ARMY AND PARLIAMENT
1647–1648
Cromwell joined the army because he wished to prevent the outbreak of
anarchy or civil war. War was inevitable, if the Presbyterian leaders
were allowed to bring Scottish forces into England to suppress the
Independent army. Anarchy was inevitable, unless the Independent army
was held in by a strong hand. If Cromwell remained passive, the mutiny
would become a military revolution, and a bloody collision would take
place between Independents and Presbyterians. He could prevent these
things only by immediate action. It was too late now to attempt
mediation, for with or without his aid the Agitators had determined to
act. “If he would not forthwith come and head them,” they told Cromwell,
“they would go their own way without him.”
As soon as Cromwell’s mind was made up, he struck with swiftness and
decision. The King was the key of the situation, and the possession of
his person was to either party nine points of the law. His co-operation
was indispensable to the success of the Presbyterian scheme, for unless
they completed their agreement with Charles, the Scots would not cross
the border, the English Royalists would not rise, and the citizens of
London would not fight. At Holmby House, Charles was guarded by the
regiment of Colonel Graves, who was an ardent Presbyterian, and Graves
was under the orders of four Presbyterian commissioners appointed by
Parliament. The danger was that Graves, either of his own accord or by
order of the commissioners, might remove the King to Scotland or to
London.
On May 31, 1647, Cromwell ordered Cornet Joyce, an officer in Fairfax’s
life-guard, to get together a party of horse, and to prevent the King’s
removal from Holmby. About midnight on June 2nd, Joyce reached Holmby,
and posted his men round the house. Next morning the troopers of the
King’s guard threw open the gates and fraternised with his men, while
Graves took flight, leaving King and commissioners in Joyce’s hands.
Cromwell had given no orders for the King’s removal, but next day there
were rumours that Graves was returning with a strong force to regain
possession of the King, and Joyce’s men urged him to remove Charles to
some place of security in the quarters of the army. Charles, who was
offered his choice, selected Newmarket, and leaving Holmby on Friday,
June 4th, Joyce and the King reached Hinchinbrook that evening. On
Saturday, Joyce was met during his march by Colonel Whalley, whom
Fairfax had sent to take command of the King’s guard and convey the King
himself back to Holmby. But Charles refused to return to what he
regarded as his prison, and persisted in going to Newmarket, where the
headquarters of the army were now established.
On the same Friday and Saturday, a general rendezvous of the army was
held at Kentford Heath, near Newmarket, during which Cromwell arrived
from London. At the rendezvous, a full statement of the grievances of
the soldiers was presented, and all bound themselves by a solemn
engagement not to disband or divide till their rights were secured. A
council was instituted, consisting of the general officers, with two
officers and two privates chosen from each regiment, which was to
negotiate with Parliament on behalf of the soldiers, and to represent
the army in political matters. The experiment was a dangerous one, but
to limit the functions of the Agitators and to induce them to co-operate
with their officers was the only way to bring them under control. In
military matters, however, the General and his council of war remained
supreme, and in that body Cromwell was the ruling spirit. Adversaries
described the Lieutenant-General as the “_primum mobile_,” and “the
principal wheel” which moved the whole machine. Under his influence
subordination and discipline were rapidly restored, and in a few weeks
the real direction of the army passed into the hands of the council of
war, while the General Council sank into the position of a debating
society. No one doubted that this was Cromwell’s work. “You have
robbed,” complained Lilburn in July, “by your unjust subtlety and
shifting tricks, the honest and gallant Agitators of all their power and
authority, and solely placed it in a thing called a council of war.”
From Newmarket, the army advanced toward London. Parliament promised the
soldiers all their arrears, and cancelled their offensive declarations.
But the soldiers now required guarantees for the future as well as
satisfaction for the past. They insisted on the exclusion of the
Presbyterian leaders from power, and claimed a voice in the settlement
of the nation. A letter to the City of London, signed by all the chief
officers, but probably written by Cromwell himself, explained the change
in their attitude.
“As Englishmen—and surely our being soldiers hath not stripped us of
that interest, though our malicious enemies would have it so—we
desire a settlement of the peace of the kingdom and of the liberties
of the subject, according to the votes and declarations of
Parliament, which, before we took arms, were by the Parliament used
as arguments to invite us and divers of our dear friends out; some
of whom have lost their lives in this war. Which being now by God’s
blessing finished, we think we have as much right to demand and
desire to see a happy settlement, as we have to our money and the
other common interests of soldiers we have insisted upon.”
Cromwell asserted that the army had no wish either for a civil or an
ecclesiastical revolution, but reiterated the demand for toleration.
“We have said before and we profess it now, we desire no alteration
of the civil government. As little do we desire to interrupt, or in
the least to intermeddle with, the settling of the Presbyterial
government. Nor did we seek to open a way for licentious liberty
under pretence of obtaining ease for tender consciences. We profess
as ever in these things, when once the State has made a settlement,
we have nothing to say but to submit or suffer. Only we could wish
that every good citizen, and every man who walks peaceably in a
blameless conversation, and is beneficial to the Commonwealth, might
have liberty and encouragement; this being according to the true
policy of all states, and even to justice itself.”
To Cromwell, it is evident, the acquisition of freedom of conscience
seemed more important than any possible change in the constitution of
Church or State. The task of formulating the political programme of the
army fell to his son-in-law Ireton, who had more definite views than
Cromwell as to the constitutional changes needed. Arbitrary power,
Ireton asserted in the army’s Declaration of June 14th, was the root of
all evil. The absolutism of Parliament must be guarded against as well
as the absolutism of the King, and parliamentary privilege might become
as dangerous to popular liberties as royal prerogative had been. The way
to make the rights of the people secure was to make Parliament more
really representative. Henceforward the demand for the speedy
termination of the existing Parliament was accompanied by demands for
equalisation of the constituencies, short Parliaments, and the
vindication of the right to petition.
[Illustration:
HENRY IRETON.
(_From a painting by Robert Walker, in the National Portrait
Gallery._)
]
The Long Parliament was not disposed to accept such democratic changes,
but it was obliged to temporise. News came that the ten thousand men of
the northern army under General Poyntz were on the verge of mutiny, and
ready to join the forces under Fairfax. The eleven Presbyterian leaders
impeached by the army saved the dignity of the House by a voluntary
withdrawal, and negotiations were opened at Wycombe on July 1st. After a
fortnight of negotiating, the Agitators murmured at the delay, and urged
the immediate resumption of the march on London, and the enforcement of
their demands. Cromwell and the higher officers opposed. “Whatsoever we
get by a treaty,” argued Cromwell, “will be firm and durable. It will be
conveyed over to posterity.” The friends of the army were daily gaining
ground in the House.
“What we and they gain in a free way is better than twice so much in
a forced way, and will be more truly ours and our posterity’s....
That you have by force I look upon as nothing. I do not know that
force is to be used except we cannot get what is for the good of the
kingdom without it.”
In Cromwell’s opinion, it would be sufficient peremptorily to demand
certain concessions as a guarantee that the treaty was seriously meant,
and to leave the terms of the political settlement for negotiation.
Above all things it was essential that the army should be united. “You
may be in the right and I in the wrong, but if we be divided I doubt we
shall both be in the wrong.”
Cromwell’s plan was adopted, and the Long Parliament yielded. All
preparations for armed resistance were abandoned. Parliament appointed
Fairfax commander-in-chief of all the forces in England, including those
lately under General Poyntz; it disbanded all the soldiers it had
enlisted to oppose Fairfax; it restored the control of the London
militia to the old committee, which the army trusted, in place of the
exclusively Presbyterian committee appointed in the spring. But if
Parliament saw the necessity of yielding, London did not. On July 21st,
crowds of citizens signed an engagement for the maintenance of the
Covenant, and the restoration of the King on his own terms, though both
Houses united in denouncing their engagement. On the 26th, crowds of
apprentices and discharged soldiers besieged the Houses and threatened
their members with violence unless the command of the City forces were
given back to the Presbyterians. The Lords gave way first; the Commons
resisted some hours longer, but in the end they too obeyed the mob, and
repealed their votes. The rioters also extorted from them a vote
inviting the King to London. After this both Houses adjourned till the
30th of July, but before that day came the two Speakers, followed by
eight Peers and fifty-seven members of the Commons, had taken refuge
with the army, declaring that Parliament was not free, and the army,
pledged to restore the freedom of Parliament, was marching on London.
The Presbyterians prepared to fight, and placed the forces of the City
under the command of Major-General Massey. The eleven impeached
Presbyterian leaders took their places in Parliament again, assumed the
direction of the movement, and appointed a Committee of Safety. But
citizen militia and undisciplined volunteers would have stood a poor
chance against the veterans of Naseby. Even the fanatical mob of the
City knew it, and when Fairfax arrived at Hounslow with twenty thousand
men, their courage fell to zero.
Crowds gathered outside Guildhall, where the City fathers were
deliberating whether to fight or yield. “When a scout came in, and
brought news that the army made a halt, or other good intelligence, they
cried, ‘One and all.’ But if the scouts brought intelligence that the
army advanced nearer to them, then they would cry as loud ‘Treat, Treat,
Treat.’” On August 4th, London submitted unconditionally, and two days
later the army escorted the fugitive members to Westminster, and made a
triumphal progress through the City. The Agitators talked loudly of
purging the House of Commons by expelling all members who had sat during
the absence of the Speakers, but Cromwell and the officers contented
themselves with demanding that the proceedings of the last ten days
should be declared null and void. Even this could not be obtained till
Cromwell threatened to use force, and drew up a regiment of cavalry in
Hyde Park to give weight to his arguments. For the Presbyterians were
still a majority in Parliament, though their leaders had now fled to the
continent.
The army now rested its hopes on the King rather than on the Parliament.
During the march on London it had published its proposals “for clearing
and securing the rights of the kingdom, and settling a just and lasting
peace.” The “Heads of the Proposals,” like the Newcastle Propositions,
demanded that for the next ten years Parliament should have the control
of the militia and the appointment of officers of State, but they were
more lenient to the King’s party. Royalists were to be for a time
incapacitated from office, but their fines were to be reduced, the
number of exceptions from pardon diminished, and a general amnesty
passed. Besides these temporary measures of security there were to be
three permanent changes in the constitution. The religious settlement
was to be based on toleration, not on the enforcement of
Presbyterianism. No man was to be obliged to take the Covenant, bishops
and ecclesiastical officials were to be deprived of all coercive power,
and the statutes enforcing attendance at church or use of the
Prayer-book were to be abolished. In future the royal power was to be
limited by the institution of a Council of State which would share with
the King the control of the military forces and the conduct of foreign
affairs. Parliaments were to meet every two years, to sit for a limited
space of time, and to be elected by more equal constituencies, while the
existing Parliament was to end within a year.
Ireton was the chief author of these proposals, but Cromwell was equally
eager for an agreement between the army and the King.
“Whatever the world might judge of them,” said Cromwell to one of
the King’s agents, “the army would be found no Seekers of
themselves, further than to have leave to live as subjects ought to
do and to preserve their own consciences; and they thought no men
could enjoy their lives and estates quietly without the King had his
rights.”
When Charles raised objections to the first draught of the “Proposals,”
Cromwell and Ireton persuaded the Council of the Army to lower their
demands, and to make important alterations in the scheme finally
published. If the King accepted it the army leaders assured him that no
further concessions should be demanded. And supposing that after he had
accepted it Parliament refused its assent, they would purge the Houses
of opponents “till they had made them of such a temper as to do his
Majesty’s business.”
Such was the talk amongst the officers, but it soon became evident they
had reckoned without their host. The King was little inclined to submit
to the permanent restrictions on his royal power which the army
demanded, and thought he could avail himself of the quarrel between it
and the Parliament to impose his will on both. He avowed it frankly.
“You cannot do without me. You will fall to ruin if I do not sustain
you,” he told the officers, when the “Proposals” were first offered to
him. “Sir,” answered Ireton, “you have an intention to be the arbitrator
between the Parliament and us, and we mean to be it between your Majesty
and the Parliament.” Another time Charles answered Ireton’s
remonstrances with the defiant announcement: “I shall play my game as
well as I can.” “If your Majesty have a game to play,” replied Ireton,
“you must give us also the leave to play ours.”
They could come to no agreement. Charles persisted in his policy of
playing off one party against another, confident that his diplomatic
skill would secure his ultimate victory. In September, the Parliament
once more offered the King the Newcastle Propositions, to which he
answered that the “Proposals” of the army offered a better foundation
for a lasting peace, and asked for a personal treaty. The advanced party
amongst the Independents, headed by Harry Marten and Colonel
Rainsborough, urged that Parliament should proceed to the settlement of
the kingdom without consulting the King. They compared Charles to Ahab,
whose heart God hardened, and to a Jonah who must be thrown overboard if
the ship of the state was to come safe to port. Cromwell, backed by
Ireton and Vane, argued in favour of a new application to the King, and
by eighty-four votes to thirty-four the House decided to draw up fresh
propositions. It seemed to Cromwell that the re-establishment of
monarchy was the only way to avoid anarchy. Already an officer had been
expelled from the Council of the Army for declaring that there was now
no visible authority in England but the power of the sword, and Cromwell
warned Parliament that men who thought the sword ought to rule all were
rapidly growing more numerous amongst the soldiers. He argued that a
speedy agreement with the King was necessary, but to persuade the
Parliament to reduce its demands proved beyond his power. The new terms
it proceeded to draw up showed no sign of any willingness for a
compromise. As before, all the leading Royalists were to be excluded
from pardon, the establishment of Presbyterianism for an indefinite
period was once more insisted upon, and toleration was refused not only
to Catholics, but to all who used the liturgy. Cromwell’s efforts to
limit the duration of Presbyterianism to three or to seven years were
unsuccessful. Parliament was as impracticable as the King, and while it
was fruitlessly discussing proposals which could produce no agreement,
the progress of the democratic movement in the army threatened a new
revolution.
Cromwell’s negotiations with the King, his speeches in favour of
monarchy, his modification of the terms offered by the army to Charles,
and his attempt to moderate the terms offered by Parliament, all exposed
him to suspicion. While Charles distrusted Cromwell and Ireton because
they asked for no personal favours or advantages for themselves, both
were freely accused of having made a private bargain with the King for
their own advancement. Cromwell, it was said, was to be made Earl of
Essex as his kinsman had been, Captain of the King’s guard, and a Knight
of the Garter; Ireton was to be Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland. Royalists
spread these stories in order to sow division between Cromwell and the
army; the soldiers swallowed them because they feared the restoration of
the monarchy. The pamphleteers of the Levellers, as the extreme Radicals
were popularly termed, published broadcast vague charges of treachery
and double-dealing against the army leaders. Sometimes Cromwell was
described as an honest man led astray by the ambitious Ireton; at other
times the two were regarded as confederates in evil, whose occasional
differences of opinion were merely a device to throw dust in the eyes of
the world. In their appeals to Cromwell there was a touch of surprise
and sorrow. “O my once much honoured Cromwell,” wrote Wildman, “can that
breast of yours—the quondam palace of freedom—harbour such a monster of
wickedness as this regal principle?” While Wildman hoped “to waken
Cromwell’s conscience from the dead,” Lilburn, confessing that his good
thoughts of Cromwell were not yet wholly gone, threatened to pull him
down from his fancied greatness before he was three months older.
These attacks shook the confidence of the soldiers in their chiefs, and
fanned the sparks of discontent into a flame. The Agitators, once ardent
for an agreement with the King, began to demand the immediate rupture of
the negotiations with him. Let the army, said they, take the settlement
of the nation into its own hands, since neither their generals nor the
Parliament could accomplish it. In October, five regiments of horse
cashiered their old representatives as too moderate, elected fresh
Agents, and laid their demands before Fairfax.
The existing Parliament was to be dissolved within a year, and in future
there were to be biennial parliaments, equal constituencies, and manhood
suffrage. Nothing was said of King or House of Lords, but the abolition
of both was tacitly assumed. A declaration accompanied this draught
constitution, by which freedom of conscience, freedom from impressment,
and equality before the law were asserted to be the native rights of
every Englishman—rights which no Parliament or Government had power to
diminish or to take away. The officers had proposed a more limited
monarchy—an adaptation of the old constitution to the new conditions
which the Civil War had created. What the soldiers demanded was a
democratic republic, based on a written constitution drawn up in
accordance with abstract principles new to English politics.
The soldiers asked that their scheme, which they termed “The Agreement
of the People,” should be at once submitted to the nation for its
acceptance. Parliament was to be set aside by a direct appeal to the
people as the only lawful source of all political authority. Against
this, Cromwell and Ireton protested. The army, they said, had entered
into certain engagements in its recent declarations to the nation, and
the pledges made in them must be observed. Both declared that unless
these public promises were kept they would lay down their commissions,
and act no longer with the army. Equally strong were their objections to
some of the principles which the “Agreement” contained, and the method
in which it was proposed to impose it upon the nation. “This paper,”
said Cromwell, “doth contain in it very great alterations of the
government of the kingdom—alterations of that government it hath been
under ever since it was a nation. What the consequences of such an
alteration as this would be, even if there were nothing else to be
considered, wise and godly men ought to consider.” The proposed
constitution contained much that was specious and plausible, but also
much that was very debatable. And while they were debating it, other
schemes equally plausible might be put forward by other parties.
“And not only another and another, but many of this kind. And if so,
what do you think the consequences of that would be? Would it not be
confusion? Would it not be utter confusion? Would it not make
England like Switzerland, one canton of the Swiss against another,
and one county against another? And what would that produce but an
absolute desolation to the nation? I ask you,” he concluded,
“whether it be not fit for every honest man seriously to lay that
upon his heart?”
Moreover, not only the consequences but the ways and means of
accomplishing a thing ought to be considered. Granted that this was the
best possible constitution for the people of England, still the
difficulty of its attainment was a very real objection.
“I know,” said he, “a man may answer all difficulties with faith,
and faith will answer all difficulties where it really is; but we
are very apt all of us to call that faith which perhaps may be but
carnal imagination and carnal reasoning.” Faith could remove
mountains, “but give me leave to say there will be very great
mountains in the way of this.”
Cromwell’s mention of difficulties called up Colonel Rainsborough, the
leader of the democratic party amongst the officers.
“If ever we had looked upon difficulties,” cried Rainsborough, “I do
not know that ever we should have looked an enemy in the face. Let
difficulties be round about you, though you have death before you,
and the sea on each side of you and behind you; if you are convinced
that the thing is just, I think you are bound in consequence to
carry it on; and I think at the last day it can never be answered to
God that you did not do it. For it is a poor service to God and the
kingdom to take their pay and to decline their work.”
“Perhaps,” answered Cromwell with quiet dignity, “we have all of us
done our parts not affrighted with difficulties, one as well as
another, and I hope all purpose henceforward to do so still. I do
not think that any man here wants courage to do that which becomes
an honest man and an Englishman to do. But we speak as men that
desire to have the fear of God before our eyes, and men that may not
resolve to do that which we do in the power of a fleshly strength,
but to lay this as the foundation of all our actions, to do that
which is the will of God.”
When it came to a discussion of the details of the Proposals the
fiercest debate arose on the question of manhood suffrage.
“Every man born in England,” argued Rainsborough, “the poor man, the
meanest man in the kingdom,” ought to have a voice in choosing those
who made the laws under which he was to live and die. It was a
natural right, part of every Englishman’s birthright, and part of
the liberty for which the soldiers had shed their blood. “It was the
ground that we took up arms,” said one of them, “and it is the
ground which we shall maintain.”
Ireton answered that to give a vote to men who had no stake in the
country would endanger both liberty and property. Logically, he argued,
the theory of natural rights implied a claim to property as well as a
claim to political power. Cromwell, while agreeing that universal
suffrage “did tend very much to anarchy,” dismissed abstract principles
altogether, and expressed his willingness to assent to a reasonable
extension of the franchise.
Next came a struggle on the question of the King and the Lords. Cromwell
protested that he had no private pledges to either, and no wish to
preserve them, if their preservation was incompatible with the safety of
the nation. The democratic party in the council held that both the
monarchy and the Upper House must be abolished, and that their retention
in any shape was dangerous. Cromwell’s view was that at present,
considering its public engagements, the army could not with justice and
honesty either abolish them or set them aside, and therefore he desired
to maintain both so far as it could be done without hazard to the public
interest. Some boldly asserted that the power of King and Lords was part
of that Babylon which God would destroy, and pleaded their own
convictions to that effect as a revelation from heaven. Cromwell replied
with a warning against “imaginary revelations.” Like them, he said, he
believed in the fulfilment of the prophecies in the Bible. “I am one of
those whose heart God hath drawn out to wait for some extraordinary
dispensations, according to those promises that He hath held forth of
things to be accomplished in the later times, and I cannot but think
that God is beginning of them.” He was inclined to agree with those who
held that God would overthrow King and Lords. Yet let them not make
those things a rule to them which they could not clearly know to be the
mind of God. Let them not say, “This is the mind of God, we must work to
it.” If it was God’s purpose to destroy the power of King and Lords, He
could do it without necessitating the army to dishonour itself by
breaking its engagements. Let them wait for God’s time, and do their
plain, immediate duty. “Surely what God would have us do He does not
desire we should step out of the way for it.”
In these discussions Fairfax was absent or silent. Ireton’s readiness in
debate and knowledge of constitutional law and political theory made him
the spokesman of the superior officers. He had a firm grasp of the
principles involved, possessed great logical acuteness, and spoke with
clearness, vigour, and even eloquence. But he was too dogmatic and too
unconciliatory to convince opponents. With less dialectical skill and
much less facility in expressing himself, Cromwell was an infinitely
more effective speaker. What distinguished his speeches was an unfailing
moderation and good sense which even the visionaries and demagogues whom
he combated were forced to acknowledge. Neither religious nor political
formulas blinded him to facts. Avowing that the good of the people was
the proper end of government, and admitting that all political power was
properly derived from the people, he denied the conclusion of the
democrats that a republic was the only legitimate government for
England. At the very outset of these debates he laid down the rule that
in proposing any important political change the first thing to consider
was “whether the spirit and temper of the people of this nation are
prepared to go along with it.” For that reason he declared his
preference for monarchy. “In the government of nations that which is to
be looked after is the affections of the people, and that I find which
satisfies my conscience in the present thing.” The particular form of
government seemed to him quite unimportant compared with its
acceptability to the people. Consider, he argued, the example of the
Jews. They were governed successively by patriarchs, by judges, and by
kings, and under all these different kinds of government they were happy
and contented. Moreover there were things more important than the civil
government of a state. Even if you change the government to the best
possible kind of government, “it is but a moral thing.” Less important,
Cromwell meant, than religious freedom. “It is but, as Paul says, dross
and dung in comparison with Christ.” Why then should they contest so
much for merely temporal things? If every man in the kingdom should
insist on fighting to realise what he thought the best form of
government, “I think the State will come to desolation.”
In the background of Cromwell’s mind there was always this desire to
avoid a new civil war, and this dread of anarchy. It determined him now
to put a stop to the spread of insubordination amongst the soldiers, and
to limit the political action of the army to a minimum. Without
obedience to its officers, he declared, the army would cease to exist.
It was intolerable that private men, such as the Agents were, should
take upon themselves to issue orders and call a rendezvous of a troop or
a regiment. “This way is destructive to the army and to every man in it.
I have been informed by some of the King’s party that if they give us
rope enough we shall hang ourselves.” Soldiers must obey their officers:
officers must submit to the decisions of Parliament. The army should
leave Parliament to decide what government was fittest for the nation,
and content itself with requiring that Parliaments should be fairly
elected, frequently summoned, and dissolved in due season. As it needed
the support of some civil authority, it must own the authority of
Parliament. For his own part, he added, he would lay hold of anything,
“if it had but the face of authority,” rather than have none.
The struggle in the council lasted nearly a fortnight, but in the end
Cromwell prevailed. The “Agreement of the People” was converted into a
series of proposals to be offered to Parliament, instead of being
accepted as a constitution to be imposed on people and Parliament. The
demand for universal suffrage became a request for the extension of the
franchise. Monarchy and the House of Lords were not to be swept away
altogether, but henceforth limited in authority and subordinated to the
House of Commons. The old constitution was to be preserved and amended,
but not superseded by a new one.
By this time, however, even those officers who were anxious to retain
the monarchy had begun to doubt whether it was possible to retain the
King. For some weeks past their negotiations with Charles had been
completely broken off, and distrust of his sincerity had become general.
It was well known that he was intriguing with the commissioners who had
lately arrived in England from the Scottish Parliament, and very little
was expected from the propositions which the English Parliament was
preparing to send to him. The democratic party—the Levellers, as they
were now termed—were demanding not only his dethronement, but his
punishment. On November 11, 1647, Colonel Harrison, in a committee of
the Council of the Army, denounced the King as a man of blood, whom they
ought to bring to judgment. All Cromwell said in reply was, that there
were cases in which for prudential reasons the shedder of blood might be
allowed to escape unpunished. David, for instance, had allowed Joab to
escape the penalty due for the murder of Abner, “lest he should hazard
the spilling of more blood, in regard the sons of Zeruiah were too
strong for him.” If the King deserved punishment, he concluded, it was
rather the duty of Parliament than the army to do justice upon him. In
any case, Cromwell was resolved to keep the King safe from the
threatened attempts of the Levellers against his life. “I pray have a
care of your guard,” he wrote to his cousin, Colonel Whalley, “for if
such a thing should be done, it would be accounted a most horrid act.”
The same night the King escaped from the custody of Colonel Whalley at
Hampton Court, and on November 15th news came that he had reached
Carisbrooke Castle in the Isle of Wight. Contemporary pamphleteers and
memoir writers often put forward the theory that Cromwell frightened the
King into this flight from Hampton Court in order to forward his own
ambitious designs. This is the view expressed in the well-known lines of
Marvell, which relate how
Twining subtle fears with hope
He wove a net of such a scope
As Charles himself might chase
To Carisbrooke’s narrow case,
That thence the royal actor borne
The tragic scaffold might adorn.
There is no evidence in support of this theory. In the long run, the
King’s flight was one of the causes of his dethronement and execution,
and so of Cromwell’s elevation to supreme power. At the moment, it
increased Cromwell’s difficulties, and added to the dangers which beset
the Government. At Hampton Court the King was in the safe hands of
Colonel Whalley, Cromwell’s cousin, who could be relied upon to observe
the orders of the General. At Carisbrooke he was in the hands of Colonel
Hammond—a connection indeed of Cromwell’s by his marriage with a
daughter of John Hampden, but a man as to whose action under “the great
temptation” of the King’s appeal to his loyalty, Cromwell was painfully
uncertain. Cromwell’s letters to Hammond prove this. For the next six
weeks the question whether Hammond would obey Fairfax and the
Parliament, or allow Charles to go where he chose, remained unsettled.
The real cause of the King’s flight was his intrigue with the Scottish
Commissioners. In October, they had promised him Scotland’s assistance
in recovering his throne, if he would make satisfactory concessions
about religion. But the one thing essential to the completion of the
bargain was that Charles should escape from the hands of the army, and
be able to treat freely. The plan for the King’s flight was arranged
early in November. The Scots urged him to take refuge at Berwick; he
thought of Jersey, but preferred to remain in England; finally he
determined on the Isle of Wight, at the suggestion of one of his
attendants who believed Hammond to be a Royalist at heart. Safe in the
Isle of Wight, Charles thought he could negotiate with Parliament,
Scots, and officers, and accept the terms offered by the highest bidder.
If negotiation failed, escape to France would not be difficult.
For six months Charles had succeeded in playing off Parliament against
Army, and Army against Parliament. But the result had been to make him
thoroughly distrusted by both, and his flight from Hampton Court united
them against him. The King had hoped much from the divisions of the
army, but simultaneously with his arrival at Carisbrooke Cromwell and
Fairfax reduced their troops to obedience again. On November 8th,
Cromwell carried a vote for the temporary suspension of the sittings of
the Council, and sent Agitators and officers back to their regiments. A
week later Fairfax held a general review of the army, dividing it into
three brigades, which met at three different places. At each review he
solemnly engaged himself to the soldiers to stand by them in securing
the redress of their military grievances and the reform of Parliament,
exacting from them in return a signed pledge to obey the orders of the
General and council of war. At the first rendezvous, which took place
near Ware on November 15th, there was some opposition. The Levellers
tried to convert it into a general demonstration in favour of the
“Agreement of the People.” Two regiments came there unsummoned, wearing
the “Agreement of the People” in their hats, with the motto, “England’s
Freedom, Soldiers’ Rights.” They had driven away their own officers,
called on other regiments to do the like, and planned the seizure of
Cromwell as a traitor to the cause of the people. But when he rode up to
the mutineers none dared to lay hands on him. “Lieutenant-General
Cromwell’s carriage, with his naked waved sword, daunted the soldiers
with the paper in their hats, and made them pluck it out and be
subjected to command.” One soldier was tried, and shot on the field;
others, including several officers, were reserved for the judgment of a
future court-martial. On November 19th, Cromwell was able to report to
Parliament that the army was very quiet and obedient, and received the
thanks of the Commons for his services.
Meanwhile the King sent a message to Parliament from the Isle of Wight,
offering various concessions and asking to be admitted to a personal
treaty at London. He applied also to the army leaders, urging them to
support his request, to which they coldly replied that they were the
Parliament’s army, and must refer those matters to it. Parliament,
equally distrustful of Charles, answered his overtures by drawing up an
ultimatum, consisting of four bills, to which his assent was required
before any treaty should begin. Their chief demand was the direct
control of the militia for the next twenty years, and a share in its
control when that period ended. Other constitutional questions might be
left to discussion, but they must make sure that the King could never
use force to impose his will upon the nation. Driven to extremity by
this demand, Charles turned once more to the Scottish Commissioners, who
had now arrived at Carisbrooke. He found them ready enough to sacrifice
the liberties of Englishmen, and they promised him restoration to all
the rights of his crown in return for the three years’ establishment of
Presbyterianism in England, the rigid suppression of Independents and
other heretics, and certain privileges for Scotland and the Scottish
nobility. If Parliament refused to disband its forces and to treat with
the King in London, an army was to cross the border and replace Charles
on his throne (December 27, 1647). “The Engagement,” as this treaty was
termed, was wrapped in lead and buried in the castle garden till it
could be safely smuggled out of the island. The next day the King
definitely rejected the ultimatum of the English Parliament, and
prepared to effect his escape to the continent.
It was too late. As soon as the King’s answer was delivered, his guards
were doubled and he was made a close prisoner. The two Houses were well
aware that his refusal of their terms was due to some agreement with the
Scots, although they were ignorant of its precise nature.
“The House of Commons,” wrote Cromwell to Hammond, “is very sensible
of the King’s dealings and of our brethren’s in this late
transaction. You should do well, if you have anything that may
discover juggling, to search it out, and let us know it. It may be
of admirable use at this time, because we shall I hope go upon
business in relation to them tending to prevent danger.”
On January 3, 1648, the House of Commons voted that they would make no
further addresses to the King, and receive no more messages from him.
Cromwell and Ireton, who had opposed the resolution to that effect which
Marten had brought forward in the previous September, now spoke
earnestly in its favour. “It was now expected,” said Cromwell, “that the
Parliament should govern and defend the kingdom by their own power, and
not teach the people any longer to expect safety and government from an
obstinate man whose heart God had hardened.” In such a policy, he added,
the army would stand by the Parliament against all opposition: but if
the Parliament neglected to provide for its own safety and that of the
nation, the army would be forced to seek its own preservation by other
means.
Events had thus driven Cromwell to be the foremost advocate of that
policy of completely setting aside the King which he had long so
stubbornly opposed. Yet, though convinced that the King could not be
trusted, he was not prepared to abandon monarchy. At a conference on the
settlement of the government which took place early in 1648, the
“Commonwealth’s-men,” as the republicans were termed, pressed for the
immediate establishment of a free commonwealth and the trial of the
King. Ludlow noted with great dissatisfaction that Cromwell and his
friends “kept themselves in the clouds, and would not declare their
judgments either for a monarchical, aristocratic, or democratic
government; maintaining that any of them might be good in themselves, or
for us, according as Providence should direct us.” When he pressed
Cromwell privately for the grounds of his objection to a republic,
Cromwell replied that he was convinced of the desirableness of what was
proposed, but not of the feasibility of it. There is evidence that
during the spring of 1648 the Independent leaders discussed a scheme for
deposing Charles I., and placing the Prince of Wales or the Duke of York
upon the throne. But the unwillingness of the Prince and the escape of
the Duke to France frustrated this plan.
While seeking to find some compromise which would prevent a new war,
Cromwell endeavoured to unite all sections of the parliamentary party to
meet it, if it came. The reunion of the army had already been effected.
It was completed in a series of council meetings held at London during
December, 1647, in which the officers under arrest for insubordination
were pardoned, and a personal reconciliation took place between Cromwell
and Rainsborough. In February and March, 1648, Cromwell made
conciliatory overtures to the Presbyterians of the City, but as nothing
short of the restoration of the King to his authority would content
them, the negotiations failed. As little could Cromwell succeed in
overcoming the distrust and hostility which the advanced party amongst
the Independents now felt towards him. On January 19, 1648, John
Lilburn, at the bar of the House of Lords, publicly accused him of high
treason. Nor was it only his dealings with the King that made him the
object of suspicion. During the last year his political attitude had
continually altered. In April, he had urged the army to disband
peaceably; in June, he had headed its revolt; in November, he had forced
it into obedience to the Parliament again. And besides his apparent
inconsistency, he was notoriously indifferent to principles which
Levellers and Commonwealth’s-men held all-important. To them a republic
meant freedom and a monarchy bondage. For him the choice between the two
was a question of expediency, and dependent upon circumstances. In open
council he had declared that he “was not wedded or glued to forms of
government,” and in private he was said to have avowed that it was
lawful to pass through all forms of government to accomplish his ends.
It was not surprising, therefore, that men to whom his opportunism was
unintelligible thought self-interest or ambition the natural explanation
of his conduct, and that charges of hypocrisy and apostacy were freely
made against him.
Through this cloud of detraction Cromwell pursued his way unmoved.
Sometimes he answered his accusers with blunt defiance. “If any man say
that we seek ourselves in doing this, much good may it do him with his
thoughts. It shall not put me out of my way.” At other times he referred
to these slanders with a patient confidence that justice would be done
to him in the end. “Though it may be,” he wrote in September, 1647, “for
the present a cloud may lie over our actions to those not acquainted
with the grounds of them; yet we doubt not but God will clear our
integrity from any other ends we aim at but His glory and the public
good.” Neither loss of popularity, misrepresentations, nor undeserved
mistrust could diminish Cromwell’s zeal for the cause. “I find this only
good,” he wrote on his recovery from a dangerous illness in the spring
of 1648: “to love the Lord and His poor despised people, to do for them,
and to be ready to suffer with them, and he that is found worthy of this
hath obtained great favour from the Lord.”
Not Cromwell’s utterances only but his acts testify to the integrity of
his motives. In March, 1648, Parliament settled an estate upon him as a
reward for his services, to which he responded by offering to contribute
a thousand a year, out of the seventeen hundred it brought in, to be
employed in the recovery of Ireland. And so little did he dream of ever
becoming himself the ruler of England, that at the very moment when
fortune had opened the widest field to ambition, he began negotiations
for the marriage of his eldest son to the daughter of a private
gentleman of no great influence or position.
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