Cromwell

by Antonia Fraser

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  Europe had not stood still while Commonwealth and Scots engaged each other with their horns like two stags. There the situation was equally disruptive, and whatever the first reaction of shock and disapproval, the killing of the King and the establishment of a republic could not disbar for ever a leading Protestant – and maritime – power from participation in the varied and complicated series of European alliances then current. And since neither the main Protestant block of Baltic powers, nor the Catholic block of France and Spain were united, there was room for much diplomatic manoeuvre as England became once more a force to be reckoned with. Soon a series of agents and representatives were percolating through to London, beginning with the minister (euphoniously named Haraldus Applebone) despatched by Sweden’s eccentric but engaging Queen Christina in December 1651. As a Protestant country which had a hereditary feud with its Protestant neighbour Denmark, Sweden had a vested interest in engaging Commonwealth sympathies first: soon Queen Christina was signing herself “vestra arnica Christina” in her correspondence.

  Nevertheless the Commonwealth remained extremely touchy on the subject of its authority. An appeal from Elizabeth of Bohemia, sister of the dead King, for funds via the Netherlands, was greeted with indignation because it referred to “Charles i” – thus implying the existence of a Charles n. And the incoming Venetian envoy, Paulucci, had an unhappy experience because he arrived without the proper credentials from his Government. Sir Oliver Fleming acted as Master of Ceremonies, having performed the same office for Charles I – a remarkable example of neutralism. He did however complain to the Council that his salary was now much reduced from the old days, particularly as he was not allowed to accept gratuities, which were considered “dishonourable to the Commonwealth”, from the foreign envoys. He suggested artlessly that his pay should be increased, lest he should be under “the temptation of doing things dishonourable”. Fleming instructed Paulucci that the “Parliament of the Republic of England” was the only correct mode of address. Fleming told Paulucci that since Venice was at the same time asking for English troops, their casualness had caused some affront: “Our esteem and her prudence entitled us to a different treatment at her hands.” All this gave Paulucci an opportunity to report back to the Venetian Republic on the still militant spirit of the English people. Although in their hearts they now desired alliances, they still dissembled this outwardly: they scorned all titles and quoted the example of the Roman Republic which had ruled the whole world under the simple initials S.P.Q.R.21

  Of the major countries, it might seem curious that it was Catholic Spain which was the first to send an accredited representative in the shape of Cardenas, and that despite the awkward murder of a Commonwealth agent in Spain, Anthony Ascham, as yet unpunished. But since Spain’s natural enemy was France, the relationship of the English Royal Family to the French King gave Spain an obvious interest in England. At the same time France herself presented a tempting target to Protestant hostilities of the Commonwealth, once they should be released from civil war within the British Isles.

  The French Government, represented by the boy King Louis xiv and his omnipotent minister Cardinal Mazarin, were facing a revolt in the south, known under the name of the Fronde and led by the powerful Prince de Conde. To obviate the danger of England assisting their own rebels, quite apart from challenging Spain, it soon became obvious to France that she too must reach an agreement of sorts with England. Her Charge de Croulle had been expelled over the perennial trouble of Catholic agents in London – allowing English nationals to hear Mass in the Embassy chapel. But the need for “some accommodation”, whatever the claims to sympathy of the widowed Henrietta Maria, was recognized soon after Worcester. By the end of 1652 Bordeaux, a member of a rich merchant family, and described by Saint-Simon as being extremely worldly “for a bourgeois” (because he had a number of mistresses), was being instructed to make an English mission in the following spring.22

  Of all the European powers however the one that presented the most forceful problem to the new Commonwealth was the Protestant Netherlands. The United Provinces, in their fight for liberty, in their institutions, in their many public virtues, in their own throwing off of the shackles of monarchy, had been the most admired model to freedom-loving Englishmen of different types for many years. Yet they were at one and the same time the chief and above all the successful rivals to England’s commercial interests. The tug-of-war between emotional Protestant sympathies and practical commercial necessities was one which would be fought out this way and that throughout the Interregnum. The commercial predominance of the Dutch was particularly marked at the end of the English internal wars since England’s colonies had seized the opportunity of the distracted attentions of the mother country to trade freely with the Dutch, and to use Dutch ships to convey their own goods to Europe. The Dutch carryingtrade menaced England, it was felt, while Dutch capital had also found its way into the happy grasp of newly prosperous English colonials.

  For all these difficulties, the first instinct of the Commonwealth had been to draw close to its Protestant neighbour; it was the Dutch who had rejected a mission to this effect in the spring of 1651, headed by Oliver St John, with contumely. The first Navigation Act of October 1651, just after Worcester, was said to be the direct result of this rebuff; but it was also the product of another side to English thinking of the time, a hardheaded commercial decision at a time when English finances needed critical resuscitation. The produce of the colonies in America, Africa or Asia was forbidden to be brought in future in any ships other than those of the British or the territories concerned; the majority of crews on the ships were to be Commonwealth subjects; goods from Europe had either to come in English “bottoms” or in those of the country of origin – thus hopefully putting an end to the profitable carrying-trade of the Dutch. Yet this law in itself would not have led to war between the two countries. It was the umbrageous Commonwealth demand to search Dutch ships on the high seas for the goods of other countries, particularly those of the French, which caused much offence. This right was in turn angrily resisted by the Dutch themselves, and it was in the various hot-headed incidents which resulted from the attempted implementation of this right to search, that the immediate genesis of the Anglo-Dutch War that broke out in the summer of 1652 was found. Soon throughout the Commonwealth, wrote Henry Fletcher, it was being widely studied “how to alter the natural verdure of the sea with the sanguine purple of human slaughter”.

  The evidence for Cromwell’s attitude to the war has been described as ambiguous. He seems to have been confused enough in his own mind as to where the right course lay, to have been blown now in this direction, now in that. It was true that the one constant predilection he did display was in favour of amity with Protestants anywhere; that in turn obviously made him perturbed and reluctant over the prosecution of the AngloDutch struggle, in contrast to the more commercially-minded members of Parliament or the Council of State. “I do not like the war and I cornmend your Christian admonition. I will do everything in my power to bring about peace,” he is said to have replied to some Dutch expatriates petitioning Parliament to resume peace negotiations in July 1652.23

  The belief in a Protestant Europe was something to which many Puritans had long subscribed. In a Fast Sermon of 1645 Hugh Peter had cried out apocalyptically: “Methinks I see Germany lifting up her lumpish shoulder, and the thin-cheeked Palatinate looking out, a prisoner of hope . .. Indeed, methinks all Protestant Europe seems to get new colour in her cheeks.” The peasants of the Netherlands, France and even (at that date) Ireland were said to be studying their long-lost liberties. Cromwell himself was much under the spell of such heady visions of a Protestant crusade: the Venetian Ambassador in Spain reported that immediately after Dunbar he had written to Parliament suggesting that they should now think of helping other nations to throw off the yoke.24 Yet Cromwell knew little of finance or commerce, and in the case of the Dutch War at east, found his emotional pref
erences overruled by sterner counsels. It was as though the Dutch issue was for the time being too complicated for him to pursue, the dispensations too difficult to analyse.

  In the meantime the Dutch War went on amain, not only with Cromwell’s tacit acquiescence but with his participation in its administration. The English Navy at least made rapid advances: thirty new frigates were ordered, at a cost of Ł300,000 and Cromwell with other magnates of the Commonwealth attended the launching at Deptford of the Diamond and the Raby, very much cheered at the time by the onlookers.25 The trouble was that the cost of running such a fleet amounted to nearly a million pounds a year: since under half a million was allotted to it by the Commonwealth, for all the benefits to the Navy, the Government’s unstable finances were exacerbated further by a mounting deficit while the war continued.

  But there were fields of foreign action less complicated than the Netherlands and in those instances of which some evidence has survived, however obscure, relating to France, Cromwell always gave proof of the vigorous Protestant slant to his mind. In October 1651 a mission came from the Prince de Conde, received personally by Cromwell, asking for Ł100,000 and ten thousand men to assist him in his Frondeur struggles against Mazarin and the French King. Oliver was said to have called for a map of France and studied it, before refusing the plea. But his refusal took the form of a wry joke: the actual aid was a trifling matter – he would come in person, he said, with forty thousand foot and twelve thousand horse, if he could be assured that France would have the same happy end result in her government (i.e. the overthrow of her monarchy) as had taken place in England. The emissary was struck dumb by the sally and left the room. But an odd little incident concerning Vane, now re-dated to some time in the summer of 1652, seems to have had its origin in Cromwell’s desire to help the Frondeurs: Vane apparently made an undercover approach to the political leader of the Fronde, Cardinal de Retz.26 In the same way the visit of the former Army agitator Colonel Sexby to Conde’s brother, the Prince de Conti, was probably inspired by Cromwell. Unfortunately Sexby was an inept negotiator, and by arriving with a copy of the Army’s Agreement of the People as a possible manifesto for a new French constitution once the Frondeurs should be successful in their rebellion, he did not advance the cause either of England in French hearts, or of the Frondeurs in the French power struggle.

  Yet another mission, in the spring of 1652, was connected more directly with Cromwell, although its ultimate aim still remains obscure. Cromwell’s emissary, a Colonel Fitzjames, entered negotiations with the French Governor of Dunkirk, Estrades, for the exchange of prisoners, in the course of which he arranged, as he thought, for Estrades actually to go further and betray the port to the English. This would have given England a Continental beachhead, from which Cromwell or any other General could have in theory mounted a military expedition to assist Conde. In the event Estrades changed his mind, the treacherous handover never took place and Dunkirk for the time being remained in French hands.27 Perhaps Cromwell did have a punitive crusade in mind, although if so the details were never worked out. But the idea of a Continental beachhead was certainly one which was to remain with him, and his obsession with it played a marked part in his Protectoral foreign policy. However all that can be stated with certainty about his attitudes to Europe during the eighteen months following Worcester, is that they were avidly coloured by enthusiasm for Protestantism and Protestant allies – this, despite the fact that his position at home did not as yet enable him to give these feelings full and powerful vent.

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  In domestic politics, by the summer of 1652 the tolerance of the Army towards the Rump was showing signs of reaching breaking-point: the efforts of the previous year to procure dissolution had been effectively put aside by the Army’s opponents. In August a petition was presented by various key officers, including Whalley, Okey and Worsley (who was in charge of Cromwell’s own regiment) urging the dissolution of Parliament. Although Cromwell’s name was officially kept out of it, the fact that the presenters numbered many of his most faithful supporters amongst their number was not missed by observers. Contemporary newsletters spoke of conferences between Cromwell and the officers preceding the petition, and were not put off by the fact that the officers also demanded the abolition of tithes – a cause on which Cromwell remained cool. Whitelocke told Cromwell pointedly that it was a pity to allow the officers to petition with swords “lest in time it come home to himself”;28 but it was Lambert of course, still smarting from his failure to obtain the deputyship, who was for the time being the most prominent lobbyer.

  Throughout October there was a series of meetings initiated by Cromwell between MPs and officers to discuss the Parliamentary possibilities. At the end of November the horrifying naval defeat endured by Blake in the Downs at the hands of the Dutch Admiral Van Tromp would blight those members of the Rump who constituted the war party, giving an edge to the pro-Cromwellians just at the vital moment of the new elections to the Council of State. Cromwell was once more elected top, but Vane, chairman of the Admiralty Committee, dropped to fourth place. It was at the beginning of November that a conversation of dynamic importance, on which much of the evidence for Cromwell’s new-mounting ambition rests, took place between Cromwell and Whitelocke on the subject of England’s political future. It happened to be a particularly agreeable autumn evening and Whitelocke was strolling in St James’s Park when he was accosted by the Lord-General.29 Cromwell, with courtesy beyond his usual practice, invited Whitelocke to stroll with him. The two men exchanged many mutual compliments, Cromwell the while taking care, said Whitelocke, to flatter him with extra skill. Cromwell then began a more serious discussion by returning to his familiar theme, the oft-expressed argument against the present Parliament, that it was their duty to make good what they had achieved. On no account must they “hazard all again by our private janglings, and bring those mischiefs upon ourselves which our enemies could never do”. To this, Whitelocke responded that the real question was how to keep the Army in peace. Cromwell agreed and commented further that the Army was beginning to have “a strange distaste against Parliament”, adding “I wish there was not too much cause of it”. He then mentioned the many popular grievances against the Rump, their delays, the perpetuation of their own powers, their scandalous lives, their injustice and partiality.

  Whitelocke tried to defend the Rump. But Cromwell forced home the point: “There is little hopes of a good settlement to be made by them, really there is not… we all forget God, and God will forget us, and give us up to confusion.” In short, the Rump had to be restrained. To this Whitelocke replied, reasonably enough, that they themselves had acknowledged Parliament as the supreme power: “and how to restrain and curb them after this, it will be hard to find at a way for it”. It was then that Cromwell asked the question which, on Whitelocke’s testimony, was to damn him thereafter in the minds of those who believed that he aimed starkly at the throne: “What if a man should take upon him to be king?” To this Whitelocke replied: “I think that remedy would be worse than the disease.” Cromwell proceeded to outline the legal uses of kingship. There was quite a cogent case for it, he said, since he had been assured by the lawyers that the servants of a de facto monarchy would be exempt from reprisals should there be any form of Restoration; then of course there was the traditional reverence paid in England to the concept of monarchy. Whitelocke’s answer to this ingenuous piece of pleading was scarcely encouraging: he pointed out that the concept of monarchy would on the one hand alienate all their friends who believed so firmly in the Commonwealth and on the other simply resolve the discussions on government into “Cromwell or Stuart”. Would it not therefore be better, if monarchy was really so beneficial, to negotiate with the humbled Charles II? But this eminently reasonable argument did not seem to please Cromwell; according to Whitelocke, the two men were never so intimate again, Cromwell seeming to avoid his former confidant, although he never voiced his displeasure publicly.

  What c
an be fairly read into this momentous piece of dialogue? First and foremost, it must surely be accepted that such a conversation or some version of it did take place: for the length and detail make it impossible that Whitelocke could literally have imagined the whole encounter. Secondly, but not contradictorily, too much reliance should not be placed on the exact wording recorded by Whitelocke, the sole authority for the encounter. Even the most accurate and painstaking diarist can err by a phrase and Whitelocke’s record was almost certainly completed after the Restoration. That famous question: “What if a man should take upon him to be king?” may even have been posed much less crudely. But that posed it was, surely cannot be doubted. Indeed, what remains is interesting enough: a long conversation in which Cromwell openly considered the pros – no longer the cons – of monarchy, and mused aloud on the possibilities, if no more, of himself assuming the crown.