Oliver Cromwell
An unfinished miniature portrait of Oliver Cromwell by Samuel Cooper,
1657
English statesman
born April 25, 1599, Huntingdon, Huntingdonshire, Eng.
died Sept. 3, 1658, London
Main
English soldier and statesman who led parliamentary forces in the
English Civil Wars; he was lord protector of England, Scotland, and
Ireland from 1653 to 1658 during the republican Commonwealth.
As one of the generals on the parliamentary side in the English Civil
War against King Charles I, Cromwell helped to bring about the overthrow
of the Stuart monarchy, and, as lord protector, he raised his country’s
status once more to that of a leading European power from the decline it
had gone through since the death of Queen Elizabeth I. A man of
outstanding gifts and a forceful character, he was one of the most
remarkable rulers in modern European history, for although a convinced
Calvinist, he believed deeply in the value of religious toleration. At
the same time Cromwell’s victories at home and abroad helped to enlarge
and sustain a Puritan attitude of mind, both in Great Britain and in
North America, that continued to influence political and social life
until recent times.
Youth and early public career
Cromwell was born at Huntingdon in eastern England in 1599, the only son
of Robert Cromwell and Elizabeth Steward. His father had been a member
of one of Queen Elizabeth’s parliaments and, as a landlord and justice
of the peace, was active in local affairs. Robert Cromwell died when his
son was 18, but his widow lived to the age of 89. Oliver went to the
local grammar school and then for a year attended Sidney Sussex College,
Cambridge. After his father’s death he left Cambridge to look after his
widowed mother and sisters but is believed to have studied for a time at
Lincoln’s Inn in London, where country gentlemen were accustomed to
acquire a smattering of law. In August 1620 he married Elizabeth,
daughter of Sir James Bourchier, a merchant in the City of London. By
her he was to have five sons and four daughters.
Youth and early public career » Formative influences
Cromwell was descended indirectly on his father’s side from Henry VIII’s
chief minister, Thomas Cromwell, who had assisted Oliver’s
great-grandfather and grandfather in acquiring significant amounts of
former monastic land in Huntingdon and in the Fenland. Oliver was the
eldest surviving son of the younger son of a knight; he inherited a
modest amount of property but was brought up in the vicinity of his
grandfather, who regularly entertained the King’s hunting party. His
education would have presented him with a strong evangelical
Protestantism and a powerful sense of God’s providential presence in
human affairs.
During his early married life Cromwell, like his father, was
profoundly conscious of his responsibilities to his fellow men and
concerned himself with affairs in his native Fenland, but he was also
the victim of a spiritual and psychological struggle that perplexed his
mind and damaged his health. He does not appear to have experienced
conversion until he was nearly 30; later he described to a cousin how he
had emerged from darkness into light. Yet he had been unable to receive
the grace of God without feeling a sense of “self, vanity and badness.”
He was convinced that he had been “the chief of sinners” before he
learned that he was one of God’s Chosen.
In his 30s Cromwell sold his freehold land and became a tenant on the
estate of Henry Lawrence at St. Ives in Cambridgeshire. Lawrence was
planning at that time to emigrate to New England, and Cromwell was
almost certainly planning to accompany him, but the plan failed.
There is no evidence that Cromwell was active in the opposition to
Charles I’s financial and social policies, but he was certainly
prominent in schemes in East Anglia to protect local preachers from the
religious policies of the King and Archbishop William Laud. He had
strong links with Puritan groups in London and Essex, and there is some
evidence that he attended, and perhaps preached at, an underground
conventicle.
Youth and early public career » Cromwell in Parliament
Cromwell had already become known in the Parliament of 1628–29 as a
fiery and somewhat uncouth Puritan, who had launched an attack on
Charles I’s bishops. He believed that the individual Christian could
establish direct contact with God through prayer and that the principal
duty of the clergy was to inspire the laity by preaching. Thus he had
contributed out of his own pocket to the support of itinerant Protestant
preachers or “lecturers” and openly showed his dislike of his local
bishop at Ely, a leader of the High Church party, which stood for the
importance of ritual and episcopal authority. He criticized the bishop
in the House of Commons and was appointed a member of a committee to
investigate other complaints against him. Cromwell, in fact, distrusted
the whole hierarchy of the Church of England, though he was never
opposed to a state church. He therefore advocated abolishing the
institution of the episcopate and the banning of a set ritual as
prescribed in The Book of Common Prayer. He believed that Christian
congregations ought to be allowed to choose their own ministers, who
should serve them by preaching and extemporaneous prayer.
Cromwell’s election to the Parliaments of 1640 (see Short Parliament;
Long Parliament) for the borough of Cambridge was certainly the result
of close links between himself and radical Puritans in the city council.
In Parliament he bolstered his reputation as a religious hothead by
promoting radical reform. In fact, he was too outspoken for the leaders
of the opposition, who ceased to use him as their mouthpiece after the
early months of the Long Parliament.
Indeed, though Cromwell shared the grievances of his fellow members
over taxes, monopolies, and other burdens imposed on the people, it was
his religion that first brought him into opposition to the King’s
government. When in November 1641 John Pym and his friends presented to
King Charles I a “Grand Remonstrance,” consisting of over 200 clauses,
among which was one censuring the bishops “and the corrupt part of the
clergy, who cherish formality and superstition” in support of their own
“ecclesiastical tyranny and usurpation,” Cromwell declared that had it
not been passed by the House of Commons he would have sold all he had
“the next morning, and never have seen England more.”
The Remonstrance was not accepted by the King, and the gulf between
him and his leading critics in the House of Commons widened. A month
later Charles vainly attempted to arrest five of them for treason:
Cromwell was not yet sufficiently prominent to be among these. But when
in 1642 the King left London to raise an army, and events drifted toward
civil war, Cromwell began to distinguish himself not merely as an
outspoken Puritan but also as a practical man capable of organization
and leadership. In July he obtained permission from the House of Commons
to allow his constituency of Cambridge to form and arm companies for its
defense, in August he himself rode to Cambridge to prevent the colleges
from sending their plate to be melted down for the benefit of the King,
and as soon as the war began he enlisted a troop of cavalry in his
birthplace of Huntingdon. As a captain he made his first appearance with
his troop in the closing stages of the Battle of Edgehill (Oct. 23,
1642) where Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex, was commander in chief
for Parliament in the first major contest of the war.
Oliver Cromwell, by Robert Walker
Military and political leader
During 1643 Cromwell acquired a reputation both as a military organizer
and a fighting man. From the very beginning he had insisted that the men
who served on the parliamentarian side should be carefully chosen and
properly trained, and he made it a point to find loyal and well-behaved
men regardless of their religious beliefs or social status. Appointed a
colonel in February, he began to recruit a first-class cavalry regiment.
While he demanded good treatment and regular payment for his troopers,
he exercised strict discipline. If they swore, they were fined; if
drunk, put in the stocks; if they called each other Roundheads—thus
endorsing the contemptuous epithet the Royalists applied to them because
of their closecropped hair—they were cashiered; and if they deserted,
they were whipped. So successfully did he train his own cavalrymen that
he was able to check and re-form them after they charged in battle. That
was one of Cromwell’s outstanding gifts as a fighting commander.
Throughout 1643 he served in the eastern counties that he knew so
well. These formed a recognized centre of parliamentary strength, but,
unwilling to stay on the defensive, Cromwell was determined to prevent
the penetration of Yorkshire Royalists into the eastern counties and
decided to counterattack. By re-forming his men in a moment of crisis in
the face of an unbeaten enemy, he won the Battle of Gainsborough in
Lincolnshire on July 28. On the same day he was appointed governor of
the Isle of Ely, a large plateau-like hill rising above the surrounding
fens, that was thought of as a possible bastion against advancing
Royalists. In fact, however, Cromwell, fighting alongside the
parliamentary general Sir Thomas Fairfax, succeeded in stemming the
royalist attacks at Winceby in Lincolnshire and then successfully
besieged Newark in Nottinghamshire. He was now able to persuade the
House of Commons, well pleased with these victories, to create a new
army, that would not merely defend eastern England but would march out
and attack the enemy.
This new army was formed under the command of Edward Montagu, 2nd
earl of Manchester, early in 1644. Appearing in the House of Commons,
Cromwell, besides commending Manchester for the command, accused some of
his fellow officers as incompetents or as being “profane” and “loose” in
their conduct. Although not all members of the House of Commons approved
of Cromwell’s using his political position to defame other officers, his
friends rallied round him, and in 1644 he was appointed Manchester’s
second in command, with the rank of lieutenant general, and paid five
pounds a day. After an alliance had been concluded with the Scots, he
was also appointed a member of the Committee of Both Kingdoms, which
became responsible for the overall strategy of the Civil War. But since
he was engaged at the front during the campaigning season, Cromwell took
little part in its deliberations.
After Manchester’s army had stormed Lincoln in May 1644, it marched
north to join the Scots and the Yorkshire parliamentarians at the siege
of York. But Charles I’s commander in chief, Prince Rupert, raised the
siege. He was, however, defeated in the Battle of Marston Moor, July 2,
1644, that in effect gave the north of England to Parliament. Cromwell
had again distinguished himself in the battle, and when Manchester’s
army returned to eastern England to rest on its laurels, Cromwell
criticized his superior officer for his slowness and lethargy. He did
not believe that Manchester really wanted to win the war, and in
mid-September he laid his complaints before the Committee of Both
Kingdoms. The quarrel between the two commanders was patched up, but
after the defeat at Newbury, caused largely by the earl of Manchester’s
refusal to support Cromwell’s cavalry with his infantry, it broke into
the open once more.
Cromwell now expounded his detailed complaint about Manchester’s
military conduct in the House of Commons. Manchester retorted by
attacking Cromwell in the House of Lords. It was even planned to impeach
Cromwell as “an incendiary.” Once again, however, these quarrels were
patched up. In December 1644, Cromwell proposed that in the future no
members of either house of Parliament should be allowed to hold commands
or offices in the armed forces; his proposal was accepted, and it was
also agreed that a new army should be constituted under Sir Thomas
Fairfax. Cromwell, an admirer of Fairfax, put forward his name and then
busied himself with planning the new army, from which, as a member of
Parliament, he himself was excluded. But, significantly, the post of
second in command was left open, and, when the Civil War reached its
climax in the summer of 1645, Fairfax insisted that Cromwell should be
appointed to it. He then fought at the battles of Naseby and Langport,
where Charles I’s last two field armies were destroyed. In January 1646
the House of Commons awarded Cromwell £2,500 a year in confiscated
Royalist land for his services and renewed his commission for a further
six months. Thus he was able to join Fairfax in the siege of Oxford,
from which Charles I escaped before it surrendered.
Cromwell was delighted with the way in which the war had gone since
Fairfax had taken command of the new army and the lethargic earls of
Essex and Manchester had been removed from their commands. He attributed
these victories to the mercy of God and demanded that the men who had
served the country so faithfully should have their due reward. After
Naseby he wrote to the Speaker of the House of Commons urging that such
“honest men” should not meet with discouragement: “He that ventures his
life for the liberty of his country, I wish he trust God for the liberty
of his conscience, and you for the liberty he fights for.”
But once the war was over the House of Commons wanted to disband the
army as cheaply and quickly as possible. Disappointed, Cromwell told
Fairfax in March 1647 that “never were the spirits of men more
embittered than now.” He devoted himself to trying to reconcile the
Parliament with the army and was appointed a parliamentary commissioner
to offer terms on which the army could be disbanded except for those
willing to take part in a campaign in Ireland. As late as May he thought
that the soldiers might agree to disband but that they would refuse to
serve in Ireland and that they were “under a deep sense of some
sufferings.” When the civilian leaders in the House of Commons decided
that they could not trust the army and ordered it disbanded, while they
hired a Scottish army to protect them, Cromwell, who never liked the
Scots and thought that the English soldiers were being disgracefully
treated, left London and on June 4, 1647, threw in his lot with his
fellow soldiers.
Military and political leader » Mediation and the Second Civil War
For the remainder of this critical year he attempted to find a peaceful
settlement of the kingdom’s problems, but his task seemed insoluble; and
soon his good faith was freely called into question. The army was
growing more and more restive, and on the day Cromwell left London, a
party of soldiers seized Charles I. Cromwell and his son-in-law, Henry
Ireton, interviewed the King twice, trying to persuade him to agree to a
constitutional settlement that they then intended to submit to
Parliament. At that time Cromwell, no enemy of the King, was touched by
his devotion to his children. His main task, however, was to overcome
the general feeling in the army that neither the King nor Parliament
could be trusted. When, under pressure from the rank and file, General
Fairfax led the army toward the houses of Parliament in London, Cromwell
still insisted that the authority of Parliament must be upheld; and in
September he also resisted a proposal in the House of Commons that no
further addresses should be made to the King. Just over a month later he
took the chair at meetings of the General Council of the Army (which
included representatives of the private soldiers known as Agitators) and
assured them that he was not committed to any particular form of
government and had not had any underhand dealings with the King. On the
other hand, fearing anarchy, he opposed extremist measures such as the
abolition of the monarchy and the House of Lords and the introduction of
a more democratic constitution.
But all Cromwell’s efforts to act as a mediator between army,
Parliament, and King came to nothing when Charles I escaped from Hampton
Court Palace, where he had been kept in honourable captivity, and fled
to the Isle of Wight to open negotiations with Scottish commissioners
offering to restore him to the throne on their terms. On Jan. 3, 1648,
Cromwell abandoned his previous position and, telling the House of
Commons that the King was “an obstinate man, whose heart God had
hardened,” agreed to a vote of no addresses, which was carried. The
Royalists, encouraged by the King’s agreement with the Scots and the
failure of Cromwell to unite Parliament and the army, took up arms again
and the Second Civil War began.
General Fairfax first ordered Cromwell into Wales to crush a rising
there and then sent him north to fight the Scottish army that invaded
England in June. Though his army was inferior in numbers to that of the
Scots and northern Royalists, he defeated them both in a campaign in
Lancashire; then he entered Scotland and restored order there; finally
he returned to Yorkshire and took charge of the siege of Pontefract. The
correspondence he conducted during the siege with the governor of the
Isle of Wight, whose duty it was to keep watch on the King, reveals that
he was increasingly turning against Charles. Parliamentary commissioners
had been sent to the island in order to make one final effort to reach
an agreement with the King. But Cromwell told the governor that the King
was not to be trusted, that concessions over religion must not be
granted, and that the army might be considered a lawful power capable of
ensuring the safety of the people and the liberty of all Christians.
While Cromwell, still not entirely decided on his course, lingered in
the north, his son-in-law Ireton and other officers in the southern army
took decisive action. They drew up a remonstrance to Parliament
complaining about the negotiations in the Isle of Wight and demanding
the trial of the King as a Man of Blood. While Cromwell still felt
uncertain about his own views, he admitted that his army agreed with the
army in the south. Fairfax now ordered him to return to London; but he
did not arrive until after Ireton and his colleagues had removed from
the House of Commons all members who favoured continuing negotiations
with the King. Cromwell asserted that he had not been acquainted with
the plan to purge the House, “yet since it was done, he was glad of it,
and would endeavour to maintain it.” Hesitating up to the last moment,
Cromwell, pushed on by Ireton, by Christmas Day finally accepted
Charles’s trial as an act of justice. He was one of the 135
commissioners in the High Court of Justice and, when the King refused to
plead, he signed the death warrant.
Military and political leader » First chairman of the Council
After the British Isles were declared a republic and named the
Commonwealth, Oliver Cromwell served as the first chairman of the
Council of State, the executive body of a one-chamber Parliament. During
the first three years following Charles I’s execution, however, he was
chiefly absorbed in campaigns against the Royalists in Ireland and
Scotland. He also had to suppress a mutiny, inspired by a group known as
Levellers, an extremist Puritan party said to be aiming at a “levelling”
between rich and poor, in the Commonwealth army. Detesting the Irish as
primitive, savage, and superstitious, he believed they had carried out a
huge massacre of English settlers in 1641. As commander in chief and
lord lieutenant, he waged a ruthless campaign against them, though when
he refused quarter to most of the garrison at Drogheda near Dublin in
September 1649, he wrote that it would “tend to prevent the effusion of
blood for the future, . . . which otherwise cannot but work remorse and
regret.” On his return to London in May 1650 Cromwell was ordered to
lead an army into Scotland, where Charles II had been acknowledged as
its new king. Fairfax had refused the command; so on June 25 Cromwell
was appointed captain general in his place. He felt more tender toward
the Scots, most of whom were fellow Puritans, than toward the Catholic
Irish. The campaign proved difficult, and during the winter of 1650
Cromwell was taken ill. But he defeated the Scots with an army inferior
in numbers at Dunbar on Sept. 3, 1650, and a year later, when Charles II
and the Scots advanced into England, Cromwell destroyed that army at
Worcester.
This battle ended the civil wars. Cromwell now hoped for
pacification, a political settlement, and social reform. He pressed
through an “act of oblivion” (amnesty), but the army became more and
more discontented with Parliament. It believed that the members were
corrupt and that a new Parliament should be called. Once again Cromwell
tried to mediate between the two antagonists, but his sympathies were
with his soldiers. When he finally came to the conclusion that
Parliament must be dissolved and replaced, he called in his musketeers
and on April 20, 1653, expelled the members from the House. He asserted
that they were “corrupt and unjust men and scandalous to the profession
of the Gospel”; two months later he set up a nominated assembly to take
their place. In a speech on July 4 he told the new members that they
must be just, and, “ruling in the fear of God,” resolve the affairs of
the nation.
Cromwell seems to have regarded this “Little Parliament” as a
constituent body capable of establishing a Puritan republic. But just as
he had considered the previous Parliament to be slow and self-seeking,
he came to think that the Assembly of Saints, as it was called, was too
hasty and too radical. He also resented the fact that it did not consult
him. Later he described this experiment of choosing Saints to govern as
an example of his own “weakness and folly.” He sought moderate courses
and also wanted to end the naval war begun against the Dutch in 1652.
When in December 1653, after a coup d’etat planned by Major General John
Lambert and other officers, the majority of the Assembly of Saints
surrendered power into Cromwell’s hands, he decided reluctantly that
Providence had chosen him to rule. As commander in chief appointed by
Parliament, he believed that he was the only legally constituted
authority left. He therefore accepted an “Instrument of Government”
drawn up by Lambert and his fellow officers by which he became lord
protector, ruling the three nations of England, Scotland, and Ireland
with the advice and help of a council of state and a Parliament, which
had to be called every three years.
Administration as lord protector
Before Cromwell summoned his first Protectorate Parliament on Sept. 3,
1654, he and his Council of State passed more than 80 ordinances
embodying a constructive domestic policy. His aim was to reform the law,
to set up a Puritan Church, to permit toleration outside it, to promote
education, and to decentralize administration. The resistance of the
lawyers somewhat dampened his enthusiasm for law reform, but he was able
to appoint good judges both in England and Ireland. He was strongly
opposed to severe punishments for minor crimes, saying: “to see men lose
their lives for petty matters . . . is a thing that God will reckon
for.” For him murder, treason, and rebellion alone were subject to
capital punishment. During his Protectorate, committees known as Triers
and Ejectors were set up to ensure that a high standard of conduct was
maintained by clergy and schoolmasters. In spite of resistance from some
members of his council Cromwell readmitted Jews into the country. He
concerned himself with education, was an excellent chancellor of Oxford
University, founded a college at Durham, and saw to it that grammar
schools flourished as they had never done before.
Administration as lord protector » Foreign and economic policies
In 1654 Cromwell brought about a satisfactory conclusion to the
Anglo-Dutch War, which, as a contest between fellow Protestants, he had
always disliked. The question then arose of how best to employ his army
and navy. His Council of State was divided, but eventually he resolved
to conclude an alliance with France against Spain. He sent an amphibious
expedition to the Spanish West Indies, and in May 1655 Jamaica was
conquered. As the price for sending an expeditionary force to Spanish
Flanders to fight alongside the French he obtained possession of the
port of Dunkirk. He also interested himself in Scandinavian affairs;
although he admired King Charles X of Sweden, his first consideration in
attempting to mediate in the Baltic was the advantages that would result
for his own country. In spite of the emphasis Cromwell laid on the
Protestant interest in some of his speeches, the guiding motive in his
foreign policy was national and not religious benefit.
His economic and industrial policy followed mainly traditional lines.
But he opposed monopolies, which were disliked by the country and had
only benefitted the court gentry under Queen Elizabeth and the first two
Stuarts. For this reason the East Indian trade was thrown open for three
years, but in the end Cromwell granted the company a new charter
(October 1657) in return for financial aid. Satisfactory methods of
borrowing had not yet been discovered; hence—like those of practically
all European governments of his time—Cromwell’s public finances were by
no means free from difficulties.
Administration as lord protector » Relations with Parliament
When Cromwell’s first Parliament met he justified the establishment of
the Protectorate as providing for “healing and settling” the nation
after the civil wars. Arguing that his government had prevented anarchy
and social revolution, he was particularly critical of the Levellers
who, he said, wished to destroy well-tested institutions “whereby
England hath been known for hundreds of years.” He believed that they
wanted to undermine “the ‘natural’ magistracy of the nation” as well as
“make the tenant as liberal a fortune as the landlord.” He also thought
that the spiritual anarchy that followed the destruction of the Anglican
Church had gone too far, for now ordained preachers were frequently
interrupted or shouted down in their pulpits. A radical in some
directions, such as in seeking the reform of the laws, Cromwell now
adopted a conservative attitude because he feared that the overthrow of
the monarchy might lead to political collapse.
But vociferous republicans, who became leaders of this newly elected
Parliament, were unwilling to concentrate on legislation, questioning
instead the whole basis of Cromwell’s government. Cromwell insisted that
they must accept the “four fundamentals” of the new constitution that,
he argued, had been approved both by “God and the people of these
nations.” The four fundamentals were government by a single person and
Parliament; the regular summoning of parliaments, which must not be
allowed to perpetuate themselves; the maintenance of “liberty of
conscience”; and the division of the control of the armed forces between
the protector and Parliament. Cromwell said that he would sooner be
“rolled into my grave and buried with infamy, than I can give my
consent” to the “wilful throwing away of this Government, . . . so owned
by God, so approved by men.” He therefore required all members of
Parliament, if they wished to keep their seats, to sign an engagement to
be faithful to a protector and Parliament and to promise not to alter
its basic character. Except for 100 convinced republicans, the members
agreed to do so but were still more concerned with rewriting the
constitution than reforming the laws as desired by the protector. As
soon as he could legitimately do so (Jan. 22, 1655), Cromwell dissolved
Parliament.
In the aftermath of that Parliament, Cromwell faced a Royalist
insurrection. The rising fizzled out—too many of those who had secretly
pledged support to the King waited to see what others were doing—but
Cromwell was aware that local magistrates and militia commissioners had
closely monitored the situation. He could rely on the acquiescence of
the gentry but not on any commitment from them. He therefore determined
to increase security by sending senior army officers (the major
generals) to recruit veterans of the civil wars into an efficient
militia, the costs of which would be defrayed by collections from all
those convicted of royalism in the1640s. The major generals also were
encouraged to promote “a reformation of manners”—a program of moral
rearmament. They ran into serious trouble when the next Parliament met a
year early (in 1656, to vote on taxes to pay for a war by land and sea
against the Spanish). In that Parliament Cromwell’s broad policy of
religious toleration also came under fire, especially in relation to the
Quakers. In the spring of 1657 Parliament voted to invite Cromwell to
become king, since kingship was an office “interwoven with the
fundamental laws” of the nation, as Cromwell himself stated, and there
would be an end to constant innovation. Torn between his desire for
“settlement” and his continued yearning for a godly reformation, he
hesitated for many weeks and then declined the title. Cromwell did
agree, however, to a new constitutional arrangement that restored many
of the trappings of monarchy, including the restoration of a House of
Lords. That decision provoked a republican backlash, and Cromwell’s
final parliamentary session (January–February 1658) ended in bitter
recrimination and in accusations of a new “Egyptian bondage.”
Ever since the campaign in Ireland, Cromwell’s health had been poor.
In August 1658, after his favourite daughter, Elizabeth, died of cancer,
he contracted malaria and was taken to London with the intention of
living in St. James’s Palace. But he died in Whitehall at three o’clock
on September 3, the anniversary of two of his greatest victories. The
embalmers bungled their work, and his putrefying body was secretly
interred several weeks before his state funeral and the interment of a
probably empty coffin in Westminster Abbey on Nov. 23, 1658. In 1661,
after the Restoration of Charles II and on the anniversary of the
regicide, a corpse that may or may not have been Cromwell’s was exhumed
and hung up at Tyburn, where criminals were executed. That body was then
buried beneath the gallows. But the head was stuck on a pole on top of
Westminster Hall, where it is known to have remained until the end of
Charles II’s reign.
Maurice Ashley
John S. Morrill
Administration as lord protector » Assessment
Oliver Cromwell was by no means an extreme Puritan. By nature he was
neither cruel nor intolerant. He cared for his soldiers, and when he
differed from his generals he did not punish them severely. (For
example, when he dismissed John Lambert he gave him a generous pension.)
He was devoted to his old mother, his wife, and family. (The stories
spread by Royalists that he was an admirer of a number of ladies have
little substance to them.) While he concerned himself with the spiritual
welfare of his children because he believed that “often the children of
great men have not the fear of God before their eyes,” he committed the
mistake of not preparing for the practical tasks of government his
eldest son, Richard, whom in the last days of his life he nominated to
succeed him as protector. Music and hunting were among his recreations.
He delighted in listening to the organ and was an excellent judge of
horses. He was known to smoke, to drink sherry and small beer, and to
prefer English food; he permitted dancing at the marriage of his
youngest daughter. In his younger days he indulged in horseplay with his
soldiers, but he was a dignified ruler. Sir Peter Lely, the famous Dutch
painter, pictured him as he was in his prime (although the portrait was
apparently not painted from life); the numerous paintings from life by
Robert Walker dating from the beginning of the Civil War show him
looking more of a fanatic.
As lord protector, Cromwell was much more tolerant than in his fiery
Puritan youth. Once bishops were abolished and congregations allowed to
choose their own ministers, he was satisfied. Outside the church he
permitted all Christians to practice their own religion so long as they
did not create disorder and unrest. He allowed the use of The Book of
Common Prayer in private houses and even the English Roman Catholics
were better off under the protectorate than they had been before.
Although many Quakers were kept in prison for disturbing the peace,
Cromwell was on friendly terms with George Fox, the founder of the
society of Friends, and explored religious questions with him. When in
the winter of 1656 a Quaker entered Bristol in imitation of Christ’s
entry into Jerusalem, Cromwell tried, though unsuccessfully, to save him
from the fury of Parliament, which voted heavy punishments on the
blasphemer. The year before, Cromwell interviewed two of the leaders of
the Fifth Monarchy Men, an extreme sect: he pointed out to them that
they had been imprisoned for sedition but emphasized that no one would
hinder them from preaching the Gospel of Christ.
In politics Cromwell held no fixed views except that he was opposed
to what he called arbitrary government. Before the execution of Charles
I, he contemplated the idea of placing one of Charles’s sons upon the
throne. Cromwell also resisted the abolition of the House of Lords. In
1647 he said that he was not “wedded and glued” to any particular form
of government. After the Assembly of Saints failed, he summoned two
elected parliaments (1654–55 and 1656–58), but he was never able to
control them. His failure to do so has been attributed to “lack of that
parliamentary management by the executive which, in correct dosage, is
the essential nourishment of any sound parliamentary life” (H.R.
Trevor-Roper). In between these two parliaments (1655–56), he sanctioned
the government of the country by major generals of the Horse Militia who
were made responsible for law and order in groups of counties. But he
soon abandoned this experiment when it met with protests and reverted to
more normal methods of government. In the spring of 1657 he was tempted
by an offer of the crown by a majority in Parliament on the ground that
it fitted in better with existing institutions and the English common
law. In the end he refused to become king because he knew that it would
offend his old republican officers. Nevertheless, in the last year and a
half of his life he ruled according to a form of government known as
“the Petition and Advice.” This in effect made him a constitutional
monarch with a House of Lords whose members he was allowed to nominate
as well as an elected House of Commons. But he found it equally
difficult to govern either with or without parliaments.
Although in the late 17th century Cromwell was execrated as a brave
bad man, it was admitted that he had made his country great. In the 18th
century, on the other hand, he was considered a nauseating hypocrite,
while the 19th century, under the influence of the writer and historian
Thomas Carlyle, regarded him as a constitutional reformer who had
destroyed the absolutism of Charles I. Modern critics are more
discriminating. His belief in God’s providence is analyzed in
psychological terms. Marxists blame him for betraying the cause of
revolution by suppressing the radical movement in the army and resisting
the policy of the Levellers. On the whole, he is regarded only in a very
limited sense as a dictator, but rather as a patriotic ruler who
restored political stability after the civil wars and contributed to the
evolution of constitutional government and religious toleration.
Maurice Ashley
Encyclopaedia Britannica
