Cromwell

by Antonia Fraser

  Yet for once these conventional accents of gloom and self-abnegation had plenty to justify them. Oliver himself was voted an ample income in his combined roles – it has been worked out that his total earnings came to about .Ł13,000 a year once he reached Ireland – .Ł5,000 a year salary as Lord-Lieutenant, with Ł10 a day until he left England and an additional Ł8,000 a year on arrival.38 But the problem of money and supplies for the whole army, without which he was so resolutely determined not to set out in the first place, remained unsolved throughout June and into early July. On 27 June Cromwell was given official permission to try and raise the money he needed from the City on the security of the money to be raised in the future from the Excise; but even this expedient did not prove quite the fairy wand turning all to necessary gold that had been hoped. At the beginning of July there were still those in the City itself who were offering odds of twenty to one that Cromwell would never get to Ireland at all.

  One way and another, with the use of some Ł30,000 from the newly sold deans’ and chapters’ lands, and the royal fee-farms, with Adventurers’ pledges got at the Goldsmiths’ Hall, where money was exchanged for future promises of land, with the hope of more to come, by bludgeoning, arguing and cajoling, by 5 July, Cromwell got at least to the point where he felt justified in having his artillery and ammunition shipped to Ireland. Already by this time Jones’s situation within Dublin, threatened by the combined Irish forces, stood fair to become catastrophic unless he was relieved. Or as the satirical Man in the Moon pictured it, Jones was anxiously watching from Dublin Castle for the shining light of Cromwell’s nose that would indicate the approach of help from the sea (the newsletter also predicted that the damp Irish climate would extinguish its light).39 But it was not for another week that Cromwell himself gave a farewell dinnerparty and prepared to leave London himself, and even so the Ł70,000 of the Ł100,000 needed, secured by the warrants of the Excise, had to be sent after him. Despite further lingerings within the British Isles, Cromwell in the end never did quite keep his promise to his men not to sail until the money had actually been received.

  Not all Cromwell’s preparations were financial. Before he left London he had with one brilliant stroke secured to his own services a most important ally in the shape of Roger Boyle, Lord Broghill, a member of an Anglo-Irish family of great distinction, and a son of the great Earl of Cork of whom Cromwell observed that if there had been a Boyle in every province the Irish could not have raised a rebellion. Broghill was a man of many parts who wrote romances and tragedies as well as directed battles; there was certainly an eclectic genius in the Boyle family; his own huge brood of brothers and sisters included not only the scientist Robert Boyle, but Catharine Viscountess Ranelagh, that much admired Puritan lady of the period. Later under the Protectorate Broghill was to be one of that privileged company of Oliver’s friends with whom he would lay aside his greatness. But in 1649 it was a daring decision to invite such a man to take a command in the Parliamentary army, relying on his word alone for trust. The circumstances of Broghill’s appointment showed too that it was on Cromwell’s own initiative that the move was made, for Broghill, having lain low in England since his original campaign for the King in Ireland, was on his way secretly through London to the Continent to offer his sword to King Charles n. Cromwell got hold of him, told him that his plans were known and that he had just saved him from being clapped up in the Tower by the Council of State; he then persuaded him to join his own cause instead. Broghill represented exactly the kind of Anglo-Irish interests Cromwell needed to conciliate if he were to pacify Ireland, and in his often uncanny ability to choose men, Cromwell never made a better move than this temeritous appointment. It was tragic that he could not come to see other sections of the Irish community in the same perceptive light.

  Cromwell’s departure from London on n July contained all the elements of austere but impressive state that were coming to signalize the style of the new Commonwealth. There were three ministers present at the solemn send-off to invoke God’s blessing on it all. Cromwell himself expounded on some suitable Scriptural texts. As a result of all these holy junketings, it was five o’clock in the afternoon before he actually embarked in his coach, drawn by six white Flemish mares, and with a white standard flying above it – white, the colour of peace. Officers surrounded the coach, riding with him some of the way, and the Moderate Intelligencer (a newspaper loyal to the Government) was particularly charmed by the sight of his eighty-strong lifeguard, every member of which had been an officer, while some were supposed to have been Colonels. “And now have at you. my lord of Ormonde …” it exclaimed. “If you say ‘Caesar or nothing’ they say ‘a republick or nothing’.” Trumpets sounded. Someone expressed the pious view that Charing Cross itself would have been shaken to its foundations by the noise; perhaps it was just as well that the iconoclasts had saved it from this fate by pulling it down early in the Civil War.40 Wednesday, I August was kept as a day of fast throughout England in order to invoke God’s blessing upon the expedition.

  Cromwell went first to Bristol, where a public holiday was declared, and then on through Wales, past some of his old stamping-grounds, to Tenby where 10 was left to be distributed to the poor, and finally to Milford Haven, the port of once-sieged Pembroke Castle. Here however he remained, and by the end of the first week of August Mercurius Pragmaticus was still chirping merrily:

  Yet Noll’s not gone He’s still in Wales

  Exhorting of his Boys

  With holy-sentences and Tales

  Of new terrestrial Joys.41

  It was during this lingering sojourn, as Cromwell awaited the arrival of the promised funds, that two critical if very different pieces of intelligence arrived about the situation in Ireland itself; Cromwell’s reactions to them both provide a valuable insight into his state of mind on the eve of the expedition that was to prove so critical then to the Royalist cause, and to his reputation ever since. On the one hand Monk was obliged to capitulate to Lord Inchiquin, which meant that the May agreement with Owen Roe O’Neill would now be exposed to public – and Puritan – scrutiny. In terms of popular opinion, there would be nothing more disastrous to the whole reputation of the Irish project than the notion of such an alliance with a Catholic Celt – the sort of man who when he died was discovered to wear a Dominican habit under his armour. Although at the time it had made every kind of military sense, and there seems every likelihood that Cromwell had both known and approved of it beforehand, it was unthinkable that it should now be publicly endorsed. By far the best solution was to let Monk himself take the blame for the whole affair.

  Whether or not the Council of State in London had already reached this decision of their own initiative, it was a proposal heartily advocated by Cromwell from Milford Haven, where he had an interview with Monk on the subject. Cromwell had quite enough troubles of his own, with men who wanted money before they sailed, to have his crusade contaminated by the suggestion of unorthodoxy. He fired a letter at the Council of State on 4 August, complaining that many of his men were deserting as a result of the Monk news, and not only must Monk bear the responsibility but “he found Monk inclinable to do this”. The House of Commons was left to vote priggishly that it utterly deprecated Monk’s proceedings with O’Neill, and “doth detest and abhor” any thoughts of negotiation with Popish Rebels in Ireland “who have had their hands in shedding the innocent blood there”. It was clear that not only must the expedition be godly, but it must also be seen to be godly.42

  But the major piece of news that came to Milford Haven was of a. much rosier nature. On 2 August Colonel Jones broke out of his encirclement and heavily defeated Ormonde at Rathmines just outside Dublin. With only just over five thousand men to Ormonde’s nineteen thousand, long short of food, ammunition and supplies, Jones had done well indeed, employing the old New Model tactics of dash and surprise. Over two thousand prisoners were taken, and it was claimed that four thousand Royalists had been killed, a figure which was however pr
obably exaggerated. But the disparity in numbers between victors and vanquished, the David and Goliath story which could be read into it all, the long months of anxious waiting as the news of Jones’s condition simply grew worse and worse, now terminated in this colossal and unexpected delight all these elements give to Rathmines something of the flavour of those happy victories of wartime days, when everything in the end always went right for the Parliamentary and godly cause. Added to this was of course the great difference made to Cromwell’s own expedition which could now sail safely to Dublin, whereas an alternative course might have been to sail round to the south, and try to enter safely there.

  But it was the sheer joyous pleasure of it all that Cromwell stressed in an ecstatic letter he could not resist writing for the especial purpose of breaking “the happy news” to his “loving Brother” Richard Mayor when he was already aboard the ship John on 13 August, ready to sail. “This is an astonishing mercy; so great and seasonable as indeed we are like them that dreamed. What can we say! The Lord fill our souls with thankfulness, that our mouths may be full of His praise – and our lives too … Sir, pray for me, That I may walk worthy of the Lord in all that He hath called me unto.” Even Dorothy Cromwell, who also got a tender ship-board letter urging her to seek the Lord frequently and to urge Richard to do likewise, received a reference to the recent great dispensation, along with some grandfatherly advice to take care of herself after a recent miscarriage,* ( * If Cromwell had heard correctly about Dorothy’s condition, then she must have already by this time have been pregnant again, for the first child, a daughter, was born to the Richard Cromwells at the end of the following March.) to use a coach or to borrow her father’s nag when she went out: “The Lord is very near, which we see by His wonderful works, and therefore He looks that we of this generation draw near Him. This late great mercy of Ireland is a great manifestation thereof. Your husband will acquaint you with it. We should be much stirred up in our spirits to thankfulness.”43

  Cromwell’s sudden spurt of enthusiasm and exhilaration as a result of Jones’s achievement is easy to understand. The six months that had passed since the King’s death had seen righteous rejoicing fade before incessant and surging problems. For one who loved to examine the signs and find in success the knowledge of the Lord’s favour, it had been a positive desert of a period, with very little going right and much to be discerned going wrong in a way that had certainly never been anticipated in the rule of die Saints. The personal attacks on Cromwell, if he could shrug them off, can nevertheless not have added to the comfort of his days. Those savage Royalist newsletters, whose fires were not officially extinguished until the censorship of the autumn, continued to pillory him weekly in language which could be astonishingly lubricious. Then there were the growing accusations about his personal ambitions: on 30 January itself a Dutch caricature had been issued under the title of The Coronation of Oliver Cromwell. A broadside of April was entitled A Coffin for King Charles; a Crown for Cromwell; a Pit for the People.

  A wickedly satirical take-off of his obscure style of speech was issued in the shape of a false Cromwellian sermon sometime before he sailed for Ireland.44 It combined many favourite topics of the scandalmongers from Cromwell’s appearance: “It is true, I have a hot liver, and that is the cause my face and nose are red; for my valour lies in my liver”, to rumours of dalliance with Lambert’s wife and even his landlady outside Pembroke Castle. On another level the sermon neatly parodied Cromwell’s selfabasement towards God – “I speak it to His glory, that hath vouchsafed to take up his lodging in so vile, contemptible, unswept, unwashed, ungarnished a room, as this unworthy cottage of mine [his body].” Lilburne too had recently turned his attention to searing personal attacks on Cromwell. As for the Presbyterian ministers, their verbal assaults from the pulpits were such that Cromwell, hitherto a bastion of religious liberties of this nature, was one of those who tried unsuccessfully to get their activities curtailed by law, to forbid them to pray publicly either against the existing Government or in favour of King Charles n. There were even minor irritations, such as the involvement of Cromwell’s secretary Robert Spavin in a profitable racket selling passes forged in Cromwell’s name, and sealed with his seal. Spavin was dismissed and made to ride from Westminster to Whitehall with his face to the horse’s tail and a placard round his neck proclaiming his crime. In England then, novelty had faded. Difficulty and complexity remained.

  In Ireland all might yet be different. In Ireland surely Cromwell would rediscover that pristine sense of mission which had animated him so forcibly in the early stages of war, or that strange sense of being led on by God which had finally involved him in all the most crucial steps to do with the execution of the King. Jones’s victory was the wonderful mercy which pointed the way to a fresh holy war. For eight years Cromwell had been following the Irish situation from a distance with close interest – if it was also prejudiced by the religious and nationalist attitudes of his time. Some of his last administrative pleas before he left England had been on behalf of those who had suffered in Ireland at the hands of the rebels, presenting petitions for them. He himself had invested much money in Ireland, in the form of loans that would one day be paid back in Irish land. Now at last he was to see it for himself, this land of many imaginings, and in Cromwell’s mind at least, the signs pointed to a crusade, a crusade followed perhaps by a new settlement of godly people, who would give the ancient name of Ireland, the Island of the Saints, a very different meaning.

  13 Ireland: effusion of blood

  This is a righteous judgement of God upon these barbarous wretches, who have imbrued their hands in so much innocent blood … it will tend to prevent the effusion of blood for the future, which are satisfactory grounds to such actions, which otherwise cannot but work remorse and regret

  OLIVER CROMWELL AFTER THE STORMING OF DROGHEDA.

  The Irish Sea was choppy, the crossing was uncomfortable, and Cromwell turned out not to be a good sailor. Before he even left the harbour, according to Hugh Peter who accompanied him, Cromwell was as sea-sick as ever he had seen a man in his life.1 It is sometimes argued, lightly or otherwise, that this unpleasant experience affected Cromwell’s whole attitude to the natives of the island he was about to visit. It is true that Cromwell’s health throughout his entire nine months odd in Ireland was poor and this no doubt had the accustomed influence of such inconveniences in depressing – or exacerbating – his spirits. But his first public utterance to the people of Dublin displayed attitudes long inherent in Cromwell himself, as in the English people as a whole. Cromwell landed at Ringsend near Dublin on 15 August with thirty-five ships. Dutiful Henry Ireton followed two days later with another seventy-seven bound for the south; there were further sailings after Cromwell; all in all, it was a positive armada that crossed the Irish Channel.

  Once in Dublin, Cromwell was “most heroically entertained” wrote Whitelocke (a useful source for the English attitude to the Irish expedition, because his son James had enlisted to go there), with the resounding echo of the great guns around the city. He then proceeded to outline the nature of his mission to the vast concourse of people who had come to see him, “of whom they had heard so much”, standing graciously with his hat in his hand. Described as “most sweet and plausible” by an English newsletter, the speech dwelt heavily on the need for a Protestant crusade:

  As God had brought him thither in safety, so he doubted not but, by his divine providence, to restore them all to their just liberty and property; and that all those whose heart’s affections were real for the carrying on of the great work against the barbarous and blood-thirsty Irish, and the rest of their adherents and confederates, for the propagating of the Gospel of Christ, the establishing of truth and peace and restoring that bleeding nation to its former happiness and tranquillity, should find favour and protection from the Parliament of England and receive such endowments and gratuities, as should be answerable to their merits.2

  This oration was soundly chee
red: it should perhaps be pointed out that the audience must have been predominantly Protestant since Colonel Jones had already done all he could to drive the Catholics out of Dublin, and the penalty of harbouring a Catholic priest even for one hour was death or loss of property.* ( * Some priests seem to have got through the net. Father Nicholas Netterville, S.J., claimed to have dined with Cromwell and played chess with him, and used the story to announce afterwards that he proposed to say Mass with impunity: “I am a priest, and the Lord General knows it. And tell all the town of it, and that I will say Mass here every day.” The story is probably apocryphal; but it is curious that Cromwell always showed a weakness for the personal company of Roman Catholics, while he denounced them roundly in the whole.3) Many vowed that they would live and die with the man who so clearly intended to restore Ireland to that peaceful and profitable vehicle of English self-expression it had always been expected (by the English) to be. Such an emphasis on the peace previously enjoyed by Ireland, that the recent years of troubles were not the norm of the nation, was indeed the key to much of Cromwell’s Irish philosophy. At Bristol he had told his men that they were Israelites about to extirpate the idolatrous inhabitants of Canaan. It was a characteristically English point of view. The poet Payne Fisher, serving in Sir John Clotworthy’s regiment at the time of the rising of 1641, had addressed these lines to a brother officer regretting Ireland’s lost innocence:

  When shall we meet again, Sir, and restore

  Those pristine pastimes we found heretofore?

  This Arcadia was somehow felt to have been rudely disturbed by the vicious actions of the native Irish population who thus deserved the retribution which was now falling upon them, or as Milton was to put it: the Irish by their own former demerits and provocations had been “justly made the vassals of England”. This was the vast importance then of the legend, growing with the years, of the Irish massacres of 1641;* ( * See Chapter 4) it had lost nothing in the telling in the intervening eight years and as will be seen, was certainly believed in implicitly by Cromwell amongst others. It provided the moral basis for the fresh English colonization that was now intended along lines graphically expressed in the declaration of Parliament of February 1642: “that the country will be replanted with many noble families of this nation, and of the Protestant religion”.4