Cromwell, the Lord Protector

by Antonia Fraser

  It was these sufferings which no doubt gave rise to the Royalist rumours, ever hopeful, that the great man was actually sick in his mind, as in a letter to Ormonde from London in March: “Some say he is in many times like one distracted, and in these fits he will run about the house and into the garden, or else ride out with very little company which he never doth when he is composed and free from disorder.” A friend who met him about this time in St James’s Park found that contrary to his usual genial self in these pleasant surroundings, the Protector was brusquely refusing all petitions proffered to him, saying that he had other things to think of. Fleetwood followed at a distance, apparently not daring to approach too closely a leader who was giving so many manifestations of a ferocious bear suffering from a sore head.39 When in the spring the Protector also suffered another dangerous coach accident on his way to Wimbledon to visit Lambert’s delightful rustic property there, he might well have considered himself like Job, plagued by a long progression of reverses. On this occasion his coach was thrown from the ferry into the river while making the crossing from Lambeth to Westminster: however, although three of the six horses were drowned, the passengers fared better. All escaped and the coach itself was hauled out of the water the next day.

  Like Job, Cromwell survived his troubles. For all the predictions of February that “the grandees and courtiers” were making actual plans for his decease, it was indeed a case, as one observer said at the time, of the bear’s skin being parted before he was dead. Cromwell still had some resilience at his command: by the end of March a more hopeful report spoke of him driving in the park with his lifeguard, walking, galloping, twice round, and looking well and youthful. This was in marked contrast however to the growing number of descriptions from 1654 onwards of him as looking old and careworn. In January of that year the Venetian Ambassador described “his pensive (sottivo) brow”.40 The optimism of March 1656 was no doubt a reflection of the general anxiety that had been felt.

  In general at this period Oliver Cromwell struck observers as a man laden with cares which were taking much toll of him physically; although at the same time his personal authority gave him the necessary support of grandeur. The incoming Venetian Ambassador, Sagredo, took care to give a full portrait of the man rapidly becoming known as the terror of Europe when he saw him for the first time in October 1655: the Protector, he wrote, was “somewhat pulled” in appearance “with signs that his health is not stable and perfect”. The hand with which he held his hat trembled. Yet at the same time he gave a robust and even martial impression; with his great sword at his side, here was one who looked both soldier and orator. It might seem that the ruddy-faced, big-nosed, untidily-dressed faintly ludicrous country gentleman of Sir Philip Warwick’s early description fifteen years back had vanished for ever. Indeed, it was a point that Sir Philip himself made: how “by multiplied escapes and a real but unsurped power, having had a better tailor and more converse among good company” Cromwell managed to “appear of great and majestic deportment, and of comely presence”.

  Yet traces of the former man there still were: the complexion was still sanguine, as Sagredo noted, if his beard had become scanty; from another source we know that he had kept his teeth extremely well; and like every acute and interested observer of Cromwell’s physiognomy from Marvell in his poetry to Cooper in his miniature, Sagredo concentrated on Oliver’s eyes (which frequently filled with tears) and had, he said, “a deep and profound expression”. And despite the authority, not every commentator agreed with Sir Philip’s reassessment of the Protector’s sartorial habits. Sir John Reresby, for example, a young man coming from abroad, remembered him as one who dressed deliberately plainly, and in his apparel “he rather affected negligence than a gentile garb”. One of the Quakers who visited him in 1654 noted that the Protector wore a rough coat, whose material was “not worth three shillings a yard”. The conclusion that the Protector remained at heart sublimely and rather endearingly indifferent to what he wore is unavoidable for all the acid compliments of Sir Philip Warwick.41

  From family cares Oliver had never shrunk, neither in his days of military preoccupation nor in the period of his elevation to power. But they were destined to take on a new and demanding aspect in a period when both his rising majesty and his periodically rough health pointed to the problem of his successor. With his own accession, it was inevitable that his two surviving sons, Richard and Henry, aged twenty-seven and nearly twenty-six respectively when he became Protector, should come to occupy a more prominent place in the public eye, if only because this public was trained to the royal phenomenon of young princes succeeding ageing Kings in the course of time. Whatever the disapproval of any such prospect, at least the gossip on the subject was bound to grow with the possibilities of Cromwell himself accepting the crown. Nevertheless the first reaction of Oliver personally to any notion of hereditary rule seems to have been unfavourable. He spoke out firmly against the hereditary principle to the First Parliament of the Protectorate in January 1655 when he dissolved it. His quotation from Ecclesiastes on the subject: “Who knoweth whether he may beget a fool or a wise man?” certainly represented one unarguable disadvantage of the hereditary system. He would, he told the members, have refused the hereditary office if they had proffered it, for “men should be chosen to govern for their love to God, to truth and justice, not for their worth”.42

  But in the course of that year and subsequently in the early months of 1656, his views undoubtedly underwent some modification, as problems without cease, civil disruptions and the tentacles of ill-health were also modifying the man himself. Like other fathers, he was also subject to pressures from his family itself, and one at least of his sons was sufficiently cast in his father’s mould to disdain the notion of a quiet and dedicated private life for which Oliver seems to have originally intended them. In the summer of 1655 when Henry was on the verge of taking over from Fleetwood in Ireland, Oliver wrote to his son-in-law: “The Lord knows, my desire was for him and his brother to have lived private lives in the country; and Harry knows this very well, and how difficultly I was persuaded to give him his commission for this present place.” There is no reason to doubt, as Cromwell himself assured Fleetwood, that these views came from “a simple and sincere heart”, just as the “noise of my being crowned etc” were at this point also in the Protector’s phrase “malicious figments”.43

  In Ireland where he arrived in July 1655 Henry Cromwell did extremely well – and this in spite of a list of disadvantages, starting with the fact that he did not in fact replace Fleetwood as Lord Deputy, Fleetwood himself retaining the title, although leaving Ireland for England in the following September. Henry’s authority then derived merely from his position as Commander-in-Chief of the army and membership of the Council in Dublin, until November 1657 when he was finally made Lord Deputy and matters improved. Nevertheless this energetic young man made a very real attempt to cope with Ireland’s manifold problems. His portrait shows a genial appearance, a countenance both broader and handsomer than his father’s, the nose prominent but less bulbous, the complexion and colouring of the hair and eyes much the same. One of his good qualities was a capacity for winning himself popularity from a number of warring members of the community. In Dublin Henry lived with a princely retinue, providing much conciliatory entertainment to Protestant settlers as well as soldiers. Aided by his wife, with whom he lived on the fond and placid terms reminiscent of his parents’ relationship, he made a gallant attempt to form some kind of healing figurehead. The very attitude that the interests of the soldiers in Ireland should not necessarily be considered paramount – as Fleetwood had believed – was an advance in the cause of moderation.

  But while from the immediate past Henry had inherited a situation in Ireland where only many years of conciliation would really undo the harm which had been done, he was also presented with additional new irritations in the shape of the incoming Baptists. In his handling of these difficult people Henry showed himself at time
s tactless – admittedly in the face of much provocation – and when he wrote back to England that nothing would satisfy the Baptists except the saddle, from which he hoped to keep them, “lest they make me their ass”, he probably expressed much of the truth. But unlike Fleetwood, Henry did not attend Baptist meetings, and brought his own Independent ministers from England who denounced the Baptists. When his wife gave birth to “a lusty and hopeful son” – to be named Oliver – in the spring of 1656, there was much celebration among Dubliners, bonfires, a banquet, and more bonfires to follow the banquet The mother’s labour was reported to have been light, thanks to the prayers of the good people surrounding her, so that she was able to spend most of it writing and despatching letters to England. The public christening of this infant led to a less happy result, since the Baptists, with their concentration on adult baptism, took it as a deliberate insult.44 It was an incident which an older man might with wisdom have avoided. Henry, like any young prince, also felt himself at times put upon by his elderly advisers. Men of an older generation placed about him, Vernon, Hewson and Allen, were not backward with advice.

  The arrival of Steele, himself a Baptist, as Chancellor did something to help Henry’s relations with these “few busy choleric people” as Vincent Gookin called them. On the other hand Steele also treated Henry “as a tutor guardian to a minor”, presenting him at one point with three or four sheets of rules as to how to behave himself at Council meetings. It was hardly surprising that the association foundered, and Steele was eventually dismissed in favour of Gookin. What was to Henry’s credit was his whole state of mind, which encompassed the welfare of Ireland, as something quite separate from that of England, and at the same time perfectly desirable. When in June 1657 he was voted Ł1,500 worth of lands in Ireland by Parliament, he refused them on the grounds of Ireland’s poverty and England’s debts. While to the Baptist leaders in January 1656 he showed a proper flash of his father’s spirit on the subject of toleration and government: “I told them plainly… Liberty and countenance they might expect from me, but to rule me, or to rule with me, I should not approve.”45

  Oliver was as ever free enough with advice to a member of his family who might be supposed to be in need of it. In April 1656 he adjured Henry on the subject of his Irish affairs to “Cry to the Lord to give you a plain single heart. Take heed of being over-jealous, lest your apprehensions of others cause you to offend. Take care of making it a business to be too hard for the man who contest with you. Being over-concerned may train you into a snare.” These sage counsels, of which Henry was certainly at times in need, also told much of the lessons that Oliver had learned in the course of government. His final caution was especially sensible from a man who had won his own position to a son who would never need to do so. “Take heed of studying to lay for yourself the foundation of a great estate. It will be a snare to you: they will watch you; bad men will be confirmed in covetousness. The thing is an evil which God abhors. I pray you think of me in this.”46 But in principle Henry navigated with a certain elegance the problem of a famous father, that honeyed inheritance which has trapped many a promising young career. Perhaps the very distance between England and Ireland, that distance which led him to complain of lack of support and even to threaten resignation as his father sometimes meditated retirement (without taking the plunge) was to Henry’s advantage. He could spread his wings and allow his own personality to develop, far from the shadow of Oliver’s protection, or his greatness. As it was, in Irish history at least, Henry Cromwell’s name should have an honourable place, as one who attempted in the short space of time allotted to him to solve its problems by moderation rather than by violence. And the spark of the Protector’s greatness that he showed, if fanned, might in time have burst into a flame.

  Popular talk said that Oliver was dissatisfied with the talents of both of his sons. But if such paternal depression was unjustified in the case of Henry, there was all too much substance to it in the case of Dick. Alas, poor Dick was still the same amiable but incompetent country gentleman, the news of whose debts had been greeted with such anguished cries by his father from Scotland in 1651. Debts indeed continued to haunt him all his life, mismanagement of the sort which allowed his bailiff to defraud him being as much responsible as extravagant living. In one way or another, all contemporaries made the point that he was an unexpected son for the Protector to be endowed with (since the phenomenon of the weak gentle son of a forceful father, common as it may be, never fails to amaze). His brother-in-law, Mary’s husband, Fauconberg, put it most politely when he wrote of Richard’s excellent qualities even “if his sheaf be not as Joseph’s to which all the rest bow”. At its crudest it was expressed by the tide of a popular pamphlet: Whether Richard Cromwell be the son of Oliver Protector or no. The golden mean was expressed by the view of one Ambassador: Dick simply did not inherit “the high spirit and deep knowledge of his parent”. There are also contemporary hints, such as the allusions to “Queen Dick”, or the phrase “as queer as Dick’s hatband”, that Richard Cromwell was a homosexual. That again would be a situation easy for modern psychologists to explain. It is true that Dorothy, despite the bright promise of their marriage, did not share the years of Dick’s exile. On the other hand his acute financial situation and her need to protect her own properties for their children, provides an equally acceptable explanation for their later parting. Richard Cromwell’s homosexuality, if psychologically possible, and even probable, is not conclusively proved. Lucy Hutchinson for instance had unexpectedly pleasant words to say of him, from which one divines that Dick was agreeable company: he was meek and virtuous, she wrote, but greatness was not in him. Another pamphlet, highly hostile to the notion of any Cromwellian monarchy, summed him up as “a person well skilled in hawking, hunting, horse-racing, with other sports and pastimes” and who was said in addition to be fond of drinking – even the health of King Charles.47

  But Dick could not quite be abandoned to the life of a country gentleman for which he was clearly so eminently suited. He was a member of the 1654 Parliament; in November 1655, perhaps reflecting the tortuous but developing thinking of his father on the whole subject of the succession, he was given his first public appointment on the Committee of Trade and Navigation. And in 1656 and thereafter, as a new Parliament seemed likely to throw up the subject of the succession into still further prominence, Dick, for better or for worse now the Protector’s eldest son, was bound to share the limelight. Indeed his qualities or the lack of them, once merely the occasion of a parent’s sorrow, might prove a significant factor in the history of his country.

  * * *

  This Second Parliament of the Protectorate, which began to be discussed in the summer of 1656, came about directly as a result of the financial requirements of the Spanish War, exacerbated by the troubles of Hispaniola and the new colony of Jamaica, and at a point when Stayner s capture of the Spanish treasure-fleet of September still lay in the future. Memories of King Charles I’s attempts by a series of unorthodox expedients to pay for his foreign policy without Parliament were still unpleasantly fresh in the minds of Oliver’s own contemporaries: although the Instrument of Government did not necessarily allow for another Parliament until the autumn of 1657, this was to be an emergency gathering to raise the money which the Major-Generals had proved incapable of culling, to last three months instead of the usual five.

  Indirectly the causes were deeper and included the Protector’s own political make-up. In Oliver’s temperament there was still much which continued to hope for a solution to the difficulties of government which included the use of Parliament. It was not only that the rumblings of the military, the growing dissatisfaction of former satellites like John Lambert, at what was in effect his personal rule, suggested the thought that Parliament in this respect might provide a useful counter-weight. A revolutionary actor rather than a revolutionary thinker, Oliver Cromwell had in addition perhaps been too indoctrinated in the concept of Parliamentary government in his e
nergetic youth – and the years of crisis with King Charles which he too could vividly remember – to escape it altogether in his more conservative old age. But of course once again it was a docile Parliament which was envisaged, and another version of a nominated assembly seems even to have been discussed briefly before the notion of a conventional Parliament in the end prevailed. After all even if the MajorGenerals had failed to raise the vast sums of money required to pay for the new horse militia, at least their existence would help to ensure the election of a more manageable body of men than had appeared in 1654. It was a view to which these local “Bashaws” themselves contributed. At the end of May 1656 there was a conference of Major-Generals and Council; the writs were issued on 20 August for a Parliament to meet on 17 September.

  The truth was that in their separate ways the questions of the Jews and of the Major-Generals summed up the problems of the middle period of Oliver Protector’s rule. Over the Jews, the Council had been hostile to his wishes, and he had not been able either to gainsay or to persuade them; nevertheless he had been able to use his personal influence to bring about an equitable situation. The Major-Generals represented an experimental attempt to rule the country without Parliament that had not only proved extremely unpopular but had left Oliver in a situation where he now had to go back to Parliament for money. If Parliament were to fail – fail that is, by Oliver’s standards of what was right – yet again, the odds on some version of personal rule, be it actual kingship or no, would be stronger than ever, as the Protector’s mind was led inexorably in that direction by the failure of all other courses. In August Edmund Ludlow had an important discussion on the subject with Cromwell, which he reported in his memoirs. First Ludlow attacked the Protector for not granting “that which we fought for . . . that the Nation might be governed by its own consent”. To this Oliver replied that he was as much for government by consent as any man: “but where shall we find that consent? Amongst the Prelatical, Presbyterian, Independent, Anabaptist or Levelling parties?” It was all very well for Ludlow to answer: “Amongst those of all sorts who had acted with fidelity and affection to the public.”48 That simply begged the question.