwell arose.  He was born in the year 1599, of a good family.  He was a country squire, a gentleman farmer, though not much given to fox-hunting or dinner hilarities, preferring to read political pamphlets, or to listen to long sermons,