Cromwell

by Antonia Fraser

  It was in this manner that the daring break-out plan was conceived and one soldier afterwards remembered Cromwell spending the night riding through the various regiments by torchlight, on a little Scottish nag, “biting his lips till the blood ran down his chin without his perceiving it”, his thoughts far away on his vital plans for the secret attack. So it was at dawn – or as it turned out, slightly before, probably about 4.00 a.m. – the steep defile of Broxburn Glen was crossed, and the English were in a position to fall upon the unsuspecting Scots, who had themselves expected to make the attack somewhat later in the day. It was evidently still dark when the manoeuvre took place, for one narrative speaks of moonlight: six cavalry regiments under Fleetwood, Lambert and Whalley, and three and a half regiments of foot made the crossing in silence, .thus successfully passing the Scottish right wing. Another infantry brigade under Overton remained on the further side of the Glen, where the guns were skilfully disposed by the expert Richard Deane, and Okey’s dragoons probably began the battle by supporting them here too. It was as day was breaking that the assault force, having reformed its lines in equal secrecy on the other side of the burn, began its first fierce essay. And although the cavalry was to break through eventually, for the time being the Scots held them in check with their long Spanish lances, while for others there was what Cromwell called afterwards “a very hot dispute at sword point”. Monk’s infantry in the centre met even stiffer resistance, and even fell back under the enemy’s pikes. It was at this point that Cromwell, with his masterly eye for the battlefield, employed one of the openings left in the Scottish arc, and threw in his own regiment under Goffe and White, “very reasonably indeed”, to the left of the centre where Scots and Monk were fighting it out so harshly.*23 ( * The monument, a roughly shaped stone commemorating Dunbar with some words of Carlyle: “Here took place the brunt of essential agony of the battle of Dunbar”, is placed on the low ground at roughly the point where Cromwell would have sent in his reserves. The battlefield, dominated by Doon Hill, can still be seen today in very much its original form (with the exception of some modern cement works).)

  The war-cry of the English was “The Lord of Hosts”: it was the final great culmination of the 46th Psalm: “The Lord of Hosts is with us, the God of Jacob is our refuge”, that paean which five years later Cromwell was to describe fervently as “a rare Psalm for a Christian”. That of the Scots was quite simply “The Covenant”. Perhaps Cromwell with his mind still on Isaiah’s 58th Chapter also recalled another verse of it – “In that day shall the Lord of hosts be for a crown of glory, and for a diadem of beauty, unto the residue of his people.” The Bible, the religious fervour of it all was much on his mind as due to this crucial intervention, he was able to watch the battle turn in the English favour. By six o’clock, just as the sun was rising over the North Sea, he was heard by Sir John Hodgson saluting the orb in triumph, quoting the words of the 158th Psalm: “Now let God arise and his enemies be scattered.” For now the horse had broken savagely through after their first temporary repulse and “flew about like Furies, doing wondrous execution”; as for the Scots, in Cromwell’s own words, they were “made by the Lord of Hosts as stubble to their swords”. Whitelocke put it less glamorously: “The Scots were driven like turkeys by the English soldiers.”24

  The result was indeed the most terrible rout for the Scots. Some were chased for as much as eight miles. Three thousand were believed slain and ten thousand taken prisoner. Such were the adversities of both sides in respect of supplies, that the situation of the former was almost preferable. On the forced march south of the prisoners there were fearful hardships: desperate captives were reported snatching raw cabbages from the gardens at Morpeth. But for Cromwell, Dunbar had in truth turned out to be his masterpiece. Credit should be given where it is due for the superb fighting machine that the English army now presented, well-trained enough to execute such a difficult exercise as that silent perilous dawn manoeuvre at the end of a telling campaign in the field, and against vastly superior odds. Lambert was one of the heroes of the battle, doing exceptionally well both in planning and later by personal courage rallying the horse in their moment of crisis. Then there were the weaknesses of the Scots’ command, the doubtful decision of the ministers influencing the Scots Committee of Estates to descend from the plateau and re-camp, using what Cromwell with contempt called “the instruments of a foolish shepherd, to wit, meddling with worldly policies…” But taken all in all, Dunbar was Cromwell’s day and its victory the greatest of a great career.

  It was Cromwell who both inspired the assault, and then threw in the reserve at the vital moment in the vital place. He was acting not from strength, but from a situation which even his most jealous enemies could not describe as propitious. As Sadrach Simpson wrote to him frankly from London: previously he had often owed his triumphs to being “too many, too vigourous” when he fought; at Dunbar he had faced the supreme test of feeling “the cold earth and want of provisions in a strange country”. It was no wonder that Cromwell himself in his long report back to Parliament described Dunbar as “one of the most signal mercies God hath done for England, and His people, this war”. On 4 September, the morrow of the battle, he dashed off letters not only to Parliament, the President of the Council, and Haselrig at Newcastle, but also to Ireton in Ireland, his “beloved wife” in London, his “loving Brother” Richard Mayor in Hampshire, and even Lord Wharton; all showed signs of a high, almost delirious state of rejoicing, the last letter actually beginning: “I, poor I, love you!” And according to Bishop Burnet, he loved much to talk about the battle afterwards, in which manner the details of his own behaviour there have come down with reliability.25 While 3 September had taken its first step forward to becoming “his most auspicious day”.

  * * *

  In their reactions to Dunbar, the varying segments of contemporary opinion showed up clearly. That of England was predictably ecstatic. Whitelocke was in his coach on his way to Chelsea, having got as far as Charing Cross, when a messenger accosted him and panted out: “Oh my lord, God hath appeared gloriously for us in Scotland; a glorious day, my lord, at Dunbar in Scotland.” But as he was in too much of a hurry to reach the House of Commons to give any details, Whitelocke had perforce to change direction and follow him to hear the report read aloud. It was resolved by the House that a Dunbar medal should be struck, which should be given equally to both officers and men.* ( * The first medal for all ranks to be struck. There was not to be another until the battle of Waterloo over one hundred and fifty years later.) The services of the official medallist Thomas Simon were engaged, and for the portrait of Cromwell proposed to be thereon, he made a special journey to Edinburgh at the beginning of the following year – despite the modest protests of the Lord-General, who wrote back to London on the subject: “I may truly say it will be very thankfully acknowledged by me, if you will spare the having my Effigies on it . . .” A picture of Parliament on the one side would “do singularly well”, but Cromwell wanted the Army depicted on the other, and the inscription The Lord of Hosts over it, “which was our word that day”. However Simon with much dexterity managed to squeeze in a token skirmish on one side, above the profile bust of Cromwell, and the war-cry was duly employed. And Cromwell was sufficiently pleased with the result to commission from Simon a similar medal of himself as Lord-General of the Army, arising out of the same visit, so that either Simon or the passage of time evidently overcame his scruples.26

  While the Scots in London grew pale, and were insulted in the shops as the news of the defeat spread, de Croull6 wrote back to Mazarin full of affront at Cromwell’s prolonged praises of God in his Dunbar despatch: it showed, he said, the full measure of his hypocritical nature and that of his whole faction. More to the point, de Croulle also ruminated with alarm on the militant spirit produced in the English by this victory: there was talk now of reversing all the monarchies, in which case France would certainly be the first to be attacked. As if in confirmation of his words, t
he official Nouvelles Ordinaire devoted the whole of its current issue, for spreading to Europe, to the Dunbar despatch. Oliver St John, in a lyrical letter from London to his cousin Cromwell, put into words much of the prevalent English feeling that this striking victory totally justified them in their recent attitude to the Scots: “. . . both parties referred the decision of the cause to God,” he wrote, “and desired that he would give his judgement therein at the day of battle, as that whereby each side, and all standers by, might take notice of the mind of God, concerning the righteousness of their cause … He is the God of Judgement,” he cried, “and according to the appeal, takes the umpirage upon him.”27

  It was an attitude that many of the now unhappy Covenanting Scots shared. For none took a more serious view of their defeat than the Scots themselves, and this was not only along the lines that the flower of their army had been hideously routed, leaving much of southern Scotland under what was virtually an English military occupation. It was the clear, the undeniable, the evident rejection of their cause by the Lord – the verdict of God’s umpirage – which fazed and harassed many of the Scots. In a sense, they showed an admirably honourable bearing towards this appalling providence, and did not attempt to hide from themselves that their own fallibility must be in some way responsible for this rejection. Robert Baillie referred to the Lord overthrowing them “contrary to all appearance … by our own negligence” and saw in their subsequent divisions further proof of “the Lord’s hand now upon us”. Psychologically it was so much easier for the supporters of King, rather than those of Presbytery, to accept the reverse. What to young Charles n was merely “that sad stroke” of Dunbar, became in Nicoll’s Diary an instance of divine vengeance on the Scots, a further instance being the bad weather for the harvest, all of which had to be atoned for by fasts and humiliations (which did indeed become increasingly frequent in post-Dunbar Scotland). Later Nicoll would see in Worcester merely a further argument for the “hot wrath and indignation of the Lord against the kingdom of Scotland” and come to the melancholy conclusion that “the cloak of piety” there must have covered “much knavery” at this time.28

  Of course Scottish resistance was not ended by Dunbar. Leslie escaped to Stirling, the fortress gateway to the Highlands, where he gathered together a force of four or five thousand men. Cromwell’s ex-colleagues Strachan and Kerr, both keen Presbyterians, took the road to Western Scotland where they hoped to raise more men. King Charles was at Perth, where he intended to acquire troops from the loyalists farther north under the Royalist Middleton, which force he later attempted to join in preference to the Covenanters in the abortive expedition of October known as “the Start”. But the need to swallow and digest the humiliation of Dunbar still further divided the Scots into the hard-line “Remonstrants” who wanted the Covenant strictly adhered to and distrusted Charles’s attitude to it (perhaps slackness had been the fault of the Scots); then there were the “Resolutioners” who were milder, and driven by the obduracy of the former to ally with the Royalists, previously known as “malignants”. There was a natural advantage to Cromwell in all this. The tendency would be now for the Scottish nationalist party of the future to take on a much more Royalist slant. This left Cromwell to indulge in overtures and arguments with the former Covenanters as individuals, attempting to persuade them that since God had clearly declared himself in favour of the English, he must also favour a looser form of religion. And of course this bent towards conversion and fraternal discussion was where his inclination had always lain with regard to the Scots. It fitted too with his rough ideas of social policy towards the Scots – there were to be no wholesale confiscations of land here as in Ireland, but wherever possible an attempt at an agreement.

  On 7 September Cromwell entered Edinburgh. The city had heard the news of Dunbar in a peculiarly fitting manner, for just as a certain Mr Haig was denouncing the sectaries from the pulpit and outlining their defeat, an exhausted soldier reeled into the back of the church and began to describe on the contrary the slaughter of his fellow countrymen. Cromwell was received at the Nether Bow by three leading citizens, an advocate, a physician and a “cordwainer” (shoe-maker), who treated for the safety of the city. He proceeded to establish himself once more in the house of the Countess of Moray in the Canongate, his habitation of two years back. But almost immediately the further needs of the Scottish campaign took him first round West Lothian, then in the direction of enemy-held Stirling via Linlithgow and Falkirk. He spent one night in St Ninian’s Church near Stirling because the weather was so exceptionally wet and there was no other lodging. Stirling, however, although the garrison was outnumbered by the English, refused to respond to the exhortations of Cromwell’s trumpeter with his summons. But Cromwell took no further action, either because he hoped the Scots would come to join him of their own accord, or because he feared to drive the defenders further north into the Highlands, from where it would be extremely hard to dislodge them. Linlithgow was fortified instead, with the aid of the distinguished Dutch engineer Joachim Hane, and by 21 September Oliver was back in Edinburgh.

  Unlike the town itself, Edinburgh Castle had not surrendered. Under its Governor Sir Walter Dundas, it was huge, imposing, well fortified, and from its extraordinary position on its rock commanding the whole city, obviously presented one of Cromwell’s most pressing .problems, as well as being likely to turn out one of the most intractable. Indeed a contemporary Scot prophesied that the castle would prove the bone that would break Cromwell’s teeth. Here some of the Presbyterian ministers had taken refuge after Dunbar, not waiting for the conqueror’s arrival, and in the text of his summons, a long and closely reasoned document, Cromwell harangued them passionately for not abiding by the umpirage of Dunbar: “Did not you solemnly appeal and pray? Did not we do so too? Were not both yours and our expectations renewed from time to time, whilst we waited on God, to see which way He would manifest himself upon our appeals?” How could they then refuse to let what they described as mere “events” be a test of equity? He appealed to them not to let their personal prejudices stand in the way of renewed understanding.29 But the summons and the arguments having fallen on deaf ears, the bombardment was duly set up, while Cromwell himself travelled across country to visit Glasgow.

  Here, in mid-October, the English were much impressed by the small but graceful city, which they preferred to Edinburgh. It was in line with Cromwell’s hopes of curing the Scots – particularly the strict Covenanting south-western Scots – with kindness that he saw to it that the English army as a whole behaved with great civility throughout their stay. Robert Baillie commented on Cromwell’s courtesy, and gave the opinion that as a result the English troops had done “less displeasure at Glasgow, nor if they had been at London”. This restraint was the more commendable in that the leaders had to endure a Presbyterian minister, Zachary Boyd, railing at them in one part of the High Church of Glasgow, while in another corner they with greater discretion listened to the words of an English chaplain. Undismayed, Cromwell later sought out Boyd for discussions, and may be felt to have got a little of his own back by an extemporare prayer of two or three hours’ duration. Such inter-denominational feelers were characteristic of Cromwell’s time in Scotland. After his arrival in Edinburgh he had declared his hopes during the winter “to give the people such an understanding of the justness of our cause . . . that the better sort of them will be satisfied therewith”, although he went on to add with humorous indignation: “I thought I should have found in Scotland a conscientious people and a barren country; about Edinburgh is as fertile for corn as any part of England, but the people generally given to the most impudent lying, and frequent swearing, as is incredible to be believed. . .”30

  Such reflections could be cured by some honest disputations, of the sort which took place on several occasions between Cromwell, Owen and Alexander Jaffray, who had been taken prisoner after Dunbar. Jaffray, on his own admission, became convinced that the Scots had been in error as to God’s inten
tions towards the magistrate’s power over the exercise of religion: “The mistake and ignorance of the mind of God in this matter – what evils hath it occasioned!” he exclaimed. In April the following year, on another visit to Glasgow, Cromwell listened quietly enough to Presbyterian sermons, and then asked for further discussions thereafter, because, according to Robert Baillie, he had no wish to contradict the Scots publicly but had genuine hopes that a conference would lead to conversion. The Scots accepted, reluctantly, but feeling it was unavoidable. There followed “a long and serious debate”, partly on matters of pure religion, partly on the rights and wrongs of the English invasion of Scotland. Joseph Baynes, reporting it back to London, thought their action “sufficiently proved just and necessary”, and although he admitted that the Scottish ministers were not yet satisfied of the justification, yet he was optimistic that “divers of their countrymen are somewhat convinced, and will do a little better comply with us than formerly”.31

  Such a conference, impossible to conceive between Cromwell and the Irish Catholic clergy, was all part of the picture outlined by Whitelocke: Cromwell “thus sought to win them [the Scots] by fair means rather than to punish them”. It was an attitude Cromwell was to maintain even after the final defeat of the Scots the next year: in a letter to a friend in New England, he still wrote that the Scots were “(I verily think) godly but through weakness and subtlety of Satan, involved in interests against the Lord and his people”.32 In Edinburgh, the church-going habits of the English were the subject of much speculation: they stifled criticism by attending the church of a Presbyterian minister Mr Stapleton and listening with apparent edification. The only outward difference apparent between Covenanters and Independents in the congregation was audible rather than visible: whereas the Covenanters were in the habit of groaning aloud to express their appreciation, the English, in Independent fashion, hummed.