The daily morning journal and courier. [volume] (New Haven, Conn.) 1894-1907, 1903-02-02

DOgmatie RuIe-EXeeatiOn of Charles
I-CoIoneI DixweiI least known of
RegIcides.
At United church last evening a very in
terestiug historical paper was read by
Leonard f. COgswell under the auspices OF
the Mems club. 1t treated of the Puritan
movement in England. Mr. COgswell In
part said:
. We are ant to make serious mistake
Ft garding puritanism. We lose the true
perspective. We think of it as a purely re-
ligiOus movement. As a matter of fact, the
religious feature was incidental. 1t was
financial oppression that gave birth TO tDe
Puritan party. Puritanism was first Of all
ii protest against Illegal taxation, the I'M
posing of illegal fines, the arbitrary levy
ing of ship money" the false imprlsOn-
meRt of men without due process OF law,
and the cOnfiscatiOn of their estates; gen
eral and high-handed disregard for the
! rights of the people.
PuritaniSm, if | am right in my interpre-
! tation--that for which the Puritan party in
England stoOd-was very simple thing, a
protest against irresponsible and dogmatic
rule, as typifed in the person of Charles
the First-in favor of the common inherent
rights. of man. Religion was factor, and
an important one; for with all the other
abuses with which England was cursed,
came theological dOgmatiSm.
OF the execution of Charles the First the
speaker said:
Few deliberate acts have so startled the
civilized world. Few events in history have
been fraught with such mightinesS of
power. Behind it lay the divine right Of
kings, with all its folly, and its wickedncss.
Beyond lay the development Of the princl-
pie that the people are the source of pOltl-
cal power, the great principle for which the
PuritanS cOntended.
The wisdom of this act we are not called
upon to discuss. We sometimes think it
needless, uncalled for, even ood-thirsty;
move neither polite nor expedient; the
supreme act of Puritanism overlapping It.
self, and forgetting its high ideals in Its
brutal fury. Head and shoulders above his
fellows in this movement stood Oliver
Cromwell hard, austere, relentless, grimly
religious, archetype of the seventeenth cen
tury Puritan, stalwart product of the
conditions out Of which he grew. Hamp-
den, Pym and Elliot embodied the tr!ee
spirit of Puritanism; Cromwsll, the spirit
plus force. Aggressive, strong. dominant,
unlovely-the incarnation of executive force
he was the one man In all England to do
the work that lay ahead. But he must he
adJudged by seventeenth century standards
and conditions Those days in England
We're not the days and times of brothery
love, but of the mailed hand and the iron
heel.
Mr.. Cogswell had this to say of John
DiXwell. the least known of the regicides:
Colonel DiXwell lived to be nearly eighty
two years old. Just before his death, he re-
queSted that no monument be erected to
his memory which should reveal his name,
''lest his enemies might dishonor his
ashes. Accordingly, a plain stone was
placed at the head of his grave, bearing
simply the letters u. D., Esq.," and Civ
ing his age and the date of his death.
About one hundred and sixty years later,
one of his Boston descendants moved the
remains to their present resting place, and
erected monument over them, all danger
of moeStation being passed.
OF the thoughts of DiXWell's last hours,
we know nothing Whether he was haunt
ed by the CHASTITY spectre of a headess
king, whose death warrant he had signed;
or whether he was tranquil in the satisfac-
tion Of duty we'll done. he never made
known. But he always prOfessed to believe
that England would soon be rid of kings
forever, and he would be allowed to die in
his native land.
Thousands of people, every year. pause
before the little gray headstone, and the
more imposing block Of marble on New. Ha-
ven Green. The story they read tharp9ii Ris
romantic. 1t tells of riches and sh6nors and
spoai Of country rent with
civil war, of the killing of a king by his
people. 1t tells of sudden flight to escape
an 'gnominious death, of long years of exile
and Obscurity among strangers, and quiet
, sleep of two centuries in a foreign church.
yard. But It tells more than all this 1t
tells of high ideals which have developed
out of the shock of arms, and the harsh
bitterness Of theological strife-that charity
and liberation, which. in our own day,
make possible the ultimate brotherhood of