Rebellion: The History of England from James I to the Glorious Revolution

by Peter Ackroyd

  Cromwell remained in Edinburgh for almost a year after his victory at Dunbar, while Leslie strengthened the remains of his army less than 40 miles north-west at Stirling. But there was no possibility of the two armies clashing in the vicinity; the nature of the terrain, and the wild weather of winter, made any campaign unlikely. In any case Cromwell fell dangerously sick in February 1651. He suffered from a ‘feverish ague’, perhaps contracted in Ireland and exacerbated by the campaign in Scotland; he had told his wife, the day after Dunbar, ‘I grow an old man, and feel the infirmities of age marvellously stealing upon me.’ He was on the brink of death on three separate occasions and, in alarm, parliament dispatched two physicians to his bedside. He himself was convinced that God had sent him sickness in order to test his faith.

  By the early summer, however, he was fully recovered; he believed that he had been saved for a purpose, and almost at once took advantage of the more favourable weather to renew his campaign. In a series of manoeuvres he so arranged matters that the roads south to England remained open to the royalist forces. It might have seemed like an unpardonable blunder, but in fact Cromwell had wanted to remove the Scottish troops from Scotland where they could not otherwise be dislodged. He had set a trap that Charles now entered. Cromwell warned the Speaker of the Rump Parliament that ‘I do apprehend that if the enemy goes for England, being some few days march before us, it will trouble some men’s thoughts and may occasion some inconveniences’. Yet he believed that all would be well, and all manner of things would be well.

  The king, hopeful that the royalists of England would flock to his banner, came across the border by way of Carlisle. Certain ‘scares’ and conspiracies had been reported in these early days; disaffected royalists met at racecourses or in taverns to plot their schemes but, without any organized direction, they remained inchoate. The government also sent agents provocateurs among them, known as ‘decoy ducks’. In the spring of this year a royalist conspiracy was discovered in the City of London that involved several Presbyterian ministers; one of their number, Christopher Love, died on the scaffold. This was considered by some to be an affront to religion while others, such as John Milton, celebrated it as a blow against disobedience and treason.

  Yet few supporters joined the king on his journey south, principally because the Scots were not popular among the English people; they could not support an ancient enemy, even if a lawful monarch led them forward. David Leslie himself was doleful and, when the king asked why he was so sad in the presence of such a spirited army, he replied quietly that ‘he was melancholic indeed, for he knew that army, how well soever it looked, would not fight’. Nevertheless the king made his way down the north-western counties, through Cumberland and Cheshire and Staffordshire; he could not think of changing course towards London, since the regiments of the enemy were now pursing him. Cromwell’s strategy had been entirely successful.

  Charles took refuge at last in the perennially royal city of Worcester. ‘For me,’ the king said, ‘it is a crown or a coffin.’ Cromwell had not the patience to try a siege on this occasion but decided instead upon an immediate attack, on both sides of the town, by means of the Severn. With the royalist army at half the strength of its antagonist, the result was not really in doubt. Charles, watching the action from the tower of the cathedral, made one last effort to consolidate his forces in a battle that lasted for three hours. When he rallied some of his men for another fresh sally, they threw down their arms. ‘Then shoot me dead,’ he said, ‘rather than let me live to see the sad consequences of this day.’ Brave words were not enough, however, and by the early afternoon of 3 September 1651, the royalist army had been scattered to the winds. The young king disappeared into the greenwood, among the birds and foxes, where he could not be found. It was Oliver Cromwell’s last battle and it was for him, as he wrote, ‘a crowning mercy’.

  The wanderings of the young king have become the stuff of legend; he made his secret way through England for forty-two days, and was concealed in eighty-two different hiding places; forty-five people, by the smallest count, knew who he was and where he was. Yet not one of them betrayed him. The image of the king still burned brightly in some loyal hearts. It was noted that many of those who preserved him were Roman Catholic.

  In the course of his peregrinations he was disguised as a labourer; he hid in a barn, in a wood and on a farm. He adopted the disguise of the son of a tenant farmer, and was recognized in silence by the butler of the manor where he rested. He stayed in a ‘priest hole’, devised to protect visiting Jesuits, and lay concealed among the boughs of an oak tree in the grounds of Boscobel House. He dressed as a country man, in a worn leather doublet, and as a servant in a grey cloak. Posters were pasted in villages and market towns asking for the capture of ‘a tall, black man, over two yards high’; the ‘black’ referred to his somewhat swarthy complexion. On one occasion he was surprised by the sound of bells and sight of bonfires, arranged after a false report of his death.

  In Bromsgrove, Worcestershire, a blacksmith told him that the king should be hanged for bringing in the Scots. At Bridport, disguised as a servant, he entered a street that was filled with troops searching for him; he dismounted and led his horse as if he were taking it to a stable. At Brighton an innkeeper knelt down and kissed his hand, saying ‘that he would not ask him who he was, but bid God bless him whither he was going’. One attempt at escape by sea was abandoned, but on 14 October he sailed from Shoreham to the relative safety of Normandy. On his return to France the young king was asked if he would ever return to Scotland, to which he replied that he would rather be hanged first. When he arrived at the French court he was still ragged and dirty after his adventures.

  Cromwell returned in triumph to London bearing with him, like a Roman emperor, the prisoners whom he had taken. He was granted an income of £4,000 per year, and the palace at Hampton Court was bestowed upon him. There could be no doubt that he was the first man of the state.

  Yet he came back to a city very different from that which he had left at the beginning of the Irish campaign. The first ‘year of freedom’, after the heady days of the council of state, had been less than glorious. The Rump Parliament had been almost overwhelmed with the pressure of business; it set up committees for legal or ecclesiastical reform, but then did nothing to carry their conclusions into effect. Accusations of favouritism, and even of corruption, were often heard. It was widely believed that its principal concern was for its own survival.

  Parliament did pass a few bills, however, designed for the supposed good of the commonwealth; one of them was an Act making adultery a capital offence. It was not a great success. Four women, and no men, were executed. In many other respects the members of parliament seemed to have lapsed into a state close to inertia. It was reported that the present government was reduced to a ‘languishing condition’ in the provinces.

  Yet Cromwell’s triumphs were evident. Scotland was seized and strengthened by one of Cromwell’s key generals, George Monck, and was governed by a military regime for the next eleven years; Cromwell remarked that ‘I do think truly they are a very ruined nation’. No king of England had ever conquered Scotland. Ireland was in no better case; after Cromwell’s withdrawal another general, Edmund Ludlow, practically completed the conquest of that country. The Act of Settlement, passed in the summer of 1652, condemned Catholic landowners to the wholesale or partial forfeiture of their estates while those who had actively supported the Irish rebellion were in theory condemned to death. Cromwell had achieved the unparalleled feat of ascendancy over the three kingdoms.

  When he returned from his victory at Worcester he was told that great things were expected of him in peace no less than in war; it was his task, according to a letter sent to him, to ‘ease the oppressed of their burdens, to release the prisoners out of bonds, and to relieve poor families with bread’. Yet he could only achieve these laudable aims through the agency of the Rump Parliament that seemed in no way inclined to obey his orders with the
same promptness as the soldiers of the New Model Army. Those parliamentarians who were members of the council of state were in most respects still conscientious and diligent, yet others were not so easily inspired by Cromwell’s zeal or vision.

  Cromwell had argued for an immediate dissolution of parliament, making way for a fresh legislature that might deal with the problems attendant upon victory. Yet the members prevaricated and debated, finally agreeing to dissolve their assembly at a date not later than November 1654. They gave themselves another three years of procrastination. The army was by now thoroughly disillusioned with those members who seemed intent upon thwarting or delaying necessary legislation. The more committed soldiers believed them to be time-servers or worse, uninterested in the cause of ‘the people of God’.

  In truth the Rump was essentially a conservative body, while the army inherently favoured radical solutions; there was bound to be conflict between them. Yet Cromwell himself was not so certain of his course; he wished for godly reformation of the commonwealth but he also felt obliged, at this stage, to proceed by constitutional methods. He did not want to impose what was known as a ‘sword government’. Another possibility was also full of peril. In the current state of opinion it was possible that, unless fresh elections were carefully managed, a royalist majority might be returned; this could not be permitted.

  The condition of England was enough to cause dismay. The late wars had badly injured trade, with a consequent steep increase in unemployment; bands of beggars roamed the land in numbers not seen since the last century. The country gentry and other landlords were devastated by the various taxes imposed upon them; those who favoured the royalist cause found their lands in danger of confiscation or sale. The prisons were filled with debtors. The Church was in confusion, with radical sectaries and orthodox believers still engaged in recrimination and complaint. Episcopacy had been abolished but no other form of national Church government had taken its place; it was said that the mass of the people could not find ministers to serve them. Many called, without success, for legislation to abolish burdensome taxes, to simplify and improve the judicial process, to ease the public debt and to lower the cost of living.

  One evening in the autumn of 1652, Cromwell was walking in St James’s Park with a member of the council of state, Bulstrode Whitelocke. Cromwell asked his companion for his counsel on the present condition of affairs, remarking of the Rump Parliament that ‘there is little hope of a good settlement to be made by them, really there is not’. Whitelocke then replied that ‘we ourselves have acknowledged them the supreme power’.

  Cromwell: What if a man should take upon him to be king?

  Whitelocke: I think that remedy would be worse than the disease.

  Cromwell: Why do you think so?

  Whitelocke: As to your own person the title of king would be of no advantage, because you have the full kingly power in you already, concerning the militia, and you are general.

  Cromwell went on to reflect, at least according to Whitelocke’s diary, that ‘the power of a king is so great and so high’, that ‘the title of it might indemnify in a great measure those that act under it’; it would in particular be useful in curbing ‘the insolences and extravagances of those whom the present powers cannot control’. It is possible that the conversation sprang from hindsight on the part of Whitelocke but its purport is confirmed by Cromwell’s remark in an earlier meeting of officers and parliamentarians that ‘somewhat of a monarchical government would be most effectual, if it could be established with safety to the liberties of the people’. Certainly he believed that his military victories had been delivered to him by God. Why should his destiny now be in the hands of a Rump? He could have waited patiently for a sign but ambition and a sense of mission (they are not to be distinguished) soon drove him forward.

  The army had already presented a petition of complaint to parliament in which it was recommended that miscreants in positions of authority should be replaced by ‘men of truth, fearing God and hating covetousness’. This was a standard preamble based on Exodus 18:21. They listed many necessary reforms that needed ‘speedy and effectual’ redress. The members of the Rump promised to take such matters ‘under consideration’.

  Cromwell attempted to mediate between the officers and parliamentarians, although he believed that the Rump was in general guided by pride and self-seeking. He told a colleague that he was being pushed to action, the consideration of which ‘makes my hair stand on end’. His practice was always to withdraw into himself, in a process of self-communing, before taking swift and decisive action.

  The officers of the New Model Army had devoted the first week of 1653 to prayer and fasting, seeking for God’s counsel. From this time forward the members of the Rump feared some form of military intervention. It was rumoured that parliament was preparing a bill for new elections, vetted by its own members, that would destroy the army’s expectations of godly reformation; it was also claimed that parliament was about to remove Cromwell from the leadership of the army.

  On 20 April Cromwell came into the chamber of the House of Commons, dressed in plain black, and took his seat; he had left a file of musketeers at the door of the chamber and in the lobby. He took off his hat and rose to his feet. He first commended the Commons for their early efforts at reform but then reproached them for their subsequent delays and obfuscations; he roamed down the middle of the chamber and signalled various individual members as ‘whoremaster’ and ‘drunkard’ and ‘juggler’. He declared more than once that ‘it is you that have forced me to do this, for I have sought the Lord night and day that he would rather slay me than put me upon the doing of this work’. He spoke, according to one observer, ‘with so much passion and discomposure of mind as if he had been distracted’; he shouted, and kicked the floor with his foot.

  In conclusion he called out, ‘You are no parliament. I will put an end to your sitting.’ He then called for the musketeers and pointed to the parliamentary mace lying on the table. ‘What shall be done with this bauble? Here. Take it away.’ He said later that he had not planned or premeditated his intervention and that ‘the spirit was so upon him, that he was overruled by it; and he consulted not with flesh and blood at all’. This is perhaps too convenient an explanation to be altogether true. He had dissolved a parliament that, in one form or another, had endured for almost thirteen years. The Long Parliament, of which the Rump was the final appendage, had witnessed Charles I’s attempt to seize five of its members and then the whole course of the civil wars; it had seen some of its members purged and driven away. It was not a ruin, but a ruin of that ruin. It ended in ignominy, unwanted and unlamented. Cromwell remarked later that, at its dissolution, not even a dog barked. On the following day a large placard was placed upon the door of the chamber. ‘This House to be let, unfurnished.’

  32

  Fear and trembling

  The most powerful image of the age, after the demise of the Tudor line, was that of a society without divine sanction. In the early decades of the seventeenth century Jacobean tragedy, as we have seen, assumed a world without God where men and women struggle for survival. The civic broils of the 1640s had rendered the prospect of chaos only more acute. Out of that fear and insecurity came a book that has been described as the only masterpiece of political philosophy in the English language.

  Thomas Hobbes had shown no signs of greatness. After a conventional humanist education at Oxford he became tutor and companion to William Cavendish, second son of the 1st earl of Devonshire; with that gentleman he undertook the almost obligatory European tour. On a subsequent journey, to Geneva, he experienced his moment of awakening. He happened to open a copy of Euclid’s Elements of Geometry and was immediately impressed by the Greek mathematician’s reliance on deduction through definitions and axioms; it was the method, not the matter, that inspired him. In that spirit he began to brood on the nature of human society.

  He began work on Leviathan, or the Matter, Form and Power of a Common Weal
th Ecclesiastical and Civil in the late 1640s, the volume eventually being published in 1651. It was begun at a time, therefore, of chaotic civil war; its writing continued through the trial and execution of a king; it was completed in a period when the political experiment of the Rump Parliament was being challenged by various sects and interests. Where was certainty, or safety, to be found? Hobbes was in any case of a timorous and fearful nature. He wrote, at the age of eighty-four, that ‘fear and I were born twins’.

  So Leviathan emerged from the very conditions of the time, or what he called ‘the seditious roaring of a troubled nation’. He did not read other political or philosophical accounts; he believed ‘that there can be nothing so absurd, but may be found in the books of philosophers’. He followed his own bright line of thought through all of its logical consequences. He would ponder and ruminate, then jot down the phrases and conclusions that came to him. One axiom would lead to another, and then to the next, so that he was inexorably guided towards his own vision of the world.

  His clarity of purpose, and his rigorous method, allowed him to cut through all the political cant of the period; his was a thorough scepticism that pierced the pious platitudes and false generalizations, the truisms and solecisms, that always attend political discourse. He would proceed only upon first principles maintained by firm definition and vigorous argument. He stated that ‘words are wise men’s counters, they do but reckon by them; but they are the money of fools’.