Cromwell

by Antonia Fraser

  Cromwell in May had referred to the English people lightly as “children” who might be diverted or pleased by his assumption of the crown, as by a toy. But in truth his situation had changed when he harangued the Parliament of 1654 as a pedagogue to his pupils. Now his real problems were with his colleagues, rather than with his “children”. Try as he might, the wrong sort of people – or the right sort of people with the wrong ideas - kept creeping into his Parliaments. So for the third time he had perforce to dismiss his staff abruptly. In the spring of 1658 England was yet again in the position of a school which had a high master, the Lord Protector, but once again no delegates of his authority in the shape of members of Parliament.

  23 The great captain

  The great captain of their salvation comes and saith Go Thy Ways,

  thou hast faithfully discharged thy duty; go now unto thy rest

  JOHN OWEN’S FUNERAL SERMON

  A haze of unnatural calm hung over the English scene during the last six months of Oliver’s life. When Ormonde vanished precipitately from London in the spring of 1658, he bore with him the realization that the English-based Cavaliers would not stir unless prodded by the arrival of King Charles off the coast at the head of a large Spanish army. Despite the alliance, that phenomenon did not materialize. The Sealed Knot and the Royalists in general were further pilloried during the spring and summer of 1658 by a series of swift and punitive arrests. One observer was indeed of the opinion that although the Royalists were certainly meditating trouble, additional plots were also invented by the Government to keep the people loyal to the Protector. Whatever the truth of that observation, there were two salient facts about the situation which activists of both sides would ignore at their peril: first, that the Protectoral regime was now strongly entrenched in its hold on the people; second, that this hold depended on the survival of Oliver Cromwell himself at its head. On the latter point Henry Cromwell wrote unhappily to Thurloe during the summer: “Have you any settlement?” he enquired. “Does not your peace depend upon his Highness’ life, and upon his peculiar skills and faculty and personal interest in the army as now modelled and commanded? I say beneath the immediate hand of God (if I know anything of the affairs of England) there is no other reason why we are not in blood at this day.”1 Nevertheless, so long as the Royalist challenge was held under at home, and remained disorganized abroad, it was still unlikely that blood would flow in England. In the last months of his life Cromwell was like a great warship riding at anchor outside a harbour seething with lesser vessels. His mere presence made it unlikely that anyone would succeed in escaping his unconquerable control.

  It was true that money troubles might cause general perturbation amongst the men who could not solve them, the City financiers who were disinclined to grant loans, and the people who disliked taxes. Oliver’s health also continued to be the subject of the most sinister rumours – that he suffered from insomnia and had to be dosed with opium which left him in a half-dead state for many hours; that he kept to his room and had only eaten one meal with his family in eight days, in contrast to his previous uxorious record. It was more reliably reported that he suffered from vertigo and giddiness described as “migraine” and had swooned twice in one day. He also sent for a chirurgeon called Boone to look at the painful “impostume” or abscess on his back. Once again it was Henry Cromwell who said of his father: “I wish he were equally distant from both his childhoods.” Yet even the Army proved surprisingly tractable after the outburst of the dissolution: a vast banquet given by Oliver two days later at which the wine flowed particularly freely quieted down opposition, which in any case, like that of the Royalists, lacked direction. Some rearrangements in the organization of the Army itself also contributed to calm. On 12 March, the City, in the shape of the Lord Mayor and Aldermen, were given the benefit of a long discourse from their Protector on the subject of “the new designs of the old enemy Charles Stuart”, which included details of Ormonde’s expedition, and the news that Charles’s fleet was waiting in Flanders, only needing a dark night to slip by their own ships.2 At the tale of these horrors, the City dutifully responded with an address replete with loyal protestations.

  The institution of a new High Court of Justice to cope with trials for treason, and which, like the court that had tried King Charles i, was to consist of commissioners acting the combined parts of judges and jury, showed how inadequate the forces of opposition could be when faced with the determination of the Protector and Council. The commission for erecting it, in accordance with previous requests of Parliament as long ago as August 1653, had been passed by an Act of September 1656. Now in April one hundred and forty commissioners were named, of whom seventeen were to be a quorum. The Venetian Ambassador reported general fears that Royalists and Catholics would suffer anew, yet the Protector, he said, was frightened that “some spark may remain undiscovered which may suddenly burst into a flame”. The judges were predictably hostile to such a development, but the Protector merely observed to Lord Chief Justice Glyn that lawyers were ever “full of quirks”. Glyn replied coldly that it could hardly have been otherwise when soldiers drew up the Act.3 Nevertheless the Protector got his way and the first court was instituted in May, and provided with a list of those to be tried for treason by the Council. Oliver had now been Protector for over four years chief man in England for more than eight; he had survived attempted assassination, rebellion, sickness itself; for all the combined threats of all three was it really possible to envisage a time when the great ship might founder and go down? Even the Royalists began to fear neurotically within themselves that the Protector was immortal, while his supporters believing in the principles of God’s election would have put it another way: Oliver Cromwell would be spared so long as there was God’s work to be done. Another outcome was unthinkable.

  Much of the last period of the Protector’s life was spent in contemplating the fruits of his foreign policy, and enjoying its glories, expensive triumphs as these might prove to be. In the Baltic the Peace of Roskilde of February 1658 showed signs of producing the tranquillity considered essential to English trade. In Europe his new imperial position was underlined by the question of his intervention even in the election of the new Holy Roman Emperor. But the Anglo-French treaty of March 1657 had provided for more than mere diplomatic support in its projected assaults on the Spanish Netherlands: six thousand English soldiers, paid for by France, were to fight under French command in an effort to secure the three coastal towns of Mardyck, Gravelines and Dunkirk (of which the first and the last were to be ceded to England after capture), and the English fleet was to be brought into joint action. By August 1657 ordinances of the Council were providing for the transport of quantities of red coats – fast becoming the trademark of the English Army – across the channel. There was much care as well as personal interest in the preparations for this first expedition against Mardyck: had the former Lord-General perhaps learned his lesson from the fiasco of the Western Design? Cromwell himself was concerned with details of supplies such as coal, palisades, wood, candles, as well as the presence of masons and carpenters from England to erect quarters for the troops. Oliver’s orders on the subject were all “so strict and quick”, at least in the view of Captain John Taylor from Chatham. And during the course of the expedition itself he continued to bombard Ambassador Bordeaux with questions concerning the welfare of his troops, impatient at lack of news.4

  Even so, there were still some failings: the absence of small boats meant that the soldiers had to wade ashore with their provisions, and General Sir John Reynolds and Lieutenant-Colonel White were drowned on their way on Goodwin Sands, their bodies poignantly identified by a gold ornamented rapier in the rigging of the wrecked ship, and the letters or White’s wife. The winter which had so incommoded Cromwell in his attempt to dissolve Parliament with despatch, was not less severe on the Continent; the heavy ordnance had to be dragged over the ice at Mardyck. Although the exercise itself, under the great French Marshal Tu
renne, was a success and Mardyck was prised from the Spanish grasp, the delays in the further prosecution of the campaign thereafter caused much discontent in the Protector’s breast. At the same time the English soldiers now quartered in Mardyck discovered it to be an exceptionally insalubrious spot for their national health, the Ambassador Lockhart spending much of his time caring for the sick there, having to provide all types of remedies from cups of bouillon to more hospital beds. The Continental mentality was towards siege warfare – an English commander wrote home the caustic comment that fighting was not much the fashion in those parts – and the English soldiers suffered accordingly.5 It was not in fact until the May of 1658 that Turenne put into effect the joint operation to assail Dunkirk.

  At the same time, Cromwell’s own warmth for the French was noticeable in two directions. His connexion with the Ambassador in London had blossomed into such a warm admiration for the perceptive Frenchman, that in the previous December he had written a personal letter in his own hand (although the handwriting was by now extraordinarily shaky) to Cardinal Mazarin recommending Bordeaux as President of the Parlement de Paris. This piece of benevolent interference from a foreign head of State proved not unnaturally some embarrassment to Bordeaux, who was obliged to explain it away to Mazarin, along the lines of his own extreme contentment with the present incumbent of the post. Bordeaux did however feel able to add that after having received such help, such advantageous opinions of his own worth, and such a powerful recommendation, he could hardly be blamed if he had acquired some new ambitions for his own future... 6

  In May, the reverse of the coin was seen when Oliver’s son-in-law of six months, the able and charming Fauconberg, was sent on a mission of goodwill to France. He was armed with many introductions to the King and to the Cardinal, although the Protector added with a certain sweetness on the subject of Fauconberg’s personal attractions, that he was a person “who, unless we deceive ourselves, carries his own recommendations about him, wherever he goes”. Bordeaux also took great trouble to explain in advance to the French Court the courtesies which should be shown to the young emissary, in view not only of his position within the Cromwellian family, but also the trust which the Protector placed in him. As for Fauconberg’s suite, it would be found to be splendid in appearance, he wrote, the only trouble being that no member of the ancient nobility of England could be found to form part of it. The reason, he hastened to add, was not political, but due to the fact that the French Court was now encamped in northern France’campaigning; the English nobles feared the discomforts that they might be obliged to suffer in consequence. Whatever the credentials of his suite, Mazarin found Fauconberg most agreeable: a “fort honnete seigneur” he wrote from Calais.7 The Protector in turn expressed himself delighted at the news of Fauconberg’s genial reception. The love feast was completed when Oliver extended a reciprocal invitation for a French mission of equal weight to come to London in July, composed of the Cardinal’s nephew, Monsieur Mancini, and Louis xiv’s chief Gentleman of the Bedchamber, the Due de Crequi.

  In the meantime the great joint victory of the battle of 4 June, known afterwards as the Dunes, marked the culmination of the Anglo-French operation to seize Dunkirk. Turenne had laid siege to the town in May, only to be threatened by a large Spanish force coming to its relief, an army incidentally which included both Charles n’s brother, James Duke of York, and Cromwell’s erstwhile hero, Conde. The Spaniards fell on the besiegers through the sandy coastal hillocks of the dunes, with admirable effect; but while their left under Conde did well, the great Turenne in the centre hurled them back, and demolished their right. The day ended in a rout, and Dunkirk itself surrendered shortly after. It was significant that the French and English soldiers were now reported as on much more amicable terms, the French horse described as “very loving and civil”, and the English behaving themselves with sufficient aplomb to gain general applause from the grandees of the French Army. The beginnings of a spirit of amity, or at any rate live-and-let-live, could be discerned, not always prevalent among historical allies, even those who were not divided sharply by religion as were these representatives of France and England.

  Military appreciation was one thing; but to Ambassador Lockhart fell a more critical task, in the shape of the reorganization of Dunkirk itself under English command, in accordance with the terms of the treaty. Cromwell now had his Continental stronghold, his jumping-off place; but it was undeniably a complication that its inhabitants were in the main Catholics. The Protector himself had shown a broad-minded attitude to notorious French weaknesses of character earlier when discussing the alliance in a speech: “They have seen the sun a little,” he observed, “we have great lights.” Thus the French must be expected to be more pleasureloving. But administration could prove to be a different matter when the English who were used only to a minority Catholic population, their religion officially proscribed and subject to heavy penalties, were confronted by a plethora of these supposed heretics within Dunkirk. Lockhart himself behaved with admirable – and under the circumstances sensible tolerance. In a spirited speech to the inhabitants of Dunkirk, he referred to the Protector as “a man of a vast comprehensive soul” who “sought the good of all his subjects, though he was not of their religion, yet he had good thoughts and good will for all that believed in God and to be saved by Christ Jesus…” It was true that the Papists in England were “pressed hard” but that was because their religion was against the laws of England and against his own will: “they [the Catholics of Dunkirk] not being under that law, he would protect them in their profession.”8

  Lockhart tried to prevent the English soldiers behaving badly in the Catholic churches, where they were inclined to pillage; they also indulged in other pieces of less materially damaging but equally insensitive behaviour such as when an English soldier lit his pipe from the candles on the altar, with the priest there busy saying Mass. According to a pamphlet published in Brussels holy statues were knocked down and the arms of Oliver Cromwell put up in their place. But Lockhart reprimanded the soldiers: if they entered a Catholic church to satisfy their curiosity (and one can imagine how such men might regard with bated breath the open practice of a religion which they had been trained since childhood to regard as a secret rite close to that of Anti-Christ) they must still take care not to disturb others at what “they imagined to be their devotions”. He did not employ the sole church in the town for Protestant services. After all, wrote Lockhart, “the giver of toleration” always showed himself innately superior to “that which is tolerated”. On a less pious level, Lockhart observed to Cromwell: “As Rome was not built in a day, so it will not be pulled down.”9

  For all the note of British condescension in his orders, Lockhart nevertheless showed sufficient application to the problem of Catholic tolerance, for Oliver to worry at one point that the Catholics were being actually preferred at the expense of the Protestants. In August Lockhart granted the Jesuits the right to stay within Dunkirk, with exemption from the fighting, provided that they revealed to him any anti-English plots or conspiracies. This, if it violated the Jesuits’ oath of secrecy, was an action of common sense from the point of view of an English commander. But it was perhaps with a view to counteracting such dangerous Papist influences on innocent British soldiery, that the chaplain Hugh Peter paid a personal visit to the new outpost in order to lecture the troops on their duty to God and to the Government. However Lockhart quickly found Peter something of a nuisance in the way he meddled with everyone else’s business; while in regard to the delicate question of good relations with Cardinal Mazarin, he became a positive pest. He insisted on visiting the subtle Cardinal on three or four occasions, on each of which Lockhart was obliged to stay in attendance throughout, lest Peter bore the Cardinal with his long speeches. It was true that Peter himself was having a most enjoyable time. But when he hinted that he would like to extend his visit, Lockhart was obliged to say quickly that England had even greater need of his services than Dunkir
k.10

  At home the most striking feature of the London scene also involved Fauconberg, but in a less favourable light: of the list of conspirators named to be tried by the new High Court of Justice for anti-Government plotting, the chief conspirator was John Mordaunt and two of the most prominent were Dr Hewett, that Anglican clergyman rumoured to have married Fauconberg and Mary six months before, and Sir Henry Slingsby, who was actually Fauconberg’s uncle by marriage, having married a Miss Belasyse. Hewett, “born a gentleman and bred a scholar”, had been attracting great crowds preaching since the war at the church of St Gregory. The conspiracy in which they were both involved had hardly amounted to a serious threat against the regime, in view of the fact that Thurloe had once more been able to penetrate it by a double-agent, and forty prisoners had been taken without difficulty. But Slingsby was an example of that type of Royalist to whom progressive if apathetic loyalty to the powers-that-were was an unthinkable course. He was an interesting if melancholy character, described as being of “very few words”. Having fought gallantly for the King during the war, he then played a part in the Penruddock rising and spent a spell in prison. When he finally took the decision to abandon his position of retirement once more, on this occasion it was with the full realization of the possible dreadful consequences to himself: as he told his son in A Father’s Legacy, written on the eve of his execution, he had prepared himself for death in advance by making his own coffin his perpetual “companion”.11