Cromwell

by Antonia Fraser

  The controversy over Cromwell’s finances reaches an acute form over the situation immediately after his death, when the country undoubtedly underwent a bleak period of near bankruptcy with Richard’s wavering hand at the helm. Was this a situation inherited from Cromwell – who certainly left a large State debt at his death, part of his general gap between revenue and expenditure – or was it something particular produced by his untimely decease? It is of course impossible for the most enlightened economist to give an answer beyond the realms of doubt to this question. What would have happened had Cromwell not died can never be more than a matter of guesswork. Nevertheless the experience of history does suggest that Cromwell would have weathered the financial storm, had he lived. This is not to minimize the problems he was facing. But the crisis of confidence at the departure of a strong man, aggravated by external troubles of economic depression in 1659, not of his making, did combine to produce an appalling situation which would not have obtained had he lived. The further recall of Parliament for monetary reasons can easily be envisaged, and was in fact being discussed in the summer before his death. What concessions would have flowed from that can only be imagined, not known. But it has been pointed out with justice that the French Government across the Channel struggled on with a vast deficit in the seventeenth century. As a going concern, then, Cromwell’s finances were probably capable of remaining such, whatever his difficulties: once moribund, the corpse rapidly began to stink.

  For this reason, judgement on his financial handlings should not be too harsh. Nor did Cromwell attempt to rise splendidly above his economic troubles with indifference, even if he did not understand them. The efforts to subsidize the Western Design and indeed domestic policies, by the acquisition of Spanish treasure, fruitless as they turned out to be, had at least the possibilities of success; the Decimation tax to pay for the MajorGenerals, equally unsuccessful, showed a desire to cope with the problem of administration coupled with that of finance. As it is, one is compelled to sympathize with Cromwell, stumbling gallantly forward, grappling with difficulties which had not been assuaged before him and would not be assuaged for long after his death. His inadequate hold on economics may have amounted to a blind-spot: nevertheless he was also dramatically unlucky in the period with which he had to cope.

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  With regard to his social conscience, Oliver Cromwell never lacked compassion for ordinary, poor, depressed people, whether poor soldiers needing their money, poor oppressed Christians, or simply the poor – whose lot he had hoped to see ameliorated when he first came to power. At the same time, in social theory, as in finance, he was the child of his own times, not an innovator; as a result he was in no position to halt the trend in Puritan thinking which gradually came to identify poverty with lack of moral worth, self-help being the mark of God’s Elect, even though his instincts might have been against it. Nor for that matter did his embroglios with Parliament on other subjects ever leave the power and freedom in respect to that institution to push through the series of reforms that had once been the aim of those interested in the settlement of the nation. So the Protectorate continued its course as a time of experiment and suggestion, rather than fulfilment.

  The Parliament of September 1656 continued for example the discussion of legal reforms, and measures were put forward such as local offices for wills, or courts of law and equity at York, which if carried would have affected the lives of ordinary people significantly. But these bills were successfully obstructed by the mass of lawyers within the House, and since by this time the reform of the law and the seizure of private property had become fatally connected in conservative minds – due to the fact that too many of the same people preached both – so the possibilities of reform fizzled away. Even Chancery never quite got abolished, although the returned Rump continued to mull over the law after Oliver’s death.

  In the case of the administration of the country as a whole, it is more difficult to discern the intentions either of the Protector or his associates with any certainty, due to the twin effects of the chaos left by the Civil War, and the sweeping away of the changes of the Interregnum after the Restoration. There are however traces of efforts at some sort of centralization, and a feeling that had the Protector lived longer, and been less hampered by other problems during his actual period of power, he might have desired to divide off politics and government in some manner in the case of administration. But there is one area, Scotland, where the personal aims of the Protector, although different, can be seen more clearly, because they stand out against the native horizon.

  Here Oliver was duly proclaimed Lord Protector at the Canongate in Edinburgh and at Leith in mid-July 1657 with appropriate trumpets. Nicoll in his Diary spoke of “all tokens of joy”, but a newsletter revealed that out of five or six thousand Scots who witnessed the ceremony, not one opened his mouth to cry “God bless my Lord Protector”. Curiously enough this particular proclamation only just post-dated the actual passing of the Act of Union between England and Scotland by Parliament by a matter of months; the Union, planned after Dunbar and passed by Council of State and Protector as long ago as April 1654, had been held up for three years for official approval from Parliament, due to Oliver’s other troubles there. Even in the final debates some objections were raised to the Union by members, including, interestingly enough, the idea that Ireland should be given the preference in this matter “as the better country and being chiefly inhabited by the English”, Scotland of course being regarded as no colony but a land of foreigners. But this official delay did not prevent Scotland being represented in both Protectoral Parliaments, while four Scottish members were designated for the future Second Chamber. The trouble was that since the same disenfranchisement of much of the population appertained in Scotland as in Ireland – all those who had helped the King since the Engagement were disqualified unless they could prove that vaunted “Good Affection” – members naturally tended to be Government nominees, and as such included a large number of English officials and English officers, rather than true representatives of Scotland. In 1656 for example, the English military Governor of Inverness was elected member for that city; Lockhart, a Cromwellian supporter, was elected for Lanark; and Broghill for Edinburgh. Elections were not attended by any particular enthusiasm: an English officer at Aberdeen, Robert Baynes, reported the apathetic scene at one election there, where the local population were only too anxious to point out how few of them, if any, were qualified to vote by the new rules.23

  Nevertheless plans for the welfare of Scotland went forward. In May 1655 the Council of State for Scotland was constituted under Lord Broghill as President; and provided Ł100 to buy a mace for the new body. The English military commander left behind by Cromwell after Dunbar, General Monk, was also included, and under his firm but beneficent rule a period of law and order was at long last enjoyed by war-torn Scotland. Monk was a character of much interest, even if he was not precisely “your honest General Monk who is a simple hearted man” as Oliver described him in a letter about this time. John Aubrey termed him originally a strong, lusty, well-set up young fellow; it was his wife, formerly a seamstress, who incurred the laughing scorn of Dorothy Osborne at Court “she will suit well enough with the rest of the great ladies of the times” she wrote. But Monk was either the most successful turncoat of his age, or put more kindly, he showed at every point of his career, an intelligent appreciation of what action would best suit that particular situation at that particular time. Perhaps it was a help, as Clarendon put it, that he lacked what inspired so many men of his own time – he had “no fumes of religion which turned his head”. Yet he was far too cautious to parade this lack, as the fumes themselves were so often paraded: at the beginning of his stay in Scotland William Clarke wrote back enthusiastically to Speaker Lenthall that Monk was “a very precious instrument”. But Clarke pointed also to Monk’s real value for employment in Scotland: no one could order the Scots as “handsomely” as Monk – “he carries things with s
uch a grace and rigid gentleness”.24

  This rigid gentleness was expressed by Monk in two ways; in the first place he was determined to tolerate no endless series of subversive campaigns and attacks from the Scots in either Highlands or Lowlands, in which cause he much supported the building of the five great Cromwellian fortresses of Leith, Perth, Ayr, Inverlochy and Inverness. By this means he believed, and rightly, that Scotland could be controlled by the minimum of troops, thus enabling the soaring costs of the military occupation to be held down. Perth, Ayr and Leith were all praised as structures by contemporaries: Leith for example was described by John Ray in 1661 as “passing fair and sumptuous”, and he estimated that each fortress had cost .Ł100,000 to build. Inverlochy was a lonely spot in the north-west at the other end of the Great Glen from Inverness, close by the present site of Fort William. It was considered sufficiently unpleasant for its English garrisons to be limited to a year’s tour, and how the letters home of the English soldiers complained of the cold and the bleakness, as they sent oft desperately for such palliative luxuries as Russian leather, chairs, pewter goods, a warm violet-coloured gown of “shagg” against the weather, and plants of cherries and apricots to make the Highlands flower! The fortress at Inverness was built on a promontory at the head of the river Ness, where the two firths of Moray and Beauly met; local labour was used for digging, with skilled workers imported for the rest. In the same way some oak planks and beams came up from England, but neighbouring timber was also employed: the minister at Kirkhill, James Fraser, who kept a Diary, recorded that Hugh Fraser of Stray received thirty thousand marks at one go for selling his woods.25 Other materials had a less agreeable source: the best hewn stone came from the local churches and abbeys, including St Mary’s, Inverness and Beauly Priory.

  The result, costing between fifty and eighty thousand pounds, and completed in 1657, was termed “a fabulous citadel” by one local; the minister of Kirkhill called it “a most stately scene”. The Governor, Major-General Deane, was also said to have employed a vessel on Loch Ness to police it. The effects were more than military: even the minister admitted that the English soldiers civilized and enriched the place.* ( * English cooking, and even vegetables, were said to have been introduced, and the English accent also (to this day the east coast accent is notably nearer to that of England than that of the west, and easier for an Englishman to understand). It was a phenomenon, together with its Cromwellian origin, noted by Defoe in his tour of Scotland in the early eighteenth century.) Under the circumstances it was regrettable perhaps that after the Restoration the structure was pulled down and virtually obliterated in reaction against English rule: it was however a fate which must have given gloomy satisfaction to the minister from Kirkhill, since he had predicted it from the use of ecclesiastical materials (“it was a sacrilegious structure and therefore could not stand”).

  Nevertheless at the time, these fortresses over which waved the English flags with words on them in gold, like Ebenezer and Emmanuel amply justified their use. It was generally agreed by the Scots themselves that the consequent peace which fell upon a land in which focal points could control any guerilla action, was remarkable and virtually without precedent. The system of justice introduced by the English, originally to break down the power of the Scottish magnates, was at least free to the people who enjoyed it, and for that reason popular. Burnet made an oft-quoted judgement: “At no time the Highlands were kept in better order than during the usurpation” and Burton in his Diary recorded a view which has received equal prominence that “a man may ride all Scotland over with a switch in his hand and a hundred pounds in his pocket which he could not have done these five hundred years”. There was said to be not one robbery in the Inverlochy district in 1658. But Monk justified his reputation from Aubrey – “well-beloved by his soldiers in Scotland and even by that country (for an enemy)” – as much by the second half of his policy. Here he was concerned to heal wherever possible, and to soothe down all those roughened patches of Anglo-Scottish relations to mutual benefit. He was wise enough to see the advantage of allowing many of the Scots to go abroad to serve in foreign regiments, for as he wrote “the people here being generally so poor and idle . . . they cannot live unless they be in arms”.26 Magnates such as Glencairn and Atholl were allowed the privilege of raising their own regiments abroad and so departed. It might be another step forward in the perpetual process of the expatriation of the talented and energetic, the curse of Scotland’s national identity, but from Monk’s point of view it certainly made sense; and at the time it was greeted by the Scots themselves with relief.

  At home Highland and Border landowners were also allowed to maintain armed men for their defence, a valuable privilege considering the nature of the terrain, so long as chiefs were responsible for their clansmen. When the English system of Justices of the Peace was introduced, burghs were allowed to elect their own magistrates; the ministers were no longer penalized for praying for King Charles, as a result of which they obligingly left off doing it in public, although many continued in private. Monk’s aim was order, seen for example in rigorous scrutiny of passes between districts. But in bringing about order, he was also the instrument of Cromwell who from the vantage point of London seems to have had a more elevated plan for changing the face of Scotland radically from the land once dominated by ministers and nobles into an inspiring country where the “middle sort” of people nourished. It was natural that Monk in consequence had his troubles with the centre, either trying to obtain payment for his troops, or complaining when he heard that Oliver had granted some concessions with regard to Perth and Stirling and other places to men he feared would be unworthy, through the Government’s ignorance: Monk in Scotland referred pointedly to “the great wrongs that is done through want of a right information in this business”.27

  For all such traditional disputes between the man on the spot and the man in Whitehall, Oliver’s plans for Scotland did show quite a coherent aim:* ( * See H. R. Trevor-Roper, Scotland and the Puritan Revolution, pp. 392-444 in Religion, the Reformation & Social Change.) he wanted toleration – and the mere fact that the ghastly Scottish witch-hunts, a feature of seventeenth-century Scottish history, were much reduced in numbers during this period, was on the credit side. English men like William Clarke, in effect Monk’s secretary, were indeed sufficiently shocked by the procedure of these trials to compare them to that classic horror story of the seventeenth century, the Dutch massacre of the English settlers in 1621, calling them “this Amboyna kind of usage’. Oliver also wanted to boost the middle classes, and preserve not only peace, but also hopefully construct a new and righteous society. One speech on the subject of the Union in the 1656 Parliament probably appealed to him, when the speaker referred to the many previous civil wars of Scotland due to the unlimited power of the nobility. A great work was now being done there: “which none of their Kings could ever compass, reserved by the mercy of God to you”.28 This policy was particularly evident in Oliver’s attitude to education in Scotland, where he was eager to see schools and universities as sharp weapons in the battle for the souls of the people. In 1658 .Ł1,200 was granted to the Scottish Council of State for the special project of education in the Highlands, because of the general lack there. The universities were the subject of support throughout the Protectorate, on the basis of a general ordinance on the subject in August 1654. Both Glasgow and Aberdeen were to be given “a liberal annuity” for helping the poor students, and there were attempts also to help Edinburgh with grants of Church lands.

  This philanthropy was intended to be a two-way process. The universities, if manned by men favourable to the Protector’s aims, would also constitute future citadels as valuable in their way as the five military fortresses. The whole business fitted into the Protector’s courtship of the former Remonstrants in Scotland, those stricter adherents to the Covenant, as opposed to the Resolutioners who had been driven in contrast to ally with the Royalists. While Broghill wooed the Resolutioners,
a former Remonstrant, Patrick Gillespie, became Vice-Chancellor of Glasgow University against Resolutioner opposition, and the Cromwellian influence could be seen from the fact that Thurloe was duly made Chancellor. A visit to London by Gillespie at the Protector’s invitation was paralleled by other invitations to former Remonstrants including John Livingstone and John Menzies (who accepted) and Robert Blair (who did not). Menzies subsequently became Professor of Divinity at Marischal College at Aberdeen; “Gillespie’s Charter”, by giving the lands of Scottish bishoprics to the Scottish universities, enabled further building at Glasgow, and at Aberdeen.* ( * Assistance still commemorated in name by Cromwell Tower at Aberdeen University, which preserves the name of the benefactor even if the structure is not contemporary.) Jaffray, who was as has been seen the Provost of Aberdeen, served in one of Cromwell’s Parliaments.