Cromwell

by Antonia Fraser

  These essentially placatory words – the letter ended “wherefore leaving the business wholly to your Lordships dispose” – were met with an equally propitiatory reply on 28 June in which Bridgwater’s main regret seemed to be that the debts of his brother-in-law William Courteen, for whom his father had unfortunately engaged, and who had become bankrupt over the Dutch East India Company, were preventing him leaving his home to petition the Protector personally. Little had he realized the problems surrounding his presentation of Bernard, believing him “acceptable to both your Highness and the parish”. How difficult it was for him now to revoke the gift, even to show “that willing obedience which I am always ready to perform and desire to express towards your Highness”. Even so, he would accept another candidate, so long as the Protector did not insist on the insufferable Porter, whose bearing towards Bridgwater had throughout been intolerable, and whose choice would result in dreadful divisions within the parish itself.14 But in the event, Bridgwater did not have to endure either Porter or another imposed choice. On the contrary, on 23 August Oliver made an order cancelling his first initiative in the shape of Porter, and confirming Bridgwater’s own right of presentation.15 So this storm in a Shropshire clerical tea-cup ended with the Protectoral support firmly on the side of the old order and old privileges of the nobility.

  Yet one of the planks of Porter’s platform had been that the sequestration of Bridgwater’s estate had robbed him of the right of presentation. In fact, over the circumstances of this sequestration, which were the subject of some argument between Bridgwater and the local authorities as represented later by the Major-General Worsley, Oliver continued to take the side of conciliation – which was in effect the side of Bridgwater’s claim. There had been a complaint that the Bridgwater estates had never been properly sequestered despite the Earl’s Royalist affiliations for which Bridgwater was duly summoned by the Lancashire Commissioners.16 To this Bridgwater replied with a petition to the Protector “as the Fountain of all Justice in this Commonwealth” to give him “such gracious relief y that he might be freed from the supposed contempt”.17 Oliver with an order staying the Commissioners and Worsley from further execution for the time being.18 The Commissioners duly protested, possibly influenced by local politics:19 Worsley came of a family, Worsleys of Booth, already known to be hostile to the Bridgwater Egertons. But on 22 March 1656 a letter came to the Commissioners written to His Highness’s command by Oliver’s secretary William Malyn supporting the general innocence of Bridgwater, who should never after all have been a candidate for seizure. In short there had been a mistake, and it was the Protector’s pleasure that the Earl’s estate should be freed. The whole incident was best summed up in the concluding words of this communication: “His Highness desires to be tender where Innocency appears.”20

  There were however those in England to whom no gestures of reconciliation would ever alter the inexorable fact of Oliver Cromwell’s usurpation. For them no relaxation of regulations, no policy of withdrawal was temperamentally possible. One Anglican bishop Brian Duppa wrote of himself during this period as being secured “the same as a tortoise doth, by not going out of my shell”. But not all former Royalists – Anglicans or Catholics – could emulate the action of the tortoise. Although the precise moment of inception is in doubt, by 1654 a society for organized Royalist resistance known as the Sealed Knot* ( * he name adopted by a flourishing modern society, founded by Brigadier Peter Young, for recreating the battles of the Civil War. Unlike its seventeenth-century prototype, the modern Sealed Knot admits of Roundheads as well as Cavaliers and has nothing to hide.) was already in existence in its early stages. The original six leaders, Lords Belasyse and Loughborough, Sir William Compton, Colonels John Russell and Edward Villiers and Sir Richard Willys joined during the course of this year. But although all were men of good family, and Belasyse at least was a Catholic, it was noticeable that there was no really great magnate amongst their number: such men had far too much at stake in preserving their estates to abandon their own tortoise-like pose until the movement should have a real hope of success. As a result the Sealed Knot was characterized by a certain inanition in its early stages, an attempted rising of February 1654 being abandoned, which meant that rival plotters grew up beneath its branches, complicating the undergrowth of Royalist intrigue still further.21

  The first concerted attempt to upset the Government was planned for May 1654, led by John Gerard, a former Royalist Colonel and not in fact one of the Sealed Knot’s members. It aimed certainly at that area where the new Government was most vulnerable – the life of the Protector. At all times during the Protectorate indeed, Oliver must be regarded as subject to this constant threat. As with all controversial heads of State including tyrants and dictators, the wonder must be that it never succeeded. Even the stately procession made by Protector and Council of State in February 1654 to the City of London had been marred by such an attempt on the part of a Miss Granville. There had been much panoply: Oliver himself wore a “musk-coloured” (reddish-brown) suit richly embroidered in gold, the church-bells of St Giles, Cripplegate were rung (the only mention of such an acclaim throughout the Interregnum), the streets railed off in blue cloth and decorated with great flags and streamers bearing the names of City companies. At Temple Bar he was met by the Lord Mayor and Aldermen, sitting on horseback in their robes; Oliver himself then alighted from his coach and mounted a horse. At the subsequent banquet “Lord Henry Cromwell” as he was now termed, sat on his father’s left.22 All precautions could not prevent an untoward incident on the return. A brick-bat was hurled at the Protectoral coach.

  That was a crude enough assault. The problem was the attempts of those armed with more lethal weapons. Part of the protection which surrounded Oliver and preserved him, at any rate in the early years, was indeed the uncertainty of the Royalists as to what sort of situation his death would provoke. So long as there were signs of easement thanks to his usurpation, it might be unwise to exchange one bearable fate for a worse. Assassination was only a tempting weapon when Royalists could be convinced that Oliver’s death would result in Charles’s return; quite apart from the fact that Charles himself seems to have had ambivalent feelings on the subject of slaying, this restoration was by no means certain to follow in 1654. Nevertheless it was now plotted that Oliver should be seized by a company of thirty men, headed by Gerard, as he travelled between Whitehall and Hampton Court. Unfortunately for the Royalists, the plan was quickly and circumspectly terminated by the ever-efficient Thurloe, whose talent for surveillance extended to the penetration of as many such enterprises as he could manage. In this case, it was all over so quickly, that one suspects some Government foreknowledge, to say nothing of the fact that Oliver changed his route to water at the last moment, foiling the original arrangement.

  On Saturday, 19 May Lambert was writing off from London to a connexion of his wife’s family in Yorkshire, John Bright, on the subject: “We have assurances of a very bloody attempt to have been acted upon the Lord Protector, but I hope the neck of it is broken …” Yet the conspirators were not arrested till the next day, and the Council itself had only been informed two days previously.23 Although it is going too far to accuse Cromwell of actually instigating the plot, there is a compromise possibility – that the plot had been allowed to proceed, in order that the desired effect should be produced of popular disgust with the assassins, and renewed affection towards the Protector. It was a ploy well understood by Elizabethans such as Walsingham, and one which any Government faced with similar problems might profitably copy.

  The penalties were public but not particularly widespread. There was a trial, and of the conspirators three were transported, and two executed. John Gerard died on 10 July, his behaviour to the last, said Mercurius Politicus, being “sprightly” and the substance of the last discourse permitted to him to make before death “Cavalier-like”. But there were certain side effects. For one thing, an absurd fellow named the Baron de Baas despatched by
Cardinal Mazarin from France to aid Bordeaux in his diplomatic negotiations, had somehow managed to get himself implicated in Gerard’s plans. Baas had arrived in January and taken part in a few cordial conversations with the Protector in Latin, before each side relapsed into their own tongue. His status caused difficulties from the first, for Bordeaux was still intended to act as Ambassador, while Baas was merely a personal envoy; yet Baas, like Bordeaux, demanded the right to be covered in the Protector’s presence. A battle of protocol ensued, which Bordeaux sarcastically termed ‘cet important chapitre de chapeaux’. But Baas was a Gascon, and like his brother Charles who adopted their mother’s name of D’Artagnan to become the prototype of Dumas’ celebrated musketeer hero, had the qualities of brashness and over-confidence which were seen to better advantage in the pages of a historical novel, than in delicate diplomatic intrigues. Betraying but little understanding of the country in which he now found himself, he decided that the regime could be easily overthrown, on the grounds that the soldiers who supported it were feeble and dissipated: in proof of which was the fact that the very sentinels wore nightcaps under their hats.24

  But Baas could hardly hope that his overtures towards conspiracy would remain undiscovered. His contacts were blown. Cromwell, no longer smiling and friendly, gave the indiscreet envoy three days to get out, but not before he had also provided him with a grim demonstration of the imprudence of meddling in the internal concerns of a foreign land. For the Protector sent for Baas and in front of the Council, asked him outright whether the assassination of his person, the uprising of his people, and the sowing of divisions in his Army, all of which Baas was known to want to bring about, were his idea solely or the profound aspirations of the French Government. Baas unwisely counter-attacked with accusations concerning Oliver’s dealings with the Spaniards, jealousy of France for Spain playing already a major part in the Anglo-French discussions in progress. This put the Protector into an absolute fury. He demanded not only Baas’s ejection, but his further punishment by the Cardinal. It was only by degrees that the enraged Protector calmed down and allowed himself to be convinced, whether accurately or otherwise, for the sake of future relations, that King and Cardinal had been quite ignorant of their envoy’s pursuits.

  Yet in May, after peace with the Dutch had at last been achieved on terms suitable to both countries, Oliver had been genuinely anxious to discuss French terms. Medals were struck at Amsterdam to commemorate this Anglo-Dutch treaty, known as the Peace of Westminster. On the one side they displayed the twin female allegorical figures of England (with the Irish Harp on her knees) and Holland (with the Belgic lion at her feet). The reverse showed two large warships side by side at sea with the optimistic inscription in Latin: “Commerce, tranquillized by the double alliance, nourishes on the sea, and the whole world receives the allies with pleasure.” There were bonfires and city ceremonies in England, and much hospitality dispensed by the Dutch. This peace certainly established England anew in European minds as a power to be treated with careful reckoning in the future. It also left Oliver’s ever-questing mind free to consider more plans for further European adventure; typically, when in the midst of exchanging papers with the Dutch Ambassador, he had pointed to a copy of a Psalm and commented: “We have exchanged many Papers, but I think this is the best of them.”25 To Baas, before his disgrace, he had raised his own particular interests which might be considered in a future French alliance, including liberties for Huguenots and the position of the Prince de Conde (a sympathy which Baas failed to comprehend).

  Future negotiations were put back into the more skilled hands of Bordeaux, a man whose feeling for the country of his mission extended to adding an English mistress “Marie Skipbourg” (probably Mary Skippon), by whom he had an illegitimate daughter Berenice, to those attachments already noted by Saint-Simon. Nor did Bordeaux display any of the linguistic superiority to her sometimes associated with the French, for when writing to his Mary he apologized for not being” more learned in this English tongue”. His subsequent assurance, that neither public nor private affairs nor indeed the views of his own wife would alter his “inclination” towards her, was however perhps carrying the obligations of an AngloFrench entente rather too far. Bordeaux also had money troubles. At the start of his mission, his wealthy father had refused him either a subsidy or his blessing. To this Bordeaux replied sharply that he might at least have spared him his blessing, since it would need a stronger faith than his own to convert it into money.26 But for all such problems, Bordeaux continued to play an important mediatory role.

  The brouhaha produced by Baas’s implication was a minor effect of the first open Sealed Knot activity and time would show it to be remediable. The problems brought to the organization itself by the collapse of the conspiracy were of more serious consequence. There was a split in the very heart of the Sealed Knot between Belasyse and Willys, for Willys believed that Belasyse had been responsible for betraying him to Lambert. Then there were the natural jealousies which existed between the old guard of royal retainers living on the Continent, and those who considered themselves to bear the brunt of affairs living in beleaguered England. To these complications was added the further division which now sprang up between those who wanted action at all costs, if necessary bringing in other disaffected groups such as the Presbyterians and some former Army officers, and those who wanted to wait until the atmosphere was more favourable, which meant in essence waiting on the possibility of Continental aid. In the event it was the activist party which was to take the stage early in the following year, but the character of their efforts was to be much debilitated by these divisions already sown in the general Royalist structure of resistance.

  * * *

  Not only England, but Ireland also needed a new future mapped out for her. There were two aspects to this. One was of unity: a total union of the two countries was conceived, the Irish Parliament being abolished in favour of Irish MPs at Westminster, as had already been seen in the Barebones assembly, and was to be further extended in the first Parliament of the Protectorate. There were to be no customs barriers between the two countries, a provision of much commercial benefit to the Irish. Unfortunately the other aspect was of disunity, of separation, and a vast changeover in the ownership of Irish acres, in the course of which it has been estimated that two-thirds of the land in Ireland changed hands for ever. It was this second transaction, which under the name of the Cromwellian Settlement, has of course characterized the rule of the Protectorate in Ireland. In September 1653 a new Act of Plantation was passed by which the English Government intended to reserve for itself Dublin, Cork, and the lands of fertile Kildare and Carlow; this area was for satisfying its own debts and meeting the claims of English Parliamentary notables. English towns were also given corporate grants and land, as the town of Gloucester received a grant, to assuage it for its sufferings in the cause of Parliament.27 Then there was the -Ł360,000 now owing to the Adventurers to be met, and to this was apportioned the lands of Leinster, Munster and Ulster. Most of the rest of Ireland was given over to the officers and soldiers of the English Army to satisfy arrears of pay which now amounted to over one and a half million pounds, and other Commonwealth debts incurred over supplies. Lastly, the two barren provinces of Clare and Connaught, whose population geographically speaking it was possible to contain easily by the retention of a narrow English strip, were to be reserved for the native Irish.28

  In this manner it was intended that Ireland for the future should consist of three types of area: the eastern quarter of Wicklow, Wexford, Kildare and Carlow was devised as totally English, with the whole of the Irish population removed, men, women, workers, down to the humblest Irish child. Nor were any Irish to be allowed in any of the towns. Then there was to be a mixed area of English and Irish – those Irish that is who could prove their right to stay, and even here there were to be no galling Irish names in the schools, no Dermots, no Macs or Os as prefixes. In Clare and Connaught of course, the third area, these p
refixes could flourish at will. Obviously such a course presupposed a major transfer of virtually a whole population. In fact such a process of wholesale transplantation had already been envisaged by an Act of August 1652 which condemned all those Irish, or indeed Anglo-Irish, who could not prove a state of mind towards the forces of Parliament termed “Constant Good Affection”, to lose one-third of their estates, and have the remaining two-thirds of them accorded in the newly designated areas of transplantation. This was quite apart from the heavier punishments including confiscation of two-thirds of the estates belonging to those who had actually fought against Parliament. But the problem with this ominous term of “Constant Good Affection” was that positive proof had to be given of what was essentially a negative process. It was also unfairly difficult for a landowner or peasant to prove Constant Good Affection to English rule in a country so torn by faction as Ireland had been for the last ten years, since it had undergone such a remarkable quantity of changes in alliance and leadership.

  Guilt could also be acquired by association. An innocent man – innocent that is of anything save a desire to live at peace – might well have inhabited a town which had temporarily declared against the forces of the English Parliament. That would make him irremediably guilty, according to the Act, and subject to removal. In this way for example the inhabitants of Kinsale were deemed to have forfeited their claim of Constant Good Affection, although the town had been an English garrison for eight years, just because briefly in 1648 they had paid the taxes of Lord Inchiquin. The Cork garrison which had actually flung off its masters to go over to Cromwell’s side in 1649 would not have been counted as having shown Constant Good Affection, had not a special Act of Indemnity been passed on their behalf at Cromwell’s personal instigation. As a result unfortunate people who considered themselves positively English in their loyalties suffered along with those of a more stubbornly Celtic frame of mind. Lady Dunsany was turned out of her castle in Meath, for all the heroic words of her husband in 1641 that he would rather die a loyal subject of England, than live “in the quiet possession of all the north of Ireland”. A man like Lord Roche of Fermoy, with his young daughters, was reduced to utter beggary.