Cromwell

by Antonia Fraser

  Portents of what might have been done, even to Cromwell’s genealogy, were to be seen in the treatment of his figure as Lord Protector in the twelve months left to him before his death. It was in only 1658 that Thomas Pugh produced his British and Outlandish Prophecies to prove “his Highness’ lineal Descent from the ancient Princes of Britain clearly manifesting that He is the Conqueror they so long prophesied of…” These prophecies, said to be formerly insufficiently understood in English (of the type previsouly applied to another Welsh conqueror Henry vn) were now interpreted to discover in Cromwell, with the aid of a long family tree, the “Branch” who would defeat the wicked Mould Warp, a legendary figure of sinister import here interpreted as Charles I (a role previously played by Richard III), and then proceed to “conquer England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland, shake the anti-christ of Rome, and the Kingdoms of Europe, and force them to a peaceable Association”. In this context it was noticeable that upon Cromwell’s death another Welsh enthusiast not only composed a number of anagrams out of the late Protector’s name (Rule welcom Roy was a typical English example and in Welsh Y Lieu Mor Cower meaning The Lyon is True) but also gave the names of his family a similar treatment, as the lesser royalities they had undoubtedly in a sense become. Thus Elizabeth Cromwell was turned into Be Comlier with Zeal, Bettie into A Holily Blest Peece and Mary Go main careful bride.47 These Welsh-based fantasies of course did not even begin to make use of the other useful myth of Cromwell’s descent from the Stuarts.

  It is not then to be over-cynical to suppose that these problems might conceivably have been overcome had Cromwell accepted the kingship, had he lived longer, and above all had he been endowed with the ultimate good fortune of any man seeking to found a hereditary monarchy, a brilliant forceful and stable eldest son. Even ten years of kingship, ten years in which Charles n might have eaten his heart out in frustration in exile, his youthful energies dissipating while his debaucheries increased in idleness, might have changed the whole course of English history. As it was Cromwell had rejected the mystique of kingship, an aura which would henceforward work against him and his descendants, as it might have worked for them. This very rejection, accomplished in a manner so characteristic of the whole man throughout his career, sprang from elements which in turn had their deepest roots in his being. The kingship was not the “lodestar” of his existence as Sir Roger L’Estrange thought; if so, he would certainly have taken it and gambled on holding down his officers. But there was another brighter star in his sky, in the shape of what he himself worked out to be right. John Milton was one who had much studied Cromwell in his lifetime, and in his preoccupation with heroes from Satan and Samson Agonistes finally turned to write of the great Christian hero of Paradise Regained after his death.48 This was the true heroism in Milton’s view, the conquest of self: Christ rejecting Satan’s Kingdoms of the world, had turned away from public honour; yet at the same moment by conquering himself, he conquered all things.

  For what is glory but the blaze of fame,

  The peoples praise, if always praise unmixt? . . .

  Cromwell in his rejection of the crown would have agreed with that.

  22 Old Oliver, new ideas

  New hands shall learn to work, forget to steal

  New legs shall go to Church, new knees shall kneel.

  POEM ON THE RECLAMATION OF THE FENS

  In the summer of 1657 “old Oliver” as he was now often termed by friends as well as enemies, was compelled to bow his head further before the combined onslaughts of age and ill-health. His signature – OLIVER p - on both official documents and private letters began to look positively shaky in marked contrast to the firm letters of a year or two back. Much of August was spent at salubrious Hampton Court seeking recovery; there were some medicinal waters not far distant which were held to be beneficial to a series of painful catarrhs from which he had recently been suffering. The connexion between his new weakness and his recent experiences was the subject of contemporary comment: this Samson was gradually losing his strength and “surely he hath not wanted Delilahs to deprive him of it” – meaning the Army officers. A letter of Richard Cromwell’s in June expressed a mood of depression: “the Publique Peace is tumbled and tossed as if it were nothing to break the veins of one another to a deadly gasping … wisdom hath tooken the wings of the morning and I fear left us.‘1 The grandeur of the new Protectoral Investiture could not cloak over altogether the plain facts of a situation in which attempts at a more satisfactory constitutional settlement had failed. The nation was now ruled precariously by the authority of one ageing and none too robust man.

  Yet for all the perfume of sadness which haunted Cromwell personally, there was much of interest still to be discerned in his rule in the tender young shoots of experiment, social and administrative. It is these which give to the Interregnum in England its unique and seminal character. It was true that many of the ideas which pushed up their heads from under the turf in the newly fertile atmosphere were trampled upon at the Restoration, as a result of which their traces are sometimes hard to discern, and equally difficult to analyse with positive certainty. Nevertheless the mere fact that the experiments which now flourished were sometimes as much as two or three hundred years away from fulfilment – and some not fulfilled yet – demonstrates the excitement of an age when at least in theory new solutions were believed possible to old problems.

  Education was a prime example. It had been a natural subject of Puritan interest for some time, and a special concern of the two immigrant pundits, Samuel Hartlib and John Dury, who exercised much influence in the Protectoral circle. Hartlib was originally a Polish Prussian from Elbing who moved to London in 1630; he was a great believer both in “useful knowledge” and in spreading it about, or as John Evelyn said of him later, he was “honest and learned … a public spirited and ingenious person, who has propagated many useful things and arts”. Back in 1641 he had outlined his own ideal kingdom in a book entitled Macaria, a paradise where the wealth of the country would be perfectly distributed having originally been wisely husbanded, and where education would incidentally be the concern of the State. Dury, also from Elbing, and the son of an exiled Scottish minister, had landed up in England after some peregrinations round Europe; here he worked on the idea of a Protestant Union.2

  Both Hartlib and Dury were much impressed by the plans of Comenius for the synthesization of all education, the idea of a Pansophic College, and it was at their insistence that Comenius had been invited to England by the Long Parliament in 1641. Hartlib and Dury continued to believe in the need for both common and mechanical schools as an important weapon in building an ideal State, and had put forward proposals to this effect to the Barebones Parliament. The common schools should teach reading, writing, maths, geography, history, reasoning and law; later the “mechanical” schools should follow with vocational training. On the sensible grounds that an educational system changes the face of a country quicker than anything else, they believed that this double programme would ensure that English commoners would shortly be superior to all others.

  Such ideas abounded: William Petty for example believed in the need to establish “literary workhouses” for poor children. The minister William Dell demanded State-maintained universities at London, York, Bristol, Exeter, Norwich and so forth. The interest and belief in the properties of science extended through the ranks of thinking society, as George Fox suggested that laboratory analysis would establish whether bread and wine could really turn to the body and blood of Christ, while Gerard Winstanley, the Leveller, suggested that lectures on natural science might replace the Sunday sermon. The Leveller Richard Overton advocated a method for testing the immortality of the soul by scientific experiment.3 Jonathan Goddard, the physician later associated with the foundation of the Royal Society, who had accompanied Cromwell to both Ireland and Scotland, who had been a member of the Council of State and had been chosen to help out Oliver over his duties as Chancellor of Oxford University, probably owed
his appointment as Professor of Physic at Gresham College in 1655, to the Protector’s influence. It was true that the emphasis of Hartlib and Dury on the need to make science part of the general system of education was eventually quelled at Oxford in favour of the opposite view, that it was a subject only suited to more mature scholars.* ( * See Charles Webster, Science and the challenge to the scholastic curriculum, 1640-1660. History of Education Society.) Thus scientific knowledge became the pride of the few – the aristocrats – and not as it might conceivably have been, the possession of the many – the people. But this is to look forward into the future. At least such energetic ideas were part of the intellectual climate of Oliver’s time.

  Nor were they cut off from mere practice. The actual ordinances of the Protectorate about education showed its persistent concern for the subject.4 Visitors for schools and universities were subjected to scrutiny. The rules for the ejection of scandalous schoolmasters (part of the ordinances to control preachers similarly) were continuously applied. Much enthusiasm was displayed in ridding the young of the tutelage of those who either disseminated the wrong opinions or had unworthy private lives. Possible unworthinesses ranged from adultery to the undue haunting of alehouses, or for that matter tolerating such deviations in their pupils. In June 1657 the original Act that had made these provisions was continued for a further three years, and it was suggested that the work of purgation should be done with “renewed diligence”. At the same time the Government showed general enlightenment in the matter of financial grants for the upkeep of schools and the support of school masters. In June 1657 in the case of the special assessment for the Spanish War, the salaries of masters, fellows and scholars of any university college, Eton or Westminster, or any of the free schools were specifically exempted. If then, the Protectoral Government did not apply the conclusions of Hartlib and Dury to the last letter, it showed itself at least benevolently inclined.

  What was more, Oliver himself displayed the influence of their thinking, which fitted neatly into his own hopes for the dissemination of Protestantism through the use of good ministers, on at least two specific occasions. He drafted a plan for a new college at Oxford to be named St Mary’s Hall, with voluntary subscriptions to be raised to endow it; .Ł1,000 was to be paid out of the college revenue to ten men who were to make “a generall synopsis of the true reformed Protestant Christian Religion proposed in this commonwealth”. It was further proposed “that into this college shall be received and there maintained poor Protestant Ministers and scholars being Foreigners and strangers borne, who shall reside in the said College and apply themselves principally to the study of Divinity”. But it was not only the needs of world Protestantism which encouraged him to promote educational projects. His support of an educational establishment at Durham, which, it has been suggested, might have played the same role as Trinity College, Dublin, in Elizabethan Ireland, was once again rooted in a desire to provide a good body of suitable ministers.5

  On the level of sheer regional enhancement, a northern centre of sorts was not a new idea. In 1640 there had been a petition to found a university at Manchester, and in 1647 at York. The appropriated lands and money of the deans and chapter of Durham Cathedral would, it was then felt, provide the ideal financial backing for a college or university there, and by April 1650 matters had got to the stage where the gentlemen, freeholders and inhabitants of Durham joined together to petition Parliament on the subject. It was in the March of 1651 that Oliver, then in Edinburgh, was moved to intervene on their behalf, possibly as a result of a visit from some of those concerned. At any rate, in a letter of endorsement to the Speaker, he wrote “Truly it seems to me a matter of great concernment and importance as that which, by the blessing of God, may much conduce to the promoting of learning and piety in those poor and ignorant parts.” So much for the ministry. But he spared a thought too, to the North itself, adding “there being also many concurring advantages to this place, as pleasantness and aptness of situation, healthful air, and plenty of provisions, which seem to plead for their desires therein”. If the work was set on foot, not only might it “suit with God’s present dispensations”, but there was a chance of unforeseen but glorious fruits in the future.6

  Nevertheless the pressure of other affairs held off the further developments of Durham’s plans until the spring of 1656. Then Lilburne wrote to Thurloe pointing out a further advantage of accepting a new petition on the subject – it would gain “northern affection” (at a time after all when the Government was in need of all the loyalty it could muster), as well as of course adding to Oliver’s renown. Finally in May 1657 letters patent were granted, on the petition of Durham, Newcastle and Northumberland. The point should however be made that there was no mention yet of a university; the letters patent referred strictly to a “College”, Eton or Winchester being apparently the model rather than Oxford or Cambridge.

  The aim of the new college was said to be “the better Advancement of Learning and Religion in those parts” and Hartlib’s name was amongst those on the committee to set it up. But the list of Visitors, many of whom were intimately connected with Cromwell or the Protectoral regime showed that this advancement was intended not only to be made within their sphere of influence, but also to extend that sphere on a further solid base in the North itself. Thus Durham College was to be part of a twoway process in the strengthening of both religion and the central Government, with Speaker Widdrington, Rushworth, Walter Strickland, Fauconberg, Sir Christopher Packe and Lambert (this was two months before his retirement) amongst those listed. The names of those selected to be the first office-holders were similarly interwoven into prominent Protectoral circles. One Professor was to be the mathematician Robert Wood, a Fellow of Lincoln College, Oxford; he had been employed in Ireland in the spring of 1657 by Henry Cromwell, and enjoyed the patronage of Lady Ranelagh, in a letter to whom he greeted his appointment with a modest surprise: “My call seems to be clearly providential,” he wrote, “because I had not the least hand in it from first to last.”7

  Wood’s mind was certainly open to new ideas: having studied under the mathematician William Oughtred a year or so previously, he had actually advocated a coherent system of decimal coinage in a tract called Ten to One. Recognizing the value of logarithms being generally acclaimed in Europe at the time, he realized the advantages of decimalization in applying logarithms to monetary calculations. If the monetary system rested on the principle of mathematics, it was argued, merchants would find accountancy “turn’d to a delightful recreation”. It was suggested that the pound should be the main unit, followed by tenths (invested with Oliver’s image) and hunds or hundreds, otherwise twopence.* ( * The similarity to the scheme eventually adopted over three hundred years kter by the British Government in 1971 is marked.) Hartlib had extended his patronage to Wood, and arranged an informal debate on the subject in March 1656. While Wood reported that his ideas had been well received at Oxford, he was also welcomed by William Petty and Benjamin Worsley, secretary of the Commonwealth Council of Trade.8

  However Wood’s association with Durham proved to be somewhat less happy: for all his initial enthusiasm, it seems that Wood never actually made the adventurous journey to the North. That was one difficulty of distance not lending enchantment which one must believe would have been overcome had Durham College lasted longer. But from the first the college encountered two bodies of objection. The Quakers were enraged by the prospect of a college presuming to educate a ministry, a function which smacked too much of State control for their taste. Much ridicule was poured by them in consequence on its officials “called of men Masters, proud Pharisee-like, with rings, white boothose tops, ribbons and wearing of gold, poor men’s sons perked up in pride”. George Fox paid the place a visit and came away sarcastically comparing it to the Tower of Babel, on the ground that the new ministers were to learn Hebrew, Greek and Latin, whereas “Peter and John, that could not read letters, preached the Word Christ Jesus, which was in the beginning
before Babel was.”9

  Quaker opposition if as always, uncomfortable in its manifestations, was not disastrous. More serious was the hostility of the ancient universities, particularly as the ambitions of Durham grew and a patent for granting degrees – which would effect the transformation from college to university – had actually been drawn up before it was cut off by Oliver’s death. Oxford had already taken the line that a precedent of some danger was being set, and that by multiplying universities, the “main end of them would be quite destroyed”. In vain the new men now petitioned Richard Cromwell, referring to their body as a tender infant still in its swaddling clothes. The infant was finally smothered, the death of Oliver having proved fatal to its prospects, and it was left to another age, three centuries on, to provide a permanent university at Durham.* ( * And even then – in the 1950s – a motion to use the name Cromwell College was defeated.10) At least in its short life, Durham had proved the capacity of the Protector to build in some way on the experimental ideas of men such as Hartlib and Dury.

  * * *

  In another area, that of finance, the picture was somewhat different. Here new ideas were put into practice less at the inspiration of the theorists than as a result of the desperate need of the Government for new solutions to old problems. For Cromwell, no more than Charles I, nor for that matter many other leaders both ancient and modern, found no ideal or even ready answer to the conflicting claims of defence and foreign policy on the one hand (to keep England safe and make her great) and lower taxation on the other (to keep her people happy and make them prosperous). It is doubtful whether any such ideal solution did exist within this period. First of all it was essentially in financial terms an age of transition from the old concept of the mediaeval King who had to “live of his own”, find money from his own resources for his policies, to that of Parliamentary control of taxation, and so by degrees of policies too. Secondly this transitional age was also further bedevilled by the financial wreckage inevitably left by the Civil Wars.