THE COMMONWEALTH
the hands of the Commons : a fact which at first they refused to recognize.
Most dictatorships are ushered in by some suitably dramatic demonstration, and this proved no exception. On the conclusion of the successful campaign of 1648, while Parliament was still carrying on futile negotiations with the King, the army decided that they must be made to realize who were now their masters. On the 6th of December a certain Colonel Pride marched down to the House at the head of his regiment and forthwith proceeded to arrest or expel all those members of whom the military disapproved. Pride's Purge, as it was called, may perhaps be regarded as the Reichstag Fire of the Commonwealth. It was immediately followed by the trial and death of the King.
The first task which confronted the new administration was the termination of the Civil War which still continued spasmodically in Ireland and Scotland. In the course of one campaign Cromwell reduced the former country more thoroughly than it had ever been reduced before, and having stamped out the last embers of revolt turned his attention to Scotland, where his arms soon proved equally successful. Having systematically overrun the country as far north as Perth, he returned to England in order to deal with the army of the Prince of Wales which had slipped across the border. At thebatde of Worcester (1651) he completely defeated this last Royalist force and the Civil War was at length at an end.
The chief problem which engaged the attention of