Oliver Cromwell

LIBRARY

UNIVERSITY OF
CALIFORNIA

SAN DIEQO

Cimlfoe

OLIVEK CROMWELL

OLIVER CROMWELL

BY

FREDERIC HARRISON

Pontoon

MACMILLAN AND CO.

AND NEW YORK
1888

AH rights reserved

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I

PAGE

BlKTH —PARENTAGE —EDUCATION 1

CHAPTER II

MARRIAGE— FAMILY — DOMESTIC LIFE .... 17

CHAPTER III

PREPARATION FOR CIVIL WAR . 38

CHAPTER IV

THE FIRST CIVIL WAR — EDGEHILL — THE EASTERN ASSOCI-
ATION— MARSTON MOOR 54

CHAPTER V
THE NEW MODEL— NASEBY— END OF THE FIRST CIVIL WAR 79

CHAPTER VI
BETWEEN THE CIVIL WARS . 100

CONTENTS

CHAPTER VII

PAOE

SECOND CIVIL WAR— TRIAL OF THE KINO . . . .120

CHAPTER VIII
THE CAMPAIGN IN IRELAND 130

CHAPTER IX
THE CAMPAIGN IN SCOTLAND— WORCESTER .... 150

CHAPTER X
THE UNOFFICIAL DICTATORSHIP 168

CHAPTER XI
THE PROTECTORATE ..." 192

CHAPTER XII
HOME POLICY OF THE PROTECTORATE 212

CHAPTER XIII
FOREIGN POLICY OF THE PROTECTORATE .... 218

CHAPTER XIV
THE LAST DAYS : SICKNESS AND DEATH . . . 223

CHAPTER I

BIRTH — PARENTAGE — EDUCATION

A.D. 1599-1620. 2ETAT. 1-21

OLIVER CROMWELL was born at Huntingdon, on the
25th of April 1599. It was the dark year in Elizabeth's
decline, which saw the fall of Essex and Tyrone's war.
In the year preceding, Burleigh and Philip of Spain had
both passed a\yay; in the year following was born
Charles the First. The sixteenth century, which had
opened with such hopes, was closing in strife and gloom ;
the Tudor dynasty was in its wane ; and the brilliant
life of the Renascence had already deepened into the
long struggle for conscience and freedom.

Oliver was the only surviving son of Robert Cromwell,
the second son of Sir Henry Cromwell and younger
brother of Sir Oliver Cromwell, both knights of Hin-
chinbrook, near Huntingdon. His mother was Elizabeth,
the daughter of William Steward and sister of Sir
Thomas Steward, both landowners of Ely. He came of
a race well born and of good estate : as did Pym, Eliot,
Hampden, Vane, St. John, Hutchinson, and Blake. "I
was by birth a gentleman," — so he told his first Parlia-
ment— "living neither in any considerable height, nor

*1 « B

2 OLIVER CROMWELL CHAP.

yet in obscurity." "Est Oliverius Cromwellus" wrote
Milton, "genere nobUi atque illustri ortus" The gene-
alogists of later times have discovered for him traces
of historic descent, which are more or less inventions,
and were wholly unrecognised by the Protector himself.
There is no foundation for the supposed connection of
the Steward family with the royal house of Stuart.
The descent of the Cromwells from " Glothian, Lord of
Powis, before the Norman Conquest," is doubtless as
mythical as the descent of the Stewards from " Banquo,
the common ancestor of the Stewards and the Stuarts."

Both Cromwells and Stewards were families which
had grown to wealth and importance at the dissolution
of the monasteries. The Stewards had been planted
at Ely, enriched with revenues of the Church, by the
great-uncle of the Protector's mother, Kobert Steward,
D.D., who had the singular fortune to be for twenty
years the last Catholic Prior, and then, for twenty years
more, the first Protestant Dean, of Ely. The Cromwells
of Huntingdon were descendants of Sir Richard Crom-
well, otherwise called Williams, a kinsman of Thomas
Cromwell, Earl of Essex, the Malleus Monachorum, or
" Hammer of Monasteries," under Henry VIII.

For generations the Cromwells were conspicuous for
loyalty, chivalry, and public spirit. Sir Richard Crom-
well, the founder of the house, the great-grandfather
of the Protector, had been one of the preux chevaliers
of Henry's Court, and was an ardent supporter of
Thomas Cromwell, the Vicar-General. In letters to
the Earl he signs himself "your bounden nephew"; he
was, in fact, the son of Catherine, Cromwell's sister.
Sir Richard's family was Williams of Glamorganshire,

i BIRTH— PARENTAGE-EDUCATION 3

a name which he was authorised to change for that of
his kinsman and patron; and in his will he describes
himself as Sir Richard Williams, otherwise called Sir
Richard Cromwell. His descendants continued to use
the family name of Williams concurrently with that of
Cromwell; it appears in Oliver's marriage settlement,
and even in the inscription over the Protector's bed
when his effigy lay in state. Sir Richard Cromwell
retained the favour of Henry VIII. on the fall of his
great kinsman. Honours, grants, offices, civil and
military, came to him in profusion; he married the
daughter of Sir Thomas Martyn, Lord Mayor of London ;
and, dying one year before his master, he left vast
estates in five counties to his children.

His eldest son, Sir Henry Cromwell, the Protector's
grandfather, was knighted by Elizabeth in 1563, and in
the next year entertained the Queen at Hinchinbrook,
a noble house which he built on his principal estate,
and in which he incorporated the suppressed Benedictine
nunnery. He represented the county of Huntingdon
in the Parliament of 1563, was four times High Sheriff,
and by his liberality and magnificence acquired the
name of the Golden Knight. He married a daughter
of Sir Ralph Warren, Lord Mayor of London. Sir
Oliver, the eldest son of Sir Henry, uncle and godfather
to the Protector, was even more sumptuous and more
loyal than his father and grandfather. He too was
knighted by Elizabeth, served as High Sheriff for the
counties of Huntingdon and Cambridge, and sat in
many Parliaments in the reigns of the Queen, of James
I., and of Charles I. He married first the daughter of
Sir H. Bromley, Lord Chancellor, and afterwards the

4 OLIVER CROMWELL CHAP.

widow of Sir Horatio Palavicini, the famous financier.
When James of Scotland succeeded to the throne of
England, Sir Oliver entertained him during two days at
Hinchinbrook on his state progress to London, with a
lavish magnificence which delighted the king, and which
was said to have surpassed any feast ever offered to
monarch by a subject. He was made Knight of the
Bath at the Coronation, and continuing his royal
entertainments, he ultimately ruined himself ; and lived
in seclusion, a stubborn cavalier to the last, well into
the Protectorate of his godson. The many sons of Sir
Henry and those of Sir Oliver, all knights or country
gentlemen in the eastern counties, served in public
offices, in Parliament, or as soldiers; and, during the
civil war, for the most part on the side of the king.
The daughters of Sir Henry and those of Sir Oliver
were married to men of good family and estate : the
most illustrious of these being Oliver's aunt Elizabeth,
the mother of John Hampden.

Eobert Cromwell, the father of Oliver, was a cadet of
this knightly house ; and his simple home at Huntingdon
was in modest contrast with the splendour of Hinchin-
brook. As one of the younger sons of Sir Henry, the
Golden Knight, he inherited a small estate, in and near
the town of Huntingdon, chiefly possessions which
formerly belonged to the Austin Canons. This estate
amounted, with the great tithes of Hartford, to about
£300 a year, a tolerable fortune in those times ; rather
more than £1000 now. His wife had a jointure of
£60 a year, or somewhat more than £200 in our day.
He represented the borough in Parliament in 1593 ; was
one of the town bailiffs in two successive years; and

i BIRTH— PARENTAGE— EDUCATION 5

was in the commission of the peace for the county.
He lived in a stone house, at the northern extremity of
the town, having extensive back premises and a fine
garden, the Hinchin brook flowing through the court-
yard. There Oliver was born. The room was to be
seen until 1810; but the house has been twice rebuilt.
It fronts the old Roman road, still called Ermine Street ;
and is now a solid manor-house with a fine old garden :
some traces of the external walls and of the original
offices remain. It is in the possession of Captain Isaac
Bernard, and is known as Cromwell House : the footpath
alongside its garden, leading to the water-meadows,
is named Cromwell's Walk

Robert Cromwell is described as a gentleman of good
sense and competent learning; of a great spirit, but
without any ambition ; regular in his habits, reserved,
and somewhat proud. He served in the local duties
of his town and at quarter sessions, managed his
estate, was on various commissions for draining the
fens; a steadfast and worthy man, bringing up in
honour a family of ten children, of whom Oliver was
the only son that survived.

From the civil troubles to the present day contro-
versy has raged round the question if he or his family
carried on the trade of a brewer. Tradition, lampoons,
and biographies persistently assert that he did ; nor is
there any real evidence to the contrary. The house
at Huntingdon was occupied as a brewery before it
belonged to Robert Cromwell; lampoons published
during Charles I.'s lifetime certainly call Oliver a
brewer; but his earliest, and most hostile, biographer
asserts that not he but his father was the brewer. We

6 OLIVER CROMWELL CHAP.

are most circumstantially told that the brewing business
was carefully managed by Mrs. Robert Cromwell, and
continued by her on her husband's death. There is no
decisive evidence; and the matter has no importance.
Robert Cromwell, like his son Oliver, was a gentleman
managing a small estate and cultivating a moderate
farm. But the better opinion seems to be that the
business of brewing was carried on at some time by
Robert Cromwell, or his wife and widow; though not
by Oliver himself.

Of Elizabeth Steward, the mother of Oliver, we have
a record both clearer and more full She was a grand-
daughter of Nicolas Steward, elder brother of the first
Dean of Ely, who had secured for his family considerable
estates in Ely, on long leases from the dean and
chapter, together with the privilege of farming the
great tithes. On the death of Elizabeth's father, her
brother, Sir Thomas Steward, enjoyed the family
estates : an energetic and popular citizen of Ely, who,
being childless, regarded Oliver, the only son of his
sister Elizabeth, as his heir. Elizabeth Steward, named
of course, like Oliver's own wife and aunt, after the
Queen, was the widow of William Lynne, when she
married Robert Cromwell about 1591. By him she had
ten children, of whom Oliver was the fifth. The
concurrent testimony of all contemporary writers de-
scribes her as a woman of strong character, of sterling
goodness, and of simple nature. The very lampoons
and invectives have no evil word for this blameless
matron. " Both Robert Cromwell and his wife," we are
told, " were persons of great worth, . . . remarkable for
living on a small fortune with decency, and maintaining

i BIRTH— PARENTAGE— EDUCATION 7

a large family by their frugal circumspection." She
survived her husband thirty-seven years, and married her
daughters to men of worth and honour. She was much
beloved by her relations, and also by those of her
husband, particularly by Sir Oliver Cromwell, the
godfather of her son. The supposed portrait of her
shows us a face curiously resembling her son, the
motherly form of the same type : strong, homely, keen,
with firm mouth, penetrating eyes, a womanly goodness
and peacefulness of expression ; the genial face demurely
enveloped in its flowing wimple and prim lawn kerchief.
Between this Puritan mother and her great son love and
esteem of the deepest continued till death. He was
but eighteen in the year when she lost at once husband
and father. From that time till her death mother and
son lived almost constantly together. As her son rose
to power she remained at his side to love, exhort,
comfort ; to pray for him and to fear for him. In the
highest place, as in a humble place, she continued simple
and steadfast. The Protector insisted on lodging her
beside him in the Palace of Whitehall; and at her death,
as it seems, in her ninetieth year, in spite of her wishes
to the contrary, he buried her royally in the Abbey.
There she lay in peace amongst kings and queens until
the Restoration, when her bones were cast forth and
thrust into a hole. Few English women have had a
destiny more strange : yet in all things she remained the
homely, provident, devout matron. "A little while
before her death," says Thurloe, " she gave my lord her
blessing in these words : ' The Lord cause His face to
shine upon you, and comfort you in all your adversities,
and enable you to do great things for the glory of your

8 OLIVER CROMWELL CHAP.

Most High God, and to be a relief unto His people. My
dear son, I leave my heart with thee. A good-night ! ' '
Of such father and mother, and from such a home,
came Oliver, the future Protector of the Commonwealth.
Born, as we have said, on the 25th April 1599, he was
christened in the church of St. John's, at Huntingdon, as
the parish register still records, on the 29th of that
month ; and Sir Oliver, his uncle, gave him his name at
the font Not a few of the elements which make up the
history of our people were represented in his birth and
surroundings. Essentially a townsman, the son of a
townsman, one who passed his early life in towns, but
also a landowner occupied in the business of farming, he
lived to maturity, as his father had done, the active
citizen of a thriving eastern township. The eastern
townships then were the core of the prosperous, inde-
pendent, and pious middle class ; and the household of
Robert Cromwell in Huntingdon was a type of that
order of life. Oliver Cromwell belonged to a race which,
by its wealth and alliances, stood in the front rank of the
untitled gentry of England, and which, by its ostenta-
tious loyalty, had been personally connected with the
Court for three generations. Hinchinbrook, with its
royal pageants and knightly splendour, was within a
mile of Robert Cromwell's plain home in Huntingdon.
The uncles and great-uncles, the sisters, aunts, and great-
aunts of Oliver were connected by their marriages with
scores of families conspicuous in honour and the service
of the State. His father's paternal estate, and that of
his mother's brother, both of which Oliver inherited and
farmed, were old Church lands. Cromwells and
Stewards, whoever their remoter ancestors might have

I BIRTH— PARENTAGE— EDUCATION 9

been, were conspicuous examples of the new Reforma-
tion houses. The homestead in which Oliver was born
had been built on the ruins of the Augustine friars ; the
lordly mansion of his grandfather had for its domestic
offices the cells of Benedictine nuns. On every circum-
stance of his home the Protestant seal was set. So
many things went to the making of that compound
nature — knighthood, burgerhood, the Crown's honours,
the State's service, the ancient Church, the Reformation,
revolution both social and religious, Puritanism, the Bible.
For Oliver's boyhood there is nothing but unlimited
conjecture and most dubious legend. Neither of these
need detain us. In January 1603 Sir Henry Cromwell,
the Golden Knight, died at Hinchinbrook, and Sir Oliver,
his son, reigned in his stead. In March died Elizabeth,
the last of the Tudors, and James, first of the Stuarts,
peacefully succeeded. In April, two days after the boy's
fourth birthday, took place the royal entertainment
which Sir Oliver gave to the new king. Passing through
the sculptured gatehouse of the Benedictine convent,
James entered the great court of Hinchinbrook in state,
Lord Southampton bearing before him the sword of
honour presented by the town of Huntingdon; the
dignitaries of the University came from Cambridge to
congratulate the king in a Latin oration. The mansion
was thrown open; all comers were made free of its
kitchens and cellars; and when, on the third day, the
king set forth to his capital, a gold cup, horses, hounds,
hawks, and gifts of money were presented to James and
to his Scotch courtiers. The earliest recollections of the
child must have been of the new gay dynasty, and his
own courtly godfather.

10 OLIVER CROMWELL CHAP.

There is a tradition that in the following year
Charles, then Duke of York, was taken to Hinchinbrook
on his way to London, that he played with the little
Oliver, and was worsted in fisticuffs. In 1604 Oliver
was five and Charles was four : it is quite possible that
they met as children in Sir Oliver's hall. But enough
of this and of the other traditions of his boyhood. How
the ape at Hinchinbrook carried him off as an infant on
to the roof ; how he was saved from drowning by the
curate, who lived to repent his act; how he robbed
orchards and dove-houses, and was known as an " apple-
dragon"; how he had nightly visions and prophetic
omens ; how he played rude pranks at Yule-tide ; how
Sir Oliver had him ducked by the Lord of Misrule ; how
Sir Thomas Steward rebuked him as a traitor; how,
when one night a spirit appeared to him in a dream and
foretold that he should be the greatest man in the king-
dom, his father had him mercilessly caned; how "from^
his infancy to his childhood he was of a cross and peevish
disposition " ; how, in a school play, he had once to put
on a stage crown and to say —

" Methinks I hear my noble parasites
Styling me Caesar or great Alexander,"

— are not these things written in the " Lives," lampoons,
and loose flux called " tradition " — part, it may be, truth,
part exaggeration, part scurrilous invention 1

One certain and important fact stands out in Oliver's
boyhood. He was sent to the free school at Huntingdon,
an ancient foundation attached to the Hospital of St.
John, which still flourishes and retains some fragments
of the old twelfth-century chapel. The then master and
warden was Thomas Beard, Doctor of Divinity. The

i BIRTH— PARENTAGE— EDUCATION 11

connection between Oliver and his master was very close
and very long ; and of the latter we have very definite
knowledge. For upwards of thirty years, and down to
his death in 1632, Dr. Beard lived, taught, and preached
in Huntingdon. He was not only master and warden of
St. John's foundation, but "lecturer" in All Saints'
Church, and also an active citizen and justice of the
peace in Huntingdon. He is the author of several
works — Anti-Christ the Pope of Rome, etc., The Theatre of
God's Judgments, etc. etc., and a Latin play ; from all of
which we gather that he was a sound scholar, a man of
wide reading, a zealous Puritan, and an ardent reformer.
His reputed portrait, holding his ferule, is that of a
stern, vigorous, keen man. Gossip represents him as a
flogging pedagogue, under whom the young Oliver
suffered much and to little purpose. 'It may be so, it
may be not. What we know is, that Dr. Beard is con-
stantly associated in Huntingdon records with the
Cromwells, that he witnesses Eobert's will, that he was
Oliver's first teacher, that Oliver's earliest extant letter
is an earnest plea for such lectures which " provide for
the feeding of souls," and his first speech in Parliament
was to bear witness of this very Dr. Beard, that the
Doctor and Oliver are two of the three justices for
Huntingdon. The future Protector then, we know, was
educated in the Grammar School of his native town by a
typical Puritan teacher, with whom he remained in close
intimacy till manhood.

From the Grammar School of Huntingdon Oliver
Cromwell proceeded to Cambridge, where he was
admitted on the 23d of April 1616 as Fellow-Commoner
at Sidney Sussex College. It was the very day on which

12 OLIVER CROMWELL CHAP.

Shakespeare died at Stratford. It was within two days
of young Cromwell's seventeenth birthday. Sidney
Sussex College was stigmatised by Laud as one of the
nurseries of Puritanism. The head then and for twenty-
seven years afterwards was Dr. Samuel Ward, one of the
translators of the English Bible in 1611, who was named
in 1618 as one of the delegates at the Synod of Dort.
Once accounted a Puritan, he was always a stout Pro-
testant, a man of great learning, morbidly sensitive as to
his duty, a strict disciplinarian, who records in his diary
his compunction for the sin of too great laxity in exact-
ing from his scholars accounts of the sermons they
attended. There is no evidence how long Cromwell's
college career lasted. The unfriendly " Lives " assure us
it was short. He took no degree, nor does his name
appear elsewhere in the books.

How far did Cromwell's studies at school and at
college extend 1 The unfriendly memoirs assert that he
gained little at either; that, on the contrary, he was
more famous in the fields than in the schools ; that he
was foremost in football, cudgels, and all boisterous
sports; nay, that he consorted with drinking com-
panions, gained the name of royster, and was given to
debauchery. The friendly memoirs, on the other hand,
assure us that he made "good proficiency in the
university " ; " that there wanted not presages of his
future greatness" ; that "he finished his course of study,
and perfectly acquired the Latin tongue " ; that he
excelled chiefly in mathematics, and "yielded to no
gentleman in the rest of the arts and sciences." One
of them, indeed, tells us that "he was not so much
addicted to speculation as to action, as was observed by

i BIRTH— PARENTAGE— EDUCATION 13

his tutor." That is, perhaps, at once friendly and
truthful.

The truth as to Cromwell's learning is probably this.
He certainly understood Latin conversation. Latin was
then the language of diplomacy ; and educated men were
supposed to use it readily both in writing and speech.
Beverning carried on a negotiation with the Protector
speaking in Latin. Burnet says that Cromwell spoke
Latin, but viciously and scantily ; perhaps as many of
our statesmen now speak French. In letters in mature
life Cromwell spoke of his son's education ; he recom-
mends to him history, to study mathematics, cosmo-
graphy. " These fit for public services for which a man is
born." He tells Bichard he should recreate himself with
Raleigh's History of the World. Now a man who loved
such books as Raleigh's History of the World and Dr.
Beard's Theatre of God's Judgments, a book with a curious
range of miscellaneous reading, would have a consider-
able storehouse of historical analogies. Edmund Waller,
the poet, declared that Cromwell " was very well read in
Greek and Roman story." From his letters and speeches
we gather that he had a well-stored mind, and we are
told that, as Protector, he collected " a noble collection
of books." There is no reason to suppose that he ever
was a student in the special sense of the word. But
he acquired, at some time of his life, an education ade-
quate for all his public duties.

It is probable that Oliver's college career did not
extend beyond his eighteenth year, a year which proved
an epoch in his life. In the March of that year (1617)
King James was entertained at Hinchinbrook for the
fourth and last time, and was attended by Laud and by

14 OLIVER CROMWELL CHAP.

Buckingham. On the 6th of June following Robert Crom-
well made his will ; on the 24th he was buried. On the
20th of the month, four days before the burial, his
daughter Margaret, then just seventeen, was married
to Valentine Walton. We know no more of the cir-
cumstances under which Oliver within four days was
called on to attend his young sister's wedding and then
his father's funeral. By his will Robert Cromwell left
two-thirds of his estate, and a sum of £600, to his wife
for twenty-one years to maintain his daughters. Of
these he left six living, the youngest about seven years
old. Oliver, his only son, was then eighteen. It seems
that, being his father's heir, and the only son of his
mother, he did not continue at college. He probably
returned to his home at Huntingdon, at least for a time,
to manage his father's estate.

A persistent but confused tradition asserts that
Cromwell, after leaving college, studied law at Lincoln's
Inn ; and it is even said that he occupied rooms in the
fine old gatehouse of 1518. His name is not found in the
books of any Inn ; but it is difficult to resist the repeated
assertion of the " Lives," and still more the inscription
over his effigy as it lay in state, that "he was educated
in Cambridge, afterwards of Lincoln's Inn." It is ex-
tremely probable that he made some study of law, as
did every civilian who had any idea of entering public
life, as did Eliot, Pym, Hampden. When, how long,
and to what purpose he studied law, we know nothing.
There are indications in his speeches that he understood
the general principles of law, and he is said to have
carried on a long legal argument with learned civilians,
whom he impressed with his knowledge.

I BIRTH— PARENTAGE— EDUCATION 15

Such was the course of his education to full age.
The times had not a little to teach him. He was six
years old when the Gunpowder Plot shook all England ;
eleven when Henry IV. was stabbed in Paris. In his
twelfth year appeared the new version of the Bible.
The whole book-learning of the youth must have
gone on at the very season when that incomparable
masterpiece of the English tongue was beginning to
mould the speech and thought of our race. When
he was nineteen Raleigh was beheaded in Old Palace
Yard, a sacrifice to Spain ; and in the same year began
the terrible Thirty Years' War in Germany, dragging
on its devastating course until the end of our first Civil
War in England.

What was the manner of life of the young man we
know not. Friendly writers tell us that he was addicted
more to the reading of men than to poring over authors.
Unfriendly writers assure us (but in a confused, incon-
sistent way) that he was given to roystering, extra-
vagance, coarseness, and vice. Such testimony as theirs
we cannot trust ; but we cannot now refute it. Certainly
he bore through life a strange turn for rough jests.
When we first reach authentic utterances of Cromwell
himself, we meet with a spirit of intense religious earnest-
ness. The whole of his surroundings in childhood and
youth tended to that direction. A Puritan mother, a
serious father, a zealous Puritan schoolmaster, a Puritan
college, under a Puritan head, his father's premature
death and his own early responsibilities, his veneration
for his mother, his early marriage, do not suggest a
vicious youth. Yet they do not positively exclude it.
At the age of thirty-nine he writes to his cousin, Mrs.

16 OLIVER CROMWELL CHAP, j

St. John : " You know what my manner of life hath
been. Oh, I lived in and loved darkness, and hated
light ; I was a chief, the chief of sinners. " So, indeed,
said St. Paul. And in the mouth of an earnest Puritan
this phrase from Scripture refers, not to profligacy, but
to a time before "conversion." That he should so
write at thirty-nine suggests that his spiritual conver-
sion was not in early youth. When and how that con-
version took place we know not. There was a time, no
doubt, when that mighty nature had not fully absorbed
the great Bible conception, how the entire life of man
is one intimate communion with God. There may have
been a period (we have no sufficient proof that there
was) when that passionate mass of manhood may have
been a law to itself, in the lust of the flesh, and the
lust of the eyes, and the pride of life. Each of us
must imagine as he best can how that great soul passed
into its new birth, at what age, under what surround-
ings, and through what agonies and storms.

CHAPTER II

MARRIAGE — FAMILY — DOMESTIC LIFE
A.D. 1620-1628. .ETAT. 21-29

ON the 22d of August 1620 Oliver Cromwell was mar-
ried to Elizabeth Bourchier, in St. Giles's, Cripplegate,
in London — the church where fifty-four years later John
Milton was buried. In this year Milton, aged twelve, en-
tered as scholar at St. Paul's School. Oliver was twenty-
one years and four months old on his wedding-day. His
wife, who was one year older, was a daughter of Sir
James Bourchier, a knight and wealthy merchant of Tower
Hill, London, having an estate at Felsted in Essex, where
he ordinarily resided. The Bourchiers of the city, we
are told, were in no way related to the feudal Bourchiers,
Earls of Essex, nor to Sir John Bourchier, one of the
king's judges. Little is known of the family, and they do
not appear in the history of the time. We are told that
the Bourchiers were connections of the Hampdens, and
that Oliver owed his wife to the introduction of his
aunt, Elizabeth Hampden.

Her portrait shows us a pleasant, not uncomely
woman, with much dignity of expression, very far from
a Puritan. We take her to be a quiet, affectionate,
sensible woman, without much character or power, un-

C

18 OLIVER CROMWELL CHAP.

willing at first to assume the position in the State which
awaited her, but reconciling herself to it without much
difficulty, and playing her part in it without scandal or
offence.

Three letters of Oliver's to her remain, and one of hers
to him. They are alfectionate, trustful, and natural ;
Biblical in phrase. On her side, she complains (un-
reasonably enough), during his northern campaign, that
he does not write more frequently ; on his, he protests
his public duties. Thirty years after their marriage he
can write to her (the day after Dunbar) : " Truly, if I
love you not too well, I think I err not on the other
hand much. Thou art dearer to me than any creature ;
let that suffice." And she writes to him : "Truly my
life is but half a life in your absence." He does not
seem to have felt for her judgment the profound vener-
ation that he showed to his mother. We do not gather
the impression that she was a woman of much distinc-
tion. The lampoons, of course, are as brutal towards her
as towards him. She brought up her daughters to be
women of good breeding and nice feeling. Nor is there
any reason to doubt but that she was a worthy woman,
doing her duty to the best of her powers, to husband,
children, and friends.

Sir James Bourchier, the father of Mrs. Cromwell,
was a man of wealth ; but it does not appear what
fortune she had. On his side, Oliver Cromwell settled
on his wife for her life the parsonage house at Hart-
ford, with the glebe lands and tithes in the county of
Huntingdon. To Huntingdon, to his mother's house, he
took his bride ; and there for eleven years they lived
together, — only son, his wife and children, with the

n MARRIAGE— FAMILY— DOMESTIC LIFE 19

widowed mother and her unmarried daughters. Of this
period of his life there is almost no record, save the
birth and baptism of his children, until we come to his
entrance into public life, when he was sent to Parliament
in 1628 to represent the borough of Huntingdon. After
one short year of Parliament he returned again to
private life, until the re-opening of the great Parlia-
mentary struggle in 1640. The public career of Oliver
Cromwell shall be reserved for future chapters. Here
are the main outlines of his private life.

In 1631 he sold his paternal estate in Huntingdon
and removed to St. Ives, where he leased lands which
he farmed for five years. In 1636 he removed to Ely;
and there he farmed the lands left to him by his uncle,
Sir Thomas Steward. There his mother and sisters
rejoined him. Thus, with the short break of the Par-
liament of 1628-29, the quiet domestic life of Oliver
Cromwell continued for twenty years (1620-40), from his
marriage in his twenty-second year until his own forty-
second year. Here till long past middle age, in this
"sequester'd vale of life," he kept the noiseless tenor
of his way —

in " his private gardens, where
He. lived reserved and austere."

It seems convenient here, before we enter on the clash
of Parliament and war, to collect the few incidents worth
noting in the family and personal story of the future
Protector. By his wife, Elizabeth Bourchier, Oliver
Cromwell had nine children, of whom they reared four
sons and four daughters. All, except the youngest,
were baptized at Huntingdon. The four sons were all
educated at Felsted School, in Essex, the place where

20 OLIVER CROMWELL CHAP.

their grandfather lived — a school that reared some
famous scholars, and which still flourishes. Robert, the
eldest, died there at the age of seventeen. Oliver, the
second, was a captain in the Civil War, and died in
service at the age of twenty-one. Richard, the third
son, succeeded his father as Protector, and died quietly
at the age of eighty-six, in the reign of Anne. Henry,
the fourth son, served in the war, was Lord Deputy in
Ireland, and died in 1674. Of the daughters, Bridget
became the wife of General Ireton, and afterwards of
General Fleetwood. Elizabeth, married to John Clay-
pole, died four weeks before her father. Mary, married
to Lord Fauconberg, she whom Swift knew and called
"handsome and like her father," died at the age of
seventy-five. Frances, married to Robert Rich, grand-
son and heir of the Earl of Warwick, afterwards married
Sir John Russell, Baronet, eldest brother of Henry
Cromwell's wife, and died at the age of eighty-two.
The widow of the Protector survived him many years,
and died in obscurity at the age of seventy-four.

Of these eight children, three — Henry, Bridget, and
Frances — left ultimate descendants. Richard, the Pro-
tector's successor, married Dorothy Mayor, of Hursley,
and they had nine children, but no grandchildren.
Henry, the Protector's fourth son, married Elizabeth,
daughter of Sir Francis Russell, Baronet, of Chippenham,
by whom he had seven children. Their descendants
were numerous and are still flourishing. The male line
was continued down to living memory. Oliver Crom-
well, the last male descendant of that name, died in
1821 ; and his daughter, Elizabeth Oliveria Russell,
who died in 1849, was the last descendant of the Pro-

ii MARRIAGE— FAMILY— DOMESTIC LIFE 21

tector born a Cromwell. The descendants in the female
line, both of Henry and of Bridget, are still plentiful.
Frances, the youngest child of the Protector, by her
second husband, Sir John Eussell, Baronet, of Chippen-
ham, had five children. From these there are still
descendants of the Protector in the female lines too
numerous to recount, and in families of the highest
rank. [See Appendix A.]

Four of the five sisters of Oliver in these quiet years
married men of their own rank and position. Margaret
married Colonel Valentine Walton, one of Charles I.'s
judges. Anna became Mrs. Sewster ; her daughter mar-
ried Sir William Lockhart. Catherine married Colonel
Jones, another of the king's judges, and himself after-
wards executed. Jane married General Desborough,
one of the generals of the Commonwealth. Eobina
married Dr. French, and afterwards Dr. Wilkins, Bishop
of Chester, one of the founders of the Eoyal Society;
her daughter married Archbishop Tillotson.

What manner of man in all these years was the
unknown great captain and ruler 1 Three qualities
especially stand out. Deep family affection; tender-
ness towards sufferers ; Bible religion. Every fragment
of record from his private life tells one or other of these.
In the range of great characters in history there are
some in whom the passion for social justice burned as
keenly as in Cromwell; but there are few, indeed, in
whom the family affections nourish a spirit so pure in
the midst of distracting public duties to the last hour of
an over-burdened life. There is certainly no ruler since
Saint Louis in whom the personal communion with God
is a consciousness so vivid and habitual.

22 OLIVER CROMWELL CHAP.

" He was naturally compassionate towards objects in
distress, even to an effeminate measure," wrote John
Maidston. Long before he was known to the nation, he
was marked in his own country as the friend of the
suffering and oppressed ; he did " exceed in tenderness
towards sufferers." His house became the refuge of
persecuted ministers ; he stoutly maintained their cause,
and strove to secure them their stipends. His farming,
the Royalist writers tell us, suffered from his habit of
gathering his labourers twice a day around him, and
praying with them, and discoursing to them. For years
before the Civil War the future Protector of the Com-
monwealth had become known far and wide as the
village-Hampden with the dauntless breast

Of Cromwell's love for his wife and for his mother
we have spoken. To his wife he writes in his Scotch
campaign : —

" Thou art dearer to me than any creature. . . . Pray for
me ; truly I do daily for thee and the dear Family. . . . My
love to the dear little ones ; I pray for grace for them. I
thank them for their Letters ; let me have them often. ... If
Dick Cromwell and his Wife be with you, my dear love to
them. I pray for them : they shall, God willing, hear from
me. I love them very dearly. — Truly I am not able as yet
to write much. I am weary ; and rest, Thine,

To Bridget Ireton he writes (he forty -seven, she
twenty-two) : —

" Who ever tasted that the Lord is gracious, without some
sense of self, vanity, and badness ? Who ever tasted that
graciousness of His, and could go less [become weaker] in
desire — less than pressing after full enjoyment? Dear Heart,
press on ; let not Husband, let not anything cool thy affec-
tions after Christ. I hope he will be an occasion to inflame
them. That which is best worthy of love in thy Husband is

IE MARRIAGE— FAMILY— DOMESTIC LIFE 23

that of the image of Christ he bears. Look on that, and
love it best, and all the rest for that. I pray for thee and
him ; do so for me."

Bridget Ireton and Elizabeth Claypole were apparently
the daughters of his deepest confidence. But it is on
his poor son, Richard, that the father's care seems chiefly
bestowed. With regard to Richard he had no illusions.
The father well knew the feebleness, indolence, the
lightness of nature of the son. Yet he is continually
stirring him to better things, seeking to place him under
the highest influences. To Richard Mayor, Richard
Cromwell's father-in-law, on the son's marriage, he
writes (1649) :—

" I have delivered my son up to you ; and I hope you will
counsel him : he will need it ; and, indeed, I believe he
likes well what you say, and will be advised by you. I wish
he may be serious ; the times require it."

Again he writes to Mayor : —

" I have committed my Son to you ; pray give him advice.
I envy him not his contents ; but I fear he should be
swallowed up in them. I would have him mind and under-
stand Business, read a little History, study the Mathematics
and Cosmography : — these are good, with subordination to the
things of God. Better than Idleness, or mere outward worldly
contents. These fit for Public services, for which a man is
born."

To his son, Richard, he writes, during the fierce
campaign in Ireland : —

"DicK CROMWELL — I take your Letters kindly: I like
expressions when they come plainly from the heart, and are
not strained nor affected.

" I am persuaded it's the Lord's mercy to place you where
you are : I wish you may own it and be thankful, fulfilling
all relations to the glory of God. Seek the Lord and His

24 OLIVER CROMWELL CHAP.

face continually — let this be the business of your life and
strength, and let all things be subservient and in order to
this ! You cannot find nor behold the face of God but in
Christ ; therefore labour to know God in Christ ; which the
Scripture makes to be the sum of all, even Life Eternal. Be-
cause the true knowledge is not literal or speculative ; but
inward ; transforming the mind to it. ...

" Take heed of an inactive vain spirit ! Recreate yourself
with Sir Walter Raleigh's History : it's a body of History, and
will add much more to your understanding than fragments of
Story. — Intend to understand the Estate I have settled ; it's
your concernment to know it all, and how it stands. I have
heretofore suffered much by too much trusting others. I
know my Brother Mayor will be helpful to you in all this.

" You will think, perhaps, I need not advise you To love
your Wife ! The Lord teach you how to do it ; — or else it
will be done ill-favouredly. Though Marriage be no.instituted
Sacrament ; yet where the undefiled bed is, and love, this
union aptly resembles ' that of ' Christ and His Church. If
you can truly love your Wife, what ' love ' doth Christ bear to
His Church and every poor soul therein — who ' gave Him-
self ' for it, and to it ! — Commend me to your Wife ; tell her
I entirely love her, and rejoice, in the goodness of the Lord
to her. I wish her everyway fruitful. I thank her for her
loving Letter." . . .

Three times that great heart was wrung with agony
on the death of a beloved child. Kobert, his eldest son,
named after Oliver's own father, died in his eighteenth
year at Felsted, May 1639. The parish register still
records (one thinks in the words dictated by the father),
Et Robertus fuit eximik plus juvenis, Deum timens supra
multos — "Now Robert was a youth of singular piety,
fearing God more than ordinary." Nineteen years after-
wards, fresh from his daughter's deathbed, almost on his
own deathbed, the broken-hearted father recurred again
to this his first great loss. He had read to him those

ii MARRIAGE— FAMILY— DOMESTIC LIFE 25

verses in Philippians which end: "I can do all things
through Christ which strengthened me" (Phil. iv. 13);
and then he said : "This Scripture did once save my life ;
when my eldest son died ; which went as a dagger to my
heart, indeed it did." Again, death struck down his
second son, Oliver, who died of smallpox at Newport
Pagnell, just before Marston. To this loss he seems to
recur in the noble letter to Colonel Walton on the field
of Marston Moor reporting the death of his son in battle.
"Sir, God hath taken away your eldest son. . . . Sir,
you know my own trials in this way, but the Lord sup-
ported me with this, that the Lord took him into the
happiness we all pant for and live for."

The third great loss, the most cruel of all, undoubtedly
hastened the Protector's end. On the 6th of August
1658 his favourite daughter, Elizabeth Clay pole, died.
" She had great sufferings," we are told, "great exercises
of spirit." Thurloe writes: "For the last fourteen days
his Highness has been by her bedside at Hampton Court,
unable to attend to any public business whatever. ... It
was observed that his sense of her outward misery in
the pains she endured, took deep impression on him ;
who, indeed, was ever a most indulgent and tender father."
And then a few days after came that outburst of grief
as he thought of the death of his first-born. In three
weeks more he was dying himself. For the thirty-eight
years of his married life, Cromwell was all that a loving
husband and father could be : overflowing with affection,
even on the battlefield, and in the stress of affairs;
indulgent, but not weak; considerate, provident, just;
counselling, reproving, exhorting; yearning to lead his
children to feel his own intense sense of God's presence.

26 OLIVER CROMWELL CHAP.

The passages from his letters already given are
enough to show how profoundly Cromwell's nature was
saturated with Biblical theology. He was a Puritan
of the Puritans ; full of the dominant idea of personal
salvation by faith ; his whole imagination and speech
were steeped in the language of the Bible, as ex-
pounded by Calvin. Never were the thought and the
expression of any people more powerfully transformed
than were the thought and language of England by the
translation of the Bible. The issue of the Authorised
Version, and still more the multiplication of portable
editions of Scripture, affected our people as hardly any
book in the world ever affected a nation. The years
of Cromwell's life exactly kept pace with the growth,
culmination, and waning of this first intense influence.
In the next century England had a large and rich printed
literature. But in Cromwell's youth the Catholic man-
uals had been thrust out, and English literature as yet
was not, or was not yet open to the people. The Bible
was almost the sole poetry, the sole morality, the sole
religion, familiar to all and accessible in print. Its
mighty imagery, its majestic utterances as to man's soul
and God's power, its mystical ecstasy, its scheme of sin
and death, of future life and judgment, of man's vileness,
and the nothingness of this transitory life, wrought into
the core of the finest and deepest natures of the age.
Milton, Lucy Hutchinson, have given us a measure of
this spirit in its beauty and harmony. Fox and Bunyan
give us a sense of its mysticism and its passion. But
no man in that age drank it into his whole nature with
more intense reality than did Cromwell.

It is very hard for any of us to-day rightly to grasp

ii MARRIAGE— FAMILY— DOMESTIC LIFE 27

all this. There are still Bible Christians, not a few :
men and women, to whom the Word of God is ever
ringing in their ears, day and night continually; to whom
every word, thought, and act, of themselves as of others,
is felt to be, moment by moment, an irrevocable step to
a real heaven or to a real hell. But they who so live
are the few. The world around them visibly goes on
with no such absorbing sense of God's purposes and
God's judgments. They live in a world of their own ;
puzzled, half-paralysed, hoping all things, believing all
things, but not outwardly triumphant. The social and
mental environment round them is visibly alien to the
kingdom of heaven in which they hope and believe ;
wherein they move and have their being. And not a
few of us find mental, moral, historical obstacles in the
way of any such Biblical belief, or Biblical hopes ; and
we are not struck dead, nor are we branded and pilloried,
nor even are we outcasts and strangers ; but we are the
dear friends, children, parents, brothers, and sisters of
those who live by the Gospel alone.

But in the lifetime of Oliver Cromwell the society
in which he lived had absorbed to the depths of their
souls this Biblical conception of life. Their Bible was
literally food to their understanding and a guide to
their conduct. They saw the visible finger of God in
every incident of life ; they heard the authentic voice of
God in every turn of existence. They saw Satan in
everything evil, and heard the noise of devils in all that
was harmful, vicious, or unjust. If they took counsel of
each other of their own judgment, they literally believed
that God and His angels prompted every thought. If
one seemed to them just and useful, he was beloved of

28 OLIVER CROMWELL CHAP.

God ; if one seemed to do harm, he was hated of God.
If they were undecided, they sought God. If they felt
confidence, they had found God. If they felt hopeless,
they had lost God. To be living an honest life was
simply to be conscious of unbroken communion with
God's spirit. Now that which in our day devout men
and women come to feel in their earnest moments of
prayer, the devout Puritan felt, as a second nature, in
his rising up and in his lying down; in the market-
place and in the home, in society and business; in
Parliament, in council, and on the field of battle. He
felt in the full tide of daily life what pious men now feel
on their knees and on their deathbed.

And feeling this, the Puritan had no shame in uttering
it, in the very words of the Bible wherein he had learned
so to feel ; nay, he would have burned with shame had
he faltered in using those words. It is very hard for us
now to grasp what this implies. After a few generations
the Biblical terms ceased to sound as the very words in
which God had spoken, but grew to be mere customary
phrases ; they became the dialect of an order of men ;
they grew to be a fashion; they were imitated; and
soon withered up into a cant. But there was a generation
in which this phraseology was the natural speech of men,
to whom the Bible was their sole literature, poetry, and
religion. Oliver Cromwell grew to manhood in the very
centre of that generation. Towards the close of his life
that Biblical language was already the external shibboleth
of a sect. .He had not that sense of poetic harmony
which prevented Milton from adopting it. That he
chose to retain it through life has heavily weighted his
memory, and has retarded by centuries the understand-

ii MARRIAGE— FAMILY— DOMESTIC LIFE 29

ing of his character. From manhood to his deathbed
Oliver Cromwell used no other English, spoken or
written, save the Biblical dialect. To him it was no
dialect ; but the literal assertion of truths which he felt
to the roots of his being. When Cromwell wrote "Here
is the hand of God," he literally did think the Creator of
all things had so appointed it to be. When he " sought
the Lord," he did literally believe himself to be in
communion with God, to be receiving His direct command.
When he said that " God had given them the victory,"
he meant this in its literal sense, as fully as did Joshua
or Moses. It is a melancholy thought that the utterances
of the most sincere of men in the innocency of their
hearts should now be repulsive to us, simply because
insincere men chose to imitate their words, and to build
up into a cant what was once heartfelt truthfulness.

This is not the place to pass judgment on the Puritan's
way of using his Bible, or his general scheme of religion.
It is sufficient for us that Oliver Cromwell accepted it
wholly : in its narrowness and its strength, with all its
good, and not a little of its evil Few men in our age
look on every circumstance of their daily lives as
arranged by an inexhaustible set of special providences ;
nor do they think every impulse which crosses their
minds to be the work of direct inspiration. To the
modern psychologist this singular type of theological
exaltation amounts in effect to the kindling into intense
activity the whole moral nature. This ecstatic com-
munion with God in practice resulted in a hyper-aesthesia
of the conscience and the will. The zealot who felt
himself in hourly communion with the Divine will was
really consulting his own highest standard of the Just

30 OLIVER CROMWELL CHAP.

and the True. When he sought God, he was probing
his understanding to its depths. When he had found
assurance, his resolve was fixed down to the very roots
of his soul. And thus it depended very much on the
zealot's own nature whether the result was good or bad.
A great and wise man had his greatness and his sagacity
intensified, for his own soul was transfigured to himself.
A man of self-reliance had his will heated to a white
heat, for he knew himself to be the chosen instrument
to work out the decrees of the Almighty. The brave
man became insensible to any form of danger ; the
unselfish man became the type of self-devotion ; the com-
passionate man boiled with hate of whatever was unjust,
whatever gave pain. And so the cruel man lost all
trace of human pity ; the selfish man lost all shame ;
the self-sufficient man treated all who opposed him as
the enemies of God ; the hypocrite found ready to his
hand a whole apparatus of deceit; the traitor found
current a complete code of villainy. It is for this
reason that Puritanism and the Puritans have often been
described in the language of extravagant praise and
extravagant blame. The greater Puritans deserved the
praise ; the worse deserved the blame. It was a form
of belief which could bring out all the good and all the
evil of the heart. It made some noble natures heroic ;
it made some base natures devilish. Men may doubt if
the good or the evil preponderated in the scheme as a
whole. Men can hardly doubt that it infused into the
greater natures which it mastered, a solemnity and a
power such as have but once or twice been equalled in
the whole history of mankind.

The Calvinistic theology did not sink into Cromwell's

n MARRIAGE— FAMILY— DOMESTIC LIFE 31

soul without a great shock to his character and health.
Bunyan has left us a memorable picture of the first con-
sciousness of sin. "My sins," he says, "did so offend
the Lord, that even in my childhood He did scare and
affright me with fearful dreams, and did terrify me
with dreadful visions." Cromwell, we are told, had been
given to visions from his childhood ; and this mood
seems to have deepened in manhood into a religious
form of hypochondria. Sir Philip Warwick tells us
that Dr. Simcott, Cromwell's physician at Huntingdon,
assured him, " that for many years his Patient was a most
splenetick man, and had phansyes about the cross in that
town ; and that he had been called up to him at mid-
night and such unreasonable hours very many times,
upon a strong phansy, which made him believe he was
then dying " ; and Sir Philip gives the common story of
his conversion, and says that, "he joyned himself to men
of his own temper, who pretended unto transports and
revelations." And it is thought that this is confirmed
by an entry in the diary of Sir Theodore Mayerne, the
famous Court physician, who prescribed (15th September
1628) for "Mons. Cromwell, valde melancholicus."

Into this religious melancholy of his we have a pro-
found insight by that memorable letter to his cousin,
Mrs. St. John (October 1638) :— .

" Truly no poor creature hath more cause to put himself
forth in the cause of his God than I. I have had plentiful
wages beforehand ; and I am sure I shall never earn the
least mite. The Lord accept me in His Son, and give
me to walk in the light, — and give us to walk in the
light, as He is the light ! He it is that enlighteneth
our blackness, our darkness. I dare not say, He hideth
His face from me. He giveth me to see light in His

32 OLIVER CROMWELL CHAP.

light One beam in a dark place hatli exceeding much
refreshment in it : — blessed be His Name for shining upon
so dark a heart as mine ! You know what my manner of
life hath been. Oh, I lived in and loved darkness, and hated
light ; I was a chief, the chief of sinners. This is true : I
hated godliness, yet God had mercy on me. O the riches of
His mercy ! Praise Him for me ; — that He who hath begun
a good work would perfect it in the day of Christ."

Thus passed the years of Cromwell's private life in
his native town and county — in the rearing of a large
family of children; in farming his paternal acres; in
gathering round him the godly, the labouring, and the
afflicted; in intimacy with the Hampdens, St. Johns,
and many other Puritan families of his kindred ; in
service as borough magistrate and bailiff; in maintaining
the cause of the " lecturers " and other preachers of the
Gospel ; in melancholy communings of soul, amidst the
lonely reaches of the sluggish Ouse, as to the Judgment
to come and the state of this land on earth.

What was the outward man in whom this spirit
dwelt ? Of few persons in history has the portraiture
been preserved in a way more perfect and authentic.
He had a tall, powerful frame, strong of limb, well knit,
somewhat heavy. A large square head, and a counte-
nance massive, and far from refined, his enemies said,
swollen and red. That face has been preserved for us
in the portraits of Cooper, Walker, Faithorne, and Lely ;
in all with singular resemblance. [See Appendix B.] Of
them all Cooper was the most successful. No human
countenance recorded is more familiar to us than that
broad, solid face with the thick and prominent red nose ;
the heavy gnarled brow, with its historic wart; eyes
firm, penetrating, sad ; square jaw and close-set mouth ;

ii MARRIAGE— FAMILY— DOMESTIC LIFE 33

scanty tufts of hair on lip and chin ; long, loose brown
locks flowing down in waves on to the shoulder. His
whole air breathing energy, firmness, passion, pity, and
sorrow —

" his face

Deep scars of thunder had intreucht, and care
Sat on his faded cheek, but under brows
Of dauntless courage."

There is a famous sketch of him, as he first appeared
in public, by Sir Philip Warwick, a royalist of sense and
not unfair : —

" The first time that ever I took notice of him was in the
very beginning of the Parliament held in November 1640,
when I vainly thought myself a courtly young Gentleman
(for we Courtiers valued ourselves much upon our good
clothes) : I came one morning into the House well clad, and
perceived a Gentleman speaking (whom I knew not) very
ordinarily apparelled ; for it was a plain cloth-suit, which
seemed to have been made by an ill country-tailor ; his linen
was plain, and not very clean ; and I remember a speck or
two of blood upon his little band, which was not much larger
than his collar ; his hat was without a hat-band ; his stature
was of a good size, his sword stuck close to his side, his
countenance swollen and reddish, his voice sharp and un-
tuneable, and his eloquence full of fervour.". . .

And Sir Philip goes on to say how he lived to see
this very gentleman "appear of a great and majestic
deportment and comely " presence.

A counterpart to this picture is the Puritan sketch of
the Protector, written by John Maidston to Governor
Winthrop : —

" His body was well compact and strong, his stature
under six feet (I believe about two inches), his head so
shaped as you might see it a storehouse and shop both of a

D

84 OLIVER CROMWELL CHAP.

vast treasury of natural parts. His temper exceeding fiery,
as I have known, but the flame of it kept down for the most
part, or soon allayed by those moral endowments he had.
He was naturally compassionate towards objects in distress,
even to an effeminate measure ; though God had made him
a heart, wherein was left little room for any fear, but what
was due to himself, of which there was a large proportion.
Yet did he exceed in tenderness towards sufferers. A larger
soul, I think, hath seldom dwelt in a house of clay than
his was."

Such was the man whom, in his twenty-eighth year,
his fellow-citizens of Huntingdon chose to represent them
in Parliament — 17th March 1628.

The public life of Oliver Cromwell had now begun.

APPENDIX A

IT is a curious example of the persistence of the English
governing families, and of their close intermarriages, that the
blood of Oliver Cromwell still runs through female lines in
the veins of the following well-known persons : — Marquis of
Ripon, Earls of Chichester, Morley, Clarendon, Cowper, heir-
presumptive to the earldom of Derby, Lord Ampthill, Lord
Walsingham, Countess of Rothes, Mr. Charles Villiers, M.P.,
Sir John Lubbock, M.P., Sir F. W. Frankland, Sir Charles
Strickland, Sir H. E. F. Lewis, Sir W. Worsley, Sir W.
Payne-Gallwey, the Astleys of Checkers Court, the Polhills
of Kent, the Tennants of Glamorganshire, the families of
Vyner, Lister, Berners, Nicholas, Gosset, Prescott, Field, Mr. S.
R. Gardiner, the historian, etc. During the present century
at least seven persons descended from the Protector have held
office under the Crown, including one Prime Minister, Lord
Goderich ; one Foreign Secretary, Lord Clarendon; two Lords-
Lieutenant of Ireland, and a Viceroy in India. Amongst
those who have married descendants of Cromwell are — the
Earls of Darnley, Lytton, Lathom, Lord Stanley of Preston,

ii MARRIAGE-FAMILY—DOMESTIC LIFE 35

Sir W. Harcourt, M.P., Sir A. Borthwick, M.P., Mr. Samuel
Whitbread, M.P. The late Sir George Cornewall Lewis, the
statesman and author, was a descendant of the Protector ;
and Lady Theresa Lewis, his wife, author of a work in illus-
tration of Lord Clarendon, was a descendant at once of Oliver
the Protector and of Edward Hyde the Chancellor. I am
informed by a lady, one of the descendants of the Protector,
that it was usual in her family to keep the 30th of January
as a day of humiliation and prayer. They were taught as
children that an ancestral visitation hung over them, which
would certainly overtake them in this world or the next.
Some of the Cromwells resumed the name of Williams after
the Restoration. The arms of the Cromwells, as shown at
Hinchinbrook, are Sable, a lion rampant, argent. Crest, a
demi-lion rampant argent, in his dexter gamb a gem-ring, or.
The latter is said to have been granted to Sir Richard Crom-
well by Henry VIII., when he gave the knight his diamond
ring in reward for splendid feats performed in a tournament
before the king. The Protector used this coat and crest, with
the motto — Pax qticeritur bello.

The Cromwells as a family were prolific and long-lived.
The Protector's mother died, says Thurloe, at the age of
ninety-four, but more probably in her ninetieth year. She
had eleven children, the youngest born when she was, at
least, in her forty-sixth year. Oliver was born, at earliest, in
her thirty-fifth year. Oliver himself had nine children, and
thirty grandchildren, of whom at least one lived into the
reign of George II. and the ministry of Walpole. Sir
Henry Cromwell, the Protector's grandfather, had eleven
children, the eldest of whom, Sir Oliver, died in his ninety-
third year, also having had eleven children. Elizabeth, the
mother of John Hampden, died at the age of ninety. Of
Sir Henry Cromwell fifty-two grandchildren are recorded.
During the Civil Wars there were no less than six con-
temporary Oliver Cromwells, all closely related. The
" cousinry " of Oliver the Protector is thus an infinite field,
for it ramifies into the families of the Hampdens, Harringtons,
Whalleys, Trevors, St. Johns, Waltons, Dunches, Everards,
Ingoldsbys, Gerards ; and includes the families of Earl of
Buckinghamshire, Lord Dacre, Lord Hampden, and many more.

36 OLIVER CROMWELL CIIAI-.

APPENDIX B

All the portraits of Cromwell appear to be derived from
works by Cooper, Walker, Lely, or Faithorne. Their
paintings and drawings, with the medals, seem to be the
only portraits taken from life. And a mask was taken after
death. Of them all the best is perhaps the large drawing by
Cooper, in the house of the master, at Sidney Sussex College,
Cambridge. Cooper's miniatures are very numerous and are
well known, — they seem to have been preferred by the
Cromwell family. Evelyn thought the picture by Walker,
with the page tying his scarf, so well engraved by Lombart,
to be the most striking likeness. There is one main
difference in the portraits. Cooper and Lely, whose
portraits exactly resemble each other, paint the brows as
knit, and somewhat drawn downwards. Walker and
Faithorne make the brow high and well arched over the eye.
So too does Simon in his medals. Perhaps the bony
structure of the forehead was so formed ; and the fleshy and
movable eyebrows fell down when the face was seen in
repose.

The following is an exact description of the features made
after careful study of many portraits : —

Eyes : steely blue, keen, penetrating, very sad.

ForeJwad ; very broad, much lined, receding towards
the top, nearly in a line with the nose, very pro-
minent fleshy brow, with " the bar of Michael Angelo"
— wart over right brow.

Hair: light brown, worn in long curls, early turned
ashen-gray ; very slight, scanty moustache, and tuft on
under lip.

Chin : square, solid, but rather receding, fleshy.

Nose: very thick, heavy, prominent, red.

Lips : large, prominent, fleshy, very firmly drawn.

Complexion : weather-beaten, coarse, fair and florid.

General Characteristics: energetic, resolute, rough, sym-
pathetic, melancholy, passionate.

. Of the embalmed head fixed in the halberd-point in the
possession of Mr. Horace Wilkinson no certain history can

ii MARRIAGE— FAMILY— DOMESTIC LIFE 37

be given. Some competent judges have, on physical
grounds, believed it to be genuine ; and it does not seem to
disagree with any single feature in the authentic portraits.
It is not a skull, but a head, which has been thoroughly
embalmed ; severed, after embalming, from the body ;
encrusted into an ancient spear-point. It is said to have
been secured by a descendant of the Protector from the
soldier who was on guard when it fell from the gateway at
Westminster Hall, as described by Pepys. But it adds
nothing fresh to our knowledge ; and from the nature of the
case, it could give us no help in recalling the likeness. The
Cromwellian portraits and relics, genuine and spurious, are
altogether infinite, and even about the genuine alone a
volume might be written.

CHAPTER III

PREPARATION FOR CIVIL WAR
A.D. 1628-1642. JETAT. 29-43

IN March 1625 Charles I. began his reign amid joy
and hope in the nation. In May he was married to
Henrietta Maria, daughter of Henry IV. and sister of
Louis XIII, King of France. Villiers, Duke of
Buckingham, was the absolute ruler of the King of
England, as was Richelieu of the King of France. In
June Charles met his first Parliament; and the great
struggle began between personal Monarchy and Parlia-
mentary government, — a struggle which continued, in
a form more or less acute, for nearly one hundred years.
Charles, narrow, obstinate, and imperious, was with-
out that Scotch canniness and turn for compromise
which had saved his father in his worst hours. Villiers,
equally headstrong and incapable, exaggerated all that
in the previous reign had been disastrous and unpopular.
The Parliament which met the new king was stronger
an"d more conscious of its strength than any which had
preceded it ; and in Eliot, Pym, Wentworth, Hampden,
Selden, Coke, it possessed men of real power and
immense resource. From the first, it refused supplies
to assist the projects of Buckingham, and it made the

CHAP, in PREPARATION FOR CIVIL WAR 39

voting of the necessary expenses of government con-
ditional on its own control over the entire administra-
tion of the nation, civil and religious. Directly it
attacked Buckingham, after a session of less than two
months it was summarily dissolved.

But Charles, overwhelmed by his liabilities and
disasters abroad, was forced by his want of money to
summon a new Parliament. It met in 1626, only to
show a yet more determined resolve to secure ministerial
responsibility as the condition of voting supplies. It
formally impeached Buckingham; and after a stormy
session of three months, was dissolved even more
summarily than the last.

For some two years Charles and Buckingham
struggled on, raising money as they could by forced
loans, by arbitrary arrest, and irregular impositions;
sinking from one disaster to another, until the govern-
ment of the country was reduced to complete dis-
organisation. The miserable expeditions to Cadiz, to
Rhe, the abandonment of the Huguenots of La Rochelle,
the failure of all the foreign schemes and illegal exactions
at home, drove the nation to the last point of exaspera-
tion. All other means of raising money failing, Charles
at last consented to summon a third Parliament in 1628.
It met on 17th March. It was in this third Parliament
of Charles that Oliver Cromwell first entered on public
life as member for Huntingdon.

It was one of the most remarkable Parliaments in our
history. Those who had opposed the Court, and those
who had been imprisoned, were eagerly returned. Pym,
Eliot, Wentworth, Hampden, Selden, Coke, and many
others of fame in the great struggle were members.

40 OLIVER CROMWELL CHAP.

When the House met, its first act was to form a series of
committees on Religion, Justice, Grievances, and Trade.
It proceeded to deal with the entire range of public
affairs, civil and religious, legislative and executive alike.
Wentworth, at first its leading spirit, shrank back from
the prospect of a real Parliamentary executive, and the
lead passed to Eliot and Pym. The Petition of Right
was passed — the second great title-deed of popular
government. On the 10th March 1629 the House was
dissolved, after two stormy sessions of less than five
months in all, having taken a memorable step in the
great contest — the substitution of Parliamentary for
Monarchic government in England.

The substitution of Parliamentary for Personal gov-
ernment in England proved to be a long and singu-
larly complex undertaking. It was not at all secured
until the settlement of 1688, and it was not absolutely
accepted and developed until the accession of the House
of Hanover. But in 1628 the full meaning of the change
was imagined by few, and the practical solution of its
problems had not crossed the mind of any. None of
'the conditions, none of the institutions of Parliamentary
government, as we now understand it, existed. No one
of the greater nations of Europe had attempted anything
like it ; and, indeed, down to our day, no one of them has
organised it into a system. In 1629 the only type of
government known to the larger states of Europe was a
Personal government directly controlled by an hereditary
sovereign, under more or less definite limits, and with
more or less representative control as to legislation and
taxation. The early Parliaments of Charles did honestly
believe that they were maintaining the ancient privileges

in PREPARATION FOR CIVIL WAR 41

of Englishmen and the old rights of the Commons of
England. In reality they were doing something very
different, and from the first they laid claim to a wholly
greater part. They virtually claimed the real sovereignty
in all things civil and religious, legislative and executive.
They asserted a right to judge, punish, and control
almost anything done or spoken in Church or in State ;
to enforce absolute conformity to a given standard in
worship, opinion, and conduct; and, whilst criticising,
practically to direct the entire executive authority,
military, civil, ecclesiastical, and judicial.

Accustomed as we are to Parliamentary government,
we are wont to forget that in the reign of Charles it was
impracticable, even if it could be conceived of as an
organised system. The vast majority of the nation, and
at least three -fourths of the Parliament, knew of no
other executive authority than that of the king's
majesty, and no other ecclesiastical authority but that
of the King and Church. No man had conceived of a
king who reigned but did not govern, though many
dreamed of a church without rulers. There were no
such ideas as that of publicity in administration, as that
of an executive responsible for its daily work to Parlia-
ment. There was no conception of a ministry sitting in
Parliament, doing its ordinary work under the eye of
Parliament, and with the help and supervision of Parlia-
ment. There was no thought yet of a Cabinet virtually
nominated by the majority of the House of Commons, and
unable to survive a single adverse vote. Yet without
all this Parliamentary government could not exist. And
Parliamentary government in this form had not crossed
even the lofty and enthusiastic visions of Sir John Eliot.

42 OLIVER CROMWELL CHAP.

The part which Cromwell took in this memorable
Parliament was a very humble one. He was not thirty
when it was dissolved ; but on taking his seat as a young
man he found himself amongst friends and relations.
John Hampden, then thirty-four, was his first cousin and
close friend. Sir Francis Barrington was his uncle by
marriage. Sir William Masham of Otes, a neighbour of
Sir J. Bourchier in Essex, who married Barrington's
daughter, was Oliver's friend through life. And these
men were amongst the leaders of the Puritan gentry.
But the young member for Huntingdon sat and voted
in silence. Once only does he seem to have taken a part
in the debates. On llth February the Committee for
Religion, John Pym being in the chair, was discussing
the offences of the Bishop of Winchester and others who
had supported preachers condemned by the House.
Cromwell rose and said that he had heard from Dr.
Beard how, when a certain Dr. Alabaster had preached
flat popery at Paul's Cross, the Bishop of Winchester,
his diocesan, had commanded Dr. Beard to preach
nothing to the contrary, and, when he persisted in so
preaching, had reprimanded him. The remark was well
received by the committee, and the House ordered Dr.
Beard to be sent for as a witness, and the summons to
be delivered to Mr. Cromwell. By the 24th of
February the Eesolutions on Eeligion were ready, but
the immediate dissolution of the House put an end to
debates. For more than eleven years no Parliament
was called.

During these eleven years (1629-40) Cromwell
lived quietly amongst his own people, and we may con-
veniently here set down the simple annals of his private

in PREPARATION FOR CIVIL WAR 43

life. His uncle Eichavd — godfather, we assume, to the
young Ei chard — died in 1628, and left to Oliver a piece
of land in Huntingdon, and nineteen acres of arable
land near ; but Cromwell was soon to quit Huntingdon
for ever. In 1630 a new charter was granted to the
borough, and Cromwell, Dr. Beard, and Robert Barnard
were named as the justices of the peace. By the new
charter the rule of the town was handed over to a mayor,
and twelve aldermen appointed for life. The new
charter was apparently a triumph for the king's men,
and it abolished the old popular election. Cromwell
was not slow or measured in remonstrating against the
powers it conferred. A complaint was made by petition
of the mayor and aldermen against " the disgraceful and
unseemly speeches used to" the mayor and Robert
Barnard. A warrant was issued, and Cromwell was
brought before the Privy Council in November 1630.
The affair was committed to the arbitration of the Earl
of Manchester, and ended with an apology and a com-
promise, the charter being amended in three points.
Cromwell acknowledged that "he had spoken in heat
and passion."

Huntingdon was no longer a place to hold him. In
1631 we find him paying a fine of £10 as compensation
for refusing to appear at the king's coronation to be
knighted. A few weeks after the award, in May 1631,
Cromwell disposed of most of his property there, his
mother, his wife, and his uncle Sir Oliver, joining in the
deed of sale. He sold the "Augustine Fryers," the
house in which he was born, with other houses, and
seven acres of land in Huntingdon, and the tithes at
Hartford. The sale produced £1800. Hinchinbrook

44 OLIVER CROMWELL CHAP.

had been sold four years before for £3000. He did not
sell the property which came to him from his uncle
Richard. With the proceeds he rented some grazing
lands at St. Ives, five miles farther down the river — part
of the Slepe Hall estate — and here he lived with his
family for five years more until 1636. His mother and
his unmarried sisters continued to live at Huntingdon,
where Oliver's children were baptized down to 1637,
and where he still apparently remained a proprietor.
Of his life at St. Ives we know nothing. He was
naturally occupied in farming ; and we fancy it was in
the marshy lands there that he contracted his tendency
to ague. " He came to church," rumour said, " with a
piece of red flannel round his neck, being subject to
inflammation." And it was doubtless in these gloomy
years that the "phansies" and the "melancholy" pressed
most hardly on his spirit.

In January 1636 Sir Thomas Steward, his mother's
brother, died ; and thereon, by his uncle's will, and the
settlement of his grandfather, William Steward, Crom-
well became entitled to considerable property in Ely,
said to be worth from £400 to £500 a year, the family
house in Ely, and the goodwill to the farming of the
tithes under the chapter. To Ely he removed in the
course of the year 1636, living in the house still
standing next to St. Mary's Church ; and here his family
remained until their removal to London about 1647.
He at once obtained renewal of the leases held by Sir
Thomas, and appears from time to time as an active
trustee of the local charities and funds.

At Ely, as at St. Ives, we find him actively maintain-
ing the Puritan preachers, and the cause of the poor.

in PREPARATION FOR CIVIL WAR 45

It is from St. Ives, in 1636, that ho writes to Mr. Story
in London to maintain a lecturer in his county — " they
that procure spiritual food, they that build up spiritual
temples, they are the men truly charitable, truly pious."
It is from Ely, in 1638, that he writes that interesting
letter to his cousin, Mrs. St. John. And in Ely, in that
year, we find the little note — " Mr. Hand, I doubt not
but I shall be as good as my word for your money. I
desire you to deliver forty shillings of the town money
to this bearer to pay for the physic for Benson's cure.
[Benson was an old invalid.] If the gentlemen will not
allow it at the time of account, keep this note, and I will
pay it out of my own purse."

It was in these years, 1635-38, that the struggle went
on about the payment of ship-money. With this he was
closely connected. His cousin and friend John Hamp-
den bore the brunt of the contest; his cousin by
marriage, Oliver St. John, was Hampden's advocate in
the case. Cromwell himself is reported to have also
refused to pay, though, perhaps, like so many others, his
case was not pressed. About the same time also took
place the struggle between the poor people of the fens
and the " adventurers " who had reclaimed the Bedford
Level. The memoirs tell us that Cromwell took active
part with the commoners. If he did so, it was not
against the king, but rather against the Earl of Bedford.
But we are told that as head of the discontented faction
he made himself so well known that Hampden in Par-
liament afterwards described him "as an active person,
and one that would sit well at the mark." With or
without reference to this particular incident, in the Long
Parliament he bore the nickname of " Lord of the Fens."

46 OLIVER CROMWELL CHAP.

The picturesque story that he was about iu these
years to emigrate to America, and was stopped by an
Order in Council, is without any adequate foundation.
No emigrants were stopped for more than a few days.
Cromwell, like Hampden, at the time was busy with
important projects. And it is utterly improbable that
they and the leaders of the Commons in their struggle
were all about to embark in the same ship, and to
abandon their cause together. But the times were
gloomy and terrible to men of less nerve and energy.

These eleven years between the Parliaments of 1629
and 1640 had been times of trial. Sir John Eliot and
eight members were thrown into the Tower, where in
three years Eliot died, the proto-martyr of Parliaments.
Wentworth, disgusted with the pretensions of Parlia-
ment, passed over to the king ; and was soon to become,
with Laud, the mainstay of Personal monarchy, by whose
means "Thorough" ruled for a season in State and
Church. The Star Chamber prosecutions, the ferocious
sentences on Prynne, Burton, Bastwick, and Lilburne,
illegal fines, arbitrary taxes, the ship-money, followed.
Next came the Scotch insurrection and the Covenant of
1638. The Scotch war drove Charles at last to the
concession which for eleven years he had resisted.
Wentworth, now Earl of Strafford, was summoned from
Ireland, and he counselled a Parliament.

It met 13th April 1640; and here Oliver Cromwell
was returned as member for Cambridge. The House
had hardly assembled when, under the leadership of
Pym, instead of voting supplies, it attacked the policy
of the king in Church and State. Cromwell's name
does not appear in its proceedings. The king dissolved

in PREPARATION FOR CIVIL WAR 47

it in anger on the 5th of May. And thus the Short
Parliament, the fourth which Charles had called, was
abruptly dismissed after a session of twenty-three days.
But a fresh war in Scotland compelled the king within
six months to summon a new House.

Everywhere the Court struggled in vain to affect the
returns. The efforts of the Lord Keeper were directed
to induce the electors of Cambridge to choose his own
brother in place of Cromwell. But Cromwell was
returned with one of the common council, in place of
his former colleague, a courtier. On the 3d of
November 1640 Oliver Cromwell took his seat in the
fifth Parliament of King Charles, the famous Long
Parliament, which lasted for thirteen years, till dis-
missed by himself in 1653.

This is not the place to tell the story of the most
memorable of all English Parliaments. Our concern is
with Cromwell. He was now forty-one; he was already a
leader amongst Puritans ; and he was in close relation
with prominent men in the Commons. Hampden, St.
John, Henry Marten, Sir Thomas Barrington, Sir
William Masham, Valentine Walton, Edmund Waller,
were his connections by marriage. To Pym, the leader
of the House, to Vane, Falkland, Hyde, Holies, and
Strode, he was well known as an old member. He is no
longer the silent observer that he had been in 1628.
From the first he takes an active part; sits on many
important committees; moves several important bills.
But he is in no sense a Parliamentary leader ; there is
no record of his making a sustained speech ; nor does he
appear as the chief of a distinct party. His voice was
not heard during the great impeachments, or in the great

48 OLIVER CROMWELL CHAP.

political debates. His activity is confined almost
entirely to matters of religion and the oppression of
persons. He is a man of influence, of suggestions, of
business experience; but he nowhere appears as the
orator, the tactician, or the far-sighted statesman. He
does not sit with Pym and the great lawyers, but on the
right of the Speaker, near Hyde and Falkland, Strode
and Pennington. So far as he acts with any section it
is rather with Pennington, Puritan member for the city,
with Vane, Strode, and Henry Marten, the " root-and-
branch" men. He abstains strictly from all debates
where law, precedent, tactics are essential. His solo
concern is misgovernment, corruption, and conscience.

On the third day of the session, after Pym and
Hampden had uttered their great indictment of the
Government, Cromwell presented the petition of John
Lilburne, who had been cruelly punished by the Star-
Chamber. He was appointed on the committee to
consider the cases of Leighton, Prynne, Burton, Bastwick,
and other victims of Laud. It was then that we have
the notice of Sir Philip Warwick, already cited : " He
aggravated the imprisonment of this man by the council-
table unto that height that one would believe the very
Government itself had been in great danger by it. I
sincerely profess it lessened much my reverence unto
that great council, for he was very much hearkened
unto."

Within the first ten months of the Long Parliament
Cromwell was specially appointed to eighteen com-
mittees, besides those on which he sat as representing
Cambridge. The most important matters came before
several of those committees, and the cases of most of the

in PREPARATION FOR CIVIL WAR 49

sufferers from the Star-Chamber. There was another
case of alleged oppression referred to one of these
committees, of which Hyde, the Chancellor, has given
us his own version. Lord Manchester had a dispute
with some commoners of Huntingdon about a recent
enclosure, which resulted in a riot, and writs were issued.
Cromwell vehemently urged the case of the poor inhab-
itants ; it was referred to a committee of which Hyde
was chairman. Lord Clarendon relates that Cromwell
enlarged on the evidence " with great passion " ; that
" in great fury " he reproached the chairman with being
partial, that he bullied the witnesses, and attacked Lord
Mandeville with indecency and rudeness. In the end
his whole carriage was so tempestuous, and his behaviour
so insolent, that the chairman was obliged to reprehend
him : which Cromwell never forgave. How far all this
is exaggeration we cannot now say. Cromwell and
Lord Mandeville were intimate friends. And Claren-
don's memory was notoriously defective, especially in
all that related to himself and his opponents.

There are three great occasions where we find Crom-
well in the front. Within a few weeks of the opening of
Parliament, Alderman Pennington presented a petition
signed by 15,000 citizens of London, calling for
the abolition of Episcopacy, with all its roots and
branches. When the debate on it came on, Pennington
justified the petition, and said that he could have had
fifteen times 15,000 signatures, and Cromwell eagerly
intervened in the debate. He was himself interrupted
with loud calls "to the bar." But, Pym and Holies
supporting him, he insisted on his argument; which
was " that he was more convinced of the irregularity of

E

50 OLIVER CROMWELL CHAP.

bishops than even before, because, like the Roman
hierarchy, they would not endure to have their con-
dition come to a trial." The matter ended for the
moment in a compromise. But here, in Episcopacy, was
sounded the critical note, which ultimately rallied to
the king so large a portion of the people and the gentry.
From that hour the king represented the Church.

The second occasion is when, on 30th December
1640, Cromwell moved the second reading of Strode's
Bill for Annual Parliaments. It was referred to
a select committee, on which sat Cromwell, Pym,
Hampden, Strode, St. John, Holies, Selden, Barring-
ton, Whitelocke, and others. The Bill was extremely
defective from a constitutional point of view ; but it
ultimately took shape as the Triennial Act, one of the
most important statutes of the Long Parliament. And
the cardinal principle of the Annual Bill was ultimately
embodied in the Bill of Rights.

The third great occasion where we find Cromwell
prominent is where he prepares with Vane the Bill for
the Abolition of Episcopacy, the measure which finally
drove Hyde into the party of the Court. It is to the
downfall of Episcopacy of the Laudian type, and for the
defence of Puritanism, that Cromwell is chiefly noticed
as a member of Parliament. He sits on the committee
on the "Bill for the Abolishing of Superstition and
Idolatry " ; on the committee to consider how preaching
ministers may be set up and maintained. Mr. Cromwell
moves " to take some course to turn the Papists out of
Dublin"; and on his motion it was ordered "that
sermons should be in the afternoon in all parishes in
England." But for the Church of England, but for

in PREPARATION FOR CIVIL WAR 61

Puritanism, the Civil War would have been a short
affair, even if it ever had begun. The Long Parliament
was already assuming the absolute control of public
worship, and that in a definitely Presbyterian spirit.
Cromwell, who burned with indignation against Laud
and Popery, little saw how this claim of the Commons
would prove one of his own greatest difficulties as a ruler.

But though for twelve more years this Parliament
continued its bills, motions, and debates, Cromwell
appears in it henceforth only in urgent matters of
practical kind. The Parliament as a legislature had
ceased to exist. It was a committee of safety of the
nation charged with the duty of forcing the king to
submit. Thus at least Cromwell viewed it. His
vehemence led the Commons to take up the Grand
Kemonstrance, which was virtually a summons to the
nation to action. It was he who on 6th November 1641
carried a resolution to give the Earl of Essex power
from both Houses to command upon all occasions the
trained bands on that side of Trent for the defence of
the kingdom, and " that this power should continue until
the Parliament should take further order" Here is the
first suggestion of a Parliamentary army.

On 22d November took place the final debate on the
Remonstrance, which was virtually the call to arms.
We know already how vehemently Cromwell threw
himself into the measure. It was one of the most
memorable scenes that have ever passed in the House.
Wild with excitement and party fury — the majority had
been but eleven — the members drew their swords ; and
but for the serene good sense of Hampden, they seemed
likely to fight out the Civil War on the floor of the House.

52 OLIVER CROMWELL CHAP.

When, after sixteen hours of debate, at four in the
morning, they passed out, Falkland asked Cromwell (we
are told by Clarendon) if there had been a debate or
not "I will take your word for it, again," said he.
" If the Eemonstrance had been rejected, I would have
sold all I had the next morning, and never have seen
England any more ; and I know there are many other
honest men of this same resolution." The memory of
Clarendon is quite untrustworthy. But some such con-
versation did probably pass. The failure of the Remon-
strance would have been a different thing from the
tyranny of the king. It would have meant that a
majority of the Commons accepted Monarchy and
Church, and Cromwell may have turned his thoughts
to the New World, as did Lord Brooke and others, and
probably Hampden.

The news of the Irish Rebellion and massacre,
enormously exaggerated as it was, reached London in
November, and stimulated the passions of all. The
ferment broke out in continual riots ; arms were drawn
on both sides ; and bands of men came trooping into
London. In January 1642 the king made his ill-
starred attempt to seize the five members : on 10th
January he left Whitehall, never to return a king. In
February Cromwell offers £500 towards the service of
the Commonwealth, his cousin Hampden subscribing
£1000. In July blood was drawn. In the same
month Cromwell sent down arms to Cambridge, ex-
pended £100 of his own in that service, and moved to
raise in Cambridge two companies of volunteers. In
August he seized the magazine in the Castle of Cam-
bridge, and secured the University plate, worth £20,000,

in PREPARATION FOR CIVIL WAR 63

which was being sent to the king. The House passed
an indemnity, and repaid the money he had expended
in arming the town. Cromwell was, in fact, committed
to acts of treason and war. He, who nine months
before had first suggested that a Parliamentary army
should be formed under Essex, who in the interval had
been rousing his own constituents to arm, was the first
to strike a blow in the coming combat. The Civil War
had now begun. For the next nine years his life is
that of a soldier.

CHAPTER IV

THE FIRST CIVIL WAR
EDGEHILL — THE EASTERN ASSOCIATION — MARSTON MOOR

A.D. 1642-1644. JETAT. 43-45

ON the 22d of August 1642, in cloud and storm, King
Charles planted the royal standard on the castle rock of
Nottingham, and formally opened the Civil War. He
soon found himself at the head of an army of 10,000,
led by men trained in the Dutch and German wars.
Prince Rupert, a born scibreur, now just twenty-three,
was made General of the Horse. Another skilled soldier,
the Earl of Lindsey, was named Commander-in-Chief.
But the king's army was a motley body, and he was
swayed by varying counsels. Side by side stood great
nobles and gallant gentlemen, who had armed their
retainers and tenants, soldiers of fortune, heroic spirits
like the Verneys and Falkland, reprobates like Goring,
and dissolute idlers both from town and country. There
was little or no regular discipline, and a constantly
shifting system of command. Charles, who in war as
in peace could trust no man and adopt no counsel with-
out secret reserves and constant vacillation, listened by
turns to the groups which surrounded him — skilled
tacticians, fiery swordsmen, acute statesmen, intriguers,

CHAP, iv FIRST CIVIL WAR TO MARSTON MOOR 55

desperadoes, and lastly, his evil spirit, his beloved, daunt-
less, wrong-headed wife.

The army of the Parliament was soon assembled
round Northampton, where it mustered to the number
of 20,000 men. Its commander was Eobert Devereux,
Earl of Essex, son of Elizabeth's attainted favourite,
now chief of the Parliamentary nobles, a Puritan, and a
soldier trained in the foreign wars. Sincere, brave,
honourable, diligent, but weak and utterly dull, he mis-
took his great position for capacity, and never learned
how incompetent he was for all but moderate under-
takings. His task was indeed not slight. The Parlia-
mentary army, though twice as numerous, was no less
heterogeneous than that of the king; it was hardly
more disciplined ; it had fewer officers trained to war,
and fewer soldiers inured to arms. Its cavalry was
inferior in equipment and skill to the dashing horsemen
who followed Eupert And though a goodly proportion
were earnest Puritans, full of courage and devotion, both
troops of horse and regiments of foot were largely made
up of mere holiday soldiers, without character, heart,
or knowledge of their business. On both sides there
were germs of a splendid army, but both as yet were the
musters of armed citizens, with ignorance, carelessness,
and ruffianism in nearly equal degrees, with some heroes
and many vagabonds.

In wealth, in numbers, and in cohesion the Parlia-
ment was stronger than the king. To him there had
rallied most of the greater nobles, many of the lesser
gentry, some proportion of the richer citizens, the towns-
men of the west, and the rural population generally of
the west and north of England. For the Parliament

56 OLIVER CROMWELL CHAP.

stood a strong section of the peers and greater gentry,
the great bulk of the lesser gentry, the townsmen of the
richer parts of England, the whole eastern and home
counties, and lastly, the city of London. But as the
Civil War did not sharply divide classes, so neither did
it geographically bisect England. Roughly speaking,
aristocracy and peasantry, the Church, universities, the
world of culture, fashion, and pleasure were loyal : the
gentry, the yeomanry, trade, commerce, morality, and
law inclined to the Parliament. Broadly divided, the
north and west went for the king ; the south and east
for the Houses ; but the lines of demarcation were never
exact : cities, castles, and manor-houses long held out in
an enemy's county. There is only one permanent limita-
tion. Draw a line from the Wash to the Solent. East
of that line the country never yielded to the king ; from
first to last it never failed the Parliament. Within it arc
enclosed Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, Cambridge, Huntingdon,
Bedford, Bucks, Herts, Middlesex, Surrey, Kent, Sussex.
This was the wealthiest, the most populous, and the
most advanced portion of England. With Gloucester,
Reading, Bristol, Leicester, and Northampton, it formed
the natural home of Puritanism.

For two years the Civil War drags on its varying
course, with cruel waste in blood, treasure, and general
well-being. As is usually seen with citizen armies
commanded by civilian officers, bloody encounters lead
to no results ; one wing in a battle is in flight whilst
the other is pursuing a defeated enemy; victorious
armies mysteriously melt away, and independent generals
fight for their own hand. Though the king had more
competent leaders and more efficient troopers than the

iv FIRST CIVIL WAR TO MARSTON MOOR 57

Parliament, his own caprice and presumption, and the
lawless spirits around him, continually destroyed his
prospects of success. On the other side, the local and
temporary character of the Parliamentary levies, the
want of military habits and skilled leaders, the dis-
organisation inherent in a civilian army, controlled by
a civilian committee, led to the failure of expeditions
more numerous and better found than those of the
king. In spite of noble efforts and much individual
heroism, the cause of the Parliament on the whole lost
ground, until, after two years of fighting, it held little
more than a third of the kingdom. From this imminent
peril it was rescued by Marston Moor and the New
Model.

It is no part of this work to narrate the incidents of
the Civil War, with all its inevitable misery, waste, and
failure. The business before us is the work of Oliver
Cromwell. First he is captain of a troop, like himself
yeomen and farmers who had girt on the sword for
conscience' sake; then colonel of a regiment; soon
general of a corps of cavalry; at last leader of an
army. Steadily the discipline and fervour of his troop
spread to the rest ; till he organises the armies of the
Parliament on the " Model " of which his own troop was
the germ ; and ultimately he is the commander-in-chief
of armies, of which he is himself the soul — armies which
in discipline, valour, and perfection of all martial quali-
ties have never been surpassed in the annals of war.

The army of the Parliament was on paper about
20,000 foot and 5000 horse, there being twenty regi-
ments of infantry and seventy-five troops of horse, each
troop counting sixty sabres, raised and equipped by its

68 OLIVER CROMWELL CHAP.

own captain. Oliver Cromwell was captain of the 67th
troop, with his brother-in-law, John Desborough, as
quartagfcaaster. His eldest son Oliver was cornet in the
StUpp^; his future son-in-law, Henry Ireton, was
captain of,:ihe 5&th troop. His cousin, John llampden,
was colonel o.|^j^^6th regiment of foot ; his neighbour,
Lord MandevilTe^ afterwards Earl of Manchester, was
colonel of the 10th. His brother-in-law, Valentine
Walton, was captain of the 73d troop, with Valentine
the younger as cornet. Edward Whalley, his cousin,
was cornet in the 60th troop. Cromwell was thus sur-
rounded in the field by his relations, friends, and
political colleagues. On the 13th of September he was
ordered to muster his troop and to join the Earl of
Essex.

The war opened as civil wars do : gallant skirmishes,
inexplicable panics, ill-judged expeditions, and aimless
marching to and fro. The first battle of the war
revealed the strength and the weakness of both armies.
Essex, as he followed Charles on the march to London,
unexpectedly, and with but part of his force, came up
with the king at Edgehill in Warwickshire. The battle
began late in the afternoon of Sunday, the 23d of
October. Charles was superior in numbers, in artillery,
in cavalry, and in position. Eupert, on the right wing,
charging furiously, and, aided by treachery, routed and
drove the left wing of Essex into Kineton, where, falling
to plunder, he was in turn driven out by the arrival of
Hampden and a strong rear-guard. The king's left wing
also routed part of the right wing of Essex, who, believ-
ing the day lost, seized a pike and prepared to die on
foot at the head of his regiment. But as the entire

iv FIRST CIVIL WAR TO MARSTON MOOR 59

royal cavalry were pursuing and plundering far from the
main battle, the day was restored to the Parliament by
their horse on the right wing. Here were thirteen un-
broken troops, of which one was that of Cromwell
Dashing into the royal infantry they destroyed one
regiment after another ; and acting with the remnants of
Essex's foot, they cut to pieces the king's red guards,
took his standard, killing Sir Edmund Verney, his
standard-bearer, and the Earl of Lindsey, the late com-
mander-in-chief. But two of his regiments remained on
the field ; and Charles, with his sons, was in imminent
danger of capture.

At this moment Rupert and the cavalry, returning in
confusion from pursuit and their combat with Hampden,
found their army a rout, but they were stiH,' strong
enough to save the remnants. Night closed the fight.
About 4000 men lay on the bloody field, the loss of the
king being greatest both in numbers and quality. It
was a drawn battle, from which neither side reaped any
gain. Its only result was to show first the radical
unsteadiness of the Parliamentary army, the disorgan-
isation of the king's command, his weakness in infantry,
the recklessness of Rupert, and the splendid material in
the Puritan regiments and troops. Essex, Stapylton,
Lord Brooke, and Cromwell were especially mentioned
as leaders "who never stirred from their troops; but
they and their troops fought bravely till the last minute
of the fight" It was the Puritan regiments of Essex,
of Holies, and the troops raised in the eastern counties,
which had saved a lost battle and destroyed the king's
infantry.

The eye of a soldier would see in that first trial all

CO OLIVER CROMWELL CHAP.

the perils and all the hopes of the situation. And a
great soldier was there. It was about this time, prob-
ably a little before Edgehill, that there took place
between Cromwell and Hampden the memorable con-
versation which fifteen years afterwards the Protector
related in a speech to his second Parliament. It is a
piece of autobiography so instructive and so pathetic
that it must be set forth in full in the words of Cromwell
himself : —

" I was a person who, from my first employment, was
suddenly preferred and lifted up from lesser trusts to greater ;
from my first being a Captain of a Troop of Horse. ... I
had a very worthy Friend then ; and he was a very noble
person, and I know his memory is very grateful to all, — Mr.
John Hampden. At my first going out into this engagement,
I saw our men were beaten at every hand. . . . ' Your troops,'
said I, 'are most of them old decayed serving- men, and
tapsters, and such kind of fellows ; and,' said I, ' their troops
are gentlemen's sons, younger sons and persons of quality :
do you think that the spirits of such base mean fellows will
ever be able to encounter gentlemen, that have honour and
courage and resolution in them ? ' Truly I did represent to
him in this manner conscientiously ; and truly I did tell
him : ' You must get men of a spirit : and take it not ill what
I say, — I know you will not, — of a spirit that is likely to go
on as far as gentlemen will go : or else you will be beaten
still.' I told him so ; I did truly. He was a wise and
worthy person ; and he did think that I talked a good notion,
but an impracticable one. ... I raised such men as bad the
fear of God before tbem, as made some conscience of what
they did ; and from that day forward, I must say to you, they
were never beaten, and wherever they were engaged against
the enemy, they beat continually. And truly this is a matter
of praise to God : and it hath some instruction in it, To own
men who are religious and godly."

The issue of the whole war lay in that word. It lay

iv FIRST CIVIL WAR TO MARSTON MOOR 61

with " such men as had some conscience in what they
did." " From that day forward they were never beaten."
The history of the formation of these Puritan armies is
too important to be passed ; and it has been described for
us by contemporaries both friendly and hostile. Baxter
says : —

" He has a special care to get religious men into his troop :
these men were of greater understanding than common
soldiers, . . . and making not money, but that which they
took for the public felicity, to be their end, they were the
more engaged to be valiant; as far as I could learn, they
never once ran away before an enemy. Hereupon he got a
commission to take some care of the associated counties,
where he brought this troop into a double regiment of fourteen
full troops [840 men] ; and all these as full of religious men
as he could get. These having more than ordinary wit and
resolution, had more tban ordinary success."

Whitelocke says : —

" He had a brave regiment of horse of his countrymen,
most of them freeholders and freeholders' sons, and who upon
matter of conscience engaged in this quarrel, and under
Cromwell. And thus being well armed within by the satis-
faction of their own consciences, and without, by good iron
arms, they would as one man stand firmly and charge
desperately."

Cromwell, who turned out as a mere captain of
yeomanry, with no more knowledge of war than the
ordinary drill of the train-bands, acquired his knowledge
of the soldier's art from Captain John Dalbier, a veteran
of Dutch extraction, who had seen service abroad. We
are told that he would diligently drill his troopers,
instructing them in the handling of their weapons and
the management of their horses. "As an officer," says

62 OLIVER CROMWELL CHAP.

Waller, "he was obedient, and did never dispute my
orders or argue upon them."

Memorable indeed is the impression produced by
these men on the imagination of their countrymen. On
both sides the memoirs and journals record their iron
discipline, their fiery zeal, their desperate courage : —

"... Led in fight, yet leader seemed
Each warrior single as in chief, expert
When to advance, or stand, or turn the sway
Of battle, open when, and when to close
The ridges of grim war ; no thought of flight,
None of retreat, no unbecoming deed
That argued fear ; each on himself relied,
As only in his arm the moment lay
Of victory ; deeds of eternal fame
Were done, but infinite ; for wide was spread
That war and various."

"As for Colonel Cromwell," writes a news-letter of
May 1643, "he hath 2000 brave men, well disciplined;
no man swears but he pays his twelve-pence ; if he be
drunk, he is set in the stocks, or worse ; if one calls the
other roundhead he is cashiered : insomuch that the
countries where they come leap for joy of them, and
come in and join with them. How happy were it if all
the forces were thus disciplined ! "

These were the men who ultimately decided the war,
and established the Commonwealth. On the field of
Marston, Eupert gave Cromwell the name of "Ironside,"
and from thence this famous name passed to his troopers.
There are two features in their history which we need to
note. They were indeed " such men as had some con-
science in their work " ; but they were also much more.
They were disciplined and trained soldiers. They were

iv FIRST CIVIL WAR TO MARSTON MOOR 63

the only body of "regulars " on either side. The instinct-
ive genius of Cromwell from the very first created the
strong nucleus of a regular army, which at last in
discipline, in skill, in valour, reached the highest perfec-
tion ever attained by soldiers either in ancient or modern
times. The fervour of Cromwell is continually pressing
towards the extension of this " regular " force. Through
all the early disasters, this body of "Ironsides" kept
the cause alive : at Marston it overwhelmed the king :
so soon as, by the New Model, this system was extended
to the whole army, the Civil War was at an end.

The scanty notices of Cromwell which in these first two
years of war have come down to us give us a wonderful
picture of energy, zeal, and resource. He provides for
everything, goes everywhere, and wherever he comes the
cause prospers, the enemy recoil. His passion stirs whole
counties ; his swift strokes frustrate the royalist plans ;
at every crisis his presence of mind improvises the one
thing needful. Before the royal standard was raised, he
had established patrols round Huntingdon, who watched
all communication between the capital and the king at
York. His first task was the organisation of a strong
confederacy to block any Royalist union north with
south. On the day before the battle of Edgehill the
House had approved the formation of county unions for
organisation and defence. Cambridge, grouping round
her Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, and Hertfordshire, formed
the Eastern Association. Soon Huntingdon, and ulti-
mately Lincoln, were added. This famous Eastern Associa-
tion, strategically, was the Torres Vedras lines of the early
Civil War — morally it became the backbone of the
Parliamentary cause. "Here," says Sir Philip Warwick,

64 OLIVER CROMWELL CIIAP.

" was the root of the Independency." Its founder and
its soul was Cromwell. The growth of it contributed
to fill up the ranks of his troops, as the formation of his
regiment consolidated the Union itself. He is first
named " Colonel" on 2d March 1643. We catch gleams
of him from time to time searching the houses of the
disaffected, dispersing Eoyalist combinations, seizing plate,
and unearthing conspiracies. It is in these days that he
writes his famous warning to Mr. Barnard of Huntingdon :
" I know you have been wary in your carriages : be not
too confident thereof. Subtlety may deceive you ; integ-
rity never will." It is in these days, doubtless, that the
scene took place between Oliver and his. uncle, Sir
Oliver, at Eamsey. " He visited him," Sir Oliver told
Sir P. Warwick, "with a good strong party of horse,
and asked him for his blessing, and the few hours he
was there, he would not keep on his hat in his presence ;
but at the same time he not only disarmed but plundered
him : for he took away all his plate."

In the meantime the king's cause is prospering
in the north and the west. Essex lay inert, like a man
who both feared defeat and did not wish for victory.
Newcastle secured the north to the king, and shut up
the Fairfaxes in Hull. Kupert on the west, Camden
and other chiefs in the North Midlands, were raiding,
plundering, and exacting contributions. It was plainly
essential to gain the line of the Trent, secure Lincoln,
and take Newark, the key of the Midlands. All com-
bination to take Newark failed, in spite of Cromwell's
appeals and remonstrances; but he himself advanced
into Lincolnshire, occupying Peterborough, and taking
Crowland. On the 1 3th of May he fought and won the

iv FIRST CIVIL WAR TO MARSTON MOOR 65

first fight where he was in chief command. Some two
miles from Grantham he met a body of Newark cavaliers
who had hitherto swept the country round at their
pleasure.

"God hath given us this evening," he writes, "a glorious
victory over our enemies. They were, as we are informed,
one and twenty columns of horse-troops, and three or four of
dragoons. It was late in the evening when we drew out ;
they came and faced us within two miles of the town. So
soon as we had the alarm we drew out our forces, consisting
of about twelve troops, — whereof some of them so poor and
broken, that you shall seldom see worse : with this handful
it pleased God to cast the scale ; . . . and our men charging
fiercely upon them, by God's providence they were immediately
routed, and ran all away, and we had the execution of them
two or three miles."

For the first time a body of Puritan troopers, meeting
in fair onset double their number of cavaliers flushed
with a victorious career, "immediately routed" them
and cut them to pieces. Cromwell's men had been in
arms barely nine months ; but they were already formed
cavalry. Their commander could not but feel that with
such men ultimate victory was certain.

Elsewhere the cause of the Parliament waned. Hamp-
dendiedin June, murmuring, "Save my bleeding country;"
Waller had been annihilated in the west; Bristol was
taken by Rupert ; and everywhere surrender to the
king seemed imminent. In these straits a new effort
was made to recover Lincolnshire. Cromwell took
Burghley House by desperate fighting, and clearing
Stamford pushed on to relieve Gainsborough. On the
28th of July, after a forced march of fifty-five miles, he
met a great body of the enemy's horse, under Cavendish,

F

66 OLIVER CROMWELL CHAP.

Newcastle's kinsman, posted on a hill, two miles from
Gainsborough.

" We came up," he says, " horse to horse ; where we
disputed it with our swords and pistols a pretty time ; all
keeping close order, so that one could not break through the
other. At last, they a little shrinking, our men perceiving
it pressed in upon them, and immediately routed this whole
body ; some flying on the one side and others on the other
of the enemy's reserve ; and our men, pursuing them, had
chase and execution about five or six miles."

But Cromwell was no ungovernable Rupert. Looking
round he saw one regiment of the enemy's reserve still
unbroken, and preparing to fall on his own rear. Rally-
ing his men, he charged the Royalist general unawares,
forced him down the hill into a quagmire, and cut his
regiment to pieces, and killed young Cavendish. "My
captain-lieutenant," wrote Cromwell, "slew him with a
thrust under his short ribs. The rest of the body was
wholly routed, not one man staying upon the place."

Gainsborough was relieved and supplied; but the
day was not over. A fresh enemy was descried on the
other side of the town. They too were thrust back ;
till presently the scanty forces of the Parliament found
themselves face to face with the main army of Newcastle.
The peril was extreme ; the footmen from Gainsborough
were driven in; but Cromwell divided his troops into
two parties, caused them to retreat in turns, facing the
enemy's fresh horse ; and at length, by nine removes, he
drew off his whole command, all exhausted as it was, from
before Newcastle's army, with the loss of only two men.
For the second time Cromwell's troopers had utterly
routed the cavalier squadrons in a fair charge. But this
last combat proved much more. It had shown, in one

iv FIRST CIVIL WAR TO MARSTON MOOR 67

of the most difficult operations in war (a small body of
horse holding an army in check, whilst its own infantry
retreats), unfaltering discipline in the men and masterly
tactics in their handling. This affair is the first glimpse
we obtain of really scientific war. The Ironsides were
now led by a consummate general of horse. "This,"
wrote Whitelocke, "was the beginning of his great
fortunes, and he now began to appear in the world."

Before Newcastle's northern army Cromwell could
do nothing but retreat. On the third day he was at
Huntingdon, eighty miles away. His appeals to the
committee become desperate.

" If I could speak words to pierce your hearts," he writes,
" with the sense of our and your condition, I would ! . . .
If somewhat be not done in this, you will see Newcastle's
army march up into your bowels" (31st July). "It's no
longer disputing, but out instantly all you can ! Raise all
your bands ; send them to Huntingdon ; — get up what
volunteers you can ; hasten your horses. Send these letters
to Norfolk, Suffolk, and Essex, without delay. I beseech
you spare not, but be expeditious and industrious ! Almost
all our foot bave quitted Stamford : there is nothing to
interrupt an enemy, but our horse, that is considerable.
You must act lively ; do it without distraction. Neglect no
means " (6tb August). " I beseecb you hasten your levies,
wbat you can ; especially those of foot ! Quicken all our
friends with new letters upon this occasion. . . . Gentlemen,
make tbem able to live and subsist that are willing to spend
tbeir blood for you " (8th August).

If Cromwell's thin line of troopers had been broken
by Newcastle in that month of August, London would
have been open, and the issue of the war might have
changed.

The day after the last of these letters, 9th August,
the House resolved to raise the infantry of the Associa-

68 OLIVER CROMWELL CHAP.

tion to 10,000, and to appoint the Earl of Man-
chester as Major-General. Cromwell was one of his
four colonels of horse, and soon became second in
command. All this time, as during the months preced-
ing, he is beating up recruits, imploring money, and
organising his troops.

" Lay not too much upon the back of a poor gentleman,
who desires, without much noise, to lay down his life and
bleed the last drop to serve the cause and you " (28th May).
" I advise you that your ' foot company ' may be turned into
a troop of horse ; which indeed will, by God's blessing, far
more advantage the cause than two or three companies of foot ;
especially if your men be honest godly men, which by all
means I desire " (2d August). " Hasten your horses ; — a
few hours may undo you, neglected. I beseech you be care-
ful what captains of horse you choose, what men be mounted :
a few honest men are better than numbers. Some time they
must have for exercise. If you choose godly honest men to
be captains of horse, honest men will follow them ; and they
will be careful to mount such. . . *. I had rather have a
plain russet-coated captain that knows what he fights for, and
loves what he knows, than that which you call ' a gentleman'
and is nothing else. I honour a gentleman that is so indeed !"

To Oliver St. John he writes (llth September) : —

" My troops increase. I have a lovely company ; you
would respect them, did you know them. They are no
' Anabaptists ' ; they are honest sober Christians : — They
expect to be used as Men ! . . . I desire not to seek
myself : — ' but ' I have little money of my own to help my
Soldiers. My estate is little. I tell you, the business of
Ireland and England hath had of me, in money, between
Eleven and Twelve Hundred pounds ; — therefore my Private
can do little to help the Public. You have had my money :
I hope in God I desire to venture my skin. So do mine.
Lay weight upon their patience ; but break it not !"

Cromwell's spirit, rousing Association and Parliament,

iv FIRST CIVIL WAR TO MARSTON MOOR 69

together with the inherent rottenness in the king's forces,
averted the immediate danger. In September the
House took the Solemn League and Covenant, the
Presbyterian charter, as the condition of obtaining an
army from Scotland. The Fairfaxes held out gallantly
at Hull, and a combined movement of three forces,
under Manchester, Willoughby, and Cromwell, pushed
steadily into Lincolnshire. On 22d September Cromwell
relieved and entered Hull, where began his brotherhood-
in-arms with Fairfax. He brought Sir Thomas and his
horse into Lincoln. On llth October the combined horse
met near Winceby a strong force of cavalry from Newark
The numbers were nearly equal, some three thousand
troopers on either side. Cromwell's men were worn out
with their marches, and he would have declined a combat
could it have been done. At the sight of the enemy
the spirit of his troopers rose, and they charged, singing
psalms, Cromwell leading the van, assisted by Manchester
and seconded by Fairfax. He " fell with brave resolu-
tion upon the enemy " ; his horse was killed under him
at the first charge and fell down upon him ; as he rose
up, he was knocked down again by the gentleman who
charged him. He seized a trooper's horse and mounted
himself again, and prepared to head a second charge.
" The enemy stood not another ; but were driven back
upon their own body, which was to have seconded them ;
and at last put these into a plain disorder; and thus
in less than half an hour's fight they were all quite
routed." The enemy were chased, slaughtered, drowned,
and dispersed; a scanty remnant reached Newark
Thus a third time Cromwell's horse had in fair fight
scattered the cavalier cavalry like chaff. On the

70 OLIVER CROMWELL CHAP.

following day Newcastle abandoned the siege of Hull ;
on the 20th of the same month Manchester took Lincoln.
From that date Lincolnshire passed to the cause of the
Parliament, and the result of the campaign was to win
for it the whole east of England, as far north as the
H umber.

The year 1644 opened with better prospects for
the Parliament. In January a Scotch army of 20,000
men came to their assistance ; Cromwell, reappear-
ing in the House, charged Lord Willoughby with mis-
conduct, and induced it to name Manchester to the
sole command in the seven associated counties; and
in February it appointed the Committee of Both
Kingdoms the supreme executive authority for the
conduct of the war. Cromwell, Manchester, St. John,
and the Vanes were named members of it. Manchester
made Cromwell his lieutenant-general. A contemporary
tells us that " Manchester himself, a quiet, meek man,
permitted his lieutenant-general, Cromwell, to guide all
the army at his pleasure. The man is a very wise and
active head, universally well beloved, as religious as
stout. Being a known Independent, the most of the
soldiers, who loved new ways, put themselves under his
command." The situation therefore was this. The
whole of Eastern England, from the Humber to the
Thames, was firmly organised under one command, which
was practically that of Cromwell. This army was
composed almost wholly of zealous Puritans. And
Cromwell, its real chief, was the ruling member of the
Committee of the Association, and at the same time a
member of the Committee of Both Kingdoms.

No sooner was the Covenant taken by Parliament

iv FIRST CIVIL WAR TO MARSTON MOOR 71

than it was resolved to force its acceptance on the
Associated Counties at least. Cromwell was Governor
of Ely, and Manchester was ordered to impose the
Covenant on Cambridge. This was carried out in its
stern severity by both; and the ritual of the Church
was forcibly suppressed, and the ancient art symbolism
ruthlessly destroyed. It was then that took place the
destruction of statues, carvings and glass, the harrying
of divines, and the scene in Ely Cathedral, with Mr.
Hitch. Cromwell had by letter peremptorily ordered
this clergyman "to forbear altogether his choir-service,
so unedifying and offensive." Mr. Hitch persisting in it,
Cromwell with his guard marched into the church, with
his hat on, we are told (he was on actual military duty) ;
he called out, " I am a man under authority, and am
commanded to dismiss this assembly." Mr. Hitch still
persevered with his service ; whereupon Cromwell broke
out, " Leave off your fooling and come down, sir ! " :
which he did. The ring of the " sharp untuneable voice"
is not pleasant here; nor is driving a priest from his
pulpit an honourable mission. Cromwell had in him a
strong vein of coarseness ; he was a soldier in a civil
war executing peremptory orders, and neither he nor
any Puritan of that age would ever allow that terms
could be kept with Popish or semi-Popish divines.

Though Cromwell could not rise superior to his age
where Romish ritual was concerned, he was far above
his Presbyterian comrades in true toleration. The
exigencies of war and government broadened his view
of religion, till he ultimately rose to be the most tolerant
statesman of his time. Even now, amidst these vile
tasks of wrecking cathedrals and ejecting priests, we can

72 OLIVER CROMWELL CHAP.

see his native spirit asserting its freedom. Major-General
Crawford, a zealous Scotch Presbyterian, Cromwell's
rival and secret enemy, had suspended and arrested a
certain colonel. Cromwell writes sharply to Craw-
ford : —

" Surely you are not well advised thus to turn off one so
faithful to the cause, and so able to serve you as this man is.
Give me leave to tell you I cannot be of your judgment ; if
a man notorious for wickedness, for oaths, for drinking, hath
as great a share in your affection as one who fears an oath,
who fears to sin. . . . Ay, but the man ' is an Anabaptist.'
Are you sure of that ? Admit he be, shall that render him
incapable to serve the public ? ' He is indiscreet.' It may
be so, in some things : we have all human infirmities. . . .
Sir, the State, in choosing men to serve it, takes no notice of their
opinions; if they be willing faithfully to serve it, — that
satisfies. I advised you formerly to bear with men of differ-
ent minds from yourself : if you had done it when I advised
you to it, I think you would not have had so many stumbling-
blocks in your way. . . . Take heed of being sharp, or too
easily sharpened by others against those to whom you can
object little but that they square not with you in every
opinion concerning matters of religion."

This is the first open avowal of Cromwell's attitude.
He was opposed root and branch to Presbyterianism
as a narrow and oppressive formalism ; and he long de-
layed to sign the Covenant. He was an Independent, and
the chief of the Independents. About doctrines and
forms of worship he cared little. Bible religion, as
understood by Puritans, was the one thing needful;
subject to that, freedom of conscience to all forms of
worship. Papists were enemies of the common weal :
the ministers of a State Church should not practise
Popish rites. Vice, profanity, slackness were not to be
borne in the ranks. But every zealous, moral, God-fear-

iv FIRST CIVIL WAR TO MARSTON MOOR 73

ing servant of the State should be free to follow his own
conscience.

All through the spring we find Cromwell active on
various services in the counties of Bucks, Warwick,
Oxford, Cambridge, and Lincoln. He took Hillesden
House, Banbury, and secured Sleaford. The whole
country east of the Trent and the upper Thames was
now nearly recovered to the Parliament. In the west
all was confusion and failure. But the long-planned
deliverance of the north was at length at hand. In
April the Scots joined Manchester and the Fairfaxes
before York ; and by the end of June the combined
forces numbered about 24,000 men, under Leven, Fair-
fax, and Manchester. At Marston Moor, eight miles
from York, on the 2d July, they met a combined army
of nearly equal strength under Eupert, Newcastle, and
Goring.

The day was dull and thunderous, with occasional
showers ; and it was far into the afternoon before the
two armies were in position. Hour after hour they
stood on the moor glaring at each other across the ditch
which parted them ; each watching for his opportunity
to attack. The Parliament's men occupied a slight hill,
and stood to arms in the long corn, from time to time
chanting a psalm. Rupert had advanced his men to the
front for immediate attack; but the older generals of
the king induced him to defer the combat. A desultory
cannonade began on both sides, and here Cromwell's
nephew, young Valentine Walton, lost his life. The
armies were thus drawn up — Cromwell commanded the
left wing, where he had, besides the infantry of the
Eastern Association, some 4200 horsemen, directly front-

74 OLIVER CROMWELL CHAP.

ing Kupert and his cavaliers. Nine thousand Scotch
infantry held the centre, opposed to Newcastle and the
main body of the Eoyalists. The two Fairfaxes led the
right wing, facing Goring and his cavalry. It was seven
o'clock in the summer afternoon — the royal generals had
retired for repose — when the army of the Parliament
suddenly fell on Rupert. Horse and foot of the Eastern
Association were at once across the ditch in one head-
long charge. Cromwell in person dashed into Rupert's
chosen regiment. He was slightly wounded in the neck
by a shot. "Amiss is as good as a mile," he cried;
and the flower of the cavalry in both armies were locked
in a deadly grapple, "hacking one another at the sword
point." For a moment the Ironsides reeled, but their
reserve of three Scotch regiments pressing on behind,
Cromwell speedily broke the whole Royalist chivalry,
" and scattered them before him like a little dust." But
as his foremost lines were chasing and slaughtering the
flying cavaliers to the very gates of York, the general
held in hand his main force, and paused, as he had done
at Gainsborough, to see how the battle sped on his
right.

It was indeed speeding ill, and was all but an utter
rout. Fairfax's men on the right wing had been cut to
pieces, and chased into Tadcaster by Goring's horsemen ;
and, dashing in wild flight into their own infantry in
their rear, they had utterly broken the whole wing.
Goring turned on to the flank of the Scots in the centre,
whilst Newcastle's border regiment, known as the
Whitecoats, assailed them in front. The Scots, fighting
bravely, were all but overwhelmed. Whole regiments
broke and fled, and but three remained on the field.

iv FIRST CIVIL WAR TO MARSTON MOOR 75

The Earl of Leven, their commander, believing all lost,
fled towards Leeds ; Lord Fairfax and the Earl of Man-
chester were swept away for a time in the m&Ue.

As Cromwell rallied his men from the tremendous
charge which had broken Eupert like dust, a disastrous
sight met his eyes. Sir Thomas Fairfax, wounded in the
face, with his charger wounded, had forced his way
through to the Royalist rear ; but he was separated from
his men, and had lost all touch with his command.
From him Cromwell learned that the right wing was
dispersed, and the centre in desperate straits. In this
strange battle, whilst the prince, the Royalist commander-
in-chief, was flying with his men miles away to the
north, the three generals of the Parliament were flying
with the fragments of their troops far away to the south.
In an hour the genius of Cromwell had changed disaster
into victory. Launching the Scotch troopers of his own
wing against Newcastle's Whitecoats, and the infantry
of the Eastern Association to succour the remnants of the
Scots in the centre, he swooped with the bulk of his own
cavalry round the rear of the king's army, and fell upon
Groring's victorious troopers on the opposite side of the
field. Taking them in the rear, all disordered as they
were in the chase and the plunder, he utterly crushed
and dispersed them. Having thus with his own squadron
annihilated the cavalry of both the enemy's wings, he
closed round upon the Royalist centre ; and there the
Whitecoats and the remnants of the king's infantry were
cut to pieces almost to a man.

Such startling results, so suddenly achieved, are not
very hard to explain. The armies which fought at
Marston consisted, with one exception, of brave but

76 OLIVER CROMWELL CHAP.

untrained militia. On both sides the command was
divided and the cohesion loose, and that in the army of
the Parliament even more than in that of the king.
None of the generals, except Eupert and Cromwell, had
any real capacity, and Rupert was madly overweening
and reckless. But the 4000 horsemen whom Cromwell
led were a perfectly trained and regular corps of
cavalry ; as the veteran Lesley said, " Europe hath no
better soldiers." Their leader was an almost ideal
general of cavalry — furious in the charge, rapid in
insight, wary, alert, and master of himself. There was
nothing to surprise us, therefore, that a splendid corps
of regular cavalry, led by a consummate tactician, should
thus in an hour ride down an ill-led, ill-ordered army of
militiamen.

It was a crushing and bloody overthrow. The chase
and slaughter continued till ten at night. Four thousand
Koyalists, the flower of the king's men, lay on the field,
and the white skins of the slain revealed how many of
his silken courtiers had fallen. Colours, arms, supplies,
baggage, and papers fell to the victors. The king's
army was destroyed, and Rupert's prestige was gone.
The prince and his chosen cavaliers had indeed been
swept from the field "like chaff." The fugitives from
the Parliament's army drew back to the ranks; and
Leven and his generals learned the next day that they
had won a mighty success.

In a noble letter to his sister's husband Cromwell
recounted the victory, and then suddenly broke to him
the news of his son's death. He writes thus on the 5th
of July to Colonel Valentine Walton : —

" It's our duty to sympathise in all mercies ; and to

iv FIRST CIVIL WAR TO MARSTON MOOR 77

praise the Lord together in chastisements or trials, that so we
may sorrow together.

" Truly England and the Church of God hath had a great
favour from the Lord, in this great Victory given unto us,
such as the like never was since this War began. It had all
the evidences of an absolute Victory obtained by the Lord's
blessing upon the Godly Party principally. We never charged
but we routed the enemy. The Left Wing, which I com-
manded, being our own horse, saving a few Scots in our rear,
beat all the Prince's horse. God made them as stubble to
our swords. We charged their regiments of foot with our
horse, and routed all we charged. The particulars I cannot
relate now ; but I believe, of Twenty Thousand the Prince
hath not Four Thousand left. Give glory, all the glory, to
God.

" Sir, God hath taken away your eldest Son by a cannon-
shot. It break his leg. We were necessitated to have it cut
off, whereof he died.

" Sir, you know my own trials this way : but the Lord sup-
ported me with this, That the Lord took him into the happi-
ness we all pant for and live for. There is your precious
child full of glory, never to know sin or sorrow any more.
He was a gallant • young man, exceedingly gracious. God
give you His comfort. . . . Truly he was exceedingly beloved
in the Army, of all that knew him. But few knew him ; for
he was a precious young man, fit for God. You have cause to
bless the Lord. He is a glorious Saint in Heaven ; wherein
you ought exceedingly to rejoice. Let this drink up your
sorrow ; seeing these are not feigned words to comfort you,
but the thing is so real and undoubted a truth. You may
do all things by the strength of Christ. Seek that, and you
shall easily bear your trial. Let this public mercy to the
Church of God make you to forget your private sorrow. The
Lord be your strength."

The immediate effect of the victory of Marston was
to give the north of England to the Parliament. Rupert,
rallying a force of cavaliers, broke round by the north-
west into Lancashire ; the other royal generals dispersed,

78 OLIVER CROMWELL CHAP, iv

and York, Newcastle, and other strongholds in the north
fell one after another to the Parliament. Within a few
months the whole north of England was practically
theirs. And a line drawn from the Mersey to the
Thames at London, and thence to Southampton water,
would thenceforth roughly enclose the England which
acknowledged the Houses.

CHAPTER V

THE NEW MODEL — NASEBY — END OF THE FIRST
CIVIL WAR

A.D. 1645-1646. JETAT. 46-47

THE great success at Marston, which had given the
north to the Parliament, was all undone in the south
and west through feebleness and jealousies in the leaders
and the wretched policy that directed the war. De-
tached armies, consisting of a local militia, were aimlessly
ordered about by a committee of civilians in London.
Disaster followed on disaster. Essex, Waller, and Man-
chester would neither agree amongst themselves nor
obey orders. Essex and Waller had parted before
Marston was fought ; Manchester had returned from
York to protect his own eastern counties. Waller,
after his defeat at Cropredy, did nothing, and naturally
found his army melting away. Essex, perversely
advancing into the west, was out-manoeuvred by Charles,
and ended a campaign of blunders by the surrender of
all his infantry.

By September 1644 throughout the whole south-west
the Parliament had not an army in the field. But the
committee of the Houses still toiled on with honourable
spirit, and at last brought together near Newbury a

80 OLIVER CROMWELL CHAP.

united army nearly double the strength of the king's.
On Sunday, the 29th of October, was fought the second
battle of Newbury, as usual in these ill -ordered cam-
paigns, late in the afternoon. An arduous day ended
without victory, in spite of the greater numbers of the
Parliament's army, though the men fought well, -and
their officers led them with skill and energy. At night
the king was suffered to withdraw his army without
loss, and later to carry off his guns and train. The
urgent appeals of Cromwell and his officers could not
infuse into Manchester energy to win the day, or spirit
to pursue the retreating foe.

Such want of skill and of heart roused Cromwell to
indignation. And the differences between himself and
Manchester, which had long been smouldering, blazed
into a flame. Cromwell was the recognised chief of the
Independents, Manchester was now a leader of the
Presbyterians ; Cromwell was resolved to beat the king,
Manchester was now eager for peace; Cromwell was
the leader of the farmers and yeomen who were bent on
a thorough reform, Manchester represented the great
peers who already feared that rebellion had gone too
far. Cromwell, in filling his regiments with zealous
soldiers, refused to take account of their religions and
dogmas or their social position. To him a God-fearing
man, stout in the charge and orderly in his conduct,
was worthy of any post, were he the son of peer or
peasant. He told Manchester that such soldiers as he
sought would prevent the making a dishonourable place.
The rise of independency now began to alarm the rich
and well-born Puritans, just as the rise of Presbyterian-
ism had driven over to the king so many rich and well-

v NEW MODEL— NASEBY— END OF FIRST WAR 81

born Churchmen. Cromwell had told Manchester that
he hoped " to live to see never a nobleman in England,"
and that it would not be well till he was but plain Mr.
Montague. Cromwell had never at any time any
definite leaning towards social revolution. But the set
of circumstances was forcing him to see how Crown and
Peerage held together, how spiritual freedom was bound
up with social change. He was even reported to have
said that " if he met the king in battle, he would fire
his pistol at him as at another." The time was come
when those who had resolved to carry the work through
were to take the place of those who had but half a
heart. At a council of war, called on 10th November,
Manchester said, " If we beat the king ninety and nine
times, yet he is king still, and so will his posterity be
after him ; but if the king beat us once we shall be all
hanged, and our posterity made slaves." — "My lord,"
replied Cromwell, "if this be so, why did we take up
arms at first1? This is against fighting ever hereafter.
If so, let us make peace, be it never so base." Cromwell
resolved to strike a great blow.

During this autumn Cromwell more than once
returned to his place in Parliament ; and for some
months in the winter of 1644-45 we find his principal
activity there. In September he had in vain attempted
the removal of General Crawford, the Scotch repre-
sentative of Presbyterianism in the eastern army.
The campaign of Newbury decided him to attack
Manchester.

On the 25th of November he exhibited in the House
a formal charge against the Earl of Manchester, to the
effect " That the said Earl hath always been indisposed

G

82 OLIVER CROMWELL CHAP.

and backward to engagements, and the ending of the
war by the sword; and for such a peace as a victory
would be a disadvantage to:" and the charge went on to
specify in detail that since the taking of York, and
especially before Newbury, he had declined to take
further advantage of the enemy, and on many fit
opportunities to bring him to battle.

Cromwell's speech made a deep impression on the
House, and a committee was appointed to consider his
charge, Mr. Zouch Tate as chairman. The Earl of
Manchester defended himself, and in turn charged
Cromwell with insubordination. A long and ineffective
dispute was carried on in both Houses. The Scotch
representatives consulted some leading members if
General Cromwell, the avowed enemy of Crawford,
could not be proceeded against as "an incendiary."
Whitelocke and Maynard told them that, without
better proof, he was far too strong in both Houses to
attempt it. At length Cromwell resolved on his great
stroke for reorganising the army.

On the 9th of December the House was in committee
to consider the sad condition of the kingdom. " There
was general silence for a good space of time." At length
Cromwell rose and spoke to this effect : —

" It is now a time to speak, or for ever hold the tongue.
The important occasion now, is no less than To .save a Nation,
out of a bleeding, nay, almost dying condition : which the
long continuance of this War hath already brought it into ;
so that without a more speedy, vigorous, and effectual
prosecution of the War, — casting off all lingering proceedings
like soldiers-of-fortune beyond sea, to spin out a war, — we
shall make the kingdom weary of us, and hate the name of
a Parliament

v NEW MODEL— NASEBY— END OF FIRST WAR 83

" For what do the enemy say ? nay, what do many say
who were friends at the beginning of the Parliament ? Even
this, That the Members of both Houses have got great places
and commands, and the sword into their hands ; and, what
by interest in Parliament, what by power in the Army, will
perpetually continue themselves in grandeur, and not permit
the War speedily to end, lest their own power should
determine with it. ...

" But this I would recommend to your prudence, Not to
insist upon any complaint or oversight of any Commander-
in-chief upon any occasion whatsoever ; for as I must
acknowledge myself guilty of oversights, so I know they can
rarely be avoided in military affairs. Therefore, waving a
strict inquiry into the causes of these things, let us apply
ourselves to the remedy ; which is most necessary. And I
hope we have such true English hearts, and zealous affections
towards the general weal of our Mother Country, as no
Members of either Houses w.ill scruple to deny themselves,
and their own private interests, for the public good ; nor
account it to be a dishonour done to them, whatever the
Parliament shall resolve upon in this weighty matter."

Such was the first speech of Cromwell's which has
come down to us, where he appears as a statesman
impressing his policy on Parliament and the nation.
Both in form and in substance it is in the highest sense
characteristic. There is the strong personality, the
rough mother-wit, the vivid and racy phrase, as of a
man in authority taking counsel with his familiars, not
as of the orator addressing a senate. There is the
directness of purpose with laborious care to avoid
premature precision in detail, any needless opposition,
and all personal offence. The form is conciliatory,
guarded and qualified, almost allusive ; even the specific
measure recommended is left to be inferred or sub-
sequently defined. Yet the general purpose how clear !
the will behind the words how strenuous !

84 OLIVER CROMWELL CHAP.

Thereupon Mr. Zouch Tate, in evident concert with
Cromwell, proposed, " under the similitude of a boil in
the thumb," what was afterwards known as the Self-
denying Ordinance. By it all members of either House
were required to resign their commands. Cromwell in
a speech denied that this would destroy the army,
which looks, he said, to the cause they fight for.
Within ten days it was passed. And at a stroke the
Essexes, Manchesters, the political and Presbyterian
officers were removed from command.

Within two months more the New Model was passed
for the army. It completely reorganised the forces of
the Commonwealth. By it three irregular, disconnected
armies of 10,000 each, consisting of militia and loose
levies, raised for a short 'time, and under various
authorities, were consolidated into one regular army of
22,000 horse and foot ; so as to form a standing army,
permanently organised under a single uniform command.
Sir Thomas Fairfax was made commander-in-chief ; and
he busily laboured to complete its formation. The voice
was the voice of Fairfax ; but the hands were the hands
of Oliver.

The New Model and the Self-denying Ordinance
must be taken together ; and together they amount to
a complete revolution in the military and civil executive.
By the New Model the forces of the Parliament, hitherto
the separate corps of local militia, were organised into
a regular army of professional soldiers. They gained
at once the cohesion, the mobility, and the discipline
of a standing army. But there was much more than
this in the change. The cavalry of the Eastern
Association had long been a regular army in everything

v NEW MODEL— NASEBY— END OF FIRST WAR 85

but name; and they formed the model for the rest.
They were themselves much more than an army. They
were an organised body of radical reformers, bent upon
very definite objects in the spiritual and also in the civil
order. And though their military discipline was rigid,
they had long been permitted to carry on agitation in
things religious and even political, under the specious
disguise of seeking the Lord in prayer and exhortation.

Cromwell had created this singular body of Bible
warriors, in the first instance, as men "who had some
conscience " in the task of defeating the king, but soon
deliberately, and even avowedly, as men who would stand
between the Parliament and dishonourable peace. In
things spiritual, they were Independent or earnest for
entire liberty of conscience ; in things civil, they were
already tending to the Commonwealth, to political and
social revolution. To organise the New Model on the
frame of the Ironsides was to put the sword of the State
into the hands of Independency and of radical reform.

The Independents would not have been made masters
of the situation but for the Self-denying Ordinance. At
a stroke it put the army into the hands of its own
military chiefs ; and by excluding from command mem-
bers of either House, it destroyed the hold which Parlia-
ment retained over the generals. Essex and Manchester,
to whom rank and wealth had given a factitious influence
in a militia army, were now excluded, as was also the whole
order of the peerage. Essex and Manchester represented
Presbyterianism, the party of peace, and the landed
gentry. To exclude them and all members of Parlia-
ment was practically to exclude these elements from
command. And thus, in exchanging a force of local

86 OLIVER CROMWELL CHAP.

volunteers — the natural chiefs of which were the members
of either House — for an organised army of regulars, led
by professional officers, the Parliament was deliberately
giving itself a master. This would have been the case
had it simply created an ordinary army ; but the New
Model was much more than an army. It was itself a
Parliament — a Parliament larger, more resolute, and far
more closely knit together in spirit and will than the
Parliament which continued to sit officially at West-
minster. From this hour the motive power of the Revolu-
tion passed from the House of Commons to the army.

There is no reason to doubt that New Model and
Self-denying Ordinance, in conception and execution,
were both the work of Cromwell. The New Model was
simply his own troop enlarged, as he explained it to
Hampden, to Manchester, to Essex, to Crawford, in so
many speeches and so many letters. The Self-denying
Ordinance was in keeping with his whole conduct in war
— that of thrusting aside all but thorough-going soldiers,
whose single idea was to win. As he had successively
assailed Lord Willoughby, Lord Grey of Groby, Essex,
Crawford, so now he got rid of Manchester, and all possible
Manchesters to come. The method of carrying out the
great change is equally characteristic of the man — the em-
ployment of others in the work ; the energy in pushing
it through with the tentative, conciliatory, and cautious
way in which the details are worked out. All bears the
stamp of the thorough tactician and master of men.
Even now, as always later, he is not so much a Parlia-
mentary leader as a chief having authority, who, in a
formal message, is urging on the House a general policy
to follow.

v NEW MODEL— NASEBY— END OF FIRST WAR 87

Did he see all the momentous bearing of the change 1
Did he press it in desire of personal power 1 Two
questions the answer to which is obvious enough.
Cromwell was a man whose mind was always bent on
the immediate work to his hand. The urgent need of
the time was an organised army of professional soldiers.
Without that the king was in fair way to return in
triumph. The New Model did, in fact, prove to be the
saving of the cause. But Cromwell, with his keen in-
sight, could not have been long in grasping the truth
that the New Model meant not only the saving of the
Parliament, but the saving of the Parliament in a certain
way — utter defeat for the king, and entire liberty
for conscience. Did he desire personal power 1 He
desired the success of his cause. And he took power
when it came within his grasp, in order to secure his
desires. Such are the conditions of healthy statesman-
ship : such is the duty of a born statesman. In dealing
with persons his conduct was open, moderate, and not
ungenerous, even whilst most trenchant. He thrust them
aside, because, whilst they remained, the work, as he
cared for it, could not go on. He stepped into their
place, because he knew himself fit to accomplish the
work.

The New Model army was voted in January, and
finally established on 1 9th of February 1 645. Sir Thomas
Fairfax was named Commander-in-Chief, with Skippon
for Major-GeneraL The second place was left open,
obviously for Cromwell. There can be little doubt that
the promoters of the new measure fully designed to name
him. Fairfax was occupied from January to April
organising the army at Windsor. It was to consist of

88 OLIVER CROMWELL CHAP.

22,000 men — 14,400 foot, 6600 horse, and 1000
dragoons. There is no evidence that Cromwell directly
took part in the work. But there can be little doubt
that it was done after his own heart. During these
months we find him in Parliament, voting for the
execution of the two traitor Hothams, and afterwards
for that of Laud.

In April Cromwell was sent into the west to oppose
Goring and Grenville, and on the 22d of that month he
came to Windsor to lay down his command and to take
leave of the general. But on the following morning he
received the commands of the committee to continue
his command in spite of the New Ordinance. No direct
evidence has yet been produced as to how far Cromwell
had arranged his plans for being continued in command,
or how far this purpose was generally understood and
accepted. It would have been contrary to his nature of
restless vigilance and of personal self-reliance, either to
commit to chance so momentous an office, or willingly to
stand aside out of romantic delicacy. We may doubt
the discernment of the worthy Sprigge, when he tells us
of the lieutenant-general, " that he thought of nothing
less in all the world." Cromwell must have known the
counsels of the committee. And doubtless he felt him-
self so necessary to the cause, and his ascendancy to be so
complete, that he might safely leave others to determine
the manner and season of his own personal exemption.

The New Model army was now ready ; but though
Cromwell was continued in command he was not attached
to it. For some weeks Cromwell and Fairfax were
directed to the west and the Midlands, under orders
from London, apparently without aim or general design.

v NEW MODEL— NASEBY— END OF FIRST WAR 89

We hear of Oliver in Oxfordshire, in Wiltshire, at Ely,
and at Huntingdon, in rapid movements of no decisive
kind. Fairfax was ordered to meet the king, who, at
the end of May, had stormed and sacked Leicester, and
was again advancing southwards. Fairfax and his army
found the king on the borders of Leicestershire. On the
eve of battle, Fairfax sent a letter to the Houses, begging
that Cromwell might be sent to command the horse — a
service to which he was marked out, wrote the general,
by "the general esteem and affection which he hath
both with the officers and soldiers of this whole army,
his own personal worth and ability for the employment,
his great .care, diligence, courage, and faithfulness in the
services you have already employed him, with the con-
stant presence and blessing of God that have accompanied
him." The order demanded was at once sent, and in-
stantly obeyed by Cromwell. In the words of Claren-
don : " The evil genius of the kingdom in a moment
shifted the whole scene."

The two armies were now in touch ; and at six in the
morning, 1 3th June, at Guilsborough, Fairfax held a council
of war. "In the midst of the debate," says Sprigge, " came
in Lieutenant-General Cromwell, out of the Association,
with six hundred horse and dragoons, who was with the
greatest joy received by the general and the whole army.
Instantly orders were given for drums to beat, trumpets
to sound to horse, and all our army to draw to a ren-
dezvous." The arrival of Oliver changed the whole
scene. For some days, through both armies, the rumour
had run " that ' Ironsides ' was coming to join the Parlia-
ment's army " ; and as he rode in with his eastern
troopers the cavalry raised a great shout of joy. Harri-

90 OLIVER CROMWELL CHAP.

son was sent out with one party to scout ; Ireton, with
another strong force, to watch the enemy's flank. On
both sides they made ready for a decisive battle.

On 14th June, at three in the morning, Fairfax ad-
vanced towards Naseby ; and at five the king's army was
seen cresting the northern hills. Fairfax, with skilful
manoeuvres, drew up his army thus. As usual, he placed
his foot in the centre. The entire cavalry, near
6000 strong, he committed to Cromwell, who placed
them on the two wings — Ireton on the left, with five
regiments and dragoons ; whilst he himself, with six
regiments, took the right wing. As at Marston, the
armies were nearly equal, about 10,000 each ; the
positions not unequal ; the general disposition of the
armies almost the same. But the tactics and the qualities
of the troops are evidently much improved. It is said
that the king had 1500 officers who had seen regular
war ; and Cromwell directed the counsels of Fairfax.
As at Marston, Eupert commanded the right wing for
the king ; but he was no longer opposed to Cromwell, who
now led the right wing of the Parliament. The combat
in its general features curiously resembled that of Mar-
ston, the difference being that at Naseby it is a well-
ordered battle between regular troops, and no longer a
confused mdlfo of militiamen. As at Marston, the centre
and one wing of the Parliament were in sore straits,
when the wing which Cromwell led, having annihilated
the enemy opposed to it, sweeping round, overwhelmed
the victorious centre and wing of the royal army, and
again snatched victory out of defeat.

As the cavalry of the king were seen to advance
with gallantry and resolution, Cromwell, not waiting

v NEW MODEL— NASEBY— END OF FIRST WAR 91

the attack, charged with his whole wing. The word
that day was " God our strength" As regiment after
regiment charged, they routed and drove back in con-
fusion the king's left wing : " Not one body of the
enemy's horse which they charged but they routed."
In the meantime the foot in Fairfax's centre were " over-
pressed," gave ground, and went off in some disorder,
falling back on their reserves; when they rallied, and
again pressed back on the king.

The left wing of the Parliament, where Ireton was
in command, had fared worse. The furious charge of
Eupert had broken them in pieces. Ireton, wounded
in the thigh and face, was for the time taken prisoner.
Eupert pursued the broken wing almost to Naseby, and
was making an attempt on the train in the rear, when
at last he perceived the disaster that had befallen his
left wing on the other side of the field. Cromwell,
having driven the enemy's horse in front of him quite
behind the infantry, turned round, as at Marston, on the
king's centre, which, taken in flank and in front,
was speedily dispersed. One tertia alone (like New-
castle's border Whitecoats at Marston) held out for the
king, " standing with incredible courage and resolution,
assailed in flanks, front, and rear," till Cromwell brought
up Fairfax's own regiment of foot, who, falling on the
remnant with butt-end of muskets as the cavalry plunged
into flank and rear, finally broke and destroyed them.

The king still had a strong force of horse, mainly
consisting of Eupert's men returning from the chase;
and for a moment it seemed that the day had yet to be
decided by a fresh combat between the victorious horse
on either side. But Cromwell's unshaken wariness, even

92 OLIVER CROMWELL CHAP.

in the heat of victory, refused to trust so momentous an
issue to chance. With signal energy he and Fairfax
again brought up the infantry and cannon, and rapidly
re-formed the army in a new line, with horse, foot, and
guns in regular order of battle. Charles, who now had
none but his rallied horsemen to lead, rode round, calling
out, " One charge more, gentlemen, and the day is ours."
It was too late. His troopers, no longer with infantry
or guns, found before them again a solid army advancing
in complete order. At the sight " they broke without
standing one stroke more." For fourteen miles, up to
two miles of Leicester, they were chased ; severe execu-
tion was done, and crowds of prisoners taken.

It was a crushing defeat. Five thousand prisoners,
five hundred of them officers, cannon, train, powder,
standards, baggage, and the king's cabinet with his
papers, fell to the victors. Politically, the seizure of the
papers disclosing the royal intrigues were the most
important result of the battle. In a military sense, the
king was annihilated. No one numbered the slain.
But the king's army had ceased to exist. Rallying
a few horsemen he escaped to Leicester, and retreated
into the west, never again appearing at the head of an
army in the field.

The generals of the Parliament had all fought bravely
and commanded with skill. Skippon, the Major-General,
and Ireton were severely wounded. Fairfax, without
a helmet, led his men in person in the thick of the
fight. Cromwell had his morion cut from his head in
single combat. On both sides the battle was fought
with skill and courage. The preliminary manoeuvres of
the Parliament's army were those of scientific war ; the

v NEW MODEL— NASEBY— END OF FIRST WAR 93

rally of the centre and the skilful co-operation of right
wing with centre had displayed the discipline and
mobility of an organised army. And the rapidity and
steadiness with which the second order of battle was
improvised bears the infallible stamp of the genius of
Cromwell in the field — passionate energy in act, with
imperturbable self-command, wariness, and presence of
mind.

That very night Cromwell sent off his famous despatch
to the Houses, wherein it is easy to see that he treated
himself as practically general-in-chief ; and in his almost
menacing words on behalf of his Independents he is
speaking already in the tone of a dictator. To this
point he was now visibly arriving. First he creates a
troop, then a regiment ; soon he creates the Eastern
Association and its army ; he then develops the Associ-
ation army into the New Model. The New Model had
now concluded the first Civil War. And it was the
master of the Parliament ; indeed it was itself the real
Parliament of the nation. His despatch, sent direct to
Speaker, ends thus : —

" Sir — This is none other but the hand of God, and to
Him alone belongs the glory, wherein none are to share with
Him. The General served you with all faithfulness and
honour ; and the best commendation I can give him is, That
I daresay he attributes all to God, and would rather perish
than assume to himself. Which is an honest and a thriving
way ; and yet as much for bravery may be given to him, in
this action, as to a man. Honest men served you faithfully
in this action. Sir, they are trusty ; I beseech you, in the
name of God, not to discourage them. I wish this action
may beget thankfulness and humility in all that are concerned
in it. He tbat ventures his life for the liberty of his
country, I wish he trust God for the liberty of his conscience,

94 OLIVER CROMWELL CHAP.

and you for the liberty he fights for. In this he rests, who
is your most humble servant, OLIVER CROMWELL."

For twelve months the army was in the south and
west, stamping out what remained to the king in arms ;
and Cromwell was engaged, for the most part as second
to Fairfax, in a constant succession of sieges. In the
siege he is the same as in the field — careless of elaborate
tactics, preferring direct storm, but ever watchful to
adjust ends to means; risking nothing, but always
choosing the straightest means which each case presents
from hour to hour. In the conduct of a siege his method
is historic, and the memory of it long clung round his
name. There are few parts of England where one fails
to meet some ruined castle or dismantled manor-house,
of which the local rumour records " that it was battered
down by Cromwell in the troubles." This is his plan.
Suddenly appearing in full force before a place, he sum-
mons it peremptorily, with the threat to put the
defenders to the sword. If this first display of force
does not succeed, he chooses a vulnerable point, steadily
pours in shot from his cannon till a practicable breach is
effected. Then if surrender is offered, he grants it on
favourable terms. If not, carefully disposing his force
for simultaneous attack, and preparing reserves for the
main rush, he makes the signal early for a sudden storm.
The storming parties pour in, following each other with
desperate energy at all costs till the place is won. Of
these sieges the most important was the capture of
Bristol and the extinction of Rupert ; the most brilliant
the storm of Basing, with its carnage and destruction.
In the course of some sixteen months (April 1645-
August 1646) the historian of the New Model enumerates

v NEW MODEL— NASEBY— END OF FIRST WAR 95

upwards of sixty successful encounters, about fifty strong
places taken, more than 1000 cannon, 40,000 arms, and
250 colours.

During these operations the army was much annoyed
by the peasantry. Cromwell's dealing with the Clubmen,
—bands of half -armed countrymen, numbering some
thousands, and playing much the part of the francs-
tireurs of modern war — was a model of moderation, firm-
ness, and tact. By a mixture of sound argument,
vigorous handling, and kindly good sense, he speedily
dispersed these troublesome bands — sent " the poor silly
creatures" to their homes. Bristol was stormed and
taken on the 10th and llth of September, and the long
and exact despatch of Cromwell was by the general's
order sent direct to the Speaker Lenthall. It was a
large city, regularly entrenched and fortified, held by
some 4000 men. The works were far too extensive to
be properly invested by so moderate a force. The storm
began at one in the morning of the 10th ; it was a
desperate service, stubbornly contested foot by foot.
On the following day Rupert surrendered, and is heard
of in arms no more. There were taken 150 cannon,
100 barrels of powder, shot, and arms, and 4000 men.
The loss of the Parliament's army was less than
200.

Cromwell's despatch to the Speaker gives us an exact
account of these skilful and vigorous operations. And
then he abruptly bursts into the famous appeal, so little
like the language of a lieutenant-general to a Parliament,
or of a soldier to his Government, — a veritable sermon,
almost an allocation, such as Knox or Latimer might
have uttered from the pulpit to their sovereign, almost

96 OLIVER CROMWELL OHAP.

as a Gregory or an Innocent might have spoken to a
feudal prince : —

" Thus I have given you a true, but not a full account of
this great business ; wherein he that runs may read, That all
this is none other than the work of God. He must be a very
Atheist who doth not acknowledge it.

" It may be thought that some praises are due to those
gallant men, of whose valour so much mention is made : —
their humble suit to you and all that have an interest in this
blessing, is, That in the remembrance of God's praises they
be forgotten. It's their joy that they are instruments of
God's glory and their country's good. It's their honour
that God vouchsafes to use them. Sir, they that have been
employed in this service know, that faith and prayer obtained
this City for you : I do not say ours only, but of the people
of God with you and all England over, who have wrestled
with God for a blessing in this very thing. Our desires are,
that God may be. glorified by the same spirit of faith by which
we ask all our sufficiency, and have received it. It is meet
that He have all the praise. Presbyterians, Independents, all
have here the same spirit of faith and prayer ; the same
presence and answer ; they agree here, have no names of
difference : pity it is it should be otherwise anywhere ! All
that believe, have the real unity, which is most glorious ;
because inward, and spiritual, in the Body, and to the Head.
For being united in forms, commonly called Uniformity,
every Christian will for peace-sake study and do, as far as
conscience will permit. And for brethren, in things of the
mind we look for no compulsion, but that of light and reason.
In other things, God hath put the sword in the Parliament's
hands, — for the terror of evil-doers, and the praise of them that
do well. If any plead exemption from that, — he knows not
the Gospel : if any would wring that out of yoiir hands, or
steal it from you under what pretence soever, I hope they
shall do it without effect. That God may maintain it in
your hands, and direct you in the use thereof, is the prayer
of your humble servant, OLIVER CROMWELL."

Winchester surrendered on the 6th of October, after

v NEW MODEL— NASEBY— END OF FIRST WAR 97

two days' bombarding, with 680 men, 7 cannon, with
a loss of less than 12 men. "Sir," wrote Cromwell
to Fairfax, " this is the addition of another mercy. You
see God is not weary in doing you good." The pris-
oners complained of being robbed contrary to articles.
Cromwell had the six men accused tried : all were found
guilty, one by lot was hanged, and five were sent to the
Koyalist governor at Oxford, who returned them " with
an acknowledgment of the Lieutenant-General's noble-
ness."

Basing House, an immense fortress, with a feudal
castle and a Tudor palace within its ramparts, had long
been a thorn in the side of the Parliament. Four years
it had held out, with an army within, well provisioned
for years, and blocked the road to the west. At last it
was resolved to take it; and Cromwell was directly
commissioned by Parliament to the work Its capture is
one of the most terrible and stirring incidents of the war.
After six days' constant cannonade, the storm began at
six o'clock in the morning of the 1 4th of October. After
some hours of desperate fighting, one after another its
defences were taken, and its garrison put to the sword
or taken. The plunder was prodigious ; the destruction
of property unsparing. It was gutted, burnt, and the very
ruins carted away. The night before the. storm Crom-
well spent much time in prayer, — his chaplain records
that "he seldom fights without some text of Scripture
to support him." This time his text was from the
115th. Psalm — "Not unto us, 0 Lord, not unto us,
but unto thy name give glory, for thy mercy, and for thy
truth's sake. . . . Their idols are silver and gold, the
work of men's hands. . . . They that make them are

H

98 OLIVER CROMWELL CHAI-.

like unto them ; so is every one that trusteth in them."
Basing House was an old "nest of idolatry"; its owner,
the Marquis of Winchester, was one of the great chiefs
of the Catholics in England. And as Cromwell and his
Ironsides stormed into the proud old stronghold and tore
it to fragments, they were full of the spirit in which
Samuel had hewed Agag in pieces.

Cromwell's despatch to the Speaker is a typical
example of many such a piece. " Sir, I thank God," he
writes, "I can give you a good account of Basing, "-
bursting in on the Parliament with the fury of battle still
hot within him. Then comes the clear, quiet, nervous
and brief story of the storm. Then a paragraph full of
strategic sagacity, urging and almost dictating the
immediate razing of the fortress. " Sir, I hope not to
delay, but to march towards the west to-morrow." Then
the repeated appeals to the House in the tone of a
preacher not a soldier, which in Cromwell's mouth most
certainly were not idle phrases —

" The Lord grant that these mercies may be acknowledged
with all thankfulness : God exceedingly abounds in His
goodness to us, and will not be weary until righteousness and
peace meet, and until He hath brought forth a glorious work
for the happiness of this poor kingdom, wherein desires to
serve God and you with a faithful heart your most humble
servant, OLIVER CROMWELL."

Castle after castle, town after town, regiment after
regiment surrendered, as Cromwell and Fairfax rode fast
and struck hard from side to side. In March, Sir Ealph
Hopton, with 4000 men, 2000 arms, and 20 colours,
surrendered in Cornwall ; and Sir Jacob Astley, the
last commander in the field, in Gloucestershire. In

v NEW MODEL-NASEBY— END OF FIRST WAR 99

April Donnington Castle was taken : and now the king,
wandering aimlessly about, surrendered himself to the
Scots at Newark Oxford, with some 3000 men and
300 cannon, surrendered in June, and Eagland Castle
, in August 1646.

The First Civil War was over.

CHAPTER VI

BETWEEN THE CIVIL WARS
A.D. 1646-1648. -KTAT. 47-49

THE three years which elapsed between the defeat of the
king and his death on the scaffold (1646-49) are the
most intricate and obscure of the Civil War, and they
form the period in which the action of Cromwell can be
least definitely traced. It was a long triangiJar duel
between the king, the Parliament, and the army : the
king, with wonderful pertinacity and no little subtlety,
intriguing to recover his authority intact; the Houses
bent on formal Parliamentary government and Pres-
byterian despotism ; the army bent on real constitutional
guarantees and liberty of conscience. The main struggle
lay between the Parliament and the army : the main
question being Presbyterian orthodoxy, or Bible freedom.
But the dead weight of conservatism that still clung
round the fallen monarchy, and the unflagging ingenuity
of Charles, made the Crown still a powerful factor in the
contest ; whilst the political interests were far too real
to be long merged in any religious quarrel. Parliament
was controlled by Presbyterians, who, in their eagerness
to secure Presbyterian ascendancy, were ready to restore
the monarchy with merely nominal guarantees. The

CHAP, vi BETWEEN THE CIVIL WARS 101

army, which consisted mainly of Independents, and was
inspired by men who were zealots for civil and religious
freedom, was resolved to prevent — if need be by force —
either Presbyterian domination or restoration of the old
monarchy. As Charles wrote to Digby with no little
astuteness, he hoped to draw either the Presbyterians or
the Independents " to side with me for extirpating one
another, and I shall be really king again." In the end,
after three years of intricate manoeuvres conducted on
all sides with great audacity and craft, the army won,
forced the Parliament to become their tool, and brought
the king to the block.

A course of policy so complex and shifting cannot be
set forth in the limits of this Life, And as the part
which was played in it by Cromwell is still traceable
only by indirect evidence, and was constantly varied by
the progress of events, it cannot be stated otherwise than
in general outline. The plan of this book does not
admit of the discussion of authorities or the narrative of
events in which Cromwell himself intervened occasionally
and indirectly. It was beyond his power to do more
than this. As pre-eminently a practical statesman, and
what is now called an opportunist, he had no settled
policy, no doctrine, no single purpose to achieve. He
struck in, first here, then there, as occasion arose ;
changing his tactics and his objects as new combinations
or fresh situations developed. Although an Independent
to the backbone, and siding essentially with the army,
he is far too large a statesman not to see the strong
points both of king and of Parliament — not to feel all
the evils of a revolutionary army. He stands above all
parties, alternately using all and controlling all.

102 OLIVER CROMWELL CHAP.

Nor is there any problem more difficult than exactly
to follow Cromwell's policy in all its details. For this
part of his life there is exceedingly little direct and
unimpeachable authority. There is a large body of
disconnected anecdotes, more or less resting on con-
temporary authorities, mostly hostile, of very various
trustworthiness, and all capable of different explanations.
They are for the most part so characteristic and plausible
that it is difficult to doubt but that they rest at bottom
on fact. But the time, place, circumstances of them are
all-important, as are the facts that led up to them, and
which followed them ; and it is just in these that the
authority of the " Memoirs " is least satisfactory. The
result of a patient balancing of authorities is all that can
here be given. Much must be left to the estimate we
form of Cromwell as a whole. The probabilities are all
on the side of a belief that the ultimate result was mainly
shaped by him ; that all the critical turns in this long
and arduous political game were inspired by his genius,
and bear marks of his mastery over men.

This too is the point at which we first note complaints
of his ambition, duplicity, and intrigue ; his abandonment
by his early friends; and the public and private
animosities which continued to gather round him,
growing throughout the rest of his life. It is the too
familiar story of the great man in a troubled crisis.
And no statesman of equal rank in the modern history
of Europe comes forth from the ordeal of disparagement
more nobly. Through all these tangled times Oliver
Cromwell remains unswervingly true to his great design :
to secure responsible government without anarchy, and
freedom of conscience without intolerance. These great

vi BETWEEN THE CIVIL WARS 103

ends were to him far dearer than parties, institutions, or
persons ; and for them he would sacrifice in turn parties,
institutions, and persons. If he could have saved
responsible government without destroying the mon-
archy, he would have done it. If he could have
established a Parliamentary system without misrule and
religious oppression, he would have done it. Had he
desired an army despotism, he would have worked it out
directly, without reference to Parliament or king. Had
he aimed at personal power, he would not have risked
life and popularity so often in the cause of law, order,
and Parliament.

But it is not given to human genius to guide a
seething revolution to a great issue without wounding
to the heart even good and honest men; without
resorting to methods which are not those of perfect
saintliness; without reticence, suspicion, change of
purpose, much secret counsel, and much using of men
to the point where they cease to be useful. Irritation,
opposition, calumny are the natural result. And the
greater the superiority of the leader to his contempor-
aries, the more profound is the opposition and misunder-
standing he meets. For all his mighty brain and great
soul, Oliver Cromwell was no perfect hero, or spotless
saint. Doubtless the fine edge of candour was rudely
worn down by a long career of indirect policy. The
master of men is never wholly amiable or absolutely
frank. The man who often changes his front in the
heat of battle always seems a time-server to duller minds.
The man who takes up the task for which he knows
himself only to be fit, always seems ambitious to those
whom he thrusts aside.

104 OLIVER CROMWELL CHAP.

Nor was Cromwell without the defects of his qualities.
A somewhat coarse humour and a weakness for horse-
play sat strangely on a man who was certainly consumed
within with profound and silent designs. The habit
of extempore expounding cannot be indulged without
harm. And doubtless the taste for improving the
occasion became at last a snare to Cromwell, ending
even with him, as it ended with others, in no little
unction, mannerism — even self-deception. A certain pro-
fusion of tears, of hyperbolic asseverations and calling
God to witness, an excessive expression of each passing
emotion which grew with the habit of spiritual stimul-
ants— these are things too well attested and too con-
sonant with the tone of his generation to suffer us to
doubt that Cromwell's nature was more than touched by
the disease. It was touched, but not poisoned. He
had some of the weakness as well as all the strength of
the mighty Puritanism of which he is the incarnation
and the hero. But all these unlovely failings, which in
truthfulness we note, disappear in a larger view of the
essential grandeur, sincerity, and devoutness of the man.

The relative strength of the three parties was this.
By his defeat and imprisonment, Charles gained rather
then lost in the moral strength of his position. Men no
longer feared his vengeance as a conqueror ; they were
no longer irritated by the outrages of his soldiers ; he
had lost his dangerous power, but he was still lawful
king. The great majority of the nation could imagine
no stable government except in the king's name ; the
legal and executive machinery was hardly workable
without him. Captivity put an end to his arbitrary
acts, and gave scope for his personal dignity and

vi BETWEEN THE CIVIL WARS 105

courage. He still retained the passionate devotion of
Church, aristocracy, and large sections of the country-
people. Nay, we are accustomed to rate the ability of
Charles Stuart too low. Cromwell said : " The king is
a man of great parts and great understanding." In
truth Charles showed, both in peace and war, singular
tenacity, a very shrewd eye for a difficult situation, and
a curious subtlety in intrigue, akin to that of an Italian
statesman. Had he been Pope or Spanish governor,
dealing with Italians or Flemings, it is quite likely that
he would have won. His incurable weakness was that he
never shook off the Machiavelian or Medicean "Prince,"
and never understood the nature of Englishmen.

The House of Commons was now in its seventh year,
and had lost touch with the country. Reduced by
withdrawals and expulsions to a mere shadow of itself,
it had partly filled up its ranks by new elections which
were neither legal nor regular. Its constitutional posi-
tion, which in the midst of war had been accepted of
necessity, was incurably bad as a normal institution.
An assembly which recognised the right of none to
dissolve it, which had ejected a majority of its own
members, and which had governed for years by arbitrary
decrees enforced, if at all, by the power of the sword,
was little more than a revolutionary committee. Both
Houses, or what remained of them, were controlled by
fanatical Presbyterians, by officers discarded at the
New Model, by self-important lawyers, and city mag-
nates. But Parliament still possessed three great
advantages. The victories had been won by its soldiers
in its name; it had the sole command of the taxing
power ; and it was the one constitutional authority re-

106 OLIVER CROMWELL CHAV.

maining. It had still in its ranks bold, able, and sincere
men; it had the devoted support of London and the
Presbyterian clergy. Its weakness was this — that
whilst its claim to sovereignty could only be admitted
in a state of war, it no longer represented the country,
and was openly hostile to the power which had defeated
Charles.

That power was the army, the flower of all that was
earnest, brave, and zealous in Puritanism : men who
for years had fought, bled, and submitted to the sternest
discipline for the Cause, at their own cost, and without
hope of reward. They were what in continental
theories would be known as the " active citizens " in the
great contest ; wont to discuss, pray, and preach over
every occasion. Such an army of volunteers, carefully
selected by their officers on Cromwell's own model, all
uncongenial elements being gradually weeded out, men
who in scores of combats had never known one defeat,
as soldiers had endured an iron discipline for years, but
as citizens and Christians had been encouraged to
debate every incident of the day. They thus united
the combative enthusiasm of the Protestant martyrs to
the skill and experience of Caesar's legionaries. Though
as troopers the world has never seen their superiors,
they remained politicians and zealots of intense activity.
As the war closed and the struggle between them and
the Parliament grew acute, they formed themselves
into an organised political body. The officers formed a
council; and the men chose delegates, two for each
company or troop, known as Agitators.

. This organisation could hardly have existed without
Cromwell's approval. And there is every reason to

vi BETWEEN THE CIVIL WARS 107

believe that he promoted, if he did not originate it.
He recognised, supported, and worked with it: mainly
using Ireton as his agent. Every step in the negotia-
tions was referred to this double council, which regularly
consulted its constituents in the ranks. It was thus a
real Parliament; much more truly representative than
that at Westminster, better organised, and with more
political alertness. It was indeed more truly in touch
with the voting power in the kingdom. The subsidiary
elections to Parliament had returned an immense ma-
jority of men in sympathy with the Independents, and
amongst them Fairfax, Ludlow, Ireton, Fleetwood, Blake,
Sidney, and Hutchinson. A force like this, more than
twenty thousand strong, with such leaders and with all the
prestige of victory and unbroken success, were the true
masters of England. Even as a representative and
political body, they were morally stronger than the
remnant at Westminster. What they lacked was any
legal or constitutional right. Of this they were quite
conscious. They were ready to recognise to the full,
and even to overrate, the legal and constitutional right
of the Parliament. The name of "the Commons of
England " still overawed them.

But the struggle between the Parliament and the
army was not a mere contest of Law against the Sword,
Right against Might. Both Parliament and army were
revolutionary bodies, formed out of the exigencies of
civil war. The army had no legal right, and they
claimed none. But they had a preponderance of moral
right to represent the victorious side, almost as great as
their preponderance of material force. From the point
of view of law, the Parliament which now sat in

108 OLIVER CROMWELL CHAP.

Westminster had scarcely more technical right than the
army ; yet they exercised arbitrary powers which the
cessation of war made every day more irregular. But
the Revolution, which had arisen out of legal problems,
and had so long been carried on under the forms of
ancient law and 'custom, was still for three years longer
continued under the semblance of quasi-constitutional
methods. And no men felt this more thoroughly than
Cromwell and the chiefs of the army. The Parliament,
therefore, still remained, at least in name, the official
embodiment of the nation.

Cromwell returned to Parliament on the 23d of April
1646, whilst the king was still at the head of an army
in Oxford, and still had forces and castles in various
places. The Lieutenant-General was received with
honours and rewards. From thenceforth for more than
a year his activity is mainly in Parliament, from whence
he watches and influences events. In the army he was
the second man in rank and the first in repute. In the
House of Commons he was hardly in the first line and
was surrounded by bitter enemies. It is inconceivable
that a general, bent on founding a military dictatorship,
would have left the army, in the act of reaping the fruits
of its victories, to place himself in a Parliament where
he never publicly shone. But Parliament was the
proper authority to conclude the struggle ; and Parlia-
ment, rightly advised, had the power to do so. No
sooner was the king in the hands of the Scots than all
men perceived the importance of controlling his person,
and getting rid of the Scotch army. The disbanding of
the army, the establishment of Presbyterianism, the
control of the king, and the return home of the Scots —

vr BETWEEN THE CIVIL WARS 109

all rested alike with Parliament. To the House, there-
fore, came Cromwell, but more to confer than to speak.

It was at this epoch in his career that Cromwell
married two of his daughters, and arranged for the
marriage of his eldest son, in families of his own rank :
simple country gentlemen, devoted to the cause. Brid-
get married Ireton, Cromwell's " other self " ; Elizabeth
married John Claypole — both in 1646. Eichard's
marriage to Dorothy Mayor was proposed in 1647, but
not carried out till 1649, on the eve of the Irish cam-
paign. They were not the alliances that a Bonaparte
would have sought. In 1646 the Cromwell household
removed from Ely to London, and were modestly lodged
in Westminster.

During the long and intricate negotiations between
the king, the Parliament, and the Scots, the army and
the Independents looked on with anxiety and watchful-
ness, but did not actively interfere. That was also the
attitude of Cromwell, who formed the connecting link
between Parliament and the army. From brief sentences
in his letters, and from the less trustworthy source of
the " Memoirs," we gather that the Lieutenant-General
watched with indignation the growing hostility to the
army amongst the Parliamentary leaders, the Presby-
terians, and the city. Had the king accepted the
Covenant and the terms of Parliament, the cause of the
Independents, and, indeed, the future of England, might
have been at stake. One who knew Charles would have
rested easy that this was impossible; and though a
doubtful story suggests that Cromwell had secretly
encouraged the king to refuse the terms of the Parlia-
ment, it was sufficiently notorious that the Independents

110 OLIVER CROMWELL CHAP.

would not have required him to accept the Covenant.
Cromwell appears to have concurred in the efforts to pay
and get rid of the Scots. And this was successfully
accomplished in January 1647.

So soon as the Scots were paid off and had returned
home, leaving the king with the Parliament, a direct
conflict ensued between the Houses and the army. To
disband the army was to crush Independency (which
then was practically Dissent) and to neutralise the
Generals (who had so great extra - Parliamentary
authority). And thus the disbanding of the army was
the dominant idea of the Presbyterian leaders in Parlia-
ment. In March they began to raise a new force to
defend the city against the army. " There want not, in
all places," wrote Cromwell to Fairfax, " men who have
so much malice against the army as besots them." And
in the same month the advisers of the army were
declared by Parliament to be " enemies of the State."
From this hour the army was in a mutinous attitude,
refusing to disband till its demands were satisfied, and
so it continued for six months till Parliament submitted.

Cromwell's task was indeed a difficult one. No
soldier had ever a greater horror of mutiny, and no
statesman more completely understood that the settle-
ment of the kingdom must be at once legal and Parlia-
mentary. The army had force; but it could put no
pressure on the king, and could not grant to itself
indemnities and arrears. The work of Cromwell was so
to use tHe army as to compel the Parliament to come to
a settlement in a certain way, and yet not to set up the
anarchy of an armed mob. Backwards and forwards he
passes during April and May between army and Parlia-

vi BETWEEN THE CIVIL WARS 111

ment, moderating and guiding the demands of the army,
and presenting them to Parliament in their least offens-
ive light. It became manifest that the Presbyterian
leaders in their hostility to the army were prepared to
make any terms with the king ; there was even talk of
arresting Cromwell Charles and the Parliament to-
gether, if they had come to terms, could have made a
legal settlement, which for the moment would have been
accepted by the nation, leaving every question open and
every soldier who had fought in the war liable for
treason. A series of rapid and bold strokes changed the
whole aspect of affairs.

On the 2d of June Cromwell suddenly left London
for the army, and on that same day a strong body of
horse under Joyce, a cornet of Fairfax's guard, took the
king out of the custody of the Parliament's commis-
sioners, and with every show of respect carried him off
to the army. On the 4th took place a brilliant review ;
and within a few days the whole army, 21,000 strong,
was gathered round Newmarket. Thence, on the 10th,
they issued their famous Manifesto, and marching, to
St. Albans, openly threatened the city and Parliament.
The Manifesto, held to be Cromwell's own draft,
demanded satisfaction for themselves, the removal of
their accusers, and a real settlement of the kingdom
before they were themselves disbanded. The army
threatened, and waited at a respectful distance ; but the
threat was not enough. The city became a prey to con-
fusion ; the House of Commons was invaded by a city
mob ; yet neither Parliament nor city gave way. There-
upon the army marched on in earnest. On 3d of
August it occupied and entered London. The Speaker

112 OLIVER CROMWELL CHAP.

and the Independent leaders sought refuge with the
army ; the Presbyterian leaders withdrew ; the city was
respectful ; and the House of Commons yielded.

Thus, on the 3d of August 1647, the army visibly
assumed the chief authority in the State. Fairfax was
solemnly received and thanked by Parliament; the
troops marched, crowned with laurel branches, through
the streets to Westminster, and then through the city,
every approach being occupied in military fashion. As
the victors of Marston, Naseby, and Basing tramped
through London in splendid array and perfect discipline,
horse, foot, and artillery, with drums, trumpets, and
colours, "in so civil and orderly a manner, that not the
least offence or prejudice was offered by them to any
man, either in words, action, or gestures, as they
marched," the citizens were at once reassured and over-
awed. They saw before them an organised body" of
men, irresistible in strength, and resolved to carry out
their purpose, but with no element of disorder or per-
sonal motive. From this day, in fact, the Parliament
had visibly ceased to be sovereign. It accepted a master,
and consented to lend its name to the decision of others.

This was the real " usurpation " and military dicta-
torship. But it was accomplished officially by Fairfax
in person. The names of Parliament and of Constitution
too often dispose men to treat this act as an invasion of
legal authority by the sword. It was undoubtedly an
act of force and of revolution. But so was the entire
Civil War. Neither Parliament nor army had strict law
on their side, nor a clear majority of the nation. But
the cause that the army represented was the higher and
the truer : the cause which has ultimately prevailed.

vi BETWEEN THE CIVIL "WARS 113

Both Parliament and army appealed to force, and the
force of the army was immeasurably the greater. The
part which Cromwell took in this series of events is not
yet quite proved ; but there is every reason to believe
that it was all in the main essentially his work. No general
order could issue to the army without the knowledge and
assent of Fairfax, Cromwell, and Ireton. These three
were practically one. Cromwell was now called in the
pamphlets Dominus factotum. The mysterious seizure of
the king, with the simultaneous muster at Newmarket,
the army Manifesto, and the march on London, were all
master-strokes — timed, concerted, and executed with the
unity and precision of a great strategist. The abduction
of the king showed a genius for manoeuvre, and the
triumphal march through the city showed a mastery of
explosive forces, such as mark but one man only in that
age. And those who incline to see merely the intriguing
ambition of a tyrant must remember that it was the
policy approved by Fairfax, Ireton, Fleetwood, Hutchin-
son, Milton, and thousands of the most single-minded
heroes who ever entered into civic strife.

The surrender of the Parliament and possession of
the king entirely changed the position of the army, and
with it the policy of Cromwell. The army chiefs had
encouraged political action amongst the soldiers, but they
were now anxious to moderate it ; whilst they laboured
to reconcile the Presbyterian and Independent parties,
and to come to terms directly with the king. So
momentous a work as the making such an army the
visible master of England could not be carried through
without grave political and social consequences. A
strong and earnest party of Commonwealth's men con-

I

114 OLIVER CROMWELL CHAP.

tained some of the most honourable of the Puritans,
such as Vane, Ludlow, Sidney, Hutchinson, Milton, and
Marvell. But in the army was found the hotbed and
centre not only of the Commonwealth, but of various
political and social movements, showing nearly all the
phases of new ideas which the history of later revolutions
has made familiar. The most definite of these groups
were the party known as Levellers, who, in spite of their
nickname, did not maintain Communism, but what in
modern political language is known as the doctrine of
Political Equality.

The army had long played the part of the " clubs "
and " sections " in the French revolutions ; of the
"leagues" and "associations" of English reform; and
nearly every type of modern radicalism was duly repre-
sented in the army demands, short, perhaps, of formal
Socialism. Republicanism, sovereignty of Parliament,
annual or biennial elections, extension and equalisation
of the suffrage, local self-government, codification of the
law, complete religious liberty, and equal political rights,
were repeatedly pressed on Parliament and proclaimed
as rights. And now the army was becoming the real
House of Commons. The Parliament occupied relatively
the position we are wont to attribute to the present
House of Lords — an assembly without which a legal
settlement is impossible, but which, in the long run,
must virtually submit to the more popular authority.
Now Cromwell was a statesman, not a theorist. Though
an enemy of arbitrary monarchy, and ever eager for
practical reform, he had no leaning in principle either to
a republic or a democracy. He was by temper and con-
viction no radical. Circumstances, indeed, made him

vi BETWEEN THE CIVIL WARS 115

what, by a happy paradox, has been called " a conserva-
tive revolutionist." Thus it came to pass that no sooner
was the army master, than Cromwell laboured to con-
trol it.

Turning a deaf ear to Levellers and Commonwealth's
men, Cromwell was engaged for months in the effort to
make terms with the king directly. Communications
had probably begun even before the seizure of the king
by Joyce, an act to which Charles showed little objec-
tion and hardly even surprise. But when the victorious
army carried the king about with them, Cromwell and
Ireton were in daily relations with him. The task
they undertook was transcendently difficult, if not im-
possible. They had to find a basis of settlement which
the king would accept, and yet one that the army would
not reject; and then, if king and army agreed, it
would have to be adopted by the Parliament, which
alone could make a legal settlement. For months the
subtle and inventive brains of the two generals were
pitted against the incurable perfidy of the Stuart ; and
the personal relations between the fallen sovereign and
his rebel officers became not only courteous, but intimate
and friendly. The troopers saw with increasing irrita-
tion their great general becoming a courtier, and almost
a confidential adviser of the king. If the anecdote-
mongers may be trusted, Cromwell loudly expressed his
warm interest in the king, not only as a man, but as an
institution. He is reported to have said that no men
could enjoy their lives and estates quietly without the
king had his rights. The grumblings of the army
swelled into open accusations, and even, it is said, into
plots to assassinate Charles and Cromwell. Things

116 OLIVER CROMWELL CHAP.

reached such a pitch that he was forced to stop the
p'ublic access to himself of the king's agents. But still
he struggled on to replace Charles on his throne by a
legal settlement of the nation.

Why did he make an effort so obstinate and so
dangerous? Why did he abandon it, and as eagerly
work for the king's dethronement and execution 1 The
exact steps in his policy are not quite traced, but the
general course of it is plain. Cromwell was a man who
by temper and opinion was perfectly willing to accept
the monarchic and social constitution as he found it, up
to the point where it became impracticable or mischievous.
He was not given to visions of a future, and not eager
after new constitutions. He still believed that the
republicans were a small minority, and that English
society was not workable without a monarchy. Cromwell,
like so many great statesmen, was never in the van of the
movement, but always just ahead of the central force.
He was now, in 1647, convinced that there could be no
settlement without a king. And he risked reputation,
power, and life, to effect a settlement with the king.

Having strained his influence almost to the bursting
point, he suddenly changed front. Nearly all through
1647 we find him negotiating a monarchic settlement.
Early in 1648 he denounced the king in Parliament.
What explains the change? Two things essentially. The
growing violence of the Commonwealth party in the
army ; and the conviction that the king was intriguing,
not for a settlement at all, but for a new civil war.
Long and ominous were the warnings that told Cromwell
the temper of the army. His own life, that of Charles,
a new war, a military revolt, the solution of all discipline

vi BETWEEN THE CIVIL WARS 117

were at stake. The mutiny at Ware could not but cost
the general much cruel searching of heart. His severity
was " absolutely necessary," as he told Ludlow, " to keep
things from falling into confusion." On 15th November
two regiments, appeared at a review without orders and
with mutinous papers in their hats, with the motto
•'England's freedom and soldiers' rights." Cromwell,
with a few officers, rode up to them, and with thunder in
his brow, ordered them to take out the papers. One
regiment obeyed; the other refused. Ordering eleven
men from the ranks by name, he tried them on the spot
by court-martial, condemned three to death, and shot
one. It was a terrible moment; which must have burnt
its lessons into the army and into the general.

On the other hand, Cromwell at last fathomed the
perfidy of the king. Charles held himself to be one
who was by divine ordinance incapable of binding
himself by any agreement The famous story of the
letter to the queen concealed in a saddle which Cromwell
and Ireton discovered, though it professes to come from
Cromwell's own lips, may or may not be true in its
details; but it is the picturesque expression of an im-
portant truth. Cromwell, with or without intercepted
letters, at last discovered that the king was only playing
with him in all these negotiations for a settlement,
whilst he was really occupied in stirring up a new war.
Once satisfied of this, Cromwell turned upon Charles
Stuart the whole force of his loathing and enmity.
Cromwell was accustomed, both earlier and later, to deal
with astute men, and to meet them on equal terms in
tortuous and secret paths. He was himself far from
being an Israelite without guile. He had probably by

118 OLIVER CROMWELL CHAP.

this time persuaded himself that in diplomacy, as in war,
stratagems with an opponent are lawful parts of the game.
He, no doubt, did not show Charles his whole mind ; nor
did he expect Charles to show his whole mind to him.
But with the king it was different. The. king in these
long negotiations was not negotiating at all; he was only
laying a trap. He was solemnly debating a treaty, when
he never intended to keep any treaty at all. And this
at last Cromwell came to see was not diplomacy, but
incurable perfidy.

Nor was it merely the perfidy of a helpless prisoner.
The Scotch Presbyterians were now brought round to
the side of their king. A large body in Parliament were
once more inclined to the same result. In east, west,
and north cavaliers were again arming. And between
a Scotch invasion, new Royalist musters, intrigues in
Parliament, and Presbyterian jealousy, the army was in
imminent peril that they and their cause would perish.
The near prospect of the Second Civil War decided all.
And now, with all that he had fought for at stake,
with a fresh tide of blood rising, with the army itself in
chronic mutiny, and the noblest spirits in the army
clamouring incessantly for "justice," Cromwell at last
gave way ; resolved to strike down the throne, the rally-
ing point of all disorder ; and to bring to trial the " man
of blood," who, in spite of every effort, was obstinately
bent on renewing the war.

Dark and fierce were the prayers and outpourings of
heart with which the Ironsides sought the Lord as the
Second Civil War gathered round them. The fiery
words of the Hebrew prophets had heated their brains ;
and the Biblical notions of "atonement" and "the

vr BETWEEN THE CIVIL WARS 119

avenger of blood " had grown into sacred moral obliga-
tions. To their morbid fanaticism the cause of blood-
guiltiness lay upon the land, until he on whose doorpost
it rested had atoned for his sins. With the vivid
consciousness that each of them might yet be called to
answer with his neck before the earthly judge, was
mingled a real awe of the heavenly tribunal, if they
suffered the guilt to cry aloud in the land. The Second
Civil War seemed a judgment on their slackness and
the carnal policy of their leaders. And as they buckled
on their armour for a fresh campaign they resolved,
amidst prayers and maledictions, that if the Lord
brought them back in peace, the Chief Delinquent should
be called to account.

CHAPTEE VII

SECOND CIVIL WAR — TRIAL OF THE KING
A. D. 1648-1649. JET AT. 49

THE Second Civil War broke out in April, and proved
to be a short but formidable affair. The whole of
Wales was speedily in insurrection; a strong force of
cavaliers were mustering in the north of England; in
Essex, Surrey, and the southern counties various
outbreaks arose ; Berwick, Carlisle, Chester, Pembroke,
Colchester, were held for the king ; the fleet revolted ;
and 40,000 men were ordered by the Parliament of
Scotland to invade England. Lambert was sent to the
north; Fairfax to take Colchester; and Cromwell into
Wales, and thence to join Lambert and meet the Scotch.
On the 24th of May Cromwell reached Pembroke, but
being short of guns, he did not take it till llth July.
The rising in Wales crushed, Cromwell turned northwards,
where the north-west was already in revolt, and 20,000
Scots, under the Duke of Hamilton, were advancing into
the country. Want of supplies and shoes, and sickness,
detained him with his army, some 7000 strong, "so
extremely harassed with hard service and long marches,
that they seemed rather fit for a hospital than a battle."

CHAP, vii SECOND CIVIL WAR— TRIAL OF THE KING 121

Having joined Lambert in Yorkshire he fought the
battle of Preston on 17th of August.

The battle of Preston was one of the most decisive
and important victories ever gained by Cromwell, over
the most numerous enemy he ever encountered, and the
first in which he was in supreme command. Although
the enemy's forces were nearly threefold his, well-armed,
and of high courage, so great was the disparity in military
skill, that it was rather a prolonged massacre than a
battle. The engagements continued over three days,
and nearly thirty miles of country. In the end the
entire army of nearly 24,000 good troops were either
killed, taken, or dispersed. Early on the morning of
the 17th August Cromwell, with some 9000 men,
fell upon the army of the Duke of Hamilton unawares,
as it proceeded southwards in a long straggling, unpro-
tected line. The invaders consisted of 17,000 Scots
and 7000 good men from northern counties. The long
ill-ordered line was cut in half and rolled back north-
ward and southward, before they even knew that
Cromwell was upon them. The great host, cut into
sections, fought with desperation from town to town.
But for three days it was one long chase and carnage,
which ended only with the exhaustion of the victors
and their horses. Ten thousand prisoners were taken.
"We have killed we know not what," writes Cromwell,
" but a very great number ; having done execution upon
them above thirty miles together, besides what we
killed in the two great fights." His own loss was small,
and but one superior officer.

The despatches of the general ring with the heat of
battle and chase. It was no longer civil war; it

122 OLIVER CROMWELL CHAP.

was the extermination of a host of alien invaders,
whose success would have been the final ruin of the
Cause.

" It pleased God to enable us to give them a defeat ; which
I hope we shall improve, by God's assistance, to their utter
ruin. . . . The invading army," he writes, " is dissipated.
... In order to perfecting this work, we desire you to raise
your Country ; and to improve your forces to the total ruin
of that Enemy, which way soever they go ; and if you shall
accordingly do your part, doubt not of their total ruin. . . .
Thus you have their infantry totally ruined. . . . We have
quite tired our horses in pursuit of the enemy : we have
killed and disabled all their foot ; and left them only some
horse. ... If my horse could but trot after them, I would
take them all . . . Let all the counties about you be sent
to, to rise with you and follow them."

It was, in very truth, the sword of the Lord and of
Gideon. The largest army that ever gathered under the
standard of King Charles had been utterly dissipated
by a series of blows, swift, crushing, and unsparing.

The Scottish invaders dispersed, Cromwell hastened
to recover Berwick and Carlisle, and to restore the
Presbyterian or Whig party in Scotland. He advanced
to Edinburgh, with abundant professions of his peaceful
purpose, and with great precautions to enforce the
strictest discipline. He entered Scotland, not as an
invader, but as the ally of the party headed by the
Marquis of Argyle, in opposition to the Duke of
Hamilton. His task there was precisely that of the
foreign general who interferes in the factions of the
Greek or Italian republics to restore the " good " party
and overawe the " bad " party. After a stay of a few
weeks he took over Berwick and Carlisle, and advanced

vii SECOND CIVIL WAR— TRIAL OF THE KING 123

into Yorkshire, to recover Pontefract Castle. This
he found too strong to be taken without a regular
siege train. He remained before Pontefract some
weeks. But the train not arriving, he hastened to
London, where the great crisis at last was imminent.
It is from Yorkshire in this autumn that he writes those
striking letters which open to us the very depths of his
soul.

To Cromwell the Second Civil War was the un-
pardonable sin. God had manifested His will in the
triumph of the army. To be slack, to be indulgent,
was to struggle against His will. To struggle against
that manifestation was to tempt God.

"Sir," he wrote on the battlefield of Preston, "this is
nothing but the hand of God." To St. John he writes, " Let
us all be not careful what men will make of these actings. They,
will they, nill they, shall fulfil the good pleasure of God ; and
we — shall serve our generations. Our restwe expect elsewhere :
that will be durable." And then be tells how the poor godly
man, dying tbe day before the battle, taking a bandful of cut
grass, said, " So too shall wither tbe army of tbe Scots," and
immediately died. Parliament, he writes to Lord Wharton,
does not seem conscious of the crisis. The victory at
Preston be calls "this manifest token of His displeasure."
" His most righteous witnessing against the army under Duke
Hamilton." Tbe bringing in of tbat army was "a more
prodigious Treason than any tbat bad been perfected before :
... it is tbe repetition of tbe same offence against all tbe
witnesses that God bas borne." His officers, he says, "are
amazed to see tbeir blood beld so cheap, and such manifest
witnessings of God, so terrible and so just, no more reverenced."
And to Fairfax he writes : "I find in tbe officers of the
regiments a very great sense of tbe sufferings of tbis poor
kingdom ; and in tbem all a very great zeal to have
impartial justice done upon offenders. And I must confess,
I do in all, from my heart concur witb tbem ; and I verily

124 OLIVER CROMWELL CIIAP.

think and am persuaded they are things which God puts
into our hearts" (20th November 1648).

The Ironsides were returning home to keep their word :
and Cromwell was now as deeply resolved as any man
to exact the uttermost farthing.

Of all the writings of Cromwell which have been
preserved to us, the long letter to Colonel Hammond,
of 25th November 1648, best reveals to us his inmost
heart, in the very turning-point of his career. If ever a
letter was the secret outpouring of the spirit to a
beloved friend, it is this. If ever a difficult duty in a
momentous crisis awaited a great statesman, it was now.

" Dear Robin," he writes to his young friend, the king's
custodian at Newport, " no man rejoiceth more to see a line
from thee than myself." He touches on his recent victories :
" We have not been without our share of beholding some
remarkable providences, and appearances of the Lord." His
young friend was troubled, — had scruples about the king,
about the army dictating to Parliament, about a minority
forcing a majority. " Dear Eobin," he writes, "thou and I
were never worthy to be door-keepers in this Service. If
thou wilt seek, seek to know the mind of God in all that
chain of Providence." As to Parliament being a lawful
authority, " Yes," he says, " but authorities may not do any-
thing, and yet claim obedience. Is not Salus Populi a sound
position ? Is it provided for in the pretended Treaty with
the king? Is not the whole fruit of the war like to be
frustrated ? Is not this army a lawful power, called by God
to oppose and fight against the king upon some stated
grounds ? And may it not oppose one Name of Authority,
as well as another name ? . . . My dear Friend," he goes on,
" let us look into providences ; surely they mean somewhat
They hang so together ; have been so constant, so clear,
unclouded." And then he argues the principle of passive
obedience to the Parliament. "Mark how Providence turns
the heart of so many against it." He knows " not one officer

vii SECOND CIVIL WAR— TRIAL OF THE KING 125

among them, who is not with them. The difficulties and the
enemies against them are not few, are all that is glorious in
this world. The recent protest of the army against any
treaty with the king may have been premature ; but now
it is out let us support it Is the taking action in support
of it a tempting of God, as the young Colonel seems to
fear ? No ! Dear Robin, tempting of God is by acting
presumptuously or in unbelief. Not the encountering of
difficulties, makes us tempt God ; but acting without faith.
The treaty is 'a ruining hypocritical agreement.' Can we
have good from 'this Man — against whom the Lord hath
witnessed ? '" A great crisis was at hand, and Cromwell
earnestly seeks to win his young friend, " because my soul
loves thee, and I would not have thee swerve."

The letter did not find Hammond at Newport ; and
Cromwell having despatched it, hurried to London, where
the great drama of king and Parliament was closing to
its climax.

On 20th of November the army by Colonel Ewer
presented to Parliament its protest against the " hypo-
critical agreement" with the king. On the 25th it
backed this up by advancing to Windsor. On the 27th
Colonel Ewer removed Colonel Hammond from his duty
about the king, and the following day he removed the
king to the mainland and secured him in Hurst Castle.
Charles was now for the first time a real prisoner. On
the 30th the House rejects the " Eemonstrance " ; and
the army marches upon London, which it reaches on
Saturday, 2d December, and quietly quarters itself round
Whitehall. On Monday, 4th, as if in defiance of the
army, the House approved the Newport treaty, after an
all-night sitting. On Wednesday the 6th, Colonel Eich's
regiment of horse were paraded in Palace Yard, Colonel
Pride's regiment of foot in Westminster Hall. There

126 OLIVER CROMWELL CHAP.

Colonel Pride, with Lord Grey as his prompter, arrests
forty-one members, and on the following day more than
sixty others. This is " Pride's Purge." Cromwell came
to town that night, when the first act was over. He
declared that "he had not been acquainted with this
design; yet since it was done he was glad of it, and
would endeavour to maintain it." The next day he
received the thanks of the House, whilst the Purge was
completed at its doors.

" Pride's Purge " was the most revolutionary of the
three great acts of force by which the army coerced the
Parliament. In August 1647 Parliament submitted to
the will of the army without actual force being used,
and without breach of any constitutional form. Crom-
well's dismissal of the Rump in April 1652 was the
.virtual dissolution of the mere ghost of a Parliament by
a de facto dictator. But Pride's Purge was bare military
violence, like any modern coup d'ttat. It was carried out
under orders from headquarters, with the consent and in
the name of Fairfax, the Commander-in-Chief, by the
general's staff, and was mainly contrived by Ireton and
Ludlow. Cromwell, like Fairfax, adopted and accepted
it; but he did not direct it. He probably was not
consulted ; or Ludlow, his old enemy, who gives us all
the secret consultations, would have told us so. During
these rapid transactions he was busy with his army in
the north, and had been absent from headquarters for
seven months. His letter to Hammond shows that he
did not know of the colonel's dismissal, and that he
thought the Remonstrance premature. There is no
direct evidence of the part which Cromwell took in the
army proceedings of the autumn of 1648. Yet he could

vii SECOND CIVIL WAR— TRIAL OF THE KING 127

not have left them with unconcern. What probably
happened was this. There was an understanding
between the generals in May that the army should have
its way, if need be by force. On general matters,
Cromwell was consulted and advised. But so far as he
was concerned, he probably was content to leave overt
action, the time, the mode, and the persons, to Fairfax,
his commander, and to Ireton, his " other self."

It is with Pride's Purge in 1648, and not with
Cromwell's dismissal in 1653, that the Long Parlia-
ment of 1640 virtually ends. Three hundred and fifty
members voted in the division which occasioned it. The
divisions after it did not exceed fifty-three. The House,
its officials, those who sat in it, and those who accepted
its decisions, after such an act as that of 6th December,
were plainly content to accept the name of Parliament
without the reality.

The purging of the House was the means to bring
about the will of the army. And the will of the army
was to close the era of timorous compromise by bringing
to judgment "the man of blood." The trial, condem-
nation, and beheading of the king belong to the History
of England, and not to the Life of Cromwell. It was
essentially the act of the army, and in a special sense of
Ireton. It was not Cromwell's own conception, nor did
he easily adopt it. He long struggled against it, risked
life and reputation in the combat. At length he gave
way, probably about the time of the second outbreak of
war. The Scottish invasion, the victory at Preston, the
very catastrophe of the invaders decided him. And in
the overwhelming defeat of the Royalists he saw the
finger of God pointing to judgment on the contriver of

128 OLIVER CROMWELL CHAP.

all these horrors. Having taken up this duty, and seeing
Parliament prostrate by no direct act of his own, he
became one of the keenest and most obdurate of all the
judges of the Stuart.

In the Court of Justice Oliver is always present. In
the death-warrant of 29th January 1649, next after the
President and Lord Grey, stands the name of Oliver
Cromwell. He accepted the responsibility of it, justified,
defended it to his dying day. No man in England was
more entirely answerable for the deed than he. "I tell
you," he said to Algernon Sidney, ".we will cut off his
head with the crown upon it." Traditions tell that he
pressed other officers to sign, that he smeared Henry
Marten's face with ink as he signed, and stood by the
coffin and gazed upon the corpse. It may be, for
Cromwell was strange, passionate, and stern in supreme
moments ; and he knew better than others all that this
portentous deed implied.

To him and to his Ironsides to bring the king to
judgment was no mere act of earthly justice ; it was a
sacred duty enjoined by the inward voice and outward
signs of God Himself. To show mercy to this Agag was
flagrant rebellion against God's will. For seven years
the land had swam in blood, ruin, and confusion. And
of all that Charles Stuart was the root and contriver.
But Cromwell was not only a Puritan, saturated with
Biblical canons of morality and justice : he was also a
profound statesman. He had struggled, against hope and
inclination, for a monarchic settlement of the grand
dispute. Slowly he had come to know — not only that
the man, Charles Stuart, was incurably treacherous, but
that any settlement of Parliament with the old Feudal

vii SECOND CIVIL WAR— TRIAL OF THE KING 129

Monarchy was impossible. As the head of the king
rolled on the scaffold the old Feudal Monarchy expired
for ever. In January 1649 a great mark was set in the
course of the national life — the Old Rule behind it, the
New Rule before it. Parliamentary government, the
consent of the nation, equality of rights, and equity in
the law — -all date from this great New Departure. The
Stuarts indeed returned for one generation, but with the
sting of the Old Monarchy gone, and only to disappear
almost without a blow. The Church of England re-
turned ; but not the Church of Laud or of Charles. The
peers returned, but as a meek House of Lords, with
their castles razed, their feudal rights and their poli-
tical power extinct. It is said that the regicides
killed Charles I. only to make Charles II. king. It
is not so. They killed the Old Monarchy; and the
restored monarch was by no means its heir, but a
royal Stadtholder or Hereditary President. In 1649,
when Charles I. ceased to live, the true monarchy
of England ceased to reign. Oliver Cromwell was for
ten years supreme ruler ; whilst Charles II. was a de-
spised and forgotten exile. The monarchies, peerages,
and churches of the civilised world roared with horror
and rage ; but in five years the rage was spent, and
England was settling into new lines, which might
possibly have been permanent, and which certainly
prepared her present constitutional system. The solemn
judgment of Charles Stuart as a traitor to his people, as
a public officer who had criminally abused his trust, gave
a new life to the history of England, and ultimately to
the modern history of Europe.

CHAPTER VIII

THE CAMPAIGN IN IRELAND
A.D. 1649-1650. 2ETAT. 50-51

BY the execution of the king the whole situation was
changed. What had been a rebellion under legal forms
became a real revolution ; in the room of the Parliament
men saw a Council of State ; in the room of the
monarchy, a Commonwealth ; and Cromwell was left
the one commanding person on either side.

From the day of Pride's Purge, Parliament was never
more than a name, a form ; but not a power, or even a
reality. Parliament, in truth, had been consumed in the
act of bringing the king to trial When the House of
Peers was abolished, and the Commonwealth proclaimed,
the constitution was obviously at an end. In appoint-
ing the Council of State, the House of Commons (or
rather the remnant of it which still sat) formally
transferred the functions it had wielded for more than
eight years to a council which was really a joint-
committee of itself and the army. Such a committee
was a necessity; but it obviously rested on a revolu-
tionary basis. It consisted of men prepared for a
revolutionary and not a constitutional settlement And
amongst such men Cromwell was plainly supreme.

CHAP, viii THE CAMPAIGN IN IRELAND 131

Thus, from the day when the king's head fell at White-
hall until the day of his own death there, nearly ten
years later, Oliver Cromwell was the acknowledged
master of England.

It is in vain to repeat that the execution of the king
was a mere act of vengeance, a blunder which substituted
a young and popular prince for his deposed father.
However it be judged, it was at once the symbol and
the cause of a profound revolution. The instinct of the
army from the first fastened on it as the only guarantee
that their work should be a permanent revolution and
not a passing insurrection ; and slowly the judgment of
Cromwell was forced to adopt it in that sense. The sen-
tence upon Charles was the end of the Feudal Monarchy
and of all its attributes. It also virtually set aside at
once Constitution and Parliament. It compelled the
nation to look for a new settlement under new men.
Above all, it made a personal ruler the great necessity
of the hour. The king being dead, the throne itself
destroyed, and the three Estates of the Realm suppressed,
a dictator became inevitable. And there was but one
possible dictator.

In the formation of the Council of State, in the com-
promise by which Republicans, like Vane and Fairfax,
opposed to regicide were reconciled to take their place
in it, in the careful reorganisation of the whole adminis-
trative and legal service, the directing spirit of Cromwell
is traceable, though, after the first sittings, he had no
official supremacy. The House, indeed, rejected Ireton
and Harrison from the council, either as Cromwell's men
or as too violent revolutionists. In the words of Capel
to Cromwell before the king's death, he was the figure

132 OLIVER CROMWELL CHAP.

which gave its denomination to the cyphers that followed.
The organisation of government through the Council of
State, the execution of the Duke of Hamilton and the
other Royalist prisoners, the rigorous enforcement of the
Republican style, were all measures which had Crom-
well's support, if they were not due to his influence.

The condition of England without was, however, for the
moment more pressing even than her condition within.
The new Republic was not recognised by foreign sovereigns.
Its enemies were upheld, and its agents were insulted
throughout Europe. The bond that had held together
the three kingdoms was dissolved. Scotland proclaimed
Prince Charles as king. The contending factions in
Ireland were at last united by the execution of Charles ;
Rupert was there with a fleet ; and except for a few
hard-pressed garrisons, Ireland was now an independent
and hostile country.

The reconquest of Ireland was by all felt to be the
most urgent interest of the young Commonwealth ; there
was almost as much agreement to entrust Cromwell with
the task ; and after some consideration, and prayerful
consultations in the army, he accepted the duty. The
condition of England was precarious indeed ; service in
Ireland was not popular in the army ; and an ambitious
adventurer would have been loath to quit England
whilst the first place was still unoccupied. It was at
great risk to the cause, and at much personal sacrifice,
that Cromwell accepted the difficult post in Ireland as
his first duty to his country and to religion. His
campaign and the subsequent settlement in Ireland are
amongst those things which weigh heaviest on Crom-
well's memory, and which of his stoutest admirers one

vni THE CAMPAIGN IN IRELAND 133

only lias heartily approved. Fortunately, there is no
part of his policy where his conduct is more simple and
his motives are more plain. The Irish policy of Crom-
well was the traditional policy of all Englishmen of his
creed and party, and was distinguished from theirs only
by his personal vigour and thoroughness. He was
neither better nor worse than the English Puritans, or
rather all English statesmen for many generations : he
was only keener and stronger. When he, with Vane,
Fairfax, Whitelocke, and other commissioners, went to
the Guildhall to obtain a loan for the campaign, they
told the Common Council that this was a struggle not
between Independent and Presbyterian, but between
Papist and Protestant ; that Papacy or Popery were not
to be endured in that kingdom ; and they cited the
maxim of James I. : "Plant Ireland with Puritans, root
out Papists, and then secure it."

To Cromwell, as to all English Puritans, it seemed a
self-evident truth that one of the three realms could not
be suffered to become Catholic ; as little could it be
suffered to become independent, or the open practice of
the Catholic religion allowed there, any more than in
England ; finally, that peace and prosperity could never
be secured in Ireland without a dominant and pre-
ponderating order of English birth and Protestant belief.
By Cromwell, as by the whole Puritan body — we may
fairly say by the whole body of Protestants — the Irish
Rebellion of 1641 was believed to have opened with a
barbarous, treacherous, and wholesale massacre, followed
during nine years by one prolonged scene of confusion
and bloodshed, ending in an almost complete extinction
of the Protestant faith and English interests. The

134 OLIVER CKOMWELL CHAP.

victorious party, and Cromwell more deeply than others,
entered on the recovery of Ireland in the spirit of a re-
ligious war, to restore to the Protestant cause one of the
three realms, which had revolted to the powers of darkness.
Such was for centuries the spirit of Protestant England.

The preparations for the reconquest of Ireland were
all taken on a large and careful scale. But a pressing
danger had first to be dealt with. The individualist
doctrines of Independency and the prayer-meetings of
the army had led to their natural issue — an outburst of
democratic fanaticism ; and democratic fanaticism in the
army could only end in mutiny. It would have been
difficult for Cromwell to reconcile in theory his own
teaching in the troopers' prayer-meetings with rigid dis-
cipline, and with unfaltering submission to' the authority
of the council. But Cromwell was never at any time
troubled with the need of making his theories consistent.
" I tell you, sir," he said in the council about the Levellers,
" you have no other way to deal with these men but to
break them to pieces, or they will break us." He in-
stinctively felt that a general mutiny in the army was
ruin to his cause.

His own action was a model of swiftness, energy,
and severity, mixed with moderation, and even sym-
pathy. In the three chief outbursts — in the city, in
Hyde Park, in Oxfordshire — he is the same man. By
lightning rapidity of movement, by instant decision of
purpose, by terrible sternness in punishing, with com-
plete control of temper, with inflexible hold on the para-
mount authority of general and Parliament — in turn he
orders, harangues, argues, preaches, and implores, appeal-
ing at once to the soldiers' sense of discipline, their

vin THE CAMPAIGN IN IRELAND 135

religion, their patriotism, and their fear of the Provost-
Marshal. In the end, he convinces the heart rather
than overawes the spirit. The famous scene in the
churchyard at Burford is one of the most impressive and
dramatic of the whole war : the ringleaders are drawn
out for execution ; three are shot, then the slaughter is
stayed, the Lieutenant-General rises in the pulpit, and
pours out such a homily, that with tears and groans the
mutinous troopers return to duty. In suppressing
mutiny, Cromwell is always at his best, and reminds us
of Caesar or Germanicus with the legionaries. And in
this great crisis — one of the most dangerous that the
Commonwealth passed — but four lives were taken by
the Provost-Marshal.

Five months were occupied in the preparations for this
distant and difficult campaign. Cromwell's nomination
was on the 15th of March. On the same day Milton
was appointed Latin Secretary to the Council. During
April Cromwell arranged the marriage of his eldest son
with the daughter of a very quiet, unambitious squire.
On the 10th of July he set forth from London with much
military state. His lifeguard was a body of gentlemen
" as is hardly to be paralleled in the world." He still
waited a month in the west, his wife and family around
him; and thence wrote his beautiful letter to Mayor about
his son, and the letter to "my beloved daughter Dorothy
Cromwell, at Hursley." At length all was ready, and
he set sail on the 13th of August, with 9000 men in
about 100 ships. He was invested with supreme civil,
as well as military, command in Ireland ; amply supplied
with material, and a fleet. Ireton, his son-in-law, was
his second in command.

136 OLIVER CROMWELL CHAP.

On landing in Dublin, the general made a speech
to the people, in which he spoke of his purpose as
" the great work against the barbarous and bloodthirsty
Irish, and all their adherents and confederates, for the
propagating of the Gospel of Christ, the establishing of
truth and peace, and restoring that bleeding nation to
its former happiness and tranquillity." His first act was
to remodel the Irish army, making "a huge purge of the
army which we found here : it was an army made up of
dissolute and debauched men " ; and the general issued
a proclamation against swearing and drunkenness, and
another against the " wickedness " that had been taken
by the soldiery " to abuse, rob, and pillage, and too often
to execute cruelties upon the country people," promising
to protect all peaceable inhabitants, and to pay them in
ready money for all goods. Two soldiers were shortly
hanged for disobeying these orders. Having made a
general muster of his forces in Dublin, and formed a
complete body of 15,000 horse and foot, he selected a
force of 10,000 stout, resolute men, and advanced on
Drogheda (in English, Tredagh). Drogheda is a seaport
town on the Boyne, about twenty-three miles due north
of Dublin. It was strongly fortified, and Ormond, as
Clarendon tells us, had put into it " the flower of his army,
both of soldiers and officers, most of them English, to the
number of 3000 foot, and two or three good troops of
horse, provided with all things." Sir Arthur Ashton, an
English Catholic, an officer " of great name and experi-
ence, and who at that time made little doubt of defend-
ing it against all the power of Cromwell," was in chief
command.

Cromwell's horse reached Drogheda on 3d Sep-

viii THE CAMPAIGN IN IRELAND 137

tember, his memorable day ; some skirmishes followed,
and on the 10th the batteries opened in earnest, after
formal summons to the garrison to surrender. A steeple
and a tower were beaten down the first day; all
through the llth the batteries continued, and at length
effected " two reasonable breaches." About five in the
evening of the second day the storm began. "After
some hot dispute we entered, about seven or eight
hundred men; the enemy disputing it very stiffly with
us." But a tremendous rally of the garrison — wherein
Colonel Castle and other officers were killed — drove out
the column, which retreated disheartened and baffled.
Then the general did that which as commander he was
seldom wont to do, and which he passes in silence in
his despatches. " Resolved," says Ludlow, " to put all
upon it, he went down to the breach ; and calling out a
fresh reserve of Colonel Ewer's men, he put himself at
their head, and with the word 'our Lord God,' led
them up again with courage and resolution, though they
met with a hot dispute." Thus encouraged to recover
their loss, they got ground of the enemy, forced him to
quit his entrenchments, and poured into the town.
There many retreated to the Millmount, a place very
strong and difficult of access; "exceedingly high and
strongly palisadoed." This place commanded the whole
town : thither Sir Arthur Ashton and other important
officers had betaken themselves. But the storming
party burst in, and were ordered by Cromwell to put
them all to the sword. The rest of the garrison fled
over the bridge to the northern side of the town ; but
the Ironsides followed them hotly, both horse and foot,
and drove them into St. Peter's Church and the towers

138 OLIVER CROMWELL CHAP.

of the ramparts. St. Peter's Church was set on fire by
Cromwell's order. He writes to the speaker : " Indeed,
being in the heat of action, I forbade them to spare any
that were in arms in the Town : and I think that night
they put to the sword about 2000 men." Next
day the other towers were summoned, and the work of
slaughter was renewed for two days, until the entire
garrison was annihilated. It was unquestionably a
massacre. "That night they put to the sword about
2000 men." In Peter's Church "near 1000 of them
were put to the sword, fleeing thither for safety."
" Their friars were knocked on the head promiscuously."
" I do not think we lost 100 men upon the place." Such
are passages from Cromwell's own despatches.

The slaughter was indeed prodigious. The general
writes : " I believe we put to the sword the whole
number of the defendants. I do not think Thirty of the
whole number escaped with their lives." "The enemy
were about 3000 strong in the town." "I do not
believe, neither do I hear, that any officer escaped with
his life, save only one Lieutenant." He subsequently
gives a detailed list of the slain, amounting to about
3000. Hugh Peters, the chaplain, reports as follows :
"Sir, the truth is, Drogheda is taken, 3552 of the
enemy slain, and 64 of ours. Ashton, the gov-
ernor, killed, none spared." It is also certain that
quarter was refused. "I forbade them to spare any
that were in arms in the town." It is expressly told us
that all officers and all priests taken were killed. From
the days of Clarendon it has been repeated by historians
that men, women, and children were indiscriminately
slaughtered, and there is evidence of an eye-witness to

vin THE CAMPAIGN IN IRELAND 139

that effect ; but this is not believed to have been done
by the order or even with the knowledge of the general.
The Royalist accounts insist that quarter was promised
at first ; and that the butchery of men in cold blood was
carried on for days. Here again the act must have been
exceptional and without authority. [See Appendix C.]
To Cromwell himself this fearful slaughter was a
signal triumph of the truth. " It hath pleased God to
bless our endeavours." "This hath been a marvel-
lous great mercy." "I am persuaded that this is a
righteous judgment of God upon these barbarous
wretches, who have imbued their hands in so much
innocent blood ; and that it will tend to prevent the
effusion of blood for the future. Which are the satis-
factory grounds to such actions, which otherwise cannot
but work remorse and regret." "It was set upon some
of our hearts, That a great thing should be done, not by
power or might, but by the Spirit of God." In the
same sense it was received by Parliament and Council
of State, by some of the noblest spirits of their age.
Ludlow says simply that this "extraordinary severity was
used to discourage others from making opposition." It
had always been the policy of Cromwell in battle to
inflict a crushing defeat ; at Marston, at Naseby, and at
Preston he had " taken execution of the enemy " for
hours and over miles of country. At Basing and else-
where, after a summons and a storm, he had slaughtered
hundreds without mercy. And such was the law of war
in that age, practised on both sides without hesitation.
But the item of numbers and of time tells very heavily
here. The killing of hundreds in hot blood differs from
the massacre of thousands during days. There was no

HO OLIVER CROMWELL CHAP.

such act in the whole Civil War as the massacre — pro-
longed for days — of 3000 men enclosed in walls entirely
at the mercy of their captors, to say nothing of the
promiscuous slaughter of priests, if not of women and
unarmed men. In England such a deed could not have
been done ; and not in Ireland, but that they were
Catholics fighting in defence of their faith. The fact
that the garrison were Catholics, fighting on Irish soil,
placed them, to the Puritan Englishman, out of the pale.
No admiration for Cromwell, for his genius, courage, and
earnestness — no sympathy with the cause that he up-
held in England — can blind us to the truth, that the lurid
light of this great crime burns still after centuries across
the history of England and of Ireland ; that it is one of
those damning charges which the Puritan theology has
yet to answer at the bar of humanity.

The tremendous blow at Drogheda struck terror into
Ormond's forces. Dundalk and Trim were abandoned
in haste. O'Neil swore a great oath that as Cromwell
had stormed Drogheda, if he should storm hell he
should take it. One fort after another yielded ; and in
a fortnight from the taking of Drogheda, Cromwell was
master of the country north of Dublin. Marching from
Dublin south, on the 23d of September, his army took
forts in Wicklow, Arklow, and Enniscorthy ; and on the
1st of October the general encamped before Wexford,
an important seaport at the south-eastern corner of
the island. The town was strong, with a rampart 15
feet thick, a garrison of over 2000 men, 100 cannon,
and in the harbour two ships armed with 54 guns.
Cromwell summoned the governor to surrender, not
obscurely threatening him with the fate of Drogheda.

vin THE CAMPAIGN IN IRELAND 141

"It will clearly appear," he said, "where the guilt will
lie, if innocent persons should come to suffer with the
nocent." His terms were quarter and prison to the
officers, quarter and freedom to the soldiers, protection
from plunder to the town. These terms were refused,
and both sides continued the fight. Suddenly, some
breaches being made in the castle, the captain sur-
rendered it, and by a surprise the whole army of the
Commonwealth poured into the town. The townsmen
took part in the defence; and townsmen and garrison
together were forced into the market-place. There, as
at Drogheda, a promiscuous massacre ensued. Upwards
of 2000 were slain, and with them not a few of the
citizens ; and the town was delivered over to pillage.
It is asserted by the Catholic writers that a body of
women, who had taken refuge round the cross, were
deliberately slaughtered, and that a general massacre
took place without regard to sex or age. Priests were
killed at once, and in the sack and pillage, undoubtedly
some non-combatants, it may be some women and
children. But these things were incidents of such a
storm, and were not done by design or order of the
general. This is his own story : —

" Whilst I was preparing of it ; studying to preserve the
Town from plunder, that it might be of the more use to you
and your Army, — the Captain, who was one of the Com-
missioners, being fairly treated, yielded up the Castle to us.
Upon the top of which our men no sooner appeared, but the
Enemy quitted the Walls of the Town ; which our men per-
ceiving, ran violently upon the Town with their ladders, and
stormed it. And when they were come into the market-
place, the Enemy making a stiff resistance, our forces brake
them ; and then put all to the sword that came in their way.

142 OLIVER CROMWELL CHAP.

Two boatfuls of the Enemy attempting to escape, being over-
prest with numbers, sank ; whereby were drowned near three-
hundred of them. I believe, in all, there was lost of the
Enemy not many less than Two-thousand ; and I believe not
Twenty of yours from first to last of the Siege. And indeed
it hath, not without cause, been deeply set upon our hearts,
That, we intending better to this place than so great a ruin,
hoping the Town might be of more use to you and your
Army, yet God would not have it so ; but by an unexpected
providence, in His righteous justice, brought a just judgment
upon them ; causing them to become a prey to the Soldier —
who in their piracies had made preys of so many families, and
now with their bloods to answer the cruelties which they have
exercised upon the lives of divers poor Protestants ! . . .

" This Town is now so in your power, that of the former
inhabitants, I believe scarce one in twenty can challenge any
property in their houses. Most of them are run away, and
many of them killed in this service. And it were to be wished
that an honest people would come and plant here."

The blow that had desolated Drogheda and Wexford
did not need to be repeated. Eoss was taken; the
Munster garrisons — Cork, Kinsale, and others — joined
the Commonwealth. And within three months of
Cromwell's march from Dublin, the whole of the towns
on the eastern and southern sides of Ireland, except
Waterford and some others, were reduced to the Parlia-
ment. Waterford resisted him ; a wet winter set in ;
and with the wet, dysentery and fever. Cromwell fell
ill ; many officers sickened ; General Jones died. " What
England lost hereby is above me to speak," wrote the
general. " I am sure I lost a noble friend and com-
panion in labours. You see how God mingles out the
cup to us. Indeed we are at this time a crazy company :
yet we live in His sight ; and shall work the time that
is appointed us, and shall rest after that in peace."

vin THE CAMPAIGN IN IRELAND 143

After a short rest, on the 29th of January, Cromwell
was again in the field. He passed into the heart of the
island — into Kilkenny and Tipperary ; Clogheen, Castle-
town, Fethard, Callan, Cashel, Cahir, Kilkenny, Carrick,
were taken after a short defence ; and Clonmel at last
surrendered after a desperate attempt at storm, which
cost Cromwell, it is said, 2000 men. This was his last
great fight in Ireland. He had now crushed opposition
in the whole east and south of the island; the north
had returned to the Protestant cause ; Waterford fell
soon after; and except Limerick, Galway, and a few
fortresses, the Parliament's forces were masters of the
island. Cromwell had been nine months in Ireland,
and at no time possessed an army of more than 15,000
men. Within that time he had taken a score of strong
places, and in a series of bloody encounters had dispersed
or annihilated armies of far greater number than his
own. An official summons to England had been sent in
January ; it was not till the end of May that he actually
obeyed it.

As Cromwell's practice in warfare in Ireland differed
somewhat from what he observed elsewhere, and as from
that day to this it has been the subject of furious in-
vective, a few words thereon are plainly needed. Crom-
well had gone to Ireland, at imminent risk to his cause,
to recover it to the Parliament in the shortest possible
time, and with a relatively small army. He had gone
there first to punish (as was believed) a wholesale
massacre and a social revolution, to restore the Irish
soil to England, and to replace the Protestant ascend-
ancy. In the view of the Commonwealth government,
the mass was by law a crime, Catholic priests were

144 OLIVER CROMWELL CHAP.

legally outlaws, and all who resisted the Parliament
were constructively guilty of murder and rebellion.
Such were the accepted axioms of the whole Puritan
party, and of Cromwell as much as any man.

In such a war he held that where a place was stormed
after summons, all in arms might justly be put to the
sword, though no longer capable of resistance,, and
though they amounted to thousands. " They," he
writes, "refusing conditions seasonably offered, were
all put to the sword." Repeatedly he shot all officers
who surrendered at discretion. Officers who had once
served the Parliament he hanged. Priests, taken alive,
were hanged. "As for your clergymen, as you call them,"
wrote Oliver to the Governor of Kilkenny, " in case you
agree for a surrender, they shall march away safely ; but
if they fall otherwise into my hands, I believe they know
what to expect from me." At Gowran the castle sur-
rendered. " The next day, the Colonel, the Major, and
the rest of the Commission officers were shot to death :
... In the same castle also he took a Popish Priest,
who was chaplain to the Catholics in this regiment ; who
was caused to be hanged." The Bishop of Ross, march-
ing to save Clonmel with 5000 men, was defeated by
Broghill, captured, and hanged in sight of his own men.
The Bishop of Clogher was routed by Coote and Ven-
ables and shared the same fate. " All their friars were
knocked on the head promiscuously," Cromwell wrote
at Drogheda, as the Catholic martyrologies assert with
torture. Peaceable inhabitants were not to be molested.
But all who had taken part in or supported the rebellion
of 1641 were liable to justice.

For soldiers he found a new career. By a stroke of

vm THfi CAMPAIGN IN IRELAND 145

profound policy he encouraged foreign embassies to
enlist Irish volunteers, giving them a free pass abroad.
And thus it is said some 40,000 Irishmen ultimately
passed into the service of foreign sovereigns. With
great energy and skill the Lord-Lieutenant set about
the reorganisation of government in Ireland. A leading
feature of this was the Cromwellian settlement after-
wards carried out under the Protectorate, by which
immense tracts of land in the provinces of Ulster,
Leinster, and Munster were allotted to English settlers,
and the landowners of Irish birth removed into Con-
naught.

Cromwell has left on record his own principles of
action in the famous Declaration which he issued in
January in reply to the Irish bishops : —

Ireland, he says, was once united to England. English-
men had inheritances and leases which they had purchased :
and they lived peaceably. " You broke this Union. You,
unprovoked, put the English to the most unheard-of and
most barbarous massacre (without respect of sex or age) that
ever the sun beheld." It is a fig-leaf of pretence, that they
fight for their king : really it is for men guilty of blood : —
bellum prelaticum et religiosum — as you say. " You are a part
of Anti-Christ, whose kingdom the Scripture so expressly
speaks should be laid in blood, yea in the blood of the saints."
"You quote my own words at Ross," he says, "that where the
Parliament of England have power, the exercise of the mass
will not be allowed of; and you say that this is a design to
extirpate the Catholic religion. I cannot extirpate wbat bas
never been rooted. Tbese are my intentions. I shall not,
where I have power, suffer the exercise of the mass. Nor
shall I suffer any Papists, wbere I find them seducing the
people, or by overt act violating tbe laws." "As for the
people, what thoughts tbey bave in matters of religion in
tbeir own breasts I cannot reach." But as to tbe charge of
massacre, destruction, or banishment he says : " Give MS an

L

146 OLIVER CROMAVELL CHAP.

instance of one man since my coming into Ireland, not in arms,
massacred, destroyed or banished; concerning the massacre or the
destruction of whom justice hath not been done, or endeavoured
to be done."

This very pointed and daring challenge could hardly
have been publicly made by such a man as Cromwell,
if, to his knowledge, a slaughter of women and unarmed
men had occurred. On the other hand, it is certain that
priests and others had been killed in cold blood ; and a
general who delivers over a city to pillage, and forbids
quarter, can hardly say where outrage and massacre will
cease. As to banishment, the " Cromwellian settlement"
was necessarily based on the banishment of those whom
the settlers displaced.

With regard to the policy of confiscation and resettle-
ment, Cromwell warmly justifies it. It is the just way
of meeting rebellion, he says. You have forfeited your
estates, and it is just to raise money by escheating your
lands. But apart from the land forfeited, which is but
a part of the account, if ever men were engaged in a
just and righteous cause it was this, he asserts : —

" We are come to ask au account of the innocent blood
that hath been shed ; and to endeavour to bring to an
account, — by the presence and blessing of the Almighty, in
whom alone is our hope and strength, — all who, by appearing
in arms, seek to justify the same. We come to break the
power of lawless Rebels, who having cast off the Authority of
England, live as enemies to Human Society ; whose principles,
the world hath experience, are, To destroy and subjugate all
men not complying with them. We come, by the assistance
of God, to hold forth and maintain the lustre and glory of
English Liberty in a Nation where we have an undoubted
right to do it ; — wherein the people of Ireland (if they listen
not to such seducers as you are) may equally participate in

vin THE CAMPAIGN IN IRELAND 147

all benefits ; to use liberty and fortune equally with English-
men, if they keep out of arms."

Such was the basis of the famous " Cromwellian
settlement " — by far the most thorough act in the long
history of the conquest of Ireland ; by far the most
wholesale effort to impose on Ireland the Protestant
faith and English ascendancy. Wholesale and thorough,
but not enough for its purpose. It failed like all the
others; did more, perhaps, than any other to bind
Ireland to the Catholic Church, and to alienate Irish-
men from the English rule. On the Irish race it has
left undying memories and a legend of tyranny which
is summed up in the peasants' saying of the Curse of
Cromwell,

Cromwell, not worse than the Puritans and English
of his age, but nobler and more just, must yet for
generations to come bear the weight of the legendary
"curse." He was the incarnation of Puritan passion,
the instrument of English ambition; the official authority
by whom the whole work was carried out, the one man
ultimately responsible for the rest ; and it is thus that
on him lies chiefly the weight of this secular national
quarrel

Oliver, leaving Ireland to his son-in-law Ireton, and
appointing civil and military chiefs, reached London on
the 31st of May. Here he was received with a salute
of big guns, honours, and acclamations; Fairfax, mem-
bers of Parliament, and a great multitude coming out to
welcome him. The Cockpit was appointed as his resi-
dence; the city of London, Parliament, and many
persons of quality offered their congratulations " on the
safe arrival of his Excellence after so many dangers

148 OLIVER CROMWELL CHAP.

both by sea and land, wherein God had preserved him,
and the wonderful successes which He had given him."
As he passed Tyburn in his thronged procession, one
said to him, " See what a multitude of people come to
attend your triumph ! " He answered with a smile and
very unconcerned, " More would come to see me hanged I "

APPENDIX C

No part of the history of these times is more beset with
contradictory accounts than the details of the Irish war.
Race hatred and sectarian mendacity have carried contra-
diction to the extreme limit. Was the garrison of Drogheda
English or Irish ; was there a promiscuous massacre there of
citizens and women 1 On these two points there is deliberate
contradiction.

As to the garrison, Clarendon says, "most of them
English." In another place he speaks of the "massacre of
that body of English at Tredagb." So also say Ludlow and
Bates. Wbitelocke says, " mostly Irish." Ormond says tbey
were cbiefly Catholics ; and tbe Irisb writers interpret tbis
to mean Irisb. Cromwell's despatch at Drogheda ends thus :
"2500 Foot- soldiers besides Staff- officers, Surgeons, etc."
This appears in the Parliamentary History with tbe added
words, "and many inhabitants," and has been so copied into
many histories.

Tbe letter from Clonmel in Cromwelliana (10th May
1650) runs thus: "We discovered the enemy to be gone,
and very early tbis morning pursued them, and fell upon
their reare of straglers, and killed above 200, besides tlwse we
slew in the storm" S. Dillingbam, writing to Sancroft from
Gutter Lane (May 1650), evidently reporting this news, re-
lates it thus : " They were mad wben tbey came in, and send-
ing to pursue, cut off two hundred women and children ! " (Gary,
ii. 218). Tbe Rev. Denis Murpby, S.J., in his Cromwell
in Ireland cites this passage, but alters "they paid dear"
into " we paid dear," as if from an eye-witness.

VIH THE CAMPAIGN IN IRELAND 149

Parliament voted "that the House doth approve the
execution done at Drogheda, as an act both of justice to
them and mercy to others who may be warned by it ; and
that the Council of State prepare a letter to be signed by the
Speaker." Ludlow, Fairfax, Col. Hutchinson, Vane, White-
locke, were members of the Council of State ; Milton was its
Secretary ; Fairfax was Commander-in-Chief. Milton writes
in his panegyric (Defensio Secunda) : " Tu, uno statim prcelio
Hibernicorum opes fregisti." Lucy Hutchinson calmly men-
tions " how Cromwell finished the conquest of Ireland," and
seems to see in it only the hand of God.

CHAPTER IX

THE CAMPAIGN IN SCOTLAND — WORCESTER
A.D. 1650-1651. JETAT. 51-52

WAR between England and Scotland had long been
imminent. When Cromwell returned from Ireland it
became his immediate task. In June Charles landed
in Scotland, and was proclaimed there king of the three
kingdoms. The Kirk party which had defeated Mon-
trose determined to support the Stuart on his taking the
Covenant. They collected an army on the border, and
inflamed the Scotch people against the Commonwealth.
Underneath the ancient national quarrel lay the yet
deeper quarrel of religion. The dominant party in
Scotland were fanatical partisans of the most rigid
form of Presbyterian orthodoxy. The chiefs of the
English Commonwealth, who had suppressed Presby-
terianism and monarchy together, were no less resolute
to found a Bible freedom of Independency.

It is now useless to discuss whether the Scotch had
given just cause for war ; whether war between the two
countries could be avoided by wisdom and moderation.
Fairfax doubted if it were just, and the famous deputa-
tion which Cromwell headed failed to shake him. We
officers, said the Lord-Lieutenant, desire to serve under

CH. ix THE CAMPAIGN IN SCOTLAND— WORCESTER 151

no other general. The Scotch have invaded us once,
and give good cause to think they intend another
invasion. War between us is unavoidable. Is it better
to have this war in the bowels of another country or in
our own ? Cromwell was certainly in earnest ; but no
arguments could shake Fairfax; he resigned his com-
mission, and never again took part in public affairs.
The next day Cromwell was appointed Commander-in-
Chief of all the forces raised and to be raised by
authority of Parliament. Three days later he set out
for the north, where an army of some 16,000 men had
for some time been mustering.

The sudden advance of Cromwell, fresh from the
bloody campaign in Ireland, struck dismay into the
Scotch border. The preachers inveighed against him as a
blasphemer, leading an army of plunderers and murderers.
The country was laid bare and the male inhabitants
withdrawn from the border up to Edinburgh. David
Lesley, Cromwell's old comrade at Marston, a thorough
soldier, trained in the wars of Gustavus, was put in
command; his plan of campaign was to wear out the
invader by avoiding battle, and cutting off his supplies.
The English general crossed the border on 22d July,
and advanced somewhat slowly along the coast, resting
on his ships. The sternest discipline was enforced.
Then began a long and characteristic duel of manifestoes
and declarations, issued by the chiefs and preachers in
each army. Both sides, with abundant quotations from
Scripture, insisted that God was on their side. The
Scotch maintained that the Commonwealth had broken
the Covenant. The Cromwellians retorted that the
Scotch Presbyterians were laying the seeds of perpetual

152 OLIVER CROMWELL CHAP.

war by taking their grand enemy to their bosoms, and
by engaging to restore him to his throne in England and
Ireland. It was not so much a battle between two
armies, as between two rival congregations in arms.
Both sides intensely believed that God was with them,
and His Word gave clear assurance that all their opponents
should be utterly cast down. Never was national and
religious animosity more fiercely kindled amongst men
who had so much in common, and who were implicitly
guided by the same Book. It was a religious war be-
tween two sects, each of which regarded the other as
schismatics. Thus the English army entered Scotland
consumed with zeal to fight it out to the last man in
defence of the Commonwealth, and "to live and die
with their renowned general."

Some indecisive actions followed, where the great
superiority of the English soldiers was manifest, and
especially their strength in horse. Lesley doggedly
refused battle, and fell back to a line resting on the
coast between Edinburgh and Leith, with some 22,000
men. All through August Cromwell strove to force
Lesley to a battle ; but " he lay very strong," and could
not be attacked in his positions. The weather was wet
and stormy ; provisions were failing ; sickness disabled
a tenth of the men ; and the situation became indeed
grave. From side to side the English general attempted
to cut off the Scotch from their supplies, but the whole
north and north-west lay open to them ; Cromwell
could not advance far from his base on the coast, and
the ships could not lie in the Forth.

Unable to force the enemy to battle, he again betook
himself to spiritual arms, and issued those two amazing

ix THE CAMPAIGN IN SCOTLAND— WORCESTER 153

appeals — one to the Kirk and the other to their general.
As in the midst of his Irish campaign he passionately
inveighed against the Irish bishops, so now, invader in
arms as he was, he laboriously argued with the godly
men of the Kirk as with brothers in the Lord. " I
beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible
you may be mistaken." Are you sure, he argues, that
this your league with wicked and carnal men is a covenant
of God ? "I pray you read the twenty-eighth of Isaiah,
from the fifth to the fifteenth verse. And do not scorn
to know that it is the Spirit that quickens and giveth
life." And to General Lesley he writes : "That under
pretence of the Covenant, a king should be taken in by
you, to be imposed upon us " — a king who now has a
Popish army fighting for and under him in Ireland, and
who is surrounded by Malignants fighting and plotting
for him in England and elsewhere. It does not appear
that either side designed these declarations for their
own men more than the enemy. Both profoundly
believed their own cause; and if they did not think
they could persuade the other, they could not under-
stand how godly men could resist truth so plain and
Scriptural.

Twice had Cromwell advanced upon the enemy, and
twice he had retired baffled. His men were weary with
marching, exhausted by the wet and storms, ill-fed, and
reduced by disease, when, sullenly fighting, they fell
back on Dunbar, 1st September. By a very skilful
manoeuvre Lesley passed his whole army round the
retreating invader, planted himself to the south of him
securely on the Lammermuir Hills, and occupied with a
strong guard the pass which was the key of the road to

154 OLIVER CROMWELL CHAP.

England. Cromwell's position was now very critical.
He had scarcely 11,000 men left under arms : and these,
as one of them wrote, "a poor, scattered, hungry, dis-
couraged army." The enemy, just double his number,
was placed on a strong range of hills between him and
his own country, and had occupied the only road by the
sea along which he could retreat across the border. His
whole force lay on a small promontory jutting out into
the Northern Sea, with no other base than his ships.
He saw the danger fully ; and on the 2d of September
he wrote thus privately to warn Sir Arthur Haselrig,
the Governor of Newcastle : —

" We are upon an engagement very difficult. The enemy
hath blocked up our way at the pass at Cockburnspath,
through which we cannot get. almost without a miracle. He
lieth so upon the hills that we know not how to come that
way without great difficulty ; and our lying here daily con-
surneth our men, who fall sick beyond imagination." Then
he warns the governor to provide against a catastrophe, to
get together what forces he can, to send to friends in the
south, to inform Sir H. Vane, but not to make it public.
" Whatever becomes of us, it will be well for you to get what
forces you can together ; and the south to help what they
can. The business nearly concerneth all good people." But
he goes on : " All shall work for good. Our spirits are com-
fortable, praised be the Lord ! though our present condition
be as it is."

With such foresight Oliver faced a great peril, that it
might not lead to the ruin of the Commonwealth. As
Harvey, one of his attendants, writes : " He was a strong
man, in the dark perils of war, in the high places of the
field ; hope shone in him like a pillar of fire, when it had
gone out in all the others."

Cromwell's position was " very difficult," as he said,

ix THE CAMPAIGN IN SCOTLAND— WORCESTER 155

but not desperate. He was not yet driven to embark
either men or guns. A battle would give him victory ;
and one mistake of the enemy would secure him his
battle. That mistake at last Lesley made. Either
forced by the Kirk committee and the influence of the
preachers over his men, or urged on to crush the invader
at one blow, he began to draw down his army towards
the shore. That very afternoon, 2d September, Crom-
well, walking with Lambert, noticed the change of
position; how the enemy's right wing had descended
into the plain. "The Lord hath delivered them into
our hand ! " was the cry of Cromwell, as vague tradition
relates. This he thought, if he did not utter the words ;
Lambert and Monk were of the same mind, and so were
other officers. That night a plan of battle was drawn up,
the formations made, and leaders were chosen for each line.
Lesley had drawn down his wing to the coast, hoping
to surround and crush the English, in the act, as he
supposed, of embarking his men. Cromwell's design
was to hold the main Scotch army with his big guns,
whilst he fell suddenly with his best troops on Lesley's
right wing, and so to roll it back upon its centre. The
night was wild and wet ; the moon covered with clouds.
The English lay partly in tents ; the Scotch on the open
hillside, crouched for shelter in the soaked shocks of
corn. Both armies rested beside their arms, waiting
eagerly for dawn ; and on both sides many gathered in
companies, and prayed aloud and for the last time to the
God of Battles.

At four in the morning by the light of the moon the
English began to move. Two hours were spent in the
sodden fields in completing their formation. Then they

156 OLIVER CROMWELL CHAP.

advanced to the charge with the word that day : The
Lord of Hosts. For some time the dispute was hot and
stiff. The cannons roared against the main line of the
Scotch army, still posted on its hill, and unable to deploy
freely across the brook and ravine in their front. At
first their right wing in the plain drove back the English
troopers across the brook, where it opens out towards
the sea. But, supported by the foot which now ad-
vanced, and aided by Cromwell's favourite resource of a
flank charge of cavalry, they returned to the assault and
drove back the enemy, both horse and foot. " After the
first repulse," runs the general's despatch, " they were
made by the Lord of Hosts as stubble to their swords."
" The best of the Scotch horse being broken through and
through in less than an hour's dispute, their whole army
being put to confusion, it became a total rout ; our men
having the chase and execution of them near eight
miles." The right wing of Lesley was alone the free
part of his army. It had been outmatched and utterly
crushed in less than an hour by Cromwell's main force.
Three thousand of the Scotch were cut down in the first
onset. "They run! I profess they run !" cried Oliver
as he watched the charge. The main body of the Scotch
being planted on a hillside, and behind a deep brook
that ran in a ravine between them and the enemy, had
long been pounded by Cromwell's cannon without being
able to deploy. As at last they descended the hill to
support their right wing, it dashed in upon them in its
flight, the horsemen in panic riding down their supports.
The whole army broke and dispersed, flying in all direc-
tions : some south, some north.

Just then over the eastern ocean burst the first gleam

ix THE CAMPAIGN IN SCOTLAND— WORCESTER 157

of the sun through the morning mist. And above the
roar of the battle was heard the voice of the general :
"Let God arise, let his enemies be scattered." Then, as
the whole Scotch army fled in wild confusion, " the Lord-
General made a halt," steadying his men and firing them
afresh for the pursuit: he sang the 117th Psalm: "0
praise the Lord, all ye nations : praise him, all ye people.
For his merciful kindness is great towards us : and the
truth of the Lord endureth for ever. Praise ye the
Lord."

Such was Dunbar battle on Cromwell's great day.
The overthrow had been complete. Three thousand
dead lay on the field; thousands fell in the chase;
10,000 prisoners were taken; the whole baggage and
train, all the artillery, great and small; 15,000 stand of
arms, 200 colours. On the part of the victors, but two
officers and twenty men had fallen. It is seldom that
war sees a victory so rapid, so overwhelming, and so
wholly one-sided.

The Scotch were brave and hardy soldiers, adequately
equipped, fired with religious enthusiasm, and twice as
numerous as the English. They were at home, resting
on their capital, well provisioned, and led by a very ex-
perienced soldier, who had baffled Cromwell for six
weeks. But the bulk of their men were raw, unorganised
levies ; the great majority of the officers were without
any training, and the preachers had far more authority
than the officers. The Scotch host was rather a church
than an army. Cromwell's army from first to last was
a perfect body of warriors — generals, officers, horse, and
foot ; unsurpassed in courage, skill in arms, in discipline,
and in morale. The campaign had been one to try the

158 OLIVER CROMWELL CHAP.

best troops ; and they had never wavered before disease,
hunger, or fatigue. Cromwell, if not one of the great
masters of strategy, was certainly a consummate leader
on the field of battle. His tactics on the day of Dunbar
were as complete as those of Lesley were faulty. His
men were troops never surpassed as soldiers, stirred with
the energy of martyrs : they were led that day with all
the insight and the swoop that mark a great commander.
It is another and more complex question whether
Cromwell had shown strategic skill in the campaign.
Till the day of Dunbar his campaign had been barely a
success. He had no base but his ships, a doubtful re-
source in such a season and on such a coast ; and he
made three marches, at least, exposed to singular risk.
But before we can judge them to be military blunders
we must remember that he was sure of himself — sure of
his men. He knew that they were consummate soldiers,
facing ill -trained levies. He knew that one hour of
battle would decide the campaign, and he acted as so
many great generals have acted when, trusting in their
own star, and knowing that they led unconquered
veterans against a rude militia, they have broken every
rule of warfare and plucked victory out of extreme peril.
So Hannibal at Cannae, manoeuvring in the plain with a
smaller but trained army, had drawn down the larger host
of the Eomans from their hills, turned suddenly upon
them, and crushed them in one awful ruin. There too,
till the hour of battle, the victor seemed baffled and
hemmed in ; there too the defeated army was ruined by
pride, self-will, faction, and patriotic rhetoric ; and there
also it was seen that a great general at the head of a
veteran army can outmatch any odds ; nay, the courage

ix THE CAMPAIGN IN SCOTLAND— WORCESTER 159

and enthusiasm of a brave people fighting for their altars
and their homes.

The next day Cromwell sent on Lambert to occupy
Edinburgh, himself remaining at Dunbar, much em-
barrassed with his prisoners. Five thousand sick or
feeble men he sent away : 5000 others were de-
spatched to England, where they died like flies. That
day he wrote to his wife a few words of affection,
adding that he was growing an old man, and felt the
infirmities of age marvellously stealing upon him. And
he found time in the midst of the campaign to write
many other letters to his family and friends. Disaster
had broken up the Scotch into several parties. The
king, with a new army, was holding out in the High-
lands, resting on Perth and Stirling. Cromwell, with
his generals, occupied the country south of the Forth, and
thence to the Clyde. Long exhortations and wrestlings in
spirit, blasts and counter-blasts, passed between the chiefs
of the two nations; unceasing efforts were made to reassure
the inhabitants ; and gradually the bulk of the southern
population became accustomed to the firm and moderate
rule of Cromwell. On the 1st of January 1651 Charles II.
was crowned king at Scone ; and gradually withdrawing
himself from the Kirk, he gathered an army of the old
Royalist type.

The winter was severe, and Cromwell failed to shake
the royal army at Stirling. In one of these expeditions,
early in February, the general was seized with his old
enemy — ague. He had a severe attack in March 1648 ;
others in Ireland in 1649-50; now a third in less than
a year. It fell on him in three successive relapses, en-
dangering his life, breaking his constitution, and paralys-

160 OLIVER CROMWELL CHAP.

ing his activity until June. " I thought I should have
died of this fit of sickness," he writes to the Council of
State, "but the Lord seemeth to dispose otherwise."
And to his wife he writes : " In these hopes I wait, and
am not without expectation of a gracious return. Pray
for me. . . . Truly I am not able as yet to write much.
I am weary ; and rest, thine." He still, in the intervals
of his sickness, marches and gives orders, argues, prays,
and preaches, at least as eager to convince as to conquer
his misguided Presbyterian brethren. "I shall not
need," he writes to the Council, "to recite the extremity
of my last sickness : it was so violent that, indeed, my
nature was not able to bear the weight thereof. But the
Lord was pleased to deliver me, beyond expectation ;
and to give me cause to say once more, ' He hath plucked
me out of the grave ! ' " So he had written to Fairfax,
in his sickness of 1648 : "I received in myself the sen-
tence of death, that I might learn to trust in Him that
raiseth from the dead, and have no confidence in the
flesh. It's a blessed thing to die daily."

His life was saved, but his health was visibly shaken.
It was observed that he had grown an old man. And
the warning was not lost on him. No portion of his
career is more full than is this Scotch campaign of affec-
tionate communings with his family and intimates, medi-
tations on the will of God, and kindly dealing with all
with whom he came into personal contact. Cromwell
resumed the field in June ; and after fruitless attempts
to take or surround Stirling, he boldly crossed the Forth
into Fife, designing to cut off the Royalist communica-
tion. A successful engagement by Lambert, where the
Scotch lost 2000 men, gave him a firm hold north of the

ix THE CAMPAIGN IN SCOTLAND— WORCESTER 161

Forth. He passed across it himself with his main force,
and placed himself between Stirling and Perth — which
latter surrendered after one day's siege.

The success of Cromwell in his rear, and divisions
in his own followers, drove Charles to the desperate
adventure with which the long struggle closed. At the
end of July he suddenly broke up his camp at Stirling,
and made a dash for England by way of Carlisle and the
north-western counties. Such an adventure had been
talked of and even expected by the Council since the
beginning of the year. It was entirely in the reckless
spirit of the overweening cavaliers; and Charles had
long been withdrawing from the Presbyterians and the
politicians to place himself in the hands of the Koyalist
soldiers. Cromwell heard of the march as he lay before
Perth ; it is plain with neither surprise nor alarm.
There is every reason to believe that he deliberately opened
the way for it by marching upon Perth whilst he left
the south open. At least, he accepted the alternative
either of driving Charles into the western Highlands, or
of leaving him free to dash upon his ruin in England.
And of the two Cromwell much preferred the last.

The danger was far more apparent than real. It was
hardly more serious than the raid of his young kinsman
to Derby a hundred years later. There were ample forces
to hold and to surround Charles, and little risk of his
rousing a new war in England. Cromwell left a garrison
in Perth, sent Monk with 6000 men to reduce Stirling
and to maintain Scotland, and himself with his main army
hastened back across the border by way of Berwick —

" Resolving," he writes, " to make what speed we can up to
the enemy, — who, in his desperation and fear, and out of

M

162 OLIVER CROMWELL CHAI-.

inevitable necessity, is run to try what he can do this way.
I do apprehend that if he goes for England, being some few
days' march before us, it will trouble some men's thoughts ;
and may occasion some inconveniences." He then explains
that the present campaign will end the war, and avoid another
winter in Scotland. " The Lord," he adds, " will make the
desperateness of this counsel of theirs to appear, and the folly
of it also. When England was much more unsteady than
now ; and when a much more considerable army of theirs,
unfoiled, invaded you ; and we had but a weak force to make
resistance at Preston — upon deliberate advice, we chose rather
to put ourselves between their army and Scotland : and how
that succeeded is not well to be forgotten ! This is not out
of choice on our part, but by some kind of necessity ; and it
is to be hoped will have the like issue."

General Harrison, with a strong body of horse on the
border, was ordered to hang on the enemy's flank. Lam-
bert, with the main body of the cavalry, was pushed on
to follow up his rear. Levies were summoned on many
sides, the towns were defended by volunteers, and Crom-
well's main army followed with the utmost rapidity.

Charles marched on through Cumberland and Lanca-
shire with a jaded army, some 12,000 strong, summon-
ing towns and calling for recruits; but he met no
response. Lord Derby raised a force to join him, but it
was cut to pieces by Lilburne ; the towns resisted ; the
country-people flew at his approach, driving off their
cattle ; Fairfax raised his men in Yorkshire ; Colonel
Hutchinson in Nottingham ; and by the time the king
had reached Shropshire, Lambert and Harrison faced him
with an equal body of soldiers far better than his own.
The Council of State worked night and day with extra-
ordinary energy; county militias were everywhere muster-
ing ; and Charles, baffled and disheartened, turned to the

ix THE CAMPAIGN IN SCOTLAND— WORCESTER 163

south-west to Worcester. Here, towards the end of
August, Cromwell arrived. He had marched from Perth
in little more than three weeks, and found himself in com-
mand of more than 30,000 men. Charles was now brought
to bay. His men were exhausted by their march in a hostile
country, and were circled round with enemies. " We have
one stout argument, despair," wrote the Duke of Hamil-
ton ; " for we must now either stoutly fight it or die."
Cromwell had before him the last cavalier army, which
his own troops outnumbered nearly three to one. The
Civil War was about to close. .

Charles held at Worcester a very strong position.
The city was stoutly fortified; it lay on the left or
eastern bank of the Severn, a little above the point
where the Teme flows into it from the west. A strong
fort on a steep hill in advance of the walls defended the
city on its south-eastern angle, and a bridge connected it
with a suburb on the right, or western, bank of the
Severn. Charles posted his main force in the triangle
formed by the two rivers, using the city and its outworks
as a powerful t6te-de-pont, or entrenched camp, whence,
behind strong walls and on the inner line, his troops
could quickly operate, now on the right, now on the left
side of the Severn. He broke up the bridge over the
Severn at Upton lower down, and occupied in force the
bridge over the Teme. There, h-chevcd on two rivers,
and in the triangle between them, the Royalist army
stood at bay.

Cromwell appeared before Worcester on the 28th of
August. Having an overwhelming force, he was able to
divide his army in two sections, and to attack on both
sides of the Severn with two forces, each outnumbering

164 OLIVER CROMWELL CHAP.

the enemy. He himself fortified the hill on the eastern
side of the river, and from his batteries cannonaded the
city. Fleetwood was despatched down the Severn, which,
with great spirit, he crossed on the broken bridge,
wounded Massey, the Royalist general, drove back the
Scotch on to the Teme, and planted himself firmly
on the western bank of the Severn. From the 28th of
August till 3d of September the batteries played on the
city, the works drawing closer round it, and the besieged
continually giving ground. At dawn on the 3d of
September — his fortunate day — Cromwell ordered his
final assault. " This day twelvemonth," runs a despatch,
" was glorious at Dunbar, this day hath been glorious at
Worcester. The word then was 'The Lord of Hosts,'
and so it was now ; and indeed the Lord of Hosts was
wonderfully with us."

Fleetwood began the day with assailing the Scots on
the Teme, Cromwell aiding with a force from the other
bank, and between them they succeeded in building
two bridges of boats close together ; one across Severn,
the other across Teme. The triangle thus lost its two
river defences. Fleetwood poured into it across the
Teme from Upton, and Cromwell, heading the van in
person, poured into it across the Severn. The Scotch
were driven back from one defence to another, fighting
desperately; but they had been taken in flank, and
were completely overpowered by the forces converging
upon them from both armies. The king, who watched
the fight from the tower of the Cathedral, hastily with-
drew his men across Severn bridge into the city ; and
at once commenced a skilful and vigorous manoeuvre.
It was now afternoon : the city was still unbroken, and

ix THE CAMPAIGN IN SCOTLAND— WORCESTER 165

a large part of the Royalist army was safe behind its
walls. Suddenly dashing out from the south-eastern
gates upon the remnant of Cromwell's army left on the
left bank of the Severn, Charles, at the head of his cavalry,
broke a regiment of foot and began to force back the
weakened wing. Oliver, instantly perceiving the change
of battle, galloped over the bridge of boats back to the
troops he had left, passed over again his foot and horse,
and fell upon the royal forces. These were quickly
driven in, fighting desperately from point to point into
the now closing shades of evening. Fort Royal, disdain-
ing to yield to Cromwell's summons, was stormed, and all
within it put to the sword. By eight o'clock the city
gates were forced, and pell-mell the flying and the
pursuers burst into the crowded streets. There a
fearful carnage ensued. Fighting went on from street
to street far into the night ; and the city was delivered
over to pillage. The overthrow was complete. Three
thousand dead Scots lay on the field : 10,000 prisoners
were taken. The remnant of the fugitives were cut
down in the retreat ; Hamilton, Derby, Massey, Lauder-
dale, Lesley, and all the leaders were taken prisoners.
"My Lord-General did exceedingly hazard himself,
riding up and down in' the midst of the fire." It was
"as stiff a contest for four or five hours as ever I have
seen." The loss of the victors was under 200 men.
" The dimensions of this mercy," wrote Cromwell to the
Speaker, "are above my thoughts. It is, for aught I
know, a crowning mercy." And then he breaks forth
in the very hour of victory, as at Dunbar, as at Drogheda,
as at Naseby, to impress on Parliament the great
lessons which this mercy appeared to him to teach.

166 OLIVER CROMWELL CHAP.

Cromwell was right. The Royalist cause was utterly
crushed out at Worcester. He never again appeared in
the field; and during his lifetime the sword was not
drawn again in England.

In many respects this last campaign differs much
from all that went before it. In the month that elapsed,
from 3d August to the 3d of September, the army that
fought at Dunbar had marched 300 miles. New armies
had been mustered in many counties, equipped, supplied,
and made to converge by a common plan, had first
controlled the Royalist invaders and then had hemmed
them in, as in a circle of iron. Not a single scheme
miscarried ; and from the hour that Charles crossed the
border he had never had a chance. And so too the
battle of Worcester was far more complex than any
which Cromwell had hitherto fought. The operations
in which it culminated were carried on continuously
for a whole week. The simultaneous attack on both
sides of the city, and the advance along both sides of
two rivers, was a very complex manoeuvre. To build
two bridges of boats in mid -battle, to pass an army
twice across a rapid river in the same engagement and
within a few hours, is a bold and difficult achievement.
It demanded in the troops an alertness and precision of
discipline ; in their officers experience and skill ; and in
their commander a consummate mastery of his resources
and confidence in his men. It was fully justified by
success. Not a single combination broke down. And
this singular and complex battle would alone suffice to
place the name of Cromwell high in the rank of
tacticians, unless we judge his own impetuous courage to
savour too much of the general of division.

ix THE CAMPAIGN IN SCOTLAND— WORCESTER 167

Here Cromwell, at the age of fifty-two, sheathed the
sword which he had girt on at the age of forty-three.
To judge by the test of success, few generals have ever
done more. Not only did he never command in any
battle that did not result in utter ruin to his enemy, but
no single operation of war that he ever undertook had
failed. With some 15,000 men he practically reconquered
Ireland in nine months; with a little larger force he
subdued Scotland in about a year. At Marston and at
Naseby he had converted a losing battle into an over-
whelming victory. At Basing, at Drogheda, at Worcester,
he stormed strong places, desperately defended, in a
few hours of fighting and with very moderate loss. At
Preston, with a loss of 50 men, he annihilated a brave
army of 24,000 men ; at Dunbar, with a smaller loss, he
annihilated another brave army of 22,000 ; at Worcester,
with a loss of under 200, he overwhelmed an army of
15,000 men. He never fared so well, he said, as when
the enemy were two to one. Except at Worcester, he
always fought against great odds. Every one of his
victories was won in the least time and with the smallest
loss. It is true that he was never opposed to an army
at all equal in discipline to his own. But then the
discipline, the morale, the organisation were all his work.
He had created a regular army, and had trained it to
become as perfect an instrument of war as history
records. And thus, if we judge by results and the
standard of his age, Oliver Cromwell stands out as
thoroughly successful in strategy and as a general in
the field such as our history records but one or two.

CHAPTER X

THE UNOFFICIAL DICTATORSHIP
A.D. 1651-1653. arrAT. 52-54

As the Second Civil War, leading up to the death of the
king, had left Cromwell the foremost man in the nation
in all but style and office, so he returned from the
conquest of Ireland and Scotland, and the final over-
throw of the royal cause at Worcester, invested with an
undefined but semi-official dictatorship.

Parliament received the news of the victory with a
spasm of relief and unbounded enthusiasm, and made the
return of the Lord-General one long triumphal progress.
A deputation from the House met him at Aylesbury;
from Acton, the Speaker, the Lord Mayor, sheriffs,
and a great assemblage of members and civic officials,
conducted him in state to London with coaches, body-
guard, salvoes of artillery, and shouts of the crowd. He
received the thanks of the House, an additional grant of
£4000 a year, and the use of Hampton Court as a
residence. Thereby he was recognised by what remained
of legal authority as practically dictator.

He was now at the height of his power and prestige ;
and even Hugh Peters thought that he would make
himself king. This, then, was the moment when a

CHAP, x THE UNOFFICIAL DICTATOESHIP 169

Bonaparte would have seized the vacant throne.
Cromwell made no such use of the immense ascendancy
which Drogheda, Dunbar, and Worcester had added to
the office of Commander-in-Chief. It was remarked that
he carried himself with affability and modesty, and he
betook himself to work as a simple member of the
Council. There he laboured assiduously for nineteen
months ; nor on any single occasion did he bring himself
conspicuously before the nation. His biographers have
found it hard to ascertain how, during this period, his
energies were employed. The history of his work is to
be sought for in the records of the Council of State, and
its manifold commissions and departments. He served
on the standing committees of the Ordnance, of the
Admiralty, of Trade and Foreign affairs, of Law, of the
affairs of Ireland and Scotland, of the Dutch question,
beside many other subsidiary committees for special
matters. Of the army he was already the chief by Act
of Parliament. Thus legally in control of the whole
military forces, with paramount voice in the civil service,
at once Captain-General and semi-official dictator, Oliver
worked on at the administrative business of the nation.
But he worked without display, accepting the shadowy
authority of the remnant or fag-end of the Long
Parliament. It was only after an anxious interval of
abortive attempts at a settled government that he began
to take independent action.

Nineteen months elapsed after Worcester fight before
he closed the Long Parliament : it was two years and
three months before he was named Protector.

The situation was that which inevitably succeeds a
violent and successful revolution. The whole fabric of

170 OLIVER CROMWELL CHAP.

the body politic and social, had been shaken to its roots;
the peril which had given the Commonwealth its cohesion
and mighty force was at an end; and the various elements
of which that force was composed were now free to
insist on their differences. We may assume that the
majority of the nation did not desire a permanent
Commonwealth; that the Royalist party represented
ideas and institutions to which Englishmen were destined
to cling for generations, and even for centuries to come.
On the other hand, the Commonwealth party, by their
convictions, character, and organisation, by their superior
weight of every sort, possessed an enormous predomi-
nance in effective strength.

The backbone of that Commonwealth party was the
army — an army which consisted not of mercenaries or
conscripts, but which was the flower of the people ; men
who were, and knew themselves to be, the natural leaders
of their countrymen. They were at once an army made
up of trained politicians, and a party made up of uncon
quered veterans. Earely, indeed, in history has moral
and material force been thus concentrated in a body,
possessing both intense political conviction and consum-
mate military discipline. They were the passion, the
courage, the conscience of the people in arms ; a political
group, in energy and will stronger than all other groups
together; a corps of soldiers who had no equals in
Europe. They had none of the vices of an army ; none
of the restlessness of a political faction. Their political
ideas were few, but very definite, and held with intense
tenacity : religious freedom, orderly government, and
the final abolition of the abuses for which Laud and
Charles had died. In religion they were mainly Inde-

x THE UNOFFICIAL DICTATORSHIP 171

pendents, seeking the widest liberty for themselves and
others. Their wishes as soldiers were for peace, to
return to their homes and to civil life. Devoted to their
great chief, and profoundly trusting his honesty and
wisdom, they maintained unbroken discipline within as
well as without their body, leaving affairs of State to
him and to his council of officers.

Parliament, or the thin residuum of the House of
Commons which claimed that name, practically consisted
of a junto of men who, after so many expulsions, purges,
and abstentions of all sorts, continued to meet, to the
average number of fifty, occasionally reaching a little
more than one hundred. In spite of frequent siftings,
the House was constantly gravitating back into the hands
of lawyers and Presbyterians. The Council of State — of
forty-one members, almost all members of Parliament —
was only a committee of the House, where soldiers and
administrators had predominant influence, and which
virtually governed the nation. Cromwell, his officers,
and a few men of action practically directed the Council.
But it was far too large for an efficient cabinet ; it was
divided by very contrary views; and its activity was
constantly impeded by the House which had appointed it

It is fortunate that in our English revolution it is in
no way necessary to disparage one set of men in order
to do justice to their opponents. Both House and
Council contained many men of great ability and char-
acter. Some of the stoutest and purest spirits in our
history were in their number. There were indefatigable
men of business, excellent administrators, keen and subtle
brains, and above all, sterling honesty and excellent
sense amongst them. In one or two there was a real

172 OLIVER CROMWELL CHAP.

vein of heroism and of sagacity. Still there was but one
statesman of consummate genius ; and that fact many of
them were slow to recognise.

Cromwell, now inwardly assured that he had been
called by God and by all good men to take the foremost
place, stood apart from all the various sections by reason
of his far wider grasp of the whole situation and his
constructive and organising instinct. In his official
despatch after the victory at Dunbar(4th September 1650)
he had broken out to the Speaker with the abrupt
appeal : " Eelieve the oppressed, hear the groans of
poor prisoners in England. Be pleased to reform the
abuses of all professions : — and if there be any one such
that makes many poor to make a few rich, that suits not
a Commonwealth." So now on the morrow of Worcester
(4th September 1651) he again implored the House
that "justice and righteousness, mercy and truth, may
flow from you, as a thankful return to our gracious
God."

Always strongly conservative, he set his face steadily
towards " a settlement of this nation." Always zealous
for social order, he looked directly for the mending of
practical wrongs. The state of the Church, the state of
the law, the manifold grievances and sufferings of men
on all sides, and the confusion of all institutions and
authorities, filled him with horror and pity. Everything
in Church and State was alike provisional and chaotic.
The scanty oligarchy which clung to the bare name of
Parliament — a Parliament which had been summoned by
King Charles eleven years ago — never could be accepted
by the nation as its genuine representative in the great
change of government. The Episcopal Church was

x THE UNOFFICIAL DICTATORSHIP 173

suppressed, yet the Presbyterian Church was not set up
on any permanent or complete basis. The House con-
tinually and fitfully interfered in religious questions,
from the point of view of rigid Presbyterian orthodoxy.
The Royalists were still harried with the most crushing
exactions, and held everything on sufferance. The
relations with foreign countries were precarious, and
with the Dutch they were hostile.

The law in especial manner was in a state of chaos.
There were 23,000 unheard cases waiting in Chancery;
and this was a perpetual grievance both to the general
and his soldiers. It might surprise us to find the army
and its chief so constantly troubled about the abuses of
the law, did we not remember that the Civil War was
the turning-point in the history of English law ; that it
shattered the whole system of feudal tenure, and with
the Eestoration we find the land law mainly what it
continued to be down to the present century. The
period of transition was a time of chaos and injustice,
and Cromwell and his Ironsides were men to whom social
injustice and official tyranny never appealed in vain.
But, besides the law, practical questions had to be
solved. An army of 50,000 men had to be reduced to
one-half. A mass of diseased and wretched prisoners
had to be disposed of; the fortresses and castles
dismantled, reduced, or repaired. Ireland and Scotland
had to be brought into permanent settlement. In one
word, a nation which had been torn by ten years of
desperate civil war, and of which every institution had
been passing through a crisis, lay waiting for order,
settlement, and reorganisation.

The difficulties were all grouped round two great

174 OLIVER CROMWELL CHAP.

questions: "the settlement of the nation "and a "new
representative " ; or, as we should now say, a permanent
constitution and a new Parliament. Without the for-
mer, Cromwell saw, everything remained an open
question ; no man could feel secure, and peace would
never begin. Without the latter, no reform was
possible in Church, law, taxation, or in legal or civil
reorganisation. The Council of State and its com-
missions sufficed for daily administration. The army,
the navy, the ordnance, Ireland and Scotland, and the
treasury, were managed with energy and skill. But in
order to settle ecclesiastical and legal questions, to close
the system of confiscation, and to return to regular
government, legislation was necessary. And for prac-
tical legislation the House was incompetent. The
lawyers, the Presbyterians, the reactionists, and the
pedants debated each Bill for months. The House
drifted into a permanent attitude of reaction ; by turns
learned, loquacious, impracticable, self-important, and
bigoted.

Cromwell was bent on a " settlement," the difficulties
of which he clearly saw. He showed such a willingness
to come to terms with the defeated party, and such real
sympathy with their protracted sufferings, that the
sterner spirits at once accused him of gaining the good-
will of the Royalists to serve his own designs. He
plainly saw that the nation was not prepared for a
definite republic; nor had he himself any preference
for it. He also saw, as the lawyers continually showed
him, that without some monarchical element, the Eng-
lish constitution, the English scheme of government
and of law, could scarcely be got into work again. For

x THE UNOFFICIAL DICTATORSHIP 175

a reorganisation of the body politic, as distinct from its
complete transformation, a person as ruler was essential.
Cromwell was profoundly convinced of this ; and as a
matter of law and of history he was plainly right. The
difficulties were, however, not slight. The army and the
zealous Puritans were against the very name of king,
and especially averse to any prince of the late king's
house. The lawyers, on the other hand, could not
conceive of the monarchical element in any other form.
Cromwell's own mind inclined towards a personal head
of the State, though he still shrunk from the name of
king.

Nothing can be plainer than this, that his whole soul
rejected the idea of a mere Parliamentary executive :
government vested in a single elective chamber. By
character, from experience, and by conviction, he was
rooted to the idea of a double authority : a person
permanently charged with the executive, and a co-
ordinate elected legislature. The whole future history
of England lay in this struggle, — the alternative of the
American system with its distinct personal executive, or
the modern British system of a single supreme Parlia-
ment having the executive as a part and creature of
itself. After many fluctuations and an irregular epoch
of oligarchy, the Parliamentary system of government
triumphed; and for a century at least it has kept
undisputed ascendancy. But it is not proved thereby
that Cromwell was wrong.

The struggle between Cromwell and the House was
on neither side a question of personal ambition. It was
a struggle between two far-reaching principles of govern-
ment; the struggle as to whether executive authority

176 OLIVER CROMWELL CHAP.

shall be subordinate to, or co-ordinate with, the
legislature. It was at bottom the same principle
which, under very various forms and with very dif-
ferent aims, great English statesmen have more or less
asserted — Elizabeth, Strafford, Cromwell, William III.,
Walpole, and Chatham ; and which the founders of the
American constitution successfully worked out across
the Atlantic. Parliamentary executive is still the great
problem of our time. After Worcester it presented
itself for the first time in our history ; claiming to be a
permanent and dominant institution. Within a few days
of Cromwell's return, the question of the new Parlia-
ment was raised, evidently at his desire. For three
months the question was revived and pressed, until, at
last, after repeated divisions and debates, the House was
induced, by a majority of two, to vote its dissolution.
This it fixed for a date three years distant, 3d November
1654. But in the meantime many things were to
happen.

Around the great question at issue between Cromwell
and the House, the minor questions were grouped.
Cromwell and the army clung to entire freedom of
worship ; the House to Presbyterian orthodoxy. Crom-
well now felt himself to be in the higher sense the
representative of the nation, the guardian of the inter-
ests of all, even of those he had defeated. The
Parliament men, filled with pride in their successful
revolution, could not see that the time had come for
putting an end to revolution. Cromwell insisted on
an amnesty and on closing the system of confisca-
tion; the House would not resign the revolutionary
expedient of raising supplies. Cromwell's strength

x THE UNOFFICIAL DICTATORSHIP 177

rested on the army ; the House sought to reduce it in
order to strengthen the navy. Mainly for political
objects, Vane and his party plunged into the Dutch
war. Cromwell and his soldiers were for making a
short cut to practical reforms; the House, with its
lawyers and officials, saw obstacles and dangers in every
reform. As the army trusted its cause to Cromwell, so
the House was represented by Vane, its most eminent
leader, a man as heroic and generous as Cromwell
himself, of varied capacity and unwearied energy.
Both Cromwell and Vane represented parties who had
borne the heat and burden of the day, and who had
done great things for the common cause, the one in the
field, the other in council. Neither party could claim
the majority of the nation ; perhaps both together could
not claim it. Parliament, now alike unpopular and
incompetent, had nothing but a shred of legal right.
But Cromwell wielded overwhelming force, and em-
bodied the hopes and the trust of the best men.

Immediately on his return from Worcester, Cromwell
found himself addressed by petitions for the redress of
grievances, in the matter of law, of imprisonment, of
exactions, of tithes, as to one, said the petitioners, into
whose hands the sword was put. And commissions
were actually issued to officers to hear and determine
civil cases, which gave great satisfaction to the parties.
The Lord-General was thus passing by consent into the
position of general Moderator. It was at this time that
Whitelocke places the famous discussion he records as
to the settlement of the nation. Cromwell, he says,
desired a meeting between the leaders in Parliament
and the chiefs of the army. There he very plainly

N

178 OLIVER CROMWELL CHAP.

stated the issue thus : whether a republic or a mixed
monarchical government will be best ; and if anything
monarchical, then in whom that power should be placed 1
The lawyers were for a mixed monarchy ; the generals
for a republic. " The laws of England are so interwoven
with the power and practice of a monarchy," said
Whitelocke, "that to settle a government without
something of monarchy in it " would lead to incalculable
inconveniences. He and others evidently inclined to a
restoration of one of the Stuart princes. The generals
asked why not a republic as well as other nations?
Cromwell, it is clear, objected to any recall of the
princes ; but he thought " that a settlement of somewhat
with monarchical power in it would be very effectual."
It is plain that from this time he gave it to be under-
stood that he desired a settlement with himself invested
with some monarchical power ; though, as to the name
or prerogative of king, he felt and continued to feel the
deepest hesitation and doubt.

The question was indeed one of extraordinary
complication and difficulty. Legally speaking, the
whole fabric of the body politic, the daily routine of law
and of administration, centred in the name and authority
of the king. A king de facto, with or without hereditary
right, even a usurper, fulfilled the legal conditions. By
a statute of Henry VII. acts done under the authority of
a de facto king, even a usurper, were not acts of treason.
But without a de facto king, the old system of law and
order would have to be remodelled from its base.
Between the Puritan chiefs and the royal house an
indelible bar seemed set. One might be a lawful king,
who had conquered his throne by the sword or had been

x THE UNOFFICIAL DICTATORSHIP 179

called in by Parliament; but a king without trace of
royal blood was undreamed of in England. The gulf
that separated the most absolute military ruler from
the same man regularly proclaimed king was immense —
legally, morally, and socially. But then what would
bring soldiers like Harrison, politicians like Vane, to
acquiesce in the proclamation of Oliver Rex? The
problem was perhaps insoluble. In the meantime
Cromwell worked towards a settlement to have in it
somewhat of a monarchical power, and left the issue to
time.

All through the year 1652 the struggle went on,
Cromwell and his officers continually pressing the House
to complete the reforms and settle a new Parliament ;
the House eternally debating, obstinately bent on
retaining its legal autocracy. The story of the contest
was told by Oliver most truthfully and simply in his
public speeches. He and his soldiers were resolved, he
said, that the nation should reap the fruit of all the
blood and treasure that had been spent in the cause.
The officers had begun by private appeals to the House :
in August they presented a petition embodying their
demands — provision for preaching the Gospel, removal
of scandalous ministers, reform of the law, redress of
abuses in excise, in tithes, in the treasury, and lastly,
provision for a new Parliament. They got no answer
but a few words. Then, " finding the People dissatisfied
in every corner of the nation, and laying at our doors
the non-performance of these things," Cromwell de-
clares that he called a series of meetings between the
leaders in Parliament and the chiefs of the army. Ten
or twelve such meetings were held without result.

180 OLIVER CROMWELL CHAP.

In November Cromwell met Whitelocke, and asked
him " to consider the dangerous condition we are all in."
The members of Parliament, he said, were become odious
to the army for their pride and ambition and self-seeking,
their delays of business and their design to perpetuate
themselves to continue the power in their hands, for
their meddling in private matters, for their injustice and
partiality, and the scandalous lives of some of the chief
of them. People open their mouths against them, he
said ; and they cannot be kept within bounds of justice
and law or reason, for there is none superior or co-
ordinate with them. "What," said he abruptly, "if a man
should take upon him to be kingl" Whitelocke im-
plored him to consider the danger and the evil, and
urged a compromise with Charles Stuart. " That," said
Cromwell, "is a matter of so high importance and
difficulty, that it deserves more of consideration and
debate."

The House, led by Vane, now altered its tactics, and
began to press on a Bill for a new representation, a plan
which, with much parade of free election, was simply a
scheme to perpetuate themselves. The existing members
were to sit without re-election, and were to form an
exclusive tribunal for admitting new members. It was
a transparent artifice to continue themselves, whilst
adding such additional members as they might approve.
Cromwell thereupon called another conference at his own
house. Some twenty-three members attended on the
19th April 1653. There he and the generals told the
Parliament men clearly that they would not suffer them
to pass such an Act. They proposed as an alternative a
temporary commission of forty leading men to summon

x THE UNOFFICIAL DICTATORSHIP 181

a new Parliament. The sitting ended late at night
without decision ; it was agreed to meet the next day,
with an understanding that in the meantime the Act
should not be passed.

The next day the conference was renewed at Crom-
well's lodgings. There news was brought that the
House was hastily passing the obnoxious measure.
Presently Colonel Ingoldsby came in from the House to
tell the general that not a moment was to be lost, if he
meant to do anything. Furious at what he believed,
perhaps without reason, to be the bad faith of Vane and
the leaders, he called a company of musketeers to attend
him, and with Lambert and other officers, strode silently
to the House. In plain black clothes and gray worsted
stockings, the Lord-General came in quietly and took
his seat, as Vane was pressing the House to pass the
dissolution Bill without delay and without the customary
forms. He beckoned to Harrison and told him that the
Parliament was ripe for dissolution, and he must do it.
"Sir," said Harrison, "the work is very great and
dangerous." — "You say well," said the general, and
thereupon sat still for about a quarter of an hour. Vane
sat down, and the Speaker was putting the question
for passing the Bill. Then said Cromwell to Harrison
again, "This is the time; I must do it" He rose up,
put off his hat, and spoke.

Beginning moderately and respectfully, he presently
changed his style, told them of their injustice, delays of
justice, self-interest, and other faults ; charging them
not to have a heart to do anything for the public good,
to have espoused the corrupt interest of Presbytery and
the lawyers, who were the supporters of tyranny and

182 OLIVER CROMWELL CHAP.

oppression, accusing them of an intention to perpetuate
themselves in power. And rising into passion, " as if
he were distracted," he told them that the Lord had
done with them, and had chosen other instruments for
the carrying on His work that were worthy. Sir Peter
Wentworth rose to complain of such language in
Parliament, coming from their own trusted servant.
Roused to fury by the interruption, Cromwell left his
seat, clapped on his hat, walked up and down the floor
of the House, stamping with his feet, and cried out,
" You are no Parliament, I say you are no Parliament.
Come, come, we have had enough of this ; I will put an
end to your prating. Call them in ! " Twenty or
thirty musketeers under Colonel Worsley marched in on
to the floor of the House. The rest of the guard were
placed at the door and in the lobby.

Vane from his place cried out, " This is not honest,
yea, it is against morality and common honesty." Crom-
well, who evidently regarded Vane as the breaker of the
supposed agreement, turned on him with a loud voice,
crying, " 0 Sir Henry Vane, Sir Henry Vane, the Lord
deliver me from Sir Henry Vane." Then looking upon
one of the members, he said, " There sits a drunkard ; "
to another he said, "Some of you are unjust, corrupt
persons, and scandalous to the profession of the Gospel"
"Some are whoremasters," he said, looking at Went-
worth and Marten. Going up to the table, he said,
"What shall we do with this Bauble? Here take it
away!" and gave it to a musketeer. "Fetch him
down," he cried to Harrison, pointing to the Speaker.
Lenthall sat still, and refused to come down unless by
force. "Sir," said Harrison, "I will lend you my hand,"

x THE UNOFFICIAL DICTATORSHIP 183

and putting his hand within his, the Speaker came down.
Algernon Sidney sat still in his place. " Put him out,"
said Cromwell. And Harrison and Worsley put their
hands on his shoulders, and he rose and went out. The
members went out, fifty-three in all, Cromwell still calling
aloud. To Vane he said that he might have prevented
this; but that he was a juggler and had not common
honesty. "It is you," he said, as they passed him, "that
have forced me to do this, for I have sought the Lord
night and day, that He would rather slay me than put
me on the doing of this work." He snatched the Bill of
dissolution from the hand of the clerk, put it under his
cloak, seized on the records, ordered the guard to clear
the House of all members, and to have the door locked,
and went away to Whitehall.

Such is one of the most famous scenes in our history,
that which of all other things has most heavily weighed
on the fame of Cromwell. In truth it is a matter of no
small complexity, which neither constitutional eloquence
nor boisterous sarcasm has quite adequately unravelled.
Both in essence and in form much may be said on both
sides. Perhaps even more than the act in itself, the
mode and the circumstances have caused indignation
and offence. It is one of the rare occasions in all
history where a great act of State has been carried out
with personal fury and outrage. And it is hard to
imagine the end which personal fury and outrage can
serve. There was no other public occasion on which
Cromwell displayed ungovernable passion. But he was
a man of volcanic temper, at all times liable to outbursts
of coarseness. From his youth he was given to moody
frenzies and ecstatic outpourings of the inmost soul.

184 OLIVER CROMWELL CHAP.

The practice of Bible expounding in the camp had de-
veloped in him an unctuous and heated mannerism. At
times in battle, we have seen, he seemed deliberately to
fling off all control, as when at Drogheda and at Wor-
cester he dashed into the fray with a fury which can
hardly be forgiven in a supreme commander. The story
reads to us as if Cromwell, resolved not to be checkmated
by the Bill, had not quite decided how in detail he would
act. Then committing himself to an unbridled rage, in
the consciousness of overpowering force and a direct
mission from God, he let the whole torrent of his will
and of his scorn boil over in the sight of all men.

In strict constitutional right the House was no more
the Parliament than Cromwell was the king. A House
of Commons, which had executed the king, abolished
the Lords, approved the coup d'ttat of Pride, and by suc-
cessive proscriptions had reduced itself to a few score of
extreme partisans, had no legal title to the name of
Parliament. The junto which held to Vane was not
more numerous than the junto which held to Cromwell ;
they had far less public support ; nor had their services
to the Cause been so great. In closing the House, the
Lord-General had used his office of Commander-in-Chief
to anticipate one coup flttat by another. Had he been
ten minutes late, Vane would himself have dissolved the
House ; snapping a vote which would give his faction a
legal ascendancy. Yet, after all, the fact remains that
Vane and the remnant of the famous Long Parliament
had that scintilla juris, as lawyers call it, that semblance
of legal right which counts for so much in things
political. Civil society is held together by conventional
respect for legalised authority. And in the shipwreck

x THE UNOFFICIAL DICTATORSHIP 185

of the Constitution some tabula in naufragio, to use a
legal metaphor, still rested in the hands of the few score
members who remained. History and Englishmen have
not yet forgiven the great soldier who broke through
this ancient conventional respect, tearing down a legal
simulacrum, useless and obstructive as it long had been.
In the mind of Cromwell, always impatient of legal con-
ventions, the urgent call of public duty and the manifest
favour of Heaven outweighed all the evils which must
have been suggested to him by his prudence, his sagacity,
and his wonderful knowledge of men.

His deed must be judged by its results and its
essence. Was it good, was it necessary, for Cromwell
to anticipate Vane 1 Were the moral forces with Vane
or with Cromwell 1 The technical rights of either were
shadowy enough ; the act took place in mid-revolution
and utter chaos ; public confidence was in no way
shaken. So stated, it is plain that it was Cromwell,
and not Vane, who could give the nation peace, good
government, legal, social, and religious reform. It was
Cromwell, and not Vane, who had behind him the
effective weight of the nation. If Cromwell had in
numbers less than a majority of the people, Vane had
behind him nothing but an unpopular and divided
faction. Coarse and violent as was Cromwell's conduct,
high-minded and patriotic as was Vane's nature, Crom-
well was a mighty statesman, and Vane was only a noble
character. The final judgment of history must come
back to the prevalent opinion of the time : that, outside
a small group of partisans and doctrinaire republicans,
no man regretted Cromwell's act. A year and a half
later he said in Parliament : —

186 OLIVER CROMWELL CHAP.

"I told them, — for I knew it better than any one man in
the Parliament could know it ; because of my manner of life
which was to run up and down the nation, thereby giving
me to see and know the temper and spirits of all men, and
of the best of men, — that the Nation loathed their sitting, I
knew it. And, so far as I could discern, when they were
dissolved, there was not so much as the barking of a dog, or
any general or visible repining at it ! You are not a few
here present who can assert this as well as myself."

Returning to Whitehall, Cromwell found the officers
still in council, and after some expressions of dissent, he
satisfied them of the justice of his act. In the afternoon,
attended by Lamhert and Harrison, he went down to
the Council of State. He told them that there was no
place for them there, as the Parliament was dissolved.
Bradshaw, Scott, Haslerig, and others protested, and
then, without more words, withdrew. Three days later
a long, elaborate, and Biblical document appeared, as
the "Declaration of the Lord-General and his Council
of Officers." It evidently embodies Cromwell's own
mind, if it were not written by his hand, and entirely
agrees with the account given in his speeches. It
asserted that the honest people of the nation and the
army, having sought the Lord, felt it to be a duty to
secure the cause and to establish righteousness and peace
in these nations ; as the late Parliament were seeking
to perpetuate themselves, they had been necessitated to
put an end to it. It concluded with a long sermon on the
duty of godly men ; and order was given that all judges,
sheriffs, mayors, and other civil officers should proceed in
the execution of their respective offices. Within a few
days came in declarations of adhesion from the navy, the
armies in Scotland and in Ireland, and addresses from

x THE UNOFFICIAL DICTATORSHIP 187

municipal and civic bodies. There were no resignations,
no arrests, no further force. The fighting men approved,
the officials obeyed, the nation acquiesced. And with-
out a show of opposition, the whole machinery of the
State passed quietly into the strong hand of Cromwell.

He was determined that it should be no military
despotism. Kesolute as he was that there should be a
person as head of the State, he was equally resolute
that the government should be a civil government, with
an elected legislature, a Parliament to vote taxes and
make laws, and an executive bound in legal limits.
What he did, he told the Little Parliament, was not to
grasp at the power himself, or to keep it in military
hands, no, not for a day ; but to put it into the hands
of proper persons that might be called from the several
parts of the nation. Ten days after the close of the
Long Parliament Cromwell issued a further declaration
in his own name, that Parliament being dissolved, persons
of approved fidelity and honesty were to be called from
the several parts of this Commonwealth to the supreme
authority, and in the meantime a Council of State
should be constituted. An interim Council of thirteen,
four of them civilians, was appointed ; and summonses
were issued to divers persons to undertake the " Trust "
of the government of the Commonwealth. In the mean-
time for nine weeks Oliver continued to govern, by the
advice of the Council and his officers.

Some hundred and forty summonses were issued by
Cromwell to "persons fearing God, and of approved
fidelity and honesty " — names mainly suggested, it seems,
by the "godly clergy." Some were men of rank and
fortune; eighteen had sat in the Long Parliament;

188 OLIVER CROMWELL CHAP.

Monk and Blake and some soldiers were members, and
some were extreme types of the Puritan sects. Only
two did not attend. They met on the 4th of July
1653; they sat five months; passed some useful measures,
raised many burning questions, were named the Little
Parliament. Cromwell opened the sitting with a long
and powerful speech. He began by the story of the
civil wars ; how God had raised up a poor and contempt-
ible company of men and given them success, simply by
their owning a principle of godliness and religion. How
the Long Parliament had become impracticable ; how in
many months together they had failed to settle one
word, " incumbrances " ; how, as they had neglected all
their duties, they had been dissolved. How the general,
anxious " to divest the sword of all power in the civil
administration, had summoned them that he might
devolve the burden on their shoulders." In thus calling
them to the exercises of the supreme authority, he that
means to be their servant takes occasion to offer them
some charge. Then he bursts into an impassioned
sermon, taking texts from the prophets, the psalms, the
epistles — a sermon rich with grand passages, with quaint,
homely, vivid phrases, such as Bunyan might have
uttered, fatherly exhortations to righteousness and trust
in God. Finally he turns again to his favourite psalm,
the 68th, the psalm he sang on the field of Dunbar :
" Let God arise, let his enemies be scattered : let them
also that hate him flee before him. . . . The earth shook,
the heavens also dropped in the presence of God. . . .
The chariots of God are twenty thousand, even thousands
of angels : the Lord is among them, as in Sinai, in the
holy place." "And indeed," cries out the Puritan

x THE UNOFFICIAL DICTATORSHIP 189

soldier, " the triumph of that psalm is exceeding high
and great; and God is accomplishing it" Never before
in the history of England was Parliament opened by
speech like that.

This is the first of those speeches of Cromwell to
his Parliament, some nineteen in all, which are amongst
the most precious records of history. Now that laborious
love has unveiled them to us, we can look down through
them into the inmost spirit of the man. Uncouth,
tangled, and periphrastic as much in them seems to us,
wrapped up in a Biblical verbiage which has long been
confined to the pulpit, ill-reported, full of broken sentences
and confused periods, there is yet in them an innate
majesty and truthfulness ; nay, eloquence ; even poetry
and pathos. We hear the very beat of a great, generous
heart; we see the flash of an heroic temper, full of
trust, of sublime desires, of unshaken courage. The
religious hopes are not ours ; the cast of mind is one
which only by an effort can we picture to ourselves ; the
mixture of practical business with the promises and
manifestations of God to the saints is to us so strange
as to sound hardly sane. Yet such is the greatest
atttempt ever made in history to found a civil society on
the literal words of Scripture. So deep is the gulf
which, in things spiritual, two centuries and a half have
set between them and us.

The doings of this assembly of Puritan notables need
not detain us. Cromwell plainly designed them to be a
constituent, not a permanent body; to call a regular
Parliament; and to exercise provisional authority.
There never was before, he said, a supreme authority
so called, 140 persons not one but had in him faith

190 OLIVER CROMWELL CHAP.

in Jesus Christ. He plainly told them that they
had the affairs of the nation committed to them ;
that the existing Council of State held power only
in the interim; that it rested with them to continue
this Council or appoint another. In his third speech
(12th September 1654) he called God to witness that his
chief end in summoning them was to divest himself of
the absolute power in his hands, as he desired not to
live for a day in the unlimited condition of boundless
authority. But as he afterwards amply confessed, this
assembly of godly persons was an utter failure. They
did good and vigorous work. They sought to abolish
the Court of Chancery ; they undertook to frame a code
of law ; they proceeded to reform the Church, to abolish
tithes, Church patronage, and to establish civil marriage.
All this done in the trenchant spirit of religious fervour,
which alarmed all interests, and aroused every class.
The Church, property, law, society seemed threatened by
reformers who were prepared, Bible in hand, to dispose
at once of every question of the day. Cromwell, intensely
conservative by habit, and a keen observer of public
opinion, grew uneasy when he saw the reign of the saints
beginning in earnest. Four years later he publicly
confessed his own folly and weakness, admitting that
these godly men were going straight to " confusion of all
things" : would have "swallowed up all civil and religious
interest, and brought us under the horridest arbitrariness
that ever was exercised in the world." In him godliness
never for a moment overpowered his instinct for the
practical and the politic. In them godliness was enough,
and all things and all men were unworthy to be set in
the scale. The indignation without rose to fury. Such

x THE UNOFFICIAL DICTATORSHIP 191

root-and-branch reformation of all institutions on a pure
Biblical basis was being attempted by men who had no
constituents, no real power, who were mostly unknown
nominees of a religious party. By a politic coup-de-main,
the majority, perceiving the situation, suddenly resigned
their powers to the general who had given them.

Parliament and Council of State departed, Cromwell
was left as the sole legalised authority in the nation.
But he had no intention of holding authority alone. He
summoned his Council of officers and other persons of
interest. Within a few days it was announced that the
Council had offered, and he had accepted the style of
Lord Protector of the Commonwealth, to carry on the
government by the advice of a Council and with an
Instrument of Government, or written Constitution. By
this charter the government was vested in a Protector,
a Council of thirteen at least and twenty-one at most,
and the Commons of England, Scotland, and Ireland,
meeting in triennial Parliament, the first to begin on 3d
September 1654. All Bills that they passed were to
become law, even without the Protector's assent, after
twenty days. Until the sitting of Parliament, the
Protector and his Council had power to make Ordinances,
having the force of law. The office of Protector was to
be elective, to be chosen by the Council.

On 16th of December 1653 Oliver was formally
installed with some simple state. He became a constitu-
tional and strictly limited sovereign for life.

CHAPTEK XI

THE PROTECTORATE
A.D. 1653-1658. .SITAT. 54-59

FROM his installation, on 16th December 1653, until
his death, 3d September 1658, a period of nearly five
years, Oliver held supreme power as Protector of the
Commonwealth. His task now was to control the
Revolution which he had led to victory ; and his career
enters on a new and yet greater phase. He stands out
amongst the very few men in all history who, having
overthrown an ancient system of government, have
proved themselves with even greater success to be
constructive and conservative statesmen. In this giant's
task Oliver had the sympathy and devotion of many of
the truest lovers of liberty, justice, and religion. But
he had against him Vane, Hutchinson, Ludlow, Bradshaw,
Sidney, Haslerig, and many a noble friend of his man-
hood, to whom the Revolution meant republican equality
even more than liberty, and legal right even more than
order and prosperity. He had against him too another
group of earnest Commonwealth men, to whom the
struggle meant a religious and social revolution — men
like the austere enthusiast Harrison, the frantic Sexby,
and the zealot Overton, the friend of Milton. Of the

CHAP, xi THE PROTECTORATE 193

men who had made the Revolution, some were doctrinaire
republicans, some were Bible fanatics, some were con-
stitutional martinets, some were socialist dreamers.
Oliver was no one of these ; and such men were all from
the first his opponents. But he had with him the Puritan
rank and file, the great majority of the superior officers,
such clear and lofty spirits as those of Milton and
Marvell, Blake and Lockhart, Lawrence and Lisle ; the
men of business ; all moderate men of every party who
desired peace, order, good government ; the great cities ;
the army and the navy. With these, and his own
commanding genius, he held his own triumphantly,
slowly winning the confidence of the nation by virtue of
unbroken success and (as it seemed) miraculous fortune.
Thus he grew ever larger, until he lay in his last sleep
murmuring, "My work is done:" in battle, a soldier
who had never met with a reverse, so a statesman who
in a supreme place had never met with a fall.

Cromwell was, and felt himself to be, a dictator called
in by the winning cause in a revolution to restore con-
fidence and secure peace. He was, as he said frequently,
" the Constable set to keep order in the Parish." Nor
was he in any sense a military despot. He was no
professional soldier ; and he had no taste for arbitrary or
martial rule. He was a citizen and a country gentleman,
who at the age of forty-three first girt on his sword in
earnest, and at the age of fifty-two had put it off.
Though he distrusted and disliked a Parliamentary
executive, he clung to a civil and legal executive. From
first to last after the closing of the Long Parliament, he
struggled for five years to realise his fixed idea of a dual
government — neither a Dictator without a Parliament,

o

194 OLIVER CROMWELL CIIAI-.

nor a Parliament without a Head of the Executive.
With dogged iteration he repeats — the government shall
rest with a Single Person and a Parliament, the Parlia-
ment making all laws and voting all supplies, co-ordinate
with the authority of the Chief Person, and not meddling
with the executive. This was his idea — an idea which
the people of England have rejected, but which the
people of America have adopted. More than a century
later the founders of the United States revived and
established Oliver's ideal, basing it upon popular elec-
tion, a thing which, in 1654, was impossible in England.
Never did a ruler invested with absolute power and
overwhelming military force more obstinately strive to
surround his authority with legal limits and Parliamentary
control. The possession of boundless power and arbitrary
authority, even as a temporary expedient, seemed to
have in it something which alarmed and shocked his
nature. Absolute as he was after his triumphal return
from Worcester, he deliberately sank his personality for
nineteen months in the routine of his office, and laboured
indirectly to get the work done by Parliament. Ten
days after closing the Long Parliament he announced
the summoning of a Convention Parliament. When
that suddenly dissolved itself, within a few days he
procured the Instrument of Government to be drawn,
without which he refused the office of Protector. This
Instrument involved the election of a new Parliament,
on the footing of the admirable Reform Bill sketched
out by Ireton and completed by Vane. By it the
Protector was placed in the position of a strictly limited
king, on the lines of the constitution, but with new
Parliamentary prerogatives. Not only was the Protector

xr THE PROTECTORATE 195

bound by Parliament, but he was bound by the Council,
which was not removable by him. The Instrument of
Government was a constitution of a strictly limited
type. And it was the basis of Oliver's authority as
Protector.

During the five years of his supreme power, from the
end of the Long Parliament, Oliver summoned three
Parliaments, and the longest period in which he ruled
without one was a year and eight months. Parliaments
he did not like; did not understand; and managed
with indifferent skill. He preferred a council, or a
committee, for business. But he never repudiated the
principle that laws and taxes are the necessary function
of Parliament alone. The free election of Parliament
on a really democratic basis he saw was impossible, at
the risk of ruining the cause and re-opening the Civil
War. Therein he was plainly right ; and as a matter of
constitutional law, all that can be said is, that in mid-
revolution normal institutions are not always workable.
What he thought practicable and safe with the only
materials at hand, that he patiently endeavoured to
effect. Most certain it is that he was no Parliamentary
leader, and never could become one. His genius and
nature had none of the elements which go to the making
of a born chief of a Parliament. His intolerance of
conventions, his scorn of eloquent egoism, his abhorrence
of obstruction, delay, and waste, his intense masterfulness
and passion for action, made him unfit for Parliamentary
work. Both morally and intellectually he was not made
to play the part of a Walpole or a Pitt. From the first
his Protectorate was hampered by the fact that, though
he recognised a Parliament as indispensable, he was by

196 OLIVER CROMWELL CHAP.

nature and training unendowed with Parliamentary tact
The forces of our race were against him. For the
fortunes of England have for more than a century
required Parliamentary skill as the secret of success in a
statesman. And it has been our misfortune too seldom
to recognise the genius of a ruler, where there is con-
spicuously absent the genius of the debater.

The question at issue was one of surpassing interest,
which constitutional lawyers have never fully seized.
As the English Commonwealth was the first example in
modern Europe of a people sitting in judgment on their
king and converting a kingdom into a republic, so the
Instrument of Government was the first example of
a long line of written constitutions. The fixed idea of
Cromwell was the fixed idea of the founders of the
United States of America, and of nearly every known
continental system. There should be, he thought,
a written Instrument; there should be an Executive
Authority, not directly subordinate to Parliament ; and
there should be what Oliver called "fundamentals," or
what we now call "constitutional guarantees" — funda-
mental bases not alterable like ordinary laws. England
is the one country in the modern world where " funda-
mentals" or "constitutional guarantees" are unknown.
And on the opening of a new republican era in England
Cromwell's position was exactly that of Washington, of
Hamilton, Jay, and Madison. The fixed idea of Vane,
Bradshaw, Haslerig, and all the greater Parliamentarians,
was to establish the autocracy of an elected House,
supreme over the Executive, and free from any consti-
tutional limit, just as we see it to-day. It was a
momentous issue, nobly represented on both sides. That

xi THE PROTECTORATE 197

there was no Supreme Court, no constitutional arbiter,
no appeal to the nation, was inevitable in the situation.
The ideal of Vane and his friends was not established
conclusively until the time of Pitt — 130 years later,
and the event proved how right Oliver was in insisting
that in mid-revolution, with half the nation indifferent
or hostile, it meant simple chaos.

From this point Oliver's life is the history of England,
a history which could not be told in detail within the
limits of this book. It will be best to concentrate his
five years of power under three heads, which will form
as many chapters ; so as to devote the first to the general
political position of the Protector, the second to his
home administration, the last to his foreign policy. In
his great task, Oliver had to aid him soldiers, seamen,
diplomatists, and administrators, as able as any that
ever served a king; but we miss nearly all the great
names of the Civil Wars. The grand, pure figure of
Ireton, the true founder of the Commonwealth, the one
hero of the war who came nearest to Oliver, is gone.
He died of fever in Ireland (November 1651). Ludlow,
the contriver of Pride's Purge, the stalwart republican,
honest heart and fine soldier, is soon to withdraw in
disgust. Harrison, the noble fanatic, the right hand of
Oliver when he closed the Long Parliament, the leader
in the Parliament of Saints, was to pass much of the
Protectorate in prison. As he said in his proud defiance
to his judges, " When I found those that were as the
apple of mine eye to turn aside, I did loathe them, and
suffered imprisonment many years." Lambert, the second
soldier of the Civil Wars, the real author of the Pro-
tectorate, was still loyal to Oliver. Blake, Monk,

198 OLIVER CROMWELL CHAP.

Fleetwood, Lockhart, Broghill, Skippon, Wolselcy, com-
manded his forces. In his Council and offices were some
of the ablest men who have ever served this country.
But the glory of his rule is John Milton. By a rare or
unexampled fortune, the first political genius of his age
was served by the greatest literary genius of his time.
Cromwell and Milton stand forth as inseparable types :
the Puritan statesman, the Puritan poet. Milton, who
was appointed Foreign Secretary to the Council almost
upon the establishment of the Commonwealth, served
throughout the Protectorate of Oliver. It was during
Oliver's struggle with the Long Parliament (1652) that
he wrote his famous sonnet, "Cromwell, our chief of
Men." It was upon the establishment of the Protectorate
(May 1654) that he published the magnificent panegyric
in the Defensio Secunda : —

" We are deserted, Cromwell ; you alone remain ; the
sum-total of our affairs has come back to you, and hangs on
you alone ; we all yield to your insuperable worth. ... In
human society there is nothing more pleasing to God, more
agreeable to reason, nothing fairer and more useful to the
State, than that the worthiest should bear rule."

Never had ruler so mighty a poet in his service;
never did poet share such labours of State under so great
a chief.

Oliver had learned a severe lesson from the failure of
the godly persons in the Little Parliament. Till then
he had cherished the belief that, though Parliament had
failed, though Presbyterians were tyrannical, lawyers
self-seeking, the rich profligate, and the mass of men
worldly, yet the cause would triumph if the godly could
be placed in absolute power for a time. He had placed

xi THE PROTECTORATE 199

them in power; and he had seen the Commonwealth
tending to "confusion in all things." From that hour
Oliver recovered his common sense. He saw that even
the godly were prone to tyranny, folly, and mischief;
and he saw the still greater difficulty of ascertaining who
the godly are. Here, as always, Oliver proved to be a
thorough conservative. As he opposed all democratic
ideas of unrestricted appeal to the suffrage ; as he had
crushed the Levellers when they assailed property;
so he shrank from the social revolution dreamed of by
the Bible saints. He told his first Parliament : " As
to the authority in the Nation ; to the Magistracy ; to
the Ranks and Orders of men — whereby England hath
been known for hundreds of years — a nobleman, a
gentleman, a yeoman; that is a good interest of the
Nation and a great one ! " Never again did he risk a
real Reign of the Saints. He grew in his notions of
statecraft ever wider, more practical, more tolerant.
He relied more firmly on his carnal judgment ; he came
to see the strong sides of many persuasions. Like all
great men, by the exercise of responsible power, Oliver
grew and broadened continually.

By the Instrument of Government Parliament was to
meet on 3d of September ; and in the nine months that
intervened -Oliver was to govern by means of Ordinances.
He issued in that period some eighty-two, of various
purport and of great importance. The Church, the
Preachers, Chancery, the Treasury, Ireland, Scotland,
Police, Public Order, Education, Taxation, are all dealt
with in the form of Acts of Parliament. A most ad-
vantageous peace was made with the Dutch. And
treaties of alliance or commerce were concluded with

200 OLIVER CROMWELL CHAP.

Sweden, with Denmark, and with Portugal. France
and Spain were bidding against each other for the alli-
ance of England. On the very day when Count Sa,
the Portuguese minister, signed the treaty, Cromwell
beheaded Don Pantaleon Sa, his brother, who had been
dragged from the embassy, tried and convicted of
murder. The Protector's government was at once seen
to be the most powerful in Europe. He now removed
to Whitfihall, assumed the State of a supreme ruler,
signed OL *r P., and was king in all but name.

Oliver addressed his first Protectorate Parliament on
Sunday, the 3d of September : —

" Gentlemen," he said, " you are met here on the greatest
occasion that, I believe, England ever saw ; having upon
your shoulders the Interests of three great Nations with the
territories belonging to them ; and truly, I believe I may
say it without any hyperbole, you have upon your shoulders
the interest of all the Christian people in the world." He
expatiated on the confusion in the State, and told them the
great end before them was Healing and Settling. The ten
years' civil war had led the country to the brink of social
dissolution, and to spiritual chaos. Liberty of conscience
and liberty of the subject were being abused for the patronising
of villanies. The Fifth Monarchy men would impose again
the Judaical Law. Nothing was in the hearts and minds of
men but "Overturn, overturn, overturn!" whilst the common
Enemy sleeps not. Abroad the dangers were abating, but
were still great. There was Scotland ; there was Ireland to
settle : — great tasks on all sides. And the Protector implored
them, " not as one having dominion over them, but as their
fellow-servant," to apply themselves to the great works upon
their hands.

It was not to be. Immediately, under the leadership
of old Parliamentarians, Haslerig, Scott, Bradshaw, and
many other republicans, the House proceeded to debate

xi THE PROTECTORATE 201

the Instrument of Government, the constitutional basis
of the existing system. By five votes, it decided to
discuss " whether the House should approve of govern-
ment by a Single Person and a Parliament." This was
of course to set up the principle of making the Executive
dependent on the House ; a principle, in Oliver's mind,
fatal to settlement and order. He acted at once.
Calh'ng on the Lord Mayor to secure the city, and dis-
posing his own guard round Westminster Hall, he
summoned the House again on the ninth day, and again
addressed to them an earnest and powerful appeal.

They were, he said, a free Parliament, provided they
recognised the authority which had called them together.
" I called not myself to this place ! God and the People of
these nations have borne testimony to it. God and the
People shall take it from me, else I will not part with it. I
should be false to the trust that God hath placed in me, and
to the interest of the People of these nations, if I did."
Then he tells the story of his own calling ; that he hoped to
have leave to retire into private life ; that the Long Parliament
was becoming an intolerable tyranny when he closed it ;
that the Little Parliament of Saints was a failure ; that on
their resignation, he was left the only autliority, a person
having power over three Nations, without bound or limit
set : — not very ill beloved by the Armies nor by the People.
The Nation was in such, a state that all Government was
dissolved, and nothing left to keep things in order but the
Sword. They who held the Sword had called him to be
Protector. His nomination had been accepted by the City of
London, many cities, boroughs, and counties ; the judges,
justices, sheriffs, and other officials had acted under his
authority. Lastly, the Parliament itself met there under his
writs. You cannot, he says, disown the authority by which
alone you sit. There are some things which are Fundamental —
guaranteed by the constitution and not to be altered by a vote
ef the House. These are : first, government by a Single

202 OLIVER CROMWELL CHAP.

Person and a Parliament, not by a particular person, but by
a Single Person. "In every Government there must be somewhat
Fundamental, somewhat like a Magna Oharta, which should be
standing, be unalterable." Secondly, it is a Fundamental that
Parliament should not make themselves perpetual. Thirdly,
liberty of conscience in religion is a Fundamental. Fourthly,
it is Fundamental that the military forces shall not be at the
sole disposal either of Parliament or Executive, but held
conjointly between them : not a man being raised, nor a
penny charged on the People, nothing can be done without
consent of Parliament ; and in the intervals of Parliament,
without consent of the Council. The Supreme Officer has
thus a power co-ordinate with, and not dependent on, the
Parliament. All other things, he says, are " Circumstantials "-
to be regulated by Parliament — civil expenses, and ordinary
legislation. On these things, cries the Protector, I am forced
to insist. . "Necessity hath no law." True, some men
pretend necessities ; but it would be mere pedantry, mere
stupidity, to assert that there are no real necessities. " I
have to say : the wilful throwing away of this Government,
such as it is, so owned of God, so approved by men, so

witnessed to — I can sooner be willing to be rolled into

my grave and buried with infamy, than I can give my con-
sent unto ! "

Oliver's position was this. After twelve years of war
and strife, the three nations were in a state of political,
social, and religious chaos. The one power which
maintained order was the regimented party, called the
army. The army had formally called on its Commander-
in-chief to assume responsible government under a
written constitution. He had done so : the whole
magistracy and civil administration had accepted him ;
for many months had worked heartily in his service;
the nation had ratified their choice. A House of
Parliament had been summoned by his writs, on the
authority of the new constitution. It was not for them

xi THE PROTECTORATE 203

to dispute or upset it. His own authority was prior,
more truly national, and more really representative.

Members were called on to sign a declaration, "not
to alter the government as settled in a Single Person
and a Parliament." Some three hundred signed; the
minority — about a fourth — refused and retired. Vane,
Ludlow, Sidney, Marten, as consistent republicans, had
even refused to be candidates. But neither Vane,
Ludlow, nor Sidney were possible protectors of the
Republic : and a Republic without a Head was an idle
dream.

The Parliament, in spite of the declaration, set itself
from the first to discuss the constitution, to punish
heretics, suppress blasphemy, revise the Ordinances of
the Council ; and they deliberately withheld all supplies
for the services and the government. At last they
passed an Act for revising the constitution de novo. Not
a single Bill had been sent up to the Protector for his
assent. Oliver, as usual, acted at once. On the
expiration of their five lunar months, 22d January 1655,
he summoned the House and dissolved it, with a speech
full of reproaches. He said : " Dissettlement and
division, discontent and dissatisfaction ; together with
real dangers to the whole, — have been more multiplied
within these five months of your sitting than in some
years before ! " Then he enlarges on the dangers and
confusions. A government, limited in a Single Person
and a Parliament, had called them there as most
agreeable to the general sense of the Nation, as most
likely to avoid the extremes of Monarchy on the one
hand, and of Democracy on the other ; — and yet not to
found Dominium in gratid."

204 OLIVER CROMWELL CHAP.

No Parliament was called for a year and eight
months ; the revival of insurrection drove Cromwell to
attempt to govern by a system of provincial prefects,
known as that of the major-generals ; and the need of
money forced him to a series of arbitrary methods for
obtaining supplies. Both of these will be considered in
the next chapter. It had been no part of Cromwell's
scheme to suppress Parliaments. And he summoned
another on 17th of September 1656. Immense efforts
were made by the major-generals to exclude hostile
candidates ; and even after this, one hundred elected
members were declared by the Council disqualified, and
forcibly excluded from the House. Oliver addressed
them in a long and memorable speech — partly a reasoned
justification of his government; partly a magnificent
Puritan sermon.

This Parliament was mainly occupied with a scheme
for vesting the Crown in Oliver. The question of
Cromwell assuming the monarchy, though intrinsically
difficult to decide, is perfectly simple to follow. The
majority in Parliament, the lawyers, the men of
business, the more conservative of the Puritans, honestly
desired it, as the only chance of an effective settlement.
The nation was not actively averse. But the bulk of the
army disliked it : most of the officers protested ; the
republicans, the Fifth Monarchy fanatics, the Bible
zealots, were rabidly indignant. Cromwell himself was
ready to take the title, if he could see " a clear call " to
it. Now a "clear call" in his eyes was the prepon-
derating voice of the religious, earnest, and thoughtful
men of the party. That "call" he could not satisfy
himself that he had received. And, deeply as his

xi THE PROTECTORATE 205

judgment assented to the reasons in its favour, he could
not assume such an office, whilst it still was so wanting
in the witnessing of conscience and of God.

The arguments that made for kingship were very real
and very weighty. The office of King was known to
the law, to the constitution, to the people. The
prerogatives, rights, limits, and functions of the king
were solidly settled by custom; bounded, said the
lawyers, as well as any acre of land. Neither in law
nor in public opinion was the throne destroyed when
the king was dethroned. There stood the vacant place ;
which, in the minds of so many, Charles Stuart might
any day return to fill. The institution itself was
intact; and round it centred the law, the life of the
body politic, the entire mechanism of administration.
A "King" was a legal, constitutional, traditional,
familiar functionary. A "Protector" was a provisional
locum tenens, with no known prerogatives, no known
limits, an indefinite and unfamiliar makeshift. The
full force of this reasoning sank into Cromwell's brain.
His sympathy with order, with established institutions,
his yearning for a " settlement," his personal desire to
legalise his own authority in the eyes of the entire
nation — all pressed upon his judgment. Long he
pondered, waited, compromised, sought for a witnessing
from the Powers of Light and Truth. They still stood
averse. He was now materially strong enough to have
mastered opposition in the army. But morally, he
could not so break with his own past, with his own
spiritual life, with the godly men whom he had so long
led, as to step into the seat of the king they had
beheaded. Here, and for the last time, the army appears

206 OLIVER CROMWELL CHAP.

as the conscience of the nation. Steadily and with
dignity he put the Crown aside. He valued the title, he
said, but "as a feather in his hat." If his judgment
erred, his higher instinct was true. He never was
greater than in refusing a dignity which would have
taken all meaning out of the Puritan Revolution — even
though his refusal was certain to doom the Puritan
Eevolution itself as a -premature and short-lived effort.

Though he refused the title of king, he accepted the
new Protectorate on a revised basis, and was installed
with the ceremonial of a coronation in Westminster
Hall, 26th June 1657. Oliver had now the right of
appointing his successor, and of creating a House of
Lords. He was thus Sovereign in all but name : with
something that could be called a national constitution
and a Parliamentary title. The second protectorate
Parliament on the Installation prorogued itself until
January 1658. When it met on the second session, it
was in a different temper. The excluded members
were re-admitted : Haslerig, Scott, and the other mal-
contents were again the leaders of the House; and
they at once began a deliberate campaign to destroy
the constitution under which they met. Twice within
five days the Protector poured out on them an im-
passioned discourse to consider the national perils, and
to legislate instead of upsetting the established Govern-
ment. He had taken his oath,, he said, to govern
according to the laws that were then made. " I sought
not this place. I speak it before God, Angels, and
Men: I did not. You sought me for it, you brought
me to it ; and I took my oath to be faithful to the
interest of these nations, to be faithful to the Govern-

xi THE PROTECTORATE 207

meut." Parliament continued to assail the constitution.
Ten days later the Protector suddenly dissolved them
in a speech of burning indignation and proud defiance
(4th February 1658).

"There is not a man living can say I sought it (the
place of Protector) ; no, not a man nor woman treacling upon
English ground. But contemplating the sad condition of
these Nations, relieved from an intestine war into a six or
seven years' Peace, I did think the Nation happy therein ; I
can say in the presence of God, in comparison with whom we
are hut like poor creeping ants upon the earth, — I would
have been glad to have lived under my woodside, to have
kept a flock of sheep — rather than undertake such a
government as this. But undertaking it by the Advice and
Petition of you, I did look that you who had offered it unto
me should make it good." Then he dilates on the manifold
perils to the State, within and without. " What is like to
come upon this, the Enemy being ready to invade us, but
even present blood and confusion ? And if this be so, I do
assign it to this cause : your not assenting to what you did
invite me to by your Petition and Advice, as that which
might prove the Settlement of the Nation. And if this be
the end of your sitting, and this be your carriage — I think
it high time that an end be put to your sitting. And
I do dissolve this Parliament. And let God be judge
between you and me."

Such was Oliver's last Parliament. His position
now was the same as it was four years ago; the
business of Parliament in the midst of a revolutionary
crisis, at the close of a long civil war, was to pass laws
and vote supplies, and not to reopen constitutional
struggles. He never held another Parliament. His
"Upper House," or "House of Lords," was an utter
failure. He was planning the election of a third
Parliament when his own end came.

208 OLIVER CROMWELL CHAP.

Apart from opposition from his Parliaments, the
Protectorate was one unbroken success. Order, trade,
commerce, justice, learning, culture, rest, and public
confidence, returned and grew ever stronger. Pros-
perity, wealth, harmony, were restored to the nation ;
and with these a self-respect, a spirit of hope and
expansion such as it had not felt since the defeat of
the Armada. Never in the history of England has a
reorganisation of its administrative machinery been
known at once so thorough and so sound. No royal
government had ever annihilated insurrection and cabal
with such uniform success, and with moderation so
great. No government, not even that of Henry VII. or
of Elizabeth, had ever been more frugal ; though none
with its resources had effected so much. No govern-
ment had ever been so tolerant in things of the mind ;
none so just in its dealings with classes and interests ;
none so eager to suppress abuses, official tyranny, waste
and peculation. No government had been so distinctly
modern in its spirit; so penetrated with desire for
reform, honesty, capacity. For the first time in Eng-
land the republican sense of social duty to the State
began to replace the old spirit of personal loyalty to a
Sovereign. For the first and only time in modern
Europe morality and religion became the sole qualifica-
tions insisted on by a Court. In the whole modern
history of Europe, Oliver is the one ruler into whose
presence no vicious man could ever come ; whose service
no vicious man might enter.

But it was in foreign policy that the immediate
splendour of Oliver's rule dazzled his contemporaries.
" His greatness at home," wrote Clarendon, " was but a

xi THE PROTECTORATE 209

shadow of the glory he had abroad." Englishmen and
English historians have hardly even yet taken the full
measure of the stunning impression produced on Europe
by the power of the Protector. It was the epoch when
supremacy at sea finally passed from the Dutch to the
English. It was the beginning of the maritime Empire
of England. And it was the first vision of a new force
which was destined to exercise so great an influence,
the increased power of fleets and marine artillery to
destroy seaports and dominate a seaboard. Hitherto
fleets had fought with fleets. But Blake taught modern
Europe that henceforward fleets can control kingdoms. It
was the sense of this new power, so rapid, so mobile,
with so long an arm and practically ubiquitous, that
caused Mazarin and Louis, Spain and Portugal, Pope
and Princes of Italy, to bow to the summons of Oliver.
England became a European Power of the first rank, as
she never had been since the Plantagenets, not even in
the proudest hours of Wolsey or Elizabeth. From the
Baltic to the Mediterranean, from Algiers to TenerifFe,
from Newfoundland to Jamaica, were heard the English
cannon. And the sense of this new factor in the
politics of the world produced on the minds of the age
such an impression as the rise of the German Empire
with the consolidation of the German military system
has produced upon our own. All through his rule
Oliver had laboured to found a vast Protestant League,
a new Balance of Power. Had he ruled for another
generation the history of Europe might have had some
different cast.

It was not to be. The Protectorate fell in the zenith
of its power ; and there was silence on the earth for a

P

210 OLIVER CROMWELL CHAP.

space. For nearly two years more the Commonwealth
held together : wholly without a Head, almost without
a Government. Could it have been prolonged ? Yes.
Could it have been permanent? No. The Common-
wealth and its government might well have lasted for
the whole life of Oliver. But none, save he, could
maintain it. And even he could not have made it
lasting. The movement was essentially premature ; not
adequately prepared ; from first to last the work of a
minority, though a minority stronger, nobler, wiser than
all the rest of the nation. Its dominant spirit,
Puritanism, was fatally impracticable for constructive
work as a political and social scheme. This the sublime
common sense of Oliver forced upon him, step by step
overpowering the intense devoutness of his faith. And
ever larger as grew the statesman, less and less was
Oliver the rigid Puritan, the literal Bible zealot.

Was then the work of his life a failure ? Not so :
for, in some sense, most of the great movements in
history are for a time premature, and the labours of
most great statesmen result in consequences that they
little intend or conceive. How utterly does the history
of England since 1640 differ from the history of England
before that date !

Could Cromwell have maintained his system, had he
lived 1 There is no reason to doubt it. No ruler in
ancient or in modern times has ever surpassed him in
the qualities of vigilance, caution, and foresight. As a
statesman he happily rose superior to the chivalrous
disregard of personal safety which had been fatal to
Csesar, William the Silent, Henry IV., and Buckingham.
His almost miraculous insight into his enemies' plots

xi THE PROTECTORATE 211

and his sleepless watchfulness of public opinion give
every ground for thinking that he would have been as
successful in the future as he had been in the past.
He may be said to be almost the one politician of the
first rank continuously attended by uniform success :
who had never been surprised by an enemy, and on
whom no opponent had ever inflicted a disaster. The
one condition of the maintenance of his rule was the
duration of his life. Had his life been prolonged to the
age of seventy-five — now almost the normal limit for
modern statesmen — the Protectorate might have lasted
for twenty years instead of five. It is perhaps not an
idle dream that, in some way, it might have handed on a
peaceful and reformed State to a constitutional Mon-
archy, without the debasing interlude of the Restoration.
In 1674 William of Orange was twenty-four years of age,
already a great captain and an experienced statesman,
the hope of the Protestant cause and the bulwark in
Europe against tyranny. Is it utterly impossible that
the great Stadtholder might have peacefully succeeded
the great Protector, under some national alliance, or
even by the marriage of William with one of the family
of Cromwell? England might have been spared the
ignominy and the bloodshed of the restored Stuarts ; the
long English Revolution might have been a gradual and
peaceful evolution from a feudal to an industrial, from a
mediaeval to a modern polity ; and the great Chief of
the Commonwealth might have peacefully handed over
a new and grander England to the great Founder of
our Constitutional Monarchy.

CHAPTEE XII

HOME POLICY OF THE PROTECTORATE

THE internal policy of the Protector can only be under-
stood if we regard him as a temporary Dictator set up
to close an epoch of revolution and war. His rule was
avowedly provisional and summary ; based on expediency,
necessity, and public peace. Constitutional right it
could have none : it rested on the sword, as in times
of revolution and civil war all government must rest.
Cromwell's nature and genius were those of the practical
man, dealing with the exigencies of the hour. He made
no attempt to recast the political organism, or to found
a bran-new set of institutions. As he said in Parliament,
Healing and Settling were the crying needs of the time.
He was the typical opportunist, doing what seemed best
for the hour with the actual materials at hand. He did
things quite as arbitrary as any Tudor or any Stuart.
He did violent things — even odious things. He governed
at times by sheer military force. But the true tests by
which he must be judged are these. Was not his task
essentially different from that of any Tudor, Stuart, or
legitimate king1? Was not his task an indispensable
duty 1 Did he erect military government into a system,
or carry arbitrary action beyond the immediate necessity ?
Was his government as a whole, given its revolutionary

CHAP, xii HOME POLICY OF THE PROTECTORATE 213

origin and its military basis, that of the self-seeking
military tyrant1? These questions each of us must
answer according to his general view of this momentous
epoch.

The first duty of the Protector was to keep order.
He was the constable set to keep the peace in the parish.
In a country torn by rebellion and war for fourteen
years and on the verge of social dissolution, external
order was the first pressing need. No English govern-
ment had ever kept it better — not even that of Henry
VIII. or Elizabeth at their best. Neither Wolsey, nor
Thomas Cromwell, nor Burleigh, nor Walsingham, nor
Salisbury, were more vigilant, better served with
information, or more skilful in using it, than were Oliver
and Thurloe. During the Commonwealth there was, we
may say, one continuous plot to assassinate the Protector
and to restore the Stuarts, starting with the infamous
proclamation of Charles to reward Oliver's assassin.
In these attempts Anabaptists, Fifth -Monarchy men,
Eepublicans, Catholics, and Eoyalists were constantly
conspiring. Each and all were easily and quietly
crushed. Nor were they crushed with wholesale blood-
shed. Some eight or ten distinct conspiracies are
recorded, the authors of which were arrested upon clear
evidence of designs to kill the Protector or to destroy
his government. Many scores of conspirators were
arrested. Four only were executed : Gerard, Vowel,
Sir H. Slingsby, and Dr. Hewit. One plot only broke
into an insurrection. In that, Penruddock and Grove,
taken in arms, were beheaded; several other actual
insurgents were hanged; many more transported to
Barbadoes.

214 OLIVER CROMWELL CHAP.

Penruddock's insurrection led to the very severe
policy against the Royalists, by which they were amerced
in the tenth of their fortunes. It was a crushing measure,
but it can hardly be called vindictive or wanton. The
system of Major-Generals by which it was carried out
was an anticipation of the modern method of government
by Prefects and Military Governors of provinces. Oliver
called it his "little poor invention," and it was un-
doubtedly an engine of terrible power. It was in the
highest degree arbitrary and without a shadow of legal
right. It was, in fact, the military occupation of a country
after insurrection, declared, as we now say, to be in a
state of siege — a condition with which in modern Europe
we are but too familiar, and one which no government
can absolutely renounce. It was a war measure, to be
justified only, if at all, by the exigencies of war. It
lasted in vigour somewhat more than a year, and was a
terror to the Royalists, but not to the public. Having
served its turn, it was dropped, partly in consequence
of the odium it caused, partly because it served as an
expedient to undermine the Protector's authority.

Most of the eighty-two Ordinances passed by the
Protector and his Council were subsequently confirmed
by Parliament. They consisted of measures to continue
Taxes and Excise, for reorganising the Church, reforming
the law, for union of Scotland with England, for con-
solidating the Treasury, for the reform of colleges,
schools, and charitable foundations, and for the suppres-
sion of cock-fighting, duelling, etc. etc. On the whole,
this body of dictatorial legislation, abnormal in form as
it is, in substance was a real, wise, and moderate set of
reforms.

xii HOME POLICY OF THE PROTECTORATE 215

Taxation was throughout the great difficulty of the
Protectorate, owing entirely to this : that Parliament so
long occupied itself with checkmating or upsetting the
Protectorate itself. This drove Oliver to measures
which in point of constitutional law are quite as illegal
as any device of James or Charles. And when he
proceeded to procure the conviction of Cony, and actually
sent to the Tower three eminent lawyers who claimed
in his defence the ancient law of the land, it is open to
any one to argue that this was as arbitrary as anything
in the case of ship-money or the Impositions. The
question for us is this : Was his arbitrary government in
spirit and effect the same as that of Charles or James 1
As a matter of constitutional law the Protectorate as a
whole is out of court altogether. Its sole plea is necessity.
And though necessity is for the most part, as we know,
the tyrant's plea, it is also at times the plea of the wise
and just man in a great crisis.

If this arbitrary government had settled into a system,
if it did not prepare for a return to a legal government
by consent, Oliver stands condemned as a tyrant and
not a Protector. It is possible that the situation was
itself inherently impracticable, and the difficulties it
presented may have been insuperable. But such as they
were, each year of Oliver's short rule showed them as
diminishing, and his power to control them as growing.
The ancient organisation of England, political, judicial,
administrative, ecclesiastical, and social — law, police,
taxation, education, and government — had rested since
the Conquest upon a king, a territorial Church,
and a privileged territorial aristocracy. First the
Church, and then the aristocracy, had broken away

216 OLIVER CROMWELL CHAP.

from the revolutionary movement and rallied round
the king. Oliver found both fanatically hostile to
Commonwealth and to himself. And he had to found
order — parliamentary, judicial, administrative, and ecclesi-
astical— in a society where the old ministers of such
order were bent on producing disorder. A permanent
settlement was beyond the reach of human genius.
Such temporary settlement as was possible Oliver made.

Apart from its dictatorial character, the Protector's
government was efficient, just, moderate, and wise.
Opposed as he was by lawyers, he made some of the
best judges England ever had. Justice and law opened
a new era. The services were raised to their highest
efficiency. Trade and commerce revived under his
fostering care. Education was reorganised ; the Univer-
sities reformed ; Durham founded. It is an opponent
who says : " All England over, these were Halcyon
days." Men of learning of all opinions were encouraged
and befriended. " If there was a man in England," says
Neal, "who excelled in any faculty or science, the
Protector would find him out, and reward him according
to his merit." It was the Protector's brother-in-law,
Warden of Wadham College, who there gathered together
the group which ultimately founded the Royal Society.

Noble were the efforts of the Protector to impress
his own spirit of toleration on the intolerance of his
age ; and stoutly he contended with Parliaments and
Council for Quakers, Jews, Anabaptists, Socinians, and
even crazy blasphemers. He effectively protected the
Quakers; he admitted the Jews after an expulsion of
three centuries ; and he satisfied Mazarin that he had
given to Catholics all the protection that he dared. In

xii HOME POLICY OF THE PROTECTORATE 217

his bearing towards his personal opponents, he was a
model of magnanimity and self-control. Inexorable
where public duty required punishment, neither desertion,
treachery, obloquy, nor ingratitude ever could stir him
to vindictive measures.

It is the high distinction of Oliver's Court that for
once it exacted morality and purity from men as much
as from women. He long refused his daughter's hand
to the heir of the Earl of Warwick, because he was told
the young man was given to play and other vices. The
state kept by the Protector, though modest and serious,
was neither gloomy nor uncouth. Oliver loved music,
encouraged musicians, and held weekly concerts. He
loved society; and was frank, humorous, and genial
with his intimates ; affable with dependants and strangers;
stately and impressive on occasions of state. It is
remembered to his honour that he preserved to our
country the cartoons of Eaffaelle, and the "Triumph"
of Mantegna, together with some royal palaces and
parks ; that he collected a fine library ; that he sought
out and gathered round him many men of genius and
learning. He was generous of his personal fortune, and
made no use of power to extend it. He showed no
disposition to nepotism; was exceedingly slow to
advance his own sons; did nothing to promote the
private interest of his own family. About his whole
career there was no stain of personal interest. He
made no serious attempt to found a dynasty. He made
no definite nomination even of a successor. After his
death, he knew too well, nothing which he could do
would save the Cause. He accepted the inevitable — and
he did nothing.

CHAPTER XIII

FOREIGN POLICY OF THE PROTECTORATE

CROMWELL'S foreign policy had one consistent aim : to
form a great Protestant Alliance, and to place England
at its head. It was a policy not of War, but of
Defence ; though peace was to be secured by the
assertion of armed might on land and on sea. As a
means to this end, it involved the destruction of the
mercantile monopoly, first of the Dutch in Europe, and
then of Spain in the west. In result, it placed England
by one bound at the head of the powers of Europe ; it
laid the foundations of the naval supremacy of England,
and also of her transmarine Empire ; could it have been
maintained unbroken down to the age of William IIL,
it would have changed the whole history of Europe, and
the latter half of the reign of Louis XIV. would have
told a very different tale. Coming after the wars of
religion, and before the dynastic wars and the com-
mercial wars of the next hundred years, Cromwell's
foreign policy was founded in part on religion, in part
on trade. It was in no sense a policy of dynasty or of
conquest Had it been continued, it might have done
much to prevent wars of dynasty and conquest. When
the Commonwealth opened on the death of Charles I.,
England had sunk, both in credit and in power, to one

CH. xin FOREIGN POLICY OF THE PROTECTORATE 219

of the lowest points known to her history. At the
death of the Protector, she held a rank in the eyes of
Europe such as she had never reached since the days of
the Plantagenets, such as she has never reached since, but
in the time of Marlborough, Nelson, and Wellington.

The war which finally wrenched from the Dutch the
supremacy at sea was the work of the Commonwealth.
In this Cromwell shared, but his part was not so great
as that of Vane or Blake. But it was his privilege to
tell his first Parliament, as Protector, that he had
already made four honourable treaties of Peace. Within
four months he made peace with Holland, with Sweden,
with Denmark, with Portugal; and was negotiating
peace with France. " Peace is desirable with all men,"
he said, "so far as it may be had with conscience and
honour ! " " There is not a nation in Europe but is very
willing to ask a good understanding with you." It was
a proud saying, — and it was true.

Though he long made some politic hesitations, it is
plain that, from the first, he honestly designed an
alliance with France and not with Spain. And in this
he was right, not only from the point of view of his
time, but on a just estimate of the state of Europe.
The safety of the Protestant cause was by no means yet
secured ; Spain, and not France, was then the head of the
Catholic and retrograde forces ; and the free commerce
of the ocean was impossible whilst the exclusive pre-
tensions of Spain existed. When Blake's guns destroyed
fleet after fleet of Spain, when Penn and Venables
conquered Jamaica, when Lockhart's red-coats swept
away Don John's veterans, Cromwell was true to his idea
of a great Protestant alliance, with England at its head.

220 OLIVER CROMWELL CHAP.

All through his rule he laboured to unite the non-
Catholic states — Sweden, Denmark, Holland, Branden-
burg, and the other North German duchies, Switzerland,
even Russia — " All the interests of the Protestants," he
said, "are the same as yours" — regarding himself as
the heir to the policy of Henry IV., of Elizabeth, of
Gustavus Adolphus ; preparing that of our own William
of Orange. This policy reached its highest point in the
magnificent burst of pity and indignation with which he
championed the Vaudois against extermination : one of
the noblest memories of England. It is seldom that in
the history of a country national pride and moral
elevation surround the same deed. It is seldom that
the foremost statesman of an age joins to himself the
foremost poet of his time in expressing in one voice the
religion, the sympathy, the power, the generosity of a
great nation. "Avenge, 0 Lord, Thy slaughtered
Saints," wrote Oliver's secretary in verse. " Pukherrimi
facti laus atque gloria Ulibata atque integra tua erit" he
wrote in his Latin despatch from Oliver to Louis XIV.
The sentence might serve for the Protector's epitaph.

The settlement of Scotland and its union with
England was in every point of view one of the most
complete of the Protector's works. Peace, order, justice,
reform, prosperity, attended it in unbroken success. It
is a Scotchman, and an opponent of Oliver, who has
recorded, " We always reckon those eight years of the
usurpation a time of great peace and prosperity." Far
otherwise was it with Ireland. The conquest, begun
by Oliver with ruthless cruelty, was completed by
Ireton, Ludlow, and his other generals, with unflinching
savagery. Famine, massacre, spoliation, transportation,

xiii FOREIGN POLICY OF THE PROTECTORATE 221

persecution, and private murder, exterminated the Irish
landowners in the larger part of the island. Wholesale
dispossessions, proscriptions, and transplantation, trans-
ferred the bulk of the soil to Protestant adventurers.
At length Ireland had peace ; but it was the peace made
by the destroyer, as of the Roman it was said, " They
make a wilderness and call it peace." " No such doom,"
writes the historian of the English People, "had ever
fallen on a nation in modern times as fell upon Ireland
in its new settlement." And it was essentially the work
of Oliver. For ten years, from 1649 to 1659, Ireland
had no other rulers but Oliver, his two sons-in-law, his
own son. In Scotland, religion, institutions, law, land,
habits, and national sentiment were scrupulously re-
spected. In Ireland, the religion, institutions, law,
land, habits, and national sentiment of the Irish were
trampled under the heel of the conqueror. Such is the
dark side of Puritanism and of English ambition.

The same taint in a measure hangs over the war
policy of Oliver in Europe, if we judge it by the standard
of social morality and our modern desire for peace. In
that age, and with such a creed, it would be asking too
much to require such a standard of Puritans. Admit-
ting its arrogant assertion of right and godliness, it was
an unbroken and dazzling triumph. The history of
England offers no such picture to national pride as
when the kings and rulers of Europe courted, belauded,
fawned on the farmer of Huntingdon. The record of
English arms has no more brilliant page than that of
Blake at Teneriffe, of Lockhart at Dunkirk and Morgan
at Ypres, when the Ironsides stormed unbreached forts
and annihilated Spanish battalions, to the amazement of

222 OLIVER CROMWELL CHAP, xm

Turenne, Cond6, and Don John. Never has a ruler of
England been formally addressed by kings in such
Oriental terms as "the most invincible of sovereigns,"
" the greatest and happiest of princes." " It was hard
to discover," -wrote Clarendon, " which feared him most,
France, Spain, or the Low Countries ; " " There is nothing
he could have demanded that either of them would
have denied him." But, as in his own age, so perhaps
still, the memory of Cromwell has impressed itself on the
imagination of foreigners more deeply than on that of
his countrymen. It is an eminent statesman and a great
historian of another country who has written : " He is,
perhaps, the only example which history affords of one
man having governed the most opposite events, and
proved sufficient for the most various destinies." It is
a philosopher of another country who has said : ' ' Cromwell,
with his lofty character, is the most enlightened statesman
who ever adorned the Protestant world."

CHAPTER XIV

THE LAST DAYS: SICKNESS AND DEATH
A.D. 1658. JETA.T. 59

NEVER had the fortunes of the Cause stood firmer than
in July 1658, — had but Oliver been destined to live out
his threescore years and ten. At home rebellion and
plots had been once more utterly stamped out ; abroad
the capture of Dunkirk had raised the glory of England
to its highest point ; a new Parliament was preparing, it
was hoped with happier prospects. But the wings of the
Angel of Death already were hovering over the house of
Oliver.

His youngest daughter Frances, a bride of three
months, was made a widow in February, by the death of
young Rich, grandson and heir to the Earl of Warwick.
The old Earl, the staunchest friend of the Protector
amongst the peers, followed his grandson in April.
Next, in July, the Protector's favourite daughter,
Elizabeth Claypole, lay dying at Hampton Court. She
too had recently lost her youngest boy, Oliver. Now
she was in great extremity of bodily pain, with frequent
and violent convulsion fits. Through nearly all July
the broken-hearted father hung over her bedside, unable

224 OLIVER CROMWELL CHAP.

to attend to any public business whatever. On 6th of
August she was dead.

Oliver himself had sickened during her last days;
and, though he came to London on the 10th, when she
was buried in Henry VII. 's chapel, he returned to
Hampton Court very ill. That day, it seems, in his
bedchamber, he called for his Bible, and desired a godly
person to read to him Philippians iv. 11, 12, 13; and
repeating again and again the words : "lean do all things
through Christ that strengtheneth me," he said thus to
himself, " He that was Paul's Christ is my Christ too ! "
For some days longer he continued to transact business,
and even took the air. There George Fox saw him for
the last time. "As he rode at the head of his life-
guard, I saw and felt a waft of death go forth against
him ; and, when I came to him, he looked like a dead
man."

The next day he was very ill with ague, which
became " a bastard tertian," hot and cold shivering fits
recurring at intervals. Between the attacks he did
some business, and was able to be carried in a coach to
Whitehall on the 24th. But "his time was come, and
neither prayers nor tears could prevail with God to
lengthen out his life." He saw Fairfax for the last
time, and steadily refused his petition for the release of
Fairfax's son-in-law, Villiers, Duke of Buckingham. He
still in the intervals of the fever fits gave some orders,
mitigated Buckingham's captivity, and made some
appointments. But the ague became a " double tertian,"
fits recurring within the same day. " Truly the hot fit
hath been very long and terrible," wrote" Thurloe,
"insomuch that the doctors fear he will scarce get

xiv THE LAST DAYS : SICKNESS AND DEATH 225

through it." The family were all around him, except
Henry, who was in Ireland. Hope was now given up ;
consternation fell on the household and the whole
Puritan party; all through Sunday the churches
resounded with prayers.

His faithful attendant has preserved a record of his last
hours. These are some of his last words — but we must
remember that, in such a malady, coherence is out of the
question, even if deathbed speeches are ever exactly
recorded. He spoke continually of the Covenants ; the
preachers, chaplains, and many others being constantly
about him, or in the room adjoining. When his
children and wife stood weeping round him, he said :
"Love not this world. I say unto you, it is not good
that you should love this world ! " He prayed : "Lord,
Thou knowest, if I do desire to live, it is to show forth
Thy praise and declare Thy works ! " Once he was
heard saying, " It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands
of the Living God." Again: "I think I am the
poorest wretch that lives ; but I love God ; or rather, am
beloved of God."

On Monday, 30th August, there raged a terrific
storm, unroofing houses, uprooting trees, dealing
desolation at sea. Superstition, party malice, made the
most of this historic storm. The dying man was now
conscious only partially and at intervals. They urged
him to name his successor. The sealed paper with
Eichard's name in it could not be found. Was it
Richard ? No man now knows. Twice the sinking
ruler is believed to have given some indistinct assent.
These are the words which passed current as his last
Prayer : —

Q

226 OLIVER CROMWELL CHAP.

" Lord, though I am a miserable and wretched creature, I
am in covenant with Thee through grace. And I inay, I
will, come to Thee, for Thy people. Thou hadst made me,
though very unworthy, a mean instrument to do them some
good, and Thee service ; and many of them have set too high
a value upon me, though others wish and would be glad of
my death ; Lord, however Thou do dispose of me, continue
and go on to do good for them. Give them consistency of
judgment, one heart and mutual love ; and go on to deliver
them, and with the work of reformation ; and make the
Name of Christ glorious in the world. Teach those who look
too much on Thy instruments, to depend more upon Thyself.
Pardon such as desire to trample upon the dust of a poor
worm, for they are Thy people too. And pardon the folly
of this short Prayer : — even for Jesus Christ's sake. And
give us a good night, if it be Thy pleasure. Amen,"

These sentences are not given as the precise words he
uttered, and, like all last prayers, they are manifestly
arranged. Yet some such words he probably repeated
after Dr. Owen, or Dr. Goodwin, at his side. They
certainly present to us the spirit of his last thoughts.

For two or three days more, life still nickered ; and
we have a few broken sentences recorded, it seems quite
literally, by his faithful attendant : —

" Truly God is good ; indeed He is ; He will not " Then

his speech failed him, but as I apprehended, it was, " He will
not leave me." This saying " God is good," he frequently
used all along ; and would speak it with much cheerfulness,
and fervour of spirit, in the midst of his pains. Again he
said : " I would be willing to live to be further serviceable
to God and His People ; but my work is done. Yet God
will be with His People."

He was very restless most part of the night, speaking often
to himself. And there being something to drink offered him,
he was desired to take the same, and endeavour to sleep.
Unto which he answered : " It is not my design to drink or

xiv THE LAST DAYS : SICKNESS AND DEATH 227

sleep ; but my design is, to make what haste I can to be
gone."

Towards morning he used some expressions of con-
solation and peace, and some of deep humility and self-
abasement. The day that dawned was his day of
triumph, the 3d of September, the day of Dunbar and
of Worcester. He was then speechless, and remained all
day in a stupor; prayer, consternation, and grief, all
around him. Between three and four in the afternoon
the watchers by his bedside heard a deep sigh. Oliver
was dead.

APPENDIX D

THE vast issues which hung on the Protector's life and
the unsolved question if he named a successor give more than
usual interest to the character of his last illness. My friend,
Dr. W. Howship Dickinson, of St. George's Hospital, has been
so kind as to examine the recorded facts, and to send me a
brief report. His opinion is, and Sir George Paget, Regius
Professor of Physic at Cambridge, agrees, that Oliver died
essentially of ague, or some form of malarial fever, without
any advanced organic disease such as would cause death ; but
of ague coming upon a man weakened by toil, anxiety, and
gout. It is probable that, if Peruvian Bark, which was
then more or less in use in England, had been administered
in time, the Protector's life might have been extended. But
there is reason to think that this remedy, about the time of
Oliver's last illness, had fallen into temporary disrepute, in
consequence of a death believed to have been caused by it.
It might have subdued the ague ; and there is no evidence of
any other sufficient cause of death. In such a malady it is
unlikely that, after 31st of August, any prolonged mental effort
could have been made. One of his physicians told Sir P.
Warwick that the Protector was " never in any such condi-
tion as distinctly to know what he did." And Dr. Bates

228 OLIVER CROMWELL

declares that, when he is supposed to have nominated
Richard, he was " in a drowsy fit."

His funeral was the most magnificent ever known in
England. It was exactly imitated from that of Philip II.,
who had died on the same day, sixty years before, and is
said to have cost in our values £150,000. The legends
which have gathered round the remains of Oliver are almost
as strange as those which are told of Alexander, Charlemagne,
or Barbarossa. The ordinary histories record that the
Protector's body was embalmed, buried in Henry VII.'s
chapel, disinterred at the Restoration, hung at Tyburn,
decapitated, and the head set up over the gate of Westminster
HalL It has been continually asserted (1) that his body was
never buried in Westminster Abbey at all ; (2) that it was
buried on the field of Naseby ; (3) that it was secretly sunk
in the Thames ; (4) that when disinterred at the Restoration,
it was recovered by the family ; (5) that, after hanging at
Tyburn, it was buried near the foundations of No. 1
Connaught Place ; (6) that it was obtained by Lady
Fauconberg, and walled up in masonry at Newburgh in
Yorkshire, which is still in the possession of Sir G. Womb-
well, who inherits it from the Fauconberg family. The
truth it is now perhaps impossible to recover. The whole
funeral ceremony was avowedly performed with an " effigy."
The more probable account would be, that the body was
really buried in the Abbey, and was disinterred at the
Restoration, and the head was actually exposed for many
years over Westminster HalL It is far from improbable
that Lord Fauconberg had influence enough to secure the
remains, and privately immured them in the walls of the
mansion, where so many relics of Oliver remain.

If this be so, the quickened conscience of the nation
might yet reverse a deed which dishonours our Monarchy
and stains our annals ; and the bones of the greatest ruler
this country ever had might again be laid to rest beside the
heroes and statesmen of England.

Printed by R. & R. CLARK. Edinburgh.

BY THE SAME AUTHOR.

THE CHOICE OF BOOKS

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