Assess the validity of the view that the Rump and Barebones parliaments had no real achievements to their credit.

Have a little read: ... Assess the validity of the view that the Rump and Barebones parliaments had no real achievements to their credit. The Rump parliament was created when Colonel Pride had carried out his purge of the Long Parliament in December 1648 on the orders of the General Council of the Army. Two hundred and eleven MPs from the Long Parliament survived but the plain fact existed that "the Rump existed as the result of a military purge .....(And) what it can do, it can undo" (Lynch). This meant that the Rump hinged on the army, as shown when in the summer of 1649 a vote on whether to introduce the controversial Presbyterianism was "in the face of a hostile army scrapped"(Hutton) by one vote. This concept had obvious effects on the rule of the Rump and its strength, which I shall investigate later. However, the very idea that the army, on the 20th 1653, "destroyed the Rump for not having served its purpose" (Hutton), portrays that if even its creators were upset at its lack of success then it could be easily argued that it failed to provide any real achievements. A declaration from the Council of the Army illustrates this idea: "The Rump would never answer those ends which God, his people and the whole nation expected from them." What is not in doubt is that the Rump marked the first Commonwealth in British history. On January 4th 1649 the Rump declared that "the people" were sovereign. Charles I was executed (8-30 January 1649) and on the 7th of February the Rump voted to abolish the monarchy in England and Ireland as "unnecessary, burdensome and dangerous to the liberty of the people". The previous day it had also voted to make extinct the "useless and dangerous" House of Lords. On the 17th and 19th of March respectively acts were passed abolishing the monarchy and the House of Lords. With these went the apparatus of monarchical government, i.e. the prerogative courts and the Privy Council. Then on the 19th May England was declared a "Commonwealth and Free State" in which the "supreme authority" henceforth lay with the "representatives of the people in Parliament". With the January 1650 Engagement Act (which stated all adults must be faithful to the Commonwealth) and the July 1650 New Treason Act (which decreed it was 'high treason' to deny the Commonwealth's supreme authority) the Rump became completely sovereign. However this meant as Smith explains, that, with the established landmarks of the Crown, Church and Lords swept away, there was a feeling that the Rump was a "unique chance to break decisively with existing order". This, during the Rump's tenure, never happened, since in the words of Barnard, "The Rump was uninterested in ideological changes". Even the abolition of the Lords and the monarchy were effected with reluctance, with the act to abolish the Lords winning only 41-29, while only 43 members of the Rump signed Charles' death warrant. In religious matters the Rump failed, during this "chance for revolution" (Lynch), to impose a framework and doctrine upon the Church of England or to dismantle it which left "all parties dissatisfied" (Hutton). 'A Committee for the Propagation of the Gospel' appointed by the Rump in 1652 with the intention of creating a system of strict supervision of clerical appointments reached no agreements. The Rump did nothing on the question of tithes. Few Rumpers wished society to be left completely free in matters of morality, meaning there was to be no 'liberty of conscience'. Yet there was still no direction that would replace this notion of freedom of worship. This lack of direction encouraged most parishioners and ministers to cling as "much as possible to pre-Civil War ways", which would suggest that the Rump achieved little in terms of religion. In law and social matters, the Rump enacted a set of minor changes, such as relieving some poor debtors and abolishing some writs and fees. However as Hutton writes "all the fundamental problems remained". The Chancery remained slow, overworked and expensive to use. Monopolies went unchecked, and the grievances of depressed rural classes not even considered. Coward claims that "it was the Rump's dilatory record on constitutional reform that led directly to its dissolution", which is supported by Cromwell's declaration on 22nd April 1653 which stated "it was a matter of much grief ...to observe so little progress made". Thus this is traditionally why historians see the Rump as failure, that during a time ripe for reform, the Rump, which people thought had been set-up to activate