THE REPUBLIC AND ITS ENEMIES
1649
The execution of Charles I. was followed by the abolition of monarchy.
On February 6, 1649, the House of Commons voted that the House of Lords
was useless and dangerous, and that it ought to be abolished. On
February 8th, it resolved that the office of a king was unnecessary,
burdensome, and dangerous to the liberty, safety, and public interest of
this nation. Acts abolishing both followed, and on May 19th a third Act
established the English Republic. “England,” it declared, “shall
henceforth be governed as a Commonwealth, or a Free State, by the
supreme authority of this nation, the representatives of the people in
Parliament, and by such as they shall appoint and constitute as
ministers under them for the good of the people.” Henceforth all writs
were to run in the name of the Keepers of the Liberty of England, and
the Great Seal was to bear the picture of the Parliament with the
legend, “In the first year of Freedom by God’s blessing restored.”
Exactly what they meant by “a Free State” the founders of the Republic
did not explain. Hobbes and Harrington agreed in defining the new
government as an oligarchy. A pamphleteer praised it as an aristocracy.
But the principles on which it was ostensibly based were the principles
of democracy. In their resolutions of January 4, 1649, the House of
Commons had declared that the people were, under God, the original of
all just power, and had based their claim to override the Lords on that
ground. In their declaration of the reasons for establishing a republic,
they asserted that kings were officials, instituted by agreement amongst
the people they governed, whom the people had therefore a right to
dethrone in case of misgovernment. Milton, who became one of the
Secretaries of the Council of State, echoed the same principles. In his
_Tenure of Kings and Magistrates_, he asserted “that all men were
naturally born free, being the image and resemblance of God Himself,”
and anticipated Rousseau in tracing the origin of government to a social
contract. Yet, in spite of democratic professions, the Republic was
simply the rule of the Long Parliament under a new name. All the power
which the King and the three estates of the realm had formerly
possessed, the little remnant of the House of Commons claimed as its
own. All the checks which the existence of King and Lords, or the share
of the Church in legislation, had once imposed, were now swept away. The
one new institution established was simply a further development of that
system of government by committees which the Civil War had made
necessary. The Council of State was neither a senate nor a cabinet; it
possessed no power either to balance or to control the Parliament, but
was only an annually elected committee, to which the Parliament had
entrusted executive and administrative duties. Of the forty-one persons
composing it, all but ten were members of the Parliament itself.
Thus the Long Parliament possessed an authority which no political
assembly in England has ever possessed before or since. Its power of
legislation was unlimited. It exercised the executive power indirectly
through the Council, and directly through its own resolutions. By
interference with private suits, and by the appointment of committees
with quasi-judicial functions, it also exercised the judicial power. Its
sovereignty was undivided and uncontrolled.
“This was the case of the people of England at that time,” said
Cromwell, eight years later, “the Parliament assuming to itself the
authority of the three estates that were before. It had so assumed
that authority that if any man had come and said, ‘What rules do you
judge by?’ it would have answered, ‘Why, we have none. We are
supreme in legislature and judicature.’”
What made this authority still more burdensome was that there was no
prospect of its ever ending. Instead of sitting for about seven months
in the year, as Parliaments do now, it sat all the year round, never
taking more than three or four days’ holiday. Moreover, by the Act of
May 11, 1641, it could not be adjourned, prorogued, or dissolved, save
by its own consent, and though the King, who had passed the act, was
dead, it was held to be still in force. So, in Cromwell’s phrase, the
country was governed by “a perpetual Parliament always sitting.”
Although the claims of the Long Parliament had reached their highest,
the theory on which they rested had ceased to be in accordance with
facts. “The Commons of England in Parliament assembled,” said the
resolution of the House on January 4, 1649, “_being chosen by and
representing the people_, have the supreme power in this nation.” But
the House was never less representative than at the moment when it
passed this vote. By the expulsion of royalist members during the war,
and of Presbyterians in 1648, it had been, as Cromwell said, “winnowed,
and sifted, and brought to a handfull.” When the Long Parliament met in
November, 1640, it consisted of about 490 members; in January, 1649,
those sitting, or at liberty to sit, in the House were not more than
ninety. Whole districts were unrepresented. In the list of sitting
members given in a contemporary pamphlet, there were none from the
counties of Herefordshire, Hertfordshire, Cumberland, and Lancashire, or
from any borough within their limits. Wales was represented by three
persons, and London by but a single citizen. In later years, a few
readmissions and a few new elections swelled the total of sitting
members to about 125, but at no date between 1649 and 1653 was the Long
Parliament entitled to say that it represented the people. Its power
rested not on popular consent, but on the support of the army, and on
the superstitious reverence which Englishmen paid even to the shadow of
a Parliament.
Politically the all-important question was how long the army would
continue to maintain this remnant of the Long Parliament in power. The
agreement between the two covered a fundamental difference in their
political views. The army regarded the maintenance of the existing
assembly as a temporary expedient. The Parliament looked upon itself as
a legitimate sovereign with an indefeasible right to rule. By a Free
State, the army meant a democracy, and could not understand a republic
without republican institutions. Above all it demanded that the new
State should be based on a written constitution defining the rights of
the governed and the powers of the government. In the Agreement of the
People, drawn up in January, 1649, it sketched the outlines of the
republic it desired. The Long Parliament was to come to an end in April,
1649. All ratepayers assessed to the relief of the poor, and every man
not a menial servant or a pauper, were to have votes. Electoral
districts were to be made more equal. Parliaments were to be elected
every two years, and not to sit for more than six months in the year,
and a Council of State was to hold power when they were not sitting. If
the State chose, it might provide for the maintenance of a national
Church, but with the exception of Popery and prelacy, all forms of
Christianity were to be tolerated. Finally, as a safeguard against
arbitrary power, certain fundamental rights were enumerated with which
no government might interfere: freedom from impressment, equality before
the law, and freedom of worship.
The constitutional scheme of the army was presented to the Parliament on
January 20, 1649. They did not ask that it should be imposed on the
nation by law, but that it should be tendered to the nation for
acceptance. It was to be circulated, somewhat as a petition, amongst the
people for signatures, and if most of the supporters of the cause
approved of it, steps were to be taken to give it effect. The Parliament
received the Agreement with thanks, and laid it aside.
April, 1649, passed and they showed no sign of dissolving. Their feeling
on the subject of a new Parliament was well expressed by Harry Marten in
1650. Marten compared the Commonwealth to the infant Moses. When Moses,
he said, was found amongst the bulrushes and brought to Pharaoh’s
daughter, she took care to find out the child’s mother, and to commit
him to her to nurse. The Commonwealth was an infant, of weak growth and
very tender constitution; nobody was so fit to nurse it as the mother
who brought it forth, and till it had obtained more years and vigour
they should not trust it to other hands.
In 1649, there was much to be urged in favour of this view. At home and
abroad the young Republic was surrounded by enemies. In England it was
threatened by Royalists, Presbyterians, and Levellers; in Europe it had
no friends. The execution of Charles I. had excited universal horror
amongst foreigners. There was indeed no prospect of the general league
of European potentates to punish regicide, for which Royalists hoped,
but both governments and peoples were hostile. In Russia, the Czar
imprisoned English merchants and confiscated their goods. In Germany,
Sweden, and Denmark, ministers preached sermons denouncing the English
sectaries, and proving that there was no necessary connection between
Protestantism and king-killing. In the United Provinces, where
republicans might have expected sympathy, public opinion was equally
incensed against them. The States-General addressed Charles II. as King,
condoled with him on the death of his father, and allowed Rupert to
equip his fleet in Dutch ports. They refused to give audience to
Strickland, the English agent in Holland, and declined to recognise the
new State. In May, 1649, a special ambassador from England, Dr.
Dorislaus, was murdered by Scottish Royalists at The Hague, and though
the Dutch Government promised redress, popular feeling secured the
escape of the murderers. Much of this hostility was due to the influence
of the Stadtholder, William II., whose marriage with Mary, daughter of
Charles I., had made the House of Orange the one firm friend of the
House of Stuart. William II. helped his brother-in-law with money and
advice, and would have done more if he had been able. But Holland, the
richest and most powerful of the seven provinces, was opposed to the
warlike schemes of the Stadtholder and wished to remain at peace with
England.
In France, the King’s death made every Englishman unpopular. The war
with Spain and the distractions of France itself prevented Mazarin from
assisting Charles II., but he would not recognise the Republic. The
relations of England and France grew rapidly worse. The French
Government forbade the importation of English draperies; the English
replied by prohibiting French wines, woollen goods, and silks. French
privateers and even government ships attacked English commerce, and
during 1649 and 1650 took English shipping to the amount of five
thousand tons, and goods worth half a million. Naturally English
merchants made reprisals on French trade. Diplomatic intercourse came to
a stop; one French agent was ordered to leave England, a second was
turned back at the coast, and a third was dismissed almost as soon as he
arrived in the country.
The hostility of France made Spain comparatively friendly. It did not
recognise the Republic, but its ambassador kept up unofficial
intercourse with the Council of State, and its Government maintained a
real neutrality between English parties. It waited till the permanence
of the new government should be assured, and in the meantime declined to
help a claimant whose chances of restoration seemed precarious.
Cottington and Hyde, the ambassadors whom Charles II. sent to Spain,
were received with coldness, and their petitions for assistance
rejected. On the other hand, Ascham, the agent of the Commonwealth, was
murdered by English Cavaliers as soon as he reached Madrid (May 27,
1650), and only one of his murderers was punished. “I envy those
gentlemen,” said the Spanish prime minister, “for having done so noble
an action.” Political necessity might force Spain to preserve friendly
relations with the Commonwealth, but the feeling of subjects and rulers
alike was as hostile as that of the French.
In England itself, the reaction which began when the King became a
captive was increased by the manner of his death. Ten days after the
execution, there appeared in print the _Eikon Basilike_—the portraiture
of King Charles in his solitude and sufferings. The book was really
written by Dr. Gauden, but no Cavalier doubted that it contained the
King’s thoughts and feelings set down by his own hand. It inspired
Royalists with more fervid loyalty; converted the wavering, and touched
even the indifferent. The mob began to believe that Charles had been the
best of monarchs, and the meekest of martyrs. He was no longer the
perfidious tyrant of politicians, but the man with the mild voice and
mournful eyes whom dramatists were to glorify. Milton complained that
the people, “with a besotted and degenerate baseness of spirit, except
some few who yet retain in them the old English fortitude and love of
freedom, are ready to fall down flat and give adoration to the image and
memory of this man, who hath offered at more cunning fetches to
undermine our liberties and put tyranny into an art, than any British
king before him.” In his _Eikonoklastes_, he undertook to shatter the
idol of “the inconstant, irrational, and image-doting rabble,” but
failed altogether.
For the moment, the royalist party was too weak to be a serious danger.
In Holland and in France, a crowd of ruined noblemen and battered
soldiers waited impatiently for the chance of striking another blow
against their conquerors. Already Montrose was enlisting men in Northern
Europe for a fresh descent on Scotland. In his lines to the dead King,
he had promised to avenge his death.
“I’ll sing thine obsequies in trumpet sounds,
And write thine epitaph in blood and wounds.”
Other exiles, with an eye to profit as well as vengeance, took to
privateering. From the Irish ports, from the Isles of Man, Jersey, and
Scilly, issued swarms of privateers, who infested the Channel and
plundered English merchantmen. Nor were more distant seas secure. A few
months later Prince Rupert, with what was left of the royal fleet, took
a number of prizes in the Atlantic, made a sudden raid into the
Mediterranean, intercepted homeward-bound ships off the Azores, and even
spread havoc in West Indian waters. “We plough the seas for a
subsistence,” wrote one of his officers, “poverty and despair being our
companions, and revenge our guide.”
At home, however, the Royalists were crushed and subdued. Some of their
leaders were prisoners; others had suffered under the Republic’s High
Court of Justice. As a rule, the penalties inflicted on the defeated
party were limited to pecuniary fines. Early in the war, the Parliament
had resolved to sequestrate all the property of those in arms against
it. Subsequently it adopted the plan of compounding with delinquents;
that is, allowing a Royalist to redeem his estate on paying a certain
proportion of its value. These compositions varied in amount from
one-half to one-tenth of the capital value of the property, and were
determined according to the position and the criminality of the owner.
Under this system, large sums were raised to pay the expenses of the
war, but it was less effective as a means of raising revenue than as a
method of punishing Royalists. A country gentleman who had melted his
plate and felled his oaks to succour the King found himself forced to
raise money when money was scarce and land had immensely fallen in
value. The fixing of his fine was a long and cumbrous process, and till
it was fixed his estate was under sequestration. If he failed to pay his
instalments at the right time, or was found to have understated his
property, there came a re-assessment of the fine, or a fresh
sequestration of the estate. He might long as fervently as ever to see
the day when the King would enjoy his own again, but, disarmed and
impoverished as he was, he could do little to bring it nearer. Yet many
Cavaliers were willing to risk their lives again in the attempt. This
section of the party maintained an active correspondence with the exiled
Court, and by 1650 a central royalist council was established with
agents in every county. But the most sanguine plotters admitted that
without some assistance from abroad the party in general was “too
extremely awed” to take up arms.
In England their possible allies against the government were the
Presbyterians and the Levellers. The Presbyterians were numerous, rich,
and powerful. Their strength lay in London, in the large towns, and in
Lancashire, but most of the middle classes and the bulk of the beneficed
clergy belonged to their party. The Presbyterian clergy had protested
loudly against the King’s trial; many of them preached against the
Republic, and some were bold enough to pray for Charles II. They
condemned the Commonwealth as “an heretical democracy,” and refused the
engagement to be faithful to it which Parliament imposed. But beyond
this passive resistance few of them went. Cordial co-operation between
Presbyterians and Royalists was impossible, for the desires of the
parties differed widely. What the Presbyterians wanted was a
constitutional monarchy on the basis of the terms offered the King in
the Newport treaty; what the Royalists wanted was the restoration of
monarchy as it had existed before the war began. One party demanded the
establishment of some form of Presbyterianism, the other the maintenance
of Episcopacy. In 1648, the distrust and apathy of the Presbyterians had
prevented the success of the Royalists, and the same cause prevented
their union now. The Royalists distrusted the Presbyterians quite as
much. To men like Hyde, they seemed traitors and rebels, whose penitence
was hollow, and whose principles were as fatal to monarchy and religion
as those of the Independents. By depriving Charles of his kingly power
they had made it possible for the Independents to deprive him of his
life. A Royalist summed up the share of the two parties by saying that
the Independents cut off the King’s head, but the Presbyterians brought
him to the block. Adversity might draw Presbyterians and Royalists
together; but not till hatred of military rule and dread of anarchy had
effaced the memories of the war was their joint action possible.
As little prospect was there of the union of the Levellers with the
Royalists. Under the name of Levellers two distinct parties were
included, neither of which, however hostile to the existing government,
was favourable to monarchy. A small section, calling themselves the true
Levellers, demanded sweeping social changes. Without these, said they,
the Republic is a mockery. “Unless we that are poor have some part of
the land to live upon freely as well as the gentry, it cannot be a free
Commonwealth.” At present, they asked for the right to establish
themselves on the commons and waste lands, but they dreamed of a
socialistic republic in which there would be no private property in
land, no buying or selling, and neither rich nor poor.
The majority of the Levellers demanded political changes only, and
protested they had no desire “to level men’s estates, destroy property,
or make all things common.” What they wanted was to limit the powers of
the Government and extend the rights of the individual. The three chief
points in their programme were manhood suffrage, annual Parliaments, and
complete religious liberty. Their complaint was that the revolution of
1648 had stopped too soon, and that the Republic was not an absolute
democracy.
The socialists were harmless dreamers whose doctrines fell on stony
ground, but the teaching of the democrats bore abundant fruit. Lilburn,
their spokesman, was an effective pamphleteer, a vigorous orator, and a
party leader of singular pertinacity and courage. In his struggle with
the Government he gave voice not only to the aspirations of his own
party, but to the feelings of all the opponents of the Republic. The
Government seized his pamphlets, threw him in prison, and put him on
trial for treason. It only increased his popularity. When “honest John”
denied the right of the sword to dictate laws, and demanded the liberty
which was the birthright of every Englishman, no London jury would agree
to convict him. He was imprisoned time after time, but it was impossible
to suppress him till Parliament passed an act for his banishment
(December, 1651).
With so many enemies around them, the founders of the Republic had to
deal with a task of extraordinary difficulty. But all the machinery of
government was in their hands, and although their supporters were a
minority, energy and enthusiasm compensated for lack of numbers. The
Council of State consisted of country gentlemen of military or political
experience, with a few lawyers, a few merchants, besides three or four
professional soldiers. It contained a number of able men, and several
statesmen, than whom, as Milton says of Vane, better Senators ne’er held
the helm of Rome when the Roman Senate beat back Pyrrhus and Hannibal.
The system of governing through committees and boards made it possible
to add to each of the bodies entrusted with the management of a
department a certain number of outsiders of special knowledge or skill.
The administrative business of the Republic was consequently far better
conducted than that of the Long Parliament or the monarchy. Royalist
pamphleteers represented the men in power as universally corrupt and
self-seeking; but with some few exceptions they were men of high
character and great disinterestedness. To a foreign observer, hostile
rather than friendly, they seemed worthy to exercise power, however
defective their title to it might be.
“Not only are they powerful by sea and land,” wrote one of Mazarin’s
agents, “but they live without ostentation, without pomp, and
without mutual rivalry. They are economical in their private affairs
and prodigal in their devotion to public affairs, for which each man
toils as if for his private interest. They handle large sums of
money, which they administer honestly, observing a strict
discipline. They reward well and punish severely.”
[Illustration:
SIR HENRY VANE (THE YOUNGER).
(_From a painting by William Dobson, in the National Portrait
Gallery._)
]
The pecuniary resources of the Republic were far greater than any of the
Stuarts had ever possessed. The revenue of Charles I., in 1633, was
estimated at £618,000. The revenue of the Republic, in 1649, from
monthly assessments, customs, excise, fines from delinquents, and sales
of confiscated lands amounted to about two millions. But the demands
upon the revenue were greater still. The safety of the seas and the
possibility of a foreign war made the reorganisation of the navy an
immediate necessity. Accordingly, Warwick’s commission as Lord High
Admiral was revoked, and the command of the fleet given to three
Generals at Sea, Blake, Deane, and Popham. In place of Warwick, the
Admiralty Committee of the Council of State exercised a general
supervision over naval affairs, but the building of ships, the care of
their crews, and all the practical management of the navy were given to
a Board of Navy Commissioners taught by service at sea what a fighting
fleet required. During the next three years, forty-one new men-of-war
were added to the navy, which was further increased by hired
merchantmen. The sailors were better fed, better paid, and better cared
for than they had been under Charles I., and, moreover, their zeal was
stimulated by giving them a third of all the prizes they took. Invasion
rapidly became an impossibility, and the dominion of the seas a reality
instead of an empty claim.
The army of the Commonwealth, if small for the tasks before it, was
amply sufficient to suppress rebellion or prevent invasion. The
twenty-one thousand men of the “New Model” had swollen to a host of
double that size. The standing army, in 1649, amounted to forty-four
thousand men, of whom twelve thousand were destined for the reconquest
of Ireland. In character and composition it differed little from the
“New Model.” The uniform had become universal, and henceforth redcoat
and soldier were synonymous. As the pay of the troops was high, and
discharged with comparative regularity, it was no longer necessary to
raise recruits by pressing. For the officers the army had become a
career, and few retired, unless disabled or cashiered. Officers of all
grades were inspired by a certain corporate feeling, and accustomed to
act together in politics. But between officers and privates a serious
divergence of opinion was beginning to reveal itself. The agitation of
the Levellers had found a ready response in the lower ranks of the army.
Many of the soldiers demanded, like Lilburn, the immediate realisation
of the democratic Republic. Others wanted the re-establishment of the
Council of Agitators and the abolition of martial law. As in 1647,
reluctance to serve in Ireland and the question of arrears of pay
swelled the discontent.
Lilburn seized the opportunity to attack the council of officers, and
Cromwell as its guiding spirit. He and his disciples denounced the
Lieutenant-General as a tyrant, an apostate, and a hypocrite. “You shall
scarce speak to Cromwell about anything,” says one of their pamphlets,
“but he will lay his hand on his breast, elevate his eyes, and call God
to record. He will weep, howl, and repent, even while he doth smite you
under the fifth rib.”
Personal abuse had no effect on Cromwell, but he felt the danger with
which this agitation threatened the Republic. Tenaciously attached to
the existing social order, he regarded the teaching of the Levellers as
calculated to overthrow authority and destroy property. In one of his
later speeches he sums up his views on the levelling movement. The
distinction between class and class was the corner-stone of society. “A
nobleman, a gentleman, a yeoman, that is a good interest of the land and
a great one.” But the “levelling principle” tended to reduce all the
orders and ranks of men to an equality. Consciously or unconsciously it
aimed at that, “for what was the purport of it but to make the tenant as
liberal a fortune as the landlord?” The preaching of such a doctrine was
a danger to the State “because it was a pleasing voice to all poor men,
and truly not unwelcome to all bad men.”
When it came to propagating levelling views in the army, and inciting
soldiers to disobey their officers, Cromwell’s way with the ringleaders
was short and sharp. In March, 1649, Lilburn and three other
incendiaries were brought before the Council of State.
“I tell you,” said Cromwell, thumping the council table, “you have
no other way to deal with these men but to break them, or they will
break you; yea, and bring all the guilt of the blood and treasure
shed and spent in this kingdom upon your heads, and frustrate and
make void all that work that, with so many years’ industry, toil,
and pains you have done; and therefore I tell you again, you are
necessitated to break them.”
Lilburn and his friends went to the Tower, but the effervescence amongst
the soldiers still continued. At Salisbury, in May, 1649, three of the
regiments selected to go to Ireland broke into open mutiny, and declined
to march till the liberties of England were secured. Their watchword was
“England’s freedom, soldiers’ rights,” and they expected other regiments
to join them. But Cromwell and Fairfax left them no time to gather
strength. Hurrying from London to Oxfordshire by forced marches, the two
generals fell on the mutineers at Burford, took four hundred prisoners,
and scattered the rest. Little blood was shed. Three non-commissioned
officers were shot; the rest of the mutineers were told that they
deserved to be decimated; nevertheless, they were re-embodied in the
ranks, and shipped off to Ireland.
Cromwell did not limit himself to the soldier’s task of striking down
the enemies of the cause; he laboured with equal zeal to conciliate
doubtful supporters and regain lost friends. Many Independents were
willing to accept the Republic, now it was established, if they could do
so without approving the method by which it had been brought into being.
Cromwell was probably the author of the compromise by which these men
were induced to take their seats in the Council of State side by side
with the authors of the late revolution. Equally conciliatory was his
attitude on the question of the House of Lords. To fanatical republicans
like Ludlow, it was a proof of his want of principle that he objected to
the abolition of that institution, and wished to retain it as a purely
consultative body. In reality, his natural conservatism disinclined him
to make more constitutional changes than necessity required, and he
sought to keep the support of those few peers who had hitherto stood by
the cause. In April, 1649, Cromwell even made overtures to the
Presbyterians. He offered, as he had offered in 1647, to consent to the
establishment of the Presbyterian system, if there were toleration for
men of other creeds who “walked peaceably.” He was willing to consent to
the readmission of the members excluded by Pride’s Purge, if they would
promise fidelity to the Republic. But the Presbyterians refused his
offers.
Of these attempted compromises there is little trace in history, but
Cromwell’s letters show his efforts to convert individuals. Robert
Hammond and Lord Wharton had once been his comrades in the struggle, but
now, as Cromwell put it, they had reasoned themselves out of the Lord’s
service. To win them back, it was to faith rather than to reason that he
appealed, for that was the way he had quieted his own scruples.
“It were a vain thing,” he told Wharton, “to dispute over your
doubts, or undertake to answer your objections. I have heard them
all, and I have rest from the trouble of them, and of what has risen
in my own heart, for which I desire to be humbly thankful. I do not
condemn your reasonings. I doubt them.”
Pride’s Purge and the King’s execution stuck in Wharton’s throat. He
condemned the illegality by which the Republic had been established and
the character of some of the men concerned.
“It is easy,” replied Cromwell, “to object to the glorious actings
of God, if we look too much upon instruments. Be not offended at the
manner; perhaps there was no other way left. What if God accepted
their zeal as he did that of Phineas, whom reason might have called
before a jury?” But above all, “what if the Lord have witnessed His
approbation and acceptance to this also—not only by signal outward
acts, but to the heart too?”
To Cromwell this union of the outward sign with the inward conviction
was something far above argument. The logic of events was the only
convincing logic. It was the answer that he had given to Hammond’s
doubts in 1648. “Fleshly reasonings ensnare us”; let us see what the
purpose of God is, as it is made manifest in events. For as nothing
happened but because God willed it should happen, so what men termed
events were to the Christian “dispensations,” “manifestations,”
“providences,” “appearances of God.” There was no such thing as
fate—“that were too paganish a word.” There was no such thing as chance.
Every battle was “an appeal to God”—Cromwell often uses that phrase as a
synonym for fighting. Victory or defeat was not an accident; it was the
working of “the Providence of God in that which is falsely called the
chance of war.” Therefore each successive triumph of his cause was a
fresh proof of its righteousness. His victories in Ireland became a
justification of the Republic. “These,” he told the Speaker, “are the
seals of God’s approbation of your great change of government.”
That there was something fatalistic in this belief cannot be denied.
Cromwell himself once owns that he was inclined to make too much of
“outward dispensations.” But the confidence in his cause which this
creed gave was the source of his power over his followers.
“In the high places of the field,” said one of them, “as at Dunbar,
Worcester and elsewhere, when he carried his life in his hand, did
not his faith then work at a more than ordinary rate? Insomuch that
success and victory was in his eye, when fears and despondencies did
oppress the hearts of others, and some good men too.”
Whatever happened to himself, the Cause could not fail. “The Cause is of
God, and it must prosper.” It was not for the sake of the Cause, but for
the sake of his doubting friends that he strove to persuade them. “The
Lord hath no need of you,” he tells one. “The work needs you not, but
you it,” he tells another. The fear in his mind was only this: “what if
my friend should withdraw his shoulder from the Lord’s work through
false, mistaken reasonings?” To serve in that work in any station was
“more honour than the world can give or show.” “How great is it,” he
cries, “to be the Lord’s servant in any drudgery!” How little, then, it
matters whether a man is called an apostate or a tyrant, or what
reproaches that service brings, what estrangements, what vigils, or what
labours. “Let us all be not careful what men will make of these actings.
They, will they, nill they, shall fulfill the good pleasure of God, and
we shall serve our generations. Our rest we expect elsewhere: that will
be durable.”
Therefore, when others faltered and fell behind, Cromwell (in Marvell’s
phrase) “marched indefatigably on.” Fortunate was the Republic that in
its hour of need it had such a servant. More fortunate would it have
been had its rulers realised that the Cause which Cromwell served was
not a form of government, but ideal ends compatible with any form. He
had sought to find religious and civil liberty in a monarchy; he sought
it now in a republic; he was to seek it hereafter in a government which
was neither. At present it seemed to him inseparable from the life of
the Republic.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]