Cromwell

by Antonia Fraser

  Recently in a correspondence in The Times on the subject of Cromwell’s last resting-place, Mr Reginald Paget MP, supporting the Naseby theory, produced an even more remarkable link with history: his father told him that his grandfather had known an old man in Naseby whose great-uncle remembered as a boy the coach arriving in the night from London. Spades were collected; the coach then departed in the direction of the battlefield, and the next day a certain field had been freshly ploughed although it was not the ploughing season. Mr Paget’s father then pointed out to him the field. It is of such folk memories and links that much of the enjoyable spider’s web of historical tradition – as opposed to fact – is made. One might make the point that if Cromwell had indicated a battlefield where he might lie at rest, it is more likely to have been Worcester, “the crowning mercy” to which he referred so often, than Naseby; but that is to meet speculation with speculation. Back in 1646, a year after the battle, at the gorgeous funeral of the Earl of Essex, it was predicted that Cromwell would one day want to be buried in the Henry VIII chapel, “with the immortal turf of Naseby under his head”: but that was many years, and many victories away from the date of his death. In truth, the whole Naseby story, like another story told to Banks by a lady who knew someone present, of Oliver’s body being sunk in the Thames at midnight with two of his near relations and some trusty soldiers in attendance, to elude “the malice of the Cavaliers”, depends on a state of mind or a state of affairs which was not present in the Protector at the time of death.32

  The same arguments may be used against any theory of the substitution of another corpse for that of Cromwell, if done at his command, that is to say immediately after his death. One of the more grotesque of such stories, that he had deliberately had his own body exchanged with that of Charles I at Windsor to protect it, was given the lie when Charles’s tomb was opened in a later age and – not surprisingly – found to contain his own decapitated corpse. The most effective answer to all these suggestions was indeed given to Pepys himself by Jeremiah White, Oliver’s chaplain, who had after all known him intimately. Pepys heard from one who had been travelling abroad a rumour that Cromwell had had the tombs of Westminster Abbey opened up, so that the bodies could be swopped about for fear of later reprisals. Pepys checked the story with White, who replied instantly that he believed Cromwell “never had so poor a low thought in him to trouble himself about it”.33

  If that retort may be thought conclusive concerning Oliver’s own dispositions, there is still the question of some later substitution or rescue, at the hands of his admirers or his children. Any such theory of substitution reformed after burial and before the Restoration has two factors to contend with. First, it was by no means easy to secure the secret opening of a vault, and no such opening is of course recorded in the Abbey muniments. Secondly, and more seriously, since it is incontrovertible that some corpse at least purporting to be that of Cromwell was dragged through the streets of London, exhibited at Tyburn, and finally had its head displayed for over twenty years on Westminster Hall, this theory demands the belief that a false Cromwell was thus dishonoured. Either his coffin was found to be empty at exhumation and a new corpse hastily acquired as F. J. Varley suggests, or perhaps a substitute corpse had already been interred there, and the Government was obliged to make do with what they found. A third possibility would be the substitution of a body at the Red Lion, by bribing the soldiers during the night it spent there. Yet we know that a mummified body – its appearance thus fully preserved for spectators – was shown on Tyburn. Even if the heads were not freed then from their clothes they were certainly freed at the time of execution in the evening, for an eye-witness, Samuel Sainthill, actually recognized the face of Bradshaw. They were then shown quite openly on Westminster Hall. Since Cromwell had been dead less than eighteen months, and previous to that time had been the most celebrated figure in Britain, it seems unlikely that the crowd would not have noticed a change in his physical appearance, had a substitution been attempted.34

  There is more plausibility in the notion of a rescue later, at the hands of one of Cromwell’s children, after the grim ceremony of Tyburn was over. This rescue of course would involve only his decapitated body. Perhaps Mary Fauconberg did manage to bribe the soldiers at Tyburn, and secure her father’s headless corpse from immolation in the common pit. It has been suggested that having done so, she made haste with the body to the safer North, where at Newburgh, her husband’s property, a strange kilnlike tomb of brick is still to be seen, now lying between two floors owing to the rebuilding of the house’s levels, like a ghost which still walks on the level it has known in life. If this rescue took place, it is certainly more likely that the corpse was stored at Newburgh than in the Church of St Nicholas at Chiswick. This has been made another candidate for this controversial burial-place, on the grounds that Mary herself was buried there, and showed particular devotion to the church, endowing it with a peal of five bells. The church was rebuilt in 1882, when the legend was explored and dismissed: but the son of the vicar at the time revealed recently that his father had not in fact checked the chancel burial vaults.35 Glimpsing three coffins in Mary Fauconberg’s vault, two on the south side (her own and that of Frances) and the third opposite bearing signs of rough usage, he had feared the arrival of crowds of visitors to the church to “moralize” over Cromwell. So the vicar, the builder and the clerk of the works, all three haters of Cromwell, had the vault built up again. Despite these entertaining details of Victorian attitudes to Cromwell, the Fauconbergs did not move to Sutton Court, Chiswick until the 1670s, which would involve Mary carrying the body first to Newburgh, then down again to Chiswick.

  Of Newburgh Priory and its tomb one can only say that the case is not proven. The present owner of the Priory has understandably respected with wishes of his predecessor in not opening up the tomb – the latter having declined to do so even at the instigation of King Edward VII. It is true, that in this scientific age, when so much can be told from the merest bones, were the tomb to be opened, and were the headless skeleton of a seventeenth-century male of roughly sixty years old to be found, one would be tempted to subscribe fully to the legend of Newburgh Priory as Cromwell’s last resting-place. At the same time it is possible to have much sympathy for the opposing view that legends are legends, and should be left in the domain of romance where they belong and not subjected to examination, which after all, by discovering an empty tomb, might alternatively rob Newburgh of its aura altogether. In the meantime, in the absence of any definite proof elsewhere one must continue to suppose that Cromwell’s body lies in that deep pit under the old Tyburn – not the present marked site at Marble Arch itself where the plaque lies – but at the junction of Connaught Place and Connaught Square.

  The fate of the head is more certain, since its subsequent history, if strange, has more substance to it. Last seen on top of Westminster Hall in the 1680s, the story goes that it was blown down in a monster gale towards the end of the reign of James II. Falling at the feet of one of the sentinels, the skull was picked up by the man, who recognized it for what it was and took it home hidden under his cloak. The sentinel’s daughter sold it to a Cambridgeshire family, where it passed into the hands of a dissolute and drunken actor called Samuel Russell. At this point the skull re-emerges in the light of day, being seen about 1780 in Russell’s possession by one James Cox, proprietor of a museum, who later acquired it. He in turn sold it to three speculators for Ł230 and they exhibited it at the time of the French Revolution which was considered to be a fortunate republican coincidence. Finally it reached the possession of Josiah Wilkinson, and from him descended to Canon Wilkinson, who in turn left it at his death to Cromwell’s own college at Cambridge, Sidney Sussex.

  But before the head attained this final academic resting-place, it had been the subject of various antiquarian and scientific inspections. In 1911 it was exhibited before the Royal Archaeological Institute; in the 1930s it was subject to an important scientific piece o
f investigation by two "cranial detectives”, Karl Pearson and Dr Morant. In a notable publication in Biometrika they showed the skull to have been trepanned after death necessary for seventeenth-century embalming – and subsequently decapitated by a number of strokes.36 It is hardly necessary to stress how rare a decapitation after death must have been, let alone the combination with the trepanning. The head itself, of about six and seven-eighths size, with a fifteen hundred cubic centimetres brain capacity, fitted also with what was known of Cromwell’s physical appearance, even down to the depression for the wart over his eye. The skull was that of a male of about sixty years old. As an eminent surgeon considering the evidence of Morant and Pearson in a later paper wrote, that for all the gap in the provenance of the skull, it was out of the question that it could be a counterfeit: “To do this the forger would have had to know all the details of the seventeenthcentury embalming, which are completely followed in Cromwell’s head. He would have had to have embalmed the whole body first and severed the head afterwards. He would have had to choose a corpse aged sixty, with a moustache and a small beard and a wart over his eye. The whole thing [i.e. a forgery] is impossible and does not bear considering.”37

  That at any rate was the enlightened view taken by Sydney Sussex College, which decided to give the head at last its proper burial.The spot chosen was close by the chapel. But with a caution Oliver Cromwell had not showed at death, it was decided not to risk those depredations so feelingly described by Milton at the hands of future generations, whether light-hearted marauding undergraduates or more serious Royalists. So that the oval plaque chosen to mark the spot is merely placed to the left of the chapel entrance. It reads: “Near to this place was buried on 25 March 1960 the head of OLIVER CROMWELL Lord Protector of the CommonWealth of England, Scotland and Ireland. Fellow Commoner of this College 1616-17.” The exact whereabouts of the head remains a closely guarded secret. Nevertheless the precise location has been recorded by the College. So that the secret will not die out with those who attended this last discreet ceremony, over three hundred years after the Protector’s own death.

  * * *

  As Cromwell’s body did not settle easily, nor did his dust. It is doubtful indeed whether the clouds of controversy raised by such a redoubtable character will ever be permanently stilled, so many and various are the issues raised by his life-story. Virulence has not died away; nor has admiration. The historiography of Cromwell, the study of the historians who have studied him, provides in itself a subject of superb interest – albeit a separate one, and not strictly relevant here. Suffice it to say that the attitudes of succeeding generations to the burning topic of Oliver Cromwell have generally as much to teach one concerning the period in which they were written as about the man himself. One of the truest maxims on the subject of his reputation was propounded within the confines of his own century by Richard Baxter: “No (mere) man was better or worse spoken of than he; according as Mens Interests lead their judgements.” As for the fascination of weighing up these conflicting estimates, a writer on the most recent works on Cromwell in 1938 began his essay with an observation of much truth: “If historiography may be permitted its romances, the study of Cromwell’s life claims a high place among them.”38 In particular the arrival of any kind of comparable historical situation – a personal rule, a tyranny, a dictatorship, or along other lines a civil war or a revolution has focused attention anew on the parallels to be sought in seventeenthcentury England in general and the career of Oliver Cromwell in particular. To each age comes its new slant, and it is natural that it should be so.

  Leaving aside the pure study of history, Cromwell’s name has not failed to arouse reactions of the most venomous wrath even at a distance of several hundred years. In the nineteenth century a project to enhance the House of Commons with a series of statues of the sovereigns of England aroused ominous rumblings when the subject of Oliver Cromwell was raised. In the end the party of disgust triumphed: Oliver Cromwell should not take his place with the other rulers of the country within its precincts. Towards the end of the century, the project was revived in connexion with the tri-centenary in 1899 of Cromwell’s birth. At the last minute the Government was defeated on the subject by the Irish members of the House of Lords: a reaction of which the Prime Minister of the day Lord Rosebery aptly commented it might have been “more graceful and fair” had it been expressed before the statue was completed and the pedestal actually erected.39 In the end the statue was placed just outside the House of Commons.

  The ceremony of unveiling, performed by Lord Rosebery, was enhanced by the presence of three prominent Jews on the platform, Lord Rothschild, Sir Samuel Montagu and Mr Benjamin Cohen, to show their appreciation of the Lord Protector’s welcome to their race. In his speech, Lord Rosebery in his turn illuminated the values of late Victorian England when he spoke of Cromwell as “a raiser and maintainer of the power of the Empire of England”, English imperialism being “not the lust of dominion the pride of power, but rather the ideal of Oliver Cromwell… his faith would lie in God and in freedom, and in the influence of Great Britain as asserting both.” It was a judgement which the Lord Protector himself would have much appreciated. So that statue still stands today, a dominating figure of more than life size, facing out into Parliament Square. Unique in its site, it receives a great deal more prominence than the serried ranks of sovereigns, many of them forgotten, appropriately enough for one who was after all never a King, but none the less unique in our history.

  The character of the man himself has so much of paradox in it, that it is perhaps not surprising that 3 September, his death-day, as late as 1969 saw the insertion of two separate notices of commemoration in the personal column of The Times: one quoted the war-cry of Dunbar, from the Psalms: “Let God arise, let his enemies be scattered.” The other read “Cromwell. To the eternal condemnation of Oliver. Seditionist, traitor, regicide, racialist, proto-fascist and blasphemous bigot. God save England from his like.” This dichotomy spreads right through his career, even from the war days and before, down to the essential picture of Cromwell as a man of action. That he was a man of action can scarcely be doubted: one might go further and say that it was as a man of action that Cromwell’s most sublime moments were reached. It was the decisive quickness of his military judgements, the brilliant rapid concentration of his mind in battle, which brought him the well-deserved rise to fame, which in turn enhanced his position in the political world, and finally elevated him to the highest counsels of the country. As a politician, and later still in enjoyment of the supreme power, this same capacity for decision – which looked more like impulse in the life of peacetime – brought about the dissolution of the Rump, carried him on to the Protectoral throne, and held off assaults on his position by the quick avoiding actions he took to various assorted Parliaments.

  It is this particular “Cromwellian” quality which has presumably attracted other men interested in the realities of political action to make studies of his life; not only an English politician like John Morley, or Isaac Foot, but also a former American President like Theodore Roosevelt have studied Oliver Cromwell. On the other hand the portrait of Oliver Cromwell as a strong man of history, although true in itself, leaves out all the other subtle shadows of his portrait; above all it omits the lifelong dialogue he carried on with himself concerning the intentions of the Almighty, which led him at times to periods of indecision so prolonged and so painful that on the strength of them, he would hardly deserve the Man of Action title at all. His love of the Protestant interest, springing from his obsession with religious promulgation, his own care and concern for the spiritual welfare of the English people, these preoccupations constituted a whole other side to his nature; the part they played was quite as powerful, even if its effect was often to lead to indecision rather than to action. As the author of the account of his last hours, commenting on these obsessions, wrote: “one half of his worth as a great Christian and servant of God was not known to others.”40


  Against the celebrated ruthlessness which he could show upon occasion must be put the other tenderer side to his nature, the clemency to the weak, concern for people, seen in many private instances, and also in an abstract care demonstrated as Protector that the lives of ordinary people should be improved, not brutalized by the deeds of the powers that ruled them. Milton, listing the qualities in 1654 which made him such an excellent figurehead for the nation, included his lack of personal boastfulness and arrogance, about the past.41 And indeed it is true that even in private conversation, the evidence shows that it was to God, at one level, and the soldiers of God at another that Cromwell was wont to give the credit for triumphs gone by. He had a feeling for family relationships; his attitude to his children is notably appealing not so much because it is so perfect as because it is so human. He showed courtesy to women, and was prepared to include them in his friendships. To friendship itself he devoted much time and much art, and was rewarded by warmth and affection by men of many differing shades of opinion. Then there were his genuine feelings for England itself, the English countryside, English field sports, horses, dogs, hunting and hawking, all of which not only marked him as a rounded man, but also brought him closely in touch with many of the people over whom he ruled, because they shared these tastes. Such attributes, added up, came to the positive fact that Oliver Cromwell in private had much charm, and exercised it over nearly all those who met him.

  This is not to deny the darker side to his nature, the manic rage which drove him into battle, which caused him to have cut down the Irish priests without regret, have the King killed and feel not the slightest tremor afterwards. But it was a fact generally admitted at the time that in contrast to many before or after him who would achieve a position of strength and have to maintain it, he was not a bloodthirsty man. In a sense, it is just because he set a high standard that he has not been judged in the same breath with tyrants and dictators, and the immensely superior fibre which he displayed sometimes passes unremarked. Of his attitude to his enemies it was said that “he did not use severity ordinarily towards them as others did of that kind, as was by some expected”.42 And these very rages contrasted with the great self-control which he could show on other occasions. His own explanation would have been simple: such passions were sent by God. A more complicated explanation might have been that by such sudden and daring acts Cromwell himself would of an occasion cut the Gordian knot of his own nature, that perpetual weighing up the signs and dispensations which led for example to such delays before he cast in his lot with the avowed enemies of the King. It is this dual capacity for action and inaction which gives to his character its special patina of paradox.