Cromwell

by Antonia Fraser

  Fireworks celebrated the signing of the treaty. Amid the gathering clouds of an Anglo-Spanish action, a French alliance which temporarily nullified the dangers of Charles n made good sound sense. Of course it was only to be expected that such an alliance should also have the converse effect of throwing the exiled English King into the arms of Spain. Robbed of French support, in April 1656 the young King signed a treaty by which a Spanish army was to support his restoration, in return for which he would agree to the return of Jamaica, and the exclusion of his subjects from the Spanish domains in the West Indies. And in turn, Charles IIs dependence on Spain, inevitable as it was under the circumstances, gave a further cogency to Cromwell’s friendship with France.

  It was in the spring of 1656 also that Sir William Lockhart of Lee, described by the Protector as “a Scot by nation, of an honourable house, beloved by us, known for his very great fidelity, valour and integrity of character”, was made Ambassador to the Court of Louis xiv. Like so many of the men in whom Cromwell put his trust, he was related by marriage to the Protectoral family circle, having taken as his second wife, Oliver’s orphaned niece Robina Sewster. Earlier he had acted the part of a Scottish Royalist, being knighted by Charles i, and had fought for him at Preston; later a fracas with Argyll and the Commissioners had brought him on to the Commonwealth side. As Cromwell’s description had indicated, Lockhart in France showed himself to be a man of exceptional qualities, whose gift for friendship enabled him to secure the intimacy of Cardinal Mazarin himself, despite the fact that he did not dare write to him direct because of what he called modestly ‘mon mauvais Francais. The second of his five sons by Robina was diplomatically christened Jules or Julius after his great French patron, their eldest son with equal tact being named Cromwell. The role of the envoy of a Protestant republican power in Catholic monarchical France was not always socially enviable in January 1658 the English union was said to be so unpopular in France that Lockhart could not leave his embassy in the hours of daylight, and had to transmit all his business with the Cardinal secretly and “without ceremony” by night. But Lockhart’s presence was a contributing factor to the growth of Anglo-French warmth at least on the level of leadership.32

  It was in the spring of 1657 that their preliminary agreement deepened into a proper political treaty between the two powers; France would contribute twenty thousand men and England six thousand and her fleet. Together they would carry on France’s enduring war against Spain in Spanish Flanders. Furthermore, it was agreed that jointly they would attack three crucial coastal fortresses there, with the aim of capturing Gravelines for France, Dunkirk and Mardyck for England. As a result before Cromwell’s death he was to see not only Mardyck won, but Dunkirk also turned into a British foothold on the Continent. Lockhart struck the right note in the spring of 1657 when in a speech to Louis XIV he declared that “Providence has submitted to two powerful Princes, and has so leagued their interests”.33 The French alliance, the Flemish involvement, with its twin possibilities of hampering Spain and helping on Flemish trade, had the appearance of an excellent practical scheme at the time.

  In the meantime the Spanish War was certainly an easier aspect of his policy to explain to his fellow Englishmen. The manifesto of October 1655 had recounted Spain’s numerous villainies: by September 1656 in a speech to his Parliament from which he was beginning to need money urgently to carry on his war Cromwell sounded a further anti-Spanish note of increasing frenzy, expressed as it was with his usual mixture of repetition, hesitation and ultimate emphasis:34 “Why truly, your great enemy is the Spaniard. He is. He is natural enemy, he is naturally so. He is naturally so, throughout, as I said before, throughout all your enemies, through that enmity that is in him against all that is of God that is in you, or that which may be in you, contrary to that his blindness and darkness, led on by superstition, and the implicitness of his faith in submitting to the See of Rome, acts him unto.” And he went on to quote the Scriptures, referring all to history to show that this “providential and accidental enmity” was somehow part of the English heritage.

  It was in fact in the September of 1656 that the first great triumph of the war, from the English point of view, was destined to occur. On 8 September the Spanish treasure-fleet was destroyed by Captain Richard Stayner, with a loss to Spain of some 600,000 pieces of eight, let alone the ships and cargoes demolished, saluted by Blake and Montagu in a letter to Cromwell as a most remarkable display of God’s Providence. But the most resounding victory was that of Blake in the year following. In April 1657 the ageing Admiral heard that a vast Spanish fleet which had arrived from the Americas, was lying at the port of Santa Cruz, in the island of Teneriffe. Three days later, in an attack of extraordinary rapidity and daring, Blake fell upon the Spaniards and demolished them utterly, in a manner greeted with ecstasy by the English; Cromwell’s method of conveying it was sober, but his words concerning the evident approbation of the Lord must have fallen sweetly on the ears of the man who had been careful to “seek God” by prayer on the eve of the battle. The Protector sent the Admiral his own portrait set in diamonds and gold, and worth over Ł500 as a token of his esteem. By August however the worn-out Blake was dead, to be buried like so many other leaders of the Commonwealth with much pomp in the Henry VH chapel (and like them to be dug up at the Restoration). Worthier than such treatment was the epitaph of Captain Hatsell, who in reporting his passing reflected: “As he lived, so he continued to his death faithful.”

  Blake’s victory represented however the apogee of enthusiasm for Cromwell’s foreign policy so far as his compatriots were concerned. Edmund Waller expressed it all, the joyous crowing over the Spanish enemy, when he wrote of:

  ... Our Protector looking with disdain

  Upon this gilded Majesty of Spain …

  Our Nations solid virtue did oppose

  To the rich Troublers of the Worlds repose …

  The seaworthy Englishmen (“We tread on billows with a steady foot”) were contrasted with the clumsy yet wealthy Spaniards in their “Huge capricious Galleons stuff’d with Plate”. In such sentiments the old picture of the Armada, a contest between tiny heroic English ships and mighty Spanish vessels, was indeed repainted in all its glory. And for all the unpopularity of the war with many merchants, and the growing financial troubles which it provoked inexorably at home for the Protector who had to pay for it, Oliver’s foreign policy did represent to his people as a whole something with which they could identify, and identify with nationalistic pleasure.* ( * Not everyone took the tart line of Lady Cromwell, who was said to have responded to the rising price of oranges and lemons in housewifely fashion by depriving the Protector of his favourite orange sauce with his loin of veal. When he protested at the economy, the Protectress retorted that he should have thought of such matters before he indulged in his Spanish War ...35) Even the idea that the capture of the Spanish fleet would of itself pay for the war was a sound one from the point of view of Oliver’s contemporaries. Although for various reasons the expected bonanza never quite materialized there were many like Oliver himself who could remember the capture of the silver fleet in 1628 by Piet Hein; even the principle would seem a viable one at the time.36

  In every way Oliver Protector as a European figure came to restore to Britain that international prestige which had long been lacking. For one thing, he became extremely famous not only in their councils and their correspondences, but also in the caricatures of their countries. One highly offensive cartoon which showed the two Kings of Spain and France acting in a humiliating menial capacity to the Protector, did at least make the point of his towering reputation. No one in Europe could ignore him. By September 1655 there were said to be no less than thirty-two foreign representatives in London, a vast change from the isolation of the first months of the Commonwealth, when the chief concern of foreign powers had been to buy up the late King’s belongings cheap.

  Not only missions but presents from abroad flowed in the Protector’s direction, for
tunately not all as wilful as the mares despatched by the Duke of Oldenbourg – some Barbary horses sent by the republic of Genoa proved more acceptable. There was a lion and a leopard from the Sultan of Morocco. The state which Oliver maintained towards his Ambassadors was consonant with his picture of England’s greatness: the early teethingtroubles in which the envoys had cavilled at the details of their reception by this uncrowned head gradually gave way to ritualized state, as Cromwell’s reign progressed. Ambassadors approaching would bow three times, once at the entrance to the Protector’s chamber, once mid-way through the hall, and once more on the lower steps of Cromwell’s throne of state. The Protector was wont to acknowledge each bow with a slight nod of his head. At formal dinners, the Protector sat alone on one side of the table while Ambassadors and members of the Council of State sat on the other.

  To a certain extent Cromwell, like any other statesman, was capable of using the appurtenances of his grandeur to confuse when necessary, as well as to impress. Nieupoort, the Dutch envoy (who was in fact one of the two most favoured Ambassadors in London, the other being Bonde the Swede) complained on one occasion of Cromwell’s tenor of conversation: “I cannot interrupt him when he talks,” he wrote, “and he would be annoyed if I asked every time interpretations to the point of his general remarks… I found that he just does not answer questions which he does not wish to.” The Swedish Ambassador too had some harsh words to say about the Protector’s professions of sincerity, which in contrast to such avowals in his own country, did not always mean what they said.

  There were other complaints concerning the diplomatic arrangements of the Protectorate, which it has been suggested sprang more from amateurishness than from deliberate interference with the processes.37 Replies to letters were often heavily delayed, hence the angry remark of King Charles X of Sweden to Bonde on the subject of Milton which sounds so ironic to latterday ears – surely in all England it was strange that there was only one man capable of writing a Latin letter, and he a blind man! Again Cromwell had a singularly irritating habit of giving audiences on Thursday afternoon, too late for the Ambassadors to send their reports abroad in the packet for Europe. His prolonged Hampton Court “weekends” were also a source of some annoyance to those Ambassadors who found themselves thus kicking their heels idly in London as a result, particularly as they were not allowed to receive the English with any freedom, and thus lived as virtual prisoners in their own houses. It was only Nieupoort and Bonde who were honoured to visit Hampton Court. Bonde enjoyed a particularly traditional visit, in which he played bowls, killed a stag in the park, and listened to some music.

  But these pricks, these little annoyances, could not take away from the fact that Oliver in his foreign relationships displayed an amazing range, and was in turn called upon in European disputes or causes as only a naturally imperial figure could be invoked. To the Evangelical cities of Switzerland he wrote early in 1656 over the expulsion of some Protestants in the perennial disputes there between Catholic and Protestant: he was no less anxious for their welfare than if the conflagration had broken out in England itself. That in turn fitted well enough with his anti-Spanish speech to Parliament when he exclaimed: “Yea, all the interests of the Protestants in Germany, Denmark, Helvetia, the Cantons and all the interests in Christendom [are] the same as yours.”

  To an even greater extent it was the more distant approaches which expressed the growth of his reputation. He interested himself in the cause of the Bohemians, calling them Fratres Unitatis, and urging the persecuted Comenius and his colleagues to settle in Ireland in order to abate their sufferings. There was an idea that he should personally help to end the war between the Republic of Venice and the Turks. There was even a mission sent to distant and exotic Russia in February 1655. The original reaction of Russia, which was after all under a monarchical rule in the person of the Tsar, had been to condemn the republican regime. But the Protectoral envoy Prideaux did make his way into the Tsar’s presence, after a traumatic journey with horses and sledges, and although he did not succeed in getting the restoration of commercial privileges for English merchants, the Tsar did neatly solve the problem of address which had so taxed the ingenuity of Cardinal Mazarin and Louis xiv. “How is the good health of Oliver Utaditela?” he enquired, in Russian meaning sole commander or director.38

  An interesting incident linked the Protector’s name to the internecine affairs of mid-seventeenth-century Poland. Oliver’s early interest in the model of the Polish Diet for Parliament and an elective monarchy has been noted; Mercurius Politicus throughout this period shows much interest in Polish affairs. Indeed many felt both then and afterwards that there was a valid comparison to be made between Cromwell and Chmielnicki, the Cossack Hetman of Ukraine who had led an uprising against the Catholic Polish King in 1648. Sometimes Chmielnicki was even named as the “Protector” of the Cossacks; Pierre Chevalier, a French agent in the Ukraine who knew Chmielnicki personally, described him as “a Cromwell, not less daring, not less experienced in politics than the English Cossacks”. Chmielnicki had a Scottish lieutenant Maxim Krovonos (translated: Wrynose) who was even rumoured to be an agent of the Commonwealth.39 By 1655 however, King John Casimir of Poland hoped for Cromwell’s help against a possible invasion by the Tsar, seeing the Protector in his new world role. Nicholas de Bije, the Polish envoy, arrived with credentials correctly, even flatteringly, addressed “To Lord Oliver Cromwell, Protector of England, and our dear friend”. His mission was to suggest that Oliver should invade Archangel himself, in order to divert the Tsar from Poland – an extension indeed of Cromwell’s foreign policy.40

  But as the Venetian Ambassador predicted, the earlier efforts of the Polish King on behalf of the Stuarts were not so easily forgotten. De Bije had to wait some time for an audience, and when he did achieve it, was met with some formidable reproaches from the Protector on precisely that subject, in addition to which the Poles were said to have despoiled Englishmen and Scots living in Poland. When Sweden subsequently attacked Poland, Cromwell was supposed to have gone further and actively kept in touch with the rebel Chmielnicki, urging him on in his efforts to subvert the Polish Crown. An encouraging letter was said to have been written by the Protector to the Cossack, offering an alliance, and saluting Chmielnicki by a series of honorific if emotive titles including “The Destroyer of Papist errors” and “The Scourge of the Popes”. Such a letter in Cromwell’s hand has never been found. It may be that it never existed at all. It may be that it was forged, possibly by Chmielnicki’s energetic head of Chancery Danilo Wyhowski, as a propaganda weapon. It may even be that Cromwell did write such a letter (although there is no record of it on his side) and that it vanished with the general obliteration of Chmielnicki’s archives after his death. But from Cromwell’s point of view the episode certainly illustrates what a part his name was now playing in European affairs. Even if the letter was merely forged by Chmielnicki’s party, it was significant that the effort was thought well worth the making.* ( * The destruction of Chmielnicki’s archives also makes it impossible to state with absolute certainty that the letter did not exist. The source for it is a seventeenth-century Polish history: Annalum Poloniae ab obitu Vladislai IV. climacterprimus. W. Kochowski. Cracow. 1683. In the original Latin, the Poles are said to have intercepted the letter – “si modo nan figmentum erat – if it was not a forgery” – between Cromwell and Chmielnicki. The letter is said to have caused some laughter, not only for the grandeur of the salutations to the Cossack, but also for the notion of an alliance between such faraway peoples, compared by the author to “serving up dishes of food decorated with gold and colourings; while they feast the eyes they in no way satisfy the stomach”. But of course such dishes – and such affiances – do impress onlookers.)

  Such fringe activities all helped to embroider the legend of the Protector’s greatness abroad. In the case of the Scandinavian powers however, those nations abutting the Baltic Sea so crucial to English trade and shipping, Oliver had a mo
re complicated row to hoe. In his relations with Sweden, for example, Protestant (Lutheran) country as it might be, he must not forget the interests of the English Eastland Company, founded seventy years earlier specifically to trade with that Baltic area.41 In turn the importance of the Eastland Company went beyond the mere priorities of a commercial organization: for the supplies from the Baltic were vital to England’s Navy; including Baltic hemp (the best came from Riga), slow-growing fir poles from the hinterland, long planks for ships, Swedish iron for guns. But this commitment plunged him into a highly complicated Baltic world.

  In 1654 the unpredictable Queen Christina, whom Mrs Cromwell had once destined for his bride en deuxieme noces, gave way of her own choice to her cousin King Charles x Gustavus. Whether he understood him correctly or not – for it is possible that being of an older generation, the Protector read into this King too much of the attitudes of his great predecessor who had terrorized all Europe, Gustavus Adolphus-Oliver certainly found in Charles x the type of man he could admire. When he referred to Sweden and England as twin columns upon which European Protestantism could safely rest, he was venting this comforting feeling of being in touch with one who must surely share his own Protestant aims.42 The intimacy of Charles’s ambassador Bonde, the enviable visits to Hampton Court, were paralleled by the terms of friendship which came to exist on paper between Protector and monarch. A nice footnote to history was provided when Charles x even refused to let his brother marry Prince Rupert’s sister, Sophia of the Palatine, first cousin to the exiled English King, because the Stuart connexion might annoy Cromwell. Since this Princess ultimately married the Elector of Hanover to found the new Protestant dynasty on the English throne, it can be argued that the King of Sweden inadvertently debarred a Swedish royal house from England. And before Bonde left England in the summer of 1656, their acquaintanceship was celebrated by the gift of Oliver’s portrait, the size of a crown, in a gold case surrounded by diamonds, as well as four horses and a hundred pieces of white cloth (worth it was said .Ł4,000).