Cromwell

by Antonia Fraser

  Two days after Cromwell’s conversion in the Army Council, on 27 November, the new climate of opinion in Parliament was made clear when certain propositions, known as the Four Bills, were put forward as preconditions to any settlement with the King. All past declarations against Parliament were to be annulled; the militia was to be controlled by Parliament for the next twenty years; royal honours granted since 1642 were to be revoked, and Parliament was to have the acknowledged right to meet wheresoever it pleased. There were those Royalists who considered Cromwell’s and Ireton’s defection from the King’s cause in the Council at this point to be treacherous. But Ludlow repeats a story which did much damage at the time, by which Charles had been seen at Carisbrooke throwing a bone between two spaniels, and laughing happily as he watched them quarrelling over it.29 At any rate in the meantime Charles had not been idle in his talks with the Scots; by 15 December these were sufficiently advanced for Charles to make out a draft of the document later known as the Engagement, by which not only would a Scottish army descend into England, but also in the ensuing religious settlement a whole list of sects was to be suppressed including not only Anabaptists and Brownists but also Independents. The text of the Engagement, once agreed, was kept secret and the document having been wrapped in lead, was buried deep in the garden at Carisbrooke for the day of triumphant release when it should be wanted again. But the existence of such provisions, even if as yet only guessed at by the Army, did make the tenor of their own meeting at “Windsor on 21 December more understandable; it also makes it more difficult to accuse Cromwell and Ireton of betraying the King publicly when he was hard at work betraying them in private.

  This particular meeting of the Army Council was marked by unlookedfor fraternization between Cromwell and the Levellers. At the usual prayer-meetings which accompanied the discussions there was, wrote one observer, “such sweet music as the heavens never before knew”. It was significant that Colonel Rainsborough was now actually nominated for the post of Vice-Admiral which he had coveted in vain in September. Most ominous of all from the point of view of the King, was the suggestion made at the conference that Charles should be tried for his life “as a criminal person”. The news was immediately passed on to the King himself by Watson the Quartermaster-General of the Army, who warned him in confidence of what was brewing, since it was intended to keep the existence of the vital resolution dark until, as Clarendon wrote afterwards, Parliament could be “cozened by degrees to do what they never intended”. Charles’s plans with the Scots were as yet uncompleted: they were demanding two additional articles to the Engagement giving equality of opportunity to Scots in the public service, and providing for the residence of the King or the Prince of Wales in Scotland whenever possible. Charles needed time for these plans to mature, although it was admittedly time which would best be spent at liberty. Therefore on 28 December he rejected Parliament’s Four Bills out of hand, and asked once more for a form of personal treaty. On the same day he had already hoped to escape to Jersey, although his plans were effectively frustrated by Hammond who suddenly dismissed Ashburnham, Berkeley and Legge from the Isle of Wight. The rapidity of the move probably owed something to the warning delivered by Cromwell to his cousin Hammond about this time, giving details of a possible Jersey escape plan: “You have warrant now to turn out such servants as you suspect; do it suddenly for fear of danger. You see how God hath honoured and blessed every resolute action of those for Him; doubt not but He will do so still.”30

  On 3 January 1648 a great debate took place in the House of Commons on the subject of “No Addresses”, whether any furdier approaches should be made to the King, or whether he was to be regarded as a hopeless cause. There are three sources still extant for the course the speeches took: Clarendon, a contemporary pamphlet, and John Boys’s Diary. From the point of view of Cromwell’s own intervention, the most striking aspect on which all three sources concur is the profound change which had occurred in his public attitude to Charles since the summer. From being the most honest and conscientious man in the kingdom, as Cromwell once told Berkeley, Charles had turned into “so great a dissembler and so false a man that he was not to be trusted”, or in another version “an obstinate man, whose heart God had hardened”. Nevertheless it is important at this point to distinguish, as Cromwell did then, between the man and the office. Cromwell’s words on Charles were harsh, but at no point in this debate did he join in boldly with those who were calling loudly for the actual end to the monarchy as an institution. An MP Thomas Wroth waxed angry over the need for the destruction of the monarchy – “From divells and Kings Good Lord deliver me. Its now high time, up and be doing, I desire any government rather than that of the King.” Cromwell however was still to a large extent conciliatory.

  “Truly, we declared our intentions for Monarchy, and they still are so, unless necessity force an alteration,” he declared at one point; it was the old argument based on the practicalities of the situation. His main concern was to display once more, in a striking passage at once resolute and appealing which compels admiration, all his former sympathy for the plight of the men who had actually won the war for them. How fatal it would be if Parliament allowed itself to become alienated from such men: “Look on the people you represent, and break not your trust and expose not the honest party of the Kingdom, who have bled for you, and suffer not misery to fall upon them, for want of courage and resolution in you, else the honest people may take such courses as nature dictates to them.” Or, as another version had it, supposing such men despaired at finding themselves betrayed to the Scots? Despair might “teach them to seek their safety by some other means than adhering to you, who will not stick to yourselves. How destructive such a resolution in them will be to you all, I tremble to think and leave you to judge.” It was in this context that there must be no more dealings with Charles. In a speech that was said afterwards to have made much impression, perhaps because Cromwell put his hand on his sword at the end of it, he quoted the Scriptures to persuade the House that they should now negotiate without the King: “Thou shall not suffer a hypocrite to reign.”31 And at the end of it the vote was carried by a large majority that no more addresses should be made to the King, nor messages received from him.

  It was a further sign of the times that the old Committee of Safety had to be revived, and even more significant that its name had to be changed to the Derby House Committee after its place of session – the Two Kingdoms of the previous tide were of course shortly expected to be fighting one another. And if proof were needed that Cromwell was taking his stand on the unsatisfactory personal nature of the King, diere was his own letter to Hammond in die Isle of Wight, written on die same day of the debate, to report die vote in triumph and headed “Haste, post haste”. “A mighty providence to this poor Kingdom, and to us all… The House of Commons is very sensible of die King’s dealings, and of our brethren’s, in this late transaction. You should do well if you have anything that may discover juggling, to search it out, and let us know it.. .”32

  * * *

  It was perhaps poetic justice that at the same time as Cromwell was asking Hammond for some additional proofs of die King’s trickery in order to blacken his name further in conclave, Cromwell himself was being subjected to die full malevolent fury of die Royalist satirists. One particularly venomous attack, dating from about this time, gives what may well be die first public hint of that reproach subsequently so often hurled at his head – that he himself intended to replace Charles on the dirone. Known as O Brave Oliver, die most trenchant lines read:

  You shall have a King but whom? ...

  Was ever King served so?

  To make room for Oliver, O fine Oliver, O brave, O rare Oliver O

  Dainty Oliver, O gallant Oliver O

  Now Oliver must be he

  Now Oliver must be he

  For Oliver’s nose

  Is the Lancaster rose

  And then comes his sovereignty …

  With such unpopu
larity with a quick-witted section of the community came inevitably the attacks on “brave Oliver’s” personal appearance. The above reference to Oliver’s “Lancaster rose” is in fact one of the milder references to this prominent feature of his physiognomy, much and happily celebrated by the satirists; the pamphlet of the 3 January debate spoke less romantically of the glow-worm glistening in his beak”. It was seldom in any hostile description of his appearance that either the size of his nose or its colour escaped comment, and even his colleague Sir Arthur Hasekig was sufficiently obsessed by it to observe a few weeks earlier on die subject of Cromwell’s integrity that, if he was not honest, he would never trust a man with a big nose again. The Royalists of course persisted in die view that Cromwell was hideously ugly – “so perfect a hater of images” as Cleveland neatly put it in a reference to Puritan iconoclasm, “that he has defaced God’s in his own countenance”.33 Favourite nicknames for him were Nose, Copper Nose, Nose Almighty, Ruby Nose – from all of which, backed up perhaps by Baxter’s mention of a sanguine complexion, one can deduce at least that Cromwell had some sort of disability in this direction, without fear of seeming oversusceptible to Royalist propaganda. From this of course it was only a lightfooted step away to Unking die colour of his nose with over-indulgence in drink; and from diere only another short step to die coming scandal, first mentioned a year later, that he was a former brewer.

  Big nose or not, Cromwell was a man of audiority and that audiority had been won by his own efforts. That of die man he now opposed, King Charles Stuart, had been inherited down history and for that very reason seemed likely to be ineradicable in die hearts of many of his subjects. For all the vehemence of die debate of 3 January, for all die open republicanism of men like Thomas Wroth, political events diereafter still consisted of rambling conferences inspired by general indecision as to die best course for die future. The removal of Charles was in no way necessarily identified with die abolition of die monarchy, and Cromwell in particular, who had always shown some partiality for die scheme of rule by another younger member of die Royal Family, was now amongst diose who explored this possibility. Many of die “middle group” of MPs, including Vane and St John, were now involved in such discussions, which in die spring of 1648 seem to have centred on die idea of a regency in favour of one royal prince or another. The Prince of Wales himself seems to have been averse to die idea but after all that still left die sixteen-year-old James Duke of York and die twelve-year-old Henry Duke of Gloucester, bodi of whom, unlike dieir elder brother, were still in Parliamentary hands.

  Lilburne, brought before die House of Commons for his trial, reflected this fresh examination of the further possibilities of monarchy by repeating that old piece of gossip from the autumn, that Cromwell would shortly be made Earl of Essex. Anodier rumour spoke of “fresh trinketings” with die King. Turning from side to side for a solution, it does seem certain that Cromwell did at least try in vain for a reconciliation with die republican Marten. In general, a description by Ludlow of a dinner-party given by Cromwell at his King Street house for “Army and Commonwealth” men as well as grandees of the House of Commons, deliberately intended to bring them together, shows how extremely protean all shades of public opinion were at the time.

  It is true that the next day Cromwell did tell Ludlow with regard to republicanism that he was convinced of “the desirableness of what was posed, but not the feasibleness of it”. It was also true that Cromwell was reported to have delivered “a severe invective against monarchical government” in the House of Commons on n February when the Declaration upholding the Vote of No Addresses was passed. But at the dinner-party itself the grandees, including Cromwell, were to Ludlow’s mind irritatingly vague about what they now wanted: they “kept themselves in the clouds, and would not declare their judgements, either for a monarchical, aristocratical or democratical government, maintaining that any of them might be good in themselves, or for us, according as providence should direct us”.34 At the end of it all Oliver was seized with one of those extraordinary fits of humour, surely manic in origin, which had endeared him to his soldiers, and in this case took the surprising form of a pillow-fight. Grabbing a cushion, he broke up the discussion by hurling it at Ludlow’s head, himself springing away down the stairs away from Ludlow’s vengeance. But Ludlow managed to overtake him, armed with another cushion, and as he himself boasted, force his descent to become a great deal more rapid than he had expected. This surprising outbreak of horseplay reflected no doubt the nervous tension of the situation, with so much at stake, so little ultimately decided.

  While Oliver and his cronies thus waited for Providence – or perhaps the Scots – to dictate a suitable form of government, the condition of the rest of the country was both disordered and discontented, a perilous combination. Peace, that desirable condition, seemed to have brought with it only high prices and bad harvest. The old order of society was sadly missing, while the country gentry much resented their increasing alienation from the processes of government, as functions formally controlled locally, such as those of the militia or the Justices of the Peace, were usurped by the centre. Not only the gentry but the lower orders pined for the return of the regional proprieties. There wera food riots at Warminster in Wiltshire; in the south-east on Christmas Day 1647 a football match in Kent developed into a brawl which proved to be merely a foretaste of more serious disturbances to follow in that area.35

  Sport in this troublesome era did seem to lead uncomfortably often to riot rather than good fellowship – a fact which should be borne in mind when considering the later Protectoral condemnations of sporting gatherings: even a hurling-match in the West Country now developed into a series of demonstrations. In other ways the temper of the country resolutely refused to conform to the Puritan ideal, resistance being on many different levels. The Parliamentary ordinances against the theatres, for example, had proved surprisingly ineffective; in May 1647 there were still plays performed at suburban Knightsbridge, either at the Inn of the Rose and Crown or at Holland House (used for the same purposes under the Commonwealth). “Whither go we!” exclaimed a Roundhead newsletter angrily.36 When the new order passed for six months from July 1647, forbidding bear-baitings and dancings on the rope as well as theatres, ran out in January, the result was a happy outbreak of theatre-going. So that in February 1648, so obstinate was the English spirit in pursuit of its pleasures, it was found necessary to issue still stronger ordinances against playhouses (to be pulled down) actors and spectators (to pay forfeits of 5s. a head). Yet still the plays persisted.

  27 March, the Accession Day of Charles I and a traditional feast of celebration, saw the outburst of numbers of loyal demonstrations in his favour. Wayfarers in the streets of London were compelled to drink his health, and the butchers were overheard threatening to chop up his jailer Hammond in much the same manner as they cut up their own meat. There was no question but that there was a reaction in favour of the Crown, that dreamt-of symbol of lost pre-war order and security; that too meant that political compromise was once more in the air, particularly as many of the middle-group MPs had solid monarchical convictions which would probably always prevent them agreeing to any proper settlement which permanently excluded the King. Oliver himself took a step backwards into private life. He spent Accession Day on a family errand, although a current rumour to explain his absence, that he had gone off to the Isle of Wight to see Charles, showed how long-lasting were the potent suspicions of Cromwell’s relations with the King.

  It was true that Oliver had gone in the general direction of the south, but his journey stopped short at Winchester where he intended to have some helpful talks with one Richard Mayor at the Great Lodge of Merdon on the subject of a match between Mayor’s daughter Dorothy and Cromwell’s twenty-one-year-old son Richard. Colonel Norton, a good friend of Cromwell’s who had formerly been in Manchester’s army and was now MP for Hampshire, had been acting as go-between in the rather protracted financial negotiations which had been
accompanying the affair. In the serious duty of the Puritan father to marry off his children into godly matrimony, Oliver took his responsibilities towards his sons quite as heavily as those towards his daughters. There had been some other more worldly possible match for Richard – “a very great proposition” – but for all Oliver’s political position which might have tempted another father to seek connexions through his son, he was personally much inclined towards the more modest Dorothy: “because although the other be very greater yet I see difficulties, and not that assurance of godliness… If God please to bring it about, the consideration of piety in the [Mayor] parents, and such hopes of the gentlewoman in that respect, make the business to me a great mercy.”