Cromwell

by Antonia Fraser

  Nor was it surprising that Cromwell should find support for his foreign and colonial policy from the first in his providentialist philosophy. For God’s purposes, which were tending to become somewhat murky and difficult to discern within England, might shine forth with their old refreshing clarity in actions abroad; as once they had shone forth in Ireland at the end of another time of stress. Cromwell’s Western Design was the first direct manifestation of this new spirit. In essence, it was a project to attack the Spanish possessions in the West Indies, harry them, and hopefully transform them into English (Protestant) colonies. The plan, which had been rumoured for some time, was first discussed in Council at the beginning of June 1654. There was no attempt at this point to envisage the possible consequences in Europe: whether Spain would thus peaceably see her dominions attacked, without retaliating with a war much closer to England. It was not so much that Cromwell shrank from war with Spain as that the two spheres were not felt at this time to be inseparably linked. As Hyde put it, “Oliver himself was for a war with Spain, at least in the West Indies.” This view was not so naive as later generations might suppose, for, as has been recently pointed out,* ( * See Roger Crabtree, The Idea of a Protestant Foreign Policy (Cromwell Association Handbook 1968-9).) Blake’s attack on the French fleet in 1652 had not been followed by war with France in Europe; nor had the English depredations on the French colonies of North America.

  In August, proceeding boldly on this course, Cromwell summoned the Spanish Ambassador and told him that England could only remain on friendly terms with Spain on certain conditions: all Englishmen within the Spanish-held territories were to be granted freedom of conscience in the practice of their religion, and what was more, the free right to trade in the West Indies. In view of the fact that the Western Design had already been projected, these extremely wide demands must be interpreted more as pieces of deliberate provocation than as serious suggestions. They were certainly quite outside the context of anything the Spanish King could have reasonably been expected to concede. The reply of the Ambassador “to ask for these concessions was to demand of his Master his two eyes” may have been histrionic, but it contained some truth.

  So the preparations for the Western Design continued, but generally speaking in secret; as one Scottish soldier involved wrote, if he suspected his shirt knew of the plans, he would be compelled to burn it.2 Undoubtedly English merchants did suffer in the Spanish Main elsewhere, English shipping was sometimes attacked, and freedom of conscience was not granted within the Catholic dominions. These were perennial complaints but they were to receive new force. It was significant that part of the preparations for the Western Design was to gather together propaganda material of previous Spanish iniquities, including the Spanish raid from Cartagena in 1641, and Captain Jackson’s voyage of reprisal in 1642, well known to Cromwell, who had sat on committees of Colonial Affairs. The list of grievances eventually assembled stretched back in the end as far as 1603.

  So far there might be some substance in the accusation that the Western Design was a purely anachronistic Elizabethan-style expedition, based on ancient anti-Spanish feelings to produce commercial profits. There was however a peculiarly seventeenth-century flavour given to it first by the personality of Cromwell himself, who however much he tried to draw on the helpful memory of Queen Elizabeth, “the great Deborah”, was as far away in himself from echoing the character of this remarkable sovereign as ever a mortal could be. Of course Cromwell was much influenced by the notion of a Protestant Empire as handed down by a previous age had not his favourite Raleigh’s History of the World, which he had much commended to Dick, advocated an English empire not only to rob but to replace that of the Spaniards? But Oliver’s high-handed attitude to such colonies was peculiarly of his own time; and the belief that the inhabitants could be marched about in accordance with God’s dictates, interpreted from England by remote control as it were, with a little application to the sphere in Whitehall, was one very much his own. To come about, the whole Western Design needed the backing of a theology in which a triumphant military expedition signified God’s favour and conversely, such a triumph could be reliably expected, if God’s favour was already assured.

  As preparations for the expedition proceeded, a debate in the Army Council provided further proof of Oliver’s own inspirational zest for it all. Lambert put forward a number of arguments against the Design, including the telling suggestion that affairs at home, such as the much-needed legal reforms, or for that matter affairs in Ireland, should be settled first. To this Oliver replied by affirming the exact contrary: God had brought them to their present position, he said, “to consider the work we may do in the world as well as at home”. He added rather magnificently (an argument which does as well as any other to defend his right to an expensive foreign policy): “To stay away from attempting until you have superfluity is to put it off for ever, our expenses being such as will in probability never admit that.”3

  Many contemporaries bore witness to the sincerity of Oliver’s zeal for it all: his physician Dr Bate from a hostile point of view wrote later of his “boastful enthusiasm”. They also, interestingly enough, agreed in designating as one of the prime animators of this enthusiasm, a former Dominican priest named Thomas Gage. Of his influence, Whitelocke, Ludlow and later Burnet all gave testimony, Ludlow calling him “a principal adviser of this undertaking”.4 Once again, the presence of Gage points to the strong element of a religious crusade which existed in the expedition, since Gage was one of that most vicious category of propagandists, the renegade who attacks the faith he has deserted with the benefit of much inside information with which to back his cause. A member of an old English Catholic family, one of whose members had been implicated in the Babington Plot, and with three brothers as priests, Gage had spent some years as a Dominican in the West Indies and Central America. Here he had had ample opportunity of observing first hand the behaviour of the Spanish missionaries. Some time before 1640, however, when he returned to England for good, he had apostatized; he also subsequently married. It was as a Protestant then that in 1648 Gage published his famous book The English-American: a New Survey of the West Indies, which became a best-seller and impressed Cromwell sufficiently to have him cause a new edition to be brought out in 1653.

  Gage’s mission was simple: it was to “strengthen the perusers of this small volume against Popish superstition whether in England, or in parts of Europe, Asia or America”.5 With this aim in view, he further described himself as a Joseph appointed by God to discover the treasures of Egypt, only in this case the treasures were the iniquities of the Spanish friars in New Spain and Central America. There were such stock objects of Protestant attack as the issue of indulgences from the Pope “wherewith we began to blind that simple people with ignorant, erroneous and Popish principles”. The corruption and wealth of the Mexican priests were generally indicted, the Franciscans being described as “wretched imps” not only for ignoring their vows of poverty but for wearing such unsuitable pieces of finery as orange silk stockings, and lace-trimmed drawers, while they diced, gamed generally, and swore oaths. As for the Franciscan boast to have taught the local children to dance to the guitar Spanish fashion “capering … with their castanets or knockers on their fingers”, surely the friars would have been better employed singing in the choir.

  Vivid journalist as he might be and ardent campaigner for his newly acquired Protestant cause, Thomas Gage was unfortunately also guilty of seriously misleading the Protector in his analysis of the Spanish situation in the West Indies and Central America. For it was Gage to whom Cromwell applied in 1654 for a report on conditions there, and it was Gage who assured Cromwell that the Spaniards were weak enough as to collapse with the minimum assault. Gage believed that once Hispaniola and Cuba were taken (for which he did not anticipate much difficulty) the conquest of the whole of Central America would follow within two years. Cromwell’s other adviser, on whom he relied for local analyses, was a lawyer from Barbad
os, Thomas Modyford; with much greater appreciation of the difficulties involved, Modyford advocated the capture of Trinidad, lying so close to the coast of South America, and then moving on to the mouth of the Orinoco. Because Trinidad lay to the windward of the other Spanish territories there, Modyford calculated that it would have needed an expedition from Europe on the part of the Spaniards to recapture it.

  But this – on the face of it – sensible plan was ignored. In fact the Council of State, in its instructions to the commanders, left the precise location of the first attack undecided: not only Hispaniola (the island today occupied jointly by Haiti and the Dominican Republic) but Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Spanish Main were named as possible areas of attack. It was the general aim which was underlined: to “gain an interest in that part of the West Indies in [belonging to] the Spaniard”.6

  Thus in August 1654 arrangements for the expedition were put in charge of a committee, to include merchants and sea captains, who were expected to provide knowledge of West Indian conditions, and with Desborough in overall control. So far the tenor of the expedition had much resembled that mounted for Ireland five years earlier. But it was at this point that the two projects sharply parted company: for it was exactly the laborious care over the details of the Irish campaign, occupying so much of Cromwell’s time in the months leading up to it, which was now to be so signally missing from the preparations for the Western Design. Now this relentless scrutiny was absent (Cromwell was too busy acting the Prince, explained one of his more favourable biographers) and the success too would be curtailed as a result. Perhaps the single most important failure was over the sheer quality of the men garnered; what a contrast was now seen to the high standards by which the men of the New Model Army had been picked. The majority of the soldiers, wrote one of their own number graphically, were a gang of “common cheats, thieves, cutpurses and such like persons” who had been busy making “a fair progress unto Newgate from whence they were to proceed towards Tyburn” until rerouted unexpectedly to the West Indies.7 The truth was that commanders in England had responded to the call for men by weeding out all the dregs of their outfits, grateful for the chance to get rid of them. In the context, the fresh influx of troops expected at the staging-post of Barbados and St Christopher assumed additional importance.

  It was left to Mrs Venables, wife of the General in command of the expedition, in her bitter autobiography, to point the contrast between these scoundrels and Cromwell’s russet-coated captains. “The success was ill,” she wrote: “for the work of God was not like to be done by the devil’s instruments.” Not only was it a wicked army, added Mrs Venables, but it was also sent over without arms or provisions. She might have added that the arrangements for paying the men, which had so obsessed Cromwell before Ireland, were on this occasion inefficient. The earliest Colonial Entry Book for the new acquisition of Jamaica was filled with petitions for arrears, including those of the widows and other dependants of the dead (and unpaid).8

  The situation with regard to provisions was particularly badly handled, for which Desborough must bear some responsibility. In the absence of proper supplies shipped from England, once again the stop-over at Barbados, where it was hoped that more food could be taken on, became critical. And then in the actual embarkation itself, such matters were compounded by the inefficiency of the process. Haste led to little or no mustering and drilling of the men. Officers and men became separated, as a result of which the ordinary soldiers became prey to fears that far from arriving in the West Indies as conquerors, they were to be sold treacherously to foreign princes as slaves. The camp-followers proved a further problem. It is true they acted as nurses, as Mrs Venables pointed out, and if colonization was intended it could hardly take place without women. But at the time, although it is possible to sympathize with the pathetic petition of Mary Hope, wife of a Major in Colonel Holdip’s regiment, which had sailed to the West Indies without her, leaving her parted from all her clothes (“she is like to perish through want”)9, such gallant females did add further to the confusion.

  Even so, it is possible that these manifold disadvantages might not have emerged quite so hideously into the open, had not the Council of State chosen to crown it all with the most glaring weakness that any expedition could have, a divided and equal command. Robert Venables as General and William Penn as Admiral were neither of them to be subject to each other, and such care was taken to express this balance, that of the two documents giving the command, Penn was named first in one, Venables in the other. The main result of this parity was of course to be a history of recriminations and counter-recriminations of unexampled unpleasantness in the military annals of the Commonwealth. Both men were at least on paper suitable for the task; Venables had been with Cromwell in Ireland, joining Coote in the north after the storming of Drogheda; he had not returned to England until May 1654. William Penn, father of the Quaker founder of Pennsylvania, was at thirty-three about ten years younger than Venables, an experienced sailor in the service of the Commonwealth, who had become Blake’s Vice-Admiral in 1652, and had acted with courage and quickness at the battle of the Downs. However he had recently made overtures to King Charles offering his own services and those of his ships. This move was clearly unknown to the Council when it appointed him Admiral in charge of the fleet for the Americas in October, and since the King merely bade him await a more propitious moment, it was not strictly relevant to the expedition.

  Nevertheless the contrast between Penn, the professional sailor who did not regard himself as committed to any particular regime, and Venables, the more emotional supporter of the new order, was not likely to lead to accord between them in a situation already exacerbated by the rival claims of naval and military arms. A letter of Oliver’s in advance of the expedition indicates that all was not well between the two commanders even before they sailed. Referring to Penn’s “little dissatisfaction”, he was already attempting to soothe him: “You have your own command full and entire to yourself, nothing interfering with it, nor in the least lessening you.”10

  There were also to be two civilian commissioners, Edward Winslow and Gregory Butler. Winslow was an interesting man, now approaching sixty, who had sailed in the Mayflower over thirty years before, had become Governor of New Plymouth, and after returning to England had acted as a commissioner for the compounding of delinquents. Cromwell, with his acute interest in New England and the southern colonies, chose Winslow deliberately as his agent: he was to make him “understand all things as fully as if he (the Protector) had been here”. Butler from Barbados proved a less happy choice. Although he had originally served as a soldier under Essex before emigrating, he was subsequently described as “the unfittest man for a commissioner I ever knew employed”, a charge to which his irresponsible behaviour in deserting his post gave some substance.11

  So the ill-fated expedition set off in December 1654. In a felicitous phrase, Cromwell had wished Penn “happy gales and prosperous success to the great enterprise you have in hand”.12 In the event, only the first piece of good fortune was enjoyed by the Admiral. For the first stage of the journey, the two thousand five hundred mile trip to Barbados was accomplished without mishap, even Venables and Penn as Winslow testified afterwards, being “sweet and hopeful”. The enthusiasm of Mercurius Politkus for the future of the fleet and army, as it sailed happily towards Barbados, “this Island, the richest spot of Earth in the Universe” merely reflected the general satisfaction of Protector and Council at a great project well initiated.13 Unfortunately the contact of the English newcomers with Barbados provided in itself a microcosm of that English inability, so marked at this period, to understand or estimate any of the probable reactions of its settlers or colonists.

  It has been seen that Barbadan participation, both with troops and supplies, was a central plank of the expedition. Searle, the Governor of the island, had been named jointly with Venables, Penn, Winslow and Butler in the Council’s commission of 9 December. But by the end of February, a le
tter back to England from Venables expressed vividly his disillusionment: “All the promises made us in England of men, provisions and arms, we find to be but promises,” he wrote. It turned out that the Barbadan settlers had absolutely no wish either to upstake themselves and sally towards another unknown island, nor for that matter to part with their own employees, whether valuable slaves or indentured men. Recruiting was extremely difficult, a few employers reluctantly allowing those men to go who had only a few months to serve. Governor Searle did not himself sail along with the expedition. Somehow men were levied, and their command given to a planter Colonel Harris, but at the last moment he refused to go unless his debts were paid (and they were not paid). The truth was that Barbados was simply not the placid and compliant island envisaged by the Council of State in its orders to make it a convenient staging-post.