25 April 1599 A.D. HUNTINGTON, ENG: Oliver Cromwell Born
25 April 1599 A.D. HUNTINGTON, ENG: Oliver
Cromwell Born
Morill, John S. “Oliver
Cromwell.” Encyclopedia Britannica. 14
Apr 2014. http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/143822/Oliver-Cromwell. Accessed 24 Apr 2015..
Table of Contents
Oliver Cromwell, (born April 25,
1599, Huntingdon, Huntingdonshire,
Eng.—died Sept. 3, 1658, London), English soldier and statesman who led
parliamentary forces in the English Civil Wars; he was lord protector of England, Scotland, and Ireland from 1653 to 1658 during the republican Commonwealth.
As one of
the generals on the parliamentary side in the English Civil War against King Charles I, Cromwell helped
to bring about the overthrow of the Stuart monarchy, and, as lord protector, he
raised his country’s status once more to that of a leading European power from
the decline it had gone through since the death of Queen Elizabeth I. A man of
outstanding gifts and a forceful character, he was one of the most remarkable
rulers in modern European history, for although a convinced Calvinist,
he believed deeply in the value of religious toleration. At the same time
Cromwell’s victories at home and abroad helped to enlarge and sustain a Puritan
attitude of mind, both in Great Britain and in
North America, that continued to influence political and social life until
recent times.
Youth and early public career
Cromwell was
born at Huntingdon in eastern England in 1599, the only son of Robert Cromwell
and Elizabeth Steward. His father had been a member of one of Queen Elizabeth’s
parliaments and, as a landlord and justice of the peace, was active in local
affairs. Robert Cromwell died when his son was 18, but his widow lived to the
age of 89. Oliver went to the local grammar school and then for a year attended
Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge. After his father’s death he left Cambridge to look
after his widowed mother and sisters but is believed to have studied for a time
at Lincoln’s Inn in London, where country gentlemen were accustomed to acquire
a smattering of law. In August 1620 he married Elizabeth, daughter of Sir
James Bourchier, a merchant in the City of London. By her he was to have five
sons and four daughters.
Formative influences
Cromwell was
descended indirectly on his father’s side from Henry VIII’s chief minister,
Thomas Cromwell, who had assisted Oliver’s great-grandfather and grandfather in
acquiring significant amounts of former monastic land in Huntingdon and in the
Fenland. Oliver was the eldest surviving son of the younger son of a knight; he
inherited a modest amount of property but was brought up in the vicinity of his
grandfather, who regularly entertained the King’s hunting party. His education
would have presented him with a strong evangelical Protestantism and a powerful
sense of God’s providential presence in human affairs.
During his
early married life Cromwell, like his father, was profoundly conscious of his
responsibilities to his fellow men and concerned himself with affairs in his
native Fenland, but he was also the victim of a spiritual and psychological
struggle that perplexed his mind and damaged his health. He does not appear to
have experienced conversion until he was nearly 30; later he described to a
cousin how he had emerged from darkness into light. Yet he had been unable to
receive the grace of God without feeling a sense of “self, vanity and badness.”
He was convinced that he had been “the chief of sinners” before he learned that
he was one of God’s Chosen.
In his 30s
Cromwell sold his freehold land and became a tenant on the estate of Henry
Lawrence at St. Ives in Cambridgeshire. Lawrence
was planning at that time to emigrate to New England, and Cromwell was almost
certainly planning to accompany him, but the plan failed.
There is no
evidence that Cromwell was active in the opposition to Charles
I’s financial and social policies, but he was certainly prominent in
schemes in East Anglia to protect
local preachers from the religious policies of the King and Archbishop William Laud. He had
strong links with Puritan groups in London and Essex, and there is some evidence that he attended, and
perhaps preached at, an underground conventicle.
Cromwell in Parliament
Cromwell had
already become known in the Parliament
of 1628–29 as a fiery and somewhat uncouth Puritan, who had launched an attack
on Charles I’s bishops. He believed that the individual Christian could
establish direct contact with God through prayer and that the principal duty of
the clergy was to inspire the laity by preaching. Thus he had contributed out
of his own pocket to the support of itinerant Protestant preachers or
“lecturers” and openly showed his dislike of his local bishop at Ely, a leader of the High Church party, which stood for the
importance of ritual and episcopal
authority. He criticized the bishop in the House of Commons and was appointed a
member of a committee to investigate other complaints against him. Cromwell, in
fact, distrusted the whole hierarchy of the Church
of England, though he was never opposed to a state church. He therefore advocated abolishing the
institution of the episcopate and the banning of a set ritual as prescribed in The
Book of Common Prayer. He believed that
Christian congregations ought to be allowed to choose their own ministers, who
should serve them by preaching and extemporaneous prayer.
Cromwell’s
election to the Parliaments of 1640 (see Short Parliament; Long Parliament) for the
borough of Cambridge
was certainly the result of close links between himself and radical Puritans in
the city council. In Parliament he bolstered his reputation as a religious
hothead by promoting radical reform. In fact, he was too outspoken for the leaders of the
opposition, who ceased to use him as their mouthpiece after the early months of
the Long Parliament.
Indeed,
though Cromwell shared the grievances of his fellow members over taxes,
monopolies, and other burdens imposed on the people, it was his religion that
first brought him into opposition to the King’s government. When in November
1641 John Pym and his
friends presented to King Charles I a “Grand
Remonstrance,” consisting of over 200 clauses, among which was one
censuring the bishops “and the corrupt part of the clergy, who cherish
formality and superstition” in support of their own “ecclesiastical tyranny and
usurpation,” Cromwell declared that had it not been passed by the House of
Commons he would have sold all he had “the next morning, and never have seen
England more.”
The
Remonstrance was not accepted by the King, and the gulf between him and his
leading critics in the House of Commons widened. A month later Charles vainly
attempted to arrest five of them for treason: Cromwell was not yet sufficiently
prominent to be among these. But when in 1642 the King left London to raise an army, and events drifted toward civil
war, Cromwell began to distinguish himself not merely as an
outspoken Puritan but also as a practical man capable of organization and
leadership. In July he obtained permission from the House of Commons to allow
his constituency of Cambridge to form and arm companies for its defense, in
August he himself rode to Cambridge to prevent the colleges from sending their
plate to be melted down for the benefit of the King, and as soon as the war
began he enlisted a troop of cavalry in his birthplace of Huntingdon. As a captain he made
his first appearance with his troop in the closing stages of the Battle
of Edgehill (Oct. 23, 1642) where Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of
Essex, was commander in chief for Parliament in the first major contest of the
war.
Military and political leader
During 1643
Cromwell acquired a reputation both as a military organizer and a fighting man.
From the very beginning he had insisted that the men who served on the
parliamentarian side should be carefully chosen and properly trained, and he
made it a point to find loyal and well-behaved men regardless of their religious
beliefs or social status. Appointed a colonel in February, he began to recruit a first-class cavalry
regiment. While he demanded good treatment and regular payment for his
troopers, he exercised strict discipline. If they swore, they were fined; if
drunk, put in the stocks; if they called each other Roundheads—thus
endorsing the contemptuous epithet the Royalists applied to them because of
their closecropped hair—they were cashiered; and if they deserted, they were
whipped. So successfully did he train his own cavalrymen that he was able to
check and re-form them after they charged in battle. That was one of Cromwell’s
outstanding gifts as a fighting commander.
Throughout
1643 he served in the eastern counties that he knew so well. These formed a
recognized centre of parliamentary strength, but, unwilling to stay on the
defensive, Cromwell was determined to prevent the penetration of Yorkshire
Royalists into the eastern counties and decided to counterattack. By re-forming
his men in a moment of crisis in the face of an unbeaten enemy, he won the Battle of Gainsborough in Lincolnshire on July 28. On the
same day he was appointed governor of the Isle of Ely, a large plateau-like
hill rising above the surrounding fens, that was thought of as a possible
bastion against advancing Royalists. In fact, however, Cromwell, fighting
alongside the parliamentary general Sir
Thomas Fairfax, succeeded in stemming the royalist attacks at
Winceby in Lincolnshire and then successfully besieged Newark in
Nottinghamshire. He was now able to persuade the House of Commons, well pleased
with these victories, to create a new army, that would not merely defend
eastern England but would march out and attack the enemy.
This new
army was formed under the command of Edward
Montagu, 2nd earl of Manchester, early in 1644. Appearing in the
House of Commons, Cromwell, besides commending Manchester for the command,
accused some of his fellow officers as incompetents or as being “profane” and
“loose” in their conduct. Although not all members of the House of Commons
approved of Cromwell’s using his political position to defame other officers,
his friends rallied round him, and in 1644 he was appointed Manchester’s second
in command, with the rank of lieutenant general, and paid five pounds a day.
After an alliance had been concluded with the Scots, he was also appointed a
member of the Committee of Both Kingdoms, which became
responsible for the overall strategy of the Civil War. But since he was engaged
at the front during the campaigning season, Cromwell took little part in its
deliberations.
After
Manchester’s army had stormed Lincoln in May 1644, it marched north to join the
Scots and the Yorkshire parliamentarians at the siege of York. But Charles I’s
commander in chief, Prince Rupert, raised the siege. He was, however, defeated
in the Battle
of Marston Moor, July 2, 1644, that in effect gave the north of
England to Parliament. Cromwell had again distinguished himself in the battle,
and when Manchester’s army returned to eastern England to rest on its laurels,
Cromwell criticized his superior officer for his slowness and lethargy. He did
not believe that Manchester really wanted to win the war, and in mid-September
he laid his complaints before the Committee of Both Kingdoms. The quarrel
between the two commanders was patched up, but after the defeat at Newbury,
caused largely by the earl of Manchester’s refusal to support Cromwell’s
cavalry with his infantry, it broke into the open once more.
Cromwell now
expounded his detailed complaint about Manchester’s military conduct in the
House of Commons. Manchester retorted by attacking Cromwell in the House of Lords. It was
even planned to impeach Cromwell as “an incendiary.” Once again, however, these
quarrels were patched up. In December 1644, Cromwell proposed that in the
future no members of either house of Parliament should be allowed to hold
commands or offices in the armed forces; his proposal was accepted, and it was
also agreed that a new army should be constituted under Sir Thomas Fairfax.
Cromwell, an admirer of Fairfax, put forward his name and then busied himself
with planning the new army, from which, as a member of Parliament, he himself
was excluded. But, significantly, the post of second in command was left open,
and, when the Civil War reached its climax in the summer of 1645, Fairfax
insisted that Cromwell should be appointed to it. He then fought at the battles
of Naseby and Langport, where Charles I’s last two field armies were destroyed.
In January 1646 the House of Commons awarded Cromwell £2,500 a year in confiscated
Royalist land for his services and renewed his commission for a further six
months. Thus he was able to join Fairfax in the siege of Oxford, from which
Charles I escaped before it surrendered.
Cromwell was
delighted with the way in which the war had gone since Fairfax had taken
command of the new army and the lethargic earls of Essex and Manchester had
been removed from their commands. He attributed these victories to the mercy of
God and demanded that the men who had served the country so faithfully should
have their due reward. After Naseby he wrote to the Speaker of the House of
Commons urging that such “honest men” should not meet with discouragement: “He
that ventures his life for the liberty of his country, I wish he trust God for
the liberty of his conscience, and you for the liberty he fights for.”
But once the
war was over the House of Commons wanted to disband the army as cheaply and
quickly as possible. Disappointed, Cromwell told Fairfax in March 1647 that
“never were the spirits of men more embittered than now.” He devoted himself to
trying to reconcile the Parliament with the army and was appointed a
parliamentary commissioner to offer terms on which the army could be disbanded
except for those willing to take part in a campaign in Ireland. As late as May
he thought that the soldiers might agree to disband but that they would refuse
to serve in Ireland and that they were “under a deep sense of some sufferings.”
When the civilian leaders in the House of Commons decided that they could not trust
the army and ordered it disbanded, while they hired a Scottish army to protect
them, Cromwell, who never liked the Scots and thought that the English soldiers
were being disgracefully treated, left London and on June 4, 1647, threw in his
lot with his fellow soldiers.
Mediation and the Second Civil War
For the
remainder of this critical year he attempted to find a peaceful settlement of
the kingdom’s problems, but his task seemed insoluble; and soon his good faith
was freely called into question. The army was growing more and more restive,
and on the day Cromwell left London, a party of soldiers seized Charles I.
Cromwell and his son-in-law, Henry
Ireton, interviewed the King twice, trying to persuade him to agree
to a constitutional settlement that they then intended to submit to Parliament.
At that time Cromwell, no enemy of the King, was touched by his devotion to his
children. His main task, however, was to overcome the general feeling in the
army that neither the King nor Parliament could be trusted. When, under
pressure from the rank and file, General Fairfax led the army toward the houses
of Parliament in London, Cromwell still insisted that the authority of
Parliament must be upheld; and in September he also resisted a proposal in the
House of Commons that no further addresses should be made to the King. Just
over a month later he took the chair at meetings of the General Council of the
Army (which included representatives of the private soldiers known as
Agitators) and assured them that he was not committed to any particular form of
government and had not had any underhand dealings with the King. On the other
hand, fearing anarchy, he opposed extremist measures such as the abolition of
the monarchy and the House of Lords and the introduction of a more democratic constitution.
But all
Cromwell’s efforts to act as a mediator between army, Parliament, and King came
to nothing when Charles I escaped from Hampton Court Palace,
where he had been kept in honourable captivity, and fled to the Isle of Wight
to open negotiations with Scottish commissioners offering to restore him to the
throne on their terms. On Jan. 3, 1648, Cromwell abandoned his previous
position and, telling the House of Commons that the King was “an obstinate man,
whose heart God had hardened,” agreed to a vote of no addresses, which was
carried. The Royalists, encouraged by the King’s agreement with the Scots and
the failure of Cromwell to unite Parliament and the army, took up arms again
and the Second Civil War began.
General
Fairfax first ordered Cromwell into Wales to crush a rising there and then sent
him north to fight the Scottish army that invaded England in June. Though his
army was inferior in numbers to that of the Scots and northern Royalists, he
defeated them both in a campaign in Lancashire; then he entered Scotland and
restored order there; finally he returned to Yorkshire and took charge of the
siege of Pontefract.
The correspondence he conducted during the siege with the governor of the Isle
of Wight, whose duty it was to keep watch on the King, reveals that he was
increasingly turning against Charles. Parliamentary commissioners had been sent
to the island in order to make one final effort to reach an agreement with the King.
But Cromwell told the governor that the King was not to be trusted, that
concessions over religion must not be granted, and that the army might be
considered a lawful power capable of ensuring the safety of the people and the
liberty of all Christians.
While
Cromwell, still not entirely decided on his course, lingered in the north, his
son-in-law Ireton and other officers in the southern army took decisive action.
They drew up a remonstrance to Parliament complaining about the negotiations in
the Isle of Wight and demanding the trial of the King as a Man of Blood. While Cromwell still felt
uncertain about his own views, he admitted that his army agreed with the army
in the south. Fairfax now ordered him to return to London; but he did not
arrive until after Ireton and his colleagues had removed from the House of
Commons all members who favoured continuing negotiations with the King.
Cromwell asserted that he had not been acquainted with the plan to purge the
House, “yet since it was done, he was glad of it, and would endeavour to
maintain it.” Hesitating up to the last moment, Cromwell, pushed on by Ireton,
by Christmas Day finally accepted Charles’s trial as an act of justice. He was
one of the 135 commissioners in the High Court of Justice and, when the King
refused to plead, he signed the death warrant.
First chairman of the Council
After the
British Isles were declared a republic and named the Commonwealth,
Oliver Cromwell served as the first chairman of the Council of State, the
executive body of a one-chamber Parliament. During the first three years
following Charles I’s execution, however, he was chiefly absorbed in campaigns
against the Royalists in Ireland and Scotland. He also had to suppress a
mutiny, inspired by a group known as Levellers,
an extremist Puritan party said to be aiming at a “levelling” between rich and
poor, in the Commonwealth army. Detesting the Irish as primitive, savage, and
superstitious, he believed they had carried out a huge massacre of English
settlers in 1641. As commander in chief and lord lieutenant, he waged a
ruthless campaign against them, though when he refused quarter to most of the
garrison at Drogheda near Dublin in September 1649, he wrote that it would “tend to
prevent the effusion of blood for the future, . . . which otherwise cannot but
work remorse and regret.” On his return to London in May 1650 Cromwell was
ordered to lead an army into Scotland, where Charles II had been
acknowledged as its new king. Fairfax had refused the command; so on June 25
Cromwell was appointed captain general in his place. He felt more tender toward
the Scots, most of whom were fellow Puritans, than toward the Catholic Irish.
The campaign proved difficult, and during the winter of 1650 Cromwell was taken
ill. But he defeated the Scots with an army inferior in numbers at Dunbar on Sept. 3, 1650, and a year later, when Charles II and
the Scots advanced into England, Cromwell destroyed that army at Worcester.
This battle
ended the civil wars. Cromwell now hoped for pacification, a political
settlement, and social reform. He pressed through an “act of oblivion”
(amnesty), but the army became more and more discontented with Parliament. It
believed that the members were corrupt and that a new Parliament should be
called. Once again Cromwell tried to mediate between the two antagonists, but
his sympathies were with his soldiers. When he finally came to the conclusion
that Parliament must be dissolved and replaced, he called in his musketeers and
on April 20, 1653, expelled the members from the House. He asserted that they
were “corrupt and unjust men and scandalous to the profession of the Gospel”;
two months later he set up a nominated assembly to take their place. In a
speech on July 4 he told the new members that they must be just, and, “ruling
in the fear of God,” resolve the affairs of the nation.
Cromwell
seems to have regarded this “Little Parliament” as a constituent body capable
of establishing a Puritan republic. But just as he had considered the previous
Parliament to be slow and self-seeking, he came to think that the Assembly of Saints, as it was called, was too hasty and too
radical. He also resented the fact that it did not consult him. Later he
described this experiment of choosing Saints to govern as an example of his own
“weakness and folly.” He sought moderate courses and also wanted to end the
naval war begun against the Dutch in 1652. When in December 1653, after a coup
d’etat planned by Major General John
Lambert and other officers, the majority of the Assembly of Saints
surrendered power into Cromwell’s hands, he decided reluctantly that Providence
had chosen him to rule. As commander in chief appointed by Parliament, he
believed that he was the only legally constituted authority left. He therefore
accepted an “Instrument
of Government” drawn up by Lambert and his fellow officers by which
he became lord protector, ruling the three nations of England, Scotland, and
Ireland with the advice and help of a council of state and a Parliament, which
had to be called every three years.
Administration as lord protector
Before
Cromwell summoned his first Protectorate
Parliament on Sept. 3, 1654, he and his Council of State passed more than 80
ordinances embodying a constructive domestic policy. His aim was to reform the
law, to set up a Puritan Church, to permit toleration outside it, to promote
education, and to decentralize administration. The resistance of the lawyers
somewhat dampened his enthusiasm for law reform, but he was able to appoint
good judges both in England and Ireland. He was strongly opposed to severe
punishments for minor crimes, saying: “to see men lose their lives for petty matters
. . . is a thing that God will reckon for.” For him murder, treason, and
rebellion alone were subject to capital
punishment. During his Protectorate, committees
known as Triers and Ejectors were set up to ensure that a high standard of
conduct was maintained by clergy and schoolmasters. In spite of resistance from
some members of his council Cromwell readmitted Jews
into the country. He concerned himself with education, was an excellent
chancellor of Oxford University, founded a college at Durham, and saw to it
that grammar schools flourished as they had never done before.
Foreign and economic policies
In 1654
Cromwell brought about a satisfactory conclusion to the Anglo-Dutch
War, which, as a contest between fellow Protestants, he had always
disliked. The question then arose of how best to employ his army and navy. His
Council of State was divided, but eventually he resolved to conclude an
alliance with France against Spain. He sent an amphibious expedition to the
Spanish West Indies, and in May 1655 Jamaica
was conquered. As the price for sending an expeditionary force to Spanish
Flanders to fight alongside the French he obtained possession of the
port of Dunkirk. He also interested himself in Scandinavian
affairs; although he admired King Charles X of Sweden, his first consideration
in attempting to mediate in the Baltic was the advantages that would result for
his own country. In spite of the emphasis Cromwell laid on the Protestant
interest in some of his speeches, the guiding motive in his foreign policy was
national and not religious benefit.
His economic
and industrial policy followed mainly traditional lines. But he opposed
monopolies, which were disliked by the country and had only benefitted the court
gentry under Queen Elizabeth and the first two Stuarts. For this reason the East
Indian trade was thrown open for three years, but in the end
Cromwell granted the company a new charter (October 1657) in return for
financial aid. Satisfactory methods of borrowing had not yet been discovered;
hence—like those of practically all European governments of his time—Cromwell’s
public finances were by no means free from difficulties.
Relations with Parliament
When
Cromwell’s first Parliament met he justified the establishment of the
Protectorate as providing for “healing and settling” the nation after the civil
wars. Arguing that his government had prevented anarchy and social revolution,
he was particularly critical of the Levellers who, he said, wished to destroy
well-tested institutions “whereby England hath been known for hundreds of
years.” He believed that they wanted to undermine “the ‘natural’ magistracy of
the nation” as well as “make the tenant as liberal a fortune as the landlord.”
He also thought that the spiritual anarchy that followed the destruction of the
Anglican
Church had gone too far, for now ordained preachers were frequently
interrupted or shouted down in their pulpits. A radical in some directions,
such as in seeking the reform of the laws, Cromwell now adopted a conservative
attitude because he feared that the overthrow of the monarchy might lead to
political collapse.
But
vociferous republicans, who became leaders of this newly elected Parliament,
were unwilling to concentrate on legislation, questioning instead the whole
basis of Cromwell’s government. Cromwell insisted that they must accept the
“four fundamentals” of the new constitution that, he argued, had been approved
both by “God and the people of these nations.” The four fundamentals were
government by a single person and Parliament; the regular summoning of
parliaments, which must not be allowed to perpetuate themselves; the
maintenance of “liberty of conscience”; and the division of the control of the
armed forces between the protector and Parliament. Cromwell said that he would
sooner be “rolled into my grave and buried with infamy, than I can give my
consent” to the “wilful throwing away of this Government, . . . so owned by
God, so approved by men.” He therefore required all members of Parliament, if
they wished to keep their seats, to sign an engagement to be faithful to a
protector and Parliament and to promise not to alter its basic character.
Except for 100 convinced republicans, the members agreed to do so but were
still more concerned with rewriting the constitution than reforming the laws as
desired by the protector. As soon as he could legitimately do so (Jan. 22,
1655), Cromwell dissolved Parliament.
In the
aftermath of that Parliament, Cromwell faced a Royalist insurrection. The rising
fizzled out—too many of those who had secretly pledged support to the King
waited to see what others were doing—but Cromwell was aware that local
magistrates and militia commissioners had closely monitored the situation. He
could rely on the acquiescence of the gentry but not on any commitment from
them. He therefore determined to increase security by sending senior army
officers (the major generals) to recruit veterans of the civil wars into an
efficient militia, the costs of which would be defrayed by collections from all
those convicted of royalism in the1640s. The major generals also were
encouraged to promote “a reformation of manners”—a program of moral rearmament.
They ran into serious trouble when the next Parliament met a year early (in
1656, to vote on taxes to pay for a war by land and sea against the Spanish).
In that Parliament Cromwell’s broad policy of religious toleration also came
under fire, especially in relation to the Quakers. In the spring of 1657
Parliament voted to invite Cromwell to become king, since kingship was an office “interwoven with the fundamental laws” of the nation, as
Cromwell himself stated, and there would be an end to constant innovation. Torn
between his desire for “settlement” and his continued yearning for a godly
reformation, he hesitated for many weeks and then declined the title. Cromwell
did agree, however, to a new constitutional arrangement that restored many of
the trappings of monarchy, including the restoration of a House of Lords. That
decision provoked a republican backlash, and Cromwell’s final parliamentary
session (January–February 1658) ended in bitter recrimination and in
accusations of a new “Egyptian bondage.”
Ever since
the campaign in Ireland, Cromwell’s health had been poor. In August 1658, after
his favourite daughter, Elizabeth, died of cancer, he contracted malaria and was taken to London with the intention of living in
St. James’s Palace. But he died in Whitehall at three o’clock
on September 3, the anniversary of two of his greatest victories. The embalmers
bungled their work, and his putrefying body was secretly interred several weeks
before his state funeral and the interment of a probably empty coffin in Westminster Abbey on Nov. 23, 1658. In 1661, after the Restoration of Charles II and on the
anniversary of the regicide, a corpse that may or may not have been Cromwell’s
was exhumed and hung up at Tyburn, where criminals were executed. That body was
then buried beneath the gallows. But the head was stuck on a pole on top of
Westminster Hall, where it is known to have remained until the end of Charles
II’s reign.
Assessment
Oliver
Cromwell was by no means an extreme Puritan. By nature he was neither cruel nor
intolerant. He cared for his soldiers, and when he differed from his generals
he did not punish them severely. (For example, when he dismissed John Lambert he gave him
a generous pension.) He was devoted to his old mother, his wife, and family.
(The stories spread by Royalists that he was an admirer of a number of ladies
have little substance to them.) While he concerned himself with the spiritual
welfare of his children because he believed that “often the children of great
men have not the fear of God before their eyes,” he committed the mistake of
not preparing for the practical tasks of government his eldest son, Richard,
whom in the last days of his life he nominated to succeed him as protector.
Music and hunting were among his recreations. He delighted in listening to the
organ and was an excellent judge of horses. He was known to smoke, to drink
sherry and small beer, and to prefer English food; he permitted dancing at the
marriage of his youngest daughter. In his younger days he indulged in horseplay
with his soldiers, but he was a dignified ruler. Sir
Peter Lely, the famous Dutch painter, pictured him as he was in his
prime (although the portrait was apparently not painted from life); the
numerous paintings from life by Robert Walker dating from the beginning of the
Civil War show him looking more of a fanatic.
As lord
protector, Cromwell was much more tolerant
than in his fiery Puritan youth. Once bishops were abolished and congregations
allowed to choose their own ministers, he was satisfied. Outside the church he
permitted all Christians to practice their own religion so long as they did not
create disorder and unrest. He allowed the use of The
Book of Common Prayer in private houses
and even the English Roman Catholics were better off under the protectorate
than they had been before.
Although
many Quakers were kept in prison for disturbing the peace, Cromwell was on
friendly terms with George
Fox, the founder of the society
of Friends, and explored religious questions with him. When in the
winter of 1656 a Quaker entered Bristol in imitation of Christ’s entry into Jerusalem, Cromwell
tried, though unsuccessfully, to save him from the fury of Parliament, which
voted heavy punishments on the blasphemer. The year before, Cromwell
interviewed two of the leaders of the Fifth
Monarchy Men, an extreme sect: he pointed out to them that they had
been imprisoned for sedition but emphasized that no one would hinder them from
preaching the Gospel of Christ.
In politics
Cromwell held no fixed views except that he was opposed to what he called
arbitrary government. Before the execution of Charles I, he contemplated the
idea of placing one of Charles’s sons upon the throne. Cromwell also resisted
the abolition of the House
of Lords. In 1647 he said that he was not “wedded and glued” to any
particular form of government. After the Assembly of Saints failed, he summoned
two elected parliaments (1654–55 and 1656–58), but he was never able to control
them. His failure to do so has been attributed to “lack of that parliamentary
management by the executive which, in correct dosage, is the essential
nourishment of any sound parliamentary life” (H.R. Trevor-Roper). In between
these two parliaments (1655–56), he sanctioned the government of the country
by major generals of the Horse Militia who were made responsible for law and
order in groups of counties. But he soon abandoned this experiment when it met
with protests and reverted to more normal methods of government. In the spring
of 1657 he was tempted by an offer of the crown by a majority in Parliament
on the ground that it fitted in better with existing institutions and the
English common law. In the end he refused to become king because he knew that
it would offend his old republican officers. Nevertheless, in the last year and
a half of his life he ruled according to a form of government known as “the
Petition and Advice.” This in effect made him a constitutional monarch with a
House of Lords whose members he was allowed to nominate as well as an elected
House of Commons. But he found it equally difficult to govern either with or
without parliaments.
Although in
the late 17th century Cromwell was execrated as a brave bad man, it was
admitted that he had made his country great. In the 18th century, on the other
hand, he was considered a nauseating hypocrite, while the 19th century, under
the influence of the writer and historian Thomas
Carlyle, regarded him as a constitutional reformer who had destroyed
the absolutism of Charles I. Modern critics are more discriminating. His belief
in God’s providence is analyzed in psychological terms. Marxists
blame him for betraying the cause of revolution by suppressing the
radical movement in the army and resisting the policy of the Levellers. On the
whole, he is regarded only in a very limited sense as a dictator, but rather as a patriotic ruler who restored political
stability after the civil wars and contributed to the evolution of constitutional
government and religious toleration.
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