It is pleasant to reflect that Oliver Cromwell had at least his dash of Norman blood (as well as simple faith), and the pioneering blood of the immigrant at that. However the Grants, quickly assimilated, made an unbroken series of Welsh marriages. Much was made under the Protectorate, heraldically speaking, of Cromwell’s descent from the Princes of Powys, notably Madoc ap Meredith, last Prince of Powys, whose arms formed part of the Protectoral crest. This descent was not, as we have seen, actually in the direct male line. But in view of the interconnexions of Welsh families, there was of course no reason why the Cromwells should not descend from the Princes of Powys in the female line several times over, and no doubt they did so. It is certainly interesting to observe that over a hundred years after the emigration of the family to England, when Morgan Williams’s great-great-grandson Oliver Cromwell became Lord Protector of England, it was to his Welsh ancestry that the heralds turned to provide his arms. It is evident that pride of Welsh descent was preserved among a family who otherwise became very firmly (and profitably) Anglicized.
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In the age of Morgan Williams himself, the first half of the sixteenth century, the Court of Henry vin was amongst other things an excellent arena in which the speculator might operate to his own advantage, more especially after the dissolution of the monasteries. Now there were rich prizes indeed to be had for the picking, particularly by those who enjoyed the royal favour. In 1538, at a time when his famous uncle Thomas’s influence was still paramount, Richard Cromwell, son of Morgan Williams, was granted the large and fruitful nunnery at Hinchingbrooke, as well as various other properties. He made the change of surname at some date unknown but definitely before this grant which was made in the name of Cromwell – much encouraged in the change by the King, who wanted him to adopt the “mode of civilized nations in taking family names” and disapproved of these “aps and naps” which, amongst other disadvantages, made those of Welsh descent hard to identify in English judicial procedure. One story of Richard’s upward progress is splendidly chivalric. He had entered the lists of a tournament, richly apparelled, with his horses draped in white velvet, and his prowess was commensurate with his magnificence. King Henry, much delighted, dropped a flashing diamond ring from the royal finger, and exclaimed to his favourite: “Formerly thou wert my Dick, but hereafter thou shalt be my Diamond!” Fortunately for the future history of the Cromwell family, Dick dexterously caught his diamond; other benefits followed including a change in the family’s crest – the lion now bore a ring on its foreleg in place of a javelin.15
Sir Richard, knighted by the King, survived the fall of his uncle in 1540. Already establishing the power of the Cromwells in the east Midlands, based on formerly monastic lands, he was made high-sheriff of Huntingdonshire and Cambridgeshire in 1541 and he sat for Parliament in 1542. Thanks to the King’s generosity, he seems to have left estates at his death worth about .Ł3,000, a considerable fortune by the standards of the time. It was his son and Oliver’s grandfather, Henry Cromwell having been dubbed in turn by Queen Elizabeth in 1563, who for his lavish display was to be known as the Golden Knight. He indeed cast an opulent glow over the history of his family. Although Sir Richard had begun the conversion before his death, it was Sir Henry who was mainly responsible for building that magnificent pile at Hinchingbrooke, partly adapted from the old nunnery, partly re-created in striking red brick diapered in black, which Oliver was to know as a boy.
With extensive views across the surrounding flat but fertile countryside, close by watery tributaries of the Ouse, Hinchingbrooke was well suited to the gracious role in which Sir Henry cast it, a family seat of much splendour; and incidentally the stained-glass windows did not fail to commemorate the family’s Welsh origins, with due heraldic acknowledgement. Neither Sir Richard nor Sir Henry cut themselves totally from the city from whence they had come, since both in turn chose wives who were daughters of Lord Mayors of London. But like his father, Sir Henry also took on traditional county duties. He was sheriff of Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire four times and became a member of Parliament, where his harangues, in the opinion of Sir Charles Firth, had something in common with the oratorical style of his grandson.16 Sir Henry also quickly learnt other habits of the landed classes; privileged to entertain Queen Elizabeth at Hinchingbrooke in 1564 – an expensive pastime but one which might at least reap future benefits – the Golden Knight was also pleased to throw sums of money to the poor at Ramsey, an activity much less calculated to bring an earthly reward.
Oliver’s father Robert Cromwell was the second son of this glittering character. There were other members of the family to be noticed, including the fifth son, later knighted as Sir Philip Cromwell, whose daughters Elizabeth and Frances by marrying a Hampden and a Whalley respectively, provided Oliver with two first cousins within leading Puritan circles. But it was the eldest son and heir of the Golden Knight, Sir Oliver Cromwell, who took the attention of the world for most of his long life, until the dramatic rise of his nephew in political and military importance usurped the ageing knight’s position as the most famous member of the family. Sir Oliver married twice, and from his second marriage to Anne Hooftman, a lady of Dutch extraction, widow of the Genoese financier Sir Horatio Palavicini, sprang the story, still sometimes repeated today, that his nephew Oliver enjoyed Jewish descent. Two Palavicini stepchildren of Anne Lady Cromwell, Baptina and Henry, the offspring of her husband’s first marriage, made marriages with two of her own Cromwell children. It was the sort of arrangement, complicated to describe, which was often found convenient at that time for considerations of property as well as propinquity; it was especially convenient in this case in view of Sir Oliver’s own declining financial situation. These Palavicini-Cromwell marriages, which took place around the time of Oliver’s own birth, were obviously of no direct relevance to his branch of the family, let alone his ancestry (quite apart from the fact that the Palavicinis were actually of an ancient Catholic Genoese family) but of course the story may have gained further credence from Oliver’s favourable treatment of the Jews as Lord Protector half a century later.
Sir Oliver was clearly a man of charm and bounty, to whom the musician John Dowland dedicated a book of songs and airs, and under whose sway Hinchingbrooke continued to provide patriarchal warmth for lesser relations living roundabout, including the Robert Cromwells and their children. Such benevolent entertainments were only to be expected from a man in his position; more ambitious and fundamentally more disastrous for the fortunes of the family were Sir Oliver’s royal carousals. He had been knighted by Queen Elizabeth in 1598. In 1603 King James I stayed at Hinchingbrooke on his triumphant progress south from Edinburgh to ascend the English throne. Fatally – for the future – it was generally agreed that the King had there received “such entertainment, as the like had not been seen in any place before, since his first setting forth out of Scotland”. As Sir Oliver not only provided generous hospitality, but also pressed upon his distinguished guest such varied but welcome gifts as “a standing cup of gold”, “goodly horses”, “fleet and deep-mouthed hounds” and “divers hawks of excellent wing” it is easy to understand the royal enthusiasm, and King James returned to Hinchingbrooke on all too many more occasions. Even though Sir Oliver was to receive his symbolic reward at the great funeral of King James in 1625, bearing one of the heraldic banners, it is not difficult to appreciate how the Cromwell resources rapidly diminished under this standard of expenditure (for the first visit Sir Oliver built on a special bow window to his dining-room).17 Within his own lifetime glorious Hinchingbrooke had to be sold to the Montagu family, leaving Sir Oliver merely with the alternative Ramsey property. The case which has been made for seeing the Parliamentary party in the years leading up to the Civil War as scions of a fading class of gentry whose fortunes were declining, certainly finds a prop in the position of the Cromwells as Oliver grew to manhood. Oliver can hardly have failed to observe with sadness the passing of the great Cromwell era at Hinchingbrooke i
n 1627, the year before he entered Parliament for the first time.
Oliver’s own father, Robert Cromwell, led a more obscure life. Like his eldest brother, he was elected a member of Parliament, but unlike Sir Oliver who made some mark in the House of Commons, Robert made little impression during his solitary spell of duty in 1593. He bore his share, it is true, of local activities, taking an interest in the draining of the Fens, signing a certificate together with his brother and some others to the effect that it would be possible to drain the area known as the Great Level. Did he also conduct the brewery, with whose existence royalist scandalmongers were afterwards to make so merry at his son’s expense?* (* The Brewer” was one of the many scornful nicknames applied to Oliver Cromwell by his enemies. Verses such as The Protecting Brewer, of which a typical stanza ran: A brewer may be as bold as Hector; When as he had drunk his cup of nectar; And as a brewer may be a Lord Protector; As nobody can deny – show the insulting, if rollicking, uses to which the theme lent itself.18) Certainly Robert Cromwell enjoyed the use of a brew-house, enhanced by the fact that the Brook at Hinchin ran conveniently through his lands, and could be used in the brewing process. As we have seen, some establishment of the sort may have come to him as part of Elizabeth’s jointure, and incidentally the earlier Putney Cromwells, from whom he was descended, had quite certainly been brewers. It is of course possible to draw a distinction between brewing ale for home consumption (a sensible course in an age when ale, rather than water or wine, was a staple of the diet) or for neighbours, and indulging in “trade” as later generations would term it. On the other hand, “trade”, just because it is a later concept, is a dangerous one to foist onto the early seventeenth century.
It is noteworthy that the first derogatory mention of Oliver’s supposed brewing activities, which it was believed he carried on with his mother after his father’s death, appears in February 1649, the month after the King’s execution, the time of maximum execration towards Cromwell. It occurred in Mercurius Elenticus, the news-sheet which did much to spread that venom and made a reference to “the malice of that bloody brewer Cromwell”, suggesting that he might be about to “set up his trade of brewing again”.19 Cromwell was also scurrilously supposed to have suggested that the dead King’s youngest son, the Duke of Gloucester, might be trained as a brewer now that he no longer had any royal function to perform. Brewing, then, may well have been carried on locally by this minor branch of the Cromwell family, more or less professionally, to supplement a modest income; but it caused no particular remark until the dark days after the King’s death, when any and every weapon was used to vilify the leading figure of the party responsible. Then brewing was transformed by the cutting pens of the satirists into an activity of hideous vulgarity, only too symbolic of the coarse upstarts who now ruled England.
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Returning to the far-off days of Oliver’s infancy, it will be seen that the life of his father was typical of that of many younger sons of the gentry, unremarkable but not unpleasant, a life calculated to produce a mildmannered man, not a tyrannical father. “Man’s life in his sound and perfect health is like a bubble of water” declared Robert devoutly in his will, and he was particularly concerned before his death to leave his wife and children both “peace and quietness” as well as his “temporal estate”.20 Such a man was likely to have gentle and pleasing relations with his only surviving son, during his short lifetime. It would be natural, too, for the small house in Huntingdon to be overshadowed by the big house at Hinchingbrooke, and natural for the same reason for Robert Cromwell to choose the name Oliver for his second boy. Almost certainly Sir Oliver stood godson to his nephew at the baptism which took place four days after the birth, on 29 April 1599, in the Church of St John Baptist at Huntingdon, close by the parents’ home. Although the church itself has now disappeared in favour of a leafy municipal garden, the register with its mention of “Oliverus”, son of “Robert Cromwell gent”, and Elizabeth his wife survives in the near-by church of All Saints, as does the font in which Oliver was baptized.* (*Beneath the date and above the entry can be seen the words “England’s plague for five years” although they have been scored through. They are likely to have been added during the Civil War period and crossed out later.)
Less well established are the few stories of Oliver’s babyhood. According to one tale, handed down by word of mouth until the late eighteenth century, a tame monkey seized him in its arms out of his cradle while he was up at Hinchingbrooke, in the last days of his grandfather, the Golden Knight, and gallivanted with its burden along the flat leads of the house. Of more prophetic significance – and therefore more suspect – was the oft-repeated tale that the four-year-old Oliver bloodied the nose of the two-year-old Prince Charles Stuart, on the occasion of his father’s visit to Hinchingbrooke in 1603. It was a legend that obviously had much to cornmend it to later sages, who saw in it early evidence of Oliver’s violent and anti-monarchicaltemperament. Then there was the curate who was supposed to have rescued the boy Oliver from drowning in a river, and encountered him again marching through Huntingdon at the head of his troops many years later. Oliver stopped the clergyman and asked if he remembered him, to which his saviour replied tartly that he did: “But I wish I had put you in, rather than see you here in arms against your kind.”21
These two last stories have the quality of myths and, as in myths, the future is satisfactorily presaged in the very boyhood of the hero (or villain). The predominant impression of his boyhood left on Oliver’s contemporaries was rather different; and there were other near contemporaries like Milton who sought to explain his quality of greatness by stretching back questingly into his earliest years. Here there is undoubtedly a feeling of mystery, of something unexplained, of outward serenity, ordinariness even, which surely concealed mighty turbulence within, the product of which was not to be witnessed for many long years Oliver “had grown up in secret at home” wrote Milton in 1654, eulogizing the new Protector, “and had nourished in the silence of his own consciousness, for whatever times of crisis were coming, a trustful faith in God, and a native vastness of intellect”.22 Perhaps the Protector dropped some hints of this process to his intimates. But he himself did not go on record on the subject of the inner feelings of his early youth, whether turbulent or otherwise, and we learn from his own lips nothing of such struggles, if they existed.
The “native vastness of intellect” to which Milton referred was actually nourished in the conventional manner of the time at the local grammar school, a few hundred yards up Huntingdon High Street from Oliver’s own house.* (*The building can still be seen today, largely in its original state; it is the site of the Cromwell Museum, opened in 1962. The school has another distinguished old boy in Samuel Pepys.)This was a free school, and according to custom, there was one classroom for children of all ages, but there was nothing socially derogatory in attendance at such local free schools, of which about 1,300 were functioning in England and Wales. They were virtually interchangeable with the other two categories of schools in seventeenth-century England, the private schools (to which Oliver sent his own children) and the endowed grammar schools. Earlier Oliver would have learnt the elementary skills of reading and writing, either from his mother or “a mistress”, a type of governess; and there was also probably an intervening tutor in the shape of a clergyman called Long.23 Now he was to learn Latin in preparation for the university. Evidently in such an establishment, ruled by one master in charge with one assistant, the personality of this master would be of paramount importance, and in this, Oliver’s first influence from the outside world, was seen the first dramatic twist of fate in his career.
Dr Thomas Beard, master in charge of Huntingdon Grammar School, a Cambridge graduate and a clergyman, was neither unknown in spheres outside the classroom, nor on the other hand so obsessed by their demands as to neglect the welfare of his pupils. He was a man of fiercely disciplined mind, and more important still, it was a mind above all deeply interested in t
he great new developments in the English state religion which had been fermenting since the late sixteenth century. In broad terms, and in so far as such labels can be helpfully used, he might be described as a striking example of the sort of men, intellectual, proselytizing, courageous, above all determined to sort out honestly the relationship of God to man, and the correct part to be played in this by the Church, who made up the body of early English Puritans. Beard’s most famous work was The Theatre of God’s Judgements, first published in 1597, seven years before he was enjoined to become master at Huntingdon. This little book was marked by a conviction that the wicked were actually to be punished in this life, quite apart from the problems of the next. It consisted in fact of a list of historical occurrences, or “providences” as they were called, a term which was later to have much significance for Oliver himself. These were analysed according to God’s intentions in thereby rewarding or punishing his servants, with heavy emphasis on the punishments. As to the nature of the servants in question there was heavy emphasis on Kings and rulers who Beard believed were especially liable to God’s justice, being not only “more hardened and bold to sin”, but also liable to “boldly exempt themselves from all corrections and punishments due unto them”.24
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