Cromwell

by Antonia Fraser

  Unfortunately this Protestant idol did not reign in a vacuum. Charles’s avid militaristic eyes were from the first fixed on the two hereditary enemies of Sweden, Catholic Poland (to whose throne the Vasas had a family claim) and Denmark, which then still held Norway joined to it. Then there was the Protestant Electorate of Brandenburg, the nucleus of future Prussia, whose position on the northern coast of Germany might be endangered by a Swedish invasion. Two further powers could be expected to line up against Sweden’s projects – the Dutch, the traditional allies of Denmark, who with their own commercial interests in the Baltic, would scarcely permit the Danes to be attacked, let alone swallowed up by Sweden without a struggle, while Catholic Austria would presumably back Catholic Poland against Protestant Sweden.

  Cromwell’s attitude to these roundabouts of alliance and counteralliance was essentially cautious, where something as serious as England’s commercial interests was concerned. In an interview with Johann Friedrich Schlezer, the envoy from the Elector of Brandenburg, in December 1655, for example, Cromwell was begged to mediate between vulnerable Brandenburg and greedy Sweden. But although Oliver was quick to dwell on his desire that all “Evangelical potentates, princes and republics” should live in Christian unity, and suggested that Sweden and Brandenburg should be able to live peaceably together since “all separation, bloodshed and quarrel” should be prevented among fellow Evangelicals, he did not in fact embark on the promised mediation.43

  Throughout his official relationship with King Charles x, his friendly protestations contrasted with the inertia which marked his more positive actions. A flowery letter congratulating Charles on the birth of his heir, which came perhaps from the pen of Milton, compared him to Philip of Macedon, the father of Alexander: as Philip had learned of the birth of his son at the same moment as he had defeated the Illyrians, so Charles had just inflicted a noted defeat on the Poles, and carved away some of their territories, as “a horn dismembered from the head of the beast”.44 Yet such compliments were no substitute for the proper alliance which Charles X came to seek, as his military interests extended, and involved him by degrees into a full-scale war in the Baltic, not only with Poland but also with Denmark. As has been seen, an Anglo-Swedish treaty of 1654 had been negotiated by Whitelocke; in 1656 there was a further expansion of it; but for all the efforts and approaches of Charles, for all Oliver’s pipe-dreams of a Protestant league, no closer connexion was formed between the two countries under the Protector’s guidance. Such a league was indeed debated at length in the spring of 1658 but without result: and the League of the Rhine signed on the eve of Oliver’s death in August 1658 contained sufficient variety of powers including the King of France for it to present a very different identity.

  The real problem of Oliver’s relations with Sweden, as he himself presumably realized in his endless delays in granting King Charles X either an alliance proper or a loan, was the involvement of the Dutch. Like the Swedes, the Dutch were Protestants and Oliver had had his earlier hankerings after that union between the two countries. Alliance with France also tended to bring England closer to the Netherlands, because of Cardinal Mazarin’s favour towards the Dutch. At the same time the commercial interests of the Dutch and English continued to conflict – as the merchants of the Protectorate loudly complained – just as they had done before the Dutch War. Under the circumstances the Protector’s insistence that a clause in the Anglo-Dutch Peace of Westminster prevented him joining totally with Sweden, because it would range him against the Netherlands’ ally of Denmark, was probably the best action in the circumstances.

  Essentially he drew back from committing himself to either side. So English trade in the Baltic was subject to no more pressures than the general turbulence of that area imposed. Even a loan granted to Charles x in early 1657 was only offered with the Duchy of Bremen as a security – a handy depot for English exports. When Charles x offered Oldenburg or East Friesland in lieu of Bremen (neither of which he currently possessed) the negotiations hung fire. By August 1657 Charles was offering the personal acquisition of Oldenburg for Oliver, if only he would ally formally against Denmark. But still Oliver wrote friendly words, and still he did not make an outward decision.

  It was tactics that some of his political admirers or opponents from the vital years of the King’s death might have recognized. Whether unconsciously or not, the Protector was avoiding a decision which was bound to range one power against him. When in September 1657 he sent another envoy to Copenhagen to mediate with the Danes, it should have become clear to Charles x that the Protector’s real intention was to keep the balance in the Baltic. There was a tentative suggestion from Oliver to Charles at the end of the year that Charles should fight Austria while Oliver continued to fight the Spanish at sea at Sweden’s expense – the money to be refunded in three instalments when Parliament met. But that would clearly have done more to solve the Protector’s growing financial difficulties than the strategic problems of the Swedish King. The Peace of Roskilde in February 1658 brought to the Baltic Sound that peace which had long been Cromwell’s hope because it ended the tiresome blockades and tolls of wartime. It arrived without his intervention taking a more active form than an absolute plethora of diplomatic exchanges and manoeuvres. These were inexpensive and uncommitting substitutes for troops.

  It was inevitable that the merchants should complain that commercial interests were not the prime objective of the Protector, since in his prolonged and often tortuous Baltic balancing-act, he was often obliged to give precedence to other considerations.* ( * But see Menna Prestwich, Diplomacy and Trade in the Protectorate for the classic exposition of the view that the Protector did deliberately ignore trade interests for those of Protestantism, to the detriment of his country.) Yet after all the Baltic was one area where an over-exalted view of the necessity of a Protestant League might have led Cromwell to exactly that type of idealistic involvement for which he is often criticized. But it never happened. The Protector niggled, he played for time, he took an acute interest in it all, he made speeches, he interviewed Ambassadors and sent back envoys of his own. But as has been pointed out recently he never allowed the idea of a Protestant League to overcome his native prudence.45

  * * *

  At the Dissolution, John Milton had seen Cromwell as one destined to bring about “the blessed alteration of all Europe”. That, at his death, he had certainly not achieved, if Milton like Cromwell seriously entertained notions of a Protestant League. Stouppe told Bishop Burnet that Cromwell had intended to follow his assumption of the kingship with a grand Protestant design, with a council for the Protestant religion, counsellors and secretaries for the provinces, including France, Switzerland and the Protestant valleys, the Palatinate and the Calvinists, Germany, Scandinavia, even Turkey, England and the West Indies. These secretaries were to receive Ł500 a year to report on the state of religion world-wide, and .Ł10,000 a year was to be held for emergencies – presumably of the Piedmontese nature.46

  Such a design was characteristic of the ideas Cromwell had long mulled over, but it was not altogether ironic that what Cromwell actually achieved by his foreign and colonial policy was something quite different – the newly shining greatness of Britain in the estimation of her neighbours, friends and foes. For he had demonstrated equally in the development of his policies a grasp of the considerations which would make Britain powerful: even if it formed the subject of fewer apocalyptic speeches and utterances. Not only that, but in his pursuit of Britain’s greatness, the Protector achieved for himself popularity and in doing so, helped to ensure the stability of his own narrowly-based regime.

  That this rise in British prestige and authority was popular cannot be doubted from contemporary estimates. A man like Thurloe would be lyrical on the subject: at his death, wrote the Secretary to the Council of State, referring to the successful acquisition of Mardyck and Dunkirk, Oliver “carried the keys of the continent at his girdle, and was able to make invasions thereupon and let in arm
s and forces upon it at his pleasure”. To Marvell, he was the man “who once more joyn’d us to the Continent”. Mercurius Politicus in its official obituary took care to mention him as one whose spirit knew no bounds – “his affection would not be confined at home, but brake forth into foreign parts, where he was good men universally admired as an extraordinary person raised up by God …” It was an image also appreciated abroad: the Duke of Tuscany used to discourse with Sir John Reresby, then in exile, on his home affairs “which were then the miracle, as Cromwell the terror of the whole world”. And as for the English in general, Bishop Burnet undoubtedly judged the temper of them well, albeit from the vantage point of a Scotsman, when he wrote that Cromwell’s “maintaining the honour of the nation in all foreign countries gratified the vanity which is very natural to Englishmen”. If, as Burnet believed, Cromwell declaimed in Council that he would make the name of an Englishman as great as ever that of a Roman had been, then this was an endeavour of which his compatriots would only have approved.47

  Indeed the bogy of Cromwell’s foreign greatness was later to haunt the unfortunate King Charles n. In 1672 he complained that the French were harbouring some of his rebels, which had not been done in the time of the Protectorate. To this the French Ambassador retorted with more truth than flattery “Ha, Sire, that was another matter: Cromwell was a great man and made himself feared by land and by sea.” In vain Charles responded valiantly that he too would make himself feared in his turn as it was pointed out: “He was scarce as good as his word.” About the same time a ridiculous rhyme by Maivell expressed the same awkward truth. It purported to represent a dialogue between the horses bearing the equestrian statues of King Charles I and Charles II at Charing Cross and Wool-church respectively, complaining at the new age of royal favourites:

  De Witt and Cromwell had each a brave soul.

  I freely declare it, I am for Old Noll

  Though his government did a tyrant resemble

  He made England great and his enemies tremble.48

  It was scarcely likely that Oliver, who escaped censure in nothing, would endure an unscathed reputation in later ages in this respect. It was Edmund Ludlow who gave voice to the stock criticism of the French alliance: “this confederacy was dearly purchased on our part; for by it the balance of the two crowns of Spain and France was destroyed, and a foundation laid for the future greatness of the French, to the unspeakable prejudice of all Europe in general, and of this nation in particular, whose interest it had been to that time accounted to maintain equality as near as might be.” Slingsby Bethel in his notorious The World’s Mistake in Oliver Cromwell of 1689 gave the most effective denunciatory picture of his policies, much quoted since. He listed the Spanish War, the French alliance, Oliver’s general ignorance of foreign affairs (“he was not guilty of too much knowledge of them” he wrote sarcastically), the depopulating of England to the colonies, the impoverishment of the nation by continual wars, the lack of firmness in dealing with the Dutch to the disadvantage of English trade, and so forth and so on.

  Both of these views are not only the obvious products of hindsight, but were also written to combat the nostalgia for Oliver’s foreign greatness in the reign of Charles n. Bordeaux, the French Ambassador and an acute observer, wrote a more perceptive analysis of the Protector’s foreign policy in the summer of 1657 because it was written from the standpoint of his own time, and showed therefore what pressures he was then subject to. He designated as the Protector’s perpetual aim the desire to isolate the former English Royal Family, in order to leave them destitute of foreign alliances. He would even have liked the new Holy Roman Emperor to have been something other than an Austrian, to complete this isolation. “His policy is to engage as many states as possible in his preservation,” wrote Bordeaux, “so that there can be no peace which does not include him”.49 In this highly practical aim – for after all it must never be forgotten that Oliver headed a revolutionary regime of no other status than its own strength – he succeeded indeed sufficiently for there to be no immediate Restoration on his death.

  In one respect of course the Protector was highly unsuccessful and Slingsby Bethel spoke no more than the truth. His foreign policy cost money as ambitious policies always do – although he did have Jamaica and Dunkirk to show for it, in contrast to both Charles i and Charles II whose foreign policies were similarly expensive. It might be that his military expeditions abroad solved the problem of his soldiery who might otherwise have exhibited their “peccant humours” at home, as one commentator suggested.50 But these same soldiers still had to be paid. Nor did Oliver ever solve his financial problems, which in consequence still further bedevilled the intricate difficulties of his handling of his Parliaments. The same people who basked in the reflection of his greatness did not enjoy paying the bill for it. But this in itself shows up the perennial difficulty of judging such a protean subject as a foreign policy.

  By what standards should it be judged? If financial, then certainly as Oliver himself pointed out to the Army Council, defending his desire to go to work “in the world”, few such policies would be embarked upon either then or at many other ages in history. To later ages his notions of being a Protestant champion or deliberately promoting Protestant settlement will always ring oddly in the ears of those not reared in the Age of Faith; on the other hand his moves towards European unity will sound sweetly to those today newly leaning in this direction. Both latterday judgements ignore opinions rife in his own age. If the standards of Oliver’s time are taken, it was Edward Hyde himself who wrote that Cromwell’s greatness at home was but a shadow of the glory he had abroad.51 And there is no doubt that to Hyde this was a peerless achievement, in line with the expected aspirations of his people.

  20 Jews and Major-Generals

  / am not come to make any disturbance but only to live with

  my Nation in the fear of the Lord, under the shadow of your

  protection, while we expect with you the hope of Israel to be revealed,

  PETITION OF MENASSEH BEN ISRAEL TO CROMWELL 1655

  The immediate period after the Penruddock rising of the spring of 1655 was marked by an ugly jittery mood on the part of the Government. It was true that the light penalties exacted thereafter in the West Country were to be compared highly favourably by historians and others with those laid down in the same area by Judge Jeffreys thirty years later. Comparatively few men were “barbadazz’d”, as one Royalist intercepted letter described an enforced departure for the West Indies, as opposed to the pathetic Redleg exiles of Monmouth’s rebellion.1 But the feeling albeit inaccurate – that Royalists and Levellers had dangerously coalesced and might do so again persisted. A letter from Oliver Cromwell dated 24 March, two days after the official Thanksgiving for the failure of Penruddock, showed how far the Government was from resting on the laurels of what might be supposed to be their newly established security. To Nicholas Lechmere, a lawyer of Hanley Castle, who had been made militia commissioner for Worcestershire and returned as member for the county in the Parliament of 1654, and to the Justices of Peace in that area, he wrote* ( * Lechmere MSS; not printed in W. C. Abbott) of “the hand of God” which “along with us” had defeated the late rebellious insurrection. It was their hope that through God’s blessing on their labours, an effectual course would be taken for the “total Disappointment of the whole Design. Yet knowing the restlessness of the Common Enemy to involve this Nation in new Calamities we conceive our self and all others who are entrusted with preserving the peace of the Nation obliged to endeavour in their places to prevent and defeat the Enemy’s intention.” With this aim in view, they were specially recommended to keep diligent watches on strangers, not only to suppress “loose and idle persons” but also to enable them to apprehend strangers who might be sent thither to “kindle fires”. By these actions, as by the breaking up of all suspicious meetings and assemblies, it was to be expected that any future dangerous designs “would be frustrated in the Birth or kept from growin
g to maturity”.

  This was the identical mood which led in the same month to the establishment of Desborough as a kind of overlord to the six subversive western counties. In time Desborough’s command proved to be the pilot scheme for a general experiment, mapped out in August 1655, by which England and Wales were divided into sections, or “cantons” as critics angrily described them. By an order of 9 August, finally put into effect in October, ten – later eleven – Major-Generals were given new and unusually full powers in their respective districts. Since the direct genesis of their installation was the trembling nerve of the Government after the effects of Penruddock, the Major-Generals were put in control of the horse militia, forces already set up throughout the country in May, as a reserve to be called up in an emergency, in order to hold down further potential Royalist insurrections. By the autumn, this new type of militia had been transformed into a permanent cavalry troop, able to serve outside its native area if necessary.2 And as men cost money, it was decided that this force should be paid for by those whose anti-social tendencies made its existence necessary. As if a tithe were to be taken from the income of all past and also all potential criminals to pay for the modern police force, categories designated at the discretion of local authorities, a Decimation Tax was imposed to cull ten per cent of the income of all Royalists, and indeed anyone who might vaguely be supposed to favour King Charles n. This tax, of course, directly negated the healing effects of the Act of Oblivion of February 1652 which Oliver had been so personally anxious to see passed. The implementations of this tax, and the handling of the many appeals against it, was put into the hands of the Major-Generals.