[1] Crumhorne need not be regarded as a corruption of the German,
since the two words of which it is composed were both in use in
medieval England. _Crumb_ = curved; _crumbe_ = hook, bend; _crome_ =
a staff with a hook at the end of it. See Stratmann's _Middle English
Dictionary_ (1891), and Halliwell, _Dictionary of Archaic and
Provincial Words_ (London, 1881).
[2] See A. Howard, "Aulos or Tibia," _Harvard Studies_, iv. (Boston,
1893).
[3] See also A. A. Howard, op. cit., "Phrygian Aulos," pp. 35-38.
[4] _Musica getutscht und auszgezogen_ (Basel, 1511).
[5] See Diderot and d'Alembert's _Encyclopedie_ (Paris, 1751-1780),
t. 5, "Lutherie," pl. ix.
[6] _Organographia_ (Wolfenbuttel, 1618).
[7] _L'Harmonie universelle_ (Paris, 1636-1637), book v. pp. 289 and
290. Cf. "Musette," pp. 282-287 and 305.
[8] See "Triumphzug des Kaisers Maximilian I." Beilage zum II. Band
des _Jahrb. der Sammlungen des Allerhochsten Kaiserhauses_ (Vienna,
1884-1885), pl. 20. Explanatory text and part i. in Band i. of the
same publication, 1883-1884. A French edition with 135 plates was
also published in Vienna by A. Schmidt, and in London by J. Edwards
(1796). See also Dr August Reissmann, _Illustrierte Geschichte der
deutschen Musik_ (Leipzig, 1881), where a few of the plates are
reproduced.
[9] See J. Ecorcheville, "Quelques documents sur la musique de la
grande ecurie du roi," _Sammelband d. Intern. Musik. Ges._ Jahrg.
ii., Heft 4 (1901, Leipzig, London, &c.), pp. 630-632.
[10] Oskar Fleischer, _Fuhrer_ (Berlin, 1892), p. 29, Nos. 400 to
406.
[11] For an illustration see Captain C. R. Day, _Descriptive
Catalogue_ (London, 1891), pl. iv. E. and p. 99.
[12] _Histoire de la musique aux Pays-Bas avant le XIX^e siecle_
(Brussels, 1867-1888), vol. vii. p. 336, and description, p. 333 et
seq.
[13] Wittenberg, 1556; reproduced by A. Reissmann, op. cit., pp. 233
and 226.
[14] Reproduced in Riano's _Notes on Early Spanish Music_ (London,
1887), pp. 119-127.
[15] See Hugo Goldschmidt, "Das Orchester der italienischen Oper im
17. Jahrh." _Sammelband der Intern. Musikgesellschaft_, Jahrg. ii.,
Heft 1 (Leipzig, 1900), p. 24.
CROMPTON, SAMUEL (1753-1827), English inventor, was born on the 3rd of
December 1753 at Firwood near Bolton-le-Moors, Lancashire. While yet a
boy he lost his father, and had to contribute to the family resources by
spinning yarn. The defects of the spinning jenny imbued him with the
idea of devising something better, and for five or six years the effort
absorbed all his spare time and money, including what he earned by
playing the violin at the Bolton theatre. About 1779 he succeeded in
producing a machine which span yarn suitable for use in the manufacture
of muslin, and which was known as the muslin wheel or the
Hall-in-the-Wood wheel (from the name of the house in which he and his
family resided), and later as the spinning mule. After his marriage in
1780 a good demand arose for the yarn which he himself made at
Hall-in-the-Wood, but the prying to which his methods were subjected
drove him, in the absence of means to take out a patent, to the choice
of destroying his machine or making it public. He adopted the latter
alternative on the promise of a number of manufacturers to pay him for
the use of the mule, but all he received was about L60. He then resumed
spinning on his own account, but with indifferent success. In 1800 a sum
of L500 was raised for his benefit by subscription, and when in 1809
Edmund Cartwright, the inventor of the power-loom obtained L10,000 from
parliament, he determined also to apply for a grant. In 1811 he made a
tour in the manufacturing districts of Lancashire and Scotland to
collect evidence showing how extensively his mule was used, and in 1812
parliament allowed him L5000. With the aid of this money he embarked in
business, first as a bleacher and then as a cotton merchant and spinner,
but again without success. In 1824 some friends, without his knowledge,
bought him an annuity of L63. He died at Bolton on the 26th of June
1827.
CROMPTON, an urban district of Lancashire, England, 2(1/2) m. N. of
Oldham, within the parliamentary borough of Oldham. Pop. (1901) 13,427.
At Shaw, a populous village included within it, is a station on the
Lancashire & Yorkshire railway. Cotton mills and the collieries of the
neighbourhood employ the large industrial population.
CROMWELL, HENRY (1628-1674), fourth son of Oliver Cromwell, was born at
Huntingdon on the 20th of January 1628, and served under his father
during the latter part of the Civil War. His active life, however, was
mainly spent in Ireland, whither he took some troops to assist Oliver
early in 1650, and he was one of the Irish representatives in the
Little, or Nominated, Parliament of 1653. In 1654 he was again in
Ireland, and after making certain recommendations to his father, now
lord protector, with regard to the government of that country, he became
major-general of the forces in Ireland and a member of the Irish council
of state, taking up his new duties in July 1655. Nominally Henry was
subordinate to the lord-deputy, Charles Fleetwood, but Fleetwood's
departure for England in September 1655 left him for all practical
purposes the ruler of Ireland. He moderated the lord-deputy's policy of
deporting the Irish, and unlike him he paid some attention to the
interests of the English settlers; moreover, again unlike Fleetwood, he
appears to have held the scales evenly between the different Protestant
sects, and his undoubted popularity in Ireland is attested by Clarendon.
In November 1657 Henry himself was made lord-deputy; but before this
time he had refused a gift of property worth L1500 a year, basing his
refusal on the grounds of the poverty of the country, a poverty which
was not the least of his troubles. In 1657 he advised his father not to
accept the office of king, although in 1634 he had supported a motion to
this effect; and after the dissolution of Cromwell's second parliament
in February 1658 he showed his anxiety that the protector should act in
a moderate and constitutional manner. After Oliver's death Henry hailed
with delight the succession of his brother Richard to the office of
protector, but although he was now appointed lieutenant and governor
general of Ireland, it was only with great reluctance that he remained
in that country. Having rejected proposals to assist in the restoration
of Charles II., Henry was recalled to England in June 1659 just after
his brother's fall; quietly obeying this order he resigned his office at
once. Although he lost some property at the Restoration, he was allowed
after some solicitation to keep the estate he had bought in Ireland. His
concluding years were passed at Spinney Abbey in Cambridgeshire; he was
unmolested by the government, and he died on the 23rd of March 1674. In
1653 Henry married Elizabeth (d. 1687), daughter of Sir Francis Russell,
and he left five sons and two daughters.
CROMWELL, OLIVER (1599-1658), lord protector of England, was the 5th and
only surviving son of Robert Cromwell of Huntingdon and of Elizabeth
Steward, widow of William Lynn. His paternal grandfather was Sir Henry
Cromwell of Hinchinbrook, a leading personage in Huntingdonshire, and
grandson of Richard Williams, knighted by Henry VIII., nephew of Thomas
Cromwell, earl of Essex, Henry VIII.'s minister, whose name he adopted.
His mother was descended from a family named Styward in Norfolk, which
was not, however, connected in any way, as has been often asserted, with
the royal house of Stuart. Oliver was born on the 25th of April 1599,
was educated under Dr Thomas Beard, a fervent puritan, at the free
school at Huntingdon, and on the 23rd of April 1616 matriculated as a
fellow-commoner at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, then a hotbed of
puritanism, subsequently studying law in London. The royalist anecdotes
relating to his youth, including charges of ill-conduct, do not deserve
credit, the entries in the register of St John's, Huntingdon, noting
Oliver's submission on two occasions to church censure being forgeries;
but it is not improbable that his youth was wild and possibly
dissolute.[1] According to Edmund Waller he was "very well read in the
Greek and Roman story." Burnet declares he had little Latin, but he was
able to converse with the Dutch ambassador in that language. According
to James Heath in his _Flagellum_, "he was more famous for his exercises
in the fields than in the schools, being one of the chief match-makers
and players at football, cudgels, or any other boisterous game or
sport." On the 22nd of August 1620 he married Elizabeth, daughter of Sir
James Bourchier, a city merchant of Tower Hill, and of Felstead in
Essex; and his father having died in 1617 he settled at Huntingdon and
occupied himself in the management of his small estate. In 1628 he was
returned to parliament as member for the borough, and on the 11th of
February 1629 he spoke in support of puritan doctrine, complaining of
the attempt by the king to silence Dr Beard, who had raised his voice
against the "flat popery" inculcated by Dr Alabaster at Paul's Cross. He
was also one of the members who refused to adjourn at the king's command
till Sir John Eliot's resolutions had been passed.
During the eleven years of government without parliament very little is
recorded of Cromwell. His name is not connected with the resistance to
the levy of ship-money or to the action of the ecclesiastical courts,
but in 1630 he was one of those fined for refusing to take up
knighthood. The same year he was named one of the justices of the peace
for his borough; and on the grant of a new charter showed great zeal in
defending the rights of the commoners, and succeeded in procuring an
alteration in the charter in their favour, exhibiting much warmth of
temper during the dispute and being committed to custody by the privy
council for angry words spoken against the mayor, for which he
afterwards apologized. He also defended the rights of the commoners of
Ely threatened by the "adventurers" who had drained the Great Level, and
he was nicknamed afterwards by a royalist newspaper "Lord of the Fens."
He was again later the champion of the commoners of St Ives in the Long
Parliament against enclosures by the earl of Manchester, obtaining a
commission of the House of Commons to inquire into the case, and drawing
upon himself the severe censure of the chairman, the future Lord
Clarendon, by his "impetuous carriage" and "insolent behaviour," and by
the passionate vehemence he imparted into the business. Bishop Williams,
a kinsman of Cromwell's, relates at this time that he was "a common
spokesman for sectaries, and maintained their part with great
stubbornness"; and his earliest extant letter (in 1635) is an appeal for
subscriptions for a puritan lecturer. There appears to be no foundation
for the statement that he was stopped by an order of council when on the
point of abandoning England for America, though there can be little
doubt that the thoughts of emigration suggested themselves to his mind
at this period. He viewed the "innovations in religion" with abhorrence.
According to Clarendon he told the latter in 1641 that if the Grand
Remonstrance had not passed "he would have sold all he had the next
morning and never have seen England more." In 1631 he converted his
landed property into money, and John Hampden, his cousin, a patentee of
Connecticut in 1632, was on the point of emigrating. Cromwell was
perhaps arrested in his project by his succession in 1636 to the estate
of his uncle Sir Thomas Steward, and to his office of farmer of the
cathedral tithes at Ely, whither he now removed. Meanwhile, like Bunyan
and many other puritans, Cromwell had been passing through a trying
period of mental and religious change and struggle, beginning with deep
melancholy and religious doubt and depression, and ending with "seeing
light" and with enthusiastic and convinced faith, which remained
henceforth the chief characteristic and impulse in his career.
Cromwell's first parliamentary efforts.
He represented Cambridge in the Short and Long Parliaments of 1640, and
at once showed extraordinary zeal and audacity in his opposition to the
government, taking a large share in business and serving on numerous and
important committees. As the cousin of Hampden and St. John he was
intimately associated with the leaders of the parliamentary party. His
sphere of action, however, was not in parliament. He was not an orator,
and though he could express himself forcibly on occasion, his speech was
incoherent and devoid of any of the arts of rhetoric. Clarendon notes on
his first appearance in parliament that "he seemed to have a person in
no degree gracious, no ornament of discourse, none of those talents
which use to reconcile the affections of the standers by; yet as he grew
into place and authority his parts seemed to be renewed." He supported
stoutly the extreme party of opposition to the king, but did not take
the lead except on a few less important occasions, and was apparently
silent in the debates on the Petition of Right, the Grand Remonstrance
and the Militia. His first recorded intervention in debate in the Long
Parliament was on the 9th of November 1640, a few days after the meeting
of the House, when he delivered a petition from the imprisoned John
Lilburne. He was described by Sir Philip Warwick on this occasion:--"I
came into the House one morning well clad and perceived a gentleman
speaking whom I knew not, very ordinarily apparelled; for it was a plain
cloth suit which seemed to have been made by an ill country tailor; his
linen was plain and not very clean; ... his stature was of a good size;
his sword stuck close to his side; his countenance swollen and reddish;
his voice sharp and untunable and his eloquence full of fervour ... I
sincerely profess it much lessened my reverence as to that great council
for he was very much hearkened unto." On the 30th of December he moved
to the second reading of Strode's bill for annual parliaments. His chief
interest from the first, however, lay in the religious question. He
belonged to the Root and Branch party, and spoke in favour of the
petition of the London citizens for the abolition of episcopacy on the
9th of February 1641, and pressed upon the House the Root and Branch
Bill in May. On the 6th of November he carried a motion entrusting the
train-bands south of the Trent to the command of the earl of Essex. On
the 14th of January 1642, after the king's attempt to seize the five
members, he moved for a committee to put the kingdom in a posture of
defence. He contributed L600 to the proposed Irish campaign and L500 for
raising forces in England--large sums from his small estate--and on his
own initiative in July 1642 sent arms of the value of L100 down to
Cambridge, seized the magazine there in August, and prevented the king's
commission of array from being executed in the county, taking these
important steps on his own authority and receiving subsequently
indemnity by vote of the House of Commons. Shortly afterwards he joined
Essex with sixty horse, and was present at Edgehill, where his troop was
one of the few not routed by Rupert's charge, Cromwell himself being
mentioned among those officers who "never stirred from their troops but
fought till the last minute."
Beginning of Civil War.
During the earlier part of the year 1643 the military position of
Charles was greatly superior to that of the parliament. Essex was
inactive near Oxford; in the west Sir Ralph Hopton had won a series of
victories, and in the north Newcastle defeated the Fairfaxes at Adwalton
Moor, and all Yorkshire except Hull was in his hands. It seemed likely
that the whole of the north would be laid open and the royalists be able
to march upon London and join Charles and Hopton there. This stroke,
which would most probably have given the victory to the king, was
prevented by the "Eastern Association," a union of Norfolk, Suffolk,
Essex, Cambridgeshire and Hertfordshire, constituted in December 1642
and augmented in 1643 by Huntingdonshire and Lincolnshire, of which
Cromwell was the leading spirit. His zeal and energy met everywhere with
conspicuous success. In January 1643 he seized the royalist high sheriff
of Hertfordshire in the act of proclaiming the king's commission of
array at St Albans; in February he was at Cambridge taking measures for
the defence of the town; in March suppressing royalist risings at
Lowestoft and Lynn; in April those of Huntingdon, when he also
recaptured Crowland from the king's party. In May he defeated a greatly
superior royalist force at Grantham, proceeding afterwards to Nottingham
in accordance with Essex's plan of penetrating into Yorkshire to relieve
the Fairfaxes; where, however, difficulties, arising from jealousies
between the officers, and the treachery of John Hotham, whose arrest
Cromwell was instrumental in effecting, obliged him to retire again to
the association, leaving the Fairfaxes to be defeated at Adwalton Moor.
He showed extraordinary energy, resource and military talent in stemming
the advance of the royalists, who now followed up their victories by
advancing into the association; he defeated them at Gainsborough on the
28th of July, and managed a masterly retreat before overwhelming numbers
to Lincoln, while the victory on the 11th of October at Winceby finally
secured the association, and maintained the wedge which prevented the
junction of the royalists in the north with the king in the south.
Cromwell's soldiers.
One great source of Cromwell's strength was the military reforms he had
initiated. At Edgehill he had observed the inferiority of the
parliamentary to the royalist horse, composed as it was of soldiers of
fortune and the dregs of the populace. "Do you think," he had said,
"that the spirits of such base, mean fellows will ever be able to
encounter gentlemen that have honour and courage and resolution in them?
You must get men of a spirit that is likely to go as far as gentlemen
will go or you will be beaten still." The royalists were fighting for a
great cause. To succeed the parliamentary soldiers must also be inspired
by some great principle, and this was now found in religion. Cromwell
chose his own troops, both officers and privates, from the "religious
men," who fought not for pay or for adventure, but for their faith. He
declared, when answering a complaint that a certain captain in his
regiment was a better preacher than fighter, that he who prayed best
would fight best, and that he knew nothing could "give the like courage
and confidence as the knowledge of God in Christ will." The superiority
of these men--more intelligent than the common soldiers, better
disciplined, better trained, better armed, excellent horsemen and
fighting for a great cause--not only over the other parliamentary troops
but over the royalists, was soon observed in battle. According to
Clarendon the latter, though frequently victorious in a charge, could
not rally afterwards, "whereas Cromwell's troops if they prevailed, or
though they were beaten and routed, presently rallied again and stood in
good order till they received new orders"; and the king's military
successes dwindled in proportion to the gradual preponderance of
Cromwell's troops in the parliamentary army. At first these picked men
only existed in Cromwell's own troop, which, however, by frequent
additions became the nucleus of a regiment, and by the time of the New
Model included about 11,000 men.
In July 1643 Cromwell had been appointed governor of the Isle of Ely; on
the 22nd of January 1644 he became second in command under the earl of
Manchester as lieutenant-general of the Eastern Association, and on the
16th of February 1644 a member of the Committee of Both Kingdoms with
greatly increased influence. In March he took Hillesden House in
Buckinghamshire; in May was at the siege of Lincoln, when he repulsed
Goring's attempt to relieve the town, and subsequently took part in
Manchester's campaign in the north. At Marston Moor (q.v.) on the 2nd of
July he commanded all the horse of the Eastern Association, with some
Scottish troops; and though for a time disabled by a wound in the neck,
he charged and routed Rupert's troops opposed to him, and subsequently
went to the support of the Scots, who were hard pressed by the enemy,
and converted what appeared at one time a defeat into a decisive
victory. It was on this occasion that he earned the nickname of
"Ironsides," applied to him now by Prince Rupert, and afterwards to his
soldiers, "from the impenetrable strength of his troops which could by
no means be broken or divided."
The movements of Manchester after Marston Moor were marked by great
apathy. He was one of the moderate party who desired an accommodation
with the king, and was opposed to Cromwell's sectaries. He remained at
Lincoln, did nothing to prevent the defeat of Essex's army in the west,
and when he at last advanced south to join Essex's and Waller's troops
his management of the army led to the failure of the attack upon the
king at Newbury on the 27th of October 1644. He delayed supporting the
infantry till too late, and was repulsed; he allowed the royal army to
march past his outposts; and a fortnight afterwards, without any attempt
to prevent it, and greatly to Cromwell's vexation, permitted the moving
of the king's artillery and the relief of Donnington Castle by Prince
Rupert. "If you beat the king ninety-nine times," Manchester urged at
Newbury, "yet he is king still and so will his posterity be after him;
but if the king beat us once we shall all be hanged and our posterity be
made slaves." "My lord," answered Cromwell, "if this be so, why did we
take up arms at first? This is against fighting ever hereafter. If so
let us make peace, be it ever so base." The contention brought to a
crisis the struggle between the moderate Presbyterians and the Scots on
the one side, who decided to maintain the monarchy and fought for an
accommodation and to establish Presbyterianism in England, and on the
other the republicans who would be satisfied with nothing less than the
complete overthrow of the king, and the Independents who regarded the
establishment of Presbyterianism as an evil almost as great as that of
the Church of England. On the 25th of November Cromwell charged
Manchester with "unwillingness to have the war prosecuted to a full
victory"; which Manchester answered by accusing Cromwell of having used
expressions against the nobility, the Scots and Presbyterianism; of
desiring to fill the army of the Eastern Association with Independents
to prevent any accommodation; and of having vowed if he met the king in
battle he would as lief fire his pistol at him as at anybody else. The
lords and the Scots vehemently took Manchester's part; but the Commons
eventually sided with Cromwell, appointed Sir Thomas Fairfax general of
the New Model Army, and passed two self-denying ordinances, the second
of which, ordering all members of both houses to lay down their
commissions within forty days, was accepted by the lords on the 3rd of
April 1645.
The battle of Naseby.
Meanwhile Cromwell had been ordered on the 3rd of March by the House to
take his regiment to the assistance of Waller, under whom he served as
an admirable subordinate. "Although he was blunt," says Waller, "he did
not bear himself with pride or disdain. As an officer he was obedient
and did never dispute my orders or argue upon them." He returned on the
19th of April, and on the 23rd was sent to Oxfordshire to prevent a
junction between Charles and Prince Rupert, in which he succeeded after
some small engagements and the storming of Blechingdon House. His
services were felt to be too valuable to be lost, and on the 10th of May
his command was prolonged for forty days. On the 28th he was sent to Ely
for the defence of the eastern counties against the king's advance; and
on the 10th of June, upon Fairfax's petition, he was named by the
Commons lieutenant-general, joining Fairfax on the 13th with six hundred
horse. At the decisive battle of Naseby (the 14th of June 1645) he
commanded the parliamentary right wing and routed the cavalry of Sir
Marmaduke Langdale, subsequently falling upon and defeating the royalist
centre, and pursuing the fugitives as far as the outskirts of Leicester.
At Langport again, on the 10th of July 1645, his management of the
troops was largely instrumental in gaining the victory. As the king had
no longer a field army, the war after Naseby resolved itself into a
series of sieges which Charles had no means of raising. Cromwell was
present at the sieges of Bridgwater, Bath, Sherborne and Bristol; and
later, in command of four regiments of foot and three of horse, he was
employed in clearing Wiltshire and Hampshire of the royalist garrisons.
He took Devizes and Laycock House, Winchester and Basing House, and
rejoined Fairfax in October at Exeter, and accompanied him to Cornwall,
where he assisted in the defeat of Hopton's forces and in the
suppression of the royalists in the west. On the 9th of January 1646 he
surprised Lord Wentworth's brigade at Bovey Tracey, and was present with
Fairfax at the fall of Exeter on the 9th of April. He then went to
London to give an account of proceedings to the parliament, was thanked
for his services and rewarded with the estate of the marquess of
Worcester. He was present again with Fairfax at the capitulation of
Oxford on the 24th of June, which practically terminated the Civil War,
when he used his influence in favour of granting lenient terms. He then
removed with his family from Ely to Drury Lane, London, and about a year
later to King Street, Westminster.
The war being now over, the great question of the establishment of
Presbyterianism or Independency had to be decided. Cromwell, without
naming himself an adherent of any denomination, fought vigorously for
Independency as a policy. In 1644 he had remonstrated at the removal by
Crawford of an anabaptist lieutenant-colonel. "The state," he said, "in
choosing men to serve it, takes no notice of their opinions. If they be
willing faithfully to serve it, that satisfies. Take heed of being sharp
... against those to whom you can object little but that they square not
with you in every opinion concerning matters of religion." He had
patronized Lilburne and welcomed all into his regiment, and the
Independents had spread from his troops throughout the whole army. But
while the sectarians were in a vast majority in the army, the parliament
was equally strong in Presbyterianism and opposed to toleration. The
proposed disbandment of the army in February 1647 would have placed the
soldiers entirely in the power of the parliament; while the negotiations
of the king, first with the Scots and then with the parliament, appeared
to hazard all the fruits of victory. The petition from the army to the
parliament for arrears of pay was suppressed and the petitioners
declared enemies of the state. In consequence the army organized a
systematic opposition, and elected representatives styled Agitators or
Agents to urge their claims.
Parliament and the army.
Cromwell, though greatly disliking the policy of the Presbyterians, yet
gave little support at first to the army in resisting parliament. In May
1647 in company with Skippon, Ireton and Fleetwood, he visited the army,
inquired into and reported on the grievances, and endeavoured to
persuade them to submit to the parliament. "If that authority falls to
nothing," he said, "nothing can follow but confusion." The
Presbyterians, however, now engaged in a plan for restoring the king
under their own control, and by the means of a Scottish army, forced on
their policy, and on the 27th of May ordered the immediate disbandment
of the army, without any guarantee for the payment of arrears. A mutiny
was the consequence. The soldiers refused to disband, and on the 3rd of
June Cromwell, whom, it was believed, the parliament intended to arrest,
joined the army. "If he would not forthwith come and lead them," they
had told him, "they would go their own way without him." The supremacy
of the army without a guiding hand meant anarchy, that of the
Presbyterians the outbreak of another civil war.
Possession of the king's person now became an important consideration.
On the 31st of May 1647 Cromwell had ordered Cornet Joyce to prevent the
king's removal by the parliament or the Scots from Holmby, and Joyce by
his own authority and with the king's consent brought him to Newmarket
to the headquarters of the army. Cromwell soon restored order, and the
representative council, including privates as well as officers chosen to
negotiate with the parliament, was subordinated to the council of war.
The army with Cromwell then advanced towards London. In a letter to the
city, possibly written by Cromwell himself, the officers repudiated any
wish to alter the civil government or upset the establishment of
Presbyterianism, but demanded religious toleration. Subsequently, in the
declaration of the 14th of June, arbitrary power either in the
parliament or in the king was denounced, and demand was made for a
representative parliament, the speedy termination of the actual
assembly, and the recognition of the right to petition. Cromwell used
his influence in restraining the more eager who wished to march on
London immediately, and in avoiding the use of force by which nothing
permanent could be effected, urging that "whatsoever we get by treaty
will be firm and durable. It will be conveyed over to posterity." The
army faction gradually gathered strength in the parliament. Eleven
Presbyterian leaders impeached by the army withdrew of their own accord
on the 26th of June, and the parliament finally yielded. Fairfax was
appointed sole commander-in-chief on the 19th of July, the soldiers
levied to oppose the army were dismissed, and the command of the city
militia was again restored to the committee approved by the army. These
votes, however, were cancelled later, on the 26th of July, under the
pressure of the royalist city mob which invaded the two Houses; but the
two speakers, with eight peers and fifty-seven members of the Commons,
themselves joined the army, which now advanced to London, overawing all
resistance, escorting the fugitive members in triumph to Westminster on
the 6th of August, and obliging the parliament on the 20th to cancel the
last votes, with the threat of a regiment of cavalry drawn up by
Cromwell in Hyde Park.
Cromwell and the army now turned with hopes of a settlement to Charles.
On the 4th of July Cromwell had had an interview with the king at
Caversham. He was not insensible to Charles's good qualities, was
touched by the paternal affection he showed for his children, and is
said to have declared that Charles "was the uprightest and most
conscientious man of his three kingdoms." The _Heads of the Proposals_,
which, on Charles raising objections, had been modified by the influence
of Cromwell and Ireton, demanded the control of the militia and the
choice of ministers by parliament for ten years, a religious toleration,
and a council of state to which much of the royal control over the army
and foreign policy would be delegated. These proposals without doubt
largely diminished the royal power, and were rejected by Charles with
the hope of maintaining his sovereign rights by "playing a game," to use
his own words, i.e. by negotiating simultaneously with army and
parliament, by inflaming their jealousies and differences, and finally
by these means securing his restoration with his full prerogatives
unimpaired. On the 9th of September Charles refused once mere the
_Newcastle Propositions_ offered him by the parliament, and Cromwell,
together with Ireton and Vane, obtained the passing of a motion for a
new application; but the terms asked by the parliament were higher than
before and included a harsh condition--the exclusion from pardon of all
the king's leading adherents, besides the indefinite establishment of
Presbyterianism and the refusal of toleration to the Roman Catholics and
members of the Church of England.
Meanwhile the failure to come to terms with Charles and provide a
settlement appeared to threaten a general anarchy. Cromwell's moderate
counsels created distrust in his good faith amongst the soldiers, who
accused him of "prostituting the liberties and persons of all the people
at the foot of the king's interest." The agitators demanded immediate
settlement by force by the army. The extreme republicans, anticipating
Rousseau, put forward the _Agreement of the People_. This was strongly
opposed by Cromwell, who declared the very consideration of it had
dangers, that it would bring upon the country "utter confusion" and
"make England like Switzerland." Universal suffrage he rejected as
tending "very much to anarchy," spoke against the hasty abolition of
either the monarchy or the Lords, and refused entirely to consider the
abstract principles brought into the debate. Political problems were not
to be so resolved, but practically. With Cromwell as with Burke the
question was "whether the spirit of the people of this nation is
prepared to go along with it." The special form of government was not
the important point, but its possibility and its acceptability. The
great problem was to found a stable government, an authority to keep
order. If every man should fight for the best form of government the
state would come to desolation. He reproached the soldiers for their
insubordination against their officers, and the army for its rebellion
against the parliament. He would lay hold of anything "if it had but the
force of authority," rather than have none. Cromwell's influence
prevailed and these extreme proposals were laid aside.
Flight of the king.
Meanwhile all hopes of an accommodation with Charles were dispelled by
his flight on the 11th of November from Hampton Court to Carisbroke
Castle in the Isle of Wight, his object being to negotiate independently
with the Scots, the parliament and the army. His action, however, in the
event, diminished rather than increased his chances of success, owing to
the distrust of his intentions which it inspired. Both the army and the
parliament gave cold replies to his offers to negotiate; and Charles, on
the 27th of December 1647, entered into the _Engagement_ with the Scots
by which he promised the establishment of Presbyterianism for three
years, the suppression of the Independents and their sects, together
with privileges for the Scottish nobles, while the Scots undertook to
invade England and restore him to his throne. This alliance, though the
exact terms were not known to Cromwell--"the attempt to vassalize us to
a foreign nation," to use his own words--convinced him of the
uselessness of any plan for maintaining Charles on the throne; though he
still appears to have clung to monarchy, proposing in January 1648 the
transference of the crown to the prince of Wales. A week after the
signing of the treaty he supported a proposal for the king's deposition,
and the vote of _No Addresses_ was carried. Meanwhile the position of
Charles's opponents had been considerably strengthened by the
suppression of a dangerous rebellion in November 1647 by Cromwell's
intervention, and by the return of troops to obedience. Cromwell's
difficulties, however, were immense. His moderate and trimming attitude
was understood neither by the extreme Independents nor by the
Presbyterians. He made one attempt to reconcile the disputes between the
army and the politicians by a conference, but ended the barren
discussion on the relative merits of aristocracies, monarchies and
democracies, interspersed with Bible texts, by throwing a cushion at the
speaker's head and running downstairs. On the 19th of January 1648
Cromwell was accused of high treason by Lilburne. Plots were formed for
his assassination. He was overtaken by a dangerous illness, and on the
2nd of March civil war in support of the king broke out.
Cromwell left London in May to suppress the royalists in Wales, and took
Pembroke Castle on the 11th of July. Meanwhile behind his back the
royalists had risen all over England, the fleet in the Downs had
declared for Charles, and the Scottish army under Hamilton had invaded
the north. Immediately on the fall of Pembroke Cromwell set out to
relieve Lambert, who was slowly retreating before Hamilton's superior
forces; he joined him near Knaresborough on the 12th of August, and
started next day in pursuit of Hamilton in Lancashire, placing himself
at Stonyhurst near Preston, cutting off Hamilton from the north and his
allies, and defeating him in detail on the 17th, 18th and 19th at
Preston and at Warrington. He then marched north into Scotland,
following the forces of Monro, and established a new government of the
Argyle faction at Edinburgh; replying to the Independents who
disapproved of his mild treatment of the Presbyterians, that he desired
"union and right understanding between the godly people, Scots, English,
Jews, Gentiles, Presbyterians, Anabaptists and all; ... a more glorious
work in our eyes than if we had gotten the sacking and plunder of
Edinburgh ... and made a conquest from the Tweed to the Orcades."
Cromwell supports the Remonstrance.
The incident of the Second Civil War and the treaty with the Scots
exasperated Cromwell against the king. On his return to London he found
the parliament again negotiating with Charles, and on the eve of making
a treaty which Charles himself had no intention of keeping and regarded
merely as a means of regaining his power, and which would have thrown
away in one moment all the advantages gained during years of bloodshed
and struggle. Cromwell therefore did not hesitate to join the army in
its opposition to the parliament, and supported the Remonstrance of the
troops (20th of November 1648), which included the demand for the king's
punishment as "the grand author of all our troubles," and justified the
use of force by the army if other means failed. The parliament, however,
continued to negotiate, and accordingly Charles was removed by the army
to Hurst Castle on the 1st of December, the troops occupied London on
the 2nd; while on the 6th and 7th Colonel Pride "purged" the House of
Commons of the Presbyterians. Cromwell was not the originator of this
act, but showed his approval of it by taking his seat among the fifty or
sixty Independent members who remained.
The disposal of the king was now the great question to be decided.
During the next few weeks Cromwell appears to have made once more
attempts to come to terms with Charles; but the king was inflexible in
his refusal to part with the essential powers of the monarchy, or with
the Church; and at the end of December it was resolved to bring him to
trial. The exact share which Cromwell had in this decision and its
sequel is obscure, and the later accounts of the regicides when on their
trial at the Restoration, ascribing the whole transaction to his
initiation and agency, cannot be altogether accepted. But it is plain
that, once convinced of the necessity for the king's execution, he was
the chief instrument in overcoming all scruples among his judges, and in
resisting the protests and appeals of the Scots. To Algernon Sidney, who
refused to take part in proceedings on the plea that neither the king
nor any man could be tried by such a court, Cromwell replied, "I tell
you, we will cut off his head with the crown upon it."
The execution of Charles I.
The execution of the king took place on the 30th of January 1649. This
event, the turning-point in Cromwell's career, casts a shadow, from one
point of view, over the whole of his future statesmanship. He himself
never repented of the act, regarding it, on the contrary, as "one which
Christians in after times will mention with honour and all tyrants in
the world look at with fear," and as one directly ordained by God.
Opinions, no doubt, will always differ as to the wisdom or authority of
the policy which brought Charles to the scaffold. On the one hand, there
was no law except that of force by which an offence could be attributed
to the sovereign, the anointed king, the source of justice. The
ordinance establishing the special tribunal for the trial was passed by
a remnant of the House of Commons alone, from which all dissentients
were excluded by the army. The tribunal was composed, not of judges--for
all unanimously refused to sit on it--but of fifty-two men drawn from
among the king's enemies. The execution was a military and not a
national act, and at the last scene on the scaffold the triumphant
shouts of the soldiery could not overwhelm the groans and sobs raised by
the populace. Whatever crimes might be charged against Charles, his past
conduct might appear to be condoned by the act of negotiating with him.
On the other hand, the execution seemed to Cromwell the only alternative
to anarchy, or to a return to despotism and the abandonment of all they
had fought for. Cromwell had exhausted every expedient for arriving at
an arrangement with the king by which the royal authority might be
preserved, and the repeated perfidy and inexhaustible shiftiness of
Charles had proved the hopelessness of such attempts. The results
produced by the king's execution were far-reaching and permanent. It is
true that Puritan austerity and the lack of any strong central authority
after Oliver's death produced a reaction which temporarily restored
Charles's dynasty to the throne; but it is not less true that the
execution of the king, at a later time when all over Europe absolute
monarchies "by divine right" were being established on the ruins of the
ancient popular constitutions, was an object lesson to all the world;
and it produced a profound effect, not only in establishing
constitutional monarchy in Great Britain after James II., with the dread
of his father's fate before him, had abdicated by flight, but in giving
the impulse to that revolt against the idea of "the divinity that doth
hedge a king" which culminated in the Revolution of 1789, and of which
the mighty effects are still evident in Europe and beyond.
Cromwell in Ireland.
The king and the monarchy being now destroyed in England, Cromwell had
next to turn his attention to the suppression of royalism in Ireland and
in Scotland. In Ireland Ormonde had succeeded in uniting the English and
the Irish in a league against the supporters of the parliament, and only
a few scattered forts held out for the Commonwealth, while the young
king was every day expected to land and complete the conquest of the
island. Accordingly in March 1649 Cromwell was appointed lord-lieutenant
and commander-in-chief for its reduction. But before starting he was
called upon to suppress disorder at home. He treated the Levellers with
some severity and showed his instinctive dislike to revolutionary
proposals. "Did not that levelling principle," he said, "tend to the
reducing of all to an equality? What was the purport of it but to make
the tenant as liberal a fortune as the landlord, which I think if
obtained would not have lasted long." Equally characteristic was his
treatment of the mutinous army, in which he suppressed a rebellion in
May. He landed at Dublin on the 13th of August. Before his arrival the
Dublin garrison had defeated Ormonde with a loss of 5000 men, and
Cromwell's work was limited to the capture of detached fortresses. On
the 10th of September he stormed Drogheda, and by his order the whole of
its 2800 defenders were put to the sword without quarter. Cromwell, who
was as a rule especially scrupulous in protecting non-combatants from
violence, justified his severity in this case by the cruelties
perpetrated by the Irish in the rebellion of 1641, and as being
necessary on military and political grounds in that it "would tend to
prevent the effusion of blood for the future, which were the
satisfactory grounds of such actions which otherwise cannot but work
remorse and regret." After the fall of Drogheda Cromwell sent a few
troops to relieve Londonderry, and marched himself to Wexford, which he
took on the 11th of October, and where similar scenes of cruelty were
repeated; every captured priest, to use Cromwell's own words, being
immediately "knocked on the head," though the story of the three hundred
women slaughtered in the market-place has no foundation.
The surrender of Trim, Dundalk and Ross followed, but at Waterford
Cromwell met with a stubborn resistance and the advent of winter obliged
him to raise the siege. Next year Cromwell penetrated into Munster.
Cashel, Cahir and several castles fell in February, and Kilkenny in
March; Clonmel repulsing the assault with great loss, but surrendering
on the 10th of May 1650. Cromwell himself sailed a fortnight later,
leaving the reduction of the island, which was completed in 1652, to
his generals. The re-settlement of the conquered and devastated country
was now organized on the Tudor and Straffordian basis of colonization
from England, conversion to Protestantism, and establishment of law and
order. Cromwell thoroughly approved of the enormous scheme of
confiscation and colonization, causing great privations and sufferings,
which was carried out. The Roman Catholic landowners lost their estates,
all or part according to their degree of guilt, and these were
distributed among Cromwell's soldiers and the creditors of the
government; Cromwell also invited new settlers from home and from New
England, two-thirds of the whole land of Ireland being thus transferred
to new proprietors. The suppression of Roman Catholicism was zealously
pursued by Cromwell; the priests were hunted down and imprisoned or
exiled to Spain or Barbados, the mass was everywhere forbidden, and the
only liberty allowed was that of conscience, the Romanist not being
obliged to attend Protestant services.
These methods, together with education, "assiduous preaching ...
humanity, good life, equal and honest dealing with men of different
opinion," Cromwell thought, would convert the whole island to
Protestantism. The law was ably and justly administered, and Irish trade
was admitted to the same privileges as English, enjoying the same rights
in foreign and colonial trade; and no attempt was made to subordinate
the interests of the former to the latter, which was the policy adopted
both before and after Cromwell's time, while the union of Irish and
English interests was further recognized by the Irish representation at
Westminster in the parliaments of 1654, 1656 and 1659. These advantages,
however, scarcely benefited at all the Irish Roman Catholics, who were
excluded from political life and from the corporate towns; and
Cromwell's union meant little more than the union of the English colony
in Ireland with England. A just administration, too, did not compensate
for unjust laws or produce contentment; the policy of conversion and
colonization was unsuccessful, the descendants of many of Cromwell's
soldiers becoming merged in the Roman Catholic Irish, and the union with
England, political and commercial, being extinguished at the
Restoration. Cromwell's land settlement--modified by the restoration
under Charles II. of about one-third of the estates to the
royalists--survived, and added to the difficulties with which the
English government was afterwards confronted in Ireland.
The battles of Dunbar and Worcester.
Meanwhile Cromwell had hurried home to deal with the royalists in
Scotland. He urged Fairfax to attack the Scots at once in their own
country and to forestall their invasion; but Fairfax refused and
resigned, and Cromwell was appointed by parliament, on the 26th of June
1650, commander-in-chief of all the forces of the Commonwealth. He
entered Scotland in July, and after a campaign in the neighbourhood of
Edinburgh which proved unsuccessful in drawing out the Scots from their
fortresses, he retreated to Dunbar to await reinforcements from Berwick.
The Scots under Leslie followed him, occupied Doon Hill commanding the
town, and seized the passes between Dunbar and Berwick which Cromwell
had omitted to secure. Cromwell was outmanoeuvred and in a perilous
situation, completely cut off from England and from his supplies except
from the sea. But Leslie descended the hill to complete his triumph, and
Cromwell immediately observed the disadvantages of his antagonist's new
position, cramped by the hill behind and separated from his left wing. A
stubborn struggle on the next day, the 3rd of September, gave Cromwell a
decisive victory. Advancing, he occupied Edinburgh and Leith. At first
it seemed likely that his victories and subsequent remonstrances would
effect a peace with the Scots; but by 1651 Charles II. had succeeded in
forming a new union of royalists and presbyterians, and another campaign
became inevitable. Some delay was caused in beginning operations by
Cromwell's dangerous illness, during which his life was despaired of;
but in June he was confronting Leslie entrenched in the hills near
Stirling, impregnable to attack and refusing an engagement. Cromwell
determined to turn his antagonist's position. He sent 14,000 men into
Fifeshire and marched to Perth, which he captured on the 2nd of August,
thus cutting off Leslie from the north and his supplies. This movement,
however, left open the way to England, and Charles immediately marched
south, in reality thus giving Cromwell the wished-for opportunity of
crushing the royalists finally and decisively. Cromwell followed through
Yorkshire, and uniting with Lambert and Harrison at Evesham proceeded to
attack the royalists at Worcester; where on the 3rd of September after a
fierce struggle the great victory, "the crowning mercy" which terminated
the Civil War, was obtained over Charles.
Monk completed the subjugation of Scotland by 1654. The settlement here
was made on more moderate lines than in Ireland. The estates of only
twenty-four leaders of the defeated cause were forfeited by Cromwell,
and the national church was left untouched though deprived of all powers
of interference with the civil government, the general assembly being
dissolved in 1653. Large steps were made towards the union of the two
kingdoms by the representation of Scotland in the parliament at
Westminster; free trade between the two countries was established, the
administration of justice greatly improved, vassalage and heritable
jurisdictions abolished, and security and good order maintained by the
council of nine appointed by the Protector. In 1658 the improved
condition of Scotland was the subject of Cromwell's special
congratulation in addressing parliament. But as in Ireland so Cromwell's
policy in Scotland was unpopular and was only upheld by the maintenance
of a large army, necessitating heavy taxation and implying the loss of
the national independence. It also vanished at the Restoration.
On the 12th of September 1651 Cromwell made his triumphal entry into
London at the conclusion of his victorious campaigns; and parliament
granted him Hampton Court as a residence with L4000 a year. These
triumphs, however, had all been obtained by force of arms; the more
difficult task now awaited Cromwell of governing England by parliament
and by law. As Milton wrote:--
"Cromwell! our chief of men, who through a cloud
Not of war only, but detractions rude,
Guided by faith and matchless fortitude,
To peace and truth thy glorious way hast ploughed,
... Peace hath her victories
No less renowned than war."
Cromwell expels the Long Parliament.
Cromwell's moderation and freedom from imperiousness were acknowledged
even by those least friendly to his principles. Although the idol of his
victorious army, and in a position enabling him to exercise autocratic
power, he laboured unostentatiously for more than a year and a half as a
member of the parliament, whose authority he supported to the best of
his ability. While occupied with work on committees and in
administration he pressed forward several schemes of reform, including a
large measure of law reform prepared by a commission presided over by
Matthew Hale, and the settlement of the church; but very little was
accomplished by the parliament, which seemed to be almost exclusively
taken up with the maintenance and increase of its own powers; and
Cromwell's dissatisfaction, and that of the army which increased every
day, was intensified by the knowledge that the parliament, instead of
dissolving for a new election, was seeking to perpetuate its tenure of
power. At length, in April 1653, a "bill for a new representation" was
discussed, which provided for the retention of their seats by the
existing members without re-election, so that they would also be the
sole judges of the eligibility of the rest. This measure, which placed
the whole powers of the state--executive, legislative, military and
judicial--in the hands of one irresponsible and permanent chamber, "the
horridest arbitrariness that ever was exercised in the world," Cromwell
and the army determined to resist at all costs. On the 15th of April
they proposed that the parliament should appoint a provisional
government and dissolve itself. This compromise was refused by the
parliament, which proceeded on the 20th to press through its last stages
the "bill for a new representation." Cromwell hastened to the House, and
at the last moment, on the bill being put to the vote, whispering to
Harrison, "This is the time; I must do it," he rose, and after alluding
to the former good services of the parliament, proceeded to overwhelm
the members with reproaches. Striding up and down the House in a
passion, he made no attempt to control himself, and turning towards
individuals as he hurled significant epithets at each, he called some
"whoremasters," others "drunkards, corrupt, unjust, scandalous to the
profession of the Gospel." "Perhaps you think," he exclaimed, "that this
is not parliamentary language; I confess it is not, neither are you to
expect any such from me." In reply to a complaint of his violence he
cried, "Come, come, I will put an end to your prating. You are no
parliament, I say you are no parliament. I will put an end to your
sitting." By his directions Harrison then fetched in a small band of
Cromwell's musketeers and compelled the speaker Lenthall to vacate the
chair. Looking at the mace he said, "What shall we do with this bauble?"
and ordered a soldier to take it away. The members then trooped out,
Cromwell crying after them, "It is you that have forced me to this; for
I have sought the Lord night and day that He would rather slay me than
put me upon the doing this work." He then snatched the obnoxious bill
from the clerk, put it under his cloak, and commanding the doors to be
locked went back to Whitehall. In the afternoon he dissolved the council
in spite of John Bradshaw's remonstrances, who said, "Sir, we have heard
what you did at the House this morning...; but you are mistaken to think
that the parliament is dissolved, for no power under heaven can dissolve
them but themselves; therefore take you notice of that." Cromwell had no
patience with formal pedantry of this sort; and in point of strict
legality "The Rump" of the Long Parliament had little better title to
authority than the officers who expelled it from the House. After this
Cromwell had nothing left but the army with which to govern, and
"henceforth his life was a vain attempt to clothe that force in
constitutional forms, and make it seem something else so that it might
become something else."[2]
By the dissolution of the Long Parliament Cromwell as commander-in-chief
was left the sole authority in the state. He determined immediately to
summon another parliament. This was the "Little" or "Barebones
Parliament," consisting of one hundred and forty persons selected by the
council of officers from among those nominated by the congregations in
each county, which met on the 4th of July 1653. This assembly, however,
soon showed itself impracticable and incapable, and on the 12th of
December the speaker, followed by the more moderate members, marched to
Whitehall and returned their powers to Cromwell, while the rest were
expelled by the army.
Cromwell, who had no desire to exercise arbitrary power and whose main
object therefore was to devise some constitutional limit to the
authority which circumstances had placed in his hands, now accepted the
written constitution drawn up by some of the officers, called the
_Instrument of Government_, the earliest example of a "fixed government"
based on "fundamentals," or constitutional guarantees, and the only
example of it in English history. Its authors had wished Oliver to
assume the title of king, but this he repeatedly refused; and in the
instrument he was named Protector, a parliament was established, limited
in powers but whose measures were not restricted by the Protector's veto
unless they contravened the constitution, the Protector's executive
power being also limited by the council. The Protector and the council
together were given a life tenure of office, with a large army and a
settled revenue sufficient for public needs in time of peace; while the
clauses relating to religion "are remarkable as laying down for the
first time with authority a principle of toleration,"[3] though this
toleration did not apply to Roman Catholics and Anglicans. On the 16th
of December 1653 Cromwell was installed in his new office, dressed as a
civilian in a plain black coat instead of in scarlet as a general, in
order to demonstrate that military government had given place to civil;
for he approached his task in the same spirit that had prompted his
declaration to the Little Parliament of his wish "to divest the sword of
all power in the Civil administration."
The government of the Protector.
In the interval between his nomination as Protector and the summoning of
his first parliament in September 1654, Cromwell was empowered together
with his council to legislate by ordinances; and eighty-two were issued
in all, dealing with numerous and various reforms and including the
reorganization of the treasury, the settlement of Ireland and Scotland
and the union of the three kingdoms, the relief of poor prisoners, and
the maintenance of the highways. These ordinances in many instances
showed the hand of the true statesman. Cromwell was essentially a
conservative reformer; in his attempts to purge the court of chancery of
its most flagrant abuses, and to settle the ecclesiastical affairs of
the nation, he showed himself anxious to retain as much of the existing
system as could be left untouched without doing positive evil. He was
out-voted by his council on the question of commutation of tithes, and
his enlightened zeal for reforming the "wicked and abominable" sentences
of the criminal law met with complete failure. Most of these ordinances
were subsequently confirmed by parliament, and, "on the whole, this body
of dictatorial legislation, abnormal in form as it is, in substance was
a real, wise and moderate set of reforms."[4] His ordinances for the
"Reformation of Manners," the product of the puritan spirit, had but a
transitory effect. The Long Parliament had ordered a strict observance
of Sunday, punished swearing severely, and made adultery a capital
crime; Cromwell issued further ordinances against duelling, swearing,
race-meetings and cock-fights--the last as tending to the disturbance of
the public peace and the encouragement of "dissolute practices to the
dishonour of God." Cromwell himself was no ascetic and saw no harm in
honest sport. He was exceedingly fond of horses and hunting, leaping
ditches prudently avoided by the foreign ambassadors. Baxter describes
him as full of animal spirits, "naturally of such a vivacity, hilarity
and alacrity as another man is when he hath drunken a cup of wine too
much," and notes his "familiar rustic carriage with his soldiers in
sporting." He was fond of music and of art, and kept statues in Hampton
Court Gardens which scandalized good puritans. He preferred that
Englishmen should be free rather than sober by compulsion. Writing to
the Scottish clergy, and rejecting their claim to suppress dissent in
order to extirpate error, he said, "Your pretended fear lest error
should step in is like the man who would keep all wine out of the
country lest men should be drunk. It will be found an unjust and unwise
jealousy to deprive a man of his natural liberty upon a supposition he
may abuse it. When he doth abuse it, judge." It is probable that very
little of this moral legislation was enforced in practice, though
special efforts were made under the government of the major-generals.
Cromwell expected more results from the effects of education and
culture. A part of the revenue of confiscated church lands was allotted
to the maintenance of schools, and the question of national education
was seriously taken in hand by the Commonwealth. Cromwell was especially
interested in the universities. In 1649 he had been elected D.C.L. at
Oxford, and in 1651 chancellor of the University, an office which he
held till 1657, when he was succeeded by his son Richard. He founded a
new readership in Divinity, and presented Greek MSS. to the Bodleian. He
appointed visitors for the universities and great public schools, and
defended the universities from the attacks of the extreme sectaries who
clamoured for their abolition, even Clarendon allowing that Oxford
"yielded a harvest of extraordinary good and sound knowledge in all
parts of learning." In 1657 he founded a new university at Durham, which
was suppressed at the Restoration. He patronized learning. Milton and
Marvell were his secretaries. He allowed the royalists Hobbes and Cowley
to return to England, and lived in friendship with the poet Waller.
Cromwell's church policy.
Cromwell's religious policy included the maintenance of a national
church, a policy acceptable to the army but much disliked by the Scots,
who wanted the church to control the state, not the state the church. He
improved the incomes of poor livings by revenues derived from episcopal
estates and the fines of delinquents. An important feature of his church
government was the appointment on the 20th of March 1654 of the
"Triers," thirty-eight clerical and lay commissioners, who decided upon
the qualifications of candidates for livings, and without whose
recommendation none could be appointed; while an ordinance of August
1654 provided for the removal of the unfit, the latter class including
besides immoral persons those holding "popish" or blasphemous opinions,
those publicly using the English Prayer Book, and the disaffected to the
government. Religious toleration was granted, but with the important
exception that some harsh measures were enacted against Anglicans and
Roman Catholics, to neither of whom was liberty of worship accorded. The
acts imposing fines for recusancy, repealed in 1650, were later executed
with great severity. In 1655 a proclamation was issued for administering
the laws against the priests and Jesuits, and some executions were
carried out. Complete toleration in fact was only extended to Protestant
nonconformists, who composed the Cromwellian established church, and who
now meted out to their antagonists the same treatment which they
themselves were later to receive under the _Clarendon Code_ of Charles
II.
His religious toleration.
Cromwell himself, however, remained throughout a staunch and constant
upholder of religious toleration. "I had rather that Mahommedanism were
permitted amongst us," he avowed, "than that one of God's children
should be persecuted." Far in advance of his contemporaries on this
question, whenever his personal action is disclosed it is invariably on
the side of forbearance and of moderation. It is probable, from the
absence of evidence to the contrary, that much of this severe
legislation was never executed, and it was without doubt Cromwell's
restraining hand which moderated the narrow persecuting spirit of the
executive. In practice Anglican private worship appears to have been
little interfered with; and although the recusant fines were rigorously
exacted, the same seems to have been the case with the private
celebration of the mass. Bordeaux, the French envoy in England, wrote
that, in spite of the severe laws, the Romanists received better
treatment under the Protectorate than under any other government.
Cromwell's strong personal inclination towards toleration is clearly
seen in his treatment of the Jews and Quakers. He was unable, owing to
the opposition of the divines and of the merchants, to secure the full
recognition of the right to reside in England of the former who had for
some time lived in small numbers and traded unnoticed and untroubled in
the country; but he obtained an opinion from two judges that there was
no law which forbade their return, and he gave them a private assurance
of his protection, with leave to celebrate their private worship and to
possess a cemetery.
Cromwell's policy in this instance was not overturned at the
Restoration, and the great Jewish immigration into England with all its
important consequences may be held to date practically from these first
concessions made by Cromwell. His personal intervention also alleviated
the condition of the Quakers, much persecuted at this time. In an
interview in 1654 the sincerity and enthusiasm of George Fox had greatly
moved Cromwell and had convinced him of their freedom from dangerous
political schemes. He ordered Fox's liberation, and in November 1657
issued a general order directing that Quakers should be treated with
leniency, and be discharged from confinement. Doctrines directly
attacking Christianity Cromwell regarded, indeed, as outside toleration
and to be punished by the civil power, but at the same time he mitigated
the severity of the penalty ordained by the law. In general the
toleration enjoyed under Cromwell was probably far larger than at any
period since religion became the contending ground of political parties,
and certainly greater than under his immediate successors. Lilburne and
the anabaptists, and John Rogers and the Fifth Monarchy men, were
prosecuted only on account of their direct attacks upon the government,
and Cromwell in his broad-minded and tolerant statesmanship was himself
in advance of his age and his administration. He believed in the
spiritual and unseen rather than in the outward and visible unity of
Christendom.
Foreign policy.
In foreign policy Cromwell's chief aims appear to have been to support
and extend the Protestant faith, to promote English trade, and to
prevent a Stuart restoration by foreign aid--the religious mission of
England in the world, her commercial interests, and her political
independence being indissolubly connected in his mind. The beginning of
his rule inherited a war with France and Holland; the former consequent
on Cromwell's failure to obtain terms for the Huguenots or the cession
of Dunkirk, and the latter--for which he was not responsible--the result
of commercial rivalry, of disputes concerning the rights of neutrals, of
bitter memories of Dutch misdeeds in the East Indies, and of dynastic
causes arising from the stadtholder, William II. of Orange, having
married Mary, daughter of Charles I. In 1651 the Dutch completed a
treaty with Denmark to injure English trade in the Baltic; to which
England replied the same year by the Navigation Act, which suppressed
the Dutch trade with the English colonies and the Dutch fish trade with
England, and struck at the Dutch carrying trade. War was declared in May
1652 after a fight between Blake and Tromp off Dover, and was continued
with signal victories and defeats on both sides till 1654. The religious
element, however, which predominated in Cromwell's foreign policy
inclined him to peace, and in April of that year terms were arranged by
which England on the whole was decidedly the gainer. The Dutch
acknowledged the supremacy of the English flag in the British seas,
which Tromp had before refused; they accepted the Navigation Act, and
undertook privately to exclude the princes of Orange from the command of
their forces. The Protestant policy was further followed up by treaties
with Sweden and Denmark which secured the passage of the Sound for
English ships on the same conditions as the Dutch, and a treaty with
Portugal which liberated English subjects from the Inquisition and
allowed commerce with the Portuguese colonies. The two great Roman
Catholic powers now both bid for Cromwell's alliance. Cromwell wisely
inclined towards France, for Spain was then a greater menace than France
alike to the Protestant cause and to the growth of British trade in the
western hemisphere; but as no concessions could be gained from either
France or Spain, the year 1654 closed without a treaty being made with
either. In December 1654 Penn and Venables sailed for the West Indies
with orders to attack the Spanish colonies and the French shipping; and
for the first time since the Plantagenets an English fleet appeared in
the Mediterranean, where Blake upheld the supremacy of the English flag,
made a treaty with the dey of Algiers, destroyed the castles and ships
of the dey of Tunis at Porto Farina on the 4th of April 1655, and
liberated the English prisoners captured by the pirates.
The incident of the massacre of the Protestant Vaudois at this time
decided Cromwell's policy in favour of France. In response to Cromwell's
splendid championship of the persecuted people--which has been well
described as "one of the noblest memories of England"--France undertook
to put pressure upon Savoy, in consequence of which the persecution
ceased for a time; but Cromwell's intervention had less practical effect
than has generally been supposed, though "never was the great conception
of a powerful state having duties along with interests more
magnanimously realized."[5] The treaty of Pinerolo withdrew the edict
ordering the persecutions, but they were soon afterwards renewed, and in
1658 formed the subject of another remonstrance by Cromwell to Louis
XIV. in his last extant public letter before his death. The treaty of
Westminster (24th of October 1655) dealt chiefly with commercial
subjects, and contained a clause promising the expulsion from France of
political exiles. Meanwhile the West Indian expedition had been defeated
at Hispaniola, and war was declared by Spain, who now promised help to
Charles II. for regaining his throne. Cromwell sent powerful English
fleets to watch the coast of Spain and to prevent communications with
the West Indies and America; on the 8th of September 1656 a fleet of
treasure ships was destroyed off Cadiz by Stayner, and on the 20th of
April 1657 Blake performed his last exploit in the destruction of the
whole Spanish fleet of sixteen treasure ships in the harbour of Santa
Cruz in Teneriffe. These naval victories were followed by a further
military alliance with France against Spain, termed the treaty of Paris
(the 23rd of March 1657). Cromwell furnished 6000 men with a fleet to
join in the attack upon Spain in Flanders, and obtained as reward
Mardyke and Dunkirk, the former being captured and handed over on the
3rd of October 1657, and the latter after the battle of the Dunes on the
4th of June 1658, when Cromwell's Ironsides were once more pitted
against English royalists fighting for the Spaniards.
Such was the character of Cromwell's policy abroad. The inspiring
principle had been the defence and support of Protestantism, the
question with Cromwell being "whether the Christian world should be all
popery." He desired England to be everywhere the protector of the
oppressed and the upholder of "true religion." His policy was in
principle the policy of Elizabeth, of Gustavus Adolphus, and--in the
following generation--of William of Orange. He appreciated, without
over-estimating, the value of England's insular position. "You have
accounted yourselves happy," he said in January 1658, "in being
environed by a great ditch from all the world beside. Truly you will not
be able to keep your ditch nor your shipping unless you turn your ships
and shipping into troops of horse and companies of foot, and fight to
defend yourselves on _terra firma_." He did not regard himself merely as
the trustee of the national resources. These were not to be employed for
the advancement of English interests alone. "God's interest in the
world," he declared, "is more extensive than all the people of these
three nations. God has brought us hither to consider the work we may do
in the world as well as at home." In 1653 he had made the astonishing
proposal to the Dutch that England and Holland should divide the
habitable globe outside Europe between them, that all states maintaining
the Inquisition should be treated as enemies by both the proposed
allies, and that the latter "should send missionaries to all peoples
willing to receive them, to inculcate the truth of Jesus Christ and the
Holy Gospel." Great writers like Milton and Harrington supported
Cromwell's view of the duty of a statesman; the poet Waller acclaimed
Cromwell as "the world's protector"; but the London tradesmen complained
of the loss of their Spanish trade and regarded Holland and not Spain as
the national enemy. But Cromwell's dream of putting himself at the head
of European Protestantism never even approached realization. War broke
out between the Protestant states of Sweden, Denmark, Holland and
Brandenburg, with whom religion was entirely subordinated to individual
aims and interests, and who were far from rising to Cromwell's great
conceptions; while the Vaudois were soon subjected to fresh
persecutions. On the other hand, Cromwell could justly boast "there is
not a nation in Europe but is very willing to ask a good understanding
with you." He raised England to a predominant position among the Powers
of Europe, and anticipated the triumphs of the elder Pitt. "It was hard
to discover," wrote Clarendon, "which feared him most, France, Spain or
the Low Countries." The vigour and success with which he organized the
national resources and upheld the national honour, asserted the British
sovereignty of the seas, defended the oppressed, and caused his name to
be feared and respected in foreign courts where that of Stuart was
despised and neglected, command praise and admiration equally from
contemporaries and from modern critics, from his friends and from his
opponents. "He once more joined us to the continent," wrote Marvell,
while Dryden describes him as teaching the British lion to roar.
"Cromwell's greatness at home," said Clarendon, "was a mere shadow of
his greatness abroad." "It is strange," wrote Pepys in 1667 under a
different regime, "how everybody nowadays reflect upon Oliver and
commend him, what brave things he did, and made all the neighbour
princes fear him." To Cromwell more than to any other British ruler
belongs the credit of having laid the foundation of England's maritime
supremacy and of her over-sea empire.
Cromwell and the empire.
Cromwell's colonial policy aimed definitely at the recognition and
extension of the British empire. By March 1652 the whole of the
territory governed by the Stuarts had submitted to the authority of the
Commonwealth, and the Navigation Act of the 9th of October 1651, by
which colonial goods could only be imported to England in British ships
and all foreign trade to the colonies was restricted to products of the
exporting country, sought to bind the colonies to England and to support
the interests of the shipowners and merchants, and therefore of the
English maritime supremacy, the act being, moreover, memorable as the
first public measure which treated the colonies as a whole and as an
integral part of Great Britain. The hindrance, however, to the general
development of trade which the act involved aroused at once loud
complaints, to which Cromwell turned a deaf ear, continuing to seize
Dutch ships trading in forbidden goods. In the internal administration
of the colonies Cromwell interfered very little, maintaining specially
friendly relations with the New Englanders, and showing no jealousy of
their desire for self-government. The war with France, Holland and Spain
offered opportunities of gaining additional territory. A small
expedition sent by Cromwell in February 1654 to capture New Amsterdam
(New York) from the Dutch was abandoned on the conclusion of peace, and
the fleet turned to attack the French colonies; Major Robert Sedgwick
taking with a handful of men the fort of St John's, Port Royal or
Annapolis, and the French fort on the river Penobscot, the whole
territory from this river to the mouth of the St Lawrence remaining
British territory till its cession in 1667. In December 1654 Cromwell
despatched Penn and Venables with a fleet of thirty-eight ships and 2500
soldiers to the West Indies, their numbers being raised by recruits at
the islands to 7000 men. The attack on Hispaniola, however, was a
disastrous failure, and though a landing at Jamaica and the capture of
the capital, Santiago de la Vega, was effected, the expedition was
almost annihilated by disease; and Penn and Venables returned to
England, when Cromwell threw them into the Tower. Cromwell, however,
persevered, reminding Fortescue, who was left in command, that the war
was one against the "Roman Babylon," that they were "fighting the Lord's
battles"; and he sent out reinforcements under Sedgwick, offering
inducements to the New Englanders to migrate to Jamaica. In spite of
almost insuperable difficulties the colony took root, trade began, the
fleet lay in wait for the Spanish treasure ships, the settlements of the
Spaniards were raided, and their repeated attempts to retake the island
were successfully resisted. In 1658 Colonel Edward Doyley, the governor,
gained a decisive victory over thirty companies of Spanish foot, and
sent ten of their flags to Cromwell. The Protector, however, did not
live to witness the final triumph of his undertaking, which gave to
England, as he had wished, "the mastery of those seas," ensuring the
English colonies against Spanish attacks, and being maintained and
followed up at the Restoration.
Parliamentary difficulties.
The major-generals.
Meanwhile, the first parliament of the Protectorate had met in September
1654. A scheme of electoral reform had been carried by which members
were taken from the small and corrupt boroughs and given to the large
hitherto unrepresented towns, and which provided for thirty
representatives from Scotland and from Ireland. Instead, however, of
proceeding with the work of practical legislation, accepting the
Instrument of Government without challenge as the basis of its
authority, the parliament immediately began to discuss and find fault
with the constitution and to debate about "Fundamentals." About a
hundred members who refused to engage not to attempt to change the form
of government were excluded on the 12th of September. The rest sat on,
discussing the constitution, drawing up lists of damnable heresies and
of incontrovertible articles of faith, producing plans for the reduction
of the army and demanding for themselves its control. Incensed by the
dilatory and factious proceedings of the House, Cromwell dismissed the
parliament on the 22nd of January 1655. Various dangerous plots against
his government and person were at this time rife. Vane, Ludlow, Robert
Overton, Harrison and Major Wildman, the head of the Levellers, were all
arrested, while the royalist rising under Penruddock was crushed in
Devonshire. Other attacks upon his authority were met with the same
resort to force. The judges and lawyers began to question the legality
of his ordinances, and to doubt their competency to convict royalist
prisoners of treason. A merchant named Cony refused to pay customs not
imposed by parliament, his counsel declaring their levy by ordinance to
be contrary to Magna Carta, and Chief Justice Rolle resigning in order
to avoid giving judgment. Cromwell was thus inevitably drawn farther
along the path of arbitrary government. He arrested the persons who
refused to pay taxes, and sent Cony's lawyers to the Tower. Hitherto he
had been scrupulously impartial in raising the best men to the judicial
bench, including the illustrious Matthew Hale, but he now appointed
compliant judges, and, alluding to Magna Carta in terms impossible to
transcribe for modern readers, declared that "it should not control his
actions which he knew were for the safety of the Commonwealth." The
country was now divided into twelve districts each governed by a
major-general, to whom was entrusted the duty of maintaining order,
stamping out disaffection and plots, and executing the laws relating to
public morals. They had power to transport royalists and those who could
not produce good characters, and supported themselves by a special tax
of 10% on the incomes of the royalist gentry. Enormous numbers of
ale-houses were closed--a proceeding which excited intense resentment
and was probably no slight cause of the royalist reaction. Still more
serious an encroachment upon the constitution perhaps even than the
institution of the major-generals was Cromwell's tampering with the
municipal franchise by confiscating the charters, depriving the
burgesses, now hostile to his government, of their parliamentary votes,
and limiting the franchise to the corporation; thereby corrupting the
national liberties at their very source, and introducing an evil
precedent only too readily followed by Charles II. and James II.
Refusal of the crown.
It was in these embarrassed and perilous circumstances that Cromwell
summoned a new parliament in the summer of 1656. In spite of the
influence and interference of the major-generals a large number of
members hostile to the government were returned, of whom Cromwell's
council immediately excluded nearly a hundred. The major-generals were
the object of general attack, while the special tax on the royalists was
declared unjust, and the bill for its continuation rejected by a large
majority. An attempt at the assassination of Cromwell by Miles
Sindercombe added to the general feeling of anxiety and unrest. The
military rule excited universal hostility; there was an earnest desire
for a settled and constitutional government, and the revival of the
monarchy in the person of Cromwell appeared the only way of obtaining
it. On the 23rd of February 1657 the _Remonstrance_ offering Cromwell
the crown was moved by Sir Christopher Packe in the parliament and
violently resisted by the officers and the army party, one hundred
officers waiting upon Cromwell on the 27th to petition against his
acceptance of it. On the 25th of March the _Remonstrance_, now termed
the _Petition and Advice_, and including a new scheme of government, was
passed by a majority of 123 to 62 in spite of the opposition of the
officers; and on the 31st it was presented to Cromwell in the Banqueting
House at Whitehall whence Charles I. had stepped out on to the scaffold.
Cromwell replied by requesting a brief delay to ask counsel of God and
his own heart. On the 8th of May about thirty officers presented a
petition to parliament against the revival of the monarchy, and
Fleetwood, Desborough and Lambert threatened to lay down their
commissions. Accordingly Cromwell the same day refused the crown
definitely, greatly to the astonishment both of his followers and his
enemies, who considered his decision a fatal neglect of an opportunity
of consolidating his rule and power. In particular, his acceptance of
the crown would have guaranteed his followers, under the act of Henry
VII., from liability in the future to the charge of high treason for
having given allegiance to himself as a _de facto_ king. Cromwell
himself, however, seems to have regarded the question of title as of
secondary importance, as merely (to use his own words) "a feather in the
hat," "a shining bauble for crowds to gaze at or kneel to." "Your
father," wrote Sir Francis Russell to Henry Cromwell, "hath of late made
more wise men fools than ever; he laughs and is merry, but they hang
down their heads and are pitifully out of countenance."
On the 25th of May the petition was presented to Cromwell again, with
the title of Protector substituted for that of King, and he now accepted
it. On the 26th of June 1657 he was once more installed as Protector,
this time, however, with regal ceremony in contrast with the simple
formalities observed on the first occasion, the heralds proclaiming his
accession in the same manner as that of the kings. Cromwell's government
seemed now established on the firmer footing of law and national
approval, he himself obtaining the powers though not the title of a
constitutional monarch, with a permanent revenue of L1,300,000 for the
ordinary expenses of the administration, the command of the forces, the
right to nominate his successor and, subject to the approval of
parliament, the members of the council and of the new second chamber now
established, while at the same time the freedom of parliament was
guaranteed in its elections. Difficulties, however, appeared immediately
the parliament got to work. The republicans hostile to the Protectorate,
excluded before, now returned, took the places vacated by strong
supporters of Cromwell who had been removed to the Lords, and attacked
the authority of the new chamber, opened communications with the
disaffected in the city and army, protested against unparliamentary
taxation and arbitrary imprisonment, and demanded again the supremacy of
parliament. In consequence Cromwell summoned both Houses to his presence
on the 4th of February 1658, and having pointed out the perils to which
they were once more exposing the state, dissolved parliament, dismissing
the members with the words, "let God be judge between me and you."
During the period following the dissolution Cromwell's power appeared
outwardly at least to be at its height. The revolts of royalists and
sectaries against his government had been easily suppressed, and the
various attempts to assassinate him, contemptuously referred to by
Cromwell as "little fiddling things," were anticipated and prevented by
an excellent system of police and spies, and by his bodyguard of 160
men. The victory at Dunkirk increased his reputation, while Louis XIV.
showed his respect for the ruler of England by the splendid reception
given to the Protector's envoy, Lord Fauconberg, and by a complimentary
mission despatched to England.
The great career, the incidents of which we have been following, was
now, however, drawing to a close. Cromwell's health had long been
impaired by the hardships of campaigning. Now at the age of 58 he was
already old, and his firm, strong signature had become feeble and
trembling. The responsibilities and anxieties of government unassisted
by parliament, and the continued struggle against the force of anarchy,
weighed upon him and exhausted his physical powers. "It has been
hitherto," Cromwell said, "a matter of, I think, but philosophical
discourse, that a great place, a great authority, is a great burthen. I
know it is." "I can say in the presence of God, in comparison of whom we
are but like poor creeping ants upon the earth, I would have lived under
my woodside to have kept a flock of sheep rather than undertook such a
government as this." "I doubt not to say," declared his steward
Maidston, "it drank up his spirits, of which his natural constitution
afforded a vast stock, and brought him to his grave."
Death.
Domestic bereavements added further causes of grief and of weakened
vitality. On the 6th of February 1658 he lost his favourite daughter,
Elizabeth Claypole, and he was much cast down by the shock of his
bereavement and of her long sufferings. Shortly afterwards he fell ill
of an intermittent fever, but seemed to recover. On the 20th of August
George Fox met him riding at the head of his guards in the park at
Hampton Court, but declared "he looked like a dead man." The next day he
again fell ill and was removed from Hampton Court to Whitehall, where
his condition became worse. The anecdotes believed and circulated by the
royalists that Cromwell died in all the agonies of remorse and fear are
entirely false. On the 31st of August he seemed to rally, and one who
slept in his bedchamber and who heard him praying, declared, "a public
spirit to God's cause did breathe in him to the very last." During the
next few days he grew weaker and resigned himself to death. "I would,"
he said, "be willing to be further serviceable to God and his people,
but my work is done." For the first time doubts as to his spiritual
state seemed to have troubled him. "Tell me is it possible to fall from
grace?" he asked the attendant minister. "No, it is not possible," the
latter replied. "Then," said Cromwell, "I am safe, for I know that I was
once in grace." He refused medicine to induce sleep, declaring "it is
not my design to drink or to sleep, but my design is to make what haste
I can to be gone." Towards the morning of the 3rd of September he again
spoke, "using divers holy expressions, implying much inward consolation
and peace," together with "some exceeding self-debasing words,
annihilating and judging himself." He died on the afternoon of the same
day, his day of triumph, the anniversary both of Dunbar and of
Worcester. His body was privately buried in the chapel of Henry VII. in
Westminster Abbey, the public funeral taking place on the 23rd of
November, with great ceremony and on the same scale as that of Philip
II. of Spain, and costing the enormous sum of L60,000. At the
Restoration his body was exhumed, and on the 30th of January 1661, the
anniversary of the execution of Charles I., it was drawn on a sledge
from Holborn to Tyburn, together with the bodies of Ireton and Bradshaw,
accompanied by "the universal outcry and curses of the people." There it
was hanged on a gallows, and in the evening taken down, when the head
was cut off and set up upon Westminster Hall, where it remained till as
late as 1684, the trunk being thrown into a pit underneath the gallows.
According to various legends Cromwell's last burial place is stated to
be Westminster Abbey, Naseby Field or Newburgh Abbey; but there appears
to be no evidence to support them, or to create any reasonable doubt
that the great Protector's dust lies now where it was buried, in the
neighbourhood of the present Connaught Square.
Cromwell's military genius.
As a military commander Cromwell was as prompt as Gustavus, as ardent as
Conde, as exact as Turenne. These, moreover, were soldiers from their
earliest years. Conde's fame was established in his twenty-second year,
Gustavus was twenty-seven and Turenne thirty-three at the beginning of
their careers as commanders-in-chief. Cromwell, on the other hand, was
forty-three when he fought in his first battle. In less than two years
he had taken his rank as one of the great cavalry leaders of history.
His campaigns of 1648 and 1651 placed him still higher as a great
commander. Worcester, his crowning victory, has been indicated by a
German critic as the prototype of Sedan. Yet his early military
education could have consisted at most of the perusal of the _Swedish
Intelligencer_ and the practice of riding. It is not, therefore, strange
that Cromwell's first essays in war were characterised more by energy
than technical skill. It was some time before he realized the spirit of
cavalry tactics, of which he was later so complete a master. At first he
speaks with complacence of a _melee_, and reports that he and his men
"agreed to charge" the enemy. But before long he came to understand, as
no other commander of the age save Gustavus understood it, the value of
true "shock-action." Of Marston Moor he writes, "we never charged but we
routed them"; and thereafter his battles were decided by the shock of
closed squadrons, the fresh impulse of a second and even a third line,
and above all by the unquestioning discipline and complete control over
their horses to which he trained his men. This gave them not merely
greater steadiness, but, what was far more important, the power of
rallying and reforming for a second effort. The Royalist cavalry was
disorganized by victory as often as by defeat, and illustrated on
numerous fields the now discredited maxim that cavalry cannot charge
twice in one day. Cromwell shares with Frederick the Great the credit of
founding the modern cavalry spirit. As a horsemaster he was far superior
to Murat. His marches in the eastern campaign of 1643 show a daily
average at one time of 28 m. as against the 21 of Murat's cavalry in the
celebrated pursuit after Jena. And this result he achieved with men of
less than two years' service, men, too, more heavily equipped and worse
mounted than the veterans of the _Grande Armee_. It has been said that
his battles were decided by shock action; the real emphasis should be
laid upon the word "decided." The swift, unhesitating charge was more
than unusual in the wars of the time, and was possible only because of
the peculiar earnestness of the men who fought the English war. The
professional soldiers of the Continent could rarely be brought to force
a decision; but the English, contending for a cause, were imbued with
the spirit of the modern "nation in arms"; and having taken up arms
wished to decide the quarrel by arms. This feeling was not less
conspicuous in the far-ranging rides, or raids, of the Cromwellian
cavalry. At one time, as in the case of Blechingdon, they would perform
strange exploits worthy of the most daring hussars; at another their
speed and tenacity paralyses armies. Not even Sheridan's horsemen in
1864-65 did their work more effectively than did the English squadrons
in the Preston campaign. Cromwell appreciated this feeling at its exact
worth, and his pre-eminence in the Civil War was due to this highest
gift of a general, the power of feeling the pulse of his army.
Resolution, vigour and clear sight marked his conduct as a
commander-in-chief. He aimed at nothing less than the annihilation of
the enemy's forces, which Clausewitz was the first to define, a hundred
and fifty years later, as the true objective of military operations. Not
merely as exemplifying the tactical envelopment, but also as embodying
the central idea of grand strategy, was Worcester the prototype of
Sedan. The contrast between a campaign of Cromwell's and one of
Turenne's is far more than remarkable, and the observation of a military
critic who maintains that Cromwell's art of war was two centuries in
advance of its time, finds universal acceptance.
At a time when throughout the rest of Europe armies were manoeuvring
against one another with no more than a formal result, the English and
Scots were fighting decisive battles; and Cromwell's battles were more
decisive than those of any other leader. Until his fiery energy made
itself felt, hardly any army on either side actually suffered rout; but
at Marston Moor and Naseby the troops of the defeated party were
completely dissolved, while at Worcester the royalist army was
annihilated. Dunbar attested his constancy and gave proof that Cromwell
was a master of the tactics of all arms. Preston was an example like
Austerlitz of the two stages of a battle as defined by Napoleon, the
first _flottante_, the second _foudroyante_.
Cromwell's strategic manoeuvres, if less adroit than those of Turenne or
Montecucculi, were, in accordance with his own genius and the temper of
his army, directed always to forcing a decisive battle. That he was also
capable of strategy of the other type was clear from his conduct of the
Irish War. But his chief work was of a different kind and done on a
different scale. The greatest feat of Turenne was the rescue of one
province in 1674-1675; Cromwell, in 1648 and again in 1651, had
two-thirds of England and half of Scotland for his theatre of war.
Turenne levelled down his methods to suit the ends which he had in view.
The task of Cromwell was far greater. Any comparison between the
generalship of these two great commanders would therefore be misleading,
for want of a common basis. It is when he is contrasted with other
commanders, not of the age of Louis XIV., but of the Civil War, that
Cromwell's greatness is most conspicuous. Whilst others busied
themselves with the application of the accepted rules of the Dutch, the
German, and other formal schools of tactical thought, Cromwell almost
alone saw clearly into the heart of the questions at issue, and evolved
the strategy, the tactics, and the training suited to the work to which
he had set his hand.
Cromwell's statesmanship.
Cromwell's career as a statesman has been already traced in its
different spheres, and an endeavour has been made to show the breadth
and wisdom of his conceptions and at the same time the cause of the
immediate failure of his constructive policy. Whether if Cromwell had
survived he would have succeeded in gradually establishing legal
government is a question which can never be answered. His administration
as it stands in history is undoubtedly open to the charge that after
abolishing the absolutism of the ancient monarchy he substituted for it,
not law and liberty, but a military tyranny far more despotic than the
most arbitrary administration of Charles I. The statement of Vane and
Ludlow, when they refused to acknowledge Cromwell's government, that it
was "in substance a re-establishment of that which we all engaged
against," was true. The levy of ship money and customs by Charles sinks
into insignificance beside Cromwell's wholesale taxation by ordinances;
the inquisitional methods of the major-generals and the unjust and
exceptional taxation of royalists outdid the scandals of the extra-legal
courts of the Stuarts; the shipment of British subjects by Cromwell as
slaves to Barbados has no parallel in the Stuart administration; while
the prying into morals, the encouragement of informers, the attempt to
make the people religious by force, were the counterpart of the Laudian
system, and Cromwell's drastic treatment of the Irish exceeded anything
dreamed of by Strafford. He discovered that parliamentary government
after all was not the easy and plain task that Pym and Vane had
imagined, and Cromwell had in the end no better justification of his
rule than that which Strafford had suggested to Charles I.,--"parliament
refusing (to give support and co-operation in carrying on the
government) you are acquitted before God and man." The fault was no
doubt partly Cromwell's own. He had neither the patience nor the tact
for managing loquacious parliamentary pedants. But the chief
responsibility was not his but theirs. John Morley (_Oliver Cromwell_,
p. 297) has truly observed of the execution of Charles I., that it was
"an act of war, and was just as defensible or just as assailable, and on
the same grounds, as the war itself." The parliamentary party took leave
of legality when they took up arms against the sovereign, and it was
therefore idle to dream of a formally legal sanction for any of their
subsequent revolutionary proceedings. An entirely fresh start had to be
made. A new foundation had to be laid on which a new system of legality
might be reared. It was for this that Cromwell strove. If the Rump or
the Little Parliament had in a business-like spirit assumed and
discharged the functions of a constituent assembly, such a foundation
might have been provided. It was only when five years had passed since
the death of the king without any "settlement of the nation" being
arrived at, that Cromwell at last accepted a constitution drafted by his
military officers, and attempted to impose it on the parliament. And it
was not until the parliament refused to acknowledge the Instrument as
the required starting point for the new legality, that Cromwell in the
last resort took arbitrary power into his hands as the only method
remaining for carrying on the government. For much as he hated
arbitrariness, he hated anarchy still more. While therefore Cromwell's
administration became in practice little different from that of
Strafford, the aims and ideals of the two statesmen had nothing in
common. It is therefore profoundly true, as observed by S. R. Gardiner
(_Cromwell_, p. 315), that "what makes Cromwell's biography so
interesting in his perpetual effort to walk in the paths of legality--an
effort always frustrated by the necessities of the situation. The
man--it is ever so with the noblest--was greater than his work." The
nature of Cromwell's statesmanship is to be seen rather in his struggles
against the retrograde influences and opinions of his time, in the many
political reforms anticipated though not originated or established by
himself, and in his religious, perhaps fanatical, enthusiasm, than in
the outward character of his administration, which, however, in spite of
its despotism shows itself in its inner spirit of justice, patriotism
and self-sacrifice, so immeasurably superior to that of the Stuarts.
Personal character.
Cromwell's personal character has been inevitably the subject of
unceasing controversy. According to Clarendon he was "a brave bad man,"
with "all the wickedness against which damnation is pronounced and for
which hell fire is prepared." Yet he cannot deny that "he had some
virtues which have caused the memory of some men in all ages to be
celebrated"; and admits that "he was not a man of blood," and that he
possessed "a wonderful understanding in the natures and humour of men,"
and "a great spirit, an admirable circumspection and sagacity and a most
magnanimous resolution." According to contemporary republicans he was a
mere selfish adventurer, sacrificing the national cause "to the idol of
his own ambition." Richard Baxter thought him a good man who fell before
a great temptation. The writers of the next century generally condemned
him as a mixture of knave, fanatic and hypocrite, and in 1839 John
Forster endorsed Landor's verdict that Cromwell lived a hypocrite and
died a traitor. These crude ideas of Cromwell's character were
extinguished by Macaulay's irresistible logic, by the publication of
Cromwell's letters by Carlyle in 1845, which showed Cromwell clearly to
be "not a man of falsehoods, but a man of truth"; and by Gardiner, whom,
however, it is somewhat difficult to follow when he represents Cromwell
as "a typical Englishman." In particular that conception which regarded
"ambition" as the guiding motive in his career has been dispelled by a
more intimate and accurate knowledge of his life; this shows him to have
been very little the creator of his own career, which was largely the
result of circumstances outside his control, the influence of past
events and of the actions of others, the pressure of the national will,
the natural superiority of his own genius. "A man never mounts so high,"
Cromwell said to the French ambassador in 1647, "as when he does not
know where he is going." "These issues and events," he said in 1656,
"have not been forecast, but were providences in things." His
"hypocrisy" consists principally in the Biblical language he employed,
which with Cromwell, as with many of his contemporaries, was the most
natural way of expressing his feelings, and in the ascription of every
incident to the direct intervention of God's providence, which was
really Cromwell's sincere belief and conviction. In later times
Cromwell's character and administration have been the subject of almost
too indiscriminate eulogy, which has found tangible shape in the statue
erected to his memory at Westminster in 1899. Here Cromwell's effigy
stands in the midst of the sanctuaries of the law, the church, and the
parliament, the three foundations of the state which he subverted, and
in sight of Whitehall where he destroyed the monarchy in blood. Yet
Cromwell's monument is not altogether misplaced in such surroundings,
for in him are found the true principles of piety, of justice, of
liberty and of governance.
John Maidston, Cromwell's steward, gives the "character of his person."
"His body was compact and strong, his stature under six foot (I believe
about two inches), his head so shaped as you might see it a storehouse
and a shop both of a vast treasury of natural parts." "His temper
exceeding fiery, as I have known, but the flame of it, ... kept down for
the most part, was soon allayed with those moral endowments he had. He
was naturally compassionate towards objects in distress even to an
effeminate measure; though God had made him a heart wherein was left
little room for fear, ... yet did he exceed in tenderness towards
sufferers. A larger soul I think hath seldom dwelt in a house of clay
than his was. I believe if his story were impartially transmitted and
the unprejudiced world well possessed with it, she would add him to her
nine worthies." By his wife Elizabeth Bourchier, Cromwell had four sons,
Robert (who died in 1639), Oliver (who died in 1644 while serving in his
father's regiment), Richard, who succeeded him as Protector, and Henry.
He also had four daughters. Of these Bridget was the wife successively
of Ireton and Fleetwood, Elizabeth married John Claypole, Mary was wife
of Thomas Belasyse, Lord Fauconberg; and Frances was the wife of Sir
Robert Rich, and secondly of Sir John Russell. The last male descendant
of the Protector was his great-great-grandson, Oliver Cromwell of
Cheshunt, who died in 1821. By the female line, through his children
Henry, Bridget and Frances, the Protector has had numerous descendants,
and is the ancestor of many well-known families.[6]
BIBLIOGRAPHY.--A detailed bibliography, with the chief authorities for
particular periods, will be found in the article in the _Dict. of Nat.
Biography_, by C. H. Firth (1888). The following works may be
mentioned: S. R. Gardiner's _Hist. of England_ (1883-1884) and of the
_Great Civil War_ (1886), _Cromwell's Place in History_ (1897),
_Oliver Cromwell_ (1901), and _History of the Commonwealth and
Protectorate_ (1894-1903); _Cromwell_, by C. H. Firth (1900); _Oliver
Cromwell_, by J. Morley (1904); _The Last Years of the Protectorate,
1656-1658_, 2 vols., by C. H. Firth (1909); _Oliver Cromwell_, by
Fred. Harrison (1903); _Letters and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell_, by
T. Carlyle, ed. by S. C. Lomas, with an introd. by C. H. Firth (the
best edition, rejecting the spurious Squire papers, 1904); _Oliver
Cromwell_, by F. Hoenig (1887); _Oliver Cromwell, the Protector_, by
R. F. D. Palgrave (1890); _Oliver Cromwell ... and the Royalist
Insurrection ... of March 1655_, by the same author (1903); _Oliver
Cromwell_, by Theodore Roosevelt (1900); _Oliver Cromwell_, by R.
Pauli (tr. 1888); _Cromwell, a Speech delivered at the Cromwell
Tercentenary Celebration 1899_, by Lord Rosebery (1900); _The Two
Protectors_, by Sir Richard Tangye (valuable for its illustrations,
1899); _Life of Sir Henry Vane_, by W. W. Ireland (1905); _Die Politik
des Protectors Oliver Cromwell in der Auffassung und Tatigkeit ... des
Staatssekretars John Thurloe_, by Freiherr v. Bischofshausen (1899);
_Cromwell as a Soldier_, by T. S. Baldock (1899); _Cromwell's Army_,
by C. H. Firth (1902); _The Diplomatic Relations between Cromwell and
Charles X. of Sweden_, by G. Jones (1897); _The Interregnum_, by F. A.
Inderwick (dealing with the legal aspect of Cromwell's rule, 1891);
_Administration of the Royal Navy_, by M. Oppenheim (1896); _History
of the English Church during the Civil Wars_, by W. Shaw (1900); _The
Protestant Interest in Cromwell's Foreign Relations_, by J. N. Bowman
(1900); _Cromwell's Jewish Intelligencies_ (1891), _Crypto-Jews under
the Commonwealth_ (1894), _Menasseh Ben Israel's Mission to Oliver
Cromwell_ (1901), by L. Wolf. (P. C. Y.; C. F. A.; R. J. M.)