Cromwell

by Antonia Fraser

  This wholesale adaptation of the customs of a former royal age to this new era extended through all the varied details in the establishment of the new Protectoral Court. In a way it was hardly surprising that the model followed was the only one known to those concerned, but the management of such symbolic minutiae now did show a marked contrast to the way matters had been handled at the inception of the Commonwealth in 1649. Then, all things had been made new, or at least there had been valiant attempts to make them look new, and think out new solutions for what was supposed to be a new age. Now the emphasis was backwards, on conservatism, on restoration even of former courtly customs. This lead naturally to some ironic situations. Bordeaux was quick to notice that the Ambassadors were now being received, ceremoniously, in exactly the same manner as they had been under the former Kings. The piquancy of this was not lost on all observers. As the Swedish Ambassador Count Christer Bonde was leaving the Banqueting House after an audience with Oliver, he could not help being reminded of the mutability of all things in this world: that this building “which was built for the pleasure of the king and then had been the place from which he went through the window and was beheaded, and that the same locality, hung with those most precious tapestries, that had been the Prioris Regis spolia now should be the place where he who mitissime spoken had contributed nothing to it, should so splendidly triumph”.4 He was right. It was indeed a strange example of time’s revolutions that in the chamber first built by King James i to hallow deliberately the kingship of his dynasty, Oliver Cromwell in glory should now receive his Ambassadors.

  It was in April 1654 that Oliver and his family first moved into Whitehall, a portion of which was to be redecorated “according to the instructions of her highness the lady Cromwell”. Another report on their Privy Lodgings spoke at length of their dining arrangements: a Table for His Highness, a Table for the Protectress, a Table for Chaplains and Strangers, a Table for the Steward and Gentlemen, a Table for the Gentlewomen, a Table for Coachmen, Grooms and other domestic servants, down finally to a Table for Inferiors or Sub-Servants. The upholstery of a coach with velvet for the Protectress cost .Ł38 with extra payments for damask, serge and ninety ounces of fringe at a total cost of over Ł10. A newspaper solemnly recorded the event of their first dinner at Whitehall. Certainly whatever the quality of Lady Cromwell’s instructions, the orders of the Council of State showed unprecedented business on this particular subject. In February two services of plate were ordered to be retained for the use of the Protectoral couple; the Lord Mayor, Sir Thomas Vyner was to hand over the two bespoken services to two members of the Council, and having been “exactly weighed”, the problem of their maintenance and accounting was to be further considered. Altogether furniture and hangings from the late King’s belongings to the tune of Ł35,000 were set aside and employed, to be marked in the Trustees’ inventories, as “reserved for his Highness”. Pictures or hangings acquired included the famous Raphael cartoons, a series depicting the Seven Deadly Sins which was fetched from the Tower, and two somewhat mariolatrous pieces from Nonsuch: The Ascension of Mary, with Apostles watching, and a Madonna with angels.5

  Money was paid out anew to wardrobe-keepers, braziers, upholsterers, silkmen, turners and linendrapers. There were bills for such luxurious appurtenances as plumes of feathers and gilt nails. Some of the spoils of Stirling Castle were brought out of the Tower including chairs of State, red velvet bed furniture, silk curtains and rich canopies. A preoccupation with the previous regime, or else an instinct for economy, was shown when it was even thought worth sending for a number of worn ex-royal carpets from Nonsuch: one was described as being of orange tawney and blue silk needlework – “but old”. This obsession may be said to have reached its apogee when from the former royal dwelling at Greenwich was imported one “Close-stool” (or chamber pot) of red velvet, “Trunke fashion”, valued at 15s. for the Protector’s use at Whitehall. In May Richard Scut got Ł12 for setting up the lights in the passages of Whitehall, and Geoffrey Vaux was paid Ł150 for housekeeping and passage clearing. By October Clement Kinnersley was petitioning that he had done “his best service” in gathering together the late King’s possessions to decorate Whitehall, and needed Ł500 in consequence. As a sign of the times, Philip Starkey, a master-cook, was paid Ł20 each time he presided at an Ambassadorial banquet. On a less exalted level, Thomas Redriff got Ł5 for a badge as His Highness’s waterman. Gradually state was being restored. By February 1656, John Evelyn, going to Whitehall for the first time after a lapse of many years, found it “glorious and well-furnished”.6

  It was in line with the policy of bridging over the past, that in September 1654 it was ordered that the creditors and servants of the late King and the Queen should be paid off. Yet nothing illustrated more acutely the innate strangeness of the whole situation than the unexpected human problems which resulted from this energetic refurbishment of Whitehall. For here some of the attendants of the vanished Royal Family, and in certain cases their descendants, were clinging like pathetic barnacles, in a series of sheds and hovels, which custom had allowed them to set up for themselves in the royal mews. These trembling relics of a bygone age now found themselves in danger of ejection, which meant virtual annihilation. The Council of State was flooded with petitions, like that of “Anne”, widow of the late King’s sumpterman, Rob Granger “a poor old barber” with a wife and six small children, who lived over the old forge built by his father-in-law, Serjeant to the King, and one whose claim stretched back to the reign of King James I, being the son-in-law of his coachman. Saddest of all were some grooms, living near the dunghill of the mews, for they appeared to have been triply cursed in social terms, being described as “aged, poor, and having many children”. Out however they all had to go, out went amongst others Colonel Mathews, Miss Pierce, Mrs Hugge and the Widow Goose. In April a man actually had to be paid Ł5 for disposing of two children found abandoned within Whitehall (method unspecified).7 Perhaps it was some consolation to the wretched dispossessed to know that they were not the only victims of change brought about by the new order: the Admiralty Commissioners also had to turn out of their rooms in Whitehall to make room for the apartments of Lord Richard Cromwell.

  About the same time as the move to Whitehall, Oliver and his family also took possession of another palace belonging to the late King, that of Hampton Court, about twelve miles out of London on the banks of the Thames. It had originally been offered to him by the Barebones Parliament and declined; now he gratefully accepted it. With its pastoral air of relaxation, combined with its accessibility by either coach or river, Hampton Court came to play an increasingly important part in Cromwell’s life, comparable to that of the Buckinghamshire retreat of Chequers in the life of a modern British Prime Minister. As he took to leaving London on Friday and returning thither on Monday, Cromwell came in effect to enjoy something very like the twentieth-century weekend before the practice had anything like the incidence to be labelled as such. It was pleasing for example that Hampton Court was closely adjoining a semiwild park, where he could indulge his favourite sports of hawking and hunting with the buckhounds. For this reason, the Council had to buy back some of the surrounding former royal properties, which had been allowed to slip away for money: immediately after the proclamation, two members were deputed to treat with those who had unwittingly bought the Hare Warren, Parks, Meadows and so forth appertaining to Hampton Court and get them back.8 As a result, Oliver felt no need to make use of other royal properties placed at his disposal to be vested in him and his successors, such as Windsor Castle. He was content with the precise mixture of the rural and the gracious which Hampton Court provided. In the Long Gallery were now hung those great Mantegna tapestries of the Triumphs of Julius Caesar; the bedroom of the Lady Frances was adorned with hangings illustrating the adventures of Meleager, that javelin-thrower who was a favourite subject of mythology. Only the hangings in Oliver’s own bedroom represented perhaps rather an odd choice, for they told the story of
Vulcan, Mars and Venus; although at first sight, Vulcan and Mars might seem appropriate choices for a retired warrior, in fact Vulcan was generally held, mythologically speaking, to be the patron of cuckolds.

  In the formal gardens which encased the rose-red palace, there were placed statues, as well as a green-bronze fountain with figures by Fanelli brazen statues of Venus and Cleopatra, marble ones of Adonis and Apollo. It is however famously difficult to please all sections of the community at the same time. This gesture towards aesthetic values caused much offence in certain rigid quarters, since the statues were demonstrably “all standing naked in the open air”. A good lady named Mrs Mary Nethaway took it upon herself to write to the Protector in protest: “This one thing I desire of you, to demolish these monsters which are set up as ornaments in the Privy Garden . . .”, and she predicted that as long as they remained, the wrath of God was liable to strike the Protector at any minute, just as it had struck Israel in ancient times, to warn them against their groves and altars of idols.9 The statues however remained unmoved, and the Protector, as far as is known, remained unstruck.

  Obviously a Protector who lived on such a scale needed a household, on much the same lines if not quite to the same degree as that previously enjoyed by the King. In March 1654 the Council of State ordered two of its members, Colonel Philip Jones and Walter Strickland to set up a model for the Protectoral “family” as the household was named. ,Ł16,000 a quarter was set aside for its expenses, and Jones was established as Comptroller: he was that Colonel who had stemmed the Welsh rising at St Pagans during the Second Civil War and had first entered the Council of State after the dissolution of the Rump. A trusted member of Cromwell’s entourage (it is thought that Cromwell stood sponsor to his fourth son Oliver), he was thus typical of the kind of man who would now surround the Protector. Later the post of Lord Chamberlain was given to Sir Gilbert Pickering, another of Cromwell’s intimates, and a man described by an angry republican pamphlet as admirably suited to the task because he was “so finical, spruce and like an old courtier”.10 Sir Oliver Fleming, who really was an old courtier, continued in his role as Master of Ceremonies.

  The personal security of the Lord Protector was taken extremely seriously: he was guarded by both a lifeguard and a footguard. The lifeguard received notably high pay – 5s. a day – to indicate its importance. The footguard belonged on the other hand to the household rather than the Army, and were put under the command of Walter Strickland, another good servant of the Commonwealth, who had acted as diplomatic agent in Holland, and amongst other missions had accompanied St John to the Netherlands in 1651; like Jones, he had become a member of the Council of State after the dissolution of the Rump. Under his sway, the footguard presented a suitably discreet yet elegant appearance in grey cloth coats with black velvet collars, with trimmings of silver and black. The lifeguard was taken over from that of the Commander-in-Chief of the Army, originally under Charles Howard, a member of the Council of State, but later put under the command of another member of the extended Cromwellian family circle – Richard Beke, the son-in-law of Oliver’s favourite sister Catherine Whetstone, who during her widowhood lived with Oliver at the Cockpit. Catherine, a gentle and rather dependent character, later married the regicide Colonel John Jones; but the demands of her position and the use to which Royalists tried to put it were shown when she returned in floods of tears from a mission as an intermediary for the Royalist Lady Baker, saying that Oliver was the best brother in all the world and she would do nothing whatsoever to harm him. Indeed, it was gratifying what close relationships Oliver retained with his swarm of sisters, as though he had never quite shaken off his early role as their solitary male guardian. In 1651, at an excruciatingly busy time, he was found sending Ł20 to his unmarried sister Elizabeth “as a small token of my love”;11 Jane of course as Desborough’s wife was part of the inner Puritan circle; the youngest, Robina, married two divines, Peter French, canon of Christ Church and then John Wilkins, both of whom enjoyed Cromwell’s friendship.

  The original intention of all this Protectoral state on which so much care was lavished was to present a picture of authority, rather than of splendour. In this, of course, Cromwell and the Council of State were following the attitudes of the Stuart dynasty, which had developed its kingship so signally by means of many outward symbols, quite as much as in the smaller details of the Court. The point of such visible regality had been well understood by William Duke of Newcastle, before the Civil War, advising the young Prince Charles on the subject:

  What preserves you Kings more than ceremony [he had enquired rhetorically]. The cloth of estates, the distance people are with you, great officers, heralds, drums, trumpeters, rich coaches, rich furniture for horses, guards, marshal’s men making room for his orders to be laboured by their staff of office, and cry ‘now the king comes’, I know these masters, the people sufficiently [he concluded]. Aye, even the wisest, though he knew it and not accustomed to it, shall shake off his wisdom, and shake for fear of it, for this is the mist cast before us, and masters the commonwealth.12

  It was true that the words had changed, and the cry was “now the Protector comes”, but human nature had not changed.

  Cromwell and those about him, in many cases military men, were used to the importance of the outward show of authority, and understood quite as well the need to cast the mist before the public in order to master the Commonwealth. A Quaker described Lady Cromwell as being surrounded by “twenty proud women” while Cromwell himself was engulfed by “at least thirty young fellows, his sons and attendants”. When a deputation from the Corporation of Guildford, for instance, came to be received by the Protector, they were first welcomed most formally by a series of his gentlemen of the household; they were then led by degrees to “where his Highness stood, and some of his heroes, and divers other gentlemen of quality attending on him”. Oliver himself was “in a handsome and somewhat awful posture, fairly pointing towards that which of necessity, for the honour of the English nation, must be showed to him who is their Protector”. In the same way the Council of State, which had been impressed by the solemnity of Oliver’s reception at the town of Exeter, believed that an account of the proceedings could be usefully made into a pamphlet, which “would show men’s affection in such doubtful times”.13

  Cromwell however was not an ostentatious man either by habit or by training. As the authority grew, so did the splendour naturally tend to increase. But the Protector himself viewed all these procedures essentially from the viewpoint of his position as a head of State: did they enhance its lustre? Then they must be carried out. But he had no particular appetite for the enjoyment of the luxurious trivialities which have often innocently pleased men who have acquired rather than inherited the supreme power. Official presence rather than personal extravagance was the keynote of the Protectoral Court. Fletcher described his tastes generally and his diet in particular as “spare not curious … At his private table very rarely, or never, were our French quelque choses suffered by him, or any such modern gustos.”14 The absent-minded dressing of his youth, which had so impressed itself upon the vision of Sir Philip Warwick, gave way to something at least a little tidier, but was never replaced by any kind of passion for gorgeous show in his person, still less a series of glittering uniforms such as have characterized modern dictators. It is difficult to avoid the impression that Cromwell lacked any great visual sense, a combination not incompatible with his deep and abiding love of music, a taste which certainly did characterize the Protectoral Court. For as a man Cromwell sometimes does seem to have been too busy listening to the inner ear to have had much time for employing the outer eye.

  As against his weekly dinners, which he enjoyed giving at Whitehall, for his officers, in order to keep in touch with the opinions of the Army, can be balanced the musical entertainments which equally appealed to another profound side of his nature. It has been mentioned that the Puritans were cruelly wronged in later ages by being accused of being host
ile to music as an art. The very reverse was true: although inimicable to music in the churches, they were marked often by a particular love of domestic music. And the paradoxical but happy result of the abolition of religious music in the period of the Interregnum was the striking development in the secular side to the art.15 The publication of airs and tunes generally for domestic consumption rose sharply via publishers such as John Playford, and composers such as Henry Lawes. It was during this period that the violin enjoyed its first real popularity as an instrument; the fashion arose for solo songs, such as those of Lawes, that amateurs could profitably warble in their own homes rather than the madrigals of an earlier era. Prominent Puritans such as Bunyan and Milton loved music: Lawes had composed the original music for Comus, and as “Harry” was honoured by a sonnet from the poet. Oliver Cromwell was typical of many men of his age in his deep love of English chamber music and songs. Once Protector, it was no longer necessary for him to wander alone in St James’s Park and gatecrash, as it were, the musical parties of others: he could give his own.

  Anecdotes were told of the Protector’s well-known weakness for music and its practitioners. James Quin, who had an excellent strong bass voice, happened to be turned out of his senior student’s place at Christ Church for what were thought to be unsuitable views; fortunately he was heard singing “with great delight” by the Protector. After having “liquor’d him with sack” Oliver observed jovially: “Mr Quin, you have done very well, what shall I do for you?” Quin promptly asked for his student’s place back, and got it. It was Oliver Protector who had the organ of Magdalen College transferred to Hampton Court for his delectation; and he had another organ in London. That in itself should give the lie to the tradition that the Puritans disliked all organs: it was organs in churches to which they objected. Oliver furthermore employed the famous organist John Kingston at ;Ł100 who, among other delights, organized boys to sing his favourite Latin Motets by Deering to the Protector, which he was said to be “very taken with”.16 David Mell, the admired violinist, was also in his employ, and in 1657 when leading musicians, reflecting the surge forward, petitioned for a kind of Corporation or College of Musicians in London, Hingston and Mell were among their number. In February 1657 the Council appointed a Committee for the Advancement of Music; there came to be music at the ambassadorial banquets and later even courtly masks.