Cromwell

by Antonia Fraser

  Cromwell’s inner thinking, it is suggested, now ran something along the following lines, put in a very simplified form: supposing all these amazing signal mercies, these victories brought about by God’s help under my leadership, supposing they are the divine method of pointing out to me that I should assume the crown? Why otherwise does this corrupt Parliament not reform itself, leaving the Army so obstinately bitter as a result, so that between them they make it impossible to reach a true settlement of the nation? Thus Cromwell mused aloud, as many another man has pondered understandably on his destiny, without the added spur of Cromwell’s extraordinary mystical streak. In both cases, a question asked aloud is very far as yet from being a considered plan. But when the Duke of Gloucester applied for permission to the Council of State to sail for the Continent early the next year, it was noticed that Cromwell did not attempt to gainsay it; although he had not initiated the Duke’s departure, it was thought by many that he was happy to see him go. Since the death of the Princess Elizabeth two years back, the Commonwealth had been upset by the accusations of poison which had attended her demise and in consequence nervous of the boy’s health. He was allowed Ł500 to aid his journey. To Cromwell his departure must have seemed yet another sign.* ( * The bright and hopeful boy won golden opinions during his short lifetime (he died of smallpox just after the Restoration); he was a staunch Protestant, refusing his mother’s Catholicism, and the outcome, had he lived to replace his brother James or succeed his niece Queen Anne, is another sad might-have-been of Stuart history.)

  The change in Cromwell’s philosophy of government which had occurred since the previous year was also symptomatic of the alteration in English political thinking as a whole which had occurred since 1649. Originally it had been the tendency of those in power in the new Commonwealth to explain their regime in terms of contract based on popular consent. It was suggested that by breaking the contract on which his authority was based by his misdeeds, the King had forfeited the consent of the people to his rule. A new form of government had then been set up consisting of Parliament – a single-chamber body – and its executive the Council of State. The authority of this body was that Act of January 1649 which had constituted the House of Commons the supreme source of power in the country, without King or House of Lords to check it. The supporters of the Commonwealth maintained that Parliament had now lawfully inherited the people’s consent to be ruled once possessed by the King. In 1651 in his First Defence of the People of England, Milton was still defending the Commonwealth as superior to the monarchy because it could not deteriorate into a tyranny. Throughout 1651 Mercurius Politicus was much concerned to point out the many imperfections of monarchies, whose subjects were compared to beasts cooped up in a den; people were said to be happier in a free state because there was less luxury, and where luxury dwelt, there was a natural tendency to tyranny.30

  But for the majority of ordinary folk who were going to live, whether they liked it or not, under the Commonwealth, it was necessary to work out some new and more assimilable kind of justification for obedience to its rule than the doctrine of popular consent. For one thing Royalist or indeed Presbyterian, signatories to the Covenant, were hardly likely to be persuaded that the new regime rested on their own consent to it. Many had taken the oath of Engagement in the autumn of 1649 for the good reason that they had no alternative except ruin or flight. It was obvious that this spirit of gloomy acquiescence to the de facto regime would be greatly enhanced if some kind of de jure justification could be provided for it. While there would be those who preferred to regard the Engagement merely as an unpleasant providence to be digested, there would be others prepared to succumb to the arguments put forward by Francis Rous as early as April 1649, summed up by the claim that “though the change of a government were believed not to be lawful, yet it may be lawfully obeyed”. And he quoted St Paul to the Romans to show that every power in authority ought properly to be given obedience.31

  This argument from the de facto to the de jure, which was what in essence it was, received its plainest expression in Marchamont Nedham’s pamphlet of 1650 which made the sword the foundation of the right to rule. Named “The Right of the Common Wealth stated,” it was subtitled ‘or the equity, utility, and necessity of a submission to the present government cleared”. And in his preface Nedham somewhat cynically addressed his reader to the situation he hoped to cure: “Perhaps thou art of an opinion contrary to what is here written; I confess that for a time I myself was so too, till some causes made me reflect with an impartial eye upon the affairs of the new government.” Two years later, it was of course to receive its finest and purest form in the theories of Thomas Hobbes in Leviathan with their emphasis on civil order to hold off political anarchy. Hobbes posited quite simply that the justification of the civil authority was to be found in conquest, followed by the protection of the people that it subsequently afforded. This made the contract, only broken when the protection lapsed. Thus was order to be maintained. There was to be no nonsense concerning popular consent and that again suited the convenience of the Royalists who had no wish for such a dangerous doctrine to flourish. Nor for that matter was there to be that vague mantle of pointing providences, beloved of the less clear-minded philosophers who preceded Hobbes, who had in this manner often muddled up the two possible bases of power.* ( * See Quentin Skinner, Thomas Hobbes and the defence of the de facto powers. Skinner points out that Hobbes was by no means the solitary thinker in this field as has sometimes been supposed, but rather “the one genius at large in the discussion” who freed it from its providentialist aura.)

  Cromwell, in his thinking out loud to Whitelocke, had paralleled this development and this general atmosphere of change. He too was moving, in day-to-day terms, at least, away from the earlier notions which had once led him most surely to the death of the King – so many providences fitted together as in a jig-saw to produce the final execution scene. He now found himself in daily contact with what were in effect Hobbesian problems of civil protection, the lives of ordinary people, their social grievances. As his conversation with Whitelocke showed, Cromwell was beginning to doubt seriously whether the Rump would ever give the people this kind of protection which their Government should provide. He was moving clearly to the view that one man might perform the role better. It was a view shared incidentally by many observers at the time: just about the time of his talk with Whitelocke, the Venetian Ambassador was reporting that only Cromwell’s own “sagacity and influence” could avert future troubles in England.32 Moreover monarchy, as Cromwell had observed, was generally considered to have certain distinct legal advantages in the subsequent protections of its servants. At the same time though, in theory at least, he did not suspend his own personal search for signs.

  As it was, the turn of the year into 1653 brought no apparent solution to the problems of a new Parliament, while the clamour of the Army for dissolution became understandably more ferocious when the soldiers’ pay had to be cut in favour of that of the sailors engaged in the expensive and so far not markedly successful Dutch War. In January the Army formed a committee to put forward its own demands, which included successive Parliaments, reform of the law and some liberty of conscience. But the franchise of the new electorate continued to be a matter for dispute, and the subject of the dissolution, in one form or another, was discussed in Parliament every Wednesday throughout February and March without any sort of real progress being made that would satisfy the suspicious soldiers. Moreover the more successful action of Blake against van Tromp towards the end of February described by a London resident as “a huge crack of a sea victory”, transformed the humbler mood among the Rumpers into new martiality; Cromwell’s former ally and new opponent Vane, from the vantage point of the Admiralty Committee, found his prestige enhanced.

  In a way it was hardly surprising that the Army despaired of progress, and were as a result in an increasingly ugly mood. All those crucial questions concerning its future that had faced Parliament ei
ghteen months back after Worcester still remained to be decided one way or the other. Although the franchise was agreed to be lowered to Ł200, specifically “to please the Army”, many of the Rumpers still clung to the notion of Recruitment and perpetuation of their own seats, which would keep the nature of the new assembly as firmly as ever in their own hands. Even if there was to be a dissolution, they were determined that it should be preceded by an adjournment first, up till early November, before the new Parliament met. This would still give them every chance of supervising the new elections, whatever the nature of the electorate.

  It was understandable that both Cromwell personally and the Army generally wanted an immediate dissolution. In Cromwell’s case it was because his greatest dread was the emergence of “neuters” in the new Parliament, uncaring of the work they had done to settle the nation along proper lines: such men the Rump might throw up, given the slightest opportunity. The Army had a less sophisticated interest in simply putting an end to the hated Rump, and were altogether vague in their plans for what should happen thereafter. But Cromwell and his associates, in hoping for a dissolution, did also apply some thought to what should replace it immediately. Obviously the country could hardly be left without government of any sort until the new Parliament: an interim council of a different complexion from the Rump was the best hope meantime. As in 1647 however, Cromwell seems to have tried to straddle both sides, not only in Parliament, where there were increasing divisions between pro- and anti-Cromwellians, but also in the Army. As a result by the beginning of April, his policy of negotiation was leading to some unpopularity with extremists. He was said to be “daily railed upon by the preaching party, who say they must have both a new Parliament and General before the work be done”. It was hardly surprising that the Venetian Ambassador described him as “much exasperated at bottom”.33

  At some point, probably in early April, there was a meeting with some of the London clergy concerning the possible expulsion of the Rump. Here Edmund Calamy told Cromwell that popular opinion would not support him in such an action. Calamy was a distinguished Presbyterian divine and one of those who had preached against the killing of the King as being much against arbitrary government. “There will be nine in ten against you,” he said. Cromwell responded, as so often in these days, with a question: “But what if I should disarm the nine, and put the sword into the tenth man’s hand; would that not do the business?” It was not so much a cynical comment, as is sometimes suggested, as a suggestion that right must sometimes be brought about by force – as for example in wartime. The dialogue certainly illustrated that Cromwell’s mind was moving towards that point of view, even if the characteristic musing tone showed that he had not as yet fully made it up. To Whitelocke on 6 April he showed himself in a particular state of disgust when the usual discussion of the Bill of Elections was omitted by Parliament – “in distaste with Parliament and hastening their dissolution”. London buzzed with rumours as to what was happening, and Cromwell’s unwonted absence from Parliament and Council for about three weeks was interpreted by some as a sign that “something extraordinary was expected”. Monk’s biographer, Gumble, asserted later, but without further proof, that Cromwell had been ready to dissolve Parliament forcibly by 16 April, but wanted to be sure that Monk was on his side.34 The general picture, then, was of a man being inexorably driven towards a forcible – but not necessarily a violent – solution, and one who nevertheless still looked back at the more peaceful paths of negotiation.

  It was on Wednesday, 13 April that the Bill of Elections was discussed for the last time, before what was intended to be its final consideration the following week, on 20 April. If this bill of “the new representative” had ever been passed in its existing format, the effect would have been the immediate adjournment of the House, although the new repository of power had not yet been decided upon. The House would then have met again six months later in order to make way for “the new representative” itself on 3 November. As to how that representative would have been elected, much obscurity has understandably attended the final stages of the decision on the franchise: after the Rump’s precipitate demise it was obviously in the interests of the new masters to cast as much opprobrium as possible on their last actions, if only to justify their ejection.

  It has been suggested recently that, on balance of probabilities at least, even on the subject of the franchise, the Rump had been pushed into a situation of compromise. Despite continued pressures for Recruitment from some of their number, they had in fact agreed in theory to fresh elections following “a radical reduction and redistribution of parliamentary seats” with Parliaments to sit for only two or three years, as was afterwards stated by Rumpers such as Henry Marten, St John and Thomas Scot.* ( * *See Blair Worden, The Bill for a New Representative: the Dissolution of the Long Parliament, for a convincing reassessment of long-held theories on this subject.) But even this retreat on paper still left undecided the all-important question of the disposition of power in the Interregnum; while the intentions of the Rumpers themselves were still very much to the fore of the Army’s consideration, in view of the prolonged and wily nature of their opposition to what the Army considered progress. There was still no certain advantage in the Rump agreeing to a fresh electorate if they intended to see to it in the meantime, that by refusing a total dissolution, their power remained in the end as perpetuated as ever.

  It was then the good faith of the Rump, a body the Army as a whole had learned to scorn and dislike, and their actual intentions towards the bill, which were as much at issue in these momentous days of rising tension, as the terms of the bill itself. These intentions were indeed much discussed at a meeting of the officers held at the Cockpit in Whitehall on Tuesday, 19 April on the eve of what was expected to be the final meeting of the Rump on the subject. Cromwell reported when it was all over, in July, that the officers remained extremely perturbed on the question of the electorate, because whatever provisions were made, the Rump might still work out a method of controlling it. The officers told MPs present that they could not be sure “how it would be brought to pass, to send out an Act of Parliament into the Country, with such qualifications [as] to be a rule for electors and elected and not to know who should execute this”.35 There was still no guarantee against the feared emergence of Presbyterians and Neuters.

  Everything now turned on the holding council to be left in power: probably some kind of committee system was envisaged and it is at this point that there is evidence that some kind of vital compromise was reached between Rumpers and officers. A council of forty seems to have been put forward. Certainly Cromwell was desperately anxious that power should pass once and for all out of the hands of the Rump to those who would make better use of it, and according to Heath he told the meeting that five or six men would do the Lord’s work better in one day than this Parliament had done in a hundred. But there is no reason to doubt Cromwell’s subsequent account of the way the meeting was left: after a prolonged series of discussions in which neither side was totally satisfied, “we desired they would devolve the trust over to persons of honour and integrity that were well known, men well affected to religion and the interest of the nation”. To this the Rumpers agreed in principle, or at least promised to discuss the question of the dissolution in their own terms in the meantime. “At the parting,” said Cromwell later, “two or three of the chief ones, and very chiefest of them did tell us that they would endeavour to suspend further proceedings about the bill for a new representative until they had a further conference. And upon this we had great satisfaction, and we did acquiesce, and had hope, if our expedient would receive a loving debate, that the next day we should have some such issue thereof as would have given satisfaction to all.”36

  The next morning, lulled into a sense of agreeable false security, the officers partook of a general conference in Cromwell’s own lodgings in Whitehall. The question of the interim council continued to be discussed amongst them. There was confidence in the word
of the Rumpers that nothing would happen till the afternoon. Suddenly, and to the amazement of all, word came from the House of Commons that the chamber was packed – one hundred members present – and the bill was to be discussed immediately. Since nothing had been decided definitely concerning the interim council, clearly the resultant bill would deal with an adjournment not a dissolution. It will never be known with certainty who amongst the Rumpers was responsible for organizing this sudden rush, although suspicion points at Vane, if only to explain Cromwell’s extraordinary bitterness towards him in the subsequent scene. What is quite clear is that the news was a total surprise to Cromwell. Messengers went down to find out what was happening, and back came Colonel Ingoldsby with the horrific stunning news that the Rump despite its promises was once more discussing its own prolongation – “An Act which would occasion other Meetings of them again and prolong their sitting”. Then a second and third messenger panted up, with the news that the passage of the Act was nearly through.37

  The effect upon Oliver was immediate. His next remark has the ring of absolute sincerity: “We did not believe persons of such quality could do it.” Whether or not he actually believed, or had been told erroneously, that they had reintroduced a Recruiter clause into the bill as well, is irrelevant to the great gust of disillusion that now swept over him concerning the Rump and all its works, giving way in its turn to hectic fury. So much for their offers of compromise, so much indeed for their honesty as individuals, so much for their whole corporate identity. They had promised not to discuss the bill for the time being, and now their word was broken. It could only mean that they were still prepared to use any means, fair or foul, to perpetuate their own miserable cowardly existence. It was a sign that their hour had struck. It was the breach of faith which triggered off Cromwell’s insensate rage: “Thus, as we apprehended, would have been thrown away the liberties of the nation into the hands of those who had never fought for it,” he cried bitterly afterwards.38