Oliver Gromwell A Character Study

92 09463d

Keep Your Card in This Pocket

Boob -will be issued only on presentation of proper
library cards.

aunlesa labeled otherwise, books may be retained
forfow weeks. Borrowers finding books marked, de-
faced or mutilated are expected to report same at
library desk; otherwise the last borrower will be held
responsible for all imperfections discovered.

The card holder is responsible for all books drawn
on this card.

Penalty for over-due books 2c a day plus cost of
notices.

Lost cards and change of residence must be re-
ported promptly.

Public Library

Kansas City, Mo.

Keep Your Card in This Pocket

MRKOWIT* KNV* ion 00., . 8., Mft, , ,

D DDD1 03^0515 fl

MR. CHARLES*itlNG*OF ENGLAND
A BOOK FOR BOOKMEN
THE PILGRIM OF ETERNITY;

Lord Byron
VICTORIAN POETRY
THE LYRIC

OLIVER CROMWELL

OLIVER

*i .** S **

A CHARACTER'WtJDY

BY

JOHN DRINKWATER

/ *S , H,

Author of

"MR. CHARLES, KING OF ENGLAND,"
"THE PILGRIM OF ETERNITY*

GARDEN CITY NEW YORK
DOUBLEDAY, DORAN & COMPANY, INC.

CQFYRIGHT, 1927,
<3Y GEORGE H. 00RAN COMPANY

OUVEE CROMWHL

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

TO

MY FRIEND
GEORGE DORAN

NOTE

THIS is, specifically, a character study, not a
history. My debt to Cromwell's own letters and
speeches, as edited in Carlyle, I have referred to
in the text. Lord Nugent's Memorials of John
Hampden, 1832, a work of distinguished if for-
gotten merit, has helped me much in the earlier
part of my study; and Mr. Trevelyan has been
a very instructive companion by the way, while
the fourth volume of the Cambridge Modern
History is a valuable check on any study of
Cromwell's period. Clarendon, Guizot, Bur-
net, Evelyn and Pepys have been on the table as
I wrote, and acknowledgement should be made
to indifferent historians of old like Heath and
Noble, and those of the reformed model such
as Professors Firth and Gardiner.

J. D.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

I. INTRODUCTION ......... 13

II. BIRTH. CHILDHOOD 23

III. ENVIRONMENT OF YOUTH 33

IV. MARRIAGE AND A PURITAN HOME .... 47
V. PARLIAMENT. THE PETITION OF RIGHT 59

VI. DIVINE RIGHT 69

VII. PREPARATIONS. ELIOT! LAUD 79

VIII. THE STAR CHAMBER. SHIP MONEY .... 91

IX. THE SHORT PARLIAMENT IO3

X. ASSEMBLING OF THE LONG PARLIAMENT. THE

REPRESENTATIVE PURITAN Ill

XI. EXECUTION OF STRAFFORD. THE GRAND RE-
MONSTRANCE ... 121

XII. THE FIRST CIVIL WAR. EDGEHILL. THE EAST-
ERN ASSOCIATION ........ 133

XIH. THE IRONSIDES. MARSTON MOOR AND NASBY.

FIRSiT CIVIL WAR ENDS 145

XIV. THE ARMY AND THE PARLIAMENT . . . . 157

XV. THE EXECUTION OF THE KING 167

XVI. CROMWELL IN 1649 ........ 1 75

XVII. IRELAND . * * 183

ix

CONTENTS

CHAPTER EA0E !

XVIII. DUNBAR AND WORCESTER 201 (

XIX. LORD PROTECTOR 209 ! *

XX. FIRST PROTECTORATE PARLIAMENT . . * . 219

XXL SECOND PROTECTORATE PARLIAMENT CROM-
WELL AND KINGSHIP 2JI

XXII. LAST DAYS AND DEATH ,..,*.. 243

I

INTRODUCTION

OLIVER CROMWELL

A CHARACTER STUDY

INTRODUCTION

CROMWELL is one of the figures in history, in
English history perhaps pre-eminently the fig-
Ue, about whom no one can know a little with-
out becoming partisan. The chroniclers who
know everything may be too busy transcribing
their documents to indulge their preferences,
commonly with the result that they give a pas-
sionless account of as passionate a man as ever
took an eminent part in human affairs. But
knowledge at this rate lacks the quickening
touch of prejudice without which the records of
great men may tell nothing while affecting to
tell all. What Cromwell precisely was, what
Iven he precisely did, can never be known. But
fcow the man that, on such evidence as is avail-
able, he is supposed to have been, how his im-
puted views and conduct have affected the

13

OLIVER CROMWELL

minds of people, how these appearances still
affect our own minds, is discoverable, and it
may be with profit I think that I have read
almost everything that has been written about
Cromwell, and I know that I have forgotten a
great deal of it. I shall in this essay duly "ver-
ify my quotations," but I shall be unabashed if
I am told on unimpeachable authority that some
of them are spurious. Ever since I was a small
boy Cromwell has been one of my splendid
heroes, and this for reasons that are very clear
and succinct to me. If counsel for the Crowa
were to produce literal proof that a certain Oli-
ver Cromwell of Huntingdon and Ely, member
of Parliament, general of the revolutionary
army, and Protector of England, was a crude
fanatic, a self-seeker, a double dealer and an
enemy of liberty, I should answer quite com-
posedly that this was not my Oliver Cromwell.
And this is how it should be. Either we find
in such a man qualities signally memorable, or
we reduce him to dimensions that are not mem-
orable at all.

It is true that some observers while admitting
the stature and power see the former as mon-
strous and the power only in evil exercise. That
Cromwell greatly influenced the political events
of his own time nobody is likely to dispute, but
as much may be said of many men who have

14

INTRODUCTION

taken an insignificant place in history, and the
critics who invest his character with all the
meaner traits of narrow and prejudiced du-
plicity, propose a Cromwell who becomes in-
significant. If such a Cromwell existed, we can-
not be concerned to know him, since on no
account could he be worth knowing. There are,
however, as we say, others who would make him
not negligible, but contemptible. These have
to be more seriously considered. To say that
Cromwell was a petty though successful oppor-
tunist is merely silly, while to say that his was a
phenomenal energy iniquitously employed may
be mistaken, but it implies a view that has at
least to be contested. The logical extremes to
which Cromwell's policy led him, notably the
execution of Charles I, stirred many minds to
genuine loathing and horror ; they also afforded
less candid passions an effective opportunity for
bringing themselves to the notice of authority*
Honest men, shocked by convulsions that they
could not understand, which were indeed not
easily to be understood, saw, often with an in-
consolable sense of tragedy, nothing in Crom-
well but the common usurper and tyrant But
these and harsher terms were also much to the
purpose of Restoration pamphleteers conspicu-
ous rather for an eye to the main chance than
for devoted piety, and by them made widely cur-

15

OLIVEE CROMWELL

rent To which class of censor James Heath
belonged we need not enquire, but his Flagel-
lum: or The Life and Death, Birth and Burial
of Oliver Cromwell the Late Usurper is char-
acteristic of these essays in invective. In it Oli-
ver appears as This Fury, An Atheist or Mocker
of God, the Bloody Man, Basilisk and Belial.
He appears in every circumstance of iniquity,
no emphasis being too grotesque for the pur-
pose; when he hunts he is made "at the fall of
a deer, where he would be sure to be present,
to embrue his hands in the blood of it, and
therewith asperse and sprinckle the Attendants,"
His death is obscenely described in physical de-
tail, but shocking as the writer is able to assure
us this was, he adds with high satisfaction that
"his name and memory stinks worse," and of
the revolting scene that took place two years
later at the Restoration we read :

"On the 30 day of January 1660 [1661] that
day twelve years of his most nefarious parri-
cide, his Carcars with Bradshaws & Iretons,
having been digg'd out of their Graves, were
carried to the Red-Lyon in Holborn, & from
thence drawn in sledges to Tyburn, where they
hanged from Ten of the Clock in the morning
till Sun-set, with their faces towards Whitehal,
and were then inhumed under the Gallowes,
and his Head set upon Westminster-hall to be
the becoming Spectacle of his Treason, where

16

INTRODUCTION

on that Pinacle and Legal Advancement it is
fit to leave this Ambitious Wretch."

It will be seen that the impression made by
Cromwell on James Heath was an unfavourable
one, but it is not one affected by anything less
than a very great energy. Heath and his like
make no assumption of lightly dismissing a shal-
low impostor; they employ their most extrava-
gant terms in prophesying against a man as ter-
ribly powerful as Beelzebub, one indeed who
may be taken to be Beelzebub himself, and they
cannot merely be laughed out of court For we
must remember that their heavily loaded pe-
riods, absurd as they may seem to us now, were
in many cases written in a very fury of convic-
tion. When Flagellum came from the press,
academic disapproval of Cromwell's policy and
character was unknown. The feeling against
him might sometimes be exploited by hack lam-
poonists, but the feeling itself was unaffectedly
savage. After all, Cromwell did conduct a rev-
olution under arms, conducted it thoroughly and
to a very bitter end, and such a man cannot ex-
pect any allowances to be made for him by his
antagonists. We may believe to-day that Crom-
well saved English liberty, but even so we have
to realise that he did it in opposition to a party
that was served by many gallant and honourable

17

OLIVER CROMWELL

men, and to them he cannot have appeared as
anything but a calamity let loose upon society,
It is significant that some of these men, con-
vinced that CromwelPs ascendency was an in-
calculable disaster to their country, could yet see
in him not only a force that was not to be es-
caped, but qualities that were admirable. No
one had better reason than Edward Hyde, Earl
of Clarendon, to embellish his hatred of Crom-
well with prejudice. Cromwell was the chief
agent of a conspiracy by which for many years
his own cause was humiliated in what seemed to
be irreparable ruin. Of this cause Clarendon
was in many respects the most representative
spirit, and he believed in it with a fanaticism,
not to say bigotry, that was never exceeded in
the Puritan camp. He saw his political ideals
discredited, his church denied, a master for
whom he had an almost blind loyalty and affec-
tion brought to the block, and himself sent into
ignominious exile, and in each circumstance
Cromwell's was the responsible hand. Claren-
don, moreover, had not a natural liberality of
mind likely to moderate the resentment so am-
ply inspired; flexibility of opinion was not
among his many great gifts. Nevertheless,
when he came to summarise the career that had
involved his own in so much bitterness, he could
write : "Cromwell was one of those men whom

18

INTRODUCTION

his very enemies could not condemn without
commending him at the same time : for he could
never have done half that mischief without
great parts of courage, industry and judgment.
. . , Without doubt, no man with more wicked-
ness ever attempted anything, or brought to pass
what he desired more wickedly, more in the face
and contempt of religion, and moral honesty;
yet wickedness as great as his could never have
accomplished those trophies without the assist-
ance of a great spirit, and admirable circum-
spection and sagacity, and a most magnanimous
resolution."

Here, then, we have from his severest judges,
testimony to the man's greatness. That they
should conclude it to have been shamefully mis-
applied is inevitable, but the most resolute at-
tacks leave us with a figure of commanding stat-
ure. If on enquiry we should come to other con-
clusions: if we should find that an energy
which, in the sharpest conflict into which Eng-
lishmen have fallen among themselves, com-
pelled acknowledgment from the most fixed of
its adversaries, was further used to finely con-
structive ends, then we may see in Cromwell
one of the supreme heroes of our race. The first
man to do this with a mind equal to the task
and discriminating scholarship was Carlyle. I
am not sure what position that somewhat crusty

19

OLIVER CROMWELL

evangelist holds in the esteem of historians to-
day, but his great work on Cromwell remains
one of the most passionate as it is on the whole
one of the most convincing documents in our
national archives. It is difficult to think of any
that has contributed more to our knowledge of
ourselves as a people, and it is certain that with-
out it we should have missed half the meaning
of a man and an age that had a decisive bearing
on the England that we know to-day ,

20

II

BIRTH. CHILDHOOD

II

BIRTH. CHILDHOOD

OLIVER CROMWELL was born at Huntingdon
on April 25th, 1599. The Heathen writers
note, with some dissatisfaction, that a malicious
Fate in bringing him into this world gave no
warning of her designs by "comets nor earth-
quakes nor such like Violences of nature," that
his mother had no "f earful divinations when she
was impregnate with him," and that he was not
delivered in any preternatural way, as "with
Teeth, or Heels forward, or long hair, or marks
upon his Flesh" ; though they make some amends
to epicures of sensation by inclining to credit the
belief that when he died fifty-nine years later
at Whitehall he was in fact carried off by the
devil in a storm.

His birth was, indeed, no more than matter
for gossip among a few neighbours in a little
country town. His father, Robert Cromwell,
was a cadet in an upper middle-class family of
some substance. The grandfather, Sir Henry
Cromwell, lived at Hinchingbrooke, a consid-
erable house standing about a mile out of Hunt-

23

OLIVER CROMWELL

ingdon on the London road, where he was suc-
ceeded by his eldest son Oliver, himself a
knight and the uncle of his young namesake.
Robert was a man of some property, of good
standing in local or parish affairs, made one
brief appearance in Parliament, and lived a
modest and respected life as a gentleman farm-
er. The pamphleteers of a later date said that
he had also been a brewer, an avocation it is to
be presumed much to the distaste of the royalist
public for whom the intelligence was meant
The rumour is in any case unsupported, though
that a farmer then brewed ale for his own use
and a little over is likely enough. Besides the
eldest son Oliver, who lived with his father at
Hinchingbrooke, Robert had other brothers,
one of whom in turn had a son who is said by
Heath to have been hanged for poisoning a
lawyer; but, as Carlyle observes, this was too
good a piece of scandal to have escaped all the
other news-mongers if it had been in any way
credible, and as we find it nowhere else men-
tioned it may be left to Heath's own enjoyment
Though, with Carlyle again, we may allow that
"of course anybody can poison an Attorney and
be hanged for it."

The site of Oliver's reputed birthplace in
Huntingdon is still known, but the original
house had long since disappeared* I say re-

24

BIRTH

puted, because there is a tradition at Hinching-
brooke that when Mrs. Robert Cromwell was
near her time she moved out to the ampler es-
tablishment of her father-in-law for the added
comforts that it afforded. But as Oliver was
the fifth child in a family of ten, the fancy is
probably no more than a pleasant one. His
mother's maiden name was Elizabeth Steward,
but she was already the widow of a William
Lynne when she married Robert Cromwell.
The variations on the names Stuart, Stewart,
Steward, are obscure to any but good Scotsmen,
and I am not prepared to say what if any justifi-
cation there is for the view that through his
mother Oliver Cromwell was remotely of a line-
age with that Charles Stuart who was born at
Dunfermline twelve months after his own ar-
rival in or on the borders of Huntingdon. For
the rest, all that need- concern us genealogically
are the facts that the family was connected with
the Thomas Cromwell, Earl of Essex, who is
chiefly known to Englishmen as the associate
of Shakespeare's Wolsey, and that one of Rob-
ert Cromwell's sisters was the mother of John
Hampden, who was five years of age when his
cousin, our Oliver, was born.

Clearly as the character and associations of
landscape may be printed on our minds, noth-
ing is more difficult to define, nor can we tell

25

OLIVEE CROMWELL

whether our impressions are more than personal
to ourselves. Familiarity with our own country
may easily make us over-confident in our dis-
tinctions, and we imagine contrasts are not very
real. None of us could confuse Cumberland
with Suffolk, but I am not so sure about War-
wickshire, for example, and Kent. However
this may be, Huntingdon recommends itself
with peculiar suitability as the birthplace of the
great Puritan. Set between the brooding auster-
ity of the fens and the rich and intimate but
unspectacular pastures of the true midlands,
grey in tone and watered by the Ouse that flows
rather bleakly through unsheltered meadows to-
wards the plain of Ely, it was a fitting cradle for
the Ironside. Not that there is anything un-
friendly or sapless about this part of the country
to those who know it On the contrary, it may
be submitted that the influence of landscape on
a man's nature is the more mellowing among
such grave, reticent scenes, where beauty has
to be slowly learnt, sought out, waited upon*
The significance of these contacts has never been
adequately explored, but we may take it that it
was not for nothing that Shakespeare grew up
in a homeland flowing with milk and honey, or
that the boy Cromwell walked about a country-
side not barren or ungenial, but sober, unef-
fusive, a little easterly in aspect Parts of Qx-

26

BIRTH

fordshire have much the same character, and it
is interesting to note that John Hampden was
going to the grammar school at Thame in that
county, while Oliver was attending a similar
institution in Huntingdon, the two places being
scarce fifty miles apart, linked together, or
nearly so, through long ages of history by the
Icknield Way.

We know little of Cromwell's life until at
the age of seventeen he entered Cambridge Uni-
versity. A small crop of legend survives, doubt-
less upon some undiscoverable foundation of
truth. It is still told at Hinchingbrooke how
an ape belonging to old Sir Henry carried the
infant grandson up on to the roof to the horror
of the family, and almost with drastic conse-
quences to English history. It is also told that
when James I visited Sir Oliver, he was accom-
panied by his son Charles, who fell out with the
host's nephew at play and got something of a
dusting. Carlyle regarded these and all such
tales with disfavour, but I do not know why we
should be impatient of them. The kidnapping
of an infant by a large monkey in an English
country house is an incident not readily invent-
ed, and we know that royal visits to Hinching-
brooke were frequent, both Elizabeth and James
taxing even the liberality that earned for Sir
Henry the sobriquet of The Golden Knight, un-

27

OLIVER CROMWELL

til a final visit of the latter sovereign left Sir
Oliver's fortune in ruin. Robert Cromwell's
family were likely to be guests of his brother
on such an occasion, and there is no reason why
his children, Oliver among them, should not
have met the young prince and even have squab-
bled with him and among themselves on a hot
afternoon. We learn also that Oliver early took
to robbing orchards, "a puerile crime and an or-
dinary trespasse," as Heath is constrained to al-
low, "but grown so scandalous and injurious by
the frequent spoyls and damage of Trees,
breaking of Hedges and Inclosures, committed
by this Apple-Dragon, that many solemn com-
plaints were made both to his Father and Mas-
ter for redresse thereof ; which missed not their
satisfaction and expiation out of his hide, on
which so much pains were lost, that, that very
offence ripened in him afterwards to the throw-
ing down of all boundaries of Law or Con-
science, and the stealing and tasting of the for-
bidden fruit of Sovereignty, by which as the
Serpent told him, he should be like unto a God."
Before which storm we can but bow our heads,
reflecting duly on the alarming prospects of
such budding larcenies. But Oliver was not
content with apples. He developed a taste for
Young Pidgeons, rifling the dovecotes, eating
and selling his spoils, "and that so publiquely

28

BIRTH

that he became a dreadful suspect to the adja-
cent Country," here also being presage of the
days to come when he should "rob the King of
his Innocence and Vertues and prostitute them
to the People and Souldiery." His father is
much blamed for "leaving him to the scope of
his own inordinate and irregular will," in the
gratification of which he went so far as to be
a notable performer with the cudgels and even
at Foot-ball. On the whole there is encourage-
ment for the belief that "he was what nurses call
a limb." A sturdy, thick-set sort of a limb, en-
terprising in his boyish way, not yet much trou-
bled by the piety of the household in which he
was brought up, but behaving, we may suppose,
with decent consideration as one of a large fam-
ily in which then as now the ordinary mutual
concessions of daily life had to be made* Of
his nine brothers and sisters six survived child-
hood, and they were all girls, though one
brother seems to have lived until after Oliver
left home for Cambridge in 1616.

29

Ill

ENVIRONMENT OF YOUTH

Ill

ENVIRONMENT OF YOUTH

ON April 23rd of that year Oliver Cromwell
was entered as a Fellow Commoner of Sidney-
Sussex College. On the same day Shakespeare
died at Stratford-on-Avon. What Oliver did or
learnt at Cambridge nobody thought it worth
while to record, as, indeed, why should they of
a youth in no way distinguishable from a hun-
dred others? For however much or little we
know of his early years, and as may already be
divined it is mostly little, there is no hint any-
where that he was marked out for future great-
ness. Legends of his having startled the ridi-
cule of his school-mates by assuming a property
crown and announcing that he meant to become
King of England are Heathean fancies far less
convincing than the accounts of his simian ad-
ventures; less convincing, that is, as being evi-
dence of some serious intention, though that he
did it is likely enough in the common traffic of
any nursery or schoolroom. There is no evi-
dence that anyone saw in him early promise of
remarkable faculties, and none that he was in

33

OLIVEE CROMWELL

those days himself conscious of possessing them.
His prospects at Cambridge were those of any
young man who after a modestly liberal educa-
tion should go back to take his place in the af-
fairs of a well-furnished but not affluent family,
and in due course perhaps to preside over them.
As things turned out the call came sooner than
was expected, Oliver having been at the Uni-
versity little more than a year when his father
died. He returned to Huntingdon, leaving
Cambridge for good in the middle of 1617, but
for some obscure reason did not remain to su-
pervise the establishment of which he was
the only male representative. Carlyle, observ-
ing that it was not fit for the boy of eighteen to
take his father's place, as he might very well
have done, adds that he naturally enough pro-
ceeded to qualify himself for his office by going
to study law in London. The reasoning es-
capes me, though there may be something in it,
but in any case we know that to London
he went He is said to have been a member
of Lincoln's Inn, but the statement is not con-
firmed by the records. Of his movements until
1620 nothing authoritative is known, not, in-
deed, even that he was in London, but it was in
London that in 1620 he was married.

Heath confirms the pledge of his Apples and
little Pidgeons by informing us that in these

34

ENVIRONMENT

years after Cambridge Oliver became a notori-
ous toss-pot and drabber. It was, it seems, be-
cause of these excesses that he was sent to Lon-
don, an exile at his mother's orders lest he
should corrupt the home. Carrion Heath, as
Carlyle loves to call him, here well overreaches
himself. Anybody can say this sort of thing
about anybody else, and there are always profes-
sional def amers about who are eager to say it of
everybody; but society has long since agreed not
to be stampeded without evidence, and of evi-
dence in this matter Heath and his friends have
never been able to advance a pothouse tag.
Moreover, although our knowledge of Crom-
well's relations with his mother is slight, it all
points to an unbroken tale of confidence and
sweetness. That the young Oliver climbed over
fences, not always very nimbly perhaps, and that
he stole a young dove or two for his supper, we
may believe; it' is even possible that with the
coming of adolescence he may have taken an in-
discreet glass of malt or cowslip wine and have
kissed the chambermaid. But Heath implies an
incurable levity, and the charge is fantastic. At
which we may leave it.

At the age of twenty Cromwell must have
been conscious, as were all responsible men, of
difficult undercurrents in the state. He must,
for example, have been conscious of a certain

35

OLIVER CROMWELL

bad thing called Buckingham that was somehow
affecting the lives of simple citizens in Hunting-
don and such places. The creative surge of
Elizabethan England had not yet spent its force,
and the nation could still live upon its capital
without disaster. But living on its capital it was,
and serious patriots were beginning to realise
that a reckoning would presently have to be
made. In her assumption of a direct and per-
sonal power in the monarch, Elizabeth was the
true daughter of Henry VIII, though like her
father she had the good sense not to disregard
the people's will, but to use it. Individuals,
however distinguished or highly placed, who
fell foul of the Queen's designs or even of her
humours, often enough had melancholy occasion
to reflect that personal liberty in England was
no more than an illusion, but Elizabeth, through
the agency of exceedingly able ministers, was
above all else careful that these designs and
humours should never come seriously into con*
flict with the interests of her subjects as a whole.
The unexampled discoveries of her poets and
explorers, the daily widening horizons of com-
merce, the rapid expansion of humane learning
and the eager approach to modern philosophical
science, gave her court and person an easy and
undisputed prestige, and they kept the minds of
men creatively and therefore safely occupied.

36

ENVIRONMENT

The strain upon the immediate counsellors of
the throne was constant and severe, and hardly
one of them could be sure at any time that his
job> siot to say his head, was worth a day's pur-
chase, but the average Englishman felt with
good reason that he had a profitable stake in
in what was very much a going concern.

Under the first Stuart things began to change,
not convulsively at first, but perceptibly to
shrewd observers. James I neither understood
nor wanted to understand the English people.
Personally obstinate and inquisitive, with an
agreeable flair for scholarship and the arts, his
policy as a sovereign was all for securing a quiet
life at any price. Quiet, that is to say, for him-
self ; but the design necessitated certain condi-
tions in the attempt to effect which a quiet life
was made impossible for Englishmen in general
for twenty tragic years. The first of these was
that he, James, should have unlimited funds
with which to cover his extravagances and, more
particularly, those of his favourites, Bucking-
ham in chief. A quiet life, in fact, meant a life
without stint or responsibilities. James and
Buckingham asked no more than that they
should be allowed to do what they liked, when
they liked, and as lavishly as they liked. Let the
country supply means for that, and the country
then could go to the devil or elsewhere without

37

OLIVER CROMWELL

interference. Whatever the present whim might
be, from a water-party to an armed expedition
on the Continent, it must be indulged on the mo-
ment and with reference to no authority beyond
the royal pleasure. That if in these circum-
stances the country should actually go to the
devil they themselves would take the same jour-
ney does not seem to have occurred to James or
his parasite, neither of whom had the smallest
state intelligence. The King vaguely supposed
that a king of this world could not in any case
come to any serious harm, and Buckingham,
fondly intent on feathering his own nest, did not
pause to consider what would happen if the tree
in which it was lodged should be felled. And
so began the irregularity in levying supplies that
rapidly became a fixed principle which all the
officers of the Crown were expected to adopt.
The idea of the divine right of kings, as ex-
pounded by the first and second Stuarts, may
have been capable of some spiritual interpreta-
tion in the abstract, but in practice it amounted
to no more than an assertion of the King's right
to spend the public money to any extent for any
purpose he pleased^ and no reckoning to be
made. Elizabeth could never have lent herself
to so gross a stupidity, and in the name of an
awakening nationalism she might have done so
with far more hope of fooling the people than

38

ENVIRONMENT

was possible when, a generation later, the first
rapture was waning and the country was begin-
ning to contemplate the adventure through
which it had passed. Elizabeth would impover-
ish a wealthy courtier for her own ends without
scruple, but even at a time of public excitement,
when such courses are easiest, she allowed her-
self no sophistries about public funds. James,
far less advantageously placed, had nothing of
his predecessor's instinct for government nor of
her essential integrity. When constitutional
supplies seemed to him to be inadequate, he
supplemented them by loot on a large scale, and
gradually the people began to see that for them
there was nothing in it of honour to compensate
for the loss of profit To say that the Puritan re-
bellion was the consequence of this recognition
would, perhaps, be to over-state the case, but no
circumstance did more to create the mood in
which the will to rebellion was born.

The other condition desired by James for his
quiet life was peace with foreign powers. This
ambition, so laudable in itself, was unhappily
not informed in his mind by any constructive
aim. He merely wanted to be friends with
everybody because it saved trouble, but it was
beyond his power and even his inclination to
discover what if any were the solid foundations
upon which a general and lasting amity could be

39

OLIVER CROMWELL

built. That a council of Solomons could have
solved the riddle of European political intrigue
at the time or at any time for that matter is
improbable, but it was at least necessary for any
sovereign who was to retain the confidence of
his people that he should make a show of pur-
suing a coherent policy advantageous to national
interests or reputation. James never began
to be coherent in his diplomacy, and denied
the right of the people to keep any check on
his caprices. He drifted from one insecure
alliance to another, entered into undertakings
that he had no prospect of fulfilling, and en-
gaged in shady stratagems in which he had some
of the cunning but none of the pertinacity and
executive astuteness of his rivals. The conse-
quent loss of national dignity might have been
suffered without open revolt if the country's
credit abroad had alone been involved in this
cynically shiftless course, but the popular mind
was slowly compelled to attention by an aspect
of the King's conduct in foreign affairs which it
neither would nor could view with indifference.
Religion, as expressed in outward form and doc-
trine, was an issue on which a great and influen-
tial body of the people felt very deeply. Essen-
tial devoutness is not for the moment in
question, nor need we ask whether the country
was the better for the strictness of its formal pro-

40

ENVIRONMENT

fessions. The point is that to the majority of
Englishmen in the early seventeenth century re-
ligious form was a matter of daily and vital con-
cern, and the form by which the country as a
whole stood was that of the Protestant church*
Within this church itself the contentions be-
tween Episcopalianism or the establishment and
Puritanism or non-conformity was deep, and in
the end to prove one of the capital causes of
civil war, but both factions alike were deter-
mined in their opposition to Rome. Under
Elizabeth the supression of the papacy in Eng-
land had been firmly and as it seemed finally
secured, but there was still a numerous, influ-
ential, and by no means resigned Catholic popu-
lation in the country. This community, again,
was divided among itself, a certain number of
political moderates professing loyalty to the
Crown, while the Jesuits carried on an indefati-
gable conspiracy to overthrow the existing mon-
archy and government with the aid of for-
eign intervention, and bring a Catholic prince
to the throne. With the accession of James in
1603 there was some relaxation of the penal
code against Catholics, or at least in its enforce-
ment, but the discovery and failure of the Gun-
powder Plot two years later brought down the
fury of the law and of the people upon the Jes-
uits and with them on English Catholics in gen-

OLIVER CROMWELL

eral. For six years a danger that was a very
alarming one seemed to have passed, and then,
in 1611, James, finding that accommodation to
his taste in finance was not to be had from the
Commons, decided to dispense with Parliament
and govern by the more congenial instrumental-
ity of Buckingham instead. Communication in
those days was slow and difficult, and the con-
stituencies relied chiefly on the occasional visits
of their members for news of what was going
forward at court and in the councils of state.
With the members dismissed, this source of in-
formation was cut off, and it took a long time for
the country to realise what precisely were the
current practices of the King and his favourite.
But slowly a rumour sharpened into authority
that the Defender of their Faith was negotiat-
ing with the Spanish Court about a match be-
tween his son Charles, now Prince of Wales, and
the Infanta. This opened up a future of terror
to every Protestant mind. It was not merely a
question of rival religious interests. Before
their hopes, though nothing else had been blown
up in the Gunpowder Plot, the Jesuits had been
candidly debating whether, upon the enforced
and happy re-conversion of England, the Inqui-
sitional machinery of Spain or that of Italy
would be the more suitable for this country,
with a tendency in favour of the more thorough

42

ENVIRONMENT

methods of the former. The King of England,
anxious for a quiet life, was proposing to buy
the favour of a dominant European power by
delivering his people into a bondage that had
been broken with so much pain and fortitude. A
Catholic consort meant who knew what conces-
sions to Rome and England, and it more than
probably meant Catholic kings in the coming
generations. Before this menace the differences
between Bishops and Nonconformists were for
the moment of little consequence. The solid
body of Protestant opinion in the country was
disturbed by very exact and grave misgivings.
And there was no apparent means of redress, or
even of protest, in the absence of parliamentary
representation. James had already told his sub-
jects without ceremony that he meant to mind
his own business about their money, and he had
committed every kind of misdemeanour with
their national inheritance from the preceding
reign. He was now inviting the return of a
scourge at the thought of which the stoutest
might well tremble. And while nobody was
clear as to what would be done about it, the gen-
tlemen, the merchants, the artisans and the yeo-
men up and down the shires were awakening to
the conviction that done something must be if
the promise of personal liberty that for fifty
years had been slowly defining itself was not to
be swept away, it might be for ever.

43

IV

MARRIAGE AND A PURITAN HOME

IV

MARRIAGE AND A PURITAN HOME

SUCH was the mood that was manifesting it-
self in the mansions, the taverns, the counting-
houses, the class-rooms and the market-places
when on August 22nd, 1620, Oliver Cromwell
was married in St. Giles's Church, Cripplegate,
London, to Elizabeth Bourchier, the daughter
of Sir James, a city worshipful of good stand-
ing. If the young couple had not been more
suitably engaged, they might on the same day
with a prophetic sense of spectacular effect have
taken a walk of a few minutes to the precincts
of St. Paul's, and there have seen the scholars
coming out of the Church school, among them
a rather scared small boy with a bran-new
satchel on his back, by name John Milton, age
twelve. Which John Milton was, fifty-four
years later, after memorable associations with
their own fortunes, to be buried in the church
where they had just been married.

How much of the foregoing controversies had
occupied the bridegroom's mind it is impossible
to say, but that he had been aware of them we

47

OLIVER CROMWELL

may assume. If he had been in fact studying
law, he would have made argumentative
friends by whom these things must have been
canvassed. In the ordinary course of family
courtesies he is likely to have paid some visits
to his Aunt Hampden in Buckinghamshire,
where he can hardly have avoided discussion of
such matters with John, who was in the next
year to be returned to Parliament and was al-
ready stiffening his conscience against the pay-
ment of forced loans to the royal purse. That
Oliver was by this time, at the age of twenty-
one, a personable young man of promise is indi-
cated by his marriage. Elizabeth Bourchier
was the daughter of rich parents and, from such
evidence as we have, a girl of charm and char-
acter. The Cromwell fortune would not have
been a sufficient attraction in itself, and she
could choose much as she would. Her selection
of Oliver can have been dictated by nothing but
personal preference, and the marriage re-
mained a fair and happy one until his death.
Their immediate business, however, was not
with national affairs, but with a small though
ample property at Huntingdon. Here they set-
tled down with his mother, and for several years
nothing happened that would have given Oliver
even a footnote on any page of history.
Nothing, indeed, is more impressive in the

MARRIAGE

story that we have to tell than the lateness with
which this most notable flowering of the Eng-
lish genius in action was accomplished. Little
by little as his years advanced from youth,
Cromwell matured in interests beyond those of
his own few acres, but for long there was no
sign that this amounted to anything more than
the growing sense of responsibility that comes
to any man with a homestead and a family to
tend. Between the years 1621 and 1638 his wife
bore him nine children, five sons and four
daughters, of whom all but two boys lived to
maturity. Until 1628 we get but dim and fugi-
tive suggestions of contact with him ; hardly in-
deed so much. A local doctor left it on record
that he had often to attend Mr. Cromwell, who,
as it seems, would get uncommonly low in his
mind and think that his end was approaching,
also being given to hallucinations or visions of
some Wrath or another that frequented the town
cross of a night. Carlyle sees in this a symptom
of conversion to Calvinistic Christianity, with
what sagacity we need not decide. There is no
doubt that as Cromwell came fully into man-
hood his life was more and more governed by
the religious habit that he inherited from his
family and that was daily gathering momentum
throughout England. The country learnt with
profound relief that the project of a Spanish

49

OLIVER CROMWELL

match had fallen through, and that traffic with
the Escurial was at an end. A Spanish war
now seemed more likely than a Spanish match,
and Englishmen viewed the alternative with
hardy satisfaction. But as the menace of Rome
once more receded, the cleavage between the
Bishops and Puritanism actively reasserted it-
self, and the difficulties of nonconformist min-
istration increased. It was in these circum-
stances that Cromwell as a young married man
at Huntingdon paid his voluntary levy in sup-
port of some one or another of the "lecturers"
or excluded ministers, who, refusing to sub-
scribe to the Episcopalian establishment, were
privately employed by the growing Puritan
community, until Laud at the height of his
power harried them out of action. This much
we know of Oliver in those years ; we know also
that on October i4th, 1626, he wrote an intimate
little letter from Huntingdon, to an old Cam-
bridge friend, Henry Downhall, thus:

"LOVING SIR,

"Make me so much your servant as to be God-
father unto my child. I would myself have
come over to make a formal invitation; but my
occasions would not permit me: and therefore
hold me in that excused. The day of your trou-
ble is Thursday next. Let me entreat your com-
pany on Wednesday.

50

MARRIAGE

"By this time it appears, I am more apt to
encroach upon you for new favours than to
show my thankfulness for the love I have al-
ready found. But I know your patience and
your goodness cannot be exhausted by your
friend and servap*

Oliver Cromwell"

The son was duly sponsored, the chosen name
being Richard: Richard who was many years
later to make a pathetic succession to his father's
office but to none of his greatness. The note is
a poor scrap of evidence, but touching. "My
occasions" were no more memorable than a
market-day perhaps, or an urban committee
meeting, or a visit from the lecturer on his
rounds. We can imagine Mr. Downhall arriving
late on a chill October evening from Cambridge,
sixteen miles away, and being received with a
good sea-coal fire, and mulled ale, and laven-
dered linen, while Mrs. Cromwell was sleeping
upstairs with her fortnight old child, and the
kitchen girl went at intervals to prepare the
gentlemen's bed with a warming-pan. At sup-
per, with the doctor perhaps, and even the lec-
turer himself, as guests, there would be many
topics to discuss; the death of the old King a
year before, and the continued ascendancy of
Buckingham with the new one: the ethics of

OLIVER CROMWELL

parliamentary control, and the difficulty of see-
ing how in matters of religion a Bishop was bet-
ter than the Pope: old Cambridge days: and
perhaps the serious straits into which the extrav-
agance along at Hinchingbrooke had landed Un-
cle Sir Oliver, who was in fact on the point of
having to sell his estate there, which he did in
the following year to Sidney Montagu, whose
son Edward was to become Oliver's General-at-
Sea, and later the first Lord Sandwich.

But however the conversation ran, we may be
assured that Oliver, aged twenty-seven always
a year older than the century, as Carlyle con-
veniently puts it took his share in it with grav-
ity and good sense. Not, let it here be said once
for all, the heavy-humoured thin-spirited grav-
ity that has commonly been associated with Pur-
itanism by people who know a great movement
only by its excesses, and indulge themselves in
gusty sentiment about the romantic nobility of
Charles's Martyrdom. Wit and learning and
high character were to join the ranks of both
parties in the coming struggle, but on the whole
the strength of Puritanism lay with the landed
gentry of England, most of whom worked their
own estates, the substantial merchant class, and
the thrifty yeoman farmers. It lay, in fact, with
the men who were relieved from the daily re-
sponsibilities of life neither by great inherited

MARRIAGE

wealth nor by indifference to personal security,
the men who, because they took it as their part
to accept and meet these daily responsibilities
by their own initiative and industry, were the
thoughtful men* The adventurers who enjoyed
a superfluity of riches by doing nothing, and the
adventurers who enjoyed none by the same proc-
ess, found the Puritan doctrine of duty exceed-
ingly tiresome. They were often charming, pic-
turesque, and by no means deficient in gallantry,
but they lacked principle. Far finer stuff was,
we know, to be found on the Royalist side, but it
was in opposition to this characteristically defec-
tive sense of responsibility that Puritantism
consolidated itself out of the elements that have
been indicated. To a party so founded gravity
was in the circumstances a natural enough mood.
When a large number of men representative of
the constructive mind of a nation are brought
together in a common distrust of the governing
authority, in a conviction that their institutions
are being betrayed and their rights challenged,
they are likely to be grave. And in the days
when Charles and Buckingham were drifting
from one folly and excess to another and more
and more setting the country's welfare openly
at defiance, gravity was the inevitable note
whenever two or three men were gathered to-
gether in Puritan protest But to think of the

53

OLIVER CROMWELL

Puritan households as peopled by long-faced
bigots with envy in their hearts and sanctimony
on their lips is to know nothing of the truth.
They were commonly households of a very
sweet and genial domestic life, of generous hos-
pitality, of free speech and liberal culture. The
Puritan family, usually a large one, worked
hard, played eagerly, committed its indiscre-
tions with as little repining as needs be, cher-
ished the arts, and feared God. Its high-minded
discipline was neither ignorant nor fanatical.
And these virtues of the home were carried into
public life by a party that included John Hamp-
den, John Pym, John Milton, Andrew Marvell,
John Selden, Edward Montagu, Thomas Fair-
fax and John Eliot, and in its essential character
was preparing the way for such men as John
Bunyan and George Fox. It was the party of
light and grace no less than of power. Even
Heath allows of Cromwell himself that "he was
a great lover of Musick, and entertained the
most skilfullest in that Science in his pay and
Family," though his motive, we learn, was like
Saul to have exorcisement at hand against the
devil within him. This was at the time of Oli-
ver's protectorate, but a taste for such harmonies
may very well have enlivened Mr. DownhalFs
visit to Huntingdon in 1626. That the young
host was also worth listening to on more polem-

54

MARRIAGE

ical matters we may infer from the fact that al-
ready he was being talked of in the town as a
possible candidate for Westminster. At the mo-
ment of our christening party, Charles, after
two brief parliamentary misadventures, was
again trying to give effect to his and Bucking-
ham's designs without reference to the people;
he had in fact dissolved his latest Parliament in
the preceding June to save Buckingham from
impeachment Had Charles been capable of
learning anything of statesmanship by experi-
ence, he must have seen that each renewed at-
tempt to govern without parliamentary control
was another move in the direction of disaster;
but he could learn nothing. What wisdom
could not reveal to him, however, necessity dic-
tated. England was now at war with Spain, and
on the verge of war with France. Through
1627 Charles and his despotic minister strove
vainly to conduct an enterprise for which they
had neither means nor ability, and in 1628 they
were forced back on what appeared to them as
no better than the distasteful expedient of once
more convening the Houses, unless they were
prepared to acknowledge the collapse of their
foreign schemes. It was, accordingly, m March
of that year that Charles's ffeird Parliament as-
sembled, and in it Oliver Cromwell, Esquire,
was returned as member for Huntingdon.

V

PARLIAMENT. THE PETITION OF RIGHT

PARLIAMENT. THE PETITION OF RIGHT

THE gathering was one for ever memorable In
English history. Hitherto the Commons, where
such as it was the real authority of Parlia-
ment lay, had not been pusillanimous about
telling both James and Charles that there was
a people's no less than a royal prerogative,
but their protests had been made on the
King's sufferance, and any dangerous audacity
in debate had always been countered by sum-
mary dissolution, not infrequently followed by
imprisonment of offending members who, once
the privileges of the House were suspended,
were 3t the Sovereign's mercy on charges that
could be retrospective and cover expressions
used in the House itself. Charles had bluntly
told his second Parliament that it was altogether
in his power for calling, sitting, and dissolu-
tion ; "theref ore, as I find the fruits of them good
or evil, they are to continue or not to be." When
Buckingham was attacked, the King cut the dis-
cussion short by declaring, "I would not have
the House to question my servants, much less

OLIVER CROMWELL

one that is so near me." The Commons now met
the day of March was the iyth in a more
stubborn temper. This time the King was
clearly at his wit's end to know how to carry on
without them, and the less likely to be hasty in
their dismissal But hasty or not he should, they
were determined, pay some attention to their de-
mands or get nothing from them. Four hundred
men, inspired by a purity of devotion to the pub-
lic cause such as has seldom been equalled, faced
Charles and Buckingham with an inflexible pur-
pose and an utter disregard of what the personal
consequences of its exposition might be to them-
selves. Hardly a man among them shrank from
the prospect of beggary, imprisonment, even
death, if such should prove to be the penalty of
speaking his mind. When the Speaker had
taken his place an immediate vote was passed
declaring taxation without parliamentary con-
sent to be an abuse of the King's privilege. At
first there were no outward signs of passion in
the proceedings ; all was quiet, orderly, marked
with due consideration for Charles's person and
office. A large sum of money was voted to the
exchequer, on conditions. Charles wanted his
subsidy, but had a strong prejudice against con-
ditions of any sort. He had told these trouble-
some people more than once before that their
function was to facilitate the collection of taxes

60

PARLIAMENT

and not to waste his time and their own in the
presentation of frivolous grievances. Now
again he bade them mind their business and have
done with conditions. But somehow his words
seemed to fail of their wonted impact. Four
hundred men, very grave men indeed now, lis-
tened respectfully, and as respectfully replied
that the making of conditions was their business,
that the people of England were in future going
to be very particular about conditions, and that
until the King accepted them he might whistle
for his or their money. They said it very
courteously, but that is in effect what they said.
They said more. It was desirable that there
should be no confusion in the King's mind as to
precisely what these conditions were, and it was
proposed to define them very clearly in a Bill.
The King's impatience grew; but he curbed it,
aware at last of some new and formidable reso-
lution in these men. For six weeks the terms of
the Bill, drafted by that strange compound of
great lawyer, ruffian and patriot, Sir Edward
Coke, were debated with rising emotion, while
Charles nursed his apprehensions and told him-
self, as his father had done before him, that be-
ing a king he could after all have no reasonable
grounds for alarm. At the end of April the
Bill was presented to the house. It made exact
provisions for representation before taxation,

61

OLIVER CROMWELL

for the security of the person and property of
the subject against arbitrary seizure, and for the
proper regulation of military power, with espe-
cial regard to billeting, pressing, and the imposi-
tion of martial law. It was, in short, a plain
submission to the monarch that the people had
rights, such simple and elementary rights that
it is almost incredible to us that they can ever
have been disputed, rights in the suppression of
which the people could live with neither com-
mon honour nor common safety. These were
the express conditions of the Bill ; its undertone
was directed against false counsellors who were
a peril to the King and the State. Charles here-
upon took serious fright The mark of these
inuendos was clearly Buckingham, and life
without Buckingham was unthinkable. If the
Bill passed, his machinations with his favourite
would henceforth be seriously hampered. Not
daring at this point, with the country's will sud-
denly grown articulate, to resort to the old ex-
pedient of dissolution, Charles offered to meet
the wishes of the Commons by legislation if they
would drop the measure, find the money he
wanted, and go away. It was a forlorn bid.
The time for compromise had passed, and the
House proceeded with the instrument that was
to be known in history as the Petition of Right
As the debates advanced, the tide of magnani-
62

PARLIAMENT

mous and long-controlled passion rose. Heat
crept into the sessions. When Sir Robert Heath,
the Attorney- General, put the Crown case, dis-
missing the plea of the people's traditional
rights with some levity, Coke was on his feet
in an instant, exclaiming that it was "not under
Mr. Attorney's cap to answer anyone with argu-
ments." When later the King sent a message de-
manding to know whether or not the House
would accept his royal word to redress any
wrongs that should be made manifest, Pym re-
plied, "We have his Majesty's coronation oath to
maintain the laws of England. What need we
then to take his word?" And when the Speaker
pressed for a less equivocal reply, Pym added,
"there has been a public violation of the laws
and the subject's liberties, and we will have a
public remedy." What the King might do when
the Petition was finally passed and sent up to
him no one could tell, but the uncertainty in-
stead of moderating the temper of the House
emboldened it. Charles, at a late stage in the
proceedings, sent another message warning the
Commons "not to cast or lay any aspersion upon
any Minister of His Majesty," and the order was
greeted with a crackle of protest in which the
strained feelings of over two months blazed out
while more than one stout Puritan squire was
seen to have tears in his eyes as he spoke. Here

63

OLIVER CROMWELL

was no easily induced and readily forgotten sen-
sation ; it was the profound and moving drama
of a nation bearing solemn witness to a faith that
was here and now to be asserted for the present
and future times, even for us. Old blackguard
Coke, now seventy-six years of age, for whom no
decency was sacred but the inviolability of Eng-
lish law, stood up in apocalyptic power to de-
clare that they had not been honest in the presen-
tation of their complaint, and none more blame-
worthy for the fault than he ; that he knew not
whether he should ever again speak in this or
any other public place, and that he would now
say plainly what should have been said at first,
namely that "the author and cause of all those
miseries was the Duke of Buckingham." ' A
storm of assent barely allowed him to finish.
The onset was now irresistible; and after a
little more impotent sophistry the Petition of
Right received the royal sanction, and Charles
received confirmation of subsidies amounting to
three hundred and fifty thousand pounds.

That was on June yth, 1628. London crowds
capered round bonfires, and as hour by hour
and day by day the news of the King's conces-
sion spread through the country more bonfires
were lit There was reason enough for the re-
joicings, but, as the next twenty years were to
show, the gigantic issue that had been raised,

64

PARLIAMENT

far from being decided, was now but newly
joined. The Petition of Right having been
passed, the House pressed the enquiry against
Buckingham, If Charles had hoped, as no
doubt he had done, that his assent to the Bill
would soften public asperity against his friend,
within a week he was disillusioned. When the
demand for Buckingham's removal was at last
made explicitly, he dropped all pretence of ac-
commodation, and on June nth prorogued Par-
liament to October aoth. The members, Oliver
among them, went back to their homes. On the
next day the proceedings that had been insti-
tuted in the Star Chamber against Buckingham
in order to propitiate the Commons were struck
off the file, and preparations were made for the
Duke to lead another expedition to the relief of
Rochelle. In the middle of August the fleet
was ready to sail from Portsmouth, Bucking-
ham at its head, more splendidly than ever in
royal favour. And in Portsmouth too on the
23rd of that month was young John Felton, a
Suffolk gentleman who, with a grievance of his
own about arrears of army pay, had made the
journey to the sea-port with a twisted determina-
tion to redress what he was persuaded was an
intolerable grievance of his country. With
the desperate futility of all such fanatics, he
proceeded to his attempt in a lamentable way.

65

OLIVER CROMWELL

In the early morning Buckingham received
news that Rochelle was already relieved. He
rose hastily to dress with the intention of taking
the news to Charles, who was at a house five
miles distant As he was being valeted he car-
ried on an argument in high terms with sundry
officers who were of opinion that the news was
a device of the enemy's to gain time. Dismiss-
ing their appeal, he left the apartment and was
walking with a companion along a passage to
another where his breakfast was served, when
as it seemed from nowhere a stranger flashed
between them, and in a moment the most pow-
erful man in England was lying dead with Pel-
ton's knife in his heart The King's grief was
violent and sincere. Buckingham was the only
man he had ever regarded or ever would regard
with real affection. Charles was left with no
ally congenial to his own humours, and open
indications that the people looked upon his loss
as their deliverance stiffened his angry pride
against them.

66

VI

DIVINE RIGHT

VI

DIVINE RIGHT

THERE is no record that Cromwell had spok-
en in the House during these first three months
of his parliamentary career. But he had under-
gone a startling, it may be said, a phenomenal
experience. Still under thirty, he had taken
part in an event that even to the actors at the
time must have asserted itself as of historic
magnitude. Three months at such a rate meant
an infinite maturing; Elizabeth the mother and
Elizabeth the wife cannot but have observed
strange preoccupations in the man who came
back to them from London after so short an
absence. What this deepened mood portended
they could not tell, nor could Oliver himself*
He was shortly to have ample time to think it
all out, to settle in convictions that were now ini-
tiated with all the emphasis of a first clash in
the arena. Through the late summer and au-
tumn of 1628 Oliver attended to his farm; dis-
cussed with his neighbours the significance of
the things that he had seen at Westminster; ex-
changed, we may surmise, notes with John

60

OLIVER CROMWELL

Hampden about the condition of the State, cul-
tivating perhaps the slight acquaintance that
he had formed with some of the older leaders ;
and meditated much upon those ways of God
to men that were presently to be the theme of the
song in which the fire of Puritan genius was
to burn with its purest flame.

The prorogation of Parliament was extended
by three months, and it was not until January
2Oth, 1629, that the Houses re-assembled. In
the meantime much had happened besides
Buckingham's death. With Charles, out of
sight was out of mind, and when the members
had been dismissed in the preceding June he at
once dismissed also from his memory the very
displeasing obstinacy which they had displayed*
At least, he tried to do so; but unfortunately
there was the Petition of Right, duly recorded
now a law of the land, to remind him most in-
conveniently of all that he so much wished to
forget. His sublime obliquity was, however,
equal to the occasion. He caused fifteen thou-
sand copies of the Petition to be printed, and
incorporated in it, not the terms of his assent,
but those of his first unfavourable answer to
Parliament's claims. Whom he thought to de-
ceive by this bland expedient, he can hardly
have known himself, but having had the copies
printed he was somehow persuaded that the ob-

70

DIVINE EIGHT

noxious measure had been effectively dis-
counted, and proceeded to set its conditions at
defiance in a continued and even more reckless
course of arbitrary government When Parlia-
ment met again they found all the old abuses
in full sail. Irregular taxation, enforced pay-
ment, arrest in default, destraint on private
property, the Commons saw these practices,
against which the most solemn guarantees had
been given, indulged with advancing cynicism
by a king who was constant only in showing that
he was incapable of understanding the nature
of his pledges or of keeping them when they
had been given. The fury of the House at the
betrayal was undisguised. In the minds of
many of its members there gathered something
like despair. And yet despair was not of their
quality. It was, rather, a settling conviction
that sooner or later this quarrel would have to
be decided elsewhere than at Westminster.

Taxation and Habeas Corpus and the Star
Chamber were not the only matters to engage
the attention of an angry session that lasted two
months. The death of Buckingham had
brought about important changes in the King's
counsels. It had in the first place effected a re-
conciliation between Charles and his wife, Hen-
rietta Maria, whose influence on the King had
been closely limited by Buckingham's ascen-

71

OLIVER CROMWELL

dancy. It now asserted itself, and with a ten-
dency that inflamed anew the country's smoul-
dering suspicion of popery. That Charles ever
came near to being seduced to the interests of
Rome by his queen we have no reason to sup-
pose, but Henrietta Maria's Catholic intrigues
were notorious, and if they were far enough
from achieving their ends, they lent colour to
other antipathies. The High Church policy of
Laud, now Bishop of London, was hardly less
distasteful to Puritanism than popery itself;
there was, indeed, a restless feeling in the heart
of Puritanism that the one was not so very far
removed from the other. "Fate and freewill,
foreknowledge absolute" these speculative dif-
ferences had in those days more than a spiritual
and philosophical import. Which church or
party favoured which doctrine does not now
concern us, but the Puritan belief that Laud's
policy, which was also the King's policy, stood
for religious intolerance and indirectly for sec-
ular oppression, does. It may be a tenable view
that the member for Huntingdon was labouring
under a theological misconception; but however
that may be, we know that on February nth,
1629, Oliver Cromwell rose and for the first
time addressed the House, saying that he had it
on reliable authority that a certain Dr. Alabas-
ter had been heard preaching "flat Popery at

72

DIVINE RIGHT

Paul's Cross," and asking what the House was
going to do about it What the House did was
to order Mr. Cromwell to produce his witness,
who was Thomas Beard of Huntingdon, known
to fame as Oliver's schoolmaster, and less em-
inently as the author of a once fashionable work,
The Theatre of God's Judgements.

Another consequence of Buckingham's re-
moval was the rise of Thomas Wentworth in
court favour. He was now thirty-six, and for
some years had been a firm but moderate critic
of the King's political misconduct While,
however, he had a theoretical respect for popu-
lar rights, he had no enthusiasm for popular
control of government By instinct he favoured
the idea of what amounted to an absolute mon-
archy, so long as the King and his immediate ad-
visers showed ability, and an incorruptible sense
of public duty in their office. Moreover, he dis-
liked the religious aspect of Puritanism. When,
therefore, Charles was looking for a minister to
succeed Buckingham, and approached Went-
worth, it was not difficult for that genuine if
mistaken patriot to convince himself that he
could best serve his country by attaching him-
self to the King and working towards the wiser
and purer administration of a system that he
believed to be good in principle. He under-
stood the temper of the times no better than

73

OLIVER CROMWELL

Charles himself, but he opposed it with a states-
manship and purity of motive that were utterly
beyond the scope of such men as Buckingham
and his master. Whatever traces of dignity and
honour we find in the political ideal for which
Charles so impotently stood, are the legacy left
to history by the talents and character of Thomas
Wentworth, Earl of Strafiford. If it had been
possible to impose that ideal on the age of Crom-
well and Milton, Wentworth's devotion and in-
tegrity might have done it. But the task was be-
yond human powers. Charles had sense enough
to value the qualities of his new minister at
something like their proper worth, but Went-
worth never began to replace Buckingham in
the royal affections. How the King requited
services that shed upon his disastrous sov-
ereignty its only lustre, we shall see.

The Puritan members, on returning to Lon-
don in March 1629, were deeply shocked by
what they regarded as the defection of one of
their own leaders. Further, they knew that for
the future the King's case, with which all hope
of adjustment was rapidly disappearing, would
be shaped and pleaded by an intelligence far
above any that it had yet commanded. Went-
worth, newly created a Viscount, is said on an
early day of the session to have been leaving the
House of Lords when he met Pym. He assumed

74

DIVINE RIGHT

a cordiality that was belied by the embarrass-
ment of both the old friends. "Well, you see I
have left you." There was no cordiality in
Pym's reply. It indicated a mood out of which
all the humour had gone: "Yes, my Lord, but
we will never leave you while that head is on
your shoulders."

Realising that the Commons, instead of at-
tending to business, were again fixed on their
interminable grievances, Charles resolved to be
rid of them once more and, if by any device it
could be done, for all. He ordered the Speak-
er, who was very amenable to the royal pleasure,
not to put any more indiscreet questions to the
House; and when Sir John Eliot rose to the
very height of indiscretion, the said Speaker, Sir
John Finch, attempted to do as he had been told.
The "question" was to the effect that anybody in-
troducing popery or anything like it should be
"reputed a capital enemy to this Kingdom and
commonwealth," as also should anybody advis-
ing, levying, or even paying taxes unauthorised
by Parliament As Eliot demanded that the
question be now put, Sir John Finch declined
the responsibility, and rose to leave the House.
He was forcibly taken back to his Chair, and
there held down while in a scene of uproar the
question was taken as having been duly put, and
something like four hundred voices rang out a

75

OLIVER CROMWELL

thunder of "Yeas P In the meantime the doors
had been locked, and now loud cries from out-
side to open in the King's name broke upon the
turmoil within. Eliot's resolution was passed
in a passion of assent, the House adjourned for
eight days, and the doors were flung open. As
the members poured out into the street they hus-
tled Black Rod as he stood demanding entrance,
and coming down Whitehall they saw the King's
Guard whose captain presented his orders to
bring away the mace. He was told that the
mace was there if he chose to fetch it Eight
days later Charles came to the Lords, and with-
out calling the Commons to the bar, dissolved
Parliament, declaring that he would have no
more of such vipers about him. And for eleven
years the people of England had no voice in the
government of their country. No voice, that is
to say, which could deafen the royal ears with
its importunities. But the voice was there for
such as could hear it; a still, small voice, that
when next it was to come to the public councils
should be more terribly importunate than ever.

VII

PREPARATIONS. ELIOT. LAUD

VII

PREPARATIONS. ELIOT, LAUD

WITHIN a few days of his thirtieth birthday >
Oliver was back home once more, and for ten
years led a life that was industrious and pleas-
antly eventful, but in no respect notable unless
we read into it the promise of what was to come.
He had said his "Yea, yea" loudly enough on
that stormy March morning, and had made a
sufficiently clear profession of opinion to any
who may have been concerned to listen. If the
King should change his policy, Oliver would
doubtless be returned again for Huntingdon,
but year followed year and no Parliament was
called. Puritan resentment against the prac-
tices of the Crown was appeased by nothing
that happened in the years between 1629 and
1640; it was continually fed by new ex-
cesses. But no man could very well see how
further protest was to be made in the ab-
sence of Parliament. Individual resistance to
this or that injustice served to keep the old ar-
dours fresh and bright, but provided no oppor-
tunities for effective corporate action. It needed

79

OLIVER CROMWELL

the lessons and the occasions of the first years
of the Long Parliament to show men, Oliver
among them, how the full impact of the re-
volt was to be organised and delivered. In the
meantime there seemed to be no prospects of
anything but civic staunchness, patient farm-
ing, an amiable domestic routine, and a devout
preparation of the spirit for any call that might
come. That the call if it came would be a spec-
tacular one was in no way probable; it was un-
likely that it would ever come at all.

In 1630 Oliver was serving as a Justice of the
Peace for the Borough of Huntingdon, but we
get no glimpse of him dealing with such tres-
passers or suits as may have come before him.
In the next year he sold his Huntingdon prop-
erty and moved with his family to St. Ives
where he became tenant of grazing lands lying
along the banks of the Ouse at the east end of the
town. Here he lived for five years, still
destined, it would seem, for obscure competence
and honour, bearing as might be the injustices
that were so freely distributed from Whitehall
among his friends and countrymen. Occasions
for such fortitude were plentiful, He had
heard how on the breaking of Parliament the
more active promoters of Sir John Eliof s reso-
lution, its author among them, had been put Into
prison by the sentence of intimidated judges.

80

PREPARATIONS

He had heard how Eliot, a man in the young
prime of his life, refusing to admit that his
action had been treasonable, had slowly wasted
into a decline in the foul air of his cell in the
Tower. And then he had doubtless heard much
more of the matter from John Hampden, for
Hampden held Eliot's affection to be "a noble
purchase," and wrote many and touching letters
to his friend in captivity, full of solicitude and
offers of family service, now Searching my
study for a booke to send you," now offering by
"this bearer ... a buck out of my paddock."
Shameful things happened to Sir John Eliot,
and Hampden would have news of them for
Oliver when they met. He would be able to tell
how this subject, who loved England with
single-minded heroism, being grievously sick in
lonely confinement, sent a request to the King,
not for pardon or remission of his sentence, but
that he might be set at liberty, "that for the re-
covery of my health I may take some fresh
ayre" ; how that when the King replied that this
was by no means humble enough in tone, Sir
John Eliot explained that he was only asking
for a temporary respite, so that "when I have
recovered my health I may returne back to my
prison there to undergoe such punishment as
God hath allotted unto me" ; how that when the
King further told the dying man that he must

81

OLIVER CROMWELL

acknowledge his fault and plead for pardon
before any consideration could be shown him,
Sir John Eliot told the King, in whatever words
suited his Puritan decorum, to go to the devil;
how that his family asking that they might be
allowed to visit and comfort him, the indul-
gence was refused ; and, finally, how that when
Sir John had duly died of consumption in the
Tower at the age of forty, and his son begged
leave to take away the body for burial, the King
with a pretty wit endorsed the note, "Lett Sir
John Eliot's body be buried in the Churche of
that parish where he dyed.' 5

Then there was William Laud, who at the
age of sixty became Archbishop of Canterbury
in 1633. He had piety and a genuine zeal for
his church, but he could not endure that any-
one should refuse to conform to his own doc-
trine and practice. A long tale of religious per-
secution might seem to him a sufficient example
for whatever experiments in that line he might
choose to make himself, but he unluckily chose
to make them at a time when the people of Eng-
land were suddenly determined to stand no more
of it from one persuasion or another. On his
elevation to the primacy Laud proceeded to
hunt "lecturers" with a most diligent nose, and
caught a great many, among them the preacher
of abominable heresies in Huntingdon. Some-

82

PREPARATIONS

times the victim was merely suppressed, some-
times his history became obscured in the enfold-
ing mists of the Star Chamber. It should be
noted here that between Laud's persecution of
the Puritans and the general instinct in Eng-
land for persecuting popery, there was this im-
portant distinction. A Roman England meant,
in the minds of the people at large, an England
in political bondage and finally deprived of lib-
erty. The opposition to Catholicism was not
profoundly a religious movement at all, but in-
spired by dread of foreign domination. Laud's
tyranny was exercised against his own country-
men, and aimed at imposing his ecclesiastical
will on a conscience that rejected it English-
men said to Rome, "Keep away : we suspect your
theology of political designs, and you smell of
the Inquisition; if you insist on coming where
you are not wanted, we will drive you out re-
lentlessly." Laud said to Englishmen, "Ac-
knowledge my ritual, or be outlawed." He said
in effect, much what Englishmen feared Rome
would say if it had the chance. Anti-papist
demonstrations were not an attempt to make
Catholics change their opinions, but a pre-
caution against what were with very good rea-
son believed to be Catholic intentions of mak-
ing other people change theirs. The answer
to Rome was the penal code against popery: the

83

OLIVER CROMWELL

answer to Laud was to be the Puritan Revolu-
tion.

Very quietly the Puritans somehow contrived
to keep a few ministries in operation, but one
by one they were detected and uprooted by
Laud's consecrated enterprise. To Oliver and
men of his mind the privation had a double
edge; it frustrated their spiritual needs, and it
challenged on a new ground the personal lib-
erty that was a living article of their faith. That
in the time to come the Puritans became heady
like other people in success and fell into extrav-
agant follies in denial of their own gospel, does
not alter the fact that these were at worst the
lamentable defects of a temper that in its proper
character was represented by the Petition of
Right. Every great constructive movement in
history has to bear the odium of excesses com-
mitted by its own "lunatic fringe," and before
the Puritan revolution had been accomplished
it had some rather ugly scores to its debit ac-
count But many cheerful censors of obvious
crudities in the later Puritan reign forget that
they would have had very much less reason in
our modern world to be cheerful at all if Crom-
well and his fellows had not once fought a
despotic throne with an equal determination to
serve God and keep their powder dry. It was
this resolve that made Laud's tyranny, often a

PREPARATIONS

ferocious tyranny, so Intolerable and finally
brought Laud himself to a dismal end. When
in 1636 the trustees of funds that provided lec-
turers in such places as they could visit with
safety } suspended payment to the minister of
St. Ives, Cromwell wrote to one of them urging
that "surely, Mr. Stone, it were a piteous thing
to see a Lecture fall, in the hands of so many
able and godly men, as I am persuaded the
founders of this are, in these times, wherein we
see they are suppressed, with too much haste
and violence, by the enemies of God his Truth.
* . . I beseech you therefore in the bowels of
Jesus Christ, put it forward, and let the good
man have his pay. The souls of God's children
will bless you for it; and so shall I; and ever
rest, Your Loving Friend in the Lord, Oliver
Cromwell"

That phrase, "in the bowels of Jesus Christ,"
is of peculiar appositeness to our theme. Con-
sidered unhistorically, it has a musty, anti-
quated flavour. How fantastically would it
divert the town if Mr. Ramsay MacDonald
were to beseech Mr. Baldwin to do something
"in the bowels of Jesus Christ" But the levity,
we think, would be uncomfortably sobered if
it could be confronted by the very presence of
Pym, or Hampden, or Eliot, or Cromwell tes-
tifying in such terms. We do not speak in that

85

OLIVER CROMWELL

way now, but we can never understand the Purl-
tans until we realise that they spoke so our of a
habit that lost none of its spontaneity in daily
use. When Cromwell besought his correspond-
ent thus, he did it without intending any special
effect or emphasis, taking up his pen without
deliberation as he came in from the crew-yard
or cattle-market, to practice in the Lord who
was as familiarly present to him as his own
shadow in the streets of St. Ives. The idiom in
which his plea was made was as far from cant
as it was from profanity.

Other incitements to thought were provided
by the King with continued ingenuity. Irreg-
ular collection of tonnage and poundage, the
imposition of levies for the militia made with
open disregard of pledges, shameless traffic in
monopolies, heavy penalties for anyone who re-
fused to accept the honour of knighthood when
offered it at what was considered to be a reason-
able price, the revival of obsolete forest laws,
these and other such abuses were the common-
places of Charles's policy under improvised
proclamations of the Privy Council. Resist-
ance was answered by perfunctory trial, if any,
and imprisonment without hope of appeal.
Blind and deaf to popular disapproval that had
no means of making itself articulate, Charles
and his advisers fondly believed that their con-

86

PREPARATIONS

trol of the state was now firmly and, for them,
prosperously established. They formed a reso-
lution that this happy condition of affairs should
never again be endangered by the importunities
of Parliament Charles Rex, said Wentworth
and Laud, was a sufficient and satisfactory in-
strument for the government of England, and
court sycophants of every kind loudly ex-
pressed their approval of so profitable a doc-
trine. When disobedient or critical persons
were astute enough to keep outside the very pli-
able process of an illegal law, there were other
ways of dealing with them, A suspect country
gentleman could be warned to retire to his place
in the shires, with a hint that his return to Lon-
don would be inconvenient, chiefly to himself.
A merchant of doubtful character could be
ruined by being forbidden such ports as
afforded him any chance of successful compe-
tition with favoured rivals. Commodities of
daily use, soap, grain, wine, leather, the staple
metals, glass, were given over to the monopo-
lists, who exacted from the people fantastic
profits and a liberal margin for Court dues.

Oliver and his friends, then, had much upon
which to reflect in the years of his farming at
St. Ives. What might come of their reflection
no one could foresee; it was difficult to see how
anything could come of it at all. But tKe Court,

87

OLIVER CROMWELL

emboldened by Its apparent security, was by in-
creasing excesses to provide the answer. Provo-
cation was steadily moving to a point when the
long-tried anger of the people must kindle into
a terrible flame of power and purpose. Moder-
ation in Charles and his council during the
years 1630 to 1635 might have altered the whole
course of English history and have left us to-
day with institutions such as our minds can
hardly conceive. But moderation was unknown
to them, and by follies that could be cured only
by reforms as violent as they were profound,
they made the Puritan Revolution inevitable.

VIII

THE STAR CHAMBER. SHIP MONEY

VIII

THE STAR CHAMBER. SHIP MONEY

IN 1637 new evidence of Catholic influences
at Court set the presses busy with controversial
pamphlets. The Puritan champions continued
to show little discrimination between the Pope
at Rome and the Archbishop at Lambeth, and
Laud determined upon exemplary measures.
Once and for all Englishmen were to be shown
that revolt against the Establishment was not
to be tolerated. Three men of good birth and
standing were summoned before the Star
Chamber, and accused of publishing tracts
subversive of episcopal authority. They were
Henry Burton, aged sixty, minister of a city
church ; John Bastwick, aged forty-four, a phy-
sician who had graduated at Cambridge and
Padua ; and William Prynne, aged thirty-seven,
a barrister of Lincoln's Inn, and a graduate of
Oriel College, Oxford. Burton and Prynne had
both come into conflict with their judges before,
the former in 1629, on account of his Htsfrio-
mastix, the latter in 1634, and both had suffered
imprisonment Prynne had further had his ears

OLIVER CKOMWELL

cut off in the pillory, but had found a friendly
surgeon to sew them on again. It was for utter-
ances made in prison that he was now brought
from the Tower for his second trial. All three
defendants were found guilty, and on June 3oth
the sentence of the Chamber was executed in
Palace Yard outside Whitehall* A sullen crowd
watched these three men led out and placed in
the pillory, saw what then went forward, and
broke out into cries of indignation that the
Royal Guard was powerless to suppress. Each
of the convicted men had his ears cut off, Prynne
for the second time, and each was branded on
the cheek with the letters S.L., to show for ever
that he was a Seditious Libeller. As he was re-
leased, Bastwick fell fainting into the arms of
his wife, who somehow had bought or pleaded
her way to the dreadful scene. And then the
three, with the blood streaming down their
faces, were led away to the completion of their
sentences, which was solitary confinement for
life. Soon afterwards, John Lilburne, a young
man of twenty-one, was brought before the Star
Chamber for being concerned in the publica-
tion of the offending pamphlets, given his taste
of the pillory, whipped at the cart-tail through
the streets of London, and sent to reflect upon
Ms indiscretions in one of His Majesty's gaols.
And as news of these things travelled through

92

THE STAR CHAMBER

England, thousands of sturdy Puritan hearts
cursed Charles for a beastly and abominable
King, and Laud for a beastly and abominable
prelate, and swore to themselves in the bowels
of Jesus Christ that a reckoning should be made.

This was in 1637* In the preceding year,
Oliver had inherited his Uncle Thomas Stew-
art's property at Ely, and had removed thither
with his family. While he had been at St. Ives
his mother had continued to live at Hunting-
don, but she now rejoined her son in the home
of her own childhood. The little that we know
of the household leaves a faint but secure im-
pression of domestic peace as Oliver, now ap-
proaching forty, cared for his mother, his wife
and his children. Turbulent thoughts were
rising in his mind as these tidings of infamous
happenings in London came down to his new
fenland home, but within doors there were tran-
quillising moods.

Laud inaugurated the reign of his bishops m
Scotland at about the same time that he showed
Prynne and the others what was what At least,
he tried to do so, but on the first attempt to read
the Liturgy in an Edinburgh church a certain
Jenny Geddes flung a historical stool at the
episcopal head and defied any Pope to say mass
in that company. News of this also may have
reached Oliver, as certainly did the account of

93

OLIVER CROMWELL

yet another shocking display of indocility from
one very well qualified to speak.

The growing opposition to the Court at home
found the credit of the country abroad sunk to
its lowest ebb. The wars with France and Spain
had come to an ignominious end, their very
uncertain purposes having been wholly un-
achieved. The English seas were openly raided
by African pirates, Holland trespassed on our
fishing rights, and no foreign power troubled
so much as to enquire what was the opinion of
Whitehall. The successes of the King were over
the laws and liberties of his own subjects, but
nowhere else to be observed. In these circum-
stances it was thought fitting to extend the
sphere of operations at home, and turn the screws
yet a little tighter. That the resistance to illegal
taxation was daily growing more stubborn and
explicit did not discourage men who were by
now in a permanent state of political intoxica-
tion. One Richard Chambers, being fined two
thousand pounds for disputing a levy made
upon some of his merchandise, and sent to
prison until he should sign a form of submis-
sion, wrote instead, "All the above said con-
tents and submission, I, Richard Chambers, do
utterly abhor and detest, as most unjust and
false; and never till death will acknowledge
any part thereof." Prynne and Bastwick and

94

THE STAR CHAMBER

Barton had likewise. In an extreme agony, never
ceased to protest that the damnable iniquity was
not theirs but the Court's. More and more
freely, in fact, men were following the example
of Sir John Eliot in telling the King and his
accomplices, in an expressive range of Idiom, to
go to the devil, but without the smallest effect
upon the royal policy. The discreditable con-
dition of the country's honour at sea suggested
that fresh supplies could be raised, with some
show of reason and some hope of public acqui-
escence, on the pretext of mending this decline.
And so the expedient of Ship Money was de-
vised. Richard Chambers, who In 1635 had
somehow got out of prison after six years of
confinement, now showed that the lesson had
been lost on him by again resisting the King's of-
ficers, whereupon he was again removed to gaol
as incorrigible. At first the new tax met with
some success, being levied only in sea-port
towns that might hope for direct enjoyment of
Its benefits. But when Charles thereupon pro-
posed to enforce It on all inland shires and
towns, the revolt was immediate and uncom-
promising. The very natural suspicion that the
money would not be used for Its avowed pur-
pose at all was eclipsed by a far more funda-
mental objection. Had nothing more than the
misappropriation of public funds been involved,

95

OLIVER CROMWELL

the matter could have been dealt with by the
ordinary processes of law or impeachment The
question now raised, by no means for the first
time, but at length with critical directness, was
not how the public funds were to be used but
how they were to be raised; whether, in fact,
money illegally exacted could in any sense be
said to be public funds at all. The general and
open campaign for the levying of Ship-Money
was to give the country an opportunity of de-
claring its mind on the policy of loot; and pres-
ently, in decisive terms, upon the character of
the looters. In 1636 a writ was issued requir-
ing the county of Buckingham to supply a war-
ship of four hundred and fifty tons and a hun-
dred and eighty men and appertaining cannon,
muskets, gunpowder, etc., etc., and to deliver
the said ship fully equipped in Portsmouth har-
bour on an appointed date. And if (as was
likely enough) the loyal subjects of Bucking-
hamshire should be unable to build and furnish
such a ship, then they were forthwith to pay a
sum of four thousand and five hundred pounds
into the King's treasury. The agents sent down
to the High Sheriff of the country with this de-
mand were very coldly received, and were pre-
sented with a list of persons who proclaimed
themselves as intending defaulters. And fore-

96

THE STAR CHAMBER

most upon this role of honour was inscribed the
name of John Hampden.

By popular consent Hampden's was at once
accepted as a test case. He was a man of
wealth, and the amount at which his personal
liability was assessed was trifling no more than
a few shillings. There could, therefore, be no
question of any motive for his action other than
that of public spirit The King took counsel
with his judges, being careful in his charge to
let It be plainly known that any judge who
valued the King's favour would carefully con-
sider the King's wishes. The judges thereupon
dutifully pronounced the levying of Ship-
Money to be legal, and Hampden was sum-
moned to show cause why he should not pay his
lawful dues. Hampden appeared, and with his
advisers flatly denied that there was anything
lawful in any of these proceedings whatever.
When this argument became too pertinent, it
was judiciously called to order by the bench.
Through the Hilary, Easter, and Trinity terms
the case went on, not because the issue was ever
in doubt, but in order to produce an effect of
scrupulous forbearance and impartiality. But
such was the weight of Hampden's appeal, that
even the judges were divided. One by one they
gave their findings, and it was not until June
9th, 1638, that the last judgment was delivered,

97

OLIVER CROMWELL

when eight of the judges had decided for the
King and four for Hampden.*

It is, no doubt, due to lack of vigilance on my
own part, but I have nowhere been able to dis-
cover what happened in the matter of actual
payment as a result of the decision against
Hampden. It is, however, a matter of small
consequence. Whether he accepted the judg-
ment of the Court or not, we know that he abated
nothing of his opposition to the principle that
had been thus inconclusively tested. The fact
that four judges, with superb courage and com-
plete disregard of their own interests, had de-
fied the crown, gave heart to the Puritan party
throughout the country. On the other hand,
knowledge that the judgment had in fact gone
against him, in spite of arguments that nobody
would hear without being persuaded in his con-
science, showed Hampden and the other leaders
of the movement how seemingly desperate were
the odds against which they had to contend. In
such a condition of mind we can imagine Oliver
and his cousin to have met in these times. While
John's trial had been going forward, Oliver

*The names of the judges, worth recording for their part in
this epic moment of English history, were: for the King Weston,
Crawley, Berkeley, Vernon, Trevor, Jones, Finch, and Bramston;
for Hampden Croke, Hutton, Denham, and Davenport. Jones in
his judgment for the King made reservations that may justify the
claim of some, Mr. Trevelyan and Dr. G. W. Prothero (Cam-
bridge Modern History) among others, that the decision was seven
to five.

THE STAB CHAMBER

himself had conducted a process of his own in
the name of freedom, A local problem of great
importance to the people of his neighbourhood
was the draining of the fens. Enlightened opin-
ion was favourable to the scheme in so far as it
concerned land improvement, but decidedly op-
posed to it in so far as it proposed to grant cer-
tain advantages to be derived therefrom to the
Bedford family by royal favour. To improve
the land for public use was one thing, but to
enclose it by monopoly from public use quite
another. Cromwell led the opposition, and at
a mass meeting in Huntingdon presented the
people's case not against the draining but against
the private exploitation of the Bedford Level.
The incident enhanced his reputation in the dis-
trict for liberality and fearlessness ; marked him
as a man whom others might safely follow if
there should be yet a bolder bid made in the
cause of ancient liberties. We cannot question
the literal simplicity of a confession made by
Oliver in a letter to a friend at this time: "If
here I may honour my God either by doing or
by suffering, I shall be most glad." For the
moment, however, the way to effective national
action remained obscure. Large numbers of
Puritans, hopeless of repairing their condition
in England, were emigrating to the New World.
It is said that Hampden and Cromwell were

99

OLIVER CROMWELL

themselves preparing to follow this example,
had, indeed, actually embarked, when an order
of the King in Council forbade any man to leave
the country without express warrant, and their
ship was prevented from sailing. And so, with
incomparable irony of circumstance, Cromwell
was detained to do his work in England by
Charles's intervention.

100

IX

THE SHORT PARLIAMENT

IX

THE SHORT PARLIAMENT

SUDDENLY the situation cleared. Scotch re-
sistance to Laud's attempt at imposing his ritual
on the Kirk roused the country to a high pitch
of excitement People of all ranks joined in a
Covenant to preserve the Presbyterian faith.
Orders from Whitehall and from Lambeth
were alike ignored, and any attempt to read the
new service produced rioting in the churches.
At length Charles decided on active measures;
but he had no means of carrying them out.
Scraping together some semblance of an army
with money raised by further forced loans
under the authority of the Privy Council, he
set out for the north to bring the insurgents to
their senses. On his arrival he found them pre-
senting far too formidable a front to encourage
a trial by arms, and the terms of an agreement
were hastily improvised. Returning to London
from this abortive expedition, he formed a reso-
lution that the royal dignity must somehow yet
be vindicated. But how? The answer was ex-
tremely mortifying, but it was the only one.

103

OLIVER CROMWELL

Clearly a real army must be organised, and as
clearly this could not be done without ample
and regular supplies. These, on the necessary
scale, could only be obtained by popular con-
sent, which deplorably meant the calling of the
vipers back to Westminster. Early in 1640
Parliament was summoned after an interval of
eleven years, and assembled on April I3th.

It represented the fine flower of English
character. The King's party was itself fortu-
nate in the allegiance of men who sought to
restore honour to a corrupt cause, Lucius Gary
Lord Falkland, Sir Bevill Grenvil and others,
among them Edward Hyde, now a young man
of thirty, who did not allow his royalist sym-
pathies to condone the grave and dangerous
practices of the Court The opposition of such
men gave an added sense of responsibility to the
Puritan members who met with the conscious-
ness that their duty was not to make a high-
tempered display of rhetoric, but to give so-
ber, reasoned, and weighty expression of the
people's will. And their sessions were in fact
distinguished for the most part by an equable
steadiness and restraint, by a refusal either to be
provoked or to be intimidated. Oliver Crom-
well was returned as one of the members for
Cambridge.

As soon as the King presented his demands
104

THE SHORT PARLIAMENT

for subsidies, the House let it be clearly under-
stood that while every consideration would be
shown for contracted liabilities, and a disposi-
tion to forget past irregularities, nothing at all
could be done in the matter of supplies until a
sufficient guarantee was given against griev-
ances in the future. This meant a definition of
the grievances, which would take time, and the
King was in a hurry. Also it meant that the
House was dictating methods of procedure in-
stead of doing as it was told, and the King was
as obstinate as ever. Before any business could
be done, this question of "supplies before griev-
ances" or "grievances before supplies" had to
be settled. In vain Charles protested that if
the House would fill the exchequer he would
give any guarantees they asked. The royal
word had been tried too often and found want-
ing. The Puritan majority would not concede
an inch of ground. Pym and Hampden, mod-
erate in speech and inflexible in temper, led the
Puritan debate. Hyde made Ingenious attempts
to effect a compromise, and failed. The Com-
mons would vote not a penny until security of
and personal freedom was assured; they even
went further, and suggested that instead of
making war on the Scots, Charles should make
a rational peace with them. Wentworth told
the King that to yield on the one point meant a

105

OLIVER CROMWELL

definite surrender of his prerogative, and Laud
told him that to yield on the other meant the
coming of ecclesiastical anarchy. The counsel
on both hands was as infatuated as it could be,
but Charles, with his unerring instinct for doing
the wrong thing, followed it On May th 5 he
summoned the Commons to the bar of the
House of Lords, and in a speech of angry and
open contempt dissolved the Short Parliament.
It had sat for three weeks.

But contempt could no longer serve Charles's
turn. The following months were to see his last
desperate effort to govern by arbitrary enact-
ment; and then the breach was to be irreparable.
The King's conduct on the termination of the
Short Parliament was marked by what can only
be termed demoniac stupidity. Nothing could
be more legible than the writing that was in-
exorably tracing itself on the wall, and yet he
could not or would not read it Mobs assem-
bled in the streets murmuring imprecations;
placards were paraded denouncing Laud as
anti-Christ; the gates of Lambeth were threat-
ened; ballad-singers offended the precincts of
Whitehall with most unkingly burdens ; strange
drums broke the silence of the city nights. And
in face of it all, with a courage too gross for
sanity, Charles again placed some of the ban-
ished members under arrest, caused the persons

106

THE SHORT PARLIAMENT

of suspect noblemen to be searched for treason-
able papers, issued an edict expressly declaring
that he was "accountable to God alone," set all
his machinery to work to enforce the payment
of Ship Money and other imposts, and made be-
mused preparations to follow the grotesque
Scotch adventure of the preceding year with
another Bishop's War. The second exploit
ended even more ingloriously than the first.
The Scots were neither to be coerced by epis-
copal argument, nor defeated in the field by
Charles's exceedingly ragged regiments. The
King of England returned to London with all
his boasting quelled in public derision; and in
the meantime the Puritan leaders made no ef-
fort to conceal the fact that they were negoti-
ating with commissioners from Scotland, The
leaders of these conventions let it be known that
the King was discredited in all parts of his king-
dom. In the last extremity of autocratic power,
Charles was reduced to what he had irretriev-
ably made the indignity of summoning Parlia-
ment once more. Not to do this was to be left
utterly impotent in his own country; to do it
was to sanction his own destruction. In No-
vember 1640 the Long Parliament met at West-
minster. It was to survive unexampled passions
and crises for nearly thirteen years.

107

X

ASSEMBLING OF THE LONG PARLIAMENT.
THE REPRESENTATIVE PURITAN

X

ASSEMBLING OF THE LONG PARLIAMENT. THE
REPRESENTATIVE PURITAN

WHAT happened during this period was that
a King, his chief Minister of State, and the head
of his Church, were brought to the scaffold ; that
the blood of many thousands of eminent and ob-
scure Englishmen was spilt in the midst of Eng-
lish fields that are familiarly and lovingly
known to us all to-day, often with son met
against father, and brother against brother ; and
that the theory of government in England was
with tragic severity revised to the account of
all coming generations. But the way in which
these things happened is a tale of infinitely com-
plex policy and action. The events upon which
history generalises, sometimes significantly and
sometimes not, were composed of innumerable
and intimate particulars that are now and for
ever beyond particularisation. In those years,
every town and hamlet and acre knew its own
version of a conflict that made the remotest
bridle path a likely place of ambush. Out of
the vortex certain cardinal results emerged as

in

OLIVER CROMWELL

memorable, but the chronicles of these alone
offer a vast and often confused theme for inves-
tigation. Our business Is to attempt such a sum-
mary as will best exhibit Oliver's character.

There are in this respect two considerations
of the highest importance to be borne in mind.
The first Is that Oliver Cromwell was, in a very
special sense, the product of his age, a Repre-
sentative Man. His was no remote and lonely
genius, patiently bringing to maturity the fruits
of its own speculation, satisfied in the pursuit of
truth that others might or might not see. Nor
was his career inspired by the personal desire
for eminence, the zest for directing vast ener-
gies with reference to no particular purpose,
the joy of subjecting empires to his power and
caprice. He was neither poet nor adventurer.
In his public life, by which he is remembered,
while he gave official employment to Milton,
whom he revered, he was as incapable of emu-
lating Milton's sublime detachments, as he was
of sharing such restless ambitions as those that
made and broke Napoleon, who he would have
despised. Cromwell was the commanding sym-
bol In action of specific necessities at a specific
time. He did not make the Puritan revolution,
but was its most significant expression. He used
no ingenuity to contrive the conditions under
which he came into the world's notice, but was

112

THE LONG PARLIAMENT

himself an effect of those conditions as he was
In the end their chief instrument .If Charles
and Wentworth and Laud had been able and
willing to compromise with the spirit that they
so continually incited to revolt, it is almost cer-
tain that Cromwell would have remained an
obscure farmer taking an inconspicuous place in
public affairs. It was only when the principles
for which he stood as the private member of a
party were in the last extremity of danger, that
he began to assert his unequalled powers of
leadership. For unequalled, in the sense that
they knew no reverses, they were. At the as-
sembling of the Long Parliament he was a man
of forty, with no more experience of statesman-
ship than had been afforded by three brief ses-
sions at Westminster in the political ranks, with
his gift for organisation tried only by the man-
agement of a few farm hands, a small estate,
and his colleagues on local committees, and
with no practical knowledge whatever of arms.
Within less than ten years he had .translated the
conscience of a people into terms of terrible but
disciplined authority, was directing the national
diplomacy, and had led an army of his own
making through a succession of desperate cam-
paigns without once suffering defeat. All this
he accomplished directly as the representative
Puritan. It is, therefore, impossible to disso-

113

OLIVER CROMWELL

date him at any moment of his story from the
beliefs and passions and circumstances upon
which Puritanism was founded. It was in the
personal example of Cromwell that the move-
ment achieved its most coherent mastery, but
without the movement Cromwell could have
had no meaning. It is for this reason that, al-
though in 1640 he had done nothing to suggest
his coming ascendency, it has been necessary to
trace with some care the progress of events in
which he was but a subordinate agent The de-
velopment of Puritanism up to 1640 was Crom-
well's development, as it was that of thousands
of other undistinguished citizens, though as it
happened in his case with signal consequences.
We can only realise the essential features of his
earlier years by realising the conditions under
which he matured and the aspirations that he
was taught to cherish. Our very limited knowl-
edge of his personal life at Huntingdon and St.
Ives and Ely, leaves us none the less certain as
to the kind of man he was when he first began
to be a noted public influence. We know clearly
the Puritan temper and faith, and the occasions
by which they had been tested, and knowing
them we know Cromwell as he was when he
came up to London for the second time as
member for Cambridge.
The other consideration to be remembered
114

THE LONG PARLIAMENT

always In approaching Cromwell, Is that first
and last he was a man of action. Capable as he
was of deep Intellectual reserve, hungry for
lonely communings of the spirit, and often
weary of the conflict that gave him no respite,
his life, once he had forsaken the quiet of his
farms, was one of turbulent and incessant doing*
Violent and incalculable political crises, neces-
sitating ever fresh improvisation and renewed
tenacity, In themselves kept the string sufficiently
taut But Cromwell was not only a chief par-
ticipator In these; he conceived a new army
model, turned recruiting officer, raised one of
the most efficient fighting forces known to mili-
tary history, made himself a master of strategy
and tactics, and himself fought In command
from one victorious field to another. Utterly
Insensible to the appeal of conquest for Its own
sake, and profoundly inspired by an ideal, he
was yet called upon to vindicate it in years of
unremitting action. It is by action, at West-
minster, under arms, In council, and finally as
the executive head of the state, that the whole
definition of his character is governed.

To remember this is important for this rea-
son. No man is in his action infallibly consist-
ent, logical, prudent The creative processes of
art and philosophy are such that by them a man
may hope to give nothing of himself to the

"5

OLIVER CROMWELL

world but the best He can labour, often with
success, to keep his imperfections out of the
work by which he is revealed to us. It is a
poor curiosity that asks whether the artist in
his life is better or worse than his fellows ; the
more so as in any case we may be sure that he
is neither. All that we need to know is that he
is allowed, for his comfort and ours, to purge
some part of himself of its grossness and save
it from mortality. No great artist may hope
to equal the perfection of his own art, and it
is his happy fortune that by his art he is known.
When, however, a man with the arresting qual-
ity of genius, expresses himself not in art but
in action, he invites and has to endure a much
more intimate scrutiny. His whole life is put
forward for our analysis, and no life can sur-
vive that ordeal with an unblemished account
The man of action can effect no concealments,
make no perfect abstract of himself. We know
him by all his actions, not merely by his good
and great and generous ones, and some will in-
evitably do his reputation no good. It is true
that sometimes our interest is confined to the
action of such a man in a limited range, as in
the case of the soldier or sailor whose martial
exploits alone are of any interest to the world.
But when the man of action comes prominently
into national affairs, and influences policy as

116

THE LONG PARLIAMENT

well as the fortunes of the field, he has to abide
the larger audit And Cromwell, more perhaps
than any other figure in our history, is subject
to this most searching of all standards. He was
a man phenomenally engaged in action, and
since he was a presiding force not merely in
policy, but in the spiritual and domestic life of
a nation critically beset, no phase or turn of that
action can escape attention. We shall find that
Cromwell sometimes did things that it would
be difficult to defend, if it were our place to
defend them. Not often, we think, unaccount-
able things, but things that lend some colour
to his own protestations of insufficiency. And
what then? We do not find in Cromwell the
man who, alone among men, had no cause to
ask to be forgiven his trespasses. We merely
find in him a man who on the whole did more
memorably great and beneficent things for his
country, who was better able to bear the burden
of his acknowledged and not inconsiderable
trespasses, than any other Englishman who has
proved his faith in his deeds.

117

XI

EXECUTION OF STRAFFORD
THE GRAND REMONSTRANCE

XI

EXECUTION OF STRAFFORD.
THE GRAND REMONSTRANCE

ON April nth, 1640, the royalist John Eve-
lyn wrote In his diary, "I went to London to
see the solemnity of his Majesty's riding
through the city In state to the Short Parlia-
ment, which began the I3th following a very
glorious and magnificent sight The King cir-
cled with his royal diadem and the affections
of his people. . . . Upon May the 5th follow-
ing, was the Parliament unhappily dissolved,"
Seven months later, on October 3Oth, he writes
(from some date retrospectively, as was his
practice) , "I saw his Majesty, coming from his
Northern expedition, ride in pomp and a kind
of ovation, with all the marks of a happy peace,
restored to the affections of his people, being
conducted through London with a most splen-
did cavalcade; and on the 3rd November fol-
lowing (a day never to be mentioned without
a curse) to that long ungrateful, foolish, and
fatal Parliament, the beginning of all our sor-
row for twenty years after, and the period of

121

OLIVEK CROMWELL

the most unhappy monarch In the world.* 5 How
sincerely, how tragically, do the words of the
gentle diarist drift down to us from those times.
How eagerly could we have pressed with him
to see the splendid cavalcade, if that had been
all. And how tarnished and ashen does that
splendour seem when we know more than Eve-
lyn wished to know. A fatal Parliament indeed,
if the word means charged with fate. But the
splendour of that cavalcade could not co-exist
with a splendid England, and it was swept
away. And let us be clear as to what the splen-
dour really was. It is part of the technique of
anti-Puritan writers to represent the cavaliers
as standing, with all their faults, for a liberal
and cultured way of life against the darkness
of fanaticism* It may be remarked that no
rational being would for a moment tolerate the
mouthing bigots who, by the report of these
enthusiasts, were the progenitors of English
Puritanism. One concrete example may serve
to illuminate the common confusion. It is
asked by the cavaliers, how can a liberal mod-
ern mind protest in the name of a party that
opposed Laud's very enlightened introduction
or re-introduction of the measure sanction-
ing, or indeed enjoining, Sunday sports? The
answer is to be found in the actual terms of the
proclamation, which do not always seem to have

122

EXECUTION OF STRAFFORD

been consulted. There Is revealed the fact that
only such people were enjoined, or even al-
lowed, to take these pleasures of a Sunday, as
had attended divine service In the regulation
Church of England. Which makes a difference*
Cromwell seems to have come into no prom-
inence during the first months of the Long Par-
liament At the time of the passing of the
Grand Remonstrance, in November 1641,
Clarendon refers to him as being then "little
taken notice oL ? * But there Is evidence that he
was attending closely to the business of the
House, if at present with no great celebrity, A
few days after Parliament had met he was put
in charge of the petition of John Lilburne, of
whose treatment by the Star Chamber we have
already heard, and on this occasion he makes a
first and graphic appearance in the memoirs of
the time. The passage from Sir Philip War-
wick's * journal is well known, but not too well
for repetition here : "The first time I ever took
notice of Mr. Cromwell ... I came into the
House . . * and perceived a gentleman speak-
ing, whom I knew not, very ordinarily appar-
elled; 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 ;

* Warwick was royalist member for Radnor, and a devoted

cavalier until his death in 1683. In 1640 he was thirty years
of age,

OLIVER CROMWELL

and I remember a speck or two of blood upon
his little band, which was not much larger than
his collar. . * - His stature was of a good size;
his sword stuck close to his side; his counte-
nance swoln and reddish, his voice sharp and
untuneable, and his eloquence full of fervour.
For the subject matter would not bear much of
reason; it being on behalf of a servant of Mr.
Prynne's [Lilburne] who had dispensed libels;
I sincerely profess, it lessened much my rever-
ence unto that Great Council, for this gentle-
man was very much hearkened unto*"

It was the hearkening unto these homespun,
argumentative, ignorant gentlemen that had for
so long been distasteful to Wentworth, now
Lord Straflford. So distasteful, indeed, that for
years he had persuaded his master not to
hearken unto them at all, and with cold and
uniform insolence had let it be known that he
did not consider what they had to say to be of
the smallest importance to anybody* Their part
was a becoming docility towards their betters
who knew the arts of government. Wentworth
had done a very bad job with considerable ef-
ficiency. His vision was fatally narrow in that
it wholly disregarded the rising spirit of the
age, but within that vision he worked shrewdly,
disinterestedly, and with uncommon applica-
tion. Apart from his fundamental misconcep-

124

EXECUTION OF STRAFFORD

tlons, what he designed he was In general able
to carry out So that while men had hated and
despised Buckingham, they hated and feared
Strafford, So long as It was possible to ignore
the gathering storm, he could deceive the Court
and himself that they were equal to all emer-
gencies. But now the storm had broken. These
loutish fellows from the country, with untune-
able voices and no administrative qualifications,
had thrust themselves again into the places of
authority. And the first measure to which they
addressed themselves, after some ecclesiastical
skirmishing, was the impeachment of the man
who had defied them and repudiated the claims
of the people to preside over their own des-
tinies*

The legal ground had to be shifted before
the Commons accomplished their purpose, and
a Bill of Attainder against Strafford was substi-
tuted for the process of impeachment by law.
The attack was determined, but Strafford de-
fended himself with great courage and re-
source, and had not the mood of the Commons
been stiffened in the closing stages of the trial
by the discovery of the Army Plot, It is pos-
sible that he would have escaped. When, how-
ever, it was found that Charles was intriguing
with certain army leaders to rescue Strafford
and place him at the head of a military rising

OLIVER CROMWELL

against Parliament, Pym and his colleagues
pushed on the Bill with irresistible energy. On
May 8th, 1641, it was forced through the Lords.
For two days the King, in an agony of inde-
cision, withheld the royal assent, while popular
clamour round the palace demanded retribu-
tion. It is pleaded in Charles's behalf that his
position was one of extreme difficulty and dan-
ger. It was. But it is in such crises that heroic
fortitude is born. No one could tell what the
consequences might be if Charles refused to
sacrifice the man who had at least been mag-
nificently loyal to him. He dared not face the
risk, and late on Sunday evening, May pth,
he signed his friend's death warrant On May
i ath, Strafford was executed on Tower Hill,
within a few yards of the cell where Arch-
bishop Laud was already waiting against the
day four years later when he should be led out,
a brave foolish old man, to meet a similar fate
with no less intrepidity.

At the time of Stafford's death Charles was
compelled to accept a further drastic limitation
of his powers. A Bill was passed whereby Par-
liament could not henceforward be dissolved
without its own consent, and became law. Thus
with his only capable Minister of State gone,
with his most effective ecclesiastical adviser out
of reach, and his control over Parliament an-

126

EXECUTION OF STRATFORD

nulled, there was nothing left for him but to
seize any chance opportunities that occasion
might offer. His chief hope lay In dissensions
that were already beginning to embarrass the
Puritan party itself. Once Laud's power was
curtailed, the nonconformist sects found them-
selves occupied with distracting differences of
their own. By concentrating attention on these,
Charles might look for a rally of royalist and
High Church forces that would enable him to
hold his own yet. It was a forlorn expedient,
but there was no other left. The Parliament
leaders were by now In constant communica-
tion with the Scotch presbyterians. In August
Charles went north again, to see what crumbs
of comfort he also might pick up In that quar-
ter, leaving the Puritans In daily debate at
Westminster, united In a common offensive on
Bishops, divided on a dozen problems of Church
establishment and government Cromwell and
Vane were responsible for the introduction of
a bill for the total abolition of episcopacy the
Root-and-Branch. When asked what he would
put in the place of bishops^ Cromwell replied
that he was not sure what he wanted, but he
knew what could no longer be endured. The
King's departure roused new suspicions as to
what he was about, the call for harmony reas-
serted itself, and the Bill was dropped. In Sep-

127

OLIVER CROMWELL

tember the House went into recess, and for six
weeks Cromwell was back at Ely again. On Oc-
tober 20th Parliament re-assembled, and learnt
that Charles had found a few crumbs. The Scots
were not, it seemed, too satisfied with the
promises of their new friends at Westminster,
and some of them were inclined to negotiate
again with a king who was at all times ready to
promise anything. Also news came of a Catho-
lic insurrection in Ireland, in which some thou-
sands of Protestants were massacred, Charles
issued another of his manifestos, admonishing
the Lords not to encourage the Commons in any
tampering with Church discipline, and num-
ber^of Episcopalian sympathisers who had hith-
erto been politically neutral, openly declared
themselves Royalist Alarmed by all these
symptoms of a decline in their newly won priv-
ileges, the Commons decided to make another
demonstration of popular rights, and in No-
vember the Grand Remonstrance was laid be-
fore the House.

In it were recited the misdeeds of Charles's
reign, the services of Parliament to English lib-
erty, and proposals for lasting reform. The in-
strument was an elaboration of the Petition of
Right, supported by an immensely increased
authority. But its passage through the House
was by no means easy, a further indication that

128

EXECUTION OF STKAFFORD

the King was recovering lost ground. Strafford
had been condemned In May by two hundred
and four votes to fifty-nine; it was only after
desperate advocacy that in November the
Grand Remonstrance was passed by one hun-
dred and fifty-nine votes to one hundred and
forty-eight The scene was one of the most
violent ever witnessed in the House, and as it
closed, Cromwell is reported by Clarendon to
have said to Falkland, "If the Remonstrance had
been rejected, I would have sold all that I have
to-morrow morning, and never have seen Eng-
land more; and I know that there are many
other honest men of the same resolution*'* Upon
which Clarendon observes, "So near was the
poor Kingdom at that time to its deliverance."
But small as the majority was it was suf-
ficient Four days later, Charles returned from
Scotland, and the Remonstrance was presented
to him* He took such stock as he could of public
feeling, and the result, in the City especially,
was not too discouraging. He affected to treat
the Remonstrance as negligible, and started clan-
destine shufflings with the defences of London.
Thoroughly alarmed, Parliament sought to
strengthen its hand by ejecting the Bishops
from the Lords, and succeeded in getting thir-
teen of them impeached and locked up* It was
rumoured that the next mark of Puritan attack

129

OLIVER CROMWELL

was to be no less a person than the Queen, who
not without reason was suspected of regarding
the tragic plight of her Protestant subjects in
Ireland with some satisfaction, and of tamper-
ing with the army. Charles retaliated by an act
of stark folly. On January 3rd, 1642, the At-
torney General rose in the House at his bidding,
and named five members, Pym, Hampden,
Hazlerigg, Holies and Strode, on a charge of
high treason. The general stupefaction deep-
ened as the King, impatient of what he con-
ceived to be an unwarrantable delay in getting
forward with the business, sent his Sergeant-at-
Arm to arrest the accused members. Lords and
Commons alike sent an indignant protest to
Whitehall against this frantic proceeding.
Whereupon Charles became more frantic still,
and the next day rode down in his coach to
Westminster at the head of four hundred sol-
diers to effect the arrest himself. His men were
not there, and he walked out of a House ring-
ing with cries of "Privilege." And even as he
was leaving he had the sublime audacity to
"assure them/' as Clarendon tells us, "in the
word of a King, that he never intended any
force, but would proceed against them in a fair
and legal way. 57 A week later he had left Lon-
don, and preparations for the Civil War had
begun.

130

XII

THE FIRST CIVIL WAR. EDGEHILL. THE
EASTERN ASSOCIATION

XII

THE FIRST CIVIL WAR. EDGEHILL. THE
EASTERN ASSOCIATION

THROUGH a long term of years the issues
upon which the war was to be fought had been
defining themselves. They were now clear. The
distribution of forces was a slow and incal-
culable process ; the nearest ties of kinship were
broken, and discord was set between interests
that had worked together for generations*
Often during the struggle, as is the case in every
war, the aims of both parties became confused,
and sometimes demoralised. Narrow-minded
pedants, ignorant coxcombs, quacks, canteen
sharpers, political dodgers, place-seekers and
time servers, were plentiful on both sides. But
we have not to judge the Royalist and Puritan
causes by their disreputable elements. For the
King, as against him, were many thousands of
staunch, chivalrous, and incorruptible men
drawn from all classes. It was because the Pur-
itans laboured the more exactingly to encourage
and discipline their finer qualities and to purify
their morale, that they in the end drove their

133

OLIVER CROMWELL

no less gallant but far less resolute enemies from
the field. Roughly speaking, the King's army
and supporters consisted of those sections of the
nobility and gentry that were not politically
minded, and had a long loyalist tradition in
their families and on their estates; members of
the Episcopalian Church; Catholics who hoped,
in any new settlement that should follow the
King's victory, for many favours by the influ-
ence of Henrietta Maria; certain vested inter-
ests of office; and a considerable train of free-
lance adventurers who had no particular prin-
ciples, but had learnt in Continental wars and
elsewhere a code of honour that made them
trustworthy enough once their allegiance had
been given. The purposes for which this some-
what invertebrate association fought were the
establishment of the theory of divine right, of
the King's absolute control over the machinery
of government, and of the arbitrary subjection
of all political and religious opinion to the per-
son of the Crown and the courts of the State
Church respectively. The Puritan party con-
sisted of a majority in both houses of Parlia-
ment; the chief influences in the City, which
meant most of the traders throughout the coun-
try; such of the nobility as had been convinced
by recent experience of public affairs that the
freedom of the average citizen was their free-

134

THE FIRST CIVIL WAR

dom also a very numerous and powerful
body; most of the professional classes outside
Crown employment; the squirearchy almost to a
man and by far the greater part of the artisans
and yeomen. They stood for political rights of
the people expressed through Parliament, and
for liberty of opinion in religion. Often in the
heat of conflict they betrayed their own faith,
but this faith it was that was the mainspring of
their action 3 and that they finally vindicated as
an enduring principle of English life.

When the King fled from London, Parlia-
ment at once proceeded to organise its forces for
the field* Already in February it is the "Com-
monwealth" to which "Mr. Cromwell offers to
lend three hundred pounds 17 for such measures
of defence or offence as may seem necessary.
Hampden's contribution on this occasion is a
thousand pounds. In July, Cromwell is raising
two volunteer companies in Cambridge, and
lends another hundred pounds to that end. A
month later he has seized the Magazine in the
castle of that town s and stopped some twenty
thousand pounds worth of plate from 'being
conveyed from the University to the King's
uses. The parliamentary army Is placed under
the command of the Earl of Essex, whose gen-
eral of horse, the new Earl of Bedford, is ap-
pointing many captains of troops; in September

135

OLIVER CROMWELL

Oliver Cromwell Is given such a commissioiij
his troop being number sixty-seven, and consist-
ing of sixty men. In troop number eight his
eldest son is a cornet In the meantime the
King also was assembling his arms. Not just
now favouring the neighbourhood of London,
he journeyed north again, gathering some mo-
mentum as he went At Hull he was refused
entrance to the city by a parliamentarian gover-
nor, and there on July i5th the first skirmishing
of the war took place. On August 22nd the
royal standard was raised at Nottingham, and
after two months of manoeuvring on both sides
the battle of Edgehill in Warwickshire was
fought, October 23rd, 1642.

The result was indecisive. Each army num-
bered about fourteen thousand men, and each
claimed the victory. Cromwell was there with
his troop. So also was Colonel Hampden of
the infantry, who coming late into the action
from Stratford-on-Avon with his Buckingham-
shire green coats helped to head off one of Ru-
pert's charges. The Parliament had the advan-
tage in arms and equipment, the King in cav-
alry. The losses were variously computed, but
the total casualties seem to have amounted to
not less than four thousand. As night fell upon
this calamity that had shaken the pastoral peace
of the low-lying midland hills, a Puritan

136

THE FIEST CIYIL WAR

trooper lit a fire on Beacon Hill by Burton
Dassett, a pre-arranged signal that the King's
progress had been checked. It Is said that some
shepherds at Ivlnghoe saw the distant point of
light thirty miles away, and signalled in turn to
sentinels at Harrow-on-the-Hill, whence the
news was taken by waiting horsemen to London*
But of all the men In that battle, none knew
better than Cromwell that there was as yet no
victory to celebrate. It was then that he told
Hampden that if they were to succeed against
the quality and courage of the King's arms they
must bring Into their own fighting ranks the
very flower of Puritan manhood. He would
have such men alone as would In the name of
God discover such a spirit as their enemies had
that day shown in the name of the King.
Hampden agreed, but with some scepticism. It
was a right policy, but practicable? However,
he believed In this cousin of his. Not so long
since, a friend had enquired In the House,
"Pray, Mr. Hampden, who is that man? For
I see he Is on our side by his speaking so warmly
to-day." And according to his biographer,
Hampden replied, "That sloven whom you see
before you hath no ornament in his speech, but
If we should ever come to a breach with the
King which God forbid that sloven will be
the greatest man in England, 1 * Now, at the end

137

OLIVER CROMWELL

of 1642, after Edgehill, Oliver began to show by
unsleeping enterprise, unerring fixity of aim, an
Inspired sense of vocation, that Hampden's con-
fidence was not misplaced. He began to create
the army of his ideal

All moral considerations apart, Cromwell's
achievement of this purpose is one of the ro-
mantic wonders of history. Nothing more stir-
ring is to be found in the legendary chronicles.
County Associations were formed for the rais-
ing and training of troops* In the Eastern As-
sociation Cromwell, burning with the lessons
of Edgehill, at once took a prominent place;
very rapidly the most prominent He pleaded,
exhorted, threatened, prayed, challenged, and
rewarded. Also he worked incessantly to learn
all he could of military theory and practice.
His promotion to a colonelcy widened his au-
thority, and gave him greater scope. In 1643
he was yet again advanced in service, being
appointed Governor of the Isle of Ely by Par-
liament. Throughout this year, while the main
movement of the war was going on in the south-
west, lower midlands, and north of England,
Cromwell was occupied in organising the forces
of the Eastern Association, intermittently en-
gaged in outlying actions on a small scale, at
Grantham, Stamford, Gainsborough and else-
where. There are frequent appeals from him

138

THE FIRST CIVIL WAR

to Deputy-Lieutenants, Mayors 3 and other com-
petent authorities, for pay due to his troops.
a l beseech you hasten to supply to us: forget
not money. . . . Lay not too much upon the
.back of a poor gentleman, who desires, without
much noise, to lay down his Iife 5 and bleed the
last drop to serve the Cause and you* I ask not
your money for myself: If that were my end and
hope, viz. the pay of my place I would not
open my mouth at this time I desire to deny
myself ; but others will not be satisfied. Forget
not your prayers. Gentlemen, I am yours,
Oliver Cromwell. 77 Sometimes he had to meet
the claims of destitute soldiers out of his own
pocket On one occasion he explained that he
could do no more, having already laid out be-
tween eleven and twelve hundred pounds in thi$
way, and "my estate is little." But In face of
all difficulties, he managed la a few months to
make his district much spoken of everywhere
for discipline, efficiency, equipment, and zeal.
He encouraged support from all quarters, pro-
viding only that the givers were "honest godly
men"; or women either for the matter of that,
there being a touching little letter of his to some
nameless chairman or what not of a group of
"Young Men and Maids" who desired to sub-
scribe Twelve-score Pounds towards raising a
company of musketeers; he advises that the

*39

OLIVER CROMWELL

money be spent towards a troop of horse in-
stead,

In those Lincolnshire skirmishes Cromwell
was often in command of the small Puritan
forces engaged, and already he was noted for
the success that was never once in the coming
years to fail his leadership in the field. His
discipline was severe ; but easily imposed, since
his men were of the same mind as himself. They
learnt now by personal contact that the repu-
tation of Mr* Cromwell of Huntingdon and St
Ives and Ely, as a fearless and honest Puri-
tan and a man very hard to beat or brow-beat,
was a just one. And as he and they together
got their organisation going with clear vision
and a thoroughly firm hand on themselves, they
could say with simple confidence, in his words,
"There is nothing to be feared but our own sin
and sloth." In September Oliver could write,
"I have a lovely company; you would respect
them did you know them."

Throughout 1643 the war followed an inde-
terminate course, the armies drifting about the
shires waiting on each other's movements and
seldom coming to grips, and then, as at New-
bury, with inconclusive results. The King made
overtures to Parliament, much to the apprehen-
sion of the army in which the real Puritan
power was now concentrating. Not again un-

140

THE FIRST CIVIL WAH

til terms could be dictated were terms to be dis-
cussed* On an early morning In mid-June, as
Rupert and a small parliamentary force fought
among the standing corn across the broad unen-
closed farmlands known as Chalgrove Field, by
the little town of Watlington in Oxfordshire,
John Hampden received the wound of which
six days later he died in his fiftieth year, mur-
muring, "O Lord, level in the dust those who
would rob the people of their liberty." In De-
cember John Pym, ten years older, the greatest
parliamentarian statesman that the new order
had seen, and a leader whom every Puritan
revered, followed Hampden, wasted by disease
and worn out by ardours that he could never
subdue. His last act was to Induce Parliament
to sign the Solemn League and Covenant,
whereby Presbyterianism was to become the re-
ligion of "the three Kingdoms of England, Scot-
land and Ireland," on the understanding that
the Scots were to support the parliamentary
arms. The consequences of this agreement were
later to reverberate in the clash between an Inde-
pendent army and a Presbyterian House, but at
present the new Independents, Cromwell among
them, had not advanced beyond the common
distrust of Popes and Bishops, and when or-
ders were given that all Laudian and such-like
practices in the Church were to be abolished,

141

OLIVER CROMWELL

Oliver was all for obeying them. As we have
suggested before, the mood had nothing to do
with religious toleration. There was no time
in his life when Cromwell would not have been
perfectly content to let any man burn as many
candles and say as many masses as he wished,
if that had been all. But these things went
with a policy of which the results were already
sufficiently disastrous. When, therefore, early
in 1644, the incumbent of Ely Cathedral was
found to be conducting the proscribed forms,
Cromwell as governor of the town sent him a
polite but unequivocal note inviting him to de-
sist This producing no effect, Cromwell took
the first opportunity of walking into the ca-
thedral during service with a military guard,
and announcing that he was authorised to dis-
miss the congregation. Having done so, he
stood aside to allow a quiet dispersal, and the
Reverend Mr. Hitch taking this to be a sign
of irresolution, returned to his ritual, where-
upon with no irresolution at all Oliver cried
out, "Leave off your fooling and come down,
Sir." As Mr. Hitch then decided to do.

142

XIII

THE IRONSIDES. MARSTON MOOR AND
NASEBY. FIRST CIVIL WAR ENDS

XIII

THE IRONSIDES. MARSTON MOOR AND NASEBY.
FIRST CIVIL WAR ENDS

THE new year, 1644, found Cromwell still
employed in training his troops under the East-
ern Association, adding to their numbers, bet-
tering their condition, and learning with them
something of active warfare. All that had been
asked of them hitherto they had given without
stint, and Cromwell was daily growing more
confident that no demands would ever find them
wanting* He is now Lieutenant-General, and
can tell a Major-General who has suspended
a Lieutenant-Colonel for holding religious
views that he, the Major-General, did not es-
teem, that "the State, in choosing men to serve
it, takes no notice of their opinions"; further,
that his correspondent should "take heed of be-
ing sharp . . against those to whom you can
object little but that they square not with you in
every opinion concerning matters of religion."
Here is a sufficient answer to any who may re-
gard the scene in Ely cathedral as nothing but
a display of bigotry.

OLIVER CROMWELL

As summer came on, the opposing forces
slowly converged from all quarters upon a point
in Yorkshire, The Puritans were now in touch
with the Scots, who had crossed the border early
in the year. At the end of June the city of York,
holding out for the King and now invested,
was relieved by Rupert at the head of his
undefeated cavalry. The besiegers drew off and
joined the main parliamentary army at Long
Marston, eight miles west of the city. On Tues-
day, July and, the Royalists, under William
Cavendish, Marquis of Newcastle, now liber-
ated from York, with Rupert in command of the
horse, gathered over against them on the moor
in the hot morning. Through the day the two
armies watched each other, a long dyke between
them, preparing their order of battle, the lines
flowing and receding in trial formations. In
the late afternoon Newcastle decided that there
would be no action that day, and withdrew to
his coach. But the parliamentary leaders de-
cided otherwise, and at seven o'clock in the
evening the assault was delivered.

The Puritan army numbered twenty^seven
thousand men, twenty thousand of whom were
infantry; the King's but eighteen thousand, with
eleven thousand infantry. Thus on each side
the cavalry, on whom in those days the fortune
of battle chiefly depended, numbered seven

146

FIRST CIVIL WAR ENDS

thousand. The Puritan horsemen were as yet
untried in any major action; Rupert's had made
themselves feared by a succession of dashing ex-
ploits that had never yet failed to retrieve the
King's misfortunes in the field. But an un-
known factor was here to prove itself for the
first time. The Puritan left and centre broke
at the first impact, and something like two-thirds
of their force was reduced to what threatened
to become a rout. But on the right two thou-
sand five hundred men from the Eastern As-
sociation under Cromwell withstood every on-
set of Rupert's brilliant courage. They did
more. Yard by yard they turned defence into
attack, and beat Rupert back into the first re-
verse he had ever known. As the summer night
fell the prince was in flight with six thousand
of his hitherto invincible troopers, and Crom-
well had swung round to save the battle in the
centre. Almost at the moment of defeat Rupert
exclaimed in the face of his vanquisher "Iron-
sides!" and gave a name to English history. By
ten o'clock Cromwell had recovered all the lost
positions, broken the last efforts at resistance,
scattered the King's army, and ruined his cause
forever in the north. "God made them as stub-
ble to our swords." Cromwell's men had be-
come veterans in a day. Henceforward the

147

OLIVER CROMWELL

presence of the Ironsides in the field was an
ever mounting terror to all cavalier pretensions,
Cromwell's one purpose now was to secure
an absolute ascendency in arms* To this he ap-
plied his genius with an energy that swept aside
all opposition. Having struck his decisive blow
in the north, he looked towards the south and
west, where Royalist hopes, though gravely im-
paired by news of Marston Moor, were still find-
ing encouragement There he read nothing but
inert mismanagement in the Puritan command,
and his dissatisfaction with the state of the army
in general reached a climax when at the second
battle of Newbury, late in October, Essex from
the west and Manchester from the victory that
he had done little to gain in the north, con-
trived by bad strategy and worse tactics (Essex
was not present at the battle) to lose aa oppor-
tunity that Cromwell and the other more enter-
prising leaders were eager to take. At the end
of November Cromwell, returning for a brief
appearance in the House, formally charged
Manchester with neglect and inefficiency. He
did not press the case to an issue, fearing to
involve the party in fresh personal disputes at
a moment when unity was imperative, but the
protest had been made and he knew that it could
not be unheeded. The outcome was thkt on
December 9th the Self-Denying Ordinance

FIRST CIVIL WAR ENDS

passed both Houses, Cromwell speaking twice
during the debate in support of the measure.
By its provision all members of Parliament,
Lords and Commons, were to resign their com-
missions, and the army was to be officered ac-
cording to the New Model that had come into
being under Cromwell and his Eastern Asso-
ciation. It was the most convenient way avail-
able of clearing out Essex, Manchester, and
their like without unfairness to men who after
all had not sought positions for which they were
unqualified. Incidentally, it involved the dis-
missal of many able men from the service, Crom-
well himself among them, but by general agree-
ment the removal of incompetents from the
highest places was worth even that sacrifice.
Had this opinion held, the consequences might
well have been fatal; but this was not to be.
While the new ordinance was being put into
effect, Cromwell was employed on a western
expedition, at the successful conclusion of
which, in April 1645, he was preparing to take
leave of Fairfax, the new Commander-in-chief,
at Windsor, when he received orders from the
Committee of Both Kingdoms to remain in the
field. Parliament in fact had no intention of
losing their ablest officer, and were keeping
the post of cavalry Commander-in-chief opea
tmtil such time as they could exempt him from

149

OLIVER CROMWELL

the ordinance without seeming to be conspiring
with its originator,

In May and June Cromwell was constantly
on the move, now attacking Royalist positions
along the Thames country, now back in the Isle
of Ely calling in recruits, establishing lines of
communication, perfecting his New Model.
Fairfax was besieging Oxford, and the King
marching about the midlands with nobody knew
what objective. Early in June it seemed that
he was likely to move against the Eastern As-
sociation, and Cromwell at Cambridge joined in
proclamations for defence, seeing to it himself
that they were duly obeyed. On the 6th, ward
came that the royal army was at Market Har-
borough in Leicestershire, fifty miles away, and
advancing eastwards. An appeal was sent to
Fairfax for help. In response Fairfax left Ox-
ford in pursuit of the King, and through Parlia-
ment instructed Cromwell to come westward to
meet him. The vacant post was filled, and the
Ironsides moved towards their rendezvous.
There were six hundred of them, six hundred,
that is, of Cromwell's Own. On June i2th,
Fairfax drew up behind the King at the village
of Naseby in Northamptonshire. Some hours
later Cromwell rode into the camp, and took
command of the entire Puritan horse, six thou-

150

FIRST CIVIL WAR EHDS

sand of them all told. On the morning of the
I4th Charles attacked.

As at Marston Moor, the Roundheads had a
considerable advantage in numbers : eight thou-
sand foot and six thousand horse against three
thousand five hundred foot and four thousand
horse. But the King's army ? especially in its
cavalry, many of whom had seen foreign service,
were picked and experienced men, while the
Puritans had in their ranks some thousands of
raw untrained troops. The New Model had
as yet affected but a small part of the army* As
at Marston Moor, one wing and the centre
broke before the Royalist dash ; and as at Mar-
stoa Moor one wing, this time the right, stood
unshakably under the example of Cromwell and
his Ironsides* In three hours these men had
once again turned the whole fortune of battle,
and the King's army was scattered in irrepa-
rable confusion. He was never again to face
his enemies in action,

As an offensive force with any hope of final
victory the Royalists had ceased to exist, but
there was still much for the Puritans to do be-
fore the last resistance was quelled. For nearly
another year Cromwell was engaged in breaking
up the remaining opposition in the south-west,
and in reducing such cavalier strongholds as
Winchester^ Bristol and Basing. He did the

OLIVER CROMWELL

work thoroughly, grimly even, but he never al-
lowed severity to become undisciplined. Hon-
ourable terms and safe conduct were given when
the enemy would accept them, as at Langford
House near Salisbury. His storming was ter-
rible, but never delivered until repeated offers
of peaceable negotiations had been made. At
Winchester, for example, he summoned the cas-
tle to surrender, and was denied. He trained
his guns, and after one round, sent a second
summons, with the same result. He then effect-
ed a breach, and the governor thereupon, before
the assault, asked for a parley* Cromwell con-
sented, and articles were agreed upon. When
the club-men, irregular bands of countrymen
armed with clubs professedly as a protection
against the excesses of both armies, but in fact
a Royalist organisation, hovered round his army
two or three thousand strong and indulged in
what by the modern equivalent would be snip-
ing by civilians, he had three hundred of them
arrested, and having scolded them soundly, sent
them home. Licence among his own troops he
would never tolerate. On one occasion some of
his prisoners complained of unlawful plunder-
ing. He sent six accused men to trial by court
martial. All were found guilty, and one by lot
was hanged, the others being handed over to the
Royalist Governor of Oxford: who, however,

152

FIRST CIVIL WAR ENDS

sent them back. Occasions for such rigour in
his camp were rare, but he did not shrink from
them when they arose. Or we may believe that
he did indeed shrink from them, for Cromwell
adored his soldiers, truly his brothers-ln-arms.
But shrinking, he steeled himself nevertheless.
The servants of God must be not only above
fear but above reproach. By the spring of 1646
the last Royalist had been driven from the field.
In June the last garrison in being surrendered
at Oxford. The King had already escaped in
disguise to the north and placed himself in the
hands of the Scots. The young Prince of Wales
had left the country. The triumph of the Par-
liament was complete, and the first civil war
was over.

XIV

THE ARMY AND THE PARLIAMENT

XIV

THE ARMY AND THE PARLIAMENT

AND yet the triumph was not the Parliament* s,
but the army's. In a directly personal sense it
was Cromwell's, for his above all others had
been the genius that had given the army its
character and power. And already the tension
between Parliament and army was becoming
acute* After Naseby, Oliver had written to the
Speaker of the House, "Honest men served you
faithfully in this action. Sir, they are trusty;
I beseech you, in the name of God, not to dis-
courage them." Do not, for example, impose a
Presbyterian covenant on men who have a
conscience against it After Bristol, he wrote
again to the Speaker, "It may be thought that
some praises are due to those gallant men of
whose valour so much mention is made. ... It
is their joy that they are instruments of God's
glory and their country's good * . . Presbyteri-
ans, Independents, all here have the same spirit
of faith and prayer . . . pity it is it should be
otherwise anywhere." A pity, that is to say,
that Presbyterian busybodies in high places

157

OLIVER CROMWELL

could not take a hint from honest Presbyterian
soldiers, and keep their Presbyterianism to
themselves. And again, to an acquaintance in
Norfolk whose intervention in some local squall
he was soliciting, "Sir, this is a quarrelsome age;
and the anger seems to me to be the worse,
where the ground is difference of opinion." The
first civil war was over, but this question of
opinion had now to be fought out in the coun-
cils of the victors. In the dispute, Cromwell's
Independence found a valuable ally in a new
son-in-law that he had recently acquired. In
April 1645, his daughter Bridget was married
to Henry Ireton, who had served notably under
Oliver at Naseby and elsewhere. He was now
thirty-four, and his bride twenty-one.

In the middle of this year Cromwell was back
ai his business in the House. There he watched
the rising jealousy between the Commons and
the army with growing anxiety and impatience.
"Never were the spirits of men more embittered
than now," he exclaims sadly enough in a letter
to Fairfax. "Sir, it's good the heart be fixed
against all this." Then, loyal to his hope after
four years of bloody campaigning, "The naked
simplicity of Christ . . . will overcome all this. fl
That, and nothing else; if men would only re-
turn to it For months the differences smoul-
dered at the point of kindling into conflagra-

AEMY AND PARLIAMENT

tion. The Presbyterians in Parliament were
backed by the City, which wanted peace for
economic reasons, and saw the surest way to this
in disbanding the army and patching up some
sort of a treaty with the King. But neither
Parliament nor City seemed able to realise that
in the New Model they had not to deal with
hordes of hired mercenaries or even conscribed
soldiers, but with the flower of the thinking
youth and middle-aged manhood of the nation,
who had taken up arms for a definite purpose.
That purpose was liberty, and at present there
was no assurance of it Until there was the army
had no intention whatever of being sent home
by their obliged and humble servants. 'And in
the background of this confusion flitted the
shadowy figure of the fugitive King of England
himself.

Not that he was In fact fugitive any longer,
being a prisoner. When he first placed him-
self, as he put it, under the protection of the
Scots early in 1646, they had stated their terms.
He was to take the Covenant, and return to the
throne pledged to the Presbyterian Church for
England. This he declined to do, and thereby
laid the foundation for the legend of Ms mar-
tyrdom. That Charles would never accept
Presbyteriamsm in place of his own Church is
true, but that Ms decision at this time was dic-

OLIVER CROMWELL

tated by that loyalty, is not To have accepted
the Scotch proposals would have been a final
defiance of the New Model army, and he had
had a great deal more than enough of that
Moreover, in spite of all his experience, he
could still persuade himself that he was a nec-
essary part of the State, and that if he could
only hold his hand long and astutely enough the
State would presently come to him cap in hand.
He saw, what everyone saw, that the Presby-
terians and Independents in England were at
dangerous odds, and might at any moment pro-
ceed to destroy each other. That, he conceived,
would be his opportunity. In the meantime, he
would wait with the Scots, and say nothing.

A nimble device, but reckoning without his
Scots, who grew tired of waiting, and told
their friends at Westminster that if arrears of
army pay were forthcoming, they, the Scots,
would be very happy to part with their unin-
vited guest The Parliament, which, its internal
dissensions notwithstanding, was still the agent
of Puritan England, accepted the offer, and
sent commissioners to pay the money and bring
his Majesty back to London. * But the New
Model had different views. The King, they
thought, would be safer In their keeping than
in Parliament's, and on June 3rd, 1647, one Cor-
net Joyce visited Holmby House in Northamp-

160

ARMY AND PARLIAMENT

tonshire, and in the name of the army relieved
the commissioners of their royal charge. Pres-
byterian Westminster was f urious, but impotent
A powerful minority of the House, led by Crom-
well, supported the army's action ; was, indeed,
by Cromwell's authority, chiefly responsible
for it.

The story of the next eighteen months is one
of overstrained nerves and passions, tormented
by the incurably shifting and shiftless mind of
Charles. There is every reason to believe and
none to doubt that at this time Cromwell's one
desire was to effect a settlement that should com-
pose all differences, avoid further bloodshed,
and restore the Monarchy on a constitutional
basis that would be acceptable to all parties.
But such an end could only be achieved by a
spirit of tolerance in the Presbyters, common-
sense in the politicians, and candour in the
King. None of these conditions was to be
found. The Commons tibe majority of the
Commons, that is continued to resist the army's
demands for liberty of conscience; the Home
and War Offices, or whatever they then were,
persisted in treating the veterans of Marston
Moor and Naseby as naughty rabble; and
Charles played out the lamentable farce of sup-
posing that he could hoodwink men of Crom-
well's or any other kind of genius* In August

161

OLIVER CROMWELL

still 1647 the smouldering embers broke into
flame. The army ordered Parliament to sus-
pend eleven of its members. It further an-
nounced the conditions upon which it would
accept the King's government These were
magnificent in temper. Religious opinion was
to be unconditionally free, an exception, for
reasons that have already been discussed, being
made against Romanism. Presbyterianism was
to be free, even Episcopalianism, and if any man
believed in neither, he too was to be free. But
magnificent as the proposals were, they were
as yet beyond the grasp of English policy.
Cromwell and Ireton, who were very practical
saints, saw this, and counselled their friends not
to assume powers of legislation. Hoping to
find yet a way of escape from the threatened
rupture, they entered into close negotiations
with Charles, seeking to persuade him that by
accepting a reformed theory of monarchy he
could save himself and his people. The main
body of the army viewed these approaches with
something like savage suspicion. Their cap-
tain, they believed, was betraying them. But
the betrayal was not his. While Charles was
professing favourable and even grateful consid-
eration of the proposals laid before him by
Cromwell and Ireton, he was newly in com-
munication with the Scots and constructing a

162

ARMY AND PARLIAMENT

plot for the fresh invasion of England from
the north. Suddenly the generals learnt the
truth, and the King was warned. In Novem-
ber the prisoner slipped by his guard at Hamp-
ton Court and made good his escape to the Isle
of Wight Terribly disillusioned, Cromwell
pledged himself to the last reckoning. But first
the Scotch menace had to be met. In the late
spring of 1648, Ironsides was at the head of
his troops again, and the second Civil War had
begun.

XV

THE EXECUTION OF THE KING

XV

THE EXECUTION OF THE KING

EVEN in this extremity the King thought that
his star was rising. What could be more de-
sirable than that the New Model and their late
allies the Scots should thus break or be broken?
The old infatuation had never so tragically over-
reached itself. Cromwell moving northwards
was veritably a fury of the Lord upon earth.
At Preston in August he met the invaders, twen-
ty-one thousand in numbers, swarming down
from Scotland under the Duke of Hamilton,
He had but nine thousand men in his own com-
mand. But he and they were ablaze with, an
apocalyptic wrath, and in a battle that lasted
three days they annihilated the King's last hope*
Hamilton fell to utter ruin before a ferocity of
attack that has never been excelled in warfare,
"Surely, Sir," wrote Oliver in continued obe-
dience to Lenthall as Speaker of the Commons^
"this is nothing but the hand of God." And
that hand, divine or East Anglian, was now in-
exorably upon the person of Charles Stuart

In the meantime the Presbyterian members

167

OLIVER CROMWELL

had been carrying on negotiations of their own
with the King at Carisbrooke. They too had
found him incapable of even-handed dealing,
but clung to the hope of an accommodation as
the only alternative to army rule. Whether
they succeeded in the project or failed in reality
mattered little, since Cromwell and his men
were now returning from Preston and the sub-
sequent northern campaign with an authority
that was prepared to abide no question. Charles
was removed to other quarters under a strong
army guard. This was at the end of November.
On December 4th, the Presbyterians of the
House in desperation proposed that the King's
offers were a sufficient ground of settlement
The debate went on through the night until
five o'clock the following morning, when the
"Yeas" had it On the 6th, Thomas Pride,
colonel of infantry, well known at Naseby and
elsewhere, placed musketeers at all the en-
trances to Westminster with orders to allow no
one to enter whose name was on the list that
he carried in his hand as he walked in and out
of the Hall and kept up a continuous round of
inspection. On the evening of that day Crom-
well arrived in town, and on the yth Pride's
Purge was continued. Over a hundred members
were excluded ; and the Rump Parliament was
left to do the army's will.

168

EXECUTION OF THE KING

Cromwell had sworn that if he returned from
the field again it should be to judgment While
he had displayed incomparable military geniir
and superb personal heroism, he was in his heart
nothing of a soldier and all patriot The first
civil war had been to him a very terrible ne-
cessity, and he believed, with sufficient reason,
that Charles' duplicity and nothing else had
been responsible for the second. He felt now,
and the whole of independent Puritanism to-
gether with a large body of Presbyterians in the
army felt with him, that to spare the King
would be fatally to imperil everything for which
Marston and Naseby and Preston had been
fought and won. To us, who can share the
passions and dangers of those days only in
imagination, to whom the liberties then at
stake seem a natural and easy inheritance, the
execution of a King appears as an event of tragic
horror* But at the time the events necessitating
the tragedy were even more shocking. It is dif-
ficult for us to hear Cromwell saying, **We will
cut off his head with the crown upon it," with-
out wincing as at a cold brutality; but unless we
overcome the difficulty, we must miss the mean-
ing of Cromwell and Puritanism altogether.
We have to realise that the words were said
from the white heat of a soul that had strug-
gled out of the toils of a triple betrayal. And

169

OLIVER CROMWELL,

it was not merely Oliver Cromwell's soul, but
England's. The report of the King's trial
makes lamentable reading. The terrible judg-
ment, we feel, is being delivered truly by the
conscience of a nation, but we feel also an al-
most anguished desire somehow to modify the
finding of the Court This may be sentimental,
but sentimental impulses are always cutting
across men's affectation of logic. The great
crises of history are wrought in passion, and it
is as futile to look for logic in the spectators
as it is to look for it in the actors themselves.
But even the logic in this scene of tremendous
passion cannot finally be disputed. In a play
that I wrote on Cromwell, I make his mother
say of the King's death, "If this be wrong, all
was wrong," and that I think is the inescapable
truth, Charles had shown that he could not, or
would not, adjust himself to the new conditions
of English thought and liberty, and it was plain
that he could live only as a constant and danger-
ous repudiation of those conditions. His death
was a solution from which the instinct recoils,
but the reason casts about in vain for any other.
The trial began in Westminster Hall on Sat-
urday, January 2Oth, 1649, John Bradshaw be-
ing Lord President of the Court. Charles re-
fused to acknowledge the authority of his
judges, and offered no other defence to the

170

EXECUTION OF THE KING

charge of Treason "subverting the ancient and
fundamental laws and liberties of this nation."
Cromwell attended the sittings, which lasted un-
til the following Saturday, but took no other
part in the proceedings. On the 2yth sentence
of death was pronounced, on the 29^1 the War-
rant was signed by Bradshaw, Thomas Grey,
and, third on the list, Oliver Cromwell, and
fifty-six others. The next day the sentence was
carried out at Whitehall; Oliver, it is said, wit-
nessing the scene from a window in the palace.
To see in this, as detraction had been eager to
do, a gross insensibility, is strangely to misap-
prehend his character.

171

XVI

CROMWELL IN 1649

XVI

CROMWELL IN 1649

WHILE, however, the death of the King set
the seal, and for ever, upon the principles that
had sent the Puritans into many desperate fields,
its immediate effect was to plunge the parties
of England into an even deeper confusion. It
was not till more than a generation later that
the real lessons of the civil war and of the over-
throw of despotic monarchy began to emerge
clearly from the political, social, and religious
welter that marked the Commonwealth and the
reigns of the later Stuarts* Never has the din
of sects and factions risen in shriller confusion
than it did in the 'fifties of seventeenth-century
Britain, and of those old and bitter quarrels it is
chiefly the confusion that has survived. Our
loss Is trifling. In the twenty years between
1629 and 1649 the character of our country made
one of those manifestations that are a story for
ever. In those years the objects for which men
strove were defined with a black-and-white pre-
cision. But once that clean-cut issue had been
decided, the disputants fell into an infinite vari-

175

OLIVER CROMWELL

ety of vain and petty brawls. Up to the date
of the King's execution the contest had been be-
tween heroes ; men of the Shakespearean stature,
whether for good or evil intent But with the
bleak incisiveness of that snowy January morn-
ing outside Whitehall, it fell into a squabble be-
tween fishwives. Our interest is only with the
emphasis that the chaos of settlement gave to the
nature of the man who had made the settlement
possible.

It is, perhaps, a rash conclusion, but we be-
lieve that Cromwell in his secret reflections
knew that in 1649 his real work had been accom-
plished. It would, he must have believed, take
more years than he would see to bring the na-
tion to serene enjoyment of the privileges for
which he had fought He may even have sus-
pected that his desires would finally be realised
in conditions quite alien to those of his present
moulding. On the death of the King, monarchy
was abolished by Parliament in terms that were
intended to establish the new order in perma-
nence, but it is not unlikely that even then Crom-
well saw the shadow of the restoration as he
certainly saw it before his death less than ten
years later. One thing, however, was sure in the
midst of these or other doubts ; a word had been
said that must sooner or later set the people of
England firmly in control of popular rights

176

CROMWELL IN 1649

against any tyranny. How soon or how late
could not at the moment be told, but the con-
summation was from that moment inevitable,
and Cromwell knew it In the meantime, he
had little leisure for speculation. For the rest
of his life he was engaged in preserving such
unity as he could in a great national party that
after a supreme effort had fallen exhausted into
a fever of internal discord. In doing this he
displayed infirmities to which he freely con-
fessed. When he spoke of his burden as too
great to be borne and of himself as a poor
worm, the words were no lip-service to an occa-
sion, but the cries of a passionate and suffering
spirit deeply toiled in circumstance.

History down to our own time is rich in ex-
amples of the spectacle. A man leads his people
up to and through a crisis with superb vision
and heroism, and when the achievement comes
later to be organised on the ebb of the con-
suming impulse he shows that his greatness is
heir to the common frailties of mankind. It
was so with Cromwell. Up to 1649 there is lit-
tle in his career that does not wholly compel our
admiration. He was now fifty years of age. He
had throughout his manhood been steadfast in
mind and speech to the most liberal form of
Puritan doctrine; he had given his cause au-
thority by fearless example and by military

177

OLIVER CROMWELL

genius of a unique character; and he had been
chiefly responsible for the vindication of Eng-
lish freedom in a victory that, however ruthless
it may have been, was nobly disinterested. At
this point he stands before us, the patriot with-
out blemish; the subtlest and most intelligent
patriot, perhaps, by whom the action of English
history has been dignified. The nine years that
he had yet to live brought him to yet greater
world eminence, but they belonged essentially
to an occasion of diminished splendour, and they
betrayed him into lapses that we recognise with-
out presuming to blame. His immense capacity
for statesmanship was, indeed, fully tried only in
these later years, and to the end he revealed an
inexhaustible power and invention as a leader
of men. The successes of his government at
home and abroad were largely his personal suc-
cesses, and they afforded constant proof that he
was immeasurably the ablest administrator in
the country at the time. Nor were the native
qualities of his heart ever seriously obscured.
Vexed in soul as he often was, he continued al-
ways to care above all for the well-being of
England, which for him meant the individual
liberty and enlightenment of the English peo-
ple. But once the meridian of effort had been
passed, and inspiration had to be tested in end-
less details of policy and interest, the trouble

178

CROMWELL IN 1649

was that even he could not always see how that
well-being was to be effected. And sometimes
he chose questionable means for his purpose.
Once or twice he allowed his perplexity to be-
tray him into actions that may be explained but
which even affection does not seek to excuse.

The Puritan Revolution was an event infi-
nitely valuable to the life of all coming genera-
tions in England ; but also it was an act of vio-
lence, and it was upon this violence that Crom-
well's government of England was founded.
Here was a condition for which the price had
inevitably to be paid. Cromwell and his men
stood for right as clearly as any party has ever
stood in this country, but they held power with-
out legal sanction, and were in consequence sub-
ject to a formal insecurity that no moral justifi-
cation could remove. They might, and indeed
did, make their own legal sanction, but it was
bound to be hotly disputed at every step, and
utterly denied by a large body of opinion. The
execution of Charles may have been necessary
and just, but no ingenuity could make it lawful.
It was, in fact, contrived by a minority assem-
bly at the orders of a dominant army. That
army was, we know, composed of the best that
England then could very proudly boast, but it
literally took the law into its own hands, with
results that were a daily menace to the Common-

179

OLIVEK CROMWELL

wealth and Oliver's Protectorate. Profoundly
thankful as we may be that he was so, we can-
not deny that Cromwell was the usurper that he
was so bitterly styled. And the usurper, how-
ever sure his claims may be by equity and rea-
son and the common good, has discarded peace
of mind for ever. Inescapably he is drawn into
the way of despotism, and step by step, in his
dealings with Parliament, with the army, and
with national policy, Cromwell became as des-
potic as the monarchy that he had destroyed.
Between the two despotisms there was a vital
difference, Charles's despotism was leading the
nation into captivity, Cromwell's was the pre-
lude to the deliverance for which he had fought
but for which he could not yet discover the prac-
tical formula. But despotism, no matter how
benevolent it may be, is inseparable from ex-
cesses, and of such excesses Cromwell's rule can-
not be absolved. We may, however, ask that
they should be kept duly in perspective. Few
despots of Oliver's power and circumstance
have so little need to ask the indulgence of his-
tory.

180

XVII

IRELAND

XVII

IRELAND

WITHIN three weeks of the King's death the
government passed into the hands of a Council
of State, of which Cromwell was a member
and the first President. There was, however,
urgent business to be dealt with outside the coun-
cil chamber, and almost at once Oliver was back
with the army, leaving the Presidency to Brad-
shaw. Two matters of high importance claimed
his attention.

Foremost of these was a Royalist movement in
Ireland. But before this could be arrested, it
was necessary to see that the discipline and tem-
per of the army had not fallen out of repair
during the months of inactivity. Disorder of a
very formidable kind was immediately appar-
ent Numbers of men who had fought with
pure zeal for Puritanism fondly believed that
with the new government would be inaugurated
their veritable kingdom of heaven on earth.
They had risked all for freedom, and now free-
dom, absolute and elysian, should surely be their
reward. This had been a war for the establish-

183

OLIVER CROMWELL

ment of the perfect state, with every man unhin-
dered in the enjoyment of equal rights. The
war had been won; and yet here were army
leaders still enforcing discipline and soldier-
statesmen suggesting that there was a long and
rough road to travel yet. Brave men, but refus-
ing to realise that the millennium was no more
within their grasp than the moon. The Level-
lers preached to their comrades in the ranks that
nothing now stood between them and Utopia but
the self-esteem of a few jacks-in-office. In short,
they were openly inciting to mutiny, and Crom-
well found himself for the first time in the
tragically false position that is so often the fate
of practical evangelists. He, the heart and right
arm of liberty's cause in England, was now
called upon to correct men whose demand was
for nothing but freedom and yet more freedom.
The claimants were not loosely aiming at mere
license; they sincerely believed that the mate-
rial and spiritual worlds could there and then
be parcelled out in terms of liberty, equality,
and fraternity. In demonstration of their the-
ories they annexed certain lands at Cobham in
Surrey, started community agriculture, pro-
posed to extend their holding by pulling down
the palings of a neighbouring park and appro-
priating the enclosures, and promised anyone
who would join them the current equivalent of

184

IRELAND

three acres and a cow. Cromwell may very well
have sympathised with their ambitions. But he
was in command of an army that was under
orders for duty across the Irish Channel, and it
was in this army that the Levellers were most
active. At such a moment there was no room in
his nature for philosophic doubt. Either he
must act strongly or resign from public office.
Warnings and entreaties were of no avail. The
levelling ringleaders persisted in their propa-
ganda, and suddenly the unpractical saints
found themselves sharply in conflict with the
saint who was disconcertingly practical. A few
swift descents on the scenes of disaffection were
followed by the processes of court-martial, and
firing-parties did their lamentable work in the
full gaze of London traffic at St. Paul's and in
the seclusion of a country churchyard at Bur-
ford in Oxfordshire. As the executed body of
a young trooper named Lockyer, who at the age
of twenty-three had seen seven years of service
in the Puritan army, was carried away from St.
Paul's for burial, a great crowd followed the
coffin through the London streets, deeply shaken
with emotion but in an orderly silence broken
only by the sound of "six trumpets sounding a
soldier's knell." But Cromwell needed no such
spectacle to convince him how dreadful the oc-
casion was. Perceiving that something must be

185

OLIVER CROMWELL

done, he believed also that the only merciful
way was to do it decisively. The pretensions of
the Levellers as he saw them were in no sense
ignoble ; but as things were they meant anarchy
in the State and ruin to the country. There was
nothing for it but to crush them, and for this
the two relentless strokes of St. Paul's and Bur-
ford sufficed. Under those terrible examples,
Cromwell persuaded the malcontents to mend
their ways ; and he persuaded them with an elo-
quence that rose above intimidation. They
could face the rifles of a firing-squad without
flinching, but when old Ironsides of Marston
and Naseby stood before them pleading in per-
son, they could not withstand the passion of that
unthreatening appeal. The smoking barrels
were indeed an earnest of his inflexible will,
but that alone could not have won them. It was
when they realised that the man who had never
failed them in battle was still of an uncorrup-
tible spirit that they succumbed. Cromwell's
army was whole again. But he had been driven
to his first act of despotism; for it was some-
thing more than a military insurrection that he
had suppressed.

Cromwell's Irish campaign is the dark shad-
ow upon his fame; with what justice we shall
enquire. History has a two-fold function; to
collect facts, and to interpret them. The his-

186

IRELAND

torian who confines himself to the accurate as-
sembling of data is our creditor even though he
resolutely refrains from offering any observa-
tions upon the material that he arranges. He is
readily dubbed dryasdust by writers who are
willing enough to borrow from his archives,
perhaps without acknowledgment, but he is in
reality often an honour to scholarship and great-
ly facilitates our understanding of mankind.
But the historian who chooses rather to attempt
the translation of ascertained facts into credible
figures of humanity has a definite responsibility,
which too often he ignores. If beyond record-
ing an event he seeks to invest it with motive and
character, it is his duty to do so in terms that do
not violate a common knowledge of human na-
ture. In my book about Charles II, I suggested
that the usual interpretation of his treatment of
Montrose was not plausible in the light of psy-
chology or common sense. Critics who in their
moral prejudice are prepared to believe any ill
of Charles, accept without question the view that
he abandoned a loyal gallant servant in a mood
of craven and cynical treachery. I showed that,
having due regard for the circumstances and
Charles's character in all its aspects, this was a
view that made no sense. My explanation of the
affair may or may not have been the true one,
but at least it squared the actors in the drama

187

OLIVEE CROMWELL

with some possible code of conduct based on ex-
perience of men and their ways. And so with
Cromwell in Ireland. He did things there the
horror of which has never been forgotten. It is
not our business to excuse or palliate them. But
it is our business to see as exactly as we can
how and why he came to do them, and not to
accept the fulminations inspired by a general
prejudice against a Cromwell in effigy bearing
no resemblance to the original. When we hear
that drunk with power and pride of place Oliver
abandoned himself in Ireland to a frenzy of hid-
eous brutality, deranged at last in an unbridled
lust for destruction, we know that animosity has
lost control of itself. And yet, if we refuse this
explanation, we have to find another. For
Cromwell's severities in Ireland were, and are,
staggering, and some explanation is needed. Our
only clue to the right one must, as always, be a
consideration of his character in relation to the
known circumstances.

We have seen the temper in which Cromwell
approached his northern campaign when he
learnt that Charles was keeping faith at no step
in the negotiations between them. He had
fought the second civil war with an iron deter-
mination to make any further appeal to the
sword impossible, and he had carried the task
through implacably to the scaffold at Whitehall.

188

IRELAND

There remained before him the further and in-
finitely difficult task of reconstruction. To that
he was now preparing to devote all his energies,
addressing himself to problems that might have
daunted any man, and with one sole assur-
ance to support him, that the final trial by bat-
tle had been made. And at that moment news
came from Ireland that a dozen contending fac-
tions had been composed by the unwearying pol-
icy of the Marquis of Ormond into a new and
formidable Royalist army. Catholics, Episco-
palians, covenanting Presbyterians, refugee Cav-
aliers, Parliament troops quartered in Ireland
but with no very strong affections for Parlia-
ment in these later days and susceptible to the
prestige of Ormond, stragglers from the de-
feated Scots army, and Protestant colonists who
distrusted the upstart Commonwealth even more
than they did their Catholic neighbours, all
these suddenly became reconciled at Ormondes
bidding into a compact and very formidable
front Very soon the whole island except Dublin
and Derry was in their hands, the young Charles
in exile was debating whether he should join
the Ormondites in Ireland or the Covenanters
in Scotland, and extensive preparations were
forward for a further challenge at arms in the
King's name.
The effect of this intelligence on Cromwell

OLIVER CROMWELL

can readily be imagined. Always a resolute
fighter, his resolution was now stung to fury, and
he turned upon Ireland in avenging wrath. On
March I5th, 1649, he was made Commander of
the Irish Forces and Lord Lieutenant; on the
same day Milton was appointed Latin Secretary
to the Council of State. We get glimpses of
Oliver's domestic concerns while he is prepar-
ing for Ireland. He marries his son Richard,
the future Protector, to Dorothy Mayor, con-
ducting a scrupulous correspondence with "my
very loving brother Richard Mayor, Esquire, at
Hursley" about the marriage settlement, com-
plaining that his loving brother is being rather
close : "I received your Paper ... I desire your
leave to return my dissatisfaction therewith . . .
I have two young Daughters to bestow, if God
give them life and opportunity. According to
your offer, I have nothing for them ; nothing at
all in hand." An amicable agreement was made,
however, and towards the end of July he writes
from Bristol to Hursley that he is "very glad
to hear that our children have so good leisure
to make a journey to eat cherries," adding that
he is expecting his wife at Bristol and that she
will doubtless call on them by the way. In Au-
gust he was at Milford Haven, and on the 13*
sailed for Ireland, arriving at Dublin two days
later.

190

IRELAND

He was in the country nine months, and when
he left in May 1650, his son-in-law Ireton, who
succeeded him in command, had only isolated
risings in remote parts of the west to deal with,
Ormond's main forces having been destroyed.
The succession of events in this military cam-
paign need not be given here, adding as for the
most part they do nothing to our knowledge
of CromwelL After October 1649, indeed, the
campaign thinned out into a war of attrition, dis-
ease in Cromwell's ranks being neutralised by
desertion from Ormond's, until Cromwell's su-
perior discipline and generalship wore down the
last opposition. But before that date Drogheda
and Wexford had been stormed, and it is by
Drogheda and Wexford that Cromwell's con-
duct in Ireland has been measured. The facts
may be stated briefly*

On his arrival at Dublin Cromwell at once
issued a proclamation imposing the strictest re-
straint on his troops in their dealings with the
civil population, defining very exactly the of-
fences for which they would be answerable. As
though already conscious of the extreme rigours
to which he was shortly to put the interpreta-
tion of martial law, he spared no pains at the
outset to let it be known precisely what that
law forbade. This was on August 24th, 1649.
A week later, "after some refreshment taken for

OLIVER CROMWELL

our weather-beaten men and horses," he was at
Drogheda (Tredah in those times) some thirty
miles north of Dublin. It was a stronghold
of great strategic importance, and was moreover
the headquarters of Orrnond's principal
strength. Its reduction was a capital necessity
to Cromwell's designs, and as his army lay be-
fore it on September 2nd his determination
burnt in a steady incandescence. He took a
week to "frame his batteries," and on the 9th
they began to play. Simultaneously, he sent a
summons to the Governor requiring him to "de-
liver the Town to the use of the Parliament of
England," with an offer of safe conduct to the
garrison. No satisfaction being returned, the
bombardment proceeded. On the loth the
storm was made, and was repulsed with heavy
loss. This was not to be endured. Rallying his
men, Cromwell, Lieutenant General, Lord-lieu-
tenant, Commander-in-chief, and what not be-
sides, placed himself at their head and in per-
son led a second assault This time the breach
was entered, and as defence by defence was
broken the defendants were slain without quar-
ter. Nearly three thousand of them perished.
There is no doubt that in the chaos of that
slaughter a number of civilians, and even women
and children, were slaughtered, but there is no
reliable evidence to show that this was with

192

IRELAND

Cromwell's sanction or by any deliberation. The
ethics of civilian immunity in warfare, so drasti-
cally tested in our own time, were in any case an
inconsiderable element in the sack of Drogheda.
It is enough that the garrison was annihilated.
The town was in Cromwell's hands, and it would
not have been the less so had he shown mercy.
He showed none. It does not make pretty read-
ing, but we have yet to learn from any page of
history that the invasion of a country has ever
been a pretty business. Mildness was no part
of Cromwell's soldiering, and he was convinced
that never could mildness be more misguided
than now. Ireland was to know that resistance
meant ruin, and it was the fate of Drogheda to
bear the first tragic witness to the inexorable
condition. The garrisons of Dundalk and Trim
asked for no further example, and laid down
their arms forthwith. Three weeks later Crom-
well was before Wexf ord, more than a hundred
miles south of Drogheda. On October 3rd the
summons to deliver the town "to the use of the
State of England" was made. The Governor
asked for time in which to consult with his offi-
cers and the Mayor, and for a cessation of hos-
tilities in the meantime. To which Oliver
replied, "Sir, I am contented to expect your reso-
lution by twelve of the clock to-morrow morn-
ing. Because our tents are not so good a cover-

193

OLIVER CROMWELL

ing as your houses, and for other reasons, I can-
not agree to a cessation. I rest, Your servant,
Oliver Cromwell." The next day the Governor
proposed a conference, and was told that he was
being asked not to negotiate but surrender, but
that if he had anything to say he could send his
messengers to Cromwell within an hour* A fur-
ther extension of time was granted, and on the
5th the Governor announced that his conditions
were drawn up. Cromwell sent a safe-conduct
for four envoys. At that moment a relieving
force obtained entry to the town, the Governor
was encouraged to stiffen his argument, and told
Cromwell he must wait a little longer. Crom-
well instantly withdrew the safe-conduct, and
prepared to assault the castle. On the nth the
batteries opened, and after a hundred shots had
been fired "the Governor's Stomach came
down" and he asked for a renewal of the safe-
conduct, which was given. Two field-officers,
an alderman, and the Captain of the Castle,
brought out the specified propositions, "which,"
says Cromwell in writing to the Speaker of the
Commons, "for their abominableness, manifest-
ing also the impudency of these men, I thought
fit to present to your view." The conditions,
which need not be enumerated here, amounted
to a confirmation of the civic rights of the town
to the existing corporation, and leave for such

194

IRELAND

citizens as chose to depart from the town with
their property; full acknowledgment of the
Roman establishment in the town and its fran-
chises; and permission for the entire garrison
with its "artillery, ordnance, ammunition, arms,
goods of all sorts, horses, moneys and what else
belongs to them" to march under flying colours
with a convoy provided by Cromwell to escort
them to a destination of their own choosing in
Ormond's country. Cromwell might well see in
this an "impudency" seldom equalled. His an-
swer was brief, but still admirable in its moder-
ation* "I have had the patience to peruse your
Propositions; to which I might have returned
an Answer with some disdain. But, to be short
I shall give the Soldiers and Non-Commis-
sioned Officers quarter for life, and leave to go
to their several habitations, with their wearing
clothes ; they engaging themselves to live quietly
there, and to take up arms no more against the
Parliament of England. And the Commis-
sioned Officers quarter for their lives, but to
render themselves Prisoners. And as for the
Inhabitants, I shall engage myself that no vio-
lence shall be offered to their goods, and that I
shall protect the Town from plunder." The
letter was not delivered; while Cromwell was
writing it, the battery fire was proceeding, and
an act of betrayal in the town gave the besiegers

195

OLIVER CROMWELL

sudden entry. The scene that followed was none
of Cromwell's ordering; but he did not disown
it. The extremity was by a few hours out of his
reckoning, but it was one to which he was pre-
pared to go. Again there is no evidence of vio-
lence done outside the severest imposition of
military law, apart from the inevitable excesses
of individual soldiers ; and again the destruction
of the garrison was complete.

As to the effect that Drogheda and Wexford
had on the future of the Irish campaign each
student of history must form his own conclu-
sions. Opinions vary between far extremes.
The Cambridge Modern History (Professor
Dunlop) considers that the violence was useless,
"because after the first terror had passed away
it did not serve to weaken the resistance of a
single garrison." At the other extreme there is
Carlyle's "that it did 'save much effusion of
blood' (Cromwell's own words) we and all spec-
tators can very readily testify ... In fact, it cut
through the heart of the Irish War . . . there
was no other storm or slaughter needed in that
Country." Carlyle goes too far, but he is, we
think, a good deal nearer the truth than the more
recent historian. Stubborn resistance was still
offered here and there, but as we read the rec-
ords of this and of many bloodless capitulations,
we are persuaded that it would have been far

196

IRELAND

more stubborn and far more general if Crom-
well had mitigated his first blows. In May
1650, he left Ireland with the famous "Crom-
wellian Settlement" already well in view. The
conditions of the settlement were to be a storm-
centre of bitterness and contention for nearly
three centuries; but without them it is by no
means unlikely that Great Britain would long
since have become a third rate power. The mor-
alities of the matter may be left to anyone who
feels competent to pronounce on them; but that
is the fact On reaching London Cromwell was
conducted in triumph through the streets by
Parliament, the home army, civic lords and
throngs of citizens. Someone exclaimed on the
size of the multitude assembled to meet him, and
Oliver replied that a much greater would come
out any day to see him hanged.

197

XVIII

DUNBAR AND WORCESTER

XVIII

DUNBAR AND WORCESTER

THE Scotch War, arising out of circumstances
that necessitated Cromwell's return from Ire-
land, throws no new light on his character, but
touches his military character with its last
strong note of genius. The Scotch Covenanters,
tired of waiting on the English Parliament for
favours that never advanced beyond polite as-
surances, opened negotiations with the pathetic
little court of Charles to be the Second that was
dodging about the Continent in search of any
alms or hospitality that it could come by. After
long hesitation as to whether he should ally him*
self to the Montrose Royalists or the Covenant-
ing Presbyters, and after vain efforts by Hyde
and others to unite those irreconcilables in one
cause, Charles at the age of twenty landed in
Scotland under the equally distasteful auspices
of Argyll's low cunning and Kirk pedantry. He
had already been preached into taking the Cove-
nant, and now his new mentors did their daily
best to preach him out of his five wits. And
while they preached Cromwell was crossing the

20 1

OLIVER CROMWELL

border with his Ironsides, in the field again to
meet yet another challenge against the England
of his dreams* On the way he writes to Richard
Mayor, "I should be glad to hear how the little
Brat doth. I could chide both Father and Moth-
er for their neglects of me : I knew my son is idle,
but I had better thoughts of Doll. I doubt now
her husband hath spoiled her ; pray tell her so
from me ... I hope you will discharge my duty
and your love ; you see how I am employed. I
need pity. I know what I feel. Great place
and business in the world is not worth looking
after ... I have not sought these things. 5 ' On
September 3rd, a year and a day after his fate-
ful appearance before Drogheda, he engaged
the army of the Covenant at Dunbar. He had
eleven thousand men, very precariously situ-
ated; the Scots had twenty-two thousand, de-
ployed on chosen ground, and with ample lines
of communication, Cromwell's being cut off.
At six o'clock in the morning, hoping to snatch
an advantage by not waiting to be attacked, Oli-
ver moved his whole force into action, his word
for the day being "The Lord of Hosts." Within
an hour the Puritan arms had achieved one of
the most astounding victories known to the
chronicles of war. The Scotch army became a
total rout, scattered in a pursuit of eight miles.
Three thousand were killed, and ten thousand

202

DUNE All AND WORCESTER

prisoners were taken, together with the entire
baggage and artillery. And then, in Cromwell's
despatch to the Speaker, comes the amazing
passage, "I do not believe we have lost twenty
men." It was a long road now that had been
covered from the Eastern Association. The
Ironsides campaigns were soon to be at an end.
Through the winter of 1650-51 Cromwell
spent his time and his eloquence attempting to
convince the Scots who had fought by his side
at Marston Moor that their allegiance with the
house of Stuart was a monstrous folly. But,
speaking in the name of England, he would have
none of their Covenant, and short of that they
would listen to no proposals. The establish-
ment of a Presbyterian Church in the Kingdom
of Great Britain was too rich a prize to be lost,
if it could in any way be secured. The only
hope still seemed to be in the restoration of
Charles to the throne, and so in spite of Dun-
bar the Scots laboured with him in sermons and
promises. On New Year's day, 1651, they
crowned him King at Scone, a week after Edin-
burgh Castle had yielded to Oliver's persua-
sions very pacific but very determined, with
batteries waiting to supplement the argument
and placed itself in his hands. There Cromwell
waits some four months, still arguing and still
hoping; troubled not a little by the exploits of

203

OLIVER CROMWELL

Moss-troopers, a kind of wilder Scotch equiva-
lent to the English Clubmen ; asking the Army
Committee in London that "you will spare the
having my Effigies" on the medal that is to be
struck in honour of Dunbar; accepting the
Chancellorship of the University of Oxford,
after explaining his many disqualifications for
that high honour, and marking the occasion by
a request that a doctor who had done well by
his troops in Ireland should be given a Degree;
desiring the Commons to extend all friendly
consideration to the project for founding a col-
lege at Durham, "as that which, by the blessing
of God, may much conduce to the promoting of
learning and piety in those poor rude and igno-
rant parts" ; lying at one time in a "fit of sick-
ness" of which he thought to have died; and
exchanging letters of lovely domestic tenderness
with his wife "I have not much to write: yet
indeed I love to write to my Dear, who is very
much in my heart" And Richard, who now at
the age of twenty-four, might in these busy times
have found, we should have supposed, some
worthy employment, "hath," it seems, "exceeded
his allowance, and is in debt." If anyone should
doubt the gentleness that lay in the depths of our
great Puritan's heart, let him consider these
words of paternal fondness ; they are written to
Richard Mayor: "I desire it to be understood

204

DUJSTBAR AND WORCESTER

that I grudge him not laudable recreations, nor
an honourable carriage of himself in them , . .
Truly I can find in my heart to allow him not
only a sufficiency but more, for his good
. . Truly I love him, he is dear to me ; so is his
wife ; and for their sakes so I thus write. They
shall not want comfort nor encouragement from
me, so far as I may afford it" And then, with
visions of Marston and Naseby and Drogheda
and Dunbar before him, "But indeed I cannot
think I do well to feed a voluptuous humour in
my Son, if he should make pleasures the busi-
ness of his life, in a time when some precious
Saints are bleeding, and breathing out their last,
for the safety of the rest" England is the nobler
for that

In July 1651 the Scotch army, re-organised
and nominally commanded by Charles, was
again broken by Cromwell, this time at Inver-
keithing, and the young prince with such sal-
vage as he could collect resolved on the last des-
perate expedient of marching into England in
the hope that his presence would rally the Roy-
alists there to some effective strength. Crom-
well, leaving Monk to do what remained to be
done in Scotland, followed at high speed, and
on the first anniversary of Dunbar the Iron-
sides fought their last battle, in the streets of
Worcester. The result was decisive, and now

205

OLIVER CROMWELL

the Kirk aad Royalism knew that it was de-
cisive. Charles escaped to France. And to "the
Honourable William Lenthall, Esquire, Speak-
er of the Parliament of England" Cromwell
wrote, "It is, for aught I know, a crowning
mercy." We may recall his words to Hampden
after Edgehill, now nearly ten years ago.
Never, perhaps, has such a boast as they im-
plied been so magnificently justified. He had
been through five campaigns with an army of
his own making, had fought innumerable skir-
mishes and at last six capital actions, had never
once been put to terms, and now his soldiering
was done.

206

XIX

LORD PROTECTOR

XIX

LORD PROTECTOR

THE ideals for which Cromwell and his men
had for nine years been more or less continu-
ously in the field have, I hope, been made suffi-
ciently clear. Order in the State under regular-
ised parliamentary control, freedom of the sub-
ject within the law, and liberty of conscience,
were the main issues. They had been now trebly
vindicated by the appeal to arms, and Crom-
well left his troops for the last time to see that
they should be realised in the administration of
peace. The difficulty of his task has already
been indicated. It had not diminished during
his absence in Ireland and Scotland* The Rump
of the Long Parliament had slowly subsided into
a torpor in which it now drowsed supinely
through a time-table of formalities. It was per-
fectly plain to any candid observer that the gov-
ernment of the country was in fact no longer
conducted from Westminster at all, but from
the headquarters of Cromwell's army. Oliver
himself could very truly protest that he did not
desire this "I have not sought these things."

209

OLIVER CROMWELL

He was far too clear-headed and clear-souled a
patriot to trifle in his mind for a moment with
the situation. So long as there were battles still
to be won, Parliament could do little but watch
and wait, but now that the last battle was over
Cromwell knew well enough that there could
be no hope of a settlement in the country until
the real authority had passed back again from
the army to the Commons.

The first thing to be done was to replace the
quite unrepresentative and now discarded
Rump by a full and nationally elected Parlia-
ment For nearly two years after Worcester
Cromwell persevered in debate to this end. He
was already much worn in body and spirit
"My Lord," said a friend in Scotland, "is not
sensible that he is grown an old man." But the
iron will did not allow his energies to falter*
The long sessions of 1651-1653 added weariness
to weariness. The sitting members of the Rump
had no mind to do anything, but they had less
mind to depart in peace. Their chief pretext
for remaining where they were was a Dutch
War. Holland had never taken kindly to the
new Commonwealth of England; had indeed
refused it any diplomatic respect It was the
army again that took the matter in hand, this
time at sea under Blake, but the members at
Westminster argued with some plausibility that

210

LORD PROTECTOR

they must not be disturbed in their business of
securing necessary supplies. In the meantime
the progress towards reconstruction was pre-
cisely nil. Complaints of every kind poured in
from men in all ranks of life with legitimate
grievances. They were obligingly placed on
the file for reference. Veterans of Marston
Moor and Naseby, long versed now in the dual
responsibility of praising God and keeping their
powder dry, asked with growing impatience
if anyone could tell them what they had been
fighting for. Cromwell could, but his daily
care was not to answer the question himself but
to make Parliament answer it And the Rump
slept on, rousing itself at intervals to expound
theories of new possible forms of government.
On the whole the feeling was "that a Settlement
with somewhat of Monarchical power in it
would be very effectual." These were Crom-
well's words; and rumour, confidently misin-
formed as usual, whispered that he aimed at
making himself King. He did not even trouble
to contradict the grossness, but continued in his
efforts to galvanise the Rump into enough life
to replace itself by a responsible assembly. His
public and private affections were darkened at
the time by the loss of Ireton, who died of a
fever in Ireland at the end of 1651. Ireton was
succeeded, by Charles Fleetwood, one of Crom-

211

OLIVER CROMWELL

well's generals, who later also became his son-
in-law, marrying Ireton's widow, Bridget. <

Slowly the Rump elaborated a device where-
by it should add to its numbers and make itself
into a representative assembly without the haz-
ardous necessity of going to the country. It
was speedily clear that the army would have
no such nonsense. If any of the Westminster
sleepers wanted to keep his bench, he must get
himself re-elected. The sleepers began to take
serious notice at last They would not get re-
elected. They would stay together, if they
pleased, until death did them part; and, further,
they would reserve to themselves the right of
rejecting, on grounds of public interest, any
newly elected member of whom they did not
approve. This went on until April 1653, when
a Bill embodying these provisions was actually
before the House, and likely to be passed,
Cromwell's patience was exhausted, and his
sense of national danger at length startled into
action. After a conference with the army of-
ficers, his decision was made. On April 2Oth,
while the Bill was being debated, "the Lord
General Cromwell came into the House, clad
in plain black clothes and grey worsted stock-
ings, and sat down, as he was wont to do, in an
ordinary place." The question was put, "that
this Bill do now pass," whereupon Oliver "rose

212

LORD PROTECTOR

up, put off his hat, and spake." Never have
honourable members been so shocked to hear
the truth about themselves. Very wide awake
now, one of them expressed deep pain that lan-
guage so unusual should be heard in those
walls, and from an honourable member, too,
himself so much respected. A sharp echo as
from Ely Cathedral cut him short as Cromwell
walked on to the floor of the House exclaiming,
"Come, come! We have had enough of this. I
will put an end to your prating." An outer
door opened, to admit a body of armed mus-
keteers, who stood at attention while Oliver
proceeded. "You call yourselves a Parliament
You are no Parliament I say you are no
Parliament . . . Corrupt unjust persons . . .
Depart, I say, and let us have done with you.
In the name of God go I" Seizing the mace
and crying out "What shall we do with this
bauble?" he handed it to a musketeer, while
Speaker Lenthall was led from his chair and
out of the House, and the Long Parliament
after twelve years of many and memorable
glories had slumbered itself into an ignominious
end.

On June 6th, Cromwell issued a summons to
a hundred and forty men nominated by himself
and the Council of Officers, calling them to
London on immediate business of State. A fur-

213

OLIVER CROMWELL

ther act of despotism, but in its choice of men
very liberal and discriminating. The Little
Parliament, otherwise designated also after one
of its members, Mr. Praisegod Barebones, was
scrupulously representative of the best elements
in national Puritanism both in and out of the
army. It met in the Council-chamber at White-
hall, and on July 4th Cromwell opened its pro-
ceedings with a long speech reviewing the his-
tory of the past twenty years, defining the
purposes that had inspired the revolution, trac-
ing the events of the war, and reciting the mis-
demeanours of the recently expelled Rump.
The enemies of truth had been vanquished in
the field; it was now for them in the name of
truth to set up a just Government in peace. A
new Executive Council of State, they were in-
formed, had been chosen, "eight or nine of them
being Members of the House that late was."
This Council was to sit only at the bidding of
his hearers. And so they parted on the first
day: "I say, you are called with an high call-
ing. And why should we be afraid to say or
think, that this may be the door to usher in
the things that God has promised?"

But it was not to be. The Little Parliament
did not slumber; it attended diligently to busi-
ness, and did much useful work in clearing out
the pigeon-holes of some dust and rubbish. But

214

LORD PROTECTOR

the praisegods began to get the upper hand, and
wanted to introduce inquisitorial practices in
the Church not at all in keeping with the new
independent doctrines. Also some members
proposed to abolish the Court of Chancery, as
being an intolerable nuisance to everyone but
the lawyers, who promptly became voluble and
pulled a great number of wires. In less than
six months, a minority of the House by a snap
vote declared that this Parliament was of no
further use to the State, and resigned its powers
to Cromwell as president of the Council. What
was really happening was that the Puritan rev-
olution had now passed into its last and least
impressive phase. At first there had been the
sublimely mysterious stirring of popular con-
science seeking to enfranchise itself. Then had
come such a compact between the Bible and the
sword as can be found nowhere else in history, a
compact made possible only by the unique dis-
position of the Puritan character. And now the
heroic days were dwindling into the shabby
scuffles of politics. The liberal heart and mind
of England could form no party that was not
teased at every turn by craft and envy from
without, and by irresolution within. The vision
was unabated with the power in one man alone,
and Cromwell was now to accept a responsi-
bility under which he would have reason

215

OLIVER CROMWELL

enough to cry out in wearier moods that the
burden was too great to be borne. The Little
Parliament disbanded on December 2nd, 1653.
On the 1 2th the Council of State met to consider
what was to be done, and on the i6th Oliver
Cromwell was publicly proclaimed Lord Pro-
tector of the Commonwealth of England, Scot-
land and Ireland. At the installation in West-
minster Hall, he wore "a rich but plain suit;
black velvet, with cloak of the same ; about his
hat a broad band of gold."

216

XX

FIRST PROTECTORATE PARLIAMENT

XX

FIRST PROTECTORATE PARLIAMENT

IN the first charter of the Protectorate, it was
ordained that a full and free Parliament should
be summoned on the third of September fol-
lowing, the date being fixed in commemoration
of Dunbar and Worcester. Until it sat Crom-
well was given powers to enact such laws as he
thought necessary for the government of the
country. He was thus for eight months a more
absolute ruler than ever Charles I had aspired
to be. He did not abuse his privileges, but he
was not long in learning that the position of
an elected head of the State in England could
never be an enviable one; that it could not, in-
deed, for long be a tenable one. From the be-
ginning plots were to be found under any and
every Royalist, Leveller, or Anabaptist bush.
Many of them aimed directly at the life of the
Protector. Of these Oliver took little or no
notice, proceeding in extreme cases as far as a
conviction, and then telling the conspirators to
be off and find some better occupation, until at
last examples had to be made in self-defence,

219

OLIVER CROMWELL

Business of first importance was Church govern-
ment In this he was flatly for toleration, but
anarchy was another matter. In the worship of
God, men and their ministers might enjoy al-
most any latitude, but sedition, atheism, politi-
cal jobbery and Royalist propaganda promoted
under the cover of such worship had to be dis-
countenanced. He appointed a Commission of
laymen and divines, representative of many
sects in its constitution, whom anyone holding a
living or collecting tithes had to satisfy as to
his bona fides. Even Oliver's adversaries were
compelled to admit that his Church Ordinance
was a rational one, that his commissioners were
well chosen, and that they really did purge the
ministry of much rottenness. Many other pro-
fitable ordinances also he issued in those eight
months, most of them directed towards an ef-
ficient civil service. Imperial and foreign pol-
icy shared his attention with the smallest rou-
tine of domestic affairs. European ambassadors
began to report that the upstart Commonwealth
was being piloted by a man of notable parts
and, apparently, of devilish tough integrity.
And as the traffic of London was becoming dan-
gerously congested, so that a pedestrian could
hardly cross the Strand in safety, the Lord Pro-
tector of, etc,, ordained that not more than two
hundred hackney coaches should be allowed on

220

FIRST PROTECTORATE

the streets within a six mile radius of Charing
Cross.

During this time Oliver left his lodgings in
the Cockpit, Westminster, and moved into offi-
cial quarters at Whitehall. At week-ends, busi-
ness permitting, he went down to Hampden
Court with his family, leaving his mother,
now well over ninety years of age, to the
tenderest care he could find until his return.
September the third this year 1654 ^ e ^ on a
Sunday, but the new Parliament met neverthe-
less on that day; four hundred English members,
thirty Scotch, and thirty Irish.

In his first speech to his first Parliament (the
"Little" not being properly a Parliament at
all) Cromwell told them that he would not
dwell on the events of late years, "though they
are things which I hope will never be forgotten,
because written in better books than those of
paper; written, I am persuaded, in the heart of
every good man." He reminded them of their
proper charge, "to wit, healing and settling,"
with a hint to let bygones be bygones. As to
"Civils," as he called temporal matters, he
would have his hearers take especial heed of the
Levellers, whose hope to merge noblemen, gen-
tlemen and yeomen into one class would, he
feared, make for nothing but confusion if en-
couraged. As to "Spirituals" the case was more

221

OLIVER CROMWELL

complicated. Anti-Christ, seen by Cromwell in
the semblance of Rome and of Laud the shadow
of Rome, was by this time pretty well under
restraint, but there was a body very active
among them that would, unless vigilance were
exercised, bring comfort yet to Anti-Christ and
all his errors. The Fifth Monarchy men,
whose gospel was the reign on earth of Christ
and His saints, aimed at the abolition of any
other reign whatsoever. The Magistracy, they
declared, had no jurisdiction in matters of con-
science. Themselves for the most part good
Christians, if others favoured Anti-Christ they
must be allowed to do so unmolested unless and
until the Spirit intervened. Further, the ordi-
nation of ministers in any kind was heathenish,
as setting one man over another. The old
tyranny of forbidding any man to preach unless
he was ordained, no matter how sure his "tes-
timony from Christ," said Cromwell, was bad,
but this new tyranny of excluding a man merely
because he was ordained, was worse. "Liberty
of Conscience, and Liberty of the Subject," the
watchwords of Fifth Monarchism, were, he
allowed, "two as glorious things to be contended
for as any that God hath given us," and then 5
once again confronting transcendentalism with
the clear-cut logic of the Practical Saint, he
added that "both these had been abused for the

222

FIRST PROTECTORATE

patronising of villainies." In short, these Fifth
Monarchy men were very much challenging the
authority of himself the Chief Magistrate, and
he must therefore tell them that he was un-
willing to betray a trust that, while he had not
sought it, he had accepted from the country
with a heavy sense of responsibility. Since his
elevation eight months ago, Bills had been pre-
pared for making the Laws "plain and short,
and less chargeable to the People," and would
shortly be laid before the House: corrupt and
incompetent persons had been dismissed from
the judicature; also from the Church ministry;
peace on honourable terms had been concluded
with Portugal, Holland, Denmark, and a treaty
arranged with France. So that on the whole
he could with some confidence submit to them
a record of wotk which had prepared the
way for that "healing and settling" to which
they were now called. That his magistracy had
been instrumental in this calling of a free Par-
liament was itself his chiefest satisfaction. He
now commended them to the election of their
Speaker, assuring them that he was their "fel-
low servant" But it was, by their leave, neces-
sary at this outset to remind Fifth Monarchy
men and all other ingenuous theorists that these
were still times of grave public peril, and as
they could rest assured that he would not desert

223

OLIVER CROMWELL

his post, so he was not going to be driven from
it. Having concluded, the Protector returned
by barge to Whitehall.

The speech was firm but carefully unpro-
vocative, and it seemed to be well received. But
at once it was plain that its lesson had not been
taken to heart The House, instead of getting
on with healing and settling, fell at once to
debating whether the government of the coun-
try ought really to be by Parliament and a
single person after all. That question, Crom-
well had told them, had already been answered
in the affirmative, but they chose to disregard
the warning. Cromwell did nothing for a
week, hoping that they would come to their
senses, which they did not On September I2th,
the members found the Parliament doors closed
under an armed guard, and were told that they
were to meet the Lord Protector in the Painted
Chamber. There, in a speech as conciliatory
in tone as it was passionate in mood, Cromwell
elaborated his argument "I was a gentleman
by birth; living neither in considerable height,
nor yet in obscurity.' 1 Having been called to
serve the nation as best he could, first as a sim-
ple member of the Commons and then in the
wars, he had returned to London after Worcester
hoping to find Parliament well disposed to a
peaceful settlement of the people. He had

224

FIRST PROTECTORATE

found instead nothing but wrangling and in-
dolence. "I say to you, I hoped to have had
leave to retire to a private life. I begged to
be dismissed from my charge ; I begged it again
and again." He had been refused, and he had
implored Parliament to have done with their
quarrels and govern ; they had not listened, and
he had driven them out, as his present hearers
well knew, and had been responsible for calling
that "Little" nominated Parliament which, in-
deed, had failed of expectations. And then,
"The Gentlemen [a Council of Officers and
Other Persons of Interest in the Nation] that
undertook to frame this Government did con-
sult divers ways . . . and that I was not privy
to their councils they know. . . . They told me
that except I would undertake the government
they thought things would hardly come to a com-
promise or settlement, but blood and confusion
would break in upon us. I refused it again and
again, not complimentingly, as they know and
as God knows. I confess, after many arguments
... I did accept it." He had been arbitrary
in power as the head of an army and "truly not
ill beloved by them," and he had taken this
office limiting that power, binding him to do
nothing without consent of the Council of State
until Parliament assembled, or without consent
of Parliament thereafter. The City, the sol-

225

OLIVER CROMWELL

diery, the judges, the people, had acclaimed his
Oath, Writs for the new Parliament this Par-
liament sitting, or for the moment not sitting
had expressly provided that the members re-
turned "should not have power to alter the Gov-
ernment as now settled in one Single Person and
a Parliament 5 ' It was would any deny it?
understood that he was the Protector, and the
Authority that called them. They now pro-
posed to sit and not own the Authority by
which they sat. This was to waste everything,
to throw away chances that he believed were
now given to them all. "I can sooner be
willing to be rolled into my grave and buried
with infamy, than I can give my consent there-
unto," And so, "seeing the Authority that
called you is so little valued, and so much
slighted, till some such assurance be given as
according to the proviso in the Writ of Return
... I have cause a stop to be put to your en-
trance into the Parliament House."

That, then, was clear this time surely. Crom-
well had one thing more to say, of crucial impor-
tance. There was in the lobby a parchment for
such members to sign as would. It was an un-
dertaking on their part that they would "be true
and faithful to the Lord Protector and Common-
wealth . . . and not . . . alter the Government
as it is settled in a Single Person and a Parlia-

226

FIRST PROTECTORATE

ment." And for his part, he solemnly asserted
"You have a legislative power without negative
from me. As the Instrument doth express it,
you may make any laws, and if I give not my
Consent within twenty days . . . they are tpso
facto laws." By the end of the month three
hundred members had signed, and the remain-
ing hundred and sixty had retired to their con-
stituencies to nurse Anabaptist or Levelling
grudges and indulge in private or public anath-
ema against despotism. The three hundred
were of little more advantage than the minority
to the Protectorate. They were quite unable to
follow Oliver's very plain and, it must be al-
lowed, very reasonable lead, and they droned
along in an interminable dispute upon consti-
tutional principles. The Protectorate charter
provided that a Parliament should be called at
least once in three years, and that it could not
be dissolved within less than five months of its
meeting. Cromwell, observing his pledge not to
interfere with parliamentary procedure, waited
until the five months had passed, and then spoke
his mind bluntly as usual. "As I may not take
notice of what you have been doing, so I think
I have a very great liberty to tell you that I
do not know what you have been doing. I do
not know whether you have been alive or dead.
I have not once heard from you all this time;

227

OLIVER CROMWELL

I have not; and that you all know." He at
Whitehall had seen everything going amiss that
could, plots and treasons everywhere, wrongs un-
redressed, healing and settling tragically unad-
vanced ; had seen, in fact, that "you have wholly
elapsed your time, and done just nothing." He
knew that some who had urged them to meet him
in friendly conf erence^ had been called to order ;
also he knew that some thought him ambitious
for his own interest, to which he replied that if
he were offered as was whispered he might be
hereditary office, kingship, he would without
hesitation decline it And then despotism, how-
soever benevolent, had to take a further decided
step. He foresaw his difficulties, but "I never
found God failing when I trusted Him. I can
laugh and sing, in my heart, when I speak of
these things." Which things amounted to the
raising of money without Parliament, as he
would now have to do, dependent on such con-
fidence as he might have earned and would earn
from the people. For, the five months being
up, he thought himself "bound, as in my duty
to God, and to the People of these Nations for
their safety and good in every respect ... to
tell you that it is not ... for common and pub-
lic good for you to continue here any longer.
And therefore I do declare unto you, that I do
dissolve this Parliament"

XXI

SECOND PROTECTORATE PARLIAMENT,
CROMWELL AND KINGSHIP

XXI

SECOND PROTECTORATE PARLIAMENT
CROMWELL AND KINGSHIP

THIS was in January 1655. Two months be-
fore, Oliver's mother had died at Whitehall,
ninety-four years old, her son then being fifty-
five. As she lay dying she spoke to him : "The
Lord cause His face to shine upon you; and com-
fort you in all your adversities : and enable you
to do great things for the glory of your Most
High God, and to be a relief unto His People.
My dear Son, I leave my heart with thee. A
good night" To be a relief unto His People
that Oliver laboured continually to be ; but the
adversities were many, and often no comfort
in them indeed but from the Lord. Those
three speeches to his first Parliament show us
Cromwell wrestling with circumstances that
were beyond the ordering of even his resolution.
The vision was undimmed and the power still
ascending, but the "healing and settling" that
he so purely desired were beyond human devis-
ing in those years. The most that could be done
was to keep the foreign credit of England high,

231

OLIVER CROMWELL

moderate the excesses of fanaticism, and keep
the country from a relapse to the old monarchic
tyranny, and all this Cromwell did by his own
force of will and integrity of spirit. But it was
done in the face of dissensions that no man then
could cure; dissensions that, as he sadly came
to realise, were aggravated by his own increas-
ingly despotic assumptions, There was no solu-
tion to his dilemma. Abdication meant, as he
knew it meant, national disaster; his hand alone
could hold the state to some fundamental sanity
in the midst of incessant brawls and bedlamite
stratagems. On the other hand, retention of his
authority meant loneliness and ever more lone-
liness. His recent experience with Parliament
was profoundly discouraging. He had so hon-
estly wanted their confidence, so longed to work
with them intimately in affection for the public
good. They had failed him, had been merely
cold or stupid or pedantic. And so he was alone,
and at every step committed more and more
deeply to methods for which he could offer to
himself no other defence than necessity. His
employment of the methods was beautifully
marked by mercy, understanding, and probity;
but the methods were, as none knew so well as
he, a hopeless foundation for permanent peace
in the State. A lesser man, even a slightly lesser
man, would almost certainly have broken his

232

SECOND PROTECTORATE

word and have deserted his post Cromwell
stayed at his, and it is probably not too much to
say that in doing so he saved English liberty as
we know it It is impossible to realise his sit-
uation and to read his letters and speeches dur-
ing the Protectorate, without astonishment that
there can ever have been any judgment so de-
luded as to charge him with ambition and self-
interest "I would," he said to his second Par-
liament, speaking of his election to headship,
a have been glad to have lived under my wood-
side, to have kept a flock of sheep"; and the
words have on them the unfeignable stamp of
truth.

When Oliver dissolved his first Parliament he
had less than four years to live. During that
time there is much that might be added to our
record of the things he did; but there is little
or nothing that can tell us more clearly than is
already seen the manner of man he was. He
tried many expedients as a ruler, and was candid
enough to acknowledge their failure when they
failed, as they frequently did. In the interval
between his two Parliaments he instituted ad-
ministration by Major Generals, the country be-
ing divided into districts over each of which an
officer was appointed with that title. He chose
for this purpose men of the highest character,
and under them Royalist and Anabaptist disaf -

OLIVER CROMWELL

fection was kept in control, but the system had
defects that were the source of much misrepre-
sentation from which Puritanism has had to
suffer since. The Major Generals found that
coursing fields, race meetings, cock-pits, bear-
baitings, tavern parlours, and the purlieus of the
playhouses were hotbeds of political or religious
conspiracy, and they closed them down. We re-
member the saloons of modern America. But
that kind of thing inevitably overreaches itself.
Petty commissioners were let loose on a cam-
paign of general interference, and the Puritan
acquired the long face of popular superstition,
These excesses were intolerable to Cromwell,
but for a time he persuaded himself that he was
powerless to arrest them. Under the Major
Generals also was carried out the "decimation"
of the Cavaliers, that is, the imposition of a ten
per cent income tax to supply State needs. This
penalising of a class was indefensible, but here
again for a time Cromwell fell a victim to the
casuistries of the case. His position was a false
one, and it was in this way constantly playing
him false. He always recovered himself; and
the lapses it must be allowed were always from
a grace that he alone wore with any certainty
among the exalted in his age. Hard pressed on
every side by dangers from which he had to de-
fend the State and himself, he never allowed

234

SECOND PROTECTORATE

panic to impair his essential liberality of mind.
Levellers of all kinds on the one hand and Roy-
alists on the other were a direct menace to the
Government that he was sworn to uphold. In
curbing them he was not and could not be in-
dulgent, but every man was free to hold what
opinions he would so long as they did not con-
geal into sedition. Cromwell's office in this as in
all else was an equivocal one. A usurper's view
of sedition is not an easy one to maintain, how-
ever rational it may be in given circumstances.
Moreover, even Cromwell's natural tolerance
was unequal to a quite unconditional applica-
tion. Popery and Laudian Protestantism could
not, he believed, be trusted even with freedom
of opinion, since it would encourage them in an
incurable antagonism to the new order. This
was unfortunate, perhaps, for his reputation in
history, but he was nevertheless probably right.
And even here he was at any time prepared to
enfranchise the High Church Protestants at least
if he could have secured reasonable guarantees.
In any case he was, within these limitations,
steadily fixed in a policy of conciliation. A man
might think what he liked and do what he liked
with his own so long as he did not use doctrine
or the memory of a martyred King as excuses
for meddling in politics. In short, he was very
willing to let any man alone, who would do as

OLIVER CROMWELL

much by him, and to see that others followed his
example. Despotism had not often been so con-
siderate.

With Parliament in abeyance, a Spanish war
was added to the difficulties of Oliver's Protec-
torate. Its commercial and political courses
were uncertain, and in Jamaica a British expedi-
tion came to grief, though Cromwell's subse-
quent diplomacy laid the foundations of our
West Indian settlement. But at sea, the Com-
monwealth fortunes were gloriously advanced
by Blake and Montagu. Their successes, and
Cromwell's maintenance of a fleet in the Medi-
terranean, secured for Britain an unexampled
measure of European prestige. It was, however,
impossible to raise supplies necessary to such
enterprises by decimation of Cavaliers, and in
September 1656, Oliver summoned his second
Parliament, a year and four months before the
prescribed date. He was readily able to con-
vince them of the justice of the war with Spain,
and the session opened with some real promise
of the accord that he so much desired between
them and himself. But this was largely due to
another, and this time an extreme act of despo-
tism. Four hundred members had been re-
turned, and of these nearly a hundred were Re-
publicans the anti-Single-Person men. These
had been the leaders of obstruction in the former

236

SECOND PROTECTORATE

Parliament, and had hindered "healing and set-
tling" by their constitutional scruples. Crom-
well was in no mind for a repetition of their
antics. He excluded them. A howl of "privi-
lege" went up, reminiscent of far other days;
and Cromwell and the three hundred settled
down to see whether they could not get on with
the business of the country.

But more and more did the insecurity of the
present "instrument" impress itself on a now
friendly Parliament Oliver himself was always
sensible of it, and when the House approached
him with a comprehensive "Petition and Ad-
vice" he was eager to listen and consider. The
document proposed wide reforms, and provided
for the recall of the excluded members and the
re-establishment of a Second Chamber or House
of Lords. But there was an even more signifi-
cant clause than these. All the best statesman-
ship of the country now realised that English
tradition and instinct could never be accommo-
dated to the permanent principle of an elected
chief magistrate. Very humbly, very firmly,
and very logically, the Commons prayed
Cromwell to accept Kingship. After much de-
liberation, he declined, but not until he had
made it clear in long discussions with a select
committee of the House that he realised how
much wisdom lay in the proposal. It is almost

OLIVER CROMWELL

certain that his decision was made chiefly in def-
erence to the wishes of a powerful element in
the army that was shocked, largely we may be-
lieve on sentimental grounds, into unqualified
protest Oliver was not afraid of his army, and
his mind, with all its tenderness, was never se-
duced by sentimental appeals. But his Ironsides
had saved England and had placed him where
he was to serve their faith, and he could not
bring himself to disregard their pleas even
though he questioned their perspicuity. Had he
lived it is probable that a later summons from
the House would have met with a different
answer, with what effect on English history no
one can say. As it was, Cromwell told his sol-
diers that the existing instrument had not been
very effective, whether supported by Parliament
or Major Generals, and that he did not know but
what the proposed alternative might be worth
trying; as also might the recall of a Second
Chamber, seeing that it might act as a check on
a somewhat too exuberant zeal in the correction
of poor bigots that had lately caused him some
concern. Having said so much, by way, it may
well have been, of preparing opinion for the
future, he told the Commons that he must not
change his present title. On May 8th, 1657, he
concluded his last address to the select commit-
tee: "I am persuaded to return this Answer to

238

SECOND PROTECTORATE

you. That I cannot undertake this Government
with the Title of King. And that is mine
Answer to this great and weighty Business."
The other reforms in principle he accepted. In
the second session of the second Protectorate
Parliament, January 1658, the Republicans took
their place, and the new House of Lords, re-
cruited from Cromwell's Puritan Notables in
the Commons, met for the first time. This
meant a serious reduction in the Cromwellian
majority in the lower house, and at once the old
challenge was renewed. No King, or Protector,
or any other kind of Single Person, they would
have someone in Whitehall understand, was
wanted. In vain Cromwell asked them in God's
name to bestir themselves; told them that
Charles Stuart II was very active in their midst
and gathering great impetus abroad. From the
world of critical realities they screened them-
selves in a mist of precedent and theory. Ten
days of it were enough. On February 4th, 1658,
the House was summoned to the Lords, there
to find His Highness waiting to deliver a speech
of unusual brevity. "I had very comfortable
expectations that God would make the meeting
of this Parliament a blessing." They well knew
the story of his election ; how he came to it, how
it had been confirmed, how he had employed it
They knew also, or if not it was for no want of

239

OLIVER CROMWELL

telling, of the dangers that surrounded them.
And still they were wasting precious time in de-
bating what was beyond 4 their competence to
debate. Treason everywhere, even in the army,
was taking heart by their example. "These
things tend to nothing but the playing of the
King of Scots game, if I may so call him; and I
think myself bound before God to do what I can
to prevent it." Some of them had been per-
verting the army, some questioning the Protec-
torate, some even listing persons "by commission
from Charles Stuart, to join with any Insurrec-
tion that may be made. . . . And what is like to
come upon this . . . but even present blood and
confusion? . . . 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." This is the last public utterance from
Oliver of which we have any record.

240

XXII

LAST DAYS AND DEATH

XXII

LAST MYS AND DEATH

THE dismissal of Parliament brought Royal-
ist hopes headlong down. A House divided
against itself was full of promising insurgency,
but Cromwell without a House at all offered
but a bleak prospect. Left to himself, he smoth-
ered the rising flames with a last rousing of the
old vigour. In June Sir Henry Slingsby and
the Rev. John Hewett, notable leaders of Royal-
ist agitation, were executed on Tower Hill, and
the threatened conflagration subsided into
smouldering ash for two years. Whether it
would ever have broken out again as beacons of
the Restoration if Cromwell had lived, it is im-
possible to say. Oliver was now fifty-nine years
of age, in the late prime of his intellectual
powers. But his physical energy had been in-
cessantly and heavily taxed since 1640, and the
strain was telling. More than once during the
negotiations in the matter of kingship he had
been kept from engagements with the committee
by indisposition ; more than once he had had to
ask their indulgence as he faltered in a speech.

243

OLIVER CROMWELL

"You will pardon me that I speak these things
in such a desultory way as this. I may be borne
withal, because I have not truly well stood the
exercise that hath been upon me these three or
four days. I have not, I say." He still drove
out to Hampton Court on Saturdays, by way
of Hammersmith, where on one occasion a mal-
content took a house from which to blow up the
Protectorate coach as it passed along the narrow
road, but the blunderbuses or some other part
of the project misfired. Rarely could Oliver
snatch an hour's recreation at Whitehall to carry
him over to the next Hampton week-end. But
he never allowed the geniality wholly to slip out
of his life in the unending agitation of state af-
fairs. Domestic affections were not allowed to
rust in the Cromwell household. Musicians, the
best that could be procured, were always ia at-
tendance at his court And he could indulge in
lighter pleasures. "Sometimes closeted with his
counsellors he could be very cheerful with
them ; and laying aside his greatness, he would
be exceedingly familiar; and by way of diver-
sion would make verses with them, play at
crambo with them, and everyone must try his
fancy. He commonly called for tobacco, pipes
and a candle, and would now and then take to-
bacco himself." Any attention or appeal from
the seats of learning found him immediately re-

244

LAST DAYS

sponsive ; and he was not afraid of having poets
about him. When his Latin Secretary of State,
John Milton, became blind, Cromwell appointed
Andrew Marvell to assist him. Of Oliver's own
reading we know but little beyond the evidence
that is scattered^up and down his speeches of an
infinitely detailed and living knowledge of the
Bible. But a correspondent * calls my attention
to a fragment of possible evidence that seems to
have escaped the commentators. Reference has
been made to Cromwell's conversation with
Hampden after EdgehilL His actual words, as
reported by himself in a speech to the Parlia-
mentary committee on kingship, were: "Your
troops are most of them old decayed serving-
men, and tapsters, and such kind of fellows, and
their troops are gentlemen's sons, younger sons
and persons of quality." . . Falstaff (Henry
IV Part I Act IV Scene 2) complains that he
can do no better in his ragged regiment than
"discarded unjust serving men, younger sons to
younger brothers, revolted tapsters, and ostlers
trade-fallen. . . ." The echo may have no sig-
nificance; but it probably has.

A few weeks after the dissolution of his last
Parliament, Cromwell was saddened by the
death of a young son-in-law, by name Rich, to
whom his youngest daughter Frances had been

* Mr* G. Emim&on, of Bedford.

245

OLIVER CROMWELL

married but four months. The succeeding sum-
mer saw Oliver's rule maturing at home, and his
arms prosperous abroad. In June a combined
English and French force routed the Spaniards
at Dunkirk. But the Protector was making dan-
gerous calls on his physical reserves. In July
his beloved daughter Elizabeth Claypole was
seized with a fatal illness at Hampton Court
For a fortnight Oliver did not leave her bedside,
refusing to attend to public business. On
August 6th she died, and her father was a broken
man. On the aoth George Fox, the Quaker, saw
him riding in Hampton Park, and "before I
came to him, as he rode at the head of his Life-
guard, I saw and felt a waft of death go forth
against him." Four days later Oliver was with
difficulty taken back to Whitehall, in a high
fever. A strange hush fell over the country as
for ten days he fought for his life. But the re-
serves were spent He talked fitfully of the suc-
cession, rallied a little now and then, uttered in-
coherent scraps of prayer. Once his mind
cleared, and he spoke for the last time on earth
with the God who had been a living presence
to him through all things. "I may, I will come
to Thee, for Thy People , . . Lord, however
Thou do dispose of me, continue and go on to do
good for them. . . , Teach those who look too
much on Thy instruments, to depend more upon

246

LAST DAYS

Thyself. Pardon such as desire to trample upon
the dust of a poor worm, for they are Thy Peo-
ple too. And pardon the folly of this short
prayer, even for Jesus Christ's sake." And then,
as though in a word remembered from his moth-
er's deathbed, "And give us a good night, if it be
Thy pleasure. Amen." On Friday, September
3rd, 1658, the anniversary of Dunbar and
Worcester, his "Fortunate Day," as he liked to
call it, between three and four in the afternoon,
he died.

247

INDEX

Alabaster, Dr., 72
Argyll, Marquis of, 201
Army Plot, 125

B

Bastwick, John, 91, 92, 94
Beard, Thomas, 73
Bedford, Earl of, 99, 135
Bill of Attainder, 125
Blake, Robert, 210, 236
Bradshaw, John, 16, 171, 183
Buckingham, Duke of, 36, 73, 74,
125

and James I, 37, 38

ascendancy to power of, 42,

Si

dangerous excesses of, 53
saved by Charles from im-
peachment, 55
indispensable to Charles, 62,

71

demand for removal of, 64, 65
murder of, 66
Bunyan, John, 54
Burton, Henry, 91, 92, 95

Carlyle, Thomas (quoted), 19,

24, 27, 34, 35, 49, 5*, *9*
Cary, Lucius (Lord Falkland),

104
Cavendish, William (Marquis

of Newcastle), 146
Chambers, Richard, 94, 95
Charles I, 15, 42, 88, 93, 103,

121, 219

visits Sir Oliver Cromwell, 27
and Buckingham, 53, 55, 60,

66

Charles I, third parliament of,

55, 60
and Petition of Right, 62, 64,

70
Henrietta Maria's influence

on, 71

and Strafford, 73, 74
dissolves Long Parliament, 76
enforces Ship-Money, 95, 107
prohibits emigration, too
summons Short Parliament,

104, 105
dissolves Short Parliament,

106
summons Long Parliament,

107
attempts rescue of Strafford,

125

signs Strafford's death war-
rant, 126
intrigues with Scotch and

Irish, 128
and the Grand Remonstrance,

128-129

flies from London, 130, 135
assembles arms, 134, 136
and the Civil War, 136, 137,

140, 141, 150
a prisoner of the Scots, 153,

159-160

taken by the army, 160
plots against Cromwell, 162
executed, 171
Charles II, 25, 153, 187, 189,

201, 205, 206, 239
Clarendon, Earl of (Edward

Hyde), 18-19, Hi 105, 123,

129, 130,, 201
Claypole, Elizabeth, 246
Coke, Sir Edward, 61, 63, 64

249

I1STDEX

Cromwell, Bridget, 158, 212
Cromwell, Elizabeth (wife), 47,

48, 51, 69
Cromwell, Elizabeth (mother),

25, 69, 93, 231

Cromwell, Sir Henry, 23, 27
Cromwell, Oliver
according to the chroniclers,

13-20

birth and family of, 23-25
youth of, 26-29
at Cambridge University, 27,

29, 33, 34

marriage of, 34, 47, 48
conditions of life in early

manhood of, 35, 49-55, 69,

87, 88 m
first parliamentary speech of,

72

as Justice of the Peace, 80
moves to St. Ives, 80
and Laud's tyranny, 84, 85
and Charles's despotism, 84,

180

domestic peace of, 93
opposes the draining of the

fens, 99

contemplates emigration, too
election to parliament of, 55,

104
the Representative Puritan,

112, 114
the man of action, 112, 115-

117
and the Long Parliament, 113,

123
introduces Root-and-Branch

bill, 127
and the first Civil War, 135-

141,^ H7-I53
organises Eastern Association,

138
promoted Lieutenant-General,

145

supports self-denying ordi-
nances, 148
desires reformed monarchy,

161, 162
and the Second Civil War,

167, 188

Cromwell, Oliver, and the exe-
cution of the King, 169-171,
176

the Patriot, 169, 178

the administrator, 178, 184-186

the usurper, 179-180

and Ireland, 186-197

at Dunbar, 202, 203

takes Edinburgh Castle, 203

Chancellor of Oxford Univer-
sity, 204

again breaks Scotch army,

205

and reconstruction, 209-216
made Lord Protector, 216
on Church Government, 220,

222-224

imperial and foreign diplo-
macy of, 220, 223
at Whitehall, 221
and his first parliament, 221,

223-228, 231

dissolves parliament, 228, 233
is beset by difficulties, 231-235
institutes administration by

Major-Generals, 233
summons second parliament,

236

refuses offer of Kingship, 237
dissolves second parliament,

240

last days, 243-247
death of, 247
Cromwell, Sir Oliver, 52
Cromwell, Richard, 51, 190, 204
Cromwell, Robert, 23-25
Cromwell, Thomas (Earl of Es-
sex), 25

Downhall, Henry, 50, 51, 54

E

Eastern Association, 1:38, 145,

147, 149, 150, 203
Edgemll, 136, 1:38, 206, 3&4S
Eliot, Sir John, 54, 75, 8o*8a, 85,

95
Elizabeth, Queen, 36, 39, 41

250

INDEX

Essex, Earl of, 135, 148, 149
Evelyn, John (quoted), 121

Fairfax, Thomas, 54, 149, 150,

158

Felton, John, 65
Finch, Sir John, 75
Flagellum: or, The Lije, etc.,

of Oliver Cromwell, 16
Fleetwood, Charles, 211
Fox, George, 54, 246

G

Geddes, Jenny, 93

Grand Remonstrance, 123, 128,

129

Grenvil, Sir Bevill, 104
Grey, Thomas, 171

Hamilton, Duke of, 167

H amp den, John, 54, 69, 70, 85,

105, 130, 206, 245
Cromwell's neighbour In

youth, 27, 48
friendship for Sir John Eliot,

81
resists levying of Ship-Money,

97-99

contemplates emigration, 100
and the Civil War, 135-138
death of, 141
Hazlerigg, 130
Heath, James (quoted), 16-17,

*4> 28, 33, 34, 35, 54
Heath, Sir Robert, 63
Henrietta Maria, 71, 134
Hewett, the Rev. John, 243
Hitch, the Rev,, 142
Holies, Denzil, 130
Hyde, Edward (see Earl of
Clarendon)

Ireton, Henry, 16, 158,

211, 212

19*1

James I

visits Sir Oliver Cromwell, 27
policy of, 37
and Buckingham, 37, 42
demands levy on public

money, 39

desires peace abroad, 39, 40
dispenses with parliament, 42
catholic sympathies of, 41
negotiates with Spanish Court,

4^, 43

Laud, Archbishop, 93, 106, 113,

127, 222

harries the "Lecturers," 50
High Church policy of, 72, 73
becomes Archbishop of Can-
terbury, 82, 83

tyranny of, not comparable
with persecution of Popery,
83
suppresses Puritan ministries,

84

upholds Charles's policy, 87
makes use of the Star Cham-
ber, 83, 91
inaugurates reign of his

bishops in Scotland, 93
attempts to impose ritual on

the Kirk, 103

denounced as Anti-Christ, 106
sanctions Sunday sports with

reservation, 122
imprisonment of, 126
Lenthall, William, 167, 206, 213
Lilburne, John, 92, 123
Lockyer, Nicholas, 185
Lynne, William, 25

M

Manchester, Earl of, 148, 149
Marston Moor, 146, 148, 151,

161, 169, 186, 203, 205, 211
Marvell, Andrew, 54, 245
Mayor, Dorothy, 190
Mayor, Richard, 190, 202, 204
Milton, John, 47, 54, 74, xia,

190, 245

251

INDEX

Monk, George, 205

Ship-Money, 95-97, 107

Montagu, Edward (the Earl of Slingsby, Sir Henry, 243

Sandwich), 52, 54, 236
Montagu, Sidney, 52

N
Naseby, 150, 157, 158, 161, 168,

169, 186, 205, 211
New Model Army, 115, 149, 150,

151, 159, 160, 167

Ormond, Marquis of, 189, 191,
192, 195

Petition of Right, 62, 64, 65, 70,

84, 128

Pride, Thomas, 168
Prynne, William, 91-94, 124
Pym, John, 54, 63, 75, 85, 105,

126, 130, 141

R

Root-and-Branch Bill, 127
Rupert, Prince, 136, 141, 146-147

Selden, John, 54

Solemn League and Covenant,

141
Star Chamber, 65, 71, 83, 91, 92.

123

Stewart, Thomas, 93
Strafford, Earl of (Thomas

Wentworth), 129
becomes court favourite, 73
patriotic motives of, 74
and Pym, 74, 75
upholds Charles's authority^

uncompromising spirit of, 105,

" 3 *

arrogance of, 124
and Bill of Attainder, 125
execution of, 126
Strode, William, 130

Vane, Sir Henry, 127

W

Warwick, Sir Philip (quoted),
123

Self-Denying Ordinance, 148, Wentworth, Thomas (see Earl
149 of Strafford)

252

124071