name and fame of Cromwell and to secure for him the recognition that
his achievements deserve. But it was hard for some royalists to
forgive this man who turned his hand against the sacred person of the
King. For nearly three centuries the conflict has raged. The royal
historians count Cromwell the greatest hypocrite in history, the
trickster, the regicide, the political Judas of all time. For a
hundred years after his death, no man was found brave enough to
mention the name of Oliver Cromwell in Windsor Castle or the House of
Lords. England's Abbey has made a place for the statues of that
one-talent general, Burgoyne, whose chief business was to surrender
his troops to our colonial soldiers, but the Abbey has no niche for a
bust of the only English general who ranks with the great soldiers of
history--Alexander, Cæsar, Napoleon, Grant, and now Foch--these six
and no more.
The British Houses of Parliament are crowded with statues of
politicians who gave the people what they wanted, and some statesmen
who gave the people what they ought to have. And there, too, are found
the busts of kings and queens, Bloody Mary, contemptible John, those
little feeblings and parasites named the Georges. But low down and
bespattered with mud she has written the name of her greatest monarch,
and the most powerful ruler that ever sat upon a throne.
Not until Carlyle came forward did the cloud of slander begin to lift.
When the three hundredth anniversary of the birth of Cromwell was
celebrated, Great Britain awakened to the fact that too little
recognition had been given to the great reformer whose career was one
of the marvels of English history. The measure of a nation's greatness
is the kind of man it admires. To-day, it is of little consequence
what we think of Cromwell, but it is of the first importance that
Cromwell should approve the leaders of our world-capitals. Only in the
last generation has the tide turned, and the reaction begun to set in.
John Morley, busied with his biography of Gladstone, took time to
write a history of the man whom he calls the maker of English history.
Professor Gardiner asserts that England has done injustice to Cromwell
and that the time has come for her to right a great wrong. All the
world has at last begun to recognise the fact that the farmer of
Huntingdon was an uncrowned king, ruling of his own natural right.
The world's ingratitude to Cromwell becomes the more striking when we
remember what he did for Great Britain, for her people, to right the
wrongs of her poor, to found her free institutions and to give her a
place among the nations of the earth. Oliver Cromwell found England
almost next to nothing in the scale of European politics. France
pitied poor little England, and Spain, the one world-wide force of the
time, despised her. He found her people a group of quarrelling sects,
divided, hostile and full of hate. Her soil was scored with countless
insurrections; her commerce was dead; her navy was so miserably weak
that pirates sailed up the Thames, dropped anchor in the night in
front of Westminster Hall, and flung defiance to the frightened
merchants. In a single year, three thousand Englishmen were impressed
by these pirates and sold in the slave markets of Algiers,
Constantinople and the West Indies. He found the king a tyrant, who
one day made the boast that he had brought every man who had opposed
his will to the Tower or the scaffold. He found Parliament saying, "We
have struggled for twenty years, and every attempt has ended with a
halter, and it is better to endure a present ill than flee to others
that we know not of."
And in the very darkest hour of England's history, this farmer flung
himself into the breach and besought his countrymen to unite in one
supreme effort to achieve liberty for the common people. For forty
years he had been a plain country gentleman, content with his farm;
ten years later he was "the most famous military captain in Europe,
the greatest man in England, and the wisest ruler England ever had."
He lived to hold the destinies of his country in his hands, to
enthrone justice and toleration over a great part of Europe, received
overtures for alliances from many kings, and died in the royal palace
at Whitehall, and was buried amid the lamentations of many who had
been his bitter enemies.
Cromwell's greatness stirs our sense of wonder the more, because he
accomplished what others had sought to achieve and failed. Balfour or
Lloyd George trained for years to his task, is like one who stands in
the midst of an arsenal, protected by walls and battlements, and
served by cannon and machine guns. To employ Carlyle's expressive
figure, a dwarf who stands with a match before a cannon can beat down
a stronghold, but he must be a giant indeed who can capture an armed
fortress with naked fists, as did Oliver Cromwell. He lived in an age
of great men. The era of Shakespeare, of Marlowe, Jonson and Bacon was
closing. It was the era of John Pym, called "The Old Man Eloquent." It
was the era of Hampden, the patrician, the orator and hero. It was the
time of Sir Harry Vane, the distinguished gentleman who came to Boston
to be made ruler of that new city, and whom Wendell Phillips called
the noblest patriot that ever walked the streets of the new capital.
Coke was on the bench, meditating his decisions, while Lyttleton was
perfecting his interpretations of the Constitution. John Milton was
making his plea for the liberty of the press. Owen and Sherlock and
Howe were in the pulpits.
These were among the bravest spirits that have ever stood upon our
earth. All hated tyranny, and all loved liberty. All sought to
overthrow the rule of the despot and yet, when all had done their
best, England was sold like a slave in the market-place. It was the
farmer of Huntingdon who, in that critical hour, came forward and
showed himself equal to the emergency. It was this country gentleman,
without political experience, this general who became a statesman
without the discipline of statecraft, who became the shepherd of his
people and overthrew that citadel of iniquity called the Divine Right
of Kings; who rid England of her pirates, developed a great commerce,
built up the most powerful navy that then sailed the sea--a possession
England has never lost--corrected the code, rectified the
Constitution, laid the foundation for the present Bill of Rights. This
is why John Morley asks us to study carefully the lineaments of this
man whose body England, to her undying shame, and in the days of her
dishonour, hung in chains at Tyburn.
If we are to understand Cromwell's character and career and his place
among the world's leaders, we must recall his age and time and the
England of that far-off day, when he wrought his work and dipped his
sword in heaven. What of the religious condition of England in the era
of intolerance, when the prophet of God was anointed with the ointment
of war, black and sulphurous? It is the year 1630, and Cromwell is
still in his early manhood. One bright morning, with St. Paul's to his
back, Cromwell entered Ludgate Circus. In the midst of the circus
stood a scaffold and around it was a great throng, crowding and
pressing toward the place of torture. At the foot of the scaffold was
a venerable scholar, his white hair flowing upon his shoulders, a man
of stainless character and spotless life, renowned for his devotion,
eloquence and patriotism. When the executioner led the aged pastor up
the steps, the soldiers tore off his garments. He was whipped until
blood ran in streams down his back, both nostrils were slit and his
ears cropped off, hot irons were brought and two letters, "S-S"--sower
of sedition--were burned into his forehead.
What crime had this pastor committed? Perhaps he had lifted a
firebrand upon the King's palace; perhaps he had organized some foul
gunpowder plot to overthrow the throne itself. Perhaps he had been
guilty of treason, or some foul and nameless sin against the State.
Not so. The reading of the decision of the judge and the decree of the
punishment made clear the truth. It seemed that a fortnight before,
the aged pastor had been commanded to give up his extempore prayers
and the singing of the Psalms, and had been commanded to read the
written prayers and sing the hymns prescribed by the state Church. But
the gentle scholar had disregarded the command, and on the following
Sunday walked in the ways familiar and dear to him by reason of long
association. He had dared to sing the same old Psalms and lift his
heart to God in extempore prayer, after the manner of his fathers.
And when the executioner announced that on the following Saturday at
high noon the old scholar would be brought a second time into Ludgate
Circus, and there scourged before the people, the cloud upon Oliver
Cromwell's brow was black as the thunder-storm that stands upon the
western sky, black and vociferous with thunder. Kings, the head of the
Church of Jesus Christ!
Two hundred years later, Abraham Lincoln, standing in the market-place
of New Orleans, was to see a coloured child torn from its mother's
arms, held by the auctioneer upon the block and sold to the highest
bidder. With a lump in his throat, Abraham Lincoln turned to his
brother and said: "If the time ever comes when I can strike, I will
hit slavery as hard a blow as I can." And when Cromwell turned away
from that scene in Ludgate Circus he went home to dream about the era
of toleration and liberty and charity, and registered a vow to strike,
when the time came, the hardest blow he could against the citadel of
intolerance and bigotry on the part of the Church.
But political England was as dark and troublesome as the religious
world of that day. One of the noblest men of the time was Sir John
Eliot. He was the child of wealth and opportunity. The university had
lent him culture, travel had lent breadth, and leisure had given him
the opportunity to grow wise and ripe. His nature was singularly lofty
and devout, his temper ardent and chivalric. His one ambition was to
serve his mother country. A vice-admiral, he was given power to defend
the commerce of the country and overthrow the pirates. After many
attempts, by a clever but dangerous maneuver he entrapped the king of
the pirates, Nutt, who had taken one hundred and twenty English ships
and sold the sailors in the slave market of Algiers and Tripoli. But
King Charles freed the pirate, and punished the vice-admiral by four
months' imprisonment, for he had taken bribes against his own sailors.
When Sir John Eliot had been released, he charged the King with
complicity in a crime. For reply the King levied an illegal fine. Sir
John Eliot was rich, and he might have bought immunity. In his home
dwelt a beautiful wife and little children, and with flight he might
have escaped his prison. His wealth would have enabled him to live
abroad in ease, but he preferred to stay at home and die in London
Tower for principle. And no martyr, going to his stake, no hero,
falling at the head of a battle line, ever did a nobler thing than
Sir John Eliot, when he refused to pay his fine and preferred death to
enjoying the pleasures of expediency for a season. For three years the
hero bore his imprisonment and endured the tortures of confinement.
The rigours of the Tower could not break his dauntless spirit. One day
he found blood upon his handkerchief. Fearing that death was near, he
sent a request to the royal palace. "A little more air, your majesty,
that I may gain strength to die in!" But John Eliot had thwarted the
King's policy, and Charles carried his vindictiveness even to death.
"Not humble enough," was the King's reply. Blows cannot break the
will, waters cannot drown the will, flames cannot consume the will,
and in the hour of Eliot's death, Charles knew that his opponent had
conquered. One day John Eliot's son petitioned the King that he might
carry his father's remains to Cornwall to lie with those of his
ancestors. Charles wrote on the petition: "Let Sir John Eliot's body
be buried in the parish where he died, and his ashes lie unmarked in
the Chapel of the Tower."
But the social England of the era of Cromwell is a darker picture
still. If our age is the era of the rise and reign of the common
people, that was an age when the middle-class was as yet almost
unknown. Feudalism still survived. There were the plebeians on the one
hand, and the patrician class on the other. Theoretically the King
owned the land, and the lords and gentlemen were agents under him.
Kenilworth Castle and its lord stand for the social England of that
day. My lord dwelt in a castle--the people dwelt in mud huts. He wore
purple and fine linen--his people wore coats of sheepskin, slept on
beds of straw, ate black bread, knew sorrow by day and misery by
night. Did a farmer sow a field and reap the harvest? Every third
shock belonged to the lord of the castle. Did the husbandman drive his
flocks afield? In the autumn, every third sheep and bullock belonged
to my lord. Was the grain ripe in the field? If the peasant owed
twenty days' labour without return at the time of sowing to my lord,
he had to give ten days more to the lord of the castle in the time of
the harvest. Again without recompense. And so it generally came about
that for want of proper time to plough and plant and for opportunity
of reaping in the hour when his grain was ripe, the serf fronted the
winter with an empty granary, and the cry of his children was
exceeding bitter.
There were few bridges across the streams, there was no glass in the
farmer's window, not one in a thousand owned a book, sanitation was
almost unknown, every other babe died in infancy; if the upper classes
came out of the Black Death almost unscathed, about a third of the
peasant class was swept off by that scourge, which the physicians now
know was caused by insufficient food and decayed grain. It was an era
of ignorance and brutality among the poor, an era of snobs and of
criminals. Cromwell found a hundred laws upon the English statute
books that involve hanging for petty infringements against the rights
of the King. He found woman a chattel and one day saw a man sell his
wife in the market-place and beheld the purchaser lead the girl off in
a halter. When the traveller rode up to London, he passed between a
line of gibbets, where corpses hung rotting in chains. Highwaymen rode
even into London, at nightfall, and tied their horses in Hyde Park,
robbed people in the streets, broke into stores and rode away
unmolested. One advertisement read thus: "For sale, a negro boy, aged
eleven years. Inquire at the Coffee House, Threadneedle Street, behind
the Royal Exchange."
Drunkenness and gambling were all but universal. One Secretary of
State was notorious as the greatest drunkard and the most unlucky
gambler of his era. A Prime Minister was allowed to appear at the
opera house with his mistress, and was esteemed the finest public man
of his century. We are face to face with corruption in politics,
incompetence in council and paganism in religion. To-day a member of
the Cabinet who would use his private information for purposes of
gambling in Wall Street would be instantly ruined. But in that era,
the King and his courtiers filled their coffers by such methods
without any criticism.
In such an era, Cromwell saw that there was no hope for England until
there was a middle class. He determined to destroy the castles that
offered shelter to the princes who had spoiled and robbed and outraged
the poor, who had no defense to which they could flee when they had
outraged the law. It has often been said that he was an iconoclast; in
razing the castles of England to the ground and overthrowing the
strongholds he was the greatest criminal of his age; but if he loved the
castles and architecture less, it was because he loved the poor more. He
levelled stones down that he might have a foundation upon which the poor
could climb up, and thereby he destroyed the strongholds of feudalism
and laid the foundations of the Bill of Rights of 1832, and was the
forerunner of our own Washington and Lincoln.
Who is this King Charles who stands for the old order, and who is the
great representative of the doctrine of the divine right of kings? He
was a grandson of Mary, Queen of Scots, who, in fleeing from Scotland,
seized the hand of Lord Lindsay, her foe, and holding it aloft in her
grasp swore by it, "I will have your head for this, so I assure you."
His father was James the First of England and Sixth of Scotland, who
had some gifts and also virtues, but who after all was simply an
animated stomach, carried far by a handful of intellectual faculties.
That Charles the First had qualities denied to his father all must
confess. He was gifted with a certain taste for pictures, he had some
imagination, and loved good literature. During his imprisonment he
read Tasso, Spenser's _Faerie Queen_, and, above all, Shakespeare. He
was methodical and decorous, but his favourite essay was Bacon's
"Essay on Simulation and Dissimulation." As a diplomat he believed
that Machiavelli's _Prince_ was the ideal to be followed, in that
truth is so precious a quantity that it ought not to be wasted on the
common people. He was not renowned for chivalry or a sense of
gratitude. Witness his foul desertion of Strafford in the hour when
Strafford exclaimed: "Put not your trust in princes!"
Again and again, through his selfishness, he spoiled his people. To
obtain money he sold to one of his favourites the exclusive right to
use sedan chairs in London, and put chains across the streets and made
it a criminal offense for a gentleman to drive his coach into the
limits of the city. He taxed the shoes the people wore, the salt they
ate, the beds on which they slept, and the very windows through which
the light came. He hired spies to make out a list of merchants who had
an income of more than £2,000 a year and by indirect blackmail
obtained money therefrom. When the Black Death broke out, and the
streets of London were piled with corpses, and the committee of relief
asked for public subscriptions, Charles the First fled to Hampton
Court and made no subscription, large or small, to the relief fund.
And how did he amuse himself during those days when every house in
London was left desolate? In his far-off palace, surrounded by guards,
beyond whom no messenger could pass, Charles the First sat, surrounded
by his court. He sent to Amsterdam for jewellers and paid £10,400 for
a necklace. He paid £8,000 for a gold collar for himself, and £10,000
for a diamond ring for the Queen. On the ground that Parliament had
not imposed taxes sufficient for his expenses, he made a tax
proclamation for himself. Then Parliament, led by Pym and Hampden and
Eliot, brought in a bill of remonstrance. They assumed that the King
ruled under preëxisting laws. They declared that if Charles refused to
call a Parliament and arrogated its power to himself, twelve peers
might call a Parliament, and if this failed, the citizens might come
together through a committee and elect their representatives.
But the King was consumed with egotism and vanity. He sent orders to
Parliament to deliver to him the five leaders who stood for the
liberties of the people, and with a mob of soldiers he entered the
House of Commons to seize Hampden and Pym. But the House refused to
give up its members, and helped them to escape through one of the
windows, and the next day it brought them back in a triumphal
procession. Returning to his palace, the King found the streets
crowded with people, silent, sullen, dark with anger. He heard threats
and growls from every side. One prophet of righteousness called out,
"To your tents, O Israel!" Suddenly Charles the First realized that
his people, driven to bay, had at last bestirred themselves, and,
fearing he might be driven into a corner, his cheek went white as
marble. That night, conscious of his danger, he fled to Hampton Court,
while the whole city applauded the five leaders who had escaped the
snare. He had furnished the dynamite to blow up his throne. The
people, represented by Parliament, stood over against the peers,
represented by the King, as enemies. It was "either your neck, or my
neck," and when a few weeks passed, there began the era of civil war,
with blazing towns and castles and strongholds. "Whom the gods would
destroy, they first make mad."
But who is the man who shall do for England what Savonarola did for
Florence, and Luther for Germany, and William Tell for Switzerland,
and Washington and Lincoln for our own country? Oliver Cromwell was of
Celtic stock and noble family. It is a singular coincidence that he
was a ninth cousin of that Charles whose death warrant he was to sign;
that seventeen of his relatives were in Parliament to sign the Great
Remonstrance, and that ten of his blood-relatives joined with him in
signing the death warrant of the King. Cromwell was sixteen years of
age, and enrolled himself as a student at Cambridge on the very day
that great Shakespeare died in Stratford. The greatest thing England
ever did in literature ended on the day when perhaps the greatest
thing she did in action began. John Milton said that Cromwell nursed
his great soul in silence and solitude. He was but a child when the
news of the Gunpowder Plot filled his father's house with excitement.
He was but a child when a dispatch was laid in his father's hands
announcing the death of Henry of Navarre, the founder of Protestantism
in France. From boyhood he loved the story of the brave and gallant
Sir Walter Raleigh, and the announcement that he was to be executed to
please the King of Spain filled him with tumultuous indignation.
In appearance he was above medium stature, built like Daniel Webster
and Brougham and Beecher, with great, beautiful head, bronzed face,
heavy, projecting eyebrows, large forehead, two eyes burning like
flames of fire beneath the overhanging cliffs. He was of sandy
complexion, like Alexander and Napoleon. But if he were thick set, he
was of finely compacted fiber, and this man, who was to deal a
crushing blow at Marston Moor, and sign the King's death warrant and
"grasp the scepter of a throne" and raze to the ground the citadels
of iniquity, the old strong castles of feudalism, was also strong
enough to lift little England with her six millions to a level with
the thirty millions of mighty Spain. Not until he was forty years of
age did this farmer enter Parliament. One day, in the House of
Commons, Sir Philip Warwick, while listening to a sharp voice, said to
John Hampden, whose seat was near him: "Mr. Hampden, who is that
sloven who spoke just now, for I see he is on our side, by his
speaking so warmly?" "That sloven," replied Hampden, "whom you see
before you--that sloven, I say--if we ever come to a breach with the
King--God forbid--that sloven, I say, would, in that case, be the
greatest man in England." But Hampden knew him also as gentle and
lovable, tender toward his friends, loved by his rustic neighbours,
though this vehement man, with sword stuck close to his side, had
stern and uncompromising work, and the most difficult task ever set
before an Englishman. "A larger soul, I think," writes Carlyle, "had
seldom dwelt in a house of clay than was his."
Much of the criticism of Cromwell that has been so bitter, so rabid
and so persistent would at once disappear if it were understood that
the central element in Cromwell's life was religion. He was first of
all a Puritan, essentially a religious reformer and incidentally a
politician. This is the clue to the maze, this is the key to the
problem, and the solution to this historical enigma. He was by nature
a poet and a prophet, haunted by sublime vision, dreaming of heaven
and hell, as did Dante and Bunyan. "Verily," said he, "I think the
Lord is with me. I undertake strange things, yet do I go through them
to great profit and gladness and furtherance of the Lord's great work.
I do feel myself lifted on by a strange force. I cannot tell why. By
night and by day I am urged forward in the great work."