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Article: After 350 years, we should sort out the Lords - again
- Article from:
- The Independent (London, England)
- Article date:
- January 29, 1999
- Author:
CopyrightCopyright 1999 The Independent - London. Provided by ProQuest LLC. (Hide copyright information)
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THREE HUNDRED and fifty years ago this week, on 30 January 1649,
Charles I was executed outside the Banqueting House in Whitehall.
There was little jubilation among those present, rather a feeling
that such unpleasantness could have been avoided if the King had been
less intransigent when confronted with a genuinely reformist
parliament. Six weeks later the House of Lords was abolished by a
majority vote in the Commons.
Rather than resolving the problem of who ran the country, the
events of 1649 sparked a furious debate at all levels as to how the
new constitution should operate. From the Diggers, who took
Cromwell's idea of a "commonwealth" at face value, to the Lords
themselves, who ...