However none of these internal discussions, and even arguments, took into account the extraordinary quasi-royal position into which Cromwell himself had now been swept as a result of his decisive throw against the Rump, in the minds of Europeans as well as his native English. No single step that Cromwell ever took was attended by such a signal elevation in his personal prestige, since by the time he assumed the supreme Protectoral Office, the grandeur was already three-quarters mantled round his shoulders as a result of these acclamatory days. London buzzed with rumours and counter-rumours. There were preachers who described Cromwell as worthy of the crown for his incomparable qualities; there were others who predicted confidently that the Stuarts were on their way back. One prophecy which said that King Charles would be married to the “daughter” of Cardinal Mazarin and restored, with Oliver made a Duke and Lord Deputy of Ireland, managed to involve a multitude of those important on the European horizon, without having much of the gloss of truth to sustain it. With more authenticity, the Cardinal did signify the change in Cromwell’s European stature by sending him a flattering if vague letter via Bordeaux suggesting a reciprocal friendship; to this Cromwell replied with equal flattery and equal vagueness accepting the offer in a letter of the utmost humilty, he refered to himself as “so inconsiderable a person … living in a way retired from the rest of the world”, dazzled by the Cardinal’s overture.*3 ( * But the true opinions of the gentlemen concerned of each other are probably better expressed by a later anecdote in which Mazarin began by dismissing Cromwell contemptuously as “a Successful Fool”; the story was then repeated back to Cromwell who replied that Mazarin on the contrary was “a Juggling Knave” (as he had earlier termed Vane a “juggler” over the Dissolution of the Rump).4)
In one strange incident just after the dissolution an anonymous (but well-dressed) gentleman arrived at the New Exchange and wordlessly posted up a bill there before vanishing as silently and mysteriously as he had come. It showed a lion trampling on a crown; beneath lay some provocative lines of verses including this sentiment:
Ascend three thrones, great Captain and divine,
I’ th’ will of God, oh Lion, they are thine . . .
It is possible that the apparition was merely a Royalist trouble-maker, but the verses certainly put into words feelings which, whether approved of or not, were much current in the air at the time. Only one thing could not be established with any certainty – for all the knowing tales – and that was Cromwell’s own secret reactions to his elevation and these rumours, of which he could hardly be unaware.
A picturesque story that Cromwell was having a crown and sceptre made for himself privately at Cheapside can certainly be discounted. But that his bearing towards all-comers was notably amiable during this period is more substantiated: “the general is sedulous to please all parties,” wrote one correspondent, “and very kind to the old malignants, who have found much more favour since the dissolution than in the seven years before.” The godly were equally not neglected: the Venetian Ambassador painted a telling picture of him visiting churches with a big prayer-book under his arm (portando sece alle chiese un gran brevario – presumably the Bible), the very model of piety and devotion, declaring publicly how the Almighty who had hitherto specially favoured his undertakings by giving him victory in battle and helping him to subdue three kingdoms, had now inspired him to effect this change. One story told of him walking in St James’s Park revealed that he was certainly aware of what was now due to him: it had become the custom to raise the hat to the Lord-General, as once formerly to the King. When one man failed to do so, Cromwell reminded him that a similar failure of the Duke of Buckingham to the late King had resulted in a rash Scotsman, newly come to Court, knocking his hat off for him. Perhaps Cromwell was joking: for in other ways he gave away little of his ultimate thoughts, and seemed to have relapsed into an enigmatic state of reserve. He was said to fall into silence at any talk in his presence of coronation, and although Hyde’s Royalist correspondents also reported that he was listening with unusual patience to suggestions that he should become either King or Protector,5 the two stories were not really so far away from each other, both adding up to a picture of caution.
One current tale however did fit into the pattern of Cromwell’s known proclivities: he was said to be considering a Parliament on the model of the Polish Diet, which would bestow the crown upon him electively as in Poland, with certain rights to his descendants. This, it was felt, would satisfy the general outcry that a monarchical rule was indispensable for the welfare of England – a view to which Cromwell himself had repeatedly subscribed, if in musing form, in recent times. It was true that English affinities with Poland had been somewhat dimmed when their newly elected King John Casimir, who succeeded about the time of the death of Charles i, showed signs of pro-Stuart sympathies. But the connexion did exist, and Poland was one of those countries towards which Cromwell was to display an enthusiastic Protestant interest: in July the Polish ViceChancellor Radziejewski arrived with a letter of introduction from Queen Christina of Sweden and with some success stirred up Cromwell against John Casimir (suspected by Radziejewski of intimacy with his own wife). Cromwell gave the Vice-Chancellor a boat and permission to acquire and take away some horses, in order to travel on to the Sultan of Turkey and from there perhaps attack the Catholic Polish King. But in the event, neither the elective monarchy and Diet of the Poles, nor the prospect of outright assumption quite convinced Cromwell of their place in the designs of the Almighty, and perhaps the true situation in his own mind was best summed up by a Royalist letter intercepted by Thurloe: there was “a gathering of hands” for a King in both town and country, yet Cromwell himself, for all he wanted to be King in effect, was loth to take the title.6
Certainly the country itself seemed to be yearning for the return of a monarchical rule and all that implied of stability which could be material as well as spiritual: it was not only the London shopkeepers for instance who missed the free-spending Court. Nor were the existing Cromwellian family considered altogether unworthy of the elevation in the estimation of onlookers as well as their own. If a story is to be believed of Mrs Cromwell gazing at a. portrait of Queen Christina and murmuring: “If I were to die, she would be the woman”, the good lady had evidently allowed her fantasies concerning her husband’s rise to reach mammoth proportions. It is true that Christina herself always showed much inquisitive interest in Cromwell, compared him to her father Gustavus Adolphus, and told Whitelocke that he had ought to have made himself a King. All the same, the thought of the match, outside the realm of a game of consequences, still beggars the imagination. But the Cromwell daughters, who had not known the early days of East Anglian obscurity, were made of more realistic as well as more self-confident stuff. There was considerably less of the Puritan maid about Cromwell’s “little wenches” Mary and Frances, now sixteen and fourteen respectively, than about Bridget. Mary, nicknamed Mall, was a spirited and rather masculine character: it was not for nothing that her later portraits show her, of all the family, inheriting the strength of her father’s countenance, brooding hooded eyes and all, and it was Burnet who was to pronounce on the Cromwell family as a whole that “those who wore the breeches deserved the petticoats better; but if those in petticoats had been in breeches, they would have held faster”.7 In youth however, dark ringlets and dark eyes of a teasing expression, arched eyebrows and a full mouth gave Mary a charming even innocently voluptuous expression; just as soft contours hid the future less attractive dominance of her features, so her nature as a girl was considered delightfully wayward rather than tiresomely bossy.
The year before, Mary had got herself into trouble by trying to matchmake between her brother Henry and a daughter of Cromwell’s friend Lord Wharton. Cromwell took his usual enlightened attitude to the whole affair: where there was no love, there should be no marriage. “If there be not freedom and cheerfulness in the noble person, let this affair slide easily off,” he wrote, “and not a word m
ore spoken about it.” He was equally tolerant of Mary’s intervention: “So hush all and save the labour of little Mall’s feeling lest she incur the loss of a good friend indeed.” But now this little Mary was being mentioned as a possible bride for the grand young Duke of Buckingham, as a gesture towards the conciliation of the Royalists (it would also have enabled him to reclaim his estates). As a gesture it would certainly have been a handsome rise in status for Mary from the Nottinghamshire gentleman thought worthy of Bridget. The marriages of Oliver’s two remaining unmarried daughters, and even the suggested matches, now provided an interesting yardstick of the rise in his reputation. The next year Mary was even said to be destined for the son of the Prince de Conde, and later her sister’s name would be coupled with that of a still more splendid bridegroom – King Charles II.8
In the meantime Henry had taken the law into his own hands. First he courted the charming if aloof Dorothy Osborne, who as late as April was writing teasingly to her secret lover William Temple that Henry Cromwell would be as acceptable to her as anyone else. Henry’s courtship of Dorothy had taken the thoroughly English course of proceeding through the medium of dogs: he had written to his brother-in-law Fleetwood in Ireland to try and secure a greyhound for her. When the dissolution came, Dorothy could not resist pointing out to Temple that if she had taken Henry when she had the opportunity “I might have been in a fair way of preferment, for, sure, they will be greater now than ever”. However less than three weeks after the dissolution Henry was in fact married to another, Elizabeth Russell, the eldest daughter of an old associate of Cromwell’s from the Eastern Association, now Sir Francis Russell of Chippenham in Wiltshire. Although not rich herself, Elizabeth, it was pointed out at the time, kept Cromwell in touch with Army feeling because her father was considered a man of much influence there. At any rate Henry was now for the time being back from Ireland, and as he walked through that public place of entertainment the Spring Gardens, those of cheaper wit than Dorothy Osborne called out “Way for the Prince!” The Spring Gardens were rumoured to have been closed down at this time because of insults to Cromwell’s wife and daughter: perhaps this was the origin of the story.9
Cromwell’s capacity for paternal care was not restricted to his own family: he was responsible also for the education of a boy, William Button, son of a dead (but wealthy) Royalist. It was in the summer of 1653 that Cromwell appointed as his tutor the poet Andrew Marvell, then a man of thirty-two, one who from having been a Royalist had become an ardent supporter of the Commonwealth. If in his Ode to Cromwell on his return from Ireland Marvell had seemed to show some loyal regard to King Charles, in another poem he had hailed the new statesman as the “darling of heaven and of men the care”. He was already known to Cromwell as the tutor of Fairfax’s daughter Mary, and in the spring had tried to penetrate further into the service of the State as assistant to the now blind Milton, a post for which Milton himself had heartily recommended him. But the application was unsuccessful. Now Marvell took Dutton down to Eton, to live in the house of one of the fellows, John Oxenbridge. Leaving aside his supreme poetic qualities, Marvell was also famously good company – Burnet called him “the liveliest droll of his age”. Some of his patriotic verses in favour of the Commonwealth during the Dutch War showed more evidence of the latter than of the former talents: Van Tromp and his “Torn navy” were described as staggering home “While the sea laughed itself into a foam.” Holland was dismissed as a country:
. . . that scarce deserves the name of land
As but the off-scouring of the British sand.
Certainly in his letter to Cromwell at the end of July, Marvell was positively obsequious in his wish to please. William was described as “of a gentle and waxen impression” and he hoped to “set nothing upon his spirit but what may be a good sculpture”. How fortunate that William had in addition two good qualities – Modesty (the bridle of Vice) and Emulation (the spur to Virtue).10 It is possible that Cromwell intended this pliable paragon as a husband for Frances. At any rate, by joining Cromwell’s service in one sense at least, Marvell provided the second leg in what was to provide a remarkable and surely unbeaten record of three major poets in Cromwell’s general employ – with Milton as the presiding genius, and John Dryden joining towards the very end of the Protectorate. The father of these putative princes and princesses was however the while industriously occupied in those actions deemed necessary to establish the membership of the new assembly. The writs of summons, which went out in extremely personal fashion under his own name, were described as being instigated “by the advice and assent of our Council” (i.e. of Officers – the Council of State had of course been dissolved). But they were not sent until the beginning of June, and although the exact machinations that led to the various nominations remain obscure, it seems clear that most of May had been occupied in arraying them by those concerned.* ( * See Austen Woolrych, The Calling of Barebone’s Parliament for the most modern assessment.) The summons referred to “divers persons fearing God, and of approved fidelity and honesty”,11 and there were to be one hundred and forty of these fortunate persons, one hundred and twenty-nine from England, five from Scotland and six from Ireland. There were of course to be no elections – that process which had come to be so much feared towards the end of the Rump – and the fact that the members were “Nominated” instead has given rise to one of the various names for this enigmatic assembly, or Parliament-that-was-not-a-Parliament. It was otherwise known as the Little Parliament, or more colourfully, the name preferred here, the Barebones Parliament, after one of its characteristic members, Praisegod Barebones, variously Anabaptist preacher, leather-seller and politician, who was named as member for the City of London.* ( * His own name was also variously spelt Barbon, Barebone and Barebones. The story that Praisegod had two brothers – Christ-came-into-the-world-to-save Barebone and IfChrist-had-not-died-thou-hadst-been-damned Barebone (familiarly shortened to Damned Barebone) has not been substantiated.)
The method of nominations seems to have been subject to various pressures only vaguely hinted at in the rules laid down – that the congregations of the cities and counties of England and Wales should send in the names, from which Cromwell and the Council of Officers should make their choice. In fact, although some “gathered churches” seem to have advanced their choices, the general system was more along the lines of personal nomination by the Council members, and even those churches which forwarded names did not always succeed in getting them nominated subsequently. Certain categories were much disliked and were to be discouraged, “professed lawyers” for example and “accountants” both of whom were presumably held responsible for the nightmare the Rump had become. Obviously with such a personal system in process, there would be some private lobbying, and there is evidence that Cromwell at least made private enquiries via his friends “to consider what persons in the respective Counties (men famous for piety and integrity) were fit to be called to that public honour”. It is not to be supposed that other leading men of the time did not pursue the same prudent policy. Therefore the Barebones Parliament, when it sat at the beginning of July, might well reflect in itself the variety of interests and hopes of the men who had been roughly responsible for its inception, and that in itself might lead to a curiously disunited assembly. It was hardly surprising that the men of the growing Cromwellian personal clique were there: Henry Cromwell was named, and Richard Mayor, Dick’s father-in-law, was returned from Southampton; John Ireton, Henry’s brother, made an appearance. But Harrison had also been responsible for the return of a number of Fifth Monarchists from South Wales, and no doubt his personal influence was responsible for the large number of hardened spiritual radicals who turned out later to have invested the assembly. Ultimately, it has been calculated that there were about eighty moderates and sixty radicals in the assembly.
However on 4 July 1653, the day on which Oliver Cromwell first addressed this historic gathering in the Council Chamber (its exact venue had been the subje
ct of popular speculation and it subsequently moved to St Stephens, to equate itself with an ordinary Parliament) his own hopes were high. There is no other explanation for his steadfast championship of this gathering than that he himself sincerely looked for some kind of millenarial joy as a result of its assembly. Even at the time, there were those who pointed scornfully to the low class, the “new representators being most empty-pated things”, their low class deliberately established by Cromwell. With all their vanity and futility, often coupled with Anabaptistical and fanatical opinions, they were intended “to evidence the necessity of establishing the supreme authority in some one person of worth under the title of Imperator, Generalissimo, or whatever name may be held fit to authenticate his power”. So wrote John Langley, repeating the London gossip. Later Clarendon and William Dugdale spread the same derogatory story: they were mainly “inferior persons of no quality or name”, although even Clarendon had to admit that there were some few gentlemen, with estates. In fact it has been pointed out that nearly half either had been or were to be members of other Parliaments: more exceptional was the predominant role that Londoners played in the assembly.12 But to Cromwell himself these men, as he gazed at their faces on that critical occasion of their first meeting, were illuminated by quite a different light. This was the gathering of the Saints, long expected, for which much tribulation had been endured, but now at last granted to them: out of it now great things would surely emanate.
Even Oliver’s language later, the language of disillusion, showed how much at the time he had hoped for from this gathering. He called it later with cruel self-reproach, the story of his own “weakness and folly”. Even the next year he was to reflect sadly that the whole episode had “much teaching in it, and I hope will make us all wiser for the future”. How great was the contrast between these melancholy reflections and his open-
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