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Title: Oliver Cromwell
Author: Roosevelt, Theodore
Language: English
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OLIVER CROMWELL
[Illustration:
OLIVER CROMWELL.
From the portrait by Robert Walker at Hinchingbrooke.
By permission of the Earl of Sandwich.
(Probably painted soon after the beginning of the Civil War, when
Cromwell was forty-three or -four years old.)
]
OLIVER CROMWELL
BY
THEODORE ROOSEVELT
ILLUSTRATED
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
NEW YORK 1900
_Copyright, 1900, by
Charles Scribner’s Sons_
TROW DIRECTORY
PRINTING AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY
NEW YORK
Cromwell, our chief of men, who through a cloud
Not of war only, but detractions rude,
Guided by faith, and matchless fortitude,
To peace and truth, thy glorious way hast ploughed,
And on the neck of crownèd fortune proud
Hast reared God’s trophies, and his work pursued,
While Darwen stream, with blood of Scots imbrued,
And Dunbar field, resounds thy praises loud,
And Worcester’s laureate wreath. Yet much remains
To conquer still; Peace hath her victories
No less renowned than War: new foes arise,
Threatening to bind our souls with secular chains.
Help us to save free conscience from the paw
Of hireling wolves, whose gospel is their maw.
—MILTON.
EXECUTIVE CHAMBER, ALBANY,
June, 1900.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CONTENTS
PAGE
I. THE TIMES AND THE MAN 1
II. THE LONG PARLIAMENT AND THE CIVIL WAR 51
III. THE SECOND CIVIL WAR AND THE DEATH OF THE KING 99
IV. THE IRISH AND SCOTCH WARS 141
V. THE COMMONWEALTH AND PROTECTORATE 177
VI. PERSONAL RULE 210
ILLUSTRATIONS
Oliver Cromwell _Frontispiece_
(_From the portrait by Robert Walker at Hinchingbrooke._)
FACING PAGE
Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford 8
(_From the miniature at Devonshire House._)
Oliver Cromwell 12
(_From a miniature by Cooper._)
Sir John Eliot 16
(_From the portrait by Van Somer at Port Eliot._)
All Saints’ Church, Huntingdon 24
Cromwell’s House at Ely 28
Archbishop Laud 34
(_From the portrait at Lambeth Palace, painted by Vandyke._)
West Tower, Ely Cathedral, from Monastery Close 40
John Pym 52
(_From the portrait by Cornelius Janssen._)
Prince Rupert 68
(_From the portrait by Vandyke at Hinchingbrooke._)
Fac-simile of Letter from Oliver Cromwell to Mr. Storie,
written January 11, 1635, said to be the earliest extant
letter in Cromwell’s Handwriting 74
(_From the original in the British Museum._)
John Hampden 80
(_From the portrait by Robert Walker at Port Eliot._)
Cromwell’s Engagement with the Marquis of Newcastle’s Regiment
of “Whitecoats” in the Battle of Marston Moor 88
The City Walls of York, with the Cathedral in the Distance 96
King Charles I. 108
(_From the replica at the Dresden Gallery, by Sir Peter Lely._)
General Sir Thomas Fairfax 116
(_From the portrait by Robert Walker at Althorp._)
John Milton 120
(_From the drawing in crayon by Faithorne at Bayfordbury._)
The Death Warrant of King Charles I.—Signed by Oliver Cromwell
and other members of the court 128
(_From the original in the library in the House of Lords._)
Pride’s Purge 136
Interior of Westminster Hall. Where Parliament sat and where
King Charles I. was tried and sentenced 140
Magdalen Tower, Drogheda 154
St. Lawrence’s Gate, Drogheda 158
Cromwell Leading the Assault on Drogheda 164
The Battle-field of Dunbar 172
Seal of the Protectorate 178
(_From an impression in wax in the British Museum._)
Admiral Robert Blake 184
(_From the portrait at Wadham College, Oxford._)
Cromwell Dissolving the Long Parliament 186
Oliver Cromwell 190
(_From the painting at Althorp by Robert Walker._)
The Clock Tower, Hampton Court 200
The Great Hall, Hampton Court—In this room the state dinners
were given under the Protectorate 206
The Second Installation of Cromwell as Protector,
in Westminster Hall, June 26, 1657 210
Sir William Waller 216
(_From the portrait by Sir Peter Lely at Goodwood._)
Henry Cromwell—Son of the Protector, and Governor of Ireland 220
The Last Charge of the Ironsides 226
Richard Cromwell 232
Exterior of Westminster Hall 236
Oliver Cromwell 240
(_From the bust by Bernini._)
OLIVER CROMWELL
I
THE TIMES AND THE MAN
For over a century and a half after his death the memory of the greatest
Englishman of the seventeenth century was looked upon with horror by the
leaders of English thought, political and literary; the very men who
were carrying to fruition Cromwell’s tremendous policies being often
utterly ignorant that they were following in his footsteps. At last the
scales began to drop from the most far-seeing eyes. Macaulay, with his
eminently sane and wholesome spirit, held Cromwell and the social forces
for which he stood—Puritanic and otherwise—at their real worth, and his
judgment about them was, in all essentials, accurate. But the true
appreciation of the place held by the greatest soldier-statesman of the
seventeenth century began with the publication of his life and letters
by Carlyle. The gnarled genius of the man who worshipped the heroes of
the past as intensely as he feared and distrusted the heroes of the
present, enabled him to write with a loftiness and intensity that
befitted his subject. But Carlyle’s singular incapacity to “see
veracity,” as he would himself have phrased it, made him at times not
merely tell half-truths, but deliberately invert the truth. He was of
that not uncommon cloistered type which shrinks shuddering from actual
contact with whatever it, in theory, most admires, and which, therefore,
is reduced in self-justification to misjudge and misrepresent those
facts of past history which form precedents for what is going on before
the author’s own eyes.
Cromwell lived in an age when it was not possible to realize a
government based upon those large principles of social, political, and
religious liberty in which—at any rate, during his earlier years—he
sincerely believed; but the movement of which he was the head was the
first of the great movements which, marching along essentially the same
lines, have produced the English-speaking world as we at present know
it. This primary fact Carlyle refused to see, or at least to admit. As
the central idea of his work he states that the Puritanism of the
Cromwellian epoch was the “last glimpse of the Godlike vanishing from
this England; conviction and veracity giving place to hollow cant and
formulism.... The last of all our Heroisms.... We have wandered far away
from the ideas which guided us in that century, and indeed which had
guided us in all preceding centuries, but of which that century was the
ultimate manifestation; we have wandered very far; and must endeavor to
return and connect ourselves therewith again.... I will advise my reader
to forget the modern methods of reform; not to remember that he has ever
heard of a modern individual called by the name of ‘Reformer,’ if he
would understand what the old meaning of the word was. The Cromwells,
Pyms, and Hampdens, who were understood on the Royalist side to be
fire-brands of the devil, have had still worse measure from the
Dry-as-Dust philosophies and sceptical histories of later times. They
really did resemble fire-brands of the devil if you looked at them
through spectacles of a certain color, for fire is always fire; but by
no spectacles, only by mere blindness and wooden-eyed spectacles, can
the flame-girt heaven’s messenger pass for a poor, mouldy Pedant and
Constitution-monger such as these would make him out to be.”
This is good writing of its kind; but the _thought_ is mere “hollow cant
and unveracity;” not only far from the truth, but the direct reverse of
the truth. It is itself the wail of the pedant who does not know that
the flame-girt heaven’s messenger of truth is always a mere mortal to
those who see him with the actual eyes of the flesh, although mayhap a
great mortal; while to the closet philosopher his quality of
flame-girtedness is rarely visible until a century or thereabouts has
elapsed.
So far from this great movement, of which Puritanism was merely one
manifestation, being the last of a succession of similar heroisms, it
had practically very much less connection with what went before than
with all that has guided us in our history since. Of course, it is
impossible to draw a line with mathematical exactness between the
different stages of history, but it is both possible and necessary to
draw it with rough efficiency; and, speaking roughly, the epoch of the
Puritans was the beginning of the great modern epoch of the
English-speaking world—infinitely its greatest epoch. We have not
“wandered far from the ideas that guided” the wisest and most earnest
leaders in the century that saw Cromwell; on the contrary, these ideas
were themselves very far indeed from those which had guided the English
people in previous ages, and the ideas that now guide us represent on
the whole what was best and truest in the thought of the Puritans. As
for Pym and Hampden, their type had practically no representative in
England prior to their time, while all the great legislative reformers
since then have been their followers. The Hampden type—the purest and
noblest of types—reached its highest expression in Washington. Pym, the
man of great powers and great services, with a tendency to believe that
Parliamentary government was the cure for all evils, followed to a line
“the modern methods of reform,” and was exactly the man who, if he had
lived in Carlyle’s day, Carlyle would have sneered at as a
“constitution-monger.” It was men of the kind of Hampden and Pym who,
before Carlyle’s own eyes, were striving in the British Parliament for
the reforms which were to carry one stage farther the work of Hampden
and Pym; who were endeavoring to secure for all creeds full tolerance;
to give the people an ever-increasing share in ruling their own
destinies; to better the conditions of social and political life. In the
great American Civil War the master spirits in the contest for union and
freedom were actuated by a fervor as intense as, and even finer than,
that which actuated the men of the Long Parliament; while in rigid
morality and grim devotion to what he conceived to be God’s bidding, the
Southern soldier, Stonewall Jackson, was as true a type of the “General
of the Lord, with his Bible and his Sword,” as Cromwell or Ireton.
The whole history of the movement which resulted in the establishment of
the Commonwealth of England will be misread and misunderstood if we fail
to appreciate that it was the first modern, and not the last mediæval,
movement; if we fail to understand that the men who figured in it and
the principles for which they contended, are strictly akin to the men
and the principles that have appeared in all similar great movements
since: in the English Revolution of 1688; in the American Revolution of
1776; and the American Civil War of 1861. We must keep ever in mind the
essentially modern character of the movement if we are to appreciate its
true inwardness, its true significance. Fundamentally, it was the first
struggle for religious, political, and social freedom, as we now
understand the terms. As was inevitable in such a first struggle, there
remained even among the forces of reform much of what properly belonged
to previous generations. In addition to the modern side there was a
mediæval side, too. Just so far as this mediæval element obtained, the
movement failed. All that there was of good and of permanence in it was
due to the new elements.
To understand the play of the forces which produced Cromwell and gave
him his chance, we must briefly look at the England into which he was
born.
He saw the light at the close of the reign of Queen Elizabeth, in the
last years of the Tudor dynasty, and he grew to manhood during the
inglorious reign of the first English king of the inglorious House of
Stuart. The struggle between the reformed churches and the ancient
church, against which they were in revolt, was still the leading factor
in shaping European politics, though other factors were fast assuming an
equal weight. The course of the Reformation in England had been widely
different from that which it had followed in other European countries.
The followers of Luther and Calvin, whatever their shortcomings—and they
were many and grievous—had been influenced by a fiery zeal for
righteousness, a fierce detestation of spiritual corruption; but in
England the Reformation had been undertaken for widely different reasons
by Henry VIII. and his creatures, though the bulk of their followers
were as sincere as their brethren on the Continent. Henry’s purpose had
been simple, namely, to transfer to himself the power and revenues of
the Papacy, so far as he could seize them, and thus to add to the
spiritual supremacy against which the leaders of the Reformation had
revolted: the absolute sovereignty which the Tudors were seeking to
establish in England. Elizabeth stood infinitely above her father in
most respects; but in religious views they were not far apart, and in
theory they were both believers in absolutism. They had no standing
army, and they were always in want of money, so that in practice they
never ventured seriously to offend the influential and moneyed classes.
But under Henry the misery and suffering of the lower classes became
very great, and the yeomen were largely driven from their lands, while
much of Elizabeth’s own administration consisted of efforts to grapple
with the vagrancy and wretchedness which had been caused by the
degradation of those who stood lowest in the social scale.
When the Stuarts took possession of the throne of England they found a
people which, unlike the peoples of most of the neighboring States, had
not fought out its religious convictions. The Reformation had deeply
stirred men’s souls. Religion had become a matter of vital and terrible
importance to Protestant and to Catholic. Among the extremists, the men
who had given the tone to the Reformation in Germany, Switzerland,
Holland, and Scotland, religion, as they understood it, entered into
every act of their lives. In England there were men of this stamp; but
in the English Reformation they had played a wholly subordinate part;
and indeed had been in almost as great danger as the Catholics. Their
force, therefore, had not spent itself. It had been conserved, in spite
of their desires.
[Illustration:
Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford.
From the miniature at Devonshire House.
By permission of the Duke of Devonshire, K.G.
]
Thus it happened that the high tide of extreme Protestantism was reached
in England, not as in other Protestant countries, in the sixteenth
century, but in the seventeenth. The Stuarts were the only Protestant
kings who were not in religious sympathy with their Protestant subjects.
In theory the Anglican Church of Henry and Elizabeth stood for what we
would now regard as tyranny. What Henry VIII. strove to do with the
Anglican Church is what has actually been done by the Czars with the
Orthodox Church in Russia; but that which was possible with the eastern
Slavs was not possible with the westernmost and freest of the Teutonic
peoples. Yet in the actual event it was probably fortunate that the
English Reformation took the shape it did; for under such conditions it
was not marked by the intense fanaticism of the reformers elsewhere.
The Stuarts not only found themselves masters of a kingdom where,
supposedly, they were spiritually supreme, while actually their claim to
supremacy was certain to be challenged; they also found themselves at
the head of a form of government which was to all appearances despotic,
while the people over whom they bore sway, though slow to object to the
forms, were extremely intolerant of the practices of despotism. The
Tudors were unarmed despots, who disliked the old feudal nobility, and
who found it for their interest to cultivate the commercial classes, and
to form a new nobility of their own, based upon wealth. The men at the
lowest round of the social ladder—the workingmen and farm laborers—were
yet, as they remained for a couple of centuries, so unfit for the work
of political combination that they could be safely disregarded by the
masters of England. At times their discontent was manifested, generally
in the shape of abortive peasant insurrections; but there was never need
to consider them as of serious and permanent importance. The middle
classes, however, had become very powerful, and to their material
interests the Tudors always took care to defer. At the very close of her
reign, Elizabeth, who was at heart as thorough a tyrant as ever lived,
but who possessed that shrewd good sense which, if not the noblest, is
perhaps on the whole the most useful of qualities in the actual workaday
world, found herself face to face with her people on the question of
monopolies; and as soon as she understood that they were resolutely
opposed to her policy, she instantly yielded. In other words, the Tudor
despotism was conditioned upon the despot’s doing nothing of which the
influential classes of the nation—the upper and middle classes—seriously
disapproved; and this the Stuart kings could never understand.
Moreover, apart from the fact that the Stuarts were so much less shrewd
and less able than the Tudors, there was the further fact that
Englishmen as a whole were gradually growing more intolerant, not only
of the practice but of the pretence of tyranny, whether in things
material or in things spiritual. There was a moral awakening which
rendered it impossible for Englishmen of the seventeenth century to
submit to the brutal wrong-doing which marked the political and
ecclesiastical tyranny of the previous century. The career of Henry
VIII. could not have been paralleled in any shape when once England had
begun to breed such men as went to the making of the Long Parliament.
Much of the aspiration after higher things took the form of spiritual
unrest. It must always be remembered that the Protestant sects which
established themselves in the northern half of Europe, although they
warred in the name of religious liberty, had no more conception of it,
as we of this day understand it, than their Catholic foes; and yet it
must also be remembered that the bitter conflicts they waged prepared
the way for the wide tolerance of individual difference in matters of
religious belief which is among the greatest blessings of our modern
life. An American Catholic and an American Protestant of to-day,
whatever the difference between their theologies, yet in their ways of
looking at real life, at its relation to religion, and the relations of
religion and the State, are infinitely more akin to one another than
either is to the men of his religious faith who lived three centuries
ago. We now admit, as a matter of course, that any man may, in religious
matters, profess to be guided by authority or by reason, as suits him
best; but that he must not interfere with similar freedom of belief in
others; and that all men, whatever their religious beliefs, have exactly
the same political rights and are to be held to the same responsibility
for the way they exercise these rights. Few indeed were the men who held
such views at the time when Cromwell was growing to manhood. Holland was
the State of all others in which there was the nearest approach to
religious liberty; and even in Holland the bitterness of the Calvinists
toward the Arminians was something which we can now scarcely understand.
Arminius was no more at home in Geneva than in Rome; and his followers
were prescribed by the most religious people of England, and so far as
might be were driven from the realm. Calvinists and Lutherans felt as
little inclination as Catholics to allow liberty of conscience to
others; and as grotesque a compromise as ever was made in matters
religious was that made in Germany, when it was decided that the peoples
of the various German principalities should in mass accept the faiths of
their respective princes.
[Illustration:
Oliver Cromwell.
From a miniature by Cooper. Here reproduced for the first time.
By permission of Sir Charles Hartopp, Bart.
]
Yet though the Reformers thus strove to establish for their own use the
very religious intolerance against which they had revolted, the mere
fact of their existence nullified their efforts. Sooner or later people
who had exercised their own judgment, and had fought for the right to
exercise it, were sure grudgingly to admit the same right in others.
That time was as yet far distant. In Cromwell’s youth all the leading
Christian churches were fiercely intolerant. Unless we keep in mind that
this was the general attitude, an attitude which necessarily affected
even the greatest men, we cannot do justice to the political and social
leaders of that age when we find them, as we so often do, adopting
toward their religious foes policies from which we, of a happier age,
turn with horror.
In England hatred of Roman Catholicism had become almost interchangeable
with hatred of Spain. Spain had been the one dangerous foe which England
had encountered under the Tudor dynasty, and the only war she had ever
waged into which the religious element entered was the war which put
upon the English roll of honor the names of her great sixteenth-century
seamen, Drake and Hawkins, Howard and Frobisher. Throughout the
sixteenth century Spain had towered above every other power of Europe in
warlike might; and though the Dutch and English sailors had broken the
spell of her invincibility at sea, on shore her soldiers retained their
reputation for superior prowess, in spite of the victories of Maurice of
Orange, until Gustavus Adolphus marched his wonderful army down from the
frozen North. During Cromwell’s youth and early manhood Spain was still
the most powerful and most dreaded of European nations. Her government
had become a mere tyranny; her religion fanatical bigotry of a type more
extreme than any that existed elsewhere, even in an age when all creeds
tended toward fanaticism and bigotry. It was in Spain that the Holy
Inquisition chiefly flourished—one of the most fearful engines for the
destruction of all that was highest in mankind that the world has ever
seen. Catholics were oppressed in England and Protestants in France; but
in each country the persecuted sect might almost be said to enjoy
liberty, and certainly to enjoy peace, when their fate was compared with
the dreadful horrors of torture and murder with which Spain crushed out
every species of heresy within her borders. Jew, Infidel, and
Protestant, shared the same awful doom, until she had purchased complete
religious uniformity at the price of the loss of everything that makes
national life great and noble. The dominion of Spain would have been the
dominion of desolation; her supremacy as baneful as that of the Turk;
and Holland and England, in withstanding her, rendered the same service
to humanity that was rendered at that very time by those nations of
southeastern Europe who formed out of the bodies of their citizens the
bulwark which stayed the Turkish fury.
But if in her relations to one Catholic nation England appeared as the
champion of religious liberty, of all that makes life worth having to
the free men who live in free nations, yet in her relations to another
Catholic people she herself played the rôle of merciless
oppressor—religious, political, and social. Ireland, utterly foreign in
speech and culture, had been ground into the dust by the crushing weight
of England’s overlordship. During centuries chaos had reigned in the
island; the English intruders possessing sufficient power to prevent the
development of any Celtic national life, but not to change it into a
Norman or English national life. The English who settled and warred in
Ireland felt and acted as the most barbarous white frontiersmen of the
nineteenth century have acted toward the alien races with whom they have
been brought in contact. There is no language in which to paint the
hideous atrocities committed in the Irish wars of Elizabeth; and the
worst must be credited to the highest English officials. In Ireland the
antagonism was fundamentally racial; whether the sovereign of England
were Catholic or Protestant made little difference in the burden of
wrong which the Celt was forced to bear. The first of the so-called
plantations by which the Celts were ousted in mass from great tracts of
country to make room for English settlers, was undertaken under the
Catholic Queen Mary, and the two counties thus created by the wholesale
expulsion of the wretched kerne were named in honor of the Queen and of
her spouse, the Spanish Philip. Though Philip’s bigotry made him the
persecutor of heretics, it taught him no mercy toward those of his own
faith but of a different nationality, whether Irish or Portuguese. When
England became Protestant, Ireland stood steadfastly for the old faith;
and religious was added to race hatred. In Spain the Holy Inquisition
was the handmaid of grinding tyranny. In Ireland the Catholic priesthood
was the sole friend, standby, and comforter of a hunted and despairing
people. In the Netherlands and on the high seas Protestantism was the
creed of liberty. In Ireland it was one of the masks worn by the alien
oppressor.
[Illustration:
Sir John Eliot.
From the portrait by Van Somer at Port Eliot.
By permission of the Earl of St. Germans.
]
France was Catholic, but her Catholicism differed essentially from that
of Spain, and during the first part of the seventeenth century was quite
as liberal as the Protestantism of England. When Cromwell was a child
Henry of Navarre was on the French throne, and to him all creeds were
alike. He was succeeded in the actual government of France by the great
Cardinals Richelieu and Mazarin, who were Statesmen rather than
Churchmen; and under them the French Protestants enjoyed rather more
toleration than was allowed the Catholics of England. The natural foes
of France were the two great Catholic powers of Spain and Austria, ruled
by the twin branches of the House of Hapsburg; and her hostility to them
determined her attitude throughout the Thirty Years’ War.
Meanwhile, Holland was at the height of her power. She had a far greater
colonial empire than England, her commercial development was greater,
and the renown of her war marine higher. Drake and Hawkins had but
singed the beard of the Spanish king, had but plundered his vessels and
harassed his great fleets. Van Heemskirk, Piet Hein, and the elder Tromp
crushed the sea-power of Spain by downright hard fighting in great
pitched battles, and captured her silver fleets entire.
In Great Britain itself—it must be kept in mind that Scotland was as yet
an entirely distinct kingdom, united to England only by the fact that
the same line of kings ruled over both—the difference between the Scotch
and the English, though less in degree, was the same in kind as that
between the English and the Dutch. In Scotland, outside of the
Highlands, the mass of the people were devoted with all the strength of
their intense and virile natures to the form of Calvinism introduced by
Knox. Their Church government was Presbyterian. As both the Presbyterian
ministers and their congregations demanded that the State should be
managed in essentials according to the wishes of the Church, the general
feeling was really in the direction of a theocratic republic, although
the name would have frightened them. In Scotland, as in England, no
considerable body of men had yet grasped the idea that there should be
toleration of religious differences or a divorce between the functions
of the State and the Church. In both countries, as elsewhere at the time
through Christendom, religious liberty meant only religious liberty for
the sect that raised the cry; but, as elsewhere, the mere use of the
name as a banner under which to fight brought nearer the day when the
thing itself would be possible.
In England there was practically peace during the first forty years of
the century, but it was an ignoble and therefore an evil peace. Of
course, peace should be the aim of all statesmen, and is the aim of the
greatest statesman. Nevertheless, not only the greatest statesmen, but
all men who are truly wise and patriotic, recognize that peace is good
only when it comes honorably and is used for honorable purposes, and
that the peace of mere sloth or incapacity is as great a curse as the
most unrighteous war. Those who doubt this would do well to study the
condition of England during the reign of James I., and during the first
part of the reign of Charles I. England had then no standing army and no
foreign policy worthy of the name. The chief of her colonies was growing
up almost against her wishes, and wholly without any help or care from
her. In short, she realized the conditions, as regards her relations
with the outside world and “militarism,” which certain philosophers
advocate at the present day for America. The result was a gradual
rotting of the national fibre, which rendered it necessary for her to
pass through the fiery ordeal of the Civil War in order that she might
be saved.
In every nation there is, as there has been from time immemorial, a good
deal of difficulty in combining the policies of upholding the national
honor abroad, and of preserving a not too heavily taxed liberty at home.
Many peoples and many rulers who have solved the problem with marked
success as regards one of the two conditions, have failed as regards the
other. It was the peculiar privilege of the Stuart kings to fail
signally in both. They were dangerous to no one but their own subjects.
Their government was an object of contempt to their neighbors and of
contempt, mixed with anger and terror, to their own people. They made
amends for utter weakness in the face of a foreign foe by showing
against the free men of their own country that kind of tyranny which
finds its favorite expression in oppressing those who resist not at all,
or ineffectually. They were held on the throne only by a mistaken but
honorable loyalty, and by an unworthy servility; by the strong habits
formed by the customs of centuries; and, most of all, by the wise
distrust of radical innovation and preference for reform to revolution
which gives to the English race its greatest strength.
This last attitude, the dislike of revolution, was entirely wholesome
and praiseworthy. On the other hand, the doctrine of the divine right of
kings, which represented the extreme form of loyalty to the sovereign,
was vicious, unworthy of the race, and to be ranked among degrading
superstitions. It is now so dead that it is easy to laugh at it; but it
was then a real power for evil. Moreover, the extreme zealots who
represented the opposite pole of the political and religious world, were
themselves, as is ordinarily the case with such extremists, the allies
of the forces against which they pretended to fight. From these dreamers
of dreams, of whose “cloistered virtue” Milton spoke with such fine
contempt, the men who possessed the capacity to do things turned
contemptuously away, seeking practical results rather than theoretical
perfection, and being content to get the substance at some cost of form.
As always, the men who counted were those who strove for actual
achievement in the field of practical politics, and who were not misled
merely by names. England, in the present century, has shown how complete
may be the freedom of the individual under a nominal monarchy; and the
Dreyfus incident in France would be proof enough, were any needed, that
despotism of a peculiarly revolting type may grow rankly, even in a
republic, if there is not in its citizens a firm and lofty purpose to do
justice to all men and guard the rights of the weak as well as of the
strong.
James came to the throne to rule over a people steadily growing to think
more and more seriously of religion: to believe more and more in their
rights and liberties. But the King himself was cursed with a fervent
belief in despotism, and an utter inability to give his belief practical
shape in deeds. For half a century the spirit of sturdy independence had
been slowly growing among Englishmen. Elizabeth governed almost under
the forms of despotism; but a despotism which does not carry the sword
has to accommodate itself pretty thoroughly to the desires of the
subjects, once these desires become clearly defined and formulated.
Elizabeth never ventured to do what Henry had done. She left England,
therefore, thoroughly Royalist, devoted to the Crown, and unable to
conceive of any other form of government, but already desirous of seeing
an increase in the power of the people as expressed through Parliament.
James, from the very outset of his reign, pursued a course of conduct
exactly fitted both to irritate the people, with the pretensions of the
Crown, and to convince them that they could prevent these pretensions
from being carried out.
Besides, he offended both their political and their religious feelings.
England had been growing more and more fanatically Protestant; that is,
more and more Puritan. Under Elizabeth there had been more religious
persecution of Puritans, and of Dissenters generally, than of Catholics.
But this could not prevent the growth of the spirit of Puritanism.
During the reign of James there were marked Presbyterian tendencies
visible within the Anglican Church itself, and plenty of Puritans among
her divines. Unfortunately, both Presbyterian and Anglican were then at
one in heartily condemning that spirit of true religious liberty, of
true toleration, which we of to-day in the United States recognize as
the most vital of religious rights. The so-called Independent movement,
from which sprang the Congregational and indeed the Baptist Churches as
we know them to-day, had begun under Elizabeth. Its votaries contended
for what now seems the self-evident right of each congregation, if it so
desires, to decide for itself important questions of doctrine and of
church management. Yet Elizabeth’s ministers had actually stamped this
sect out of existence, with the hearty approval of the wisest men in the
realm and of the enormous majority of the people. Such an act, and,
above all, such approval, shows how long and difficult was the road
which still had to be traversed before the goal of religious liberty was
reached.
The people were relatively less advanced toward religious than toward
political liberty. Nevertheless, they were distinctly in advance of the
King, even in matters religious. The resolute determination to fight for
one’s own liberty of conscience, when it once becomes the characteristic
of the majority, cannot but tend toward securing liberty of conscience
for all; whereas, for one man, who claims supremacy in the Church as
well as overlordship in the State, to seek to impose his will upon
others in matters both spiritual and political, cannot but produce a
very aggravated form of tyranny. The Stuarts represented an extreme,
reactionary type of kingship; a type absolutely alien to all that was
highest and most characteristic in the English character. They possessed
the will to be despots, but neither their own powers nor the tendencies
of the times were in their favor. The tendency was, however, very
strongly in favor of hereditary kingship; so strongly, indeed, that
nothing but the extreme folly as well as the extreme baseness of the
Stuart kings could overcome it. Stability of government, and therefore
order, depends in the last resort upon the ability of the people to come
to a consensus as to where power belongs. This consensus is less a
matter of volition than of long habit, of slow evolution; to Americans
of to-day, the rule of the majority seems part of the natural order of
things, whereas to Russians it seems utterly unnatural, and they could
by no possibility be brought into sudden acquiescence in it. To
Englishmen, in the early decades of the seventeenth century, hereditary
kingship seemed the only natural government, and they could be severed
from this belief only by a succession of violent wrenches.
[Illustration:
All Saints’ Church, Huntingdon.
Containing the registry of Oliver Cromwell’s birth and baptism—a
fac-simile of which is here given. Above the record of his birth
someone had written “England’s plague for five years;” but this is
now partially obliterated.
]
James I. stood for absolutism in Church and State, and quarrelled with
and annoyed his subjects in the futile effort to realize his ideas.
Charles I., whom James had vainly sought to marry to a Spanish princess,
and succeeded in marrying to a French princess (Henrietta Maria), took
up his father’s task. In private life he was the best of the Stuart
kings, reaching about the average level of his subjects. In public life
his treachery, mendacity, folly, and vindictiveness: his utter inability
to learn by experience or to sympathize with any noble ambition of his
country: his readiness to follow evil counsel, and his ingratitude
toward any sincere friend, made him as unfit as either of his sons to
sit on the English throne; and a greater condemnation than this it is
not possible to award. Germany was convulsed by the Thirty Years’ War:
but Charles cared nothing for the struggle, and to her humiliation
England had to see Sweden step to the front as the champion of the
Reformation. At one period Charles even started to help the French king
against the Huguenots, but was brought to a halt by the outburst of
wrath this called forth from his subjects. Once he made feeble war on
Spain, and again he made feeble war on France; but the expedition he
sent against Cadiz failed, and the expedition he sent to Rochelle was
beaten; and he was, in each case, forced to make peace without gaining
anything. The renown of the English arms never stood lower than during
the reigns of the first two Stuarts.
At the outset of his reign Charles sought to govern through Buckingham,
who was entirely fit to be his minister, and, therefore, unfit to be
trusted with the slightest governmental task on behalf of a free and
great people. Under Buckingham the grossest corruption obtained—not only
in the public service, but in the creation of peerages. His whole
administration represented nothing but violence and bribery; and when he
took command of the forces to be employed against Rochelle, he showed
that the list of his qualities included complete military incapacity.
It was after the failure at Rochelle that Charles summoned his third
Parliament. With his first two he had failed to do more than quarrel, as
they would not grant him supplies unless they were allowed the right to
have something to say as to how they were to be used. He had, therefore,
dissolved them, holding that their only function was to give him what
may be needed.
With his third Parliament he got on no better. In it two great men
sprang to the front—Sir Thomas Wentworth, afterward Lord Strafford, and
Sir John Eliot, who had already shown himself a leader of the party that
stood for free representative institutions as against the unbridled
power of the King. Eliot was a man of pure and high character, and of
dauntless resolution, though a good deal of a doctrinaire in his belief
that Parliamentary government was the cure for all the evils of the body
politic. Wentworth, dark, able, imperious, unscrupulous, was a born
leader, but he had no root of true principle in him. At the moment, from
jealousy of Buckingham, and from desire to show that he would have to be
placated if the King were awake to self-interest, he threw all the
weight of his great power on the popular side.
Instead of giving the King the money he wanted, Parliament formulated a
Petition of Right, demanding such elementary measures of justice as that
the King should agree never again to raise a forced loan, or give his
soldiers free quarters on householders, or execute martial law in time
of peace, or send whom he wished to prison without showing the cause for
which it was done. The last was the provision against which Charles
struggled hardest. The Star Chamber—a court which sat without a jury,
and which was absolutely under the King’s jurisdiction—had been one of
his favorite instruments in working his arbitrary will. The powers of
this court were left untouched by the Petition: yet even the service
this court could render him was far less than what he could render
himself if it lay in his power arbitrarily to imprison men without
giving the cause. However, his need of money was so great, and the
Commons stood so firm, that he had to yield, and on June 7th, in the
year 1628, the Petition of Right became part of the law of the land. The
first step had been taken toward cutting out of the English Constitution
the despotic powers which the Tudor kings had bequeathed to their Stuart
successors.
[Illustration:
Cromwell’s House at Ely.
The tall spire is that of St. Mary’s Church, and the Cathedral tower
is seen in the distance.
]
Immediately afterward Buckingham was assassinated by a soldier who had
taken a violent grudge against him, and the nation breathed freer with
this particular stumbling-block removed, while it lessened the strain
between the King and the Commons, who were bent on his impeachment.
There were far more serious troubles ahead. If the King could raise
money without summoning Parliament, he could rule absolutely. If
Parliament could control not only the raising, but the expenditure of
money, it would be the supreme source of power, and the King but a
figure-head; in other words, the government would be put upon the basis
on which it has actually stood during the present century. For many
reigns the Commons had been accustomed to vote to each king for life, at
the outset of his reign, the duties on exports and imports, known as
tonnage and poundage; but during the years immediately past men had been
forced to think much on liberty and self-government. Parliament was in
no mood to surrender absolute power to the King.
With the right to lay taxes and to supervise the expenditure of
money—that is, to conduct the government—was intertwined the question of
religion. The mass of Englishmen adhered rather loosely to the Anglican
communion, and were not extreme Puritans; on certain points, however,
they were tinged very deeply with Calvinism. They were greatly angered
by the attitude of those bishops, who under the lead of Laud showed
themselves more hostile to Protestant than to Catholic dogmas. These
bishops preached not only that the views in Church matters held by the
bulk of Englishmen were wrong, but furthermore that it was the duty of
every subject to render entire obedience to the sovereign, no matter
what the sovereign did, and they insisted that parliaments were of right
mere ciphers in the State. Such doctrines were not only irritating from
the theological stand-point; they also struck at the root of political
freedom. The religious antagonism was accentuated by the fact that at
this time the Protestant cause in Germany had touched the lowest point
it ever reached during the Thirty Years’ War, and the anger and alarm of
the English Protestants, as they saw the Calvinists and Lutherans of
Denmark and North Germany overcome, were heightened by the indifference,
if not satisfaction, with which the King and the bishops looked at the
struggle.
In 1629 the Commons, under the lead of Eliot and Pym, took advanced
ground alike on the questions of religion and of taxation. Pym was
supplementing Eliot’s work, which was to make the House of Commons the
supreme authority in England, by striving to associate together a
majority of the members for the achievement of certain common objects;
in other words, he was laying the foundation of party government. Under
the lead of these two men, the first two Parliamentary and popular
leaders in the modern sense, the House of Commons passed resolutions
demanding uniformity in religious belief throughout the kingdom and
condemning every innovation in religion, and declaring enemies to the
kingdom and traitors to its liberties whoever advised the levying of
tonnage and poundage without the authority of Parliament, or whoever
voluntarily paid those duties. The first clause hit Catholics and
Dissenters alike, but was especially aimed at the bishops and their
followers, who stood closest to the King; and the second was, of course,
intended to transfer the sovereignty from the King to Parliament—in
other words, from the King to the people. Charles met the challenge by
dissolving Parliament. Eleven years were to pass before another met.
Meantime, the King governed as a despot; and it must be remembered that
when he deliberately chose thus to govern as a despot, responsible to no
legal tribunal, he at once threw his subjects back on the only remedies
which it is possible to enforce against despotism—deposition or death.
Charles was bitterly angry at the sturdy independence shown by the
Commons, and marked out for vengeance those who had been foremost in
thwarting his wishes. His course was easy. The Petition of Right
formulated a principle, but as yet it offered no safeguard against an
unscrupulous king; while the Star Chamber court, and the other judges
for that matter, held office at his pleasure, and acted as his
subservient tools in fining and imprisoning merchants who refused
payment of the duties, or men whose acts or words the king chose to
consider seditious. Eliot and some of his fellow-members were thrown
into prison because of the culminating proceedings in Parliament.
Eliot’s comrades made submission and were released, but Eliot refused to
acknowledge that the King, through his courts, had any right to meddle
with what was done in Parliament. He took his stand firmly on the ground
that the King was not the master of Parliament, and of course this could
but mean ultimately that Parliament was master of the King. In other
words, he was one of the earliest leaders of the movement which has
produced English freedom and English government as we now know them. He
was also its martyr. He was kept in the Tower without air or exercise
for three years, the King vindictively refusing to allow the slightest
relaxation in his confinement, even when it brought on consumption. In
December, 1632, he died; and the King’s hatred found its last expression
in denying to his kinsfolk the privilege of burying him in his Cornish
home.
Charles set eagerly to work to rule the kingdom by himself. To the
Puritan dogma of enforced unity of religious belief—utterly mischievous,
and just as much fraught with slavery to the soul in one sect as
another—he sought, through Laud, to oppose the only less mischievous,
because silly, doctrine of enforced uniformity in the externals of
public worship. Laud was a small and narrow man, hating Puritanism in
every form, and persecuting bitterly every clergyman or layman who
deviated in any way from what he regarded as proper ecclesiastical
custom. His tyranny was of that fussy kind which, without striking
terror, often irritates nearly to madness. He was Charles’s instrument
in the effort to secure ecclesiastical absolutism.
The instrument through which the King sought to establish the royal
prerogative in political affairs was of far more formidable temper.
Immediately after the dissolution of Parliament Wentworth had obtained
his price from the King, and was appointed to be his right-hand man in
administering the kingdom. A man of great shrewdness and insight, he
seems to have struggled to govern well, according to his lights; but he
despised law and acted upon the belief that the people should be slaves,
unpermitted, as they were unfit, to take any share in governing
themselves. After a while Laud was made archbishop; and Wentworth was
later made Lord Strafford.
Wentworth and Laud, with their associates, when they tried to govern on
such terms, were continually clashing with the people. A government thus
carried on naturally aroused resistance, which often itself took
unjustifiable forms; and this resistance was, in its turn, punished with
revolting brutality. Criticism of Laudian methods, or of existing social
habits, might take scurrilous shape; and then the critic’s ears were
hacked off as he stood in the pillory, or he was imprisoned for life.
[Illustration:
Archbishop Laud.
From the portrait at Lambeth Palace, painted by Vandyke.
By permission of the Archbishop of Canterbury.
]
The great fight was made, not on a religious, but on a purely political
question—that of Ship Money. The king wished to go to war with the
Dutch, and to raise his fleet he issued writs, first to the maritime
counties, and then to every shire in England. He consulted his judges,
who stated that his action was legal: as well they might, for when a
judge disagreed with him on any important point, he was promptly
dismissed from office. But there was one man in the kingdom who thought
differently, John Hampden, a Buckinghamshire ’squire, who had already
once sat as a silent member in Parliament, together with another equally
silent member of the same social standing, his nephew, Oliver Cromwell.
Hampden was assessed at twenty shillings. The amount was of no more
importance than the value of the tea which a century and a half later
was thrown into Boston Harbor; but in each case a vital principle—the
same vital principle—was involved. If the King could take twenty
shillings from Hampden without authority from the representatives of the
people in Parliament assembled, then his rule was absolute: he could do
what he pleased. On the other hand, if the House of Commons could do as
it wished in granting money only for whatever need it chose to recognize
in the kingdom, then the House of Commons was supreme. In Hampden’s view
but one course was possible—he was for the Parliament and the nation
against the King; and he refused to pay the sum, facing without a murmur
the punishment for his contumacy.
The King and his ministers did not flinch from proceeding to any length
against either political or religious opponents. Charles heartily upheld
Laud and Wentworth in carrying out their policy of “thorough”; Laud in
England; Wentworth, after 1633, in Ireland. “Thorough,” in their sense
of the word, meant making the State, which was the King, paramount in
every ecclesiastical and political matter, and putting his interests
above the interests, the principles, and the prejudices of all classes
and all parties; paying heed to nothing but to what seemed right in the
eyes of the sovereign and the sovereign’s chosen advisers. Under
Wentworth’s strong hand a certain amount of material prosperity followed
in Ireland, although chiefly among the English settlers. There was no
such material prosperity in England; 1630, for instance, was a famine
year. The net effect of the policy would in the long run have been to
bring down a freedom-loving people to a lower grade of political and
social development. There was, of course, no oppression in England in
any way resembling such oppression as that which flogged the Dutch to
revolt against the Spaniards. But it was exactly the kind of oppression
which led, in 1776, to the American Revolution. Eliot, Hampden, and Pym,
stood for the principles that were championed by Washington, Patrick
Henry, and the Adamses. The grievances which forced the Long Parliament
to appeal to arms were like those which made the Continental Congress
throw off the sovereignty of George III. In neither case was there the
kind of grinding tyranny which has led to the assassination of tyrants
and the frantic, bloodthirsty uprising of tortured slaves. In each case
the tyranny was in its first stage, not its last; but the reason for
this was simply that a nation of vigorous freemen will always revolt by
the time the first stage has been reached. It was not possible, either
for the Stuart kings or for George III., to go beyond a certain point,
for as soon as that point was reached the freemen were called to arms by
their leaders.
However, there was the greatest reluctance among Englishmen to
countenance rebellion, even for the best of causes. This reluctance was
eminently justifiable. Rebellion, revolution—the appeal to arms to
redress grievances; these are measures that can only be justified in
extreme cases. It is far better to suffer any moderate evil, or even a
very serious evil, so long as there is a chance of its peaceable
redress, than to plunge the country into civil war; and the men who head
or instigate armed rebellions for which there is not the most ample
justification must be held as one degree worse than any but the most
evil tyrants. Between the Scylla of despotism and the Charybdis of
anarchy there is but little to choose; and the pilot who throws the ship
upon one is as blameworthy as he who throws it on the other. But a point
may be reached where the people have to assert their rights, be the
peril what it may; and in Great Britain this point was passed under
Charles I.
The first break came, not in England, but in Scotland. The Scotch
abhorred Episcopacy; whereas the English had no objection whatever to
bishops, so long as the bishops did not outrage the popular religious
convictions. In Scotland the spirit of Puritanism was uppermost, and was
already exhibiting both its strength and its weakness; its sincerity and
its lack of breadth; its stern morality and its failure to discriminate
between essentials and non-essentials; its loftiness of aim and its
tendency to condemn liberality of thought in religion, art, literature,
and science, alike as irreligious; its insistence on purity of life, and
yet its unconscious tendency to promote hypocrisy and to drive out one
form of religious tyranny merely to erect another.
A man of any insight would not have striven to force an alien system of
ecclesiastical government upon a people so stubborn and self-reliant,
who were wedded to their own system of religious thought. But this was
what Laud attempted, with the full approval of Charles. In 1637 he made
a last effort to introduce the ceremonies of the English Church at
Edinburgh. No sooner was the reading of the Prayer-Book begun than the
congregation burst into wild uproar, execrating it as no better than
celebrating mass. It was essentially a popular revolt. The incident of
Jenny Geddes’s stool may be mythical, but it was among the women and men
of the lower orders that the resistance was stoutest. The whole nation
responded to the cry, and hurried to sign a national Covenant, engaging
to defend the Reformed religion, and to do away with all “innovations”;
that is, with everything in which Episcopacy differed from Puritanism
and inclined toward the Church of Rome.
In England and Scotland alike the Church of Rome was still accepted by
the people at large as the most dangerous of enemies. The wonderful
career of Gustavus Adolphus had just closed. The Thirty Years’ War—the
last great religious struggle—was still at its height. If, in France,
the Massacre of St. Bartholomew stood far in the past, the Revocation of
the Edict of Nantes yet lay in the future. The after-glow of the fires
of Smithfield still gleamed with lurid light in each sombre Puritan
heart. The men who, in England, were most earnest about their religion
held to their Calvinistic creed with the utmost sincerity, high purpose,
and self-devotion: but with no little harshness. Theirs was a lofty
creed, but one which, in the revolt against levity and viciousness, set
up a standard of gloom; and, though ready to fight to the death for
liberty for themselves, they had as yet little idea of tolerating
liberty in others. Naturally, such men sympathized with one another, and
the action of the Scotch was heartily, though secretly, applauded by the
stoutest Presbyterians of England. Moreover, while menaced by the common
oppressor, the Puritan independents, who afterward split off from the
Presbyterians, made common cause with them, the irreconcilable
differences between the two bodies not yet being evident.
Soon the Scotch held a general assembly of the Church, composed of both
clerical and lay members, and formally abolished Episcopacy, in spite of
the angry protests of the King. Their action amounted in effect to
establishing a theocracy. They repudiated the unlimited power of the
King and the bishops, as men would do nowadays in like case; but they
declared against liberty of thought and conduct in religious matters,
basing their action on practically the same line of reasoning that
influenced the very men they most denounced, hated, and feared.
[Illustration:
West Tower, Ely Cathedral, from Monastery Close.
]
The King took up the glove which the Scotch had thrown down. He raised
an army and undertook the first of what were derisively known as the
“Bishops’ Wars.” But his people sympathized with the Scotch rather than
with him. He got an army together on the Border, but it would not fight,
and he was forced reluctantly to treat for peace. Then Strafford came
back from Ireland and requested Charles to summon a Parliament so that
he could get funds. In April, 1640, the Short Parliament came together,
but the English spirit was now almost as high as the Scotch in hostility
to the King, and Parliament would not grant anything to the King until
the grievances of the people were redressed. To this demand Charles
would not listen, and the Parliament was promptly dissolved. Then, being
heartened by Laud, and especially by Strafford, Charles renewed the war,
only to see his army driven in headlong panic before the Scotch at
Newburn. The result was that he had to try to patch up a peace under the
direction of Strafford. But the Scotch would not leave the kingdom until
they were paid the expenses of the war. There was no money to pay them,
and Charles had to summon Parliament once more. On November 3, 1640, the
Long Parliament met at Westminster.
When Oliver Cromwell took his seat in the Long Parliament he was
forty-one years old. He had been born at Huntingdon on April 25, 1599,
and by birth belonged to the lesser gentry, or upper middle-class. The
original name of the family had been Williams; it was of Welsh origin.
There were many Cromwells, and Oliver was a common name among them. One
of the Protector’s uncles bore the name, and remained a stanch Loyalist
throughout the Civil War. Oliver’s own father, Robert, was a man in very
moderate circumstances, his estate in the town of Huntingdon bringing an
income of some £300 a year. Oliver’s mother, Elizabeth Steward of Ely,
seems to have been of much stronger character than his father. The
Stewards, like the Cromwells, were “new people,” both families, like so
many others of the day, owing their rise to the spoliation of the
monasteries. Oliver’s father was a brewer, and his success in the
management of the brewery was mainly due to Oliver’s mother. No other
member of Oliver’s family—neither his wife nor his father—influenced him
as did his mother. She was devoted to him, and he, in turn, loved her
tenderly and respected her deeply. He followed her advice when young; he
established her in the Royal Palace of Whitehall when he came to
greatness; and when she died he buried her in Westminster Abbey. As a
boy he received his education at Huntingdon, but when seventeen years
old was sent to Cambridge University. A strong, hearty young fellow;
fond of horse-play and rough pranks—as indeed he showed himself to be
even when the weight of the whole kingdom rested on his shoulders. He
nevertheless seems to have been a fair student, laying the foundation
for that knowledge of Greek literature and the Latin language, and that
fondness for books, which afterward struck the representatives of the
foreign powers at London. In 1617 his father died, and he left
Cambridge. When twenty-one years old he was married in London, to
Elizabeth Bouchier (who was one year older than he was), the daughter of
a rich London furrier. She was a woman of gentle and amiable character,
and though she does not appear to have influenced Cromwell’s public
career to any perceptible extent, he always regarded her with fond
affection, and was always faithful to her.
For twenty years after his marriage he lived a quiet life, busying
himself with the management of his farm. Nine children were born to him,
of whom three sons and five daughters lived to maturity. About this time
his soul was first deeply turned toward religious matters, and, like the
great majority of serious thinkers of the time, he became devoted to the
Puritan theology; indeed no other was possible to a representative of
the prosperous, independent, and religious middle-class, from which all
the greatest Puritan leaders sprang. While a boy Oliver had been sent to
the free school at Huntingdon, and his first training had been received
under its master, the Reverend Thomas Beard, a zealous Puritan and
Reformer, as well as a man of wide reading and sound scholarship, and
lastly, an inflamed hater of the Church of Rome. All his surroundings,
all his memories, were such as to make the future Dictator of England
sincerely feel that the Church of Rome was the arch-antagonist of all,
temporal and spiritual, that he held most dear. In the first place his
ancestors were among those who had profited by the spoliation of the
monasteries; and the only way to avoid uncomfortable feelings on the
part of the spoiler is for him to show—or if this is not possible, to
convince himself that he has shown—the utmost iniquity on the part of
the despoiled. When Oliver was a small boy the Gunpowder Plot shook all
England. When he was a little older Henry of Navarre was stabbed in
Paris; and though Henry was a cynical turncoat in matters of religion,
and a man of the most revolting licentiousness in private life, he was
yet a great ruler of men, and had been one of the props of the
Protestant cause. Before Oliver came of age the Thirty Years’ War had
begun its course. To Oliver Cromwell, warfare against the Church of
Rome, broken by truces which, whether long or short, were intended only
to be breathing-spells, must have seemed the normal state of things.
In 1631 Oliver sold his paternal estate in Huntingdon and managed a
rented farm at St. Ives for five years; then he removed to Ely, in the
fen country, and again took up farming, being joined by his mother and
sisters. He served in the great Parliament which passed the Petition of
Right, but played no part of prominence therein: standing stoutly,
however, for Puritanism and Parliamentary freedom. During the ensuing
eleven years of unrest, while all England was making ready for the
impending conflict, Oliver busied himself with his farm and his family.
He showed himself one of the strongest bulwarks of the Puritan
preachers; zealous in the endeavor to further the cause of religion in
every way, and always open to appeals from the poor and the oppressed,
of whom he was the consistent champion. When certain rich men, headed by
the Earl of Bedford, endeavored to oust from some of their rights the
poor people of the fens, Oliver headed the latter in their resistance.
He was keenly interested in the trial of his kinsman, John Hampden, for
refusal to pay the Ship Money; a trial which was managed by the advocate
Oliver St. John, his cousin by marriage.
In short, Cromwell was far more concerned in righting specific cases of
oppression than in advancing the great principles of constitutional
government which alone make possible that orderly liberty which is the
bar to such individual acts of wrong-doing. From the stand-point of the
private man this is a distinctly better failing than is its opposite;
but from the stand-point of the statesman the reverse is true. Cromwell,
like many a so-called “practical” man, would have done better work had
he followed a more clearly defined theory; for though the practical man
is better than the mere theorist, he cannot do the highest work unless
he is a theorist also. However, all Cromwell’s close associations were
with Hampden, St. John, and the other leaders in the movement for
political freedom, and he acted at first in entire accord with their
ideas: while with the religious side of their agitation he was in most
hearty sympathy.
It is difficult for us nowadays to realize how natural it seemed at that
time for the Word of the Lord to be quoted and appealed to on every
occasion, no matter how trivial, in the lives of sincerely religious
men. It is very possible that quite as large a proportion of people
nowadays strive to shape their internal lives in accordance with the Ten
Commandments and the Golden Rule; indeed, it is probable that the
proportion is far greater; but professors of religion then carried their
religion into all the externals of their lives. Cromwell belonged among
those earnest souls who indulged in the very honorable dream of a world
where civil government and social life alike should be based upon the
Commandments set forth in the Bible. To endeavor to shape the whole
course of individual existence in accordance with the hidden or
half-indulged law of perfect righteousness, has to it a very lofty side;
but if the endeavor is extended to include mankind at large, it has also
a very dangerous side: so dangerous indeed that in practice the effort
is apt to result in harm, unless it is undertaken in a spirit of the
broadest charity and toleration; for the more sincere the men who make
it, the more certain they are to treat, not only their own principles,
but their own passions, prejudices, vanities, and jealousies, as
representing the will, not of themselves, but of Heaven. The constant
appeal to the Word of God in all trivial matters is, moreover, apt to
breed hypocrisy of that sanctimonious kind which is peculiarly
repellent, and which invariably invites reaction against all religious
feeling and expression.
At that day Cromwell’s position in this matter was, at its worst, merely
that of the enormous majority of earnest men of all sects. Each sect
believed that it was the special repository of the wisdom and virtue of
the Most High: and the most zealous of its members believed it to be
their duty to the Most High to make all other men worship Him according
to what they conceived to be His wishes. This was the mediæval attitude,
and represented the mediæval side in Puritanism; a side which was
particularly prominent at the time, and which, so far as it existed,
marred the splendor of Puritan achievement. The nobleness of the effort
to bring about the reign of God on earth, the inspiration that such an
effort was to those engaged in it, must be acknowledged by all; but, in
practice, we must remember that, as religious obligation was then
commonly construed, it inevitably led to the Inquisition in Spain; to
the sack of Drogheda in Ireland; to the merciless persecution of
heretics by each sect, according to its power, and the effort to stifle
freedom of thought and stamp out freedom of action. It is right, and
greatly to be desired, that men should come together to search after the
truth: to try to find out the true will of God; but in Cromwell’s time
they were only beginning to see that each body of seekers must be left
to work out its own beliefs without molestation, so long as it does not
strive to interfere with the beliefs of others.
The great merit of Cromwell, and of the party of the Independents which
he headed, and which represented what was best in Puritanism, consists
in the fact that he and they did, dimly, but with ever-growing
clearness, perceive this principle, and, with many haltings, strove to
act up to it. The Independent or Congregational churches, which worked
for political freedom, and held that each congregation of Protestants
should decide for itself as to its religious doctrines, stood as the
forerunners in the movement that has culminated in our modern political
and religious liberty. How slow the acceptance of their ideas was, how
the opposition to them battled on to the present century, will be
appreciated by anyone who turns to the early writings of Gladstone when
he was the “rising hope of those stern Tories,” whose special antipathy
he afterward became. Even yet there are advocates of religious
intolerance, but they are mostly of the academic kind, and there is no
chance for any political party of the least importance to try to put
their doctrines into effect. More and more, at least here in the United
States, Catholics and Protestants, Jews and Gentiles, are learning the
grandest of all lessons—that they can best serve their God by serving
their fellow-men, and best serve their fellow-men, not by wrangling
among themselves, but by a generous rivalry in working for righteousness
and against evil.
This knowledge then lay in the future. When Cromwell grew to manhood he
was a Puritan of the best type, of the type of Hampden and Milton;
sincere, earnest, resolute to do good as he saw it, more liberal than
most of his fellow-religionists, and saved from their worst
eccentricities by his hard common-sense, but not untouched by their
gloom, and sharing something of their narrowness. Entering Parliament
thus equipped, he could not fail to be most drawn to the religious side
of the struggle. He soon made himself prominent; a harsh-featured,
red-faced, powerfully-built man, whose dress appeared slovenly in the
eyes of the courtiers—who was no orator, but whose great power soon
began to impress friends and enemies alike.
II
THE LONG PARLIAMENT AND THE CIVIL WAR
King Charles’s theory was that Parliament had met to grant him the money
he needed. The Parliament’s conviction was that it had come together to
hold the King and his servants to accountability for what they had done,
and to provide safeguards against a repetition of the tyranny of the
last eleven years. Parliament held the whip hand, for the King dared not
dissolve it until the Scots were paid, lest their army should march at
once upon London.
The King had many courtiers who hated popular government, but he had
only one great and terrible man of the type that can upbuild tyrannies;
and, with the sure instinct of mortal fear and mortal hate, the Commons
struck at the minister whose towering genius and unscrupulous
fearlessness might have made his master absolute on the throne. A week
after the Long Parliament met, in November, 1640, Pym, who at once took
the lead in the House, moved the impeachment of Strafford, in a splendid
speech which set forth the principles for which the popular party was
contending. It was an appeal from the rule of irresponsible will to the
rule of law, for the violation of which every man could be held
accountable before some tribunal. About the same time Laud was thrown
into the Tower; but at the moment there was no thought of taking his
life, for the ecclesiastic was not—like the statesman—a mighty and
fearsome figure, and though he had done as much evil as his feeble
nature permitted, he had unquestionably been far more conscientious than
the great Earl. Strafford had sinned against the light, for he had
championed liberty until the King paid him his price and made him the
most dangerous foe of his former friends. He now defended himself with
haughty firmness, and the King strove in every way to help him. But the
Commons passed a Bill of Attainder against him: and then Charles
committed an act of fatal meanness and treachery. There was not one
thing that Strafford had done, save by his sovereign’s wish and in his
sovereign’s interest. By every consideration of honor and expediency
Charles was bound to stand by him. But the Stuart King flinched. Deeming
it for his own interest to let Strafford be sacrificed, he signed the
death-warrant. “Put not your trust in Princes,” said the fallen Earl
when the news was brought to him, and he went to the scaffold undaunted.
[Illustration:
John Pym.
From the portrait by Cornelius Janssen at the Victoria and Albert
Museum, South Kensington.
]
Cromwell showed himself to be a man of mark in this Parliament; but he
was not among the very foremost leaders. He had no great understanding
of constitutional government, no full appreciation of the vital
importance of the reign of law to the proper development of orderly
liberty. His fervent religious ardor made all questions affecting faith
and doctrine close to him; and his hatred of corruption and oppression
inclined him to take the lead whenever any question arose of dealing,
either with the wrongs done by Laud in the course of his religious
persecutions, or with the irresponsible tyranny of the Star Chamber, and
the sufferings of its victims. The bent of Cromwell’s mind was thus
shown right in the beginning of his parliamentary career. His desire was
to remedy specific evils. He was too impatient to found the kind of
legal and constitutional system which could alone prevent the recurrence
of such evils. This tendency, thus early shown, explains, at least in
part, why it was that later he deviated from the path trod by Hampden,
and afterward by Washington and Washington’s colleagues: showing himself
unable to build up free government or to establish the reign of law,
until he was finally driven to substitute his own personal government
for the personal government of the King whom he had helped to dethrone,
and put to death. Cromwell’s extreme admirers treat his impatience of
the delays and shortcomings of ordinary constitutional and legal
proceedings as a sign of his greatness. It was just the reverse. In
great crises it may be necessary to overturn constitutions and disregard
statutes, just as it may be necessary to establish a vigilance
committee, or take refuge in lynch law; but such a remedy is always
dangerous, even when absolutely necessary; and the moment it becomes the
habitual remedy, it is a proof that society is going backward. Of this
retrogression the deeds of the strong man who sets himself above the law
may be partly the cause and partly the consequence; but they are always
the signs of decay.
The Commons had passed a law authorizing the election of a Parliament at
least once in three years: which at once took away the King’s power to
attempt to rule without a Parliament; and in May they extorted from the
King an act that they should not be dissolved without their own consent.
Ship Money was declared to be illegal; the Star Chamber was abolished;
and Tonnage and Poundage were declared illegal, unless levied by Act of
Parliament. Then the Scotch army was paid off and returned across the
Border. The best work of the Commons had now been done, and if they
could have trusted the King it would have been well for them to
dissolve; but the King could not be trusted, and, moreover, the
religious question was pushed to the front. Laud’s actions—actions taken
with the full consent and by the advice of the King—had rendered the
Episcopal form of Church government obnoxious. The House of Commons was
Presbyterian, and it speedily became evident that it wished to establish
the Presbyterian system of Church government in the place of Episcopacy;
and, moreover, that it intended to be just as intolerant on behalf of
Presbyterianism as the King and Laud had been on behalf of Episcopacy.
There was a strong moderate party which the King might have rallied
about him, but his incurable bad faith made it impossible to trust his
protestations. He now made terms with the Scotch, in accordance with
which they agreed not to interfere between himself and his English
subjects in religious matters. He hoped thereby to deprive the
Presbyterian English of their natural allies across the Border. This
conduct, of itself, would have inflamed the increasing religious
bitterness; but it was raised to madness by the news that came from
Ireland at this time.
Inspired by the news of the revolt in Scotland and the troubles in
England, the Irish had risen against their hereditary oppressors. It was
the revolt of a race which rose to avenge wrongs as bitter as ever one
people inflicted upon another; and it was inevitable that it should be
accompanied by appalling outrages in certain places. It was on these
outrages that the English fixed their eyes, naturally ignoring the
generations of English evil-doing which had brought them about. A
furious cry for revenge arose. Every Puritan, from Oliver Cromwell down,
regarded the massacres as a fresh proof that Roman Catholics ought to be
treated, not as professors of another Christian creed, but as cruel
public enemies; and their burning desire for vengeance took the form,
not merely of hostility to Roman Catholicism, but to the Episcopacy,
which they regarded as in the last resort an ally of Catholicism.
In November, 1641, the Puritan majority in Parliament passed the Grand
Remonstrance—which was a long indictment of Charles’s conduct. Cromwell
had now taken his place as among the foremost of the Root and Branch
Party, who demanded the abolition of Episcopacy, and whose action drove
all those who believed in the Episcopal form of Church government into
the party of the King. He threw himself with eager vehemence into the
Party of the Remonstrance, and after its bill was passed told Falkland
that if it had been rejected by Parliament he would have sold all he
had, and never again seen England.
For a moment the Puritan violence, which culminated in the Grand
Remonstrance, provoked a reaction in favor of the King; but the King, by
another act of violence, brought about a counter-reaction. In January,
1642, he entered the House of Commons, and in person ordered the seizure
and imprisonment in the Tower of the five foremost leaders of the
Puritan party, including Pym and Hampden. Such a course on his part
could be treated only as an invitation to civil war. London, which
before had been wavering, now rallied to the side of the Commons; the
King left Whitehall; and it was evident to all men that the struggle
between him and the Parliament had reached a point where it would have
to be settled by the appeal to arms.
In August, 1642, King Charles planted the royal standard on the Castle
of Nottingham, and the Civil War began. The Parliamentary forces were
led by the Earl of Essex. They included some 20 regiments of infantry
and 75 troops of horse, each 60 strong, raised and equipped by its own
captain. Oliver Cromwell was captain of the Sixty-seventh Troop, and his
kinsfolk and close friends were scattered through the cavalry and
infantry. His sons served with or under him. One brother-in-law was
quartermaster of his own troop; a second was captain of another troop.
His future son-in-law, Henry Ireton, was captain of yet another; a
cousin and a nephew were cornets. Another cousin, John Hampden, was
colonel of a regiment of foot; so was Cromwell’s close friend and
neighbor, the after-time Earl of Manchester, who was much under his
influence.
It was nearly a hundred years since England had been the scene of
serious fighting, and Scotland had witnessed nothing more than brawls
during that time. Elizabeth’s war with Spain had been waged upon the
ocean. However, thousands of English and Scotch adventurers had served
in the Netherlands and in High Germany under the Dutch and Swedish
generals. In both the Royal and Parliamentary armies there was a
sprinkling of men—especially in the upper ranks of the officers—who had
had practical experience of war on a large scale. The English people
offered exceptionally fine material for soldiers; the population was
still overwhelmingly rural and agricultural. In the cities the hardy
mechanics and craftsmen were accustomed to sports in which physical
prowess played a great part. The agricultural classes were far above the
peasant serfs of Germany and France; and the gentry and yeomanry were
accustomed to the use of the horse and the fowling-piece, and were
devoted to field-sports. In courage, in hardihood, in intelligence, the
level was high.
Although gunpowder had been in use for a couple of centuries, progress
toward the modern arms of precision had been so slow that close-quarter
weapons were still, on the whole, superior; and shock tactics rather
than fire tactics were decisive. Artillery, though used on the field of
battle, was never there a controlling factor, being of chief use in the
assault of fortified places. The musketeers took so long to load their
clumsy weapons that they could be used to best advantage only when
protected, and they played a less important part on a pitched field than
the great bodies of pikemen with which they were mingled. In England the
cavalry had completely the upper hand of the infantry. It was used, not
merely to finish the fight, but to smash unbroken and unshaken bodies of
foot; and so great was its value in the open field that every effort was
made by the commanders on both sides to keep it at the largest possible
ratio to the whole army. Every decisive battle of the Civil War was made
such by the cavalry. The arrangement of the armies was, invariably, with
the infantry in the centre, the pikemen and the musketeers ordinarily
alternating in clumps, while the cavalry was on both wings. The
dragoons, though mounted, habitually fought on foot with their
fire-pieces. Lancers were rarely used. The heavy cavalry were clad in
cuirasses, and armed with long, straight swords and pistols. The light
cavalry usually wore the buff coat, sometimes with a breast-piece,
always with a helmet; and in addition to their sword and pistols,
carried a carbine.
Throughout Europe, at this time, cavalry trusted altogether too much to
their clumsy firearms, save when handled by some great natural leader of
horse; and, in consequence, on the Continent, the infantry had won the
upper hand. But it happened in the English Civil War that the only great
leaders developed were cavalrymen; and so the horse retained throughout
the mastery over the foot; although, as each arm was always pitted
against the same arm in the opposing forces, the struggle frequently
wore itself out before the victorious horse and victorious foot, if they
belonged to different parties, could fight it out between them.
The Civil War opened with just such blundering and indecisive fighting
as marked the opening of the American Civil War two centuries later.
There was no hard and fast line, whether geographically or of caste,
between the two parties; in every portion of England, and in every rank
of society, there were to be found adherents both of the King and of the
Commons; but, as a whole, the east and south of England were for the
Parliament; the north and west were Royalist. The bulk of the
aristocracy stood for the King; the bulk of the lesser gentry and
yeomanry were against him. The revolutionary movement—as in America in
1776—received its main strength from the lesser gentry, small farmers,
tradesmen, and upper-class mechanics and handicraftsmen. In America in
1776 there was no proletariat. So far as there was one in England in
1642, it took no interest in the struggle. The peasantry, the mass of
the agricultural laborers, were inclined toward the King, though the men
immediately above them in social position, who represented the lowest
rank that had political influence, were the other way. The townsmen were
generally for the Parliament.
In comparing the English Civil War of the seventeenth century with the
American Civil War of the nineteenth, there are some curious points of
similarity, no less than some very sharp contrasts. During the two
centuries there had been a great growth in esteem for fixity of
principle. In the English Civil War nothing was more common than for a
man to change sides, and there was treachery even on the field of battle
itself; whereas, in the American Civil War, though many of the leaders,
like Lee and Thomas, were in great doubt as to the proper course to
follow, yet when sides had once been taken, there was no flinching and
no looking back. Moreover, there was far greater intensity of popular
feeling in the American Civil War; even the States that were divided in
opinion at the outset held no considerable mass of population which did
not soon throw its weight on one side or the other; whereas, in the
English Civil War there were large bodies of men who strove to avoid
declaring for either side. At the very end of the contest, tens of
thousands of persons, mainly peasants, organized under the title of
Clubmen, with the avowed purpose of holding the scales even between the
two sets of combatants, and of looking out for their own interests. The
American Civil War was fought for the right of secession, and efforts
were made—in Kentucky, for instance—to establish the right of a locality
to be neutral. The “state rights” theory reached an almost equal
development in some of the English counties during the Cromwellian
contest. Yorkshire at one time declared for neutrality. The trained
bands of Cornwall, when the Royalist forces were driven back within
their borders, promptly turned out and drove off the pursuing
Parliamentarians, but refused to obey orders to leave the county in
pursuit of their foes, and disbanded to their own homes. Later, they
repeated exactly the same course of procedure. There were at times local
truces, or agreements as to the conditions of the contest in particular
localities.
On both sides “associations” were formed, consisting of special groups
of counties banded together intimately for the purposes of defence. The
most important of these, the Eastern Association, included Cromwell’s
own home, taking in all of the middle East. This region was throughout
the contest the backbone of resistance to the King. Its people were
strongly Puritan in feeling, and it was they who gave Cromwell his
strength: for they gave him his Ironsides; and furnished the famous New
Model for the Parliamentary army which finished the war.
At the outset of the war many of the nobles raised regiments from among
their own tenants, and the armies were of picturesque look, each
regiment having its own uniform. The Guards of Lord Essex adopted the
buff leather coat, which afterward became the uniform of the whole
Roundhead army. Hampden’s regiment was in green; the London trained
bands in bright scarlet. Other regiments were clad in blue or gray. In
the Cavalier army there were foot-guards in white and foot-guards in
red; and among their horse, the Life Guards of the King—composed of
lords and gentlemen who had no separate commands—wore plumed casques
over their long curled locks, embroidered lace collars over their
glittering cuirasses, gay scarfs, gilded sword-belts, and great-boots of
soft leather doubled down below the knee.
The history of the English Civil War, like the history of the American
Revolutionary War and the American Civil War, teaches two lessons.
First, it shows that the average citizen of a civilized community
requires months of training before he can be turned into a good soldier,
and that raw levies—no matter how patriotic—are, under normal
conditions, helpless before smaller armies of trained and veteran
troops, and cannot strike a finishing blow even when pitted against
troops of their own stamp. In the second place it teaches a lesson,
which at first sight seems contradictory of the first, but is in reality
not in the least so; namely, that there is nothing sacrosanct in the
trade of the soldier. It is a trade which can be learned without special
difficulty by any man who is brave and intelligent, who realizes the
necessity of obedience, and who is already gifted with physical
hardihood and is accustomed to the use of the horse and of weapons, to
enduring fatigue and exposure, and to acting on his own responsibility,
taking care of himself in the open.
Cromwell’s troops were not regulars, like the professional soldiers of
the Thirty Years’ War; they were volunteers. After two or three years’
service they became the finest troops that Europe could then show; just
as by 1864 the volunteers of Grant and Lee had reached a grade of
perfection which made them, for their own work, superior to any other of
the armies then in existence.
Under modern conditions, in a great civilized state, the regular army is
composed of officers who have as a rule been carefully trained to their
work; who possess remarkably fine physique, and who are accustomed to
the command of men and to taking the lead in emergencies; and the
enlisted men have likewise been picked out with great care as to their
bodily development; have been drilled until they handle themselves,
their horses, and their weapons admirably, can cook for themselves, and
are trained to the endurance of hardship and exposure under the
conditions of march and battle. An ordinary volunteer or militia
regiment from an ordinary civilized community, on the other hand, no
matter how enthusiastic or patriotic, or how intelligent, is officered
by lawyers, merchants, business men, or their sons, and contains in its
ranks clerks, mechanics, or farmers’ lads of varying physique, who have
to be laboriously taught how to shoot and how to ride, and, above all,
how to cook and to take care of themselves and make themselves
comfortable in the open, especially when tired out by long marches, and
when the weather is bad. At the outset such a regiment is, of course,
utterly inferior to a veteran regular regiment, but after it has been in
active service in the field for a year or two, so that its weak men have
been weeded out, and its strong men have learned their duties—which can
be learned far more rapidly in time of war than in time of peace—it
becomes equal to any regiment. Moreover, if a regular regiment consists
of raw recruits and is officered by men who have learned their
profession only in the barracks and the study and on the parade ground,
it may be a cause of very disagreeable surprise to those who have grown
to regard the word “regular” as a kind of fetich.
Again, a volunteer regiment may have the wisdom to select officers for
the highest positions who know how to handle men, who have seen actual
soldiering, who possess natural capacity for leadership, eagerness to
learn, and the good sense to know their own shortcomings; and the rank
and file may be men of adventurous temper, already skilful riflemen, and
of great bodily hardihood, accustomed to exposure, accustomed to
cook—that is to say, to take care of their stomachs—to live in the open,
to endure hardship and fatigue, and to take advantage of cover in
battle. Such a regiment, especially if raised on the frontier, may, from
the outset, prove itself equal to or better than any ordinary regular
regiment—as has recently been shown by our troops in the Philippines, by
the Australians and Canadians in South Africa, and, above all, by the
Boers; and as was shown nearly a century ago by Hofer’s Tyrolese and
Andrew Jackson’s backwoodsmen. Of course, no good traits will avail in
the least if men are possessed with the belief that they cannot be
taught anything, if they are not eager to obey and to learn; or if they
do not possess a natural fighting edge.
So it is with the men in high command. The careful training in body and
mind, and especially in character, gained in an academy like West Point,
and the subsequent experience in the field, endow the regular officer
with such advantages that, in any but a long war, he cannot be overtaken
even by the best natural fighter. In the American Civil War, for
instance, the greatest leaders were all West Pointers. Yet even there,
by the end of the contest both armies had produced regimental, brigade,
and division commanders, who though originally from civil life, had
learned to know their business exactly as well as the best regular
officers; and there was at least one such commander—Forrest—who, in his
own class, was unequalled. If in a war the regular officers prove to
have been trained merely to the pedantry of their profession, and do not
happen to number men of exceptional ability in their ranks, then sooner
or later the men who are born soldiers will come to the front, even
though they have been civilians until late in life.
None of the men on the Parliamentary side who had received their
training in the Continental armies amounted to much. On the Royalist
side the only professional soldier who made his mark was Rupert; and
Rupert, after a year or two, was decisively beaten by Cromwell—a great
natural military genius, who, although a civilian till after forty,
showed an astonishing aptitude in grasping the essentials of his new
profession. His only military rival in the war was Montrose, who was
also not a professional soldier.
[Illustration:
Prince Rupert.
From the portrait by Vandyke at Hinchingbrooke.
By permission of the Earl of Sandwich.
]
In September King Charles had gathered a force of 10,000 men at
Nottingham, while Essex was getting together a larger army not far off,
at Northampton. The wealth of the kingdom was with the Parliament, which
also possessed the arsenal, the fleet, and the principal ports. On the
other hand, man for man, the King’s troops were superior to the
Parliament’s, especially in the most dreaded arm of the service, the
horse. The fervid zealots who, like John Bunyan, entered the
Parliamentary army, were never in the majority, and needed peculiar
training to bring out their remarkable soldierly qualities. The sober,
thrifty, religious middle class—which was the backbone of the
Parliamentary strength—had no special aptitude for military service. If
its members could once be put in the army and kept there a sufficient
length of time, their qualities made them excellent soldiers; but, as a
whole, they were not men of very adventurous temper, and had had no such
training in arms, or in the sports akin to war, as inclined them to rush
into the army. On the other hand, the Royalist nobles and squires, and
their game-keepers, grooms, and hard-riding kinsmen, with their taste
for field-sports, their love of adventure, and their high sense of
warlike honor, made splendid material out of which to organize an army,
and especially cavalry. In consequence, for the first half of the war
the Royalist cavalry was overwhelmingly superior to the Parliamentary
cavalry, composed as it was of men bought with the money of the
_bourgeoisie_, who had no particular heart in their work; who were timid
horsemen and unskilled swordsmen. The difference in favor of the
Royalist horse was as marked as the superiority of the Confederate horse
in the American Civil War, under leaders like Stuart, Morgan, and Basil
Duke; until time was afforded, in the one case for the growth of
Cromwell, in the other for the development of leaders like Sheridan and
Wilson.
Cromwell had already shown himself very active. He had seized the
magazine of the Castle of Cambridge, and secured the University plate,
which was being sent to the King. He had raised volunteers and expended
money freely out of his own scanty means. His troop of horse was, from
the beginning, utterly different from most of the Parliamentary cavalry;
it was composed of his own neighbors, yeomen and small farmers, hard,
serious men, whose grim natures were thrilled by the intense earnestness
of their leader, and whom he steadily drilled into good horsemanship and
swordsmanship. His chaplains always played an important part; one of
them, Hugh Peters, was a man of mark, who joined ability to high
character.
The King’s cavalry was led by Prince Rupert, a dashing swordsman and
horseman, a born cavalry leader, who, though only twenty-three, had
already learned his trade in the wars of the Continent. Rupert opened
the real fighting, scattering a large body of Parliamentary horse in
panic rout when he struck them near Powick, on the Severn.
In October the King marched on London, and at Edgehill met the army of
Essex. Each side drew up, with the infantry in the centre, the cavalry
on the flanks. On the King’s side there was much jealousy among the
different generals, and some insubordination, but far more activity and
eagerness for fight than the Parliamentary troops displayed. The battle
was fought on the afternoon of October 23d, and the Parliamentary army
was demoralized at the outset by the treacherous desertion of a regiment
commanded by a man most inappropriately named Sir Faithful Fortescue. He
moved out of the ranks and joined Rupert’s horse. Rupert charged with
headlong impetuosity, and by his fury and decision so overawed the
Parliamentary horse opposed to him that they did not wait the shock, but
galloped wildly off, actually dispersing the nearest infantry regiments
of their own side. Rupert then showed the characteristic shortcoming
which always impaired the effect of his daring prowess. He never could
keep his men in hand after they had scattered the foe; he never kept a
sufficient reserve with which to meet a counter-stroke. None but a great
master of war could withstand his first shock; but after the first shock
he was no longer dangerous. At Edgehill his horse followed the routed
left wing of the Parliamentarians until they became as completely
scattered as their beaten foes. He struck the Parliamentary
baggage-train, which was defended by Hampden with a couple of infantry
regiments, and his scattered troopers were beaten back when he attempted
to take it.
Meanwhile, the Royalist horse of the left wing had fallen with the same
headlong fury on the Parliamentary right, but had only struck a small
portion of the Parliamentary cavalry. These they drove in rout before
them, themselves following in hot pursuit. The result was, that the bulk
of the Parliamentary foot, and a portion of the right wing of the
Parliamentary horse, including Oliver Cromwell’s troop, were left face
to face with the Royalist foot, which was inferior in numbers; and
falling on it, after a desperate struggle they got the upper hand and
forced it back. Rupert at last began to gather his horse together to
face the victorious Roundhead foot; and as night fell, the two armies
were still fronting each other. The King advanced on London in November,
but was unable to force his way into the city, and fell back.
The war had not opened well for the Parliamentary side, and their
especial weakness was evidently in cavalry—the arm by which decisive
battles in the open field were won. Cromwell, with unerring eye, saw the
weakness and started to remedy it. It is about this time that his famous
conversation with Hampden took place. Said Cromwell: “Your troops are
most of them old decayed serving-men and tapsters, and such kind of
fellows; and their troops are gentlemen’s sons, younger sons, and
persons of quality; do you think that the spirits of such base, mean
fellows will ever be able to encounter gentlemen that have honor and
courage and resolution in them?... You must get men of a spirit; and
take it not ill what I say—I know you will not—of a spirit that is
likely to go on as far as gentlemen will go, or else you will be beaten
still.... I raised such men as had the fear of God before them, as made
some conscience of what they did, and from that day forward they were
never beaten.”
The famous Presbyterian clergyman, Baxter, who was by no means friendly
to Cromwell, described his special care to get religious men into his
troop; men of greater intelligence than common soldiers, who enlisted,
not for the money, but from an earnest sense of public duty. Naturally,
said Baxter, these troopers “having more than ordinary wit and
resolution had more than ordinary success.”
[Illustration:
Fac-simile of Letter from Oliver Cromwell to Mr. Storie, written
January 1, 1635; said to be the earliest extant letter in Cromwell’s
handwriting.
From the original in The British Museum.
]
By another writer of the time, Cromwell’s horse are described as
“freeholders and freeholders’ sons, who upon matter of conscience
engaged in this quarrel; and thus being well-armed within by the
satisfaction of their own consciences, and without by good iron arms,
they would as one man stand firmly and charge desperately.” Cromwell at
once distinguished himself among his contemporaries, alike by the
absolute obedience he rendered to his superiors, and by the incessant,
unwearying activity with which he drilled his men in the use of their
weapons and horses. He was speedily promoted to a colonelcy. In a
news-letter of the time his regiment was described as composed of “brave
men; well disciplined. No man swears but he pays his twelvepence; if he
be drunk he is set in the stocks or worse; if one calls the other
Roundhead, he is cashiered; insomuch that the counties where they come
leap for joy of them, and come in and join with them. How happy were it
if all the forces were thus disciplined!“ Cromwell suppressed all
plundering with an iron hand. An eminently practical man, not in the
least a theoretical democrat, but imbued with that essence of democracy
which prompts a man to recognize his fellows for what they really are,
without regard to creed or caste, it speedily became known that under
him anyone would have a fair show according to his merits. He realized
to the full that the quality of troops was of vastly more consequence
than their numbers; that only the best men can be made the best
soldiers; and these best men themselves will make but poor soldiers
unless they have good training. His troops proved what iron discipline,
joined to stern religious enthusiasm, could accomplish; just as later
their immense superiority to the forces of the Scotch Covenanters showed
that religious and patriotic enthusiasm, by itself, is but a poor
substitute for training and discipline. In one of his letters he writes:
“I beseech you, be careful what captains of horse you choose; what men
be mounted. A few honest men are better than numbers. Some time they
must have for exercise. If you choose godly, honest men to be captains
of horse, honest men will follow them, and they will be careful to mount
such. I had rather have a plain russet-coated captain that knows what he
fights for, and loves what he knows, than that which you call a
gentleman, and is nothing else. I honor a _gentleman_ that is so
indeed.... It may be it provoked some spirit to see such plain men made
captains of horse.... Better plain men than none; but best to have men
patient of work, faithful and conscientious in employment.“
Ordinarily, Cromwell was able to get for his leaders men who were
gentlemen in the technical sense of the term, but again and again there
forged to the front under him men like Pride, whose natural talents had
to supply the place of birth and breeding. He writes again: “My troops
increase; I have a lovely company; you would respect them did you know
them.... They are honest, sober Christians; they expect to be used as
men.” Again he writes, when his Presbyterian colleagues were showing a
tendency to oppress and drive out of the army men whose religious
beliefs did not square with theirs: “Surely, you are not well-advised
thus to turn off one so faithful to the cause, and so able to serve you
as this man (a certain colonel). Give me leave to tell you I cannot be
of your judgment. If a man notorious for wickedness, for oaths, for
drinking, hath as great a share in your affection as one who fears an
oath, who fears to sin.... Ay, but the man is an ‘Anabaptist’! Are you
sure of that? Admit he be, shall that render him incapable to serve the
public? Sir, the state, in choosing men to serve it, takes no notice of
their opinions: if they be willing faithfully to serve it, that
satisfies.... Take heed of being sharp or too easily sharpened by
others, against those to whom you can object little, but that they
square not with you in every opinion concerning matters of religion.”
In these sentences lies the justification of genuine democracy, of
genuine religious liberty, and toleration by the state of religious
differences. They were uttered by a man far in advance of the temper of
his age. He was not sufficiently advanced to extend his toleration to
Roman Catholics, and even extending it as far as he did he was
completely out of touch with the majority of his fellow-countrymen; for
the great bulk—both Episcopalians and Presbyterians—were bitterly
hostile to the toleration of even inconsiderable differences of doctrine
and ritual. The ideal after which Cromwell strove, though lower than
that to which we of a more fortunate age have attained, was yet too high
to be reached in his day. Nevertheless, it was a good thing to have the
standard set up; and once the mark which he had established was reached,
it was certain that the spirit of toleration would go much farther. As
soon as Baptists and Congregationalists, no less than Episcopalians and
Presbyterians, were tolerated by the state for the reasons he gave, it
was sure to become impossible to refuse toleration to Catholics and
Unitarians.
We must honor Cromwell for his aspirations toward the ideal, but we must
acknowledge how far short of reaching it he fell. At this very time he
was handling without gloves the Episcopalian clergy. In order to secure
the assistance of the Scotch, Parliament had determined to take the
Covenant, which made the state religion of England the same form of
lofty, but intolerant, Presbyterianism that obtained in Scotland. Under
the decision of the Government the ritual of the Church of England was
forcibly suppressed, and there was no little harrying of Episcopal
clergy and vandal destruction of ancient art symbolism by the Puritan
zealots. “Leave off your fooling and come down, sir!” said Cromwell,
walking into Ely Cathedral, where the clergyman had persisted in the
choir service; and there was no choice but to obey.
In 1643 Cromwell forged to the front as almost the only steadily
successful Parliamentary commander. To marvellous energy, fervid zeal,
great resourcefulness, fertility of invention, and individual
initiative, he added the unerring insight of the born cavalry leader. He
soon saw that the true weapon of the cavalryman was the horse; and,
discarding the carbines with which his troop had first been armed, he
taught them to rely upon the shock of a charging, close-knit mass of men
and horses trained to move rapidly as a unit.
He was ceaseless in his efforts to get his men paid, fed, and equipped.
Like his great friend, Sir Thomas Fairfax, though he stopped all
plundering, he levied heavy fines on the estates of the Royalists, and
by these means, and by assessments from the Association, and by
voluntary loans and contributions, he was able to keep his men well
equipped.
There was no comprehensive strategy in the fighting this year; but the
balance of the isolated expeditions undertaken inclined in favor of the
King. Cromwell appears clearly, for the first time, as a successful
military leader in May, near Grantham. He had under him twelve troops.
The Cavaliers much outnumbered him. Nevertheless, when, after some
preliminary firing from the dragoons on both sides, Cromwell charged at
a round trot, the Cavaliers, instead of meeting the charge, received it
and were broken and routed. The fight was of great value as being the
first in which the Parliamentary horse beat a superior number of
Royalist horse. Cromwell was as yet learning his trade. On this occasion
he hesitated a long time about charging, and only charged at all when it
became evident that his opponents would not; and he owed his victory to
the incompetence of the Royalist commander. It was an invaluable lesson
to him.
A great deal of scrambling, confused, and rather pointless warfare
followed. Rupert and Hampden encountered each other, and Hampden was
defeated and killed. Hampden’s great colleague, Pym, died later in the
year, just after having brought about the league with Scotland—one of
the first-fruits of which was the trial and execution of Laud.
Presbyterianism was now dominant, and set itself to enforce everywhere
the rigid rule of clerical orthodoxy. Against this the Independents
began to raise their voices; but the real force which was to gain them
their victory over both Royalist and Presbyterian was as yet hidden.
Cromwell’s Ironsides—as they were afterward termed when Rupert
christened Cromwell himself by that name—the regiments which he raised
and drilled after his own manner from the Eastern Association, these
represented the real power of the Independents, and these were not yet
recognized as the heart and right arm of the army.
[Illustration:
John Hampden.
From the portrait by Robert Walker at Port Eliot.
By permission of the Earl of St. Germans.
]
Cromwell held Nottingham, where the Royalists attacked him and he beat
them off. He took Burleigh House, which was held by a strong Royalist
garrison; then, in July, 1643, he advanced to rescue the Parliamentary
general, Lord Willoughby, who was besieged at Gainsborough by a division
of Newcastle’s army. About a mile and a half out of town he met the
cavalry of Lord Cavendish, which was drawn up at the top of a hill. To
attack him it was necessary to advance up steep slopes, honeycombed by
rabbit burrows; but Cromwell’s squadrons were already remarkable alike
for flexibility and steadiness, and their leader knew both how to
prepare his forces and how to take daring advantage of every opportunity
that offered. As his leading troops struggled to the top of the hill
Cavendish’s horsemen advanced, but the Cromwellian troopers, closing up,
charged them at once. There was a stiff contest, but as the rest of the
Parliamentary troops came to the front, the Royalists were overthrown
and driven off in wild rout. Cavendish himself brought up his reserve
and routed a portion of the Parliamentary forces; but Cromwell had
neither lost his head nor let his force get out of hand. He, too, had a
reserve, and with this he charged Cavendish and overthrew him, Cavendish
himself being slain.
This feat was succeeded by another quite as notable. After relieving the
town and giving Lord Willoughby powder and provisions, Cromwell advanced
toward some Royalist soldiers who still remained in view, about a mile
distant. To his astonishment, these proved to be the vanguard of
Newcastle’s whole army, and there was nothing for it but to retreat.
Cromwell’s troops were tired, and only his excellent generalship and
indomitable courage prevented a disastrous rout. Both the Parliamentary
horse and foot were at first shaken by the advance of the fresh Royalist
soldiery, but Cromwell speedily got them in hand and retired by
divisions, making head against the enemy alternately with one body of
horse and then with another, while the rest of the troops drew back
behind the shield thus afforded them. The alternating squadrons of the
rear-guard always made head against the enemy and checked him, but
always slipped away before he could charge, and thus the tired army was
brought off in safety.
In September Cromwell joined Sir Thomas Fairfax; and in October they met
and overthrew a Royalist force at Winceby, the Puritan troopers singing
a psalm as they advanced to the combat. The numbers seem to have been
about equal, perhaps 3,000 a side. The battle began with a skirmish
between the dragoons of the two forces. It was decided by the tremendous
charge of Cromwell’s steel-clad troopers. The charge was made at the
trot, Cromwell leading his men. The Royal dragoons fired upon them as
they came on, Cromwell’s horse was killed, and a Cavalier knocked him
down as he rose, but was himself killed by a Puritan trooper. Cromwell
sprang to his feet, flung himself on a fresh horse, and again joined in
the fight. His troops were heavy cavalry, cuirassiers, and the opposing
Royalists, with only buff coats, were overthrown by the shock of his
advance. Fairfax charged in flank, and the rout was complete. The
Royalist leaders chronicled with astonishment the fact that the
Parliamentary horse showed great superiority—that they were “very good
and extraordinarily armed.” Apparently the victory was owing to the
excellent drilling of Cromwell’s troops, which enabled them to charge
knee to knee; and when thus charging, the weight of the horses and of
the ironclad men made them irresistible.
In 1644 the war at first dragged on as a series of isolated expeditions
and fights in which neither side was able to score any decided
advantage. Rupert performed two or three brilliant feats; the Scotch
crossed the border to aid the Parliamentarians; and Charles tried to
come to some understanding with the Irish, by which they would, if
possible, furnish him troops, and if not, would at least free the
English troops in Ireland. Some of the latter he did bring over. After
one or two successes a body of them were captured and many subscribed to
the Covenant. The most noted man who thus changed sides was the
after-time General, George Monk.
Cromwell was looming up steadily; not only for the discipline of his
men, but for the vigilant way in which he kept touch with the enemy and
gained information about them, making the best possible use of pickets,
outposts, and scouting parties; all, by the way, being, as was usual in
those times, under the headship of an officer known as the
Scout-master—a far better term than the cumbrous modern “Chief of the
Bureau of Intelligence.” Of course Cromwell’s growing military
reputation added greatly to his weight in Parliament, of which, like
most of the leading generals, he was still a member. His first feat
during this year showed how little the duties of the soldier and the
statesman were as yet differentiated.
Early in January he appeared in the House of Commons, charged Lord
Willoughby with misconduct, and brought about his removal and the naming
of Manchester to the sole command in the seven associated counties.
Manchester was little more than a figure-head. He made Cromwell his
lieutenant-general and yielded in all things to him, until he was
alienated by falling under the control of the Scotch Covenanters, who
already hated Cromwell as a representative of the “sectaries” whom they
persecuted. The House of Commons appointed a Committee of Both Kingdoms
to assume the supreme executive authority for the conduct of the war.
Cromwell was made a member of this Committee, and was also the ruling
member of the Committee of the Eastern Association, which furnished the
zealously Puritan force that was already the mainspring of the
Parliamentary army.
In June the Scotch, under the Earl of Leven, and the English, under Lord
Fairfax and Lord Manchester, were besieging York, which was defended by
Lord Newcastle. Toward the very last of the month Rupert marched rapidly
to its relief. The three Parliamentary generals fell back instead of
falling on him as he advanced. Newcastle wished to leave them alone, but
Rupert insisted upon following and attacking the Parliamentary armies.
He and Newcastle had about 20,000 men. The Parliamentarians probably
numbered some 25,000; but throughout this war it is impossible to give
either the numbers or the losses with accuracy.
On July 2d Rupert overtook the end of the Parliamentary column, which
was saved from disaster only by the fortunate fact that the horse of
Cromwell and Sir Thomas Fairfax formed the rear-guard. The two latter
sent on word of Rupert’s advance, warning the Parliamentary generals
that they could not now avoid a fight; and promptly the Scotch and
English troops were turned to face their Royalist foes on Marston Moor.
A ditch stretched across the moor, and the armies drew up with this
extending for most of its length between them. Each side was marshalled
in the usual order—infantry in the centre, cavalry on the flanks. The
horse of the Parliamentary right wing was commanded by Sir Thomas
Fairfax, who had under him his own English cavalry and three Scottish
regiments. The right wing of the foot was commanded by Lord Fairfax, and
consisted of the Yorkshire troops and two brigades of Scots. The centre,
with its reserve, consisted of Scotch troops; the left, of the infantry
of the Eastern Association. Leven was with the infantry of the centre;
Manchester on his left. The horse of the left wing were under Cromwell,
his Ironsides occupying the front line with three Scotch regiments in
reserve.
In the Royalist army the horse on the left wing were under Goring; the
infantry in the centre were under Newcastle, and Rupert himself led the
horse of the right wing. At last the two great cavalry leaders of the
war—Rupert and Cromwell—were to meet face to face. The war had lasted
nearly two years. The best troops, under the best leaders, had reached
very nearly their limit of perfectibility; they were veterans, soldiers
in every sense.
Hour after hour passed while the armies stood motionless, the leaders on
either side anxiously scanning the enemy, seeking to find a weak point
at which to strike. Evening drew on and no move was made. The Royalist
leaders made up their mind that the battle would not be fought that day.
Suddenly, at seven o’clock, the whole Parliamentary army moved forward,
the Puritan troopers chanting a psalm, according to their wont.
On the right, Fairfax’s troopers, as they advanced, were thrown into
disorder. Goring charged them furiously, drove them back on the reserve
of Scotch cavalry, and overthrew them all. The rout was hopeless, and
the flying horsemen carried away the Yorkshire foot with them. Sir
Thomas kept the ground, with a few of his troopers and a large number of
Lord Balgony’s Scotch Lancers and the Earl of Eglinton’s Scotch
Cuirassiers. The fugitives were followed in hot pursuit by Goring, but
part of his horse were kept in hand by their commander, Sir Charles
Lucas, who, wheeling to the right, charged the flank of the Scotch foot,
who had formed the Parliamentary centre, and who had now crossed the
ditch and were attacking the Royalists in front. The Scotch fought with
stubborn valor, repulsing Lucas again and again, but suffering so
heavily themselves that it became evident that they could not long stand
the combined front and flank attack.
While disaster had thus overtaken the Parliamentary right, on the left
Cromwell had completely the upper hand. His steel-clad troopers crashed
into Rupert’s horsemen at full speed. The fight was equal for some time,
neither stubborn Roundhead nor gallant Cavalier being able to wrest the
mastery from the other. But Rupert, who always depended upon one
smashing blow, and put his main force into his front line, did not, like
Cromwell, understand how best to use a reserve. Cromwell’s reserve—the
Scotch cavalry—came up and charged home, and the Royalist horse were
overthrown with the shock. “God made them as stubble to our swords,”
said Cromwell.
[Illustration:
Cromwell’s Engagement with the Marquis of Newcastle’s Regiment of
“Whitecoats” in the Battle of Marston Moor.
]
Sending his leading troops in pursuit, to prevent the enemy from
rallying, Cromwell instantly gathered the bulk of his horse and fell on
the right wing of the Royalist foot—already hard pressed by the foot of
the Eastern Association. The King’s men fought with dogged courage, most
conspicuous among them being Newcastle’s own Northumbrian Regiment, the
famous Whitecoats, who literally died as they stood in the ranks.
Sweeping down the line the Ironsides smashed one regiment after another,
until, in the fading summer evening, Cromwell had almost circled the
Royalist army, and came to their left wing, where he saw the Royalist
horse charging the right flank of the Scots and harrying the routed
Yorkshire foot. Immediately he reformed his thoroughly trained squadrons
almost on the same ground where Goring’s horse stood at the beginning of
the battle, and fronting the same way. The foot of the Association
formed beside them, and just before nightfall the Puritan cavalry and
infantry made their final charge. Goring’s troopers were returning from
their pursuit; Lucas’s men were recoiling from their last charge, in
which Lucas himself had been captured. They were scattered like chaff by
the shock of the steel-clad Cromwellian troopers, riding boot to boot;
and the remaining Royalist foot shared the same fate. The battle was
over just as night fell, stopping all pursuit. But there was little need
of pursuit. As at Waterloo, the very obstinacy with which the fight had
been waged made the overthrow all the more complete when at last it
came. Night went down on a scene of wild confusion, with thousands of
fugitives from both armies streaming off the field through the darkness;
for the disaster to the right wing of the Parliamentary army had
resulted not only in the rout of all the Yorkshire men and half of the
Scotch, but also in the three Parliamentary commanding generals, Leven,
Manchester, and Lord Fairfax, being swept off in the mass of fugitives.
The fight had been won by Cromwell, not only by the valor, coolness,
keen insight, and power of control over his men, which he had showed in
the battle itself, but by the two years of careful preparation and drill
which had tempered the splendid weapons he used so well.
This was the first great victory of the war; but it produced no decisive
effect; for there was no one general to take advantage of it. York fell;
but little else resulted from the triumph. Fairfax, Manchester, and
Leven all separated to pursue various unimportant objects. They left
Rupert time to recruit his shattered forces. They did not march south to
help Essex, who was opposed to the King in person. Essex blundered
badly, and when he marched into Cornwall was out-manœuvred and
surrounded, and finally had to surrender all his infantry. Before this
the King had already beaten the Parliamentary general, Waller, at
Copredy Bridge, the defeat of the Parliamentarians being turned into
disaster by the conduct of the London trained-bands, who, after two
years of battle, were still mere militia, insubordinate and prone to
desert. It was not with such stuff that victory over the Royalists could
be obtained. Mere militia who will not submit to rigid discipline cannot
be made the equals of regulars by no matter how many years of desultory
fighting. In the War of the American Revolution it was the
Continentals—the regulars of Washington, Wayne, and Greene—who finally
won the victory, while even to the very end of the struggle the ordinary
militia proved utterly unable to face the red-coats. So in the English
Civil War, it was the carefully drilled and trained horse and foot of
the Eastern Association, and not the disorderly London trained-bands,
who overthrew the King’s men. Cromwell had developed his troops just as
Grant and Lee, Sherman and Johnston long afterward developed theirs. It
is only under exceptional conditions, and with wholly exceptional
populations, that it is possible to forego such careful drilling and
training.
One great reason for the failures of the Parliamentary forces was that
their leading generals no longer greatly cared for success. They were
Presbyterians, who believed in the Parliament, but who also believed in
the throne. They hated the Independents quite as much as they hated the
Episcopalians, and felt a growing distrust of Cromwell, who in religious
matters was the leader of the Independents, and who had announced that
if he met the King in battle he would kill him as quickly as he would
kill anyone else. Essex was no more capable of putting a finish to the
war than McClellan was capable of overthrowing the Confederacy. The one,
like the other, had to make room for sterner and more resolute men.
The Committee of both Kingdoms struggled in vain to get their generals
to accomplish something. At Newbury—where one indecisive battle had
already been fought—they got together an army nearly double the strength
of the King’s: with no result save that another indecisive battle was
fought, on October 29, 1644. It was evident that there had to be a
complete change in the management of the war if a victory was to be
achieved. Accordingly Cromwell once more turned from the field to the
House of Commons.
In November he rose in Parliament and denounced Manchester as utterly
inefficient; and then turned his onslaught from an attack on one man
into a general move against all the hitherto leaders of the army. On
December 9th he addressed the House in one of his characteristic
speeches, rugged in form, but instinct with the man’s eager, strong
personality, fiery earnestness and hard common-sense. He pointed out,
not all the truth—for that was not politic—but the evident truth that it
was not wise to have leaders who both served in Parliament and also
commanded in the army. The result was the passage of the Self-denying
Ordinance, by which all members of either of the Houses were required to
resign their commands; so that, at a stroke, the Presbyterian and
Parliamentary leaders were removed from their control of the forces. Two
months afterward it was decreed that the forces of the Commonwealth
should be reorganized on the “New Model.” For the short-time service and
militia levy system there was substituted the New Model; that is, the
plan under which in the Eastern Association the Ironsides had been
raised to such a pitch of efficiency was extended to include the whole
army. Sir Thomas Fairfax was put in command, but so evident was it to
everyone that Cromwell was the real master-mind of the Parliamentary
armies that the Self-denying Ordinance was not enforced as far as he was
concerned, and he was retained, nominally as second, but in reality as
chief, in command. This was not only a victory for the radical military
party, but a victory for the Independents over the Presbyterians. The
Independent strength was in the army, and they now had their own
leaders.
During the period of reorganization of the army the war lagged along in
its usual fashion, with Rupert as much to the fore as ever; and to the
Royalists it merely seemed that their adversaries had gotten at odds,
and that the great noblemen, the experienced leaders, had been driven
from their leadership. Their hopes were high, especially as in Scotland
affairs had taken a sudden and most unexpected turn in their favor.
Immediately after Marston Moor Montrose had begun his wonderful year of
crowded life. Recognizing the extraordinary military qualities of the
Celtic clansmen of the Highlands, he had stirred them to revolt, and had
proved himself a master of war by a succession of startling victories
which finally put almost all Scotland at his feet. One would have to
examine the campaigns of Forrest to find any parallel for what he did.
Because of his feats he has been compared to Cromwell, but his fights
were on so much smaller a scale that the comparison is no more possible
than it would be possible to compare Forrest with Grant or Lee.
It is a noteworthy fact that the two soldier types which emerged from
the English Civil War as victorious over all others were the Cromwellian
Ironside and the Scotch Highlander. The intense religious and patriotic
fervor and hard common-sense of the one was in the other supplanted by a
mere wild love of fighting for fighting’s sake. It may be questioned
which was most formidable in battle, but in a campaign there was no
comparison whatsoever between them; and once his other foes were
vanquished, the Cromwellian soldier had not the slightest difficulty in
holding down the Highlander.
The victories of Montrose, the feats of Rupert, and the failures of the
Parliamentarians since Marston Moor gave Charles every feeling of
confidence, when, on June 14, 1645, he led his army against the New
Model at Naseby. As usual in these battles, it is not possible to state
the exact numbers, but it would appear that, as at Marston Moor, the
Royalists troops were outnumbered, being about 10,000 as against 14,000
in the Parliamentary army. Fairfax commanded for the Parliament, and the
King was present in person. As usual, the infantry on each side was in
the centre. On the right wing of the Parliamentarians Cromwell led his
horse, while Ireton had the horse of the left. Rupert commanded the
cavalry on the right wing of the Royalists, and Sir Marmaduke Langdale
that of the left. Thus Rupert was not, as at Marston Moor, pitted
against Cromwell; and anyone except Cromwell he could beat. Ireton was a
stout soldier, but he and his cavalry were completely overthrown; then,
according to their usual custom, Rupert’s Cavaliers followed the
headlong flight of their opponents in an equally headlong pursuit.
Meanwhile, in the centre, the foot crashed together and fought with
savage obstinacy on equal terms. As at Marston Moor, the fight was
decided solely by Cromwell. He overthrew the Royalist horse as he always
overthrew them, and he kept his men in hand as he always kept them.
Leaving a sufficient force to watch the broken hostile squadrons, he
wheeled the remainder and fell on the Royalist infantry in flank and
rear. For a moment, King Charles, stirred by a noble impulse, led
forward his horse guards to do or die; but the Earl of Carnworth seized
his bridle and stopped him, saying: “Will you go upon your death?” Had
the King been indeed a king, as ready to stake his own life for his
kingdom as he was to stake the lives of others, it would have gone hard
with the man who sought to halt him, for in such a case no man is
stopped by another unless he himself is more than willing; but Charles
faltered, the moment passed, and his army was overthrown in wild ruin.
Rupert came back and reformed his men, but when Cromwell charged home
with horse and foot the Royalist troopers never waited the onslaught.
There was plenty of light for pursuit now, and Cromwell showed yet
another trait of the great commanders by the unsparing energy with which
he followed his foe to complete the wreck. For twelve miles the
Parliamentary horse kept touch with the flying foe. The King’s army was
hopelessly shattered; from half to two-thirds of their number were slain
or captured. The Parliamentary losses were also heavy; a thousand of
their men were killed or wounded. Ireton had been wounded, and Skippon,
the Parliamentary major-general of foot. Fairfax, who had behaved with
his usual gallantry, had had his helmet knocked off in the hand-to-hand
fighting. The victory was Cromwell’s.
[Illustration:
The City Walls of York, with the Cathedral in the Distance.
]
So decisive was the overthrow that it practically ended the war. For a
moment the King had hopes of what Montrose would do; but when Montrose
came out of the Highlands he found that the clansmen would not march
beside him for a long campaign; at Philiphaugh he was overwhelmed by
numbers, and the Royalist party in Scotland disappeared with his
overthrow. Fairfax whipped Goring and captured Bristol. Cromwell took
Winchester, where he dealt severely with certain of his troopers who had
been plundering. He then stormed Basing House, an immense fortified
pile, the property of the Catholic Marquis of Winchester. Again and
again the Parliamentary generals had attempted to take the place, but
had always been beaten. Cromwell would not be denied; after three days’
battering with his guns, and an evening spent in prayer and in reading
the 115th Psalm, he stormed it with a rush, and the splendid castle, its
rooms and galleries filled with all the treasures of art, was left a
blackened and blood-stained ruin. After this it was in vain that the
Royalist troops strove to make head against their foes. If they stood in
the open they were beaten; castle after castle, and fortified
manor-house after manor-house, were battered down or stormed by Cromwell
and his comrades; and in the spring of 1646 the King surrendered himself
to the Scotch army.
III
THE SECOND CIVIL WAR AND THE DEATH OF THE KING
When the stout old Royalist, Sir Jacob Astley, was overcome and
surrendered, he exclaimed, as he gave up his sword: “Now you have done
your work and may go play, unless you fall out among yourselves!” It
very soon became evident that the victors would fall out among
themselves. Any revolutionary movement must be carried through by
parties whose aims are so different, or whose feelings and interests are
so divergent, that there is great difficulty in the victors coming to a
working agreement to conserve the fruits of their victory. Not only the
leaders, but more especially their followers—that is, the mass of the
people—must possess great moderation and good sense for this to be
possible. Otherwise, after much warfare of factions, some strong man, a
Cromwell or a Napoleon, is forced or forces himself to the front and
saves the factions from destroying one another by laying his iron hand
on all.
In the middle of the seventeenth century the English people, accustomed
for many generations to look to the monarch as their real ruler, began
to tumble into chaos when they wrenched themselves free from the
ingrained hereditary habit which had made loyalty to the King and
orderly government convertible terms. They were not yet fit to govern
themselves unaided; such fitness is not a God-given, natural right, but
comes to a race only through the slow growth of centuries, and then only
to those races which possess an immense reserve fund of strength,
common-sense, and morality. The English of the middle of the seventeenth
century were very much farther advanced along the road than were the
French at the end of the eighteenth. They had no such dreadful wrongs to
avenge as had the French people, and they indulged in no such
bloodthirsty antics among themselves. But they had by no means attained
to that power of compromise which they showed forty years later in the
Revolution of 1688, or which was displayed by their blood-kin and
political heirs, the American victors in the struggles of 1776 and 1861.
In the English Revolution that placed William on the throne, in the
American Revolution, and in the American Civil War, the victors passed
through periods of great danger when it seemed possible that the fruits
of their victory might be thrown away. They did not suffer the fate of
the victors of 1648, chiefly because of the growth of the spirit of
tolerance, of the capacity for compromise, which enabled them in part to
ignore their own differences, and in part to abide by a peaceful
settlement of them.
In England, by 1688, the Cromwellian movement had itself educated even
those who most sincerely believed that they abhorred it; and there was a
far less servile spirit toward James II. than toward Charles I. There
was less fanatical intolerance of one another among the elements that
had combined to put William on the throne; and William, otherwise by no
means as great a man as Cromwell, was yet far more willing to accept
working compromises, and more content to let Parliament go its own way,
even when that way was not the wisest. After the American Revolution
Washington’s greatness of character, sound common-sense, and entirely
disinterested patriotism, made him a bulwark both against anarchy and
against despotism coming in the name of a safeguard against anarchy; and
the people were fit for self-government, adding to their fierce jealousy
of tyranny a reluctant and by no means whole-hearted, but genuine,
admission that it could be averted only by coming to an agreement among
themselves. Washington would not let his officers try to make him
Dictator, nor allow the Continental Army to march against the weak
Congress which distrusted it, was ungrateful to it, and refused to
provide for it. Unlike Cromwell, he saw that the safety of the people
lay in working out their own salvation, even though they showed much
wrong-headedness and blindness, not merely to morality, but to their own
interests; and, in the long run, the people justified this trust.
But Cromwell never wanted the people to decide for themselves, unless
they decided in the way that he thought right; and, on the other hand,
the difficulty with the people was even greater; for they had neither
the desire for freedom, the moderation in using freedom, nor the
toleration of differences of opinion, which the American colonists had
developed by the end of the following century. At the close of, and
after, the American Civil War the differences of opinion and belief
among the victors were such as would inevitably have produced further
fighting in Cromwell’s time. The Northern Democrats were anxious to
combine politically with the defeated Southerners, and to reinstate, as
nearly as might be, the old ante-bellum conditions—that is, to prepare
for another Civil War. The Republican Party itself showed signs of a
deep division between the Extremists and Moderates, while there were all
sorts of violent little factions, just as there were Anabaptists and
Fifth Monarchy men in Cromwell’s time. The Garrison or disunion
Abolitionists, for instance, had formed just such a faction, and had
seen their cause triumph, not through, but in spite of, their own
efforts. If the Abolitionists of the Wendell Phillips type, instead of
seeking to compass Lincoln’s defeat for the Presidency in 1864 by
peaceful means, had threatened armed agitation; if, instead of trying to
elect McClellan or Seymour at the polls, the Northern Democrats had
taken the field with the former at their head; if the Republicans had
first crushed them by force of arms, and then had fought among
themselves until the extreme radical element got the upper hand,
installed Grant as perpetual President and dissolved Congress when it
became evident that the Democrats and moderate Republicans combined
would outnumber the radicals—we should have had a very fair analogy to
what happened in the Cromwellian era.
In such a case, moreover, be it remembered that the fault would have
lain less with the perpetual President than with the people whose
defects called him into being. Cromwell did not stand on the lofty plane
of Washington; but, morally, he was infinitely and beyond all comparison
above the class of utterly selfish and unscrupulous usurpers, of whom
Napoleon is the greatest representative. At the close of the first Civil
War there is no reason to suppose that he had any ambition inconsistent
with the highest good of his country, or any thought of making himself
paramount. To all outward seeming, his efforts were conscientiously
directed to securing the fruits of the victory for liberty, while at the
same time securing stability in the government. Unfortunately, in coming
to an agreement among men, no moderation or wisdom on the part of any
one man will suffice. Something of these qualities must be possessed by
all parties to the agreement. The incurable treachery of King Charles
rendered it hopeless to work with him; and the utter inability of
Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Roman Catholics, and indeed of all parties
and all creeds to act on the live-and-let-live principle, rendered a
really free government almost unworkable at the moment. How little
Cromwell yet thought of striving for a kingly position is shown by his
conduct in his social relations, notably by the marriages of his
children, who at this time sought their mates in families of his own
rank. The only one of these marriages with which we need concern
ourselves is that of his daughter, Bridget, to Ireton, a good soldier
and able politician, who was devoted to Cromwell, and was on very close
and intimate terms with him.
The religious element entered into everything Cromwell did, mixing
curiously with his hard common-sense and practical appreciation of
worldly benefits. It appears in all his letters and speeches. Such a
letter as he wrote to the Speaker of the House after the storming of
Bristol, is in thought and manner more akin to the writings of some old
Hebrew prophet than to those of any conqueror before or after Cromwell’s
time. It is saturated, not merely with biblical phraseology, but with
biblical feeling, all the glory being ascribed to God, and the army
claiming as their sole honor that God had vouchsafed to use them in his
service, and that by faith and prayer they had obtained the favor of the
Most High. It is impossible for a fair-minded and earnest man to read
Cromwell’s letters and reports after action, and the prayers he made and
the psalms he chose to read and to give out before action, and to doubt
the intensity of the man’s religious fervor. In our day such utterances
would be hypocritical. Almost the only modern generals in whom they
would have been the sincere expression of inward belief were Stonewall
Jackson and Gordon; and the times had changed so utterly that even they
could not possibly give utterance to them as Cromwell did. But in
Cromwell’s time the most earnest Puritans thought as he did, and
expressed their thoughts as he did. That such expression should lend
itself very readily to hypocrisy was inevitable; indeed, it was perhaps
inevitable that the habitual use of such expression should breed
somewhat of hypocrisy in almost any user. The incessant employment by
Cromwell and his comrades of the word “saints,” to distinguish
themselves and those who thought like them, is particularly
objectionable in its offensive self-consciousness.
In this letter about the taking of Bristol Cromwell touches upon the
religious differences which were the great causes of division among the
victors. He writes:
“Presbyterians, Independents, all have here the same spirit of faith and
prayer; the same presence and answer; they agree here; have no names of
difference; pity it is it should be otherwise anywhere.... And for
brethren in things of the mind we look for no compulsion but that of
light and reason.”
Cromwell strove earnestly to bring about harmony between the
Independents of the New Model army and the Presbyterians, who were
dominant in Parliament. Even in that day there were in private life men
of high character and great intellect who believed in true religious
liberty, men who stood far ahead of Cromwell; but Cromwell was equally
far ahead of all the men who then had any real control in public life;
so far ahead, indeed, that he could not get any considerable body of
public opinion abreast of him.
The Ironsides, the cavalry of Cromwell, stood as the extreme
representatives of the spirit which actuated the army. The great bulk of
them were men of intense political and religious convictions. However,
many even of the cavalry, and a large majority of the rank and file of
the infantry, were of the ordinary military type, men of no particular
convictions, a considerable number, indeed, having been enlisted from
among the captured armies and garrisons of the King himself. Under the
ties of discipline and comradeship, such men were sure to follow with
entire fidelity the masterful spirits among the officers and in their
own ranks; and all these masterful spirits were devoted to Cromwell as
the great leader who had given them victory. They were even more devoted
to their conceptions of religious and political liberty, and were
resolutely bent on striking down the King who embodied, in their minds,
the principles of religious and political oppression. These men had
broken entirely with the past, and were no longer overawed by the name
of hereditary power. “What,” they asked, “were the Lords of England but
William the Conqueror’s Colonels, or the Barons but his Majors, or the
Knights but his Captains?”
They believed they were indeed the Lord’s chosen people, and that upon
them, as conquerors, there devolved the duty of safeguarding the
interests of religion and of the Commonwealth. They wished to strike
down the Bishops as well as the King; and though most of them were
Congregationalists or Baptists, they had already begun to develop plenty
of men whose Christianity was of the most heterodox form, or who boldly
announced that they had a right to profess any creed, Christian or
otherwise, if they so desired. Together with their iron discipline as an
army went wide liberty of thought and discussion on all outside
matters—religious and political alike—when they were not in the ranks.
There were preachers who served with sombre fidelity as privates, but
who were fanatical inciters of Republican enthusiasm in every leisure
hour, haranguing and exhorting their fellow-soldiers about every
political or religious wrong.
[Illustration:
King Charles I.
From the replica at the Dresden Gallery, by Sir Peter Lely.
]
Trouble was brewing between this army and Parliament. The
Episcopalians—the Royalists—had left Parliament when the war broke out.
The Presbyterians were in complete command. London, which held the
purse-strings of the Parliamentary cause, was strongly Presbyterian.
Now, the Presbyterians, as the war went on, had grown more and more
afraid of their allies, and, indeed, of too decisive a victory over the
King. They were just as much bent upon an intolerant uniformity in
Church matters as was Laud, though they wished to substitute a different
form of Church government, which should rest upon a broader and more
popular basis. They wished to make Parliament supreme, but they had no
idea of dispensing with the King, and they were exceedingly distrustful
of a popular movement which would extend liberty beyond and beneath the
classes from which they drew their strength. On the contrary, the army,
which represented the Independent movement, was strongly democratic in
its tendencies, and was filled with sullen wrath against the King.
Cromwell himself was no theorist; in fact, he was altogether too little
of one. He wished to do away with concrete acts of oppression and
injustice; he sought to make life easier for any who suffered tangible
wrong. Though earnestly bent upon doing justice as he saw it, and
desirous to secure the essentials of liberty for the people as a whole,
he failed to see that questions of form—that is, of law—in securing
liberty might be themselves essential instead of, as they seemed to him,
non-essential. He was reluctant to enter into general schemes of
betterment, especially if they seemed in any way visionary. But when his
feelings were greatly roused over specific cases of wrong-doing or
oppression, he sometimes became so wrought up as to advocate reform in
language so sweeping that he seemed to commit himself, not only to
absolute religious toleration, but to complete political equality. Thus
when he broke with Lord Manchester he told him that he hoped “to live to
see never a nobleman in England.” In open Parliament he denounced
“monarchical government.” He advocated entire religious freedom. In
dealing with the army he declared his readiness to maintain the doctrine
that “the foundation and the supremacy is in the people—radically in
them—and to be set down by them in their representations”—that is, by
their representatives in Parliament.
Of course, to make his conduct square with these various utterances,
Cromwell would have had to strive for precisely such a government as
Washington was able to inaugurate a century and a half later; a
government in which there should be complete religious toleration, in
which all differences of rank and title should be abolished, and in
which the basis of representation in Parliament would have to approach
more or less closely to manhood suffrage. Doubtless, there were times
when Cromwell ardently wished for such a Government; but it was wholly
out of the question to realize it in the middle of the seventeenth
century, even in England. Generations had to pass before men could grasp
the true principles of religious toleration and political equality in
all their bearings; and, like every other man who actually works out
great reforms, who actually does signal service in the world, Cromwell
had to face facts as they were, and not as bodies of extremists—no
matter how good—thought they ought to be.
The best and most high-minded of the Puritan party were now growing to
fear lest the Presbyterians should try to perpetuate the old religious
oppression under a new name. Milton—with but one exception the greatest
poet of the English tongue, a man whose political and social ideas were
at least two centuries in advance of his time, but who had the good
sense to accept, no matter with what heart-burning, the best possible
when he could not get the best—Milton expressed the convictions of his
whole party when he said that if “Presbyter was but Priest writ large”
the people were no better off than before.
The army began to show openly its spirit of fierce unrest. A very
considerable portion avowed extreme republican theories. The Levellers,
as they were called, were looked upon in that day, even by advocates of
freedom like Cromwell, with great distrust, although the principles they
advocated—such as manhood suffrage—are now the commonplaces of American
politics. Of course, then they were not commonplaces; they were
revolutionary ideas, for the reception of which the mind of the English
people was not ready, and therefore it was the duty of men who sought
practical reform to refuse to put these schemes into operation.
There were much more extreme and dangerous groups than the mere
Republicans; groups of men in whom the desire for religious, political,
and moral reform had overstepped the broad, but not always clearly
marked, border line which divides sane and healthy fervor from
fanaticism. In such troublous times small sects and parties of
extremists swarm. Already the foundations were laid for the Fifth
Monarchy men, the men who believed that the times were ripe for the
installation of the last great world monarchy, the monarchy of which the
Saviour himself was to be Ruler; the men who shouted for King Jesus, and
were ferociously opposed to everybody who would not advocate the
immediate introduction into all mundane affairs of Heaven’s law, as the
Fifth Monarchy men chose to interpret it. Of course, men of this type
are always to be found in every free government, and aside from their
peculiar notions, they may have excellent traits. In peaceful times and
places like the United States at the present day, they merely join
little extreme parties, and run small, separate tickets on election-day,
thereby giving aid, comfort, and amusement to the totally unregenerate.
In times of great political convulsion, when the appeal to arms has been
made, these harmless bodies may draft into their ranks—as the Fifth
Monarchy men did—fierce and dangerous spirits, ever ready to smite down
with any weapons the possible good, because it is not the impossible
best. When this occurs they need to be narrowly watched.
There are many good people who find it difficult to keep in mind the
obvious fact that, while extremists are sometimes men who are in advance
of their age, more often they are men who are not in advance at all, but
simply to one side or the other of a great movement, or even lagging
behind it, or trying to pilot it in the wrong direction.
The seething unrest of the army found expression in the creation of a
regular political organization to oppose the organized Parliament. The
officers formed a Council, and the rank and file chose delegates, two
for each company or troop, known as “agitators.” In short, the army
became an organized political body whose scarcely acknowledged function
was to control or supersede the Parliament; just as, prior to the
outbreak of the American Revolution, Committees of Correspondence were
formed, in the various colonies, out of which there sprang the
Continental Congress, which superseded the loyalist colonial
legislatures.
Cromwell, like every other great leader who rises in a period of storm
and convulsion, could partly direct the forces around him, and in part
had to be directed by them. He did not sympathize with the extreme
position of the army about the King—the “man of blood,” as the Puritan
zealots called him, whose life they already demanded; nor yet with their
radical political aspirations. But it was the army alone through which
he could act, which gave him his strength; and in return he was the one
man who could in any way check or control it, for its loyalty to, and
admiration of, the great leader at whose hands it had drained the cup of
victory, were the only emotions strong enough to offset its fierce zeal
for its own theories of Church and State.
Cromwell was most earnestly desirous of getting a working compromise
between the King, the Presbyterian Parliament, and the Independent army;
a compromise which would allow the King to reign, exercising such
executive powers as the Parliament felt he should possess, and which
should leave the supreme control to Parliament, but with sufficient
guarantees for political and religious freedom to insure justice to the
Independents and the soldiers. He strove so hard to accomplish his
purpose as to excite angry mutterings against himself among his own
followers in the army; and the first steps of the impending revolution
were seemingly taken by him only because he was irresistibly pushed
onward by the army itself. When, however, he had once made up his mind
that there was no other path possible, he trod it as a leader, with all
his wonted firmness and decision.
The effort for reconciliation was hopeless, chiefly because the King was
an utterly impossible person with whom to deal. He had many bitter foes;
but they could not prevail against him until he convinced some of his
would-be friends that he was absolutely and utterly untrustworthy. He
never for a moment entertained the idea of accepting his defeat, of
abandoning the effort to rule as a despot, and of acting with good faith
toward the people. His purpose was to play off the Presbyterians,
together with the Scotch, against the Independents; as he wrote to a
friend, he hoped to get either the one party or the other “to side with
me for extirpating one another, and I shall be really King again.”
Meanwhile, the Presbyterian Parliament was determined not to tolerate
the “sectaries” of the Congregationalist and Baptist Churches, and was
drawing closer and closer to the Scotch Covenanters, who were even more
intolerant; and finally it grew ready to accept the King himself on
almost any terms, if it could overcome the army.
But the army could not be overcome. It had perfected its political
organization, and had begun to work through Ireton—Cromwell’s other
self. The army was genuinely reluctant to break with the Parliament,
for, after all, it was deeply permeated with the English respect for law
and order; and in the elections to fill the vacancies in the House, very
many Independents—men like Ireton, Fairfax, and Blake, the after-time
admiral—had been returned, so that there was in the Parliament a party
which strongly sympathized with the army.
[Illustration:
General Sir Thomas Fairfax.
From the Portrait by Robert Walker at Althorp.
By permission of Earl Spencer, K.G.
]
The majority in Parliament, however, remained steadfast in its own
views, and by its refusal to give the soldiers their arrears of pay it
added a very tangible, material grievance to those of an ethical
character. In January, 1647, the Scottish army delivered King Charles to
the agents of the Parliament, and quitted England, having received part
of the sum of money due them.
The most complicated and devious negotiations followed between the King,
the Parliament, and the army. Cromwell tried to get the army in touch
with the Parliament, but found the Parliament hopelessly obstinate. He
tried to get it in touch with the King, but found the King hopelessly
false. Yet, neither could the King and Parliament come together. Then
the army threatened mutiny, whereupon the Parliament began to negotiate
for bringing back the Scottish force to overawe the New Model, and
attempted the disbandment of the latter. The army struck back with great
decision and sent Cornet Joyce to seize the person of the King and take
him away from the Presbyterians. Parliament attempted to proceed with
the disbandment of the army, but was forced to abandon the effort when
it became evident that to pursue it meant war. No one knew quite what
the outcome would be, or, indeed, what his own course would be.
Cromwell, like the rest, was drifting; he seriously thought of leaving
England and going to Germany to fight for the Protestant cause, as the
Thirty Years’ War had not yet come quite to an end. To the French
ambassador, who sounded him on the object of his ambition, he answered:
“No one rises so high as he who knows not whither he is going.” He was
certainly at this time making the most honest efforts to come to an
agreement, either with the King, or the Parliament, or with both,
provided only liberty of conscience should be granted, the power of
Parliament guaranteed against the despotism of the King, and the rights
of the people guaranteed as against the despotism of Parliament. But,
when Parliament began to negotiate with the Scots on its account, and
Charles secretly sought to enter into a separate agreement with the
Scots on his account, to bring about an invasion of England, while the
city mob, which was rabidly Presbyterian, forced the hand of the House
of Commons and compelled its members to defy the army, it became evident
that Oliver had to choose his course. Reluctantly he was pushed along
the road of military revolution. The speaker and the Independent members
of Parliament, in fear of the London mob, took refuge with the army,
whither Cromwell himself had already gone. On June 10th the army issued
a manifesto, demanding a settlement of the difficulties upon terms which
it approved. Early in August it marched in formidable and orderly parade
through the city, overawing resistance by its mere appearance, and
Parliament submitted. This was the real beginning of the military
interference which terminated in the military dictatorship of one man.
If Cromwell is to be blamed for what he did to the Long Parliament, this
is the step for which he is to be blamed most; yet it was a step
approved by Milton, Fairfax, Ireton, and the great majority of the best
and most high-minded believers in English liberty who were then alive.
The conduct of the King and the Parliament had been such that it is
difficult to see how any other course was possible.
Cromwell did his best to stop the Revolution at the point it had now
reached. For months he endeavored to make terms with the King on the
conditions outlined above; and he not only put a stop to the extreme
democratic agitation of the Levellers and refused to further the plan
for a republican commonwealth, but, with prompt severity, repressed a
mutiny that broke out under the cry of “England’s Freedom and Soldiers’
Rights.” He disregarded the grumbling of the army until he became
convinced that Charles was incurably false, incurably treacherous and
untrustworthy, and was fomenting a counter-revolution. Then Cromwell
turned from him with loathing, and made up his mind to trust to the
sword, and to strike down anyone, even the King himself, if the need
warranted it.
It was high time for action. In Ireland the Royalists, the Catholics,
and even the Presbyterians, were uniting against the Parliament. The
Scotch, under the lead of Hamilton and the Presbyterian Royalists,
declared for the King; the English Presbyterians were for him to the
extent that they were against the army; and throughout England the
Cavaliers were arming for an uprising. Dark indeed seemed the peril. It
had taken four years for the English Presbyterians, the Scotch, and the
New Model, the army of the Independents, to conquer the Royalists, and
now the New Model was pitted single-handed against the Scotch and the
Royalists, while the Presbyterians were at best lukewarm. Nevertheless,
exactly as in the French Revolution, the victory lay with the Mountain
when it was brought face to face not only with hostile parties in France
but with the rest of armed Europe, so now the fierce energy of the New
Model, with the greatest of Englishmen at its head, was destined to
prove too much for its foes. The grim Ironsides rallied to their cause
with the devotion of fanatics, and the well-ordered discipline of
splendid soldiers. With fierce exhortations and sermons, with internal
searchings of spirit, with outpourings of prayer, they made ready for
battle, and in each dark Puritan heart welled the determination not only
to put down armed resistance, but to take the last great vengeance upon
the King, the cause of the blood-guiltiness.
[Illustration:
John Milton.
From the drawing in crayon by Faithorne at Bayfordbury.
By permission of William Clinton-Baker, Esq., J.P.
]
In April, 1648, the Second Civil War broke out. The gentry of Wales were
a unit for the King, and the commonalty followed them. The Cavaliers
rose in force in the North, and the Scotch prepared to send a formidable
army across the border to their aid; and there were Royalist outbreaks
everywhere, even in the southern and eastern counties. Berwick, Carlyle,
Chester, Pembroke, Colchester, were seized and held for the King. The
Presbyterians of London were in commotion; the Presbyterians in
Parliament itself were half-hearted and divided; but the Independents
and the army had no doubts. Fairfax marched into Kent and Essex, and,
after some hard fighting, trampled under foot the insurrection. One
Parliamentary Colonel whipped the Welsh at St. Fagan’s; another crushed
out a Royalist rising in Lancashire; General Lambert was sent to the
North, where Sir Marmaduke Langdale—Oliver’s old foe at Naseby—had
raised Yorkshire for the King. Oliver himself marched to the siege of
Pembroke, which, owing to lack of cannon, he could not take until July
11th. This ended the Welsh War. The risings in the south and centre had
been thoroughly stamped out; the fleet, which had partially revolted,
was for the most part brought back to loyalty; and there remained only
to deal with the Northern Royalists and the Scotch army under the Duke
of Hamilton, which had by this time crossed the border.
The composition of Hamilton’s army and the history of events in both
Scotland and Ireland at this moment, are alike sufficient to show the
tangle in which politics then were—the kaleidoscopic changes in the
relations of factions and parties, and the seeming minuteness of the
points of difference over which these same parties waged ferocious and
resolute war. Hamilton’s cavalry was commanded by Munro, who had come
over from Ulster to take part in the invasion of England. Munro and the
Scotch Presbyterians of Ulster had, during the years immediately
succeeding the great Irish uprising, been the formidable and merciless
opponents of the Irish of the North. But when the English Civil War was
fairly on, the English Royalists in Ireland—Episcopalians and Catholics
alike—gradually lost their animosity toward their Irish foes, in their
greater animosity toward the Puritans, and finally the Presbyterians
followed suit. This resulted in the release of Munro and a large part of
the Presbyterian force in Ulster, who went to the aid of Hamilton.
Hamilton’s own government was Presbyterian and ostentatiously devoted to
the Covenant. It is very difficult for a modern observer to see any
essential point of difference, either in their attitude toward the
Covenant, toward the King, or toward England; between the party that at
the moment controlled Scotland, and the party which was soon to drive it
out of power. Yet the bitterness between them was intense. The bulk of
the Presbyterian ministers, and the fiercest and most intense
Presbyterian zealots, hated Hamilton and his fellows with mortal hatred,
and were only waiting their chance to rise against them.
Cromwell advanced to the encounter with entire confidence, and sternly
anxious to get at his foes. He was a thorough Englishman at a time when,
to the thorough Englishman, the Scotch were classed with other aliens.
Bitterly though he hated the Royalists, he yet acknowledged them as
fellow-countrymen; but he made no such acknowledgment in the case of the
Scots. He explained that he preferred the Cavalier interest to the
Scottish interest, just as he preferred the Scottish to the Irish; and
he now moved against enemies whom he regarded not merely as enemies to
his cause, but as enemies to his country.
There seemed every reason for the Scots to be confident. Even with their
help the Parliamentarians had been able to put down the Royalists only
at the cost of four years of hard fighting; and now the Scotch and the
Royalists were to act together. They were to be pitted against Cromwell,
the best Parliamentary commander, to be sure; but the Scotch had done at
least as well as the average of the allies at the victory of Marston
Moor, and still had in mind the memory of their easy successes against
their English foes in the two Bishops’ Wars.
The great victories of the Parliamentary army had hitherto been won when
the odds in numbers were in their favor; now, they were about to fight
with the odds over two to one against them. Hamilton’s army was about
21,000 strong, including 3,000 Yorkshire Royalists under Langdale.
Cromwell had only some 9,000 men; but the great bulk of them were
veterans, who under his leadership had become the finest soldiers of the
age.
Hamilton moved slowly south toward Preston, his army scattered in a long
line, Langdale at the head, and Munro bringing up the rear. Cromwell
abandoned his heavy baggage-train that it might not encumber his
movements; Lambert joined him, and he marched with fiery speed to strike
his foes. The Scotch, confident in their numbers, and ignorant of the
movements of their speedy antagonist, advanced in loose order. On August
17th Cromwell struck their army; by which time Hamilton’s straggling
march had resulted in Langdale’s taking position to cover its left
flank. The Scotch were partially aware of their danger and were uneasily
trying to concentrate. Langdale was left to bear the shock of the first
attack single-handed. Cromwell appreciated, as well as any commander
that ever lived, the vital element of time; the need for taking full
advantage of what the moment brought forth. His headlong march had
resulted in some of his soldiers lagging behind the others, but he had
gained what he wanted; he had surprised his foes when they were
unprepared to use their superiority of force, and he dashed at them as
soon as his foremost men came up, determined to destroy them in detail.
Langdale made a stiff fight, and owing to the character of the
country—the fields were small, and the fences strong and high—the
cavalry was not able to do much, so that the decisive fighting was done
by the infantry, which was not usually the case in these wars. The
struggle took place about four miles from Preston, near which town, but
south of the river Ribble, the bulk of the Scotch foot were gathered.
For four hours Langdale’s men clung to their hedges and buildings,
regiment after regiment of the Cromwellians fighting to dislodge them.
Says Cromwell: “Our men fought with incredible valor and resolution ...
often coming to push of Pike, and to close Fire, and always making the
Enemy to recoil ... the Enemy making, though he was still worsted, very
stiff and sturdy resistance. Colonel Dean’s and Colonel Pride’s,
outwinging the enemy, could not come to so much share of the Action ...
the Enemy shogging down toward the Bridge, and keeping almost all in
reserve that so he might bring fresh commands often to fight.”
The Scotch sent some men and ammunition to Langdale, but made no serious
effort to help him, and continued their march. At last he was
overpowered and driven into the town. As soon as his men were dislodged
from the hedges and enclosures, the Cromwellian horse fell furiously
upon them, utterly routing and scattering them; at the same time, the
Cromwellian foot, pushing forward, drove back the Scotch foot, which had
been posted near the bridge to secure a passage for Langdale across the
Ribble, and cut off the fugitives from the rest of the army.
The Ironsides thundered into the streets of Preston at the heels of
Langdale and the flying remnants of his forces. Hamilton led one or two
charges, and for a moment checked the pursuit, but it was now too late
to retrieve matters, and soon afterward the whole of his army was again
in panic rout. The beaten cavalry fled north, goaded by the Cromwellian
sword, until they reached the rear guard under Munro. Most of the
Yorkshire and Scotch infantry north of the Ribble were killed, captured,
or scattered; a few only escaped to the Scotch army south of the Ribble
by swimming across it.
The day thus ended with the defeat of part of the Scotch forces, who
lost in killed or captured, 5,000 men, besides those who were dispersed.
Moreover, the Scotch army was cut in two; Munro being to the north,
separated from all the rest, who, under Hamilton, were completely cut
off from their base in Scotland. Sending a few troops to harry the
flying horsemen, Cromwell turned to deal with the Scotch main army,
which was even yet more numerous than his own. But the Scotch were cowed
by the success of Cromwell’s utterly unexpected attack. The soldiers had
lost confidence in their leaders, and they were cut off from their own
country, and, therefore, from all hope of supplies. A council of war was
held that night, and the retreat was continued. The fagged-out
Cromwellians followed and harassed them. The horse, under Colonel
Thornhaugh, rode into their rear ranks and bothered and detained them,
though at cost of the life of the Colonel, who was shot in one of the
fierce struggles. Again and again the Scotch stood, but each time to be
beaten; the last stand being made at Winwick church, under a “little
spark in a blue bonnet” who himself was slain. Here they lined the
hedges with musketeers, and filled the lane with their pikemen, and
hours went by before the Puritans, under Pride, finally pushed their
charge home, and gained possession of the place which had been held so
stubbornly. Both sides were utterly worn out, and it was impossible to
urge the pursuit as rapidly and strongly as Cromwell hoped. Finally,
leaving Lambert to deal with the shattered fragments of Hamilton’s
command, Cromwell turned north and followed Munro.
[Illustration:
The Death Warrant of King Charles I.
Signed by Oliver Cromwell and other members of the council. From the
original in the library of the House of Lords.
]
The victory was overwhelming. Two thousand Scotch and Royalists had been
slain, and 10,000 were captured; more than Cromwell’s whole force.
Almost all the generals were taken; Hamilton was afterward beheaded. The
fate of the captured rank and file was hard. Throughout the First Civil
War, the common soldiers, when taken, had either been exchanged or
released, or often enough had enlisted on the side of the victors; but
the Puritan generals and those behind them were in no mood to take a
merciful view of men whom they regarded as wanton offenders, whether
they were Scotchmen or Englishmen. The captives of Preston battle were
sold into slavery; some being sent to the Virginia planters, and others
to the Venetian Government, for galley slaves. When the Puritans could
act thus toward their fellow-Englishmen, and toward the Scotch
Presbyterians who were so nearly of their own creed, there is small
cause for wonder in the treatment afterward accorded the Irish. It was a
merciless age, the age of Tilly and Wallenstein, and we cannot judge its
great men by the canons of to-day.
This was the first time that Cromwell had actually been in supreme
command in a great victory, and too much praise cannot be accorded him
for his hardihood, energy, and skill. The speed of his motions and his
prompt decision had rendered it possible for him to strike home at his
adversary in the flank, and to eat him up piecemeal. During three days
of incessant marching and fighting he halted only to do battle or to
take the rest absolutely needed; and at the end of that time the enemy’s
foot had been killed, captured, or dispersed to the last man, and his
horse was a beaten rabble, flying toward the border.
The battle of Preston put an end to the Second Civil War. Colchester
capitulated to Fairfax immediately afterward. The part of the fleet that
had revolted had come back under Prince Charles and Rupert, to coöperate
with the risen Royalists, but could do nothing; most of the ships in
time returned to their allegiance to the Parliament. The indomitable
Rupert, with seven ships, kept the sea and made a long cruise, which
finally degenerated into mere buccaneering. Blake, whom the Parliament
made Admiral, pursued him, captured most of his ships, and finally
forced him to take refuge in France. In Scotland, Argyle and the
Presbyterian ministers—the Kirk party—on the news of Hamilton’s
overthrow, promptly rose in the so-called Whigamore raid. Munro fell
back, plundering right and left until he crossed the border.
Cromwell’s exertions had been so severe that he could not follow the
flying Royalists with his usual rapidity. The army had been long without
pay; they had not a penny with which to get their horses shod, and so
many horses had been slain and were lamed or done out that a large
number of the troopers were on foot, and the others could hardly spur
their jaded mounts into a trot. Munro was not only a ruthless plunderer,
but a hard fighter, and on his arrival in Scotland Argyle felt doubtful
as to his capacity to cope with him, and sent to Cromwell for
assistance. Cromwell promptly invaded Scotland, being careful to pose as
the ally of Argyle and the Kirk, and therefore the true friend of the
Scottish nation. According to his custom, he rigorously suppressed
plundering. All resistance withered away before him. He was received at
Edinburgh as a powerful and honored ally, and before he recrossed the
border the Scotch were again avowed supporters, for the time being at
least, of the Parliament.
The enemy in arms had been defeated. It remained to deal with the
Parliament and the Presbyterian party. Some had been active for the
King; most had been lukewarm; the victory had been a victory for the
army, and therefore for the Independents. Neither Cromwell nor the army
was of a temper to refrain from finishing matters. Before the struggle
was decided Cromwell had written Fairfax: “I pray God teach this nation
and those that are over us ... what the mind of God may be in all this,
and what our duty is. Surely it is not that the poor, godly people of
this Kingdom should still be made the object of wrath and anger, nor
that our God would have our necks under a yoke of bondage. For these
things that have lately come to pass have been the wonderful works of
God, breaking the rod of the oppressor.”
He was not in the least a doctrinaire Republican or Parliamentarian; he
believed as little in the divine right of majorities as in the divine
right of kings. Neither would he have admitted such a right as existing
in an army, or, as yet, in himself. But it was impossible to stand
still. He had to act with some party, though with none was he in entire
accord; for one was hostile, another hopelessly undecided, the third
prone to extreme measures and representing only a minority in the
nation. He could only act with the last, and yet this meant an overturn
of the recognized governmental authorities. Whether he would or not, he
had to proceed along the path of revolution.
The Presbyterians—the men who controlled Parliament—were halting between
two burdens. They would not push far enough against the King to make the
Revolution a success, or to put a permanent end to despotism; and they
would not eat their past words and deeds by turning wholly to his
support. The King himself was obstinately bent on keeping the supreme
power in his hands and setting the people under his feet, whatever he
might promise; and this was the attitude of the large Royalist and
Episcopalian party, which had showed, in supporting him, either that it
cared little for liberty and eagerly championed a servility which it
misnamed loyalty, or else that it feared disorder more than tyranny.
On the other hand, the determined foes of Absolutism, the armed
Independents, were even more cut off from the bulk of the nation by
their good qualities than by their shortcomings. Their advocacy of
toleration for every creed, their desire for legal reform, and their
strong democratic tendencies, all put them so far in advance of the rest
of the nation as to be completely out of touch with it; and they
offended it even more than their harshness and narrowness, and the
behavior of the bands of fantastic enthusiasts in their ranks. Moreover,
the sincerity of their convictions, at a time when the practical
application of belief in the rule of the majority was entirely new and
strange, drove them to rely on their strong right arms, instead of upon
the votes of a people which was mainly hostile or apathetic. When
Cromwell acted with them, heedless of what the majority might think, he
was making ready for a time when he might choose in turn to disregard
the majority within their own ranks.
Though neither Cromwell nor the Independents believed in the abstract in
employing the army as an instrument of government, they were face to
face with a condition of affairs in which, partly because of their own
shortcomings, but very much more because of the shortcomings of their
antagonists, they were driven to adopt this as the only possible course.
Doubtless Cromwell was still acting as he sincerely believed the
interests of the nation demanded. In the complex tissue of motives which
go to determine a man’s deeds it is rarely possible to say that there is
not some, and mayhap even a strong, element of self-interest and of
desire for personal aggrandizement; yet Cromwell’s conduct toward the
King goes to show that he would gladly have saved him had not the
behavior of this typical Stuart been such as to render it impossible for
an upright and far-seeing friend of English liberty longer to remain his
ally.
Parliament had no sooner been relieved by the action of the army from
all danger from the King’s adherents, than in September it proceeded to
open negotiations with the King. These negotiations in effect aimed at
the destruction of the army by uniting Parliament and King against it;
among other things, they expressly excluded any toleration for the sects
which made up the strength of the army. It would have been inexcusable
folly for the men who had won the victory to submit to such action. The
army, headed by Ireton, demanded a purge of the House which would rid it
of the members so treacherous to the interests of the nation. Ireton and
his followers then laid before Fairfax a remonstrance, which included a
demand that the King should be brought to justice for the “treason,”
“blood,” and “mischief” of which he had been guilty. Fairfax opposed
this and carried the army with him in favor of a substitute which merely
requested the King to assent to a constitutional plan which would have
limited his powers precisely as those of Queen Victoria are now limited,
and would have made the Constitution of England what it now is. A more
moderate proposal was never made by victorious revolutionists, and it
shows conclusively that the fault was not with Cromwell and his
followers when they were forced to overturn the King and the Parliament.
But Charles promptly rejected the proposals and thereby signed his own
death-warrant. He had just sought, in Cromwell’s words, “to vassalize us
to a foreign nation,” and now, after having twice plunged England into
Civil War, and shown himself eager to submit her to the power of the
alien, he obstinately refused a plan which would not merely have left
him unpunished, but would have given him all the power of a
constitutional monarch; a power greater than that which the House of
Orange at that time enjoyed in Holland.
The House of Commons stood firm in its position, and against the
position of the army, which thereupon marched into London; and on
December 6th, Colonel Pride carried through the famous “Pride’s Purge.”
He stood with a military guard at the door of the House, and turned back
or arrested the members who had voted for a continuation of the
negotiations with the the King. This was, of course, a purely
revolutionary measure, with no warrant, save as Ireton and Harrison—the
Republican generals—had said, “the height of necessity to save the
Kingdom from a new War.” It was but the second step; the all-important
one had been taken long before, when the army first marched into London
to see that the Parliament did its liking.
[Illustration:
Pride’s Purge.
Colonel Pride, who commanded the guard stationed in the lobby of the
House, had in his hand a list on which were the names of certain
members, while Lord Grey, of Groby, himself a member of the House,
stood at his side, ready to point out to him the members in
question. As each one of these approached the door of the House he
was turned back.
]
Cromwell still strove to save the King’s life. Through the exertions of
Ireton a small majority of the army council resolved for mercy, and made
a last effort to conclude a treaty with the King; but the King would not
listen to them, and he thus put it out of their power any longer to
delay his fate. On January 1, 1649, the House of Commons resolved to try
him for treason to the kingdom. The Lords refused to pass the ordinance,
whereupon the House of Commons decided to disregard them and to act on
its own authority. On January 6th it erected a High Court of Justice for
the trial of the King, on the ground that he had wickedly endeavored to
subvert the people’s rights, had levied war against them, and when he
had been spared had again raised new commotions in order to enslave and
destroy the nation. Cromwell had finally thrown his doubts to the winds,
and he supported the resolution with all his vigor. When the legality of
the action was questioned, he retorted: “I tell you we will cut off his
head with the crown upon it!” The grim Puritan leaders were at last to
have their will on “the man of blood.” On the 27th, sentence of death
was passed upon the King, and on January 30, 1649, he was beheaded on
the scaffold in front of Whitehall, meeting his death with firm dignity.
Justice was certainly done, and until the death-penalty is abolished for
all malefactors, we need waste scant sympathy on the man who so hated
the upholders of freedom that his vengeance against Eliot could be
satisfied only with Eliot’s death; who so utterly lacked loyalty that he
signed the death-warrant of Strafford when Strafford had merely done his
bidding; who had made the blood of Englishmen flow like water, to
establish his right to rule as he saw best over their lives and
property; and who, with incurable duplicity, incurable double-dealing,
had sought to turn the generosity of his victorious foes to their own
hurt.
Any man who has ever had anything to do with the infliction of the
death-penalty, or indeed with any form of punishment, knows that there
are sentimental beings so constituted that their sympathies are always
most keenly aroused on behalf of the offender who pays the penalty for a
deed of peculiar atrocity. The explanation probably is that the more
conspicuous the crime, the more their attention is arrested, and the
more acute their manifestations of sympathy become. At the time when the
great bulk even of civilized mankind believed in the right of a king,
not merely to rule, but to oppress, the action of the Puritans struck
horror throughout Europe. Even Republican Holland was stirred to
condemnation, and as the King was the symbol of the State, and as custom
dies hard, generations passed during which the great majority of good
and loyal, but not particularly far-sighted or deep-thinking men, spoke
with intense sympathy of Charles, and with the most sincere horror of
the regicides, especially Cromwell. This feeling was most natural then.
It may be admitted to be natural in certain Englishmen, even at the
present day. But what shall we say of Americans who now take the same
view; who erect stained-glass windows in a Philadelphia church to the
memory of the “Royal Martyr,” or in New York or Boston hold absurd
festivals in his praise?
The best men in England approved the execution of the King, not only as
a work of necessity, but as right on moral grounds. Two weeks after the
execution, Milton—perhaps the loftiest soul in the whole Puritan party,
full though it was of lofty souls—wrote his pamphlet justifying the
right of the nation to depose, or, if need be, execute, tyrants and
wicked kings. His arguments never have been, and never can be,
successfully controverted on grounds of justice and morality. There is
room for greater question on the ground of expediency. Some of the
ablest historians and politicians have argued that the execution was a
mistake, as making the King a martyr, and as transferring to his son,
Charles II., all the loyalty that had been his, while the hatred and
distrust could not be transferred. Yet, it certainly seems that even on
the score of expediency, Cromwell and the regicides were right and that
the event justified their judgment. While Charles was alive there could
have been no peace in any event; and during Cromwell’s lifetime Charles
II. could gain no foothold in England—for there was never a member of
the House of Stuart that could stand in battle or in council before the
stern Lord of the English Commonwealth. If in later years great Oliver
could only have managed to agree with the bulk of liberty-loving
Englishmen on some system of government by law, it is not probable that
the memory of the King’s death would have prevented the perpetuation of
such a government.
Carlyle’s mind is often warped; his vision often dim; but there are
times when he speaks like an inspired seer, and never more so than when
dealing with the execution of the Stuart King: “This action of the
English Regicides did in effect strike a damp like death through the
heart of Flunkyism universally in this world. Whereof Flunkyism, Cant,
Cloth-Worship, or whatever ugly name it have, has gone about incurably
sick ever since; and is now at length, in these generations, very
rapidly dying. The like of which action will not be needed for a
thousand years again.... Thus ends the Second Civil War. In Regicide; in
a Commonwealth, and Keepers of the Liberties of England. In punishment
of delinquents; in abolition of Cobwebs—if it be possible in a
Government of Heroism and Veracity; at lowest of Anti-Flunkyism,
Anti-Cant, and the _endeavor_ after Heroism and Veracity.”
[Illustration:
Interior of Westminster Hall.
Where Parliament sat and where King Charles I. was tried and
sentenced.
]
IV
THE IRISH AND SCOTCH WARS
The successful Revolutionary party now enacted that the people of
England and of all the dominions and territories thereunto belonging
were constituted and established as a Commonwealth, or Free State, to be
governed by the representatives of the people in Parliament and by
whomsoever the Parliament should appoint as officers and ministers; the
King and the House of Lords being both abolished. No provision was at
first made by which any man should lawfully be recognized as chief in
the new Commonwealth; but, as a matter of fact, there was one man, and
one man only, who had to be acknowledged, however unwillingly, as master
and leader. There were many upright and able civil servants; many
high-minded and fervent reformers; many grim and good captains: but
waist-high above them all rose the mighty and strenuous figure of Oliver
Cromwell. It may well be that, hitherto, personal ambition had played an
entirely subordinate part in all his actions. Now, in the turmoil of the
Revolution, in the whirlpool of currents which none but the strongest
man could breast, he became ever more and more conscious of his own
great powers—powers which he knew were shared by no other man. With the
sense of power came the overmastering desire to seize and wield it.
The first thing he had to do was to stop the Revolution where it was. In
every such Revolution some of the original adherents of the movement
drop off at each stage, feeling that it has gone too far; and at every
halt the extremists insist on further progress. As stage succeeds stage,
these extremists become a constantly diminishing body, and the
irritation and alarm of the growing remainder increase. If the movement
is not checked at the right moment by the good sense and moderation of
the people themselves, or if some master-spirit does not appear, the
extremists carry it ever farther forward until it provokes the most
violent reaction; and when the master-spirit does stop it, he has to
guard against both the men who think it has gone too far, and the men
who think it has not gone far enough.
The extreme Levellers, the extreme Republicans, and, above all, the
fierce and moody fanatics who sought after an impossible, and for the
matter of that a highly undesirable, realization of their ideal of God’s
kingdom on this earth—all these, together with the mere men of unsettled
minds and the believers in what we now call communism, socialism, and
nihilism, were darkly threatening the new government.
Men arose who called themselves prophets of new social and religious
dispensations; and every wild theory found its fanatic advocates, ready
at any moment to turn from advocacy to action. In the name of political
and social liberty, some demanded that all men should be made free and
equal by abolishing money and houses, living in tents, and dividing all
food and clothing alike. In the name of religious reform others took to
riding naked in the market-place, “for a sign”; to shouting for the
advent of King Jesus; or to breaking up church services by noisy
controversies with the preachers. The extreme Anabaptist and Quaker
agitators were overshadowed by fantastic figures whose followers hailed
them as incarnations of the Most High.
Black trouble gloomed without. The Commonwealth had not a friend in
Europe. In the British Isles Scotland declared for Charles II. as the
King, not only of Scotland, but of Great Britain. In Ireland but a
couple of towns were held for the Parliament.
It was to the reconquest of Ireland that the Commonwealth first
addressed itself, and naturally Cromwell was chosen for the work. He was
given the rank of Lieutenant-General; but before he started he had to
deal with dangerous mutinies and uprisings in the army. The religious
sectaries and political levellers, who had given to the army the fiery
zeal that made it irresistible by Parliament or King, English Royalists
or Scotch Covenanter, had also been infected with a spirit peculiarly
liable to catch flame from such agitations as were going on roundabout.
Here and there, in regiment after regiment, were sudden upliftings of
the banner of revolt in the name of every kind of human freedom, and
often of some fierce religious doctrine quite incompatible with human
freedom. Cromwell acted with his usual terrible energy, scattered the
mutineers, shot the ringleaders, and reduced army and kingdom alike to
obedience and order. Then he made ready for the invasion of Ireland.
The predominant motives for the various mutinies in the army, offer
sufficient proof of its utter unlikeness to any other army. At the
outset of the civil wars the Ironsides were simply volunteers of the
very highest type; not wholly unlike, at least in moral qualities, some
of those belated Cromwellians—the Boers of to-day. They did not take up
soldiering as a profession, but primarily to achieve certain definite
moral objects. Of course, as the force gradually grew into a permanent
body, it changed in some respects; but the old spirit remained strong.
The soldiers became in a sense regulars; but they bore no resemblance to
regulars of the ordinary type—to regulars such as served under Turenne
or Marlborough, Frederick the Great or Wellington. If in Grant’s army a
very large number of the men, including almost all the forceful, natural
leaders, had been of the stamp of Ossawatomie Brown, we should have had
an army much like Cromwell’s. Such an army might usually be a power for
good and sometimes a power for evil; but under all circumstances, when
controlled by a master hand, it was certain to show itself one of the
most formidable weapons ever forged in the workshop of human passion and
purpose.
Matters in Ireland were in a perfect welter of confusion. Eight years
had elapsed since the original rising of the native Irish. A murderous
and butcherly warfare had been carried on throughout these years, but
not along the lines of original division. On the contrary, when Cromwell
landed, there had been a complete shifting of the parties to the
contest, every faction having in turn fought every other faction, and,
more extraordinary still, having at some time or other joined its
religious foes in attacking a rival faction of its own creed. The
original rising was in Ulster, and was aimed at the English and Scotch
settlers who had been planted under James in the lands from which the
Irish had been evicted. These “plantations” under James, not to speak of
the scourge of Wentworth under Charles, were on a par with the whole
conduct of the English toward Ireland for generations, and gave as ample
a justification for the uprising as in the Netherlands the Spaniards had
given the Dutch. From the stand-point of the Irish, the war was simply
the most righteous of wars—for hearthstone, for Church, and for country.
This first uprising was one of Celtic Catholics. In the Pale and
elsewhere, here and there throughout Ireland, were large numbers of
Old-English Catholics; these, unlike the Celts, did not wish separation
from England, but did wish complete religious liberty for themselves,
and, if possible, Catholic supremacy. The Episcopalian and Royalist
English throughout Ireland, under the lead of the Earl of Ormond,
favored the King. The Puritan oligarchy of Dublin favored the
Parliament, and were in touch with the Scotch Presbyterians of Ulster.
The rising began to spread from Ulster southward. The Catholics of the
Pale were at first loyal to the King, but the Protestant leaders, in
striking back at the insurgents, harried friend and foe alike, until the
Pale joined with Ulster. After this, all Ireland revolted. Only a few
fortified and garrisoned towns were held for the English.
Violent alterations of policy and of fortune followed. Under the lead of
the Roman Catholic clergy the revolt was consolidated. Unswerving
loyalty to the King was proclaimed, war was denounced against the
Puritans, and the re-establishment of Roman Catholicism as the State
religion of Ireland was demanded. On the Puritan side the lords justices
in Dublin nominally acknowledged the King’s authority, but really stood
for the Parliament and hampered Ormond, who, while a stanch Protestant,
was an ardent Royalist. Ormond gained one or two victories over the
insurgents in spite of the way in which the lords justices interfered
with him. Charles created him marquis, and he took command of the
English interest, drove out the lords justices, and concluded a truce
for one year with the Catholic party, in September, 1643. They gave
Charles a free contribution of £30,000, and sent over some Irish troops
to aid Montrose and the other Royalist leaders in Scotland, besides
setting Ormond free to transfer part of his forces to the King in
England. But Munro and the Ulster Scotch refused to recognize the
armistice, took the Covenant, and declared against the King; while, in
the south, certain Protestant sea-coast towns, under the lead of Lord
Inchiquin, followed suit and acknowledged the Parliament. Months of
tortuous negotiations followed, King Charles showing the same readiness
in promise, and utter indifference in performance, while dealing with
the Irish as while dealing with the English. The treachery of the King
was made manifest by the discovery of his secret treaty with the Irish,
when Sligo was captured.
Meanwhile, the Papal nuncio, an Italian, had arrived, and exhorted the
Irish to refuse any peace with the King except on the basis of the
complete reinstatement of the Catholic Church. He roused what would now
be called the ultramontanes against the moderate Catholic party which
was acting with Ormond. Their wrangles caused a fatal delay, for by the
time the moderates triumphed the King had been made a prisoner. Their
treaty of peace with the King was not signed till September, 1645, and
it amounted to nothing, for the adherents of the Parliament rejected it
on the one side, and the extreme Catholic party, the utterly intolerant
and fanatical Catholics, under the nuncio, refused to be bound by it on
the other. In the north the Irish were led by Owen O’Neil, a member of
the great Ulster house of that name, and under him they had beaten Munro
and the Scotch. He now hurried to the support of the nuncio. The
moderate Catholic leaders and Ormond fled to Dublin at his approach, and
he was joined, after some hesitation, by Preston, the leader of the
Irish forces in the south. In 1647, Ormond, at his wits’ end, handed
over Dublin to the agents of the Parliament, and joined the Royalist
refugees in France.
This for a moment eliminated the Royalists, and left the party of the
nuncio, the party of the bigots and intolerant extremists, supreme among
the Irish. But when Jones, the Puritan leader, marched out of Dublin and
defeated Preston, while in the south Lord Inchiquin won some butchering
victories, the party of the moderates again raised its head. Then there
was a new and bewildering turn of the kaleidoscope. Inchiquin suddenly
became offended with the Parliament, made overtures to Preston, and then
to Ormond. A coalition was formed between the Royalist Protestants in
Munster and the moderate Catholics. The nuncio threatened the moderates
with excommunication and interdict, and fled to O’Neil’s camp. Preston
and Inchiquin joined forces and marched against O’Neil, so that civil
war broke out among the insurgents themselves.
Colonel Jones, the victor over Preston, felt doubtful of his own troops,
who included a number of Royalists, and, extraordinary to relate, he
actually made terms with the nuncio and O’Neil as against the Protestant
Royalists and moderate Catholics—the Ultramontanes so hating the
moderate Catholics that they preferred to come to terms with the
Puritans. Ormond now came over from France to head the moderates, the
party of the Royalist Catholics and Protestants. Peace was declared
between Ormond and the Supreme Council of Dublin in the King’s name.
But hardly had peace been declared when news arrived of the King’s
execution. Ormond proclaimed Charles II., at Cork; most of the Irish
outside of Ulster united under him, and Munro and the Scotch
Presbyterians joined him. The nuncio fled the country in despair. The
rupture between the Presbyterians and Independents was complete, and the
Scotch became the open enemies of the English. They began the siege of
Derry, which Coote held for the Parliament. At the same time they
confronted O’Neil and the Ulster Irish, who were acting in alliance with
Monk, who held Dundalk for the Parliament by order of Colonel Jones.
Inchiquin captured Drogheda for the Confederates. Monk’s garrison
mutinied, and he had to surrender Dundalk. Ormond began the siege of
Dublin, but was routed by Jones, one of the sturdiest of the many sturdy
Puritan fighters. Meanwhile, the Puritan Parliament had disavowed the
alliance with O’Neil and the Ulster Irish, and the latter were thus
forced into the arms of Ormond, who found himself at the head of all the
Irish and English Catholics, of the Scotch Presbyterians in Ulster, and
of the Royalist Protestants elsewhere in Ireland. It was at this time
that Cromwell landed.
The exact condition of affairs in Ireland should be carefully borne in
mind, because it is often alleged, in excuse of Cromwell’s merciless
massacres, that he was acting with the same justification that the
English had when they put down the Indian Mutiny with righteous and
proper severity. Without a doubt, Cromwell and most Englishmen felt this
way; and in the case of the average Englishman, who could not be
expected to understand the faction-fighting, the feeling was
justifiable. But it was Cromwell’s business to know what the parties had
been doing. As a matter of fact, the wrong of the original Ulster
massacre, which itself avenged prior wrongs by the invaders, had been
overlaid by countless other massacres committed by English and Irish
alike, during the intervening years; and the very men against whom this
original wrong had been committed were now fighting side by side with
the wrong-doers, against Cromwell and the Puritans. Moreover, for some
time the Parliamentarians had been in close alliance with these same
wrong-doers against the moderate Irish, who were not implicated in the
massacres in question, and against the Royalist Protestants, some of
whom had suffered from the massacres and others of whom had helped
avenge them. The troops against whom Cromwell was to fight were in part
Protestant and English, these being mixed in with the Catholics and
Irish; and at the moment the chief Royalist leaders in Ireland included
quite as many English, Scotch, and Irish Protestants, as they did Irish
Catholics.
Cromwell recked but little of nice distinctions between the different
stripes of Royalists and Catholics when, in August, 1649, he landed in
Dublin, the only place in Ireland, save Derry, which still held out for
the Parliament. He brought with him the pick of his troops and soon had
at Dublin some 10,000 foot and 5,000 horse. They were excellently
disciplined; they included the Ironsides, the veterans of the New
Model—grim Puritans for the most part, inflamed with the most bitter
hatred against Catholics, Irish, and Royalists. They had been welded
into one formidable mass by Cromwell’s rigid discipline, and yet were
all aflame with religious and political enthusiasm. There could not be
gathered in all Ireland an army capable of meeting in the open field
that iron soldiery, under such a leader as Cromwell; and this the Irish
chiefs well knew.
Cromwell, therefore, had to deal with a numerous and individually brave
but badly disciplined enemy, formidable in guerilla warfare, because
theirs was a wild country of mountain and bog, and resolute in defence
of their walled towns, but not otherwise to be feared by such troops as
the Ironsides. His first care was to put an end to the plundering and
licentiousness which had hitherto marked the English no less than the
Irish armies. He completely stopped outrages upon the peasantry and
non-combatants generally, besides protecting all who lived quietly in
their homes.
In September he marched against Drogheda, into which Ormond had thrown
3,000 picked men, largely English, under Sir Arthur Aston. Cromwell had
with him some 8,000 men when he sat down to attack it. He brought up a
siege-train, beating back the sallies of the garrison with ease, and
meanwhile maintaining his strict discipline, and putting down pillage by
the summary process of hanging the plunderers.
When his batteries were ready he summoned the Governor to surrender, but
the summons was refused. For two days the guns kept up their fire, and
then in the afternoon the assault was delivered. The defenders met the
stormers in the breaches; the fight was hot and stiff; the English were
once repulsed, but came forward again and carried the breach only to be
once more driven out by a fierce rally.
When Cromwell saw his men driven down the breach, he placed himself at
the head of the reserve, and in person led it with the rallied men of
the broken regiments, back to the breach. This time the stormers would
not be denied. They carried the breach, the church—which was strongly
held by the Irish—and finally the palisaded intrenchments of Mill Mount,
in which Sir Arthur Aston had taken refuge. The horse followed close
behind the foot, and speedily cleared the streets of the hostile cavalry
and infantry. The victorious Puritans pressed on and a terrible
slaughter followed. Cromwell forbade them to spare any that were in arms
in the town, and they put to the sword over 2,000 men. Nearly 1,000 were
killed in the great Church of St. Peter’s. “All the priests found,” says
Cromwell, “were knocked on the head promiscuously but two, both of whom
were killed next day.” Sir Arthur Aston, Verney, the son of the King’s
standard-bearer at Edgehill, and all the officers were put to the sword.
Two towers held out until next day, when they submitted; their officers
were “knocked on the head,” says Cromwell. One tower fought hard; there
every tenth man of the soldiers was killed; the rest, and all the
soldiers in the other tower, were shipped to the white slavery of the
Barbadoes. Of the assailants, about a hundred were slain and several
hundred wounded.
[Illustration:
Magdalen Tower, Drogheda.
On the right may be seen the ruins of St. Sunday’s Gate.
]
Said Cromwell: “We put to the sword the whole number of the
defendants.... This hath been a marvellous great mercy. I wish that all
honest hearts may give glory of this to God alone, to whom indeed the
praise of this mercy belongs.... I am persuaded that this is a righteous
judgment of God upon these barbarous wretches who have imbrued their
hands in so much innocent blood, and that it will tend to prevent the
effusion of blood for the future, which are the satisfactory grounds to
such actions, which otherwise cannot but work remorse and regret. The
officers and soldiers of this garrison were the flower of their army.”
Cromwell’s defenders say simply that he acted from a fervent belief in
the righteousness of what he was doing, and, further, that the terrible
vengeance he took here and at Wexford upon all who withstood him in arms
cowed the Irish and prevented further resistance. Neither defence is
tenable. If on the ground of their sincerity the deeds of Cromwell and
his soldiers at Drogheda and Wexford can be defended, then we cannot
refuse the same defence to Philip and Alva and their soldiers in the
Netherlands. Of course, we must always remember that under Cromwell
there was no burning at the stake, no dreadful torture in cold blood;
and, therefore, at his worst, he rises in degree above Philip and Alva.
But in kind, his deeds in Ireland were the same as theirs in the
Netherlands; and though the Puritan soldiers were guiltless of the
hideous licentiousness shown by the Spaniards, or by the armies of Tilly
and Wallenstein, yet the merciless butchery of the entire garrisons and
of all the priests—accompanied by the slaughter of other non-combatants,
in at least some cases—leave Drogheda and Wexford as black and terrible
stains on Cromwell’s character. Nor is there any justification for them
on the ground that they put a stop to resistance. The war lingered on
for two or three years in spite of them; and in any event the outcome
was inevitable. It does not seem to have been hastened in any way by
this display of savagery. There had been many such butcheries during the
war, before Cromwell came to Ireland, without in any way hastening the
end. Cromwell and his lieutenants put down the insurrection and
established order because they gained such sweeping victories, not
because Cromwell made merciless use of his first victories. It was the
fighting of the Puritan troops in the battle itself which won, and not
their ferocity after the battle; and it was Cromwell who not merely gave
free rein to this ferocity, but inspired it. Seemingly quarter would
have been freely given had it not been for his commands. Neither in
morals nor in policy were these slaughters justifiable. Moreover, it
must be remembered that the men slaughtered were entirely guiltless of
the original massacres in Ulster.
Immediately after Drogheda, Cromwell sent forces to Dundalk, which was
held by the Irish, and to Trim, which was held by the Scotch; but the
garrisons deserted both places at the approach of the Cromwellians. In
October, Cromwell himself advanced on Wexford and stormed the town. Very
little resistance was made, but some 2,000 of the defenders were put to
the sword. This time the soldiers needed no order with reference to
refusing quarter; they acted of their own accord, and many of the
townspeople suffered with the garrison. Practically, the town was
depopulated, not one in twenty of the inhabitants being left.
Then Cromwell moved to Ross. In spite of the slaughter which he made in
the towns he stormed, he exercised such strict discipline over his army
in the field, and paid with such rigid punctuality for all supplies
which the country people brought in, that they flocked to him as they
feared to do to their own armies, and in consequence his troops were
better fed and able to march more rapidly than was the case with the
Irish. He soon took Ross, allowing the garrison to march out with the
honors of war, and gave protection to the inhabitants. When asked to
guarantee freedom of religion he responded: “For that which you mention
concerning liberty of conscience, I meddle not with any man’s
conscience. But, if by liberty of conscience, you mean liberty to
exercise the mass, I judge it best to use plain dealing, and to let you
know, where the Parliament of England have power, that will not be
allowed of.”
[Illustration:
St. Lawrence’s Gate, Drogheda.
]
Three months after he landed, Cromwell had possession of almost all the
eastern coast. One of the remarkable features of his campaign had been
the way in which he had used the army and the fleet in combination. He
used his admirals just as he had used his generals and colonels, and
they played a very important part in the operations against Wexford and
Ross, and in securing the surrender of both. When he moved away from the
coast his task was very difficult; there were no roads, the country had
been harried into a wilderness, and was studded with castles and
fortified towns, every one held by an Irish garrison. Ormond and O’Neil
were in the field with a more numerous force than his; and though they
dared not fight a pitched battle, they threatened his detachments. The
service was very wearing, and in December Cromwell went into winter
quarters, the weather being bad, and his men decimated by fever. The
triumphs won by his terrible soldiership rendered the conquest of the
whole island only a question of time.
Having now a little leisure, Cromwell published, for the benefit of the
Irish, a “Declaration,” as an answer to a polemic issued in form of a
manifesto at Kilkenny by the high Irish ecclesiastics. In this
Declaration, which is very curious reading, he exhorted the Irish to
submit, and answered at great length the arguments of their religious
leaders, with all the zeal, ingenuity, and acrimony of an eager
theological disputant, and with an evident and burning sincerity to
which many theological disputants do not attain. The religious side of
his campaigns was always very strong in his mind, and no Puritan
preacher more dearly loved setting forth the justification of his
religious views, or answering the arguments of his religious opponents,
whether Catholics or Covenanters.
So far as Puritanism was based upon a literal following of the example
set in the Old Testament, it had a very dark, as well as a very exalted
side. To take the inhuman butcheries of the early Jews as grateful to
Jehovah, and therefore as justification for similar conduct by
Christians, could lead only to deeds of horror. When Cromwell wrote from
Cork, justifying the Puritan zeal which he admitted could not be
justified by “reason if called before a jury,” he appealed to the case
of Phineas, who was held to have done the work of the Lord, because he
thrust through the belly with his javelin the wretched Midianitish
woman. No such plea can be admitted on behalf of peoples who have passed
the stage of mere barbarism.
Drogheda and Wexford could not be excused by pointing out that the
priests of the Jews of old had held it grateful to the Lord to kill
without mercy the miserable women and children of the tribes whom the
Israelites drove from the land. Such a position was in accord with the
mediæval side of Cromwell’s character, but was utterly out of touch with
his thoroughly modern belief in justice and freedom for all men. Queer
contradictions appear in the above-mentioned “Declaration,” written, as
he phrased it, “For the undeceiving of deluded and seduced people.” He
showed that he was a leader in the modern movement for social,
political, and religious liberty, when he wrote: “Arbitrary power men
begin to grow weary of, in Kings and Churchmen; their juggle between
them mutually to uphold civil and ecclesiastical tyranny begins to be
transparent. Some have cast off _both_; and hope by the Grace of God to
keep so. Others are at it.” But when he came to reconcile his own
declarations for religious liberty with his previous refusal to permit
the celebration of the mass, he was forced into a purely technical
justification of his position. He announced that he would punish, with
all the severity of the law, priests “seducing the people, or, by any
overt act, violating the laws established,” but added: “As for the
people what thoughts they have in matters of religion in their own
breasts, I cannot reach; but shall think it my duty, if they walk
honestly and peaceably, not to cause them in the least to suffer for the
same.” In other words, Catholics could believe what they wished, but
were not allowed to profess their beliefs in the form that they desired,
or to have their teachers among them. To our American eyes such a
position is so wholly untenable, so shocking to the moral sense, that it
requires an effort to remember that it was in advance of the position
taken in the next century by the English toward the Irish through their
Penal Laws, and of the position taken in France toward the Protestants
during the latter part of the reign of Louis XIV. and all the reign of
Louis XV., while of course it was infinitely beyond the theory upon
which the temporal and spiritual authorities of Spain acted.
While the Irish campaign was at its height, the Scotch, who had declared
for Charles II., made ready for war, and the English Parliament demanded
Cromwell’s return. For some months, however, he remained in Ireland,
capturing Kilkenny and various other towns and castles and constantly
extending the area of English sway, driving the Irish westward. His
campaign was a model for all military operations undertaken in a
difficult country, covered by a network of fortified places, and held by
masses of guerillas or irregular levies, backed by the whole population.
After Clonmel was taken he handed over the command to Ireton; the heavy
work had been done, and what remained to do was tedious and harassing
rather than formidable, while the Scotch business could no longer wait.
In May, 1650, Cromwell landed in England, took his seat in the House of
Commons, and was made Captain-General and Commander-in-Chief of the
forces, Fairfax having refused to take part in any offensive campaign
against the Covenanters. It is recorded that when Cromwell entered
London, greeted by surging multitudes, someone called his attention to
the way the people turned out to do him honor for his triumph; whereupon
he dryly answered that it was nothing to the way they would turn out to
see him hanged.
The refusal of Fairfax to march against the Scotch left Cromwell the
only hope of the Commonwealth. It cannot too often be repeated that,
whether in the end Cromwell’s ambitions did or did not obscure the high
principles with which they certainly blended, yet he rose to supreme
power less by his own volition than by the irresistible march of events,
and because he was “a man of the mighty days, and equal to the days.” In
this world, in the long run, the job must necessarily fall to the man
who both can and will do it when it must be done, even though he does it
roughly or imperfectly. It is well enough to deplore and to strive
against the conditions which make it necessary to do the job; but when
once face to face with it, the man who fails either in power or will,
the man who is half-hearted, reluctant, or incompetent, must give way to
the actual doer, and he must not complain because the doer gets the
credit and reward. President Buchanan utterly disbelieved in the right
of secession, but he also felt doubts as to its being constitutional or
possible to “coerce a sovereign state,” and therefore he and those who
thought like him had to give place to men who felt no such doubts. It
may be the highest duty to oppose a war before it is brought on, but
once the country is at war, the man who fails to support it with all
possible heartiness comes perilously near being a traitor, and his
conduct can only be justified on grounds which in time of peace would
justify a revolution. The whole strength of the English Commonwealth was
in the Independents. Royalists, Episcopalians, Presbyterians, extreme
Levellers, were all against it. When the Scotch declared for Charles II.
as King, not only of Scotland but of England, they rendered it necessary
that either England or Scotland should be conquered. Fairfax declared
that he was willing to defend the English against the Scotch attack, but
not to attack Scotland. The position was puerile; a fact which should be
borne in mind by the excellent persons who at the present day believe
that a nation can be somehow armed for defence without being armed for
attack. No fight was ever yet won by parrying alone; hard hitting is the
best parry; the offensive is the only sure defensive. To refuse to
attack the Scotch was merely to give them a great initial advantage in
the inevitable struggle. Cromwell was far too clear-sighted and resolute
to suffer from oversentimental scruples in the matter. Accordingly he
undertook the task; did it with his accustomed thoroughness; and from
that moment became, not merely the first man in the Kingdom, but a man
without a second or a third, without a rival of any kind.
[Illustration:
Cromwell Leading the Assault on Drogheda.
After the batteries had made a breach in the walls an attempt was made
to take the town by storm. Cromwell, seeing his men driven back,
placed himself at the head of the column, and, rallying the troops,
soon had complete possession of the place. His soldiers were ordered
to give no quarter to those carrying arms, and it is said that more
than two thousand of the defenders were put to the sword.
]
Charles had landed in Scotland and been proclaimed King, but was forced
not merely to take the Covenant but to make degrading professions of
abandonment and renunciation of his father’s acts and principles. He
was, after all, to be a King only in name, if the dominant party in
Scotland could have its way. Dour as Dopper Boers, the Covenanters were
determined that the government should be, though in form royal, in
essence a democratic theocracy, where the men of the strictest
Calvinistic sect should all have their say in an administration marked
by the most bitter intolerance of every religious belief which differed
by even a shade from their own. To get real religious liberty in those
days one had to go to Rhode Island or Maryland; but at least the English
Puritans were, in this respect, far in advance of the men against whom
they were pitted.
There was also a Royalist party in Scotland, which had scant sympathy
with the Covenanters, but was only allowed to exist at all by their
sufferance. When at this time Montrose landed to help the King, the
Presbyterian friends of the King promptly overcame and slew him. The
Kirk was supreme, and in the army which it gathered to meet Cromwell it
made zeal for the Covenant the all-important requirement for a
commission. It would not even permit places of command to be given to
the officers who had marched with Hamilton’s army. The Royalists around
the King complained bitterly that the commissions were most apt to go to
sons of ministers, and if not, then to men whose godliness and religious
enthusiasm were but poor substitutes for training and skill in arms.
Cromwell’s soldiers possessed all of these qualities. Devotion to
country or to religion adds immensely to the efficiency of a soldier,
but is a broken reed by itself. Officers whose only qualifications are
religious or patriotic zeal, are better than officers who seek service
to gratify their vanity, or who are appointed through political favor;
but until they have really learned their business, and unless they are
eager and able to learn it, this is all that can be said of them.
Cromwell marched north to the walls of Edinburgh, where David Leslie lay
with the Covenanting army of the Kirk. Leslie had fought under Gustavus
Adolphus, and beside Cromwell at Marston Moor, where the Scotch insisted
that they had saved the Cromwellians from defeat. Now the two sides were
decisively to test the question of supremacy. But the contest was really
utterly unequal. Cromwell had a veteran army, one which had been kept
under arms for years. Leslie had an army which had been brought together
for this particular war. He was, therefore, under the terrible
disadvantage which rests on any man who, with raw volunteers, confronts
well-trained, well-led veterans. There were under him plenty of officers
and men with previous military experience—though, as the Royalist above
quoted remarked, too many of the officers were “sanctified creatures who
hardly ever saw or heard of any sword but that of the Spirit”—yet the
regiments were all new, and the men had no regimental pride or
confidence, no knowledge of how to act together, no trust in one another
or in their commanders; while Cromwell’s regiments were old, and the
recruits in each at once took their tone from the veterans around them.
Although Leslie’s force was twice that of Cromwell’s, he knew his trade
too well to risk a stricken field on equal terms, when the soldiers were
of such unequal quality. He accordingly intrenched in a strong position
covering Edinburgh, and there awaited the English attack. Cromwell was a
born fighter, always anxious for the trial of the sword; a man who
habitually took castles and walled towns by storm, himself at need
heading the stormers, and who won his pitched battles by the shock of
his terrible cavalry, which he often led in person, and which invariably
ruined any foe whom he had overthrown. He now advanced with too much
confidence and found himself in a very ugly situation; his men sickening
rapidly, while Leslie’s army increased in numbers and discipline. Like
every great commander, Cromwell realized that the end of all manœuvring
is to fight—that the end of strategy should be the crushing overthrow in
battle of the enemy’s forces. On this occasion his eagerness made him
forget his caution; and all his masterly skill was needed to extricate
him from the position into which he had been plunged by his own
overbearing courage and the wariness of his opponent.
For some time he lay before Edinburgh, unable to get Leslie to fight,
and of course unwilling to attack him in his intrenchments. Sickness and
lack of provisions finally forced him to retreat. He believed that this
would draw Leslie out of his works, and his belief was justified by the
event. The English now mustered some 11,000 men; the Scotch, 22,000.
Leslie was still cautious about fighting, but the ministers of the Kirk,
who were with him in great numbers, hurried him on. He followed Cromwell
to Dunbar, where he cut off the English retreat to England. But his army
was on the hills and was suffering from the weather. He thought that the
discouraged English were about to embark on their ships. The ministers
fiercely urged him to destroy the “sectaries” whom they so hated, and in
the afternoon of December 2d he crowded down toward the lower ground,
near the sea.
Cromwell saw with stern joy that at last the Scotch had given him the
longed-for chance, and true to his instincts he at once decided to
attack, instead of waiting to be attacked. Leslie’s troops had come down
the steep slopes, and at their foot were crowded together so that their
freedom of movement was much impaired. Cromwell believed that if their
right wing were smashed, the left could not come in time to its support.
He pointed this out to Lambert, who commanded his horse, and to Monk,
the saturnine tobacco-chewing colonel, now a devoted and trusted
Cromwellian. Both agreed with Cromwell, and before dawn the English army
was formed for the onslaught, the officers and troopers praying and
exhorting loudly. Their cry was: “The Lord of Hosts!” that of their
Presbyterian foes: “The Covenant!” It was a strange fight, this between
the Puritan and the Covenanter, whose likeness in the intensity of their
religious zeal and in the great features of their creeds but embittered
their antagonism over the smaller points upon which they differed.
Day dawned, while driving gusts of rain swept across the field, and the
soldiers on both sides stood motionless. Then the trumpets sounded the
charge, and the English horse, followed by the English foot, spurred
against the stubborn Scottish infantry of Leslie’s right wing. The
masses of Scotch cavalry, with their lancers at the head, fell on the
English horse—disordered by the contest with the infantry—and pushed
them back into the brook; but they rallied in a moment, as the reserves
came up, and horse and foot again rushed forward to the attack. At this
moment the sun flamed red over the North Sea, and Cromwell shouted
aloud, with stern exultation: “Let God arise and let His enemies be
scattered,” and a few moments later—“They run! I profess they run!” for
now the Scottish army broke in wild confusion, though one brigade of
foot held their ground, fighting the English infantry at push of pike
and butt-end of musket, until a troop of the victorious horse charged
from one end to the other, through and through them.
Cromwell was as terrible in pursuit as in battle. He never left a
victory half-won, and always followed the fleeing foe, as Sheridan
followed the Confederates before Appomattox. The English horse pressed
the fleeing Scotch, and their defeat became the wildest rout, their
cavalry riding through their infantry. Cromwell himself rallied and
reformed his troopers, who sang as a song of praise the hundred and
seventeenth Psalm; and then he again loosed his squadrons on the foe.
The fight had not lasted an hour, and Cromwell’s victory cost him very
little; but of the Scotch, 3,000 were put to the sword, chiefly in the
pursuit, and 10,000 were captured, with 30 guns and 200 colors. Leslie
escaped by the speed of his horse. Never had Cromwell won a greater
triumph. Like Jackson in his Valley Campaigns, though he was greatly
outnumbered, he struck the foe at the decisive point with the numbers
all in his own favor, and by taking advantage of their error he ruined
them at a blow. Like most great generals, Cromwell’s strategy was
simple, and in the last resort consisted in forcing the enemy to fight
on terms that rendered it possible thoroughly to defeat him; and like
all great generals, he had an eye which enabled him to take advantage of
the fleeting opportunities which occur in almost every battle, but which
if not instantly grasped vanish forever.
The ruin of the Kirk brought to the front the Cavaliers, who still
surrounded Charles and were resolute to continue the fight. Both before
and after Dunbar, Cromwell carried on a very curious series of
theological disputations with the leaders of the Kirk party. The letters
and addresses of the two sides remind one of the times when Byzantine
Emperors exchanged obscure theological taunts with the factions of the
Circus. Yet this correspondence reveals no little of the secret of
Cromwell’s power; of his intense religious enthusiasm—which was both a
strength and a weakness—his longing for orderly liberty, and his
half-stifled aspirations for religious freedom.
He was on sound ground in his controversy with the Scottish Kirk. He put
the argument for religious freedom well when he wrote to the Governor of
Edinburgh Castle, concerning his ecclesiastical opponents:[1] “They
assume to be the infallible expositors of the Covenant (and of the
Scriptures), counting a different sense and judgment from theirs Breach
of Covenant and Heresy—no marvel they judge of others so authoritatively
and severely. But we have not so learned Christ. We look at Ministers as
helpers of, not Lords over, God’s people. I appeal to their consciences
whether any ‘man’ trying their doctrines and dissenting shall not incur
the censure of Sectary? And what is this but to deny Christians their
liberty and assume the Infallible Chair? What doth (the Pope) do more
than this?“
Footnote 1:
Slightly condensed.
[Illustration:
The Battle-field of Dunbar.
The view is taken from the point occupied by Cromwell’s troops,
looking up the glen which separated the two armies. Beyond are the
fields which the Scots occupied, and on the left in the distance is
Doon Hill, on which the Scots first took their stand.
]
There is profitable study for many people of to-day in the following:
“Your pretended fear lest error should step in is like the man who would
keep all the wine out of the country, lest men should be drunk. It will
be found an unjust and unwise jealousy to deprive a man of his natural
liberty upon a supposition he may abuse it. When he doth abuse it,
judge. If a man speak foolishly, ye suffer him gladly, because ye are
wise. Stop such a man’s mouth by sound words which cannot be gainsayed.
If he speak to the disturbance of the public peace, let the civil
magistrate punish him.”
After Dunbar, Cromwell could afford to indulge in such disputations,
for, as he said: “The Kirk had done their do.” All that remained was to
deal with the Cavaliers. There is, by the way, a delightful touch of the
“Trust in the Lord, and keep your powder dry!” type in one of his
letters of this time, when he desired the Commander at Newcastle to ship
him three or four score masons, “for we expect that God will suddenly
put some places into our hands which we shall have occasion to fortify.”
The fate of the prisoners taken at Dunbar was dreadful. War had not
learned any of its modern mercifulness. Cromwell was in this, as in
other respects, ahead, and not behind, the times. He released half of
the prisoners—for the most part half-starved, sick, and wounded—and sent
the rest under convoy southward, praying that humanity might be
exercised toward them; but no care was taken of them, and four-fifths
died from starvation and pestilence.
Meanwhile, a new Scotch army was assembling at Stirling, consisting for
the most part of the Lowland Cavaliers, with their retainers, and the
Royalist chiefs from the Highlands, with their clansmen. Before acting
against them, Cromwell broke up the remaining Kirk forces, put down the
moss-troopers and plunderers, and secured the surrender of Edinburgh.
Winter came on, and operations ceased during the severe weather.
In the spring of 1651, he resumed his work, and by the end of summer he
had the Royalists in such plight that it was evident that their only
chance was to abide the hazard of a great effort. Early in August
Charles led his army across the border into England, to see if he could
not retrieve his cause there, while Cromwell was in Scotland; but
Cromwell himself promptly followed him, while Cromwell’s lieutenants in
England opposed and hampered the march of the Royalists. There was need
of resolute action, for Charles had the best Scotch army that had yet
been gathered together. There was no general rising of the English to
join him, but, when he reached Worcester, the town received him with
open arms. This was the end of his successes. Cromwell came up, and
after careful preparation, delivered his attack, on September 3d.
Charles had only some 15,000 men; Cromwell, nearly 30,000, half of whom,
however, were the militia of the neighboring counties, who were not to
be compared either with Cromwell’s own veterans, or with their Royalist
opponents. The fight was fierce, Cromwell’s left wing gradually driving
back the enemy, in spite of stubborn resistance; while, on his right,
the Cavaliers and Highlanders themselves vigorously attacked the troops
to which they were opposed. It was “as stiff a contest for four or five
hours as ever I have seen,” wrote Cromwell that evening; but at last he
overthrew his foes, and, following them with his usual vigor, frightful
carnage ensued. The victory was overwhelming. Charles himself escaped
after various remarkable adventures, but all the nobles and generals of
note were killed or taken. Nearly 11,000 men were captured, and
practically all the remainder were slain.
This was, as Cromwell said, “the crowning mercy.” It was the last fight
of the Civil War; the last time that Cromwell had to lead an army in the
field. From now till his death there never appeared in England a foe it
was necessary for him to meet in person.
[Illustration:
The Sword used by Cromwell in his Irish Campaign.
]
V
THE COMMONWEALTH AND PROTECTORATE
After the battle of Worcester, the authority of the Commonwealth was
supreme throughout the British Islands. This authority as yet reposed,
wholly in form, largely in substance, with the remnant of the Long
Parliament. This remnant, derisively called the “rump,” differed as
widely in power and capacity from the Parliament led by Pym and Hampden,
as the Continental Congress that saw the outgoing of the Revolutionary
War differed from that which saw its incoming. Defections and purgings,
exclusions first of whole-hearted Episcopalian Royalists and then of
half-hearted Presbyterian Royalists, had reduced it to being but the
representative of a faction. It had submitted to the supremacy of the
army by submitting to the exclusion of those members to whom the army
objected. Then it had worked for some time hand in hand with the army;
but, now that war was over, the Parliamentary representatives or the
Independents feared more and more the supremacy of the military, or
Cromwellian, wing of their party. It was the army, and not the
Parliament, that had won the fight; that had killed one king, and driven
another, his son, into exile; that had subdued Scotland and Ireland, and
stamped out the last vestige of Royalist resistance in England. Yet it
was the Parliament, and not the army, which in theory was to fall heir
to the royal power.
Moreover, Parliament, thanks to its past history, had become as little
as the army the legal embodiment of the power of England; and what was
more important, there was even less general acceptance of it as the
proper representative of power, than there was general acceptance of the
army. The army, even where hated, was feared and respected; the
Parliament was beginning to excite no emotion save an angry contempt.
There were men of honor, of note, and of ability still left in the
Parliament; but its vital force was dying.
Conscious of its own weakness before the people, the Parliament was most
reluctant to face a dissolution; most eager to devise means by which its
rule could be perpetuated. The army, no less conscious of the hostility
felt for it by the Parliament, was just as determined that there should
be a dissolution and an election of a new Parliament. In the approaching
conflict the army had an immense advantage, for, while the Parliament
was losing its grip upon the Independents, without in any way attracting
strength from the Royalists, the great mass of the Independents still
firmly regarded Cromwell as their especial champion.
[Illustration:
Obverse—arms of Cromwell. Reverse—representation of Oliver
Cromwell on horseback.
Seal of the Protectorate.
From an impression in wax in the British Museum.
]
This was the case, not only in England, but elsewhere. One of Cromwell’s
letters of about this time is to the New England clergyman, John Cotton,
in answer to one which showed the keen interest taken in Cromwell’s
triumph by his fellow-Puritans, who, across the Atlantic, had begun the
upbuilding of what is now the giant republic of the New World. The
letter is marked by the continuous use of scriptural phrases and
protestations of humility, so ostentatious and overstrained as to convey
an uncomfortable feeling of hypocrisy; yet, without doubt, there was a
base of genuineness for these expressions. Beyond question, Cromwell
felt that he was doing the Lord’s work; and was sustained through the
tremendous hours of labor and peril by the sense of battling for justice
on this earth, and in accordance with the Eternal Will of Heaven.
In dealing with Cromwell and the Puritan Revolution it must ever be kept
in mind, before judging too harshly the actors, that the era saw the
overlapping of two systems, both in religion and in politics; and many
incongruities resulted. It was the first great stride toward the
practical achievement of civil rights and individual liberty as we now
understand them. It was also the era in which the old theological theory
of the all-importance of dogma came into sharp conflict with the now
healthily general religious belief in the superior importance of
conduct. Of course, as is invariably the case in real life, the issues
were not sharply drawn at all points, and at some they were wholly
obscured by the strong passions and ambitions which belong, not to any
particular age, but to all time.
After Worcester, when Cromwell had returned to London, he one day
summoned a conference, at Speaker Lenthall’s house, of the leaders of
the Parliamentary army to decide how the national destiny was to be
settled. He hoped that they would be able to form a policy among
themselves; but the hope proved fruitless. Some of the members wished an
absolute republic; some wished a setting-up of what we would now call a
limited monarchy, with one of the late king’s sons recalled and put at
the head.
Nothing came of the conference, and Parliament went its way. It had at
last waked to the fact that it must do something positive in the way of
reform, or else that its days were numbered. It began with great
reluctance to make a pretence of preparing for its own dissolution, and
strove to accomplish some kind of reform in the laws. At that time the
law of England had been for generations little more than a mass of
ingenious technicalities, and the Court of Chancery had become the
synonym for a system of interminable delay, which worked as much
injustice as outright spoliation. Even now there is a tendency in the
law toward the deification of technicalities, the substitution of the
letter for the spirit; a tendency which can only be offset by a Bench,
and, indeed, a Bar, possessing both courage and common-sense. At that
time, the condition of affairs was much worse, and the best men in
England shared the popular feeling of extreme dislike for lawyers, as
men whose trade was not to secure justice, but to weave a great web of
technicalities which completely defeated justice. However, reform in the
methods of legal procedure proved as difficult then as it ever has
proved, and all that even Cromwell could do was to make a beginning in
the right direction. The Rump was quite unable so much as to make this
beginning.
The Parliament obtained a momentary respite by creating a diversion in
foreign affairs, and bringing on a war with the Dutch. Throughout the
first half of the seventeenth century, the Dutch were the leading
mercantile and naval power of Europe, surpassing the English in trade
and in colonial possessions. Unfortunately for them, their home
authorities did not believe in preparedness for war; and the crushing
defeats which the boldness and skill of their sailors had enabled them
to inflict on the Spaniards, lulled them into the unwholesome
faith—shared at times by great modern mercantile communities—that, by
simple desire for peace, they could avert war; and that if war came,
they could trust to their riches and reserve strength to win.
Accordingly, in time of peace they laid up their warships and never
built a fighting navy in advance, trusting to the use of armed
merchant-vessels and improvised war-craft to meet the need of the hour.
England, on the contrary, had a large regular navy, the ships being
superior in size and armament to the Dutch, and the personnel of the
navy being better disciplined, although none of the English Admirals,
save Blake, ranked with Tromp and De Ruyter.
The cause of the quarrel was the Navigation Act, passed by England for
the express purpose of building up the English commercial marine at the
expense of the Dutch. The latter were then the world’s carriers on the
ocean. They derived an immense profit from carrying the goods of other
countries, in their own bottoms, from these other countries to England.
The Navigation Act forbade this, allowing only English bottoms to be
used to carry goods to England, unless the goods were carried in the
ships of the country from which they came. This is the kind of measure
especially condemned by the _laissez-faire_ school of economists, and
its good results in this case have always puzzled them; while, on the
other hand, its success under one set of conditions has been often
ignorantly held to justify its application under entirely different
conditions. In other words, like the system of protective tariffs, it is
one of those economic measures which may or may not be useful to a
country, according to changes in time and circumstances. In the
Cromwellian period it benefited the English as much as it hurt the
Dutch, and laid the foundation of English commercial supremacy. Another
cause of war was the insistance by the English upon their right to have
their flag saluted by the Dutch as well as by other foreign powers.
There followed a bloody and obstinate struggle for the mastery of the
seas. Battle after battle was fought between the Dutch and English
fleets. The latter were commanded by Blake, Monk, Dean, and other
officers, who had won distinction ashore—for the process of
differentiation between military service on land and on the sea was far
from complete. The fighting was most determined, and the Dutch won two
or three victories; but they were defeated again and again, until
finally beaten into submission. The war was one undertaken purely from
motives of commercial greed, against the nation which, among all the
nations of continental Europe, stood closest to England in religious
belief, in form of government, in social ideas, and in its system of
political liberty. Cromwell hated the thought of the two free Protestant
powers battling one another to exhaustion, while every ecclesiastical
and political tyranny looked on with a grin of approbation. He wished
the alliance, not the enmity, of Holland; and though, when the war was
once on, he and those he represented refused in any way to embarrass
their own government, yet they were anxious for peace. The Parliament,
on the other hand, hailed the rise of the Navy under Blake as a
counterpoise to the power of the army under Cromwell. One effect of this
Dutch War was to postpone the question of the dissolution of Parliament;
another, to cause increased taxation, which was met by levying on the
estates of the Royalist Delinquents, so-called.
[Illustration:
Admiral Robert Blake.
From the portrait at Wadham College, Oxford.
By permission of the Master of Wadham.
]
By March, 1653, the Dutch were evidently beaten, and peace was in sight;
but before peace came, there was an end of the Rump Parliament. The
discontent in the army had steadily increased. They wished a thorough
reform in governmental methods; and with the characteristic Puritan
habit of thought, wished especially to guarantee the safety of the
“Godly interests” by a complete new election. On the other hand, the
Parliament was scheming how to yield in name only, and not in fact, and
had hit on the device of passing a bill which should continue all the
members of the existing Parliament without reëlection; and, moreover,
should constitute them a general committee, with full power to pass upon
the qualifications of any new members elected. This, of course, amounted
to nothing, and the army would not accept it.
Many conferences of the leaders of the two sides were held at Cromwell’s
house, the last on the evening of April 19, 1653, young Sir Harry Vane,
formerly one of Cromwell’s close friends, being among the number of the
Parliamentary leaders. Cromwell, on behalf of his party, warned them
that their bill could not be accepted or submitted to, and the
Parliamentary leaders finally agreed that it should not be brought up
again in the House, until after further conference. But they either did
not or could not keep their agreement. The members of the House were
obstinately resolved to keep their places—many of them from corrupt
motives, for they had undoubtedly made much money out of their
positions, through the taxing of delinquents and otherwise. In short,
they wished to perpetuate their government, to have England ruled by a
little self-perpetuating oligarchy. Next morning, April 20th, Parliament
met and the leaders began to hurry the Bill through the House.
[Illustration:
Cromwell Dissolving the Long Parliament.
Having commanded the soldiers to clear the hall, he himself went out
last, and ordering the doors to be locked, he departed to his
lodgings.—Hume and Smollett’s “History.”
]
They reckoned without their host. Cromwell, sitting in his
reception-room, and waiting the return of the conferees of last evening,
learned what was going on, and just as he was clad, “in plain black
clothes and gray worsted stockings,” followed by a few officers and
twenty or thirty stark musketeers, he walked down to the House. There he
sat and listened for some time to the debate on the Bill, once beckoning
over Harrison, the Republican general, his devoted follower. When the
question was put as to whether the Bill should pass, he rose and broke
in with one of his characteristic speeches. First, he enumerated the
good that had been done by Parliament, and then began to tell them of
their injustice, their heed to their own self-interests, their delay to
do right. One among his eager listeners called him to order, but no
appeal to Parliamentary forms could save the doomed House. “Come, come!”
answered Oliver, “we have had enough of this; I will put an end to your
prating!” With that he clapped on his hat, stamped on the floor with his
feet, and began to rate the Commons as if they were disobedient
school-boys. “It is not fit that you should sit here any longer; you
have sat too long for any good that you have been doing lately; you
shall now give place to better men!” And Harrison called in the
musketeers. Oliver then continued, enumerating the sins of the members,
some of whom were drunkards, some lewd livers, some corrupt and unjust.
The house was on its feet as he lifted the mace, saying: “What shall we
do with this bauble? Take it away!” and gave it to a musketeer; and
then, turning toward the Speaker: “Fetch him down!” and fetched down he
was. Gloomily the members went out, while Cromwell taunted Sir Harry
Vane with breaking his promise, ending with: “The Lord deliver me from
thee, Sir Harry Vane!” So ended the Long Parliament and, asserted
Oliver, “We did not hear a dog bark at their going.”
Tomes have been written to prove whether Oliver was right or wrong in
what he did at this time; but the Rump Parliament had no claim to be,
either in law or fact, the representative of the English people, or of
any part of them that really counted. There was no justification for its
continuance, and no good whatever could come from permitting it to exist
longer. Its actions, and especially its obstinate determination to
perpetuate its own rule, without warrant in law, without the even higher
and more perilous warrant of justice and national need, rendered it
necessary that it should be dissolved. At the time Cromwell, without
doubt, intended that it should be replaced by a genuinely representative
body; and if he had possessed the temper, the self-control, the
far-sighted patriotism, and the personal disinterestedness which would
have enabled him to carry out his intentions in good faith, without
thinking of his own interests, he would have rendered an inestimable
public service and might have advanced by generations the movement for
English liberty.
In other words, if Cromwell had been a Washington, the Puritan
Revolution might have been made permanent. His early acts, after the
dissolution of the Long Parliament, showed a sincere desire on his part,
and on the part of those whose leader he was, to provide some form of
government which should secure justice and order, without leaving
everything to the will of one man. His first effort was to summon an
assembly of the Puritan notables. In the interim he appointed a new
Council of State, with himself, as Captain-General, at its head. The
fleet, the army, and the Independents generally, all hastened to pledge
him their support, and England undoubtedly acquiesced in his action,
being chiefly anxious to see whether or not the new Assembly could
formulate a permanent scheme of government. If the Assembly and Cromwell
together could have done this—that is, could have done work like that of
the great Convention which promulgated the Constitution of the United
States—all would have gone well.
In criticising Cromwell, however, we must remember that generally in
such cases an even greater share of blame must attach to the nation than
to the man. Free government is only for nations that deserve it; and
they lose all right to it by licentiousness, no less than by servility.
If a nation cannot govern itself, it makes comparatively little
difference whether its inability springs from a slavish and craven
distrust of its own powers, or from sheer incapacity on the part of its
citizens to exercise self-control and to act together. Self-governing
freemen must have the power to accept necessary compromises, to make
necessary concessions, each sacrificing somewhat of prejudice, and even
of principle, and every group must show the necessary subordination of
its particular interests to the interests of the community as a whole.
When the people will not or cannot work together; when they permit
groups of extremists to decline to accept anything that does not
coincide with their own extreme views; or when they let power slip from
their hands through sheer supine indifference; then they have themselves
chiefly to blame if the power is grasped by stronger hands. Yet, while
keeping all this in mind, it must not be forgotten that a great and
patriotic leader may, if the people have any capacity for
self-government whatever, help them upwards along their hard path by his
wise leadership, his wise yielding to even what he does not like, and
his wise refusal to consider his own selfish interests. A people
thoroughly unfit for self-government, as were the French at the end of
the eighteenth century, are the natural prey of a conscienceless tyrant
like Napoleon. A people like the Americans of the same generation can be
led along the path of liberty and order by a Washington. The English
people, in the middle of the seventeenth century, might have been helped
to entire self-government by Cromwell, but were not sufficiently
advanced politically to keep him from making himself their absolute
master if he proved morally unequal to rising to the Washington level;
though doubtless they would not have tolerated a man of the Napoleonic
type.
[Illustration:
Oliver Cromwell.
From the painting at Althorp by Robert Walker.
By permission of Earl Spencer, K.G.
]
The Assembly gathered in July, 1653. It was called the “Barebones”
Parliament in derision, because one of its members—a Puritan
leather-merchant—was named “Praise-God Barbon.” The members were men of
high character, of intense religious fervor, and, for the most part, of
good social standing. They were actuated by sincere conviction, but they
had no political training whatever. They were not accustomed to make
government move; they were theorists, rather than doers. Religious
fervor, or mere fervor for excellence in the abstract, is a great
mainspring for good work in politics as in war, but it is no substitute
for training, in either civil or military life; and if not accompanied
by sound common-sense and a spirit of broad tolerance, it may do as much
damage as any other mighty force which is unregulated.
On July 4th, Cromwell opened the Assembly with a long speech, which,
toward the end, became a true Puritan sermon; a speech which had in it a
very high note of religion and morality, but which showed a growing
tendency in Oliver’s mind to appeal from the judgment of men to what he
esteemed the judgment of Heaven, whenever he thought men were wrong.
Now, it is very essential that a man should have in him the capacity to
defy his fellows if he thinks that they are doing the work of the Devil,
and not the work of the Lord; but it is even more essential for him to
remember that he must be most cautious about mistaking his own views for
those of the Lord; and also to remember that as the Lord’s work is
accomplished through human instruments, and as these can only be used to
advantage by remembering that they are human, and, therefore, imperfect,
in the long run a man can do nothing of permanence, save by joining his
zeal to sound judgment, moderation, and the desire to accomplish
practical results.
The Assembly of Puritan notables was no more competent to initiate
successful self-government in England than a Congress of Abolitionists,
in 1860, would have been competent to govern the United States. They did
not lack in lofty devotion to their ideals, but their methods were
impractical. Cromwell professed to have resigned his power into their
hands, and they went at their work in a spirit of high religious
enthusiasm. The “instrument,” under which they were summoned, had
provided that their authority should be transferred to another assembly
elected under their directions; in other words, they were to form a
constitutional Convention. They undertook a host of reforms, largely in
the right direction. Among other things, they proposed the abolition of
the Court of Chancery, the establishment of civil marriage, the
abolition of tithes, and of lay patronage. The clergy and the lawyers
were cast into a frenzy of alarm over these proposals, and the landed
proprietors became very uneasy lest some of their own unjust vested
interests should suffer.
Now, all this was most excellent in point of moral purpose, just as it
would have been absolutely right, from the abstract ethical stand-point,
if the Constitution of 1789, or the Republican Convention of 1860, had
declared for the abolition of slavery in all the States. Of course, if
the Constitution had made such a declaration, it would never have been
adopted, and the English-speaking people of North America would have
plunged into a condition of anarchy like that of the after-time South
American Republics; while, if the Republican platform of 1860 had taken
such a position, Lincoln would not have been elected, no war for the
Union would have been waged, and instead of slavery being abolished, it
would have been perpetuated in at least one of the confederacies into
which the country would have been split. The Barebones Parliament was
too far ahead of the times, too indifferent to results, and too
impatient of the limitations and prejudices of its neighbors. Its
members were reformers, who lost sight of the fact that a reform must be
practicable in order to make it of value. They excited the utmost
suspicion in the community at large, and Cromwell, whose mind was in
many respects very conservative, and who was an administrator rather
than a constructive statesman, shared the general uneasiness. He shrank
from the acts of the Barebones Parliament just as he had shrunk from the
levelling tendencies of the Republicans. The leaders of both had gone
too far in the direction of speculative reform. Cromwell erred on the
other side, and did not go far enough. It is just as necessary for the
practical man to remember that his practical qualities are useless, or
worse than useless, unless he joins with them that spirit of striving
after better things which marks the reformer, as it is for this same
reformer to remember that he cannot give effective expression to his
desire for a higher life save by following rigidly practical ways.
Cromwell, in his opening address to the Convention, had been carried
away by his religious enthusiasm, and in a burst of strange, rugged
eloquence had bid his hearers remember that they must “hold themselves
accountable to God only;” must own their call to be from Him, and must
strive to bring about God’s rule upon earth. When they took his words
literally he became heartily uneasy, as did the great bulk of
Englishmen; for, of course, there were limitless interpretations to be
put as to the proper way of being “owned” by God, and Oliver was not in
the least inclined to accept the interpretation adopted by the Barebones
Parliament. He wished administrative reform in Church and State, but he
had little sympathy with what he deemed revolutionary theories, whether
good or bad.
The Convention gradually grew conscious that it had no support in
popular sympathy, and dissolved of its own motion, after having named a
Council of State, which drew up a remarkable Constitution under the name
of the “Instrument of Government.” This Instrument was adopted by
Cromwell and the Council of Officers, and under it a new Parliament was
convened. Even yet, Cromwell, and at least the majority of the army,
shrank from abandoning every effort at constitutional rule in favor of
the naked power of the sword. Nevertheless, Cromwell had even less
fondness for the rule of a Parliament elected under any conditions he
was able to devise. He realized that the majority of the nation was
against him, and dreaded lest it might take steps toward the
rehabilitation of the monarchy. In his address to the Barebones
Convention he had dwelt with special emphasis upon the fact that a
Parliament elected merely by the majority might not be nearly so
suitable for doing the Lord’s work as such an assembly as that he had
convened.
In short, all his qualities, both good and bad, tended to render the
forms and the narrowly limited powers of constitutional government
irksome to him. His strength, his intensity of conviction, his delight
in exercising powers for what he conceived to be good ends; his dislike
of speculative reforms and his inability to appreciate the necessity of
theories to a practical man who wishes to do good work; his hatred of
both King and oligarchy, while he utterly distrusted a popular majority;
his tendency to insist upon the superiority of the moral law, as he saw
it, to the laws of mankind round about him—all these tendencies worked
together to unfit him for the task of helping a liberty-loving people on
the road toward freedom.
The Instrument of Government was a very remarkable document. It was a
written constitution. Cromwell and his soldiers desired, like Washington
and his fellow-members of the Constitutional Convention which framed the
government of the United States, to have the fundamental law of the land
put in shape where it would be accessible to all men, and where its
terms would not be open to doubt. Such a course was absolutely necessary
if a free government, in the modern sense, was to be established on
radically new lines. It has not been rendered necessary in the free
England of to-day, because, very fortunately, England has been able to
reach her freedom by evolution, not revolution.
The Instrument of Government confided the executive power to a Lord
Protector and Council; Cromwell was named as the first Protector. The
legislative power was assigned without restriction to a Parliament
elected by constituencies formed on a new and equitable franchise, there
being a sweeping redistribution of seats. Parliament could pass a Bill
over the Protector’s veto, and was to meet once in three years, for at
least five months; but it had little control over the executive, save
that with it rested the initiative in filling vacancies in the Council.
The Protector was allotted a certain fixed sum, which made him largely
independent of the Parliament’s action. Nevertheless, the Protector was
under real constitutional control. Religious liberty was secured for all
congregations which did not admit “papacy or prelacy,” the Episcopalians
and Roman Catholics being excluded from this right just as they were
excluded from the right of voting, rather as enemies to the Commonwealth
than because of their mere religious beliefs. They were regarded as what
would now be called, in the political terminology of continental Europe,
“irreconcilables”; and the mass and the Prayer-Book were both
prohibited. Until the first Parliament met, which was to be on the
anniversary of the Battle of Dunbar, on September 3, 1654, the Protector
and Council were to issue ordinances with the force of law.
The Constitution thus had very many points of difference from that under
which the United States grew into a great nation. Yet it ranks with it,
rather than with the system of Parliamentary supremacy which was
ultimately adopted in England. It was, of course, less popular, in the
true sense, than the government of either the United States or Great
Britain at the present moment. Oliver, later on, insisted on what he
called the “Four Fundamentals,” which answered to what we now style
Constitutional Rights. His position was strictly in accord with the
American, as opposed to the English, theory of embodying, by preference
in some written document, propositions which neither the law-making body
nor the executive could modify. It was not to be expected that he should
hit on the device of a Supreme Court to keep guard over these
propositions.
On December 16, 1653, Oliver was installed at Westminster, as Lord
Protector. The judges, the army, the fleet, the mass of Independents,
and the bulk of well-to-do citizens, concurred in the new departure; for
the Protectorship gave stability, and the election of the new Parliament
the assurance of liberty. There were plenty of opponents, however. The
Royalists were implacable. The exiled House of Stuart, with a baseness
of which their great opponent was entirely incapable, sought to compass
his assassination. They could in no other way hope to reach the man whom
they dared not look in the face on the field of battle. Plot after plot
was formed to kill the Protector, but the plotters were invariably
discovered and brought to justice; while every attempt at open
insurrection was stamped out with the utmost ease. To the Royalist
malcontents were added the extreme fanatics, the ultra-reformers of
every type—religious, political, and social. These were, at the time,
more dangerous than the Royalists, for they numbered supporters in the
army, including some who had been prominent friends of Cromwell up to
this time, like General Harrison. It was necessary, therefore, to arrest
some of the most turbulent agitators, including preachers, and to
deprive certain officers of their commissions.
The Protector and his Council acted wisely in their ordinances,
redressing in practical shape many grievances. The Barebones Parliament
had striven to abolish the Court of Chancery outright, and to hand its
power over to the judges of the Common Law, which would merely have
aggravated the existing hardships by checking the growth of the
principle of equity. Oliver acted more conservatively: in fact,
altogether too conservatively; but still he did something. In the Church
government, also, a good deal was accomplished by the appointment of
commissioners of good character to supervise the ministers, while
allowing each to organize his congregation on any lines he
chose—Presbyterian, Congregationalist, or Baptist. Dissenters were
permitted to form separate congregations—“gathered churches” in the
phrase of the day—if they so desired. Of course, this was not by any
means complete religious toleration, but it was a nearer approach to it
than any government in Europe, with the possible exception of the Dutch,
had yet sanctioned, and it was so far in advance of the general spirit
of the time that the new Parliament—a really representative body—took
sharp exception to it. In point of religious toleration Oliver went just
as far as the people of his day would let him—farther than any other
ruler of the century was willing to go, save only Henry IV. of
France—and Henry IV. really believed in nothing, and so could easily be
tolerant, while Cromwell’s zealous faith was part of the very marrow of
his being.
[Illustration:
The Clock Tower, Hampton Court.
]
Cromwell also concluded peace with the Dutch. Before the Long Parliament
was dissolved it had become evident that the navy would ultimately
conquer this peace for England; but the stubborn Dutch had to undergo
several additional defeats before they would come to terms. Blake, the
great admiral, had no particular admiration for Cromwell, but finally
threw in his lot with him on the ground that the fleet had no concern
with politics, and should limit itself strictly to the effort “to keep
foreigners from fooling us.” Monk was the admiral most in view in the
later stages of the Dutch War. When it was over, he was sent back to
keep the Highlands in order, which he and his fellow-Cromwellians did,
with a thoroughness not afterward approached for a century. Scotland was
now definitely united to England.
The new Parliament consisted of 400 members from England, 30 from
Scotland, and 30 from Ireland. They were elected by a general suffrage,
based on the possession of property to the value £200. The Parliament
thus gathered was representative in a very wide sense. Nearly two
hundred years were to elapse before any other as truly representative
was to sit in England. The classes whose inclusion would certainly have
made trouble were excluded; and, while the suffrage had been extended,
and gross inequalities of representation abolished, there had been no
such revolutionary action as suddenly to introduce masses of men
unaccustomed to the exercise of self-government. Indeed, the house had
arbitrarily erased from its roll of membership the names of a few
ultra-Republicans. It was chiefly Cromwell’s own fault that he failed to
get along with this Parliament, and, therefore, failed to put the
government on a permanent basis of orderly liberty.
At the beginning, everything seemed to go well. He opened the Parliament
with one of those noteworthy speeches of which some seventeen have been
preserved; speeches in the proper sense, unquestionably better when
spoken to listeners than when read by critics, but instinct with the
rough power of the speaker, permeated with religious fervor and sincere
striving after the right; and even where the reasoning is most
wrong-headed, containing phrases and sentiments which show the keenest
insight into the needs of the moment, and the needs of eternity as well.
The sentences are often very involved, it being quite evident that the
speeches were not written out, not even deliberately thought out, in
advance; for Oliver, even as he spoke, kept dropping and rejecting such
of his half-finished utterances as did not give sufficiently accurate or
vehement expression to his thought. Yet they contain abundance of the
loftiest thought, expressed in language which merely gains strength from
its rude, vigorous homeliness. For generations after Cromwell’s death,
the polished cynics and dull pedants, who abhorred and misunderstood
him, spoke of his utterances with mixed ridicule and wrath: Hume
hazarding the opinion that if his speeches, letters, and writings, were
gathered together they would form “one of the most nonsensical
collections the world had ever seen.” We could far better afford to lose
every line Hume ever wrote than the speeches of Cromwell.
In his opening address he pointed out that what the nation most needed
was healing and settling; and in a spirit of thoroughly English
conservatism, denounced any merely revolutionary doctrines which would
do away with the security of property, or would give the tenant “as
liberal a fortune” as the landlord. In religious matters also, he
condemned those who could do nothing but cry: “Overturn! Overturn!!
Overturn!!!” and together with his praise of what had been done, and of
the body to which he spoke, he mingled much advice, remarking: “I hope
you will not be unwilling to hear a little again of the sharp as well as
of the sweet.” He exhorted them to go to work in sober earnest; to
remedy in practical shape any wrongs, and to join with him in working
for good government. Unfortunately, he made the mental reservation that
he should be himself the ultimate judge of what good government was.
Equally unfortunately, there was in the House a body of vehement
Republicans who at once denied the legal existence of either Council or
Protector, on the ground that the Long Parliament had never been
dissolved. Of course such an argument was self-destructive, as it told
equally against the legality of the new Parliament in which they sat.
Parliament contented itself with recognizing the Instrument of
Government as only of provisional validity, and proceeded to discuss it,
clause by clause, as the groundwork of a new Constitution. It was
unanimously agreed that Cromwell should retain his power for five years,
but Parliament showed by its actions that it did not intend to leave him
in a position of absolute supremacy. Instantly Oliver interfered, as
arbitrarily as any hereditary King might have done.
He first appeared before the Parliament, and in an exceedingly able
speech announced his willingness to accept a Parliamentary constitution,
provided that it contained four fundamentals not to be overturned by
law. The fundamentals were, first, that the country was to be governed
by a single person, by a single executive, and a Parliament; second,
that Parliaments were not to make themselves perpetual; third, that
liberty of conscience should be respected; fourth, that the Protector
and Parliament should have joint power over the militia.
All four propositions were sound. The first two were agreed to at once,
and the third also, though with some reluctance, the Parliament being
less liberal than the Protector in religious matters. Over the control
of the soldiers there was irreconcilable difference.
Cromwell was not content with arguments. He would not permit any member
to enter the House without signing an engagement not to alter the
government as it had been settled; that is, every member had to
subscribe to the joint government of the Protector and the Parliament. A
hundred members refused to sign. Three-fourths of the House did sign,
and went on with their work.
Until the assembling of this Parliament, every step that Oliver had
taken could be thoroughly justified. He had not played the part of a
usurper. He had been a zealous patriot, working in the interests of the
people; and he had only broken up the Long Parliament when the Long
Parliament had itself become an utterly unrepresentative body. He had
then shown his good faith by promptly summoning a genuinely
representative body. It is possible to defend him even for excluding the
hundred members who declined to subscribe to his theory of the
fundamentals of government. But it is not possible to excuse him for
what he now did. Parliament, as it was left after the Extremists had
been expelled, stood as the only elective body which it was possible to
gather in England that could in any sense be called representative, and
yet agree to work with Cromwell. Had Cromwell not become cursed with the
love of power; had he not acquired a dictatorial habit of mind, and the
fatal incapacity to acknowledge that there might be righteousness in
other methods than his own, he could certainly have avoided a break with
this Parliament. His splitting with it was absolutely needless. It
agreed to confirm his powers for five years, and, as it happened, at the
end of that time he was dead. Even had he lived there could be no
possible excuse for refusing such a lease of power, on the ground that
it was too short; for it was amply long enough to allow him to settle
whatever was necessary to settle.
[Illustration:
The Great Hall, Hampton Court.
In this room the state dinners were given under the Protectorate.
]
Cromwell, and later his apologists, insisted that, by delay and by
refusing to grant supplies until their grievances were considered, the
Parliament was encouraging the spirit of revolt. In reality the spirit
of revolt was tenfold increased, not by the Parliament’s action, but by
Cromwell’s, in seizing arbitrary power. If he had shown a tenth of the
forbearance that Washington showed in dealing with the various
Continental Congresses, he would have been readily granted far more
power than ever Washington was given. He could easily have settled
affairs on a constitutional basis, which would have given him all the
power he had any right to ask; for his difficulties in this particular
crisis were nothing like so great as those which Washington surmounted.
The plea that the safety of the people and of the cause of righteousness
depended upon his unchecked control, is a plea always made in such
cases, and generally, as in this particular case, without any basis in
fact. The need was just the other way.
Contrast Cromwell’s conduct with that of Lincoln, just before his second
election as President. There was a time in the summer of 1864 when it
looked as if the Democrats would win, and elect McClellan. At that time
it was infinitely more essential to the salvation of the Union that
Lincoln should be continued in power, than it was to the salvation of
the Commonwealth, in 1654, that Cromwell should be continued in power.
Lincoln would have been far more excusable than Cromwell if he had
insisted upon keeping control. Yet such a thought never entered
Lincoln’s head. He prepared to abide in good faith the decision of the
people, and one of the most touching incidents of his life is the quiet
and noble sincerity with which he made preparations, if McClellan was
elected, to advise with him and help him in every way, and to use his
own power, during the interval between McClellan’s election and
inauguration, in such a manner as would redound most to the advantage of
the latter, and would increase, as far as possible, the chance for the
preservation of the Union. It was at this time of Cromwell’s life that,
at the parting of the ways, he chose the wrong way. Great man though he
was, and far though the good that he did out-balanced the evil, yet he
lost the right to stand with men like Washington and Lincoln of modern
times, and with the very, very few who, like Timoleon, in some measure
approached their standard in ancient times.
As the Parliament continued in session, the attitude of the Protector
changed from sullen to fierce hostility. It was entitled to sit five
months. By a quibble he construed this to mean five lunar months. On
January 22, 1655, he dissolved it, after rating it in a long and angry
speech. With its dissolution it became evident to the great mass of true
liberty-lovers that all hope of real freedom was at an end, and the
forces that told for the restoration of the King were increased tenfold
in strength. Nevertheless, some of the purest and most ardent lovers of
liberty, like Milton, still clung despairingly to the Protector. They
recognized that, with all his faults, and in spite of his determination
to rule in arbitrary fashion, he yet intended to secure peace, justice,
and good government, and, alike in power and in moral grandeur, towered
above his only possible alternative, Charles II., as a giant towers
above a pigmy.
[Illustration]
VI
PERSONAL RULE
When Cromwell, in January, 1655, dismissed the first Protectorate
Parliament, he left himself nothing to do but to establish his own
personal rule; in other words, he became a tyrant. Of course the word
cannot be used in the sense we use it in describing Ivan the Terrible,
or Agathokles. As each country must, sooner or later, obtain exactly
that measure of political freedom to which it is entitled, so, when it
falls under a tyranny, the tyranny must be strictly conditioned by the
character of the people. Cromwell ruled over Englishmen, not Russians or
Greeks, and no Englishman would have tolerated for twenty-four hours
what was groaningly borne by Muscovites, who had lost every vestige of
manhood beneath the Tartar yoke, or by Syracusans, in the days of the
rapid decadence of the Hellenistic world. Cromwell’s government was a
tyranny because it was based on his own personal rule, his personal
decision as to what taxes should be levied, what ordinances issued, what
police measures decreed and carried out, what foreign policy adopted or
rejected. He was influenced very much by public opinion, when public
opinion found definite expression in the action of a body of legislators
or of an assembly of officers; but even in such cases he was only
influenced, not controlled. In other words, he had gone back to the
theory of government professed by the man he had executed, and by that
man’s predecessors. There was, however, the tremendous and far-reaching
difference, that, whereas the Stuart kings clung to absolute power for
the sake of rewarding favorites and of carrying out policies that were
hostile to the honor and interest of England, Cromwell seized it with
the sincere purpose of exalting the moral law at home and increasing the
honor of England’s name abroad. Moreover, he was in fact what no Stuart
was, in anything but name: a “king among men,” and his mighty strength
enabled him, at least partially, to realize his purpose.
[Illustration:
The Second Installation of Cromwell as Protector, in Westminster Hall,
June 26, 1657.
]
Cromwell doubtless persuaded himself that he was endeavoring to secure
what would now be called a constitutional government: one which, in his
own words, “should avoid alike the extremes of monarchy and democracy.”
He was desirous of paying heed to the wishes of those whom he esteemed
the wisest and most honest among the people. He had somewhat of that
gift for personal popularity which was so marked a feature of Queen
Elizabeth—seemingly the only sovereign whom he admired, among all his
predecessors. To the last he kept stirring vaguely for a constitutional
system; and he sincerely disliked merely arbitrary rule.
But by the time he became Lord Protector he was too impatient of
difference of opinion, too doggedly convinced of his own righteousness
and wisdom, to be really fit to carry on a free government. He had
sought to introduce the reign of the saints; but when, in the Barebones
Parliament, he gathered together the very men whom he deemed their
arch-representatives, it was only to find, as was of course inevitable,
that he and they could not agree as to the method of realizing the reign
of the saints in this very material world. Then he sought to secure a
government by the representatives of the people: only to find that he
got along even less well with them than with the saints. In short, while
he had kept his nobility of purpose, his whole character had grown less
and less such as to fit him to found a government of the kind toward
which his race was dimly striving.
He made varied experiments for the control of England. After the first
Protectorate Parliament had been abolished, he established the
government of the major-generals, or in other words, purely military
rule; dividing England into a dozen districts, with a major-general over
each as the ultimate authority. The prime function of the major-generals
was to keep order, and they crushed under their iron heels every spark
of Royalist insurrection, or of Leveller and Anabaptist uprising. They
interfered in civil matters also, and were especially required to see to
the rigid observance of the Sabbath, and to suppress all cock-fighting,
horse-racing, and kindred sports, as well as to shut up doubtful
ale-houses. There certainly never was a more extraordinary despotism
than this; the despotism of a man who sought power, not to gratify
himself, or those belonging to him, in any of the methods to which all
other tyrants have been prone; but to establish the reign of the Lord,
as he saw it. Here was a tyrant who used the overwhelming strength of
his military force to forbid what he considered profane amusements, and
to enforce on one day of the week a system of conduct which was
old-Jewish in character. Of course the fact that he meant well, and that
his motives were high, did not make it any the easier for the people
with whose pleasures and prejudices he thus irritatingly interfered.
The Puritan passion for regulating, not merely the religion, but the
morals and manners of their neighbors, especially in the matter of
Sunday observance and of pastimes generally, was peculiarly exasperating
to men of a more easy-going nature. Even nowadays, the effort for
practical reform in American city government is rendered immeasurably
more difficult by the fact that a considerable number of the best
citizens are prone to devote their utmost energies, not to striving for
the fundamentals of social morality, civic honesty, and good government,
but, in accordance with their own theory of propriety of conduct, to
preventing other men from pursuing what these latter regard as innocent
pleasures; while, on the other hand, a large number of good citizens, in
their irritation at any interference with what they feel to be
legitimate pastimes, welcome the grossest corruption and misrule rather
than submit to what they call “Puritanism.” When this happens, before
our eyes, we need not wonder that in Cromwell’s day the determination of
the Puritans to put down ale-houses and prohibit every type of Sunday
pastime, irritated large bodies of the people to the point of longing
for the restoration of the Stuarts, no matter what might be the
accompanying evils of corruption and tyranny.
The experiment of governing by the major-generals provoked such
mutterings of discontent that it had to be abandoned. Another parliament
was summoned, and out of this Oliver arbitrarily kept any man whom he
did not think ought to come in. It was anything but a radical body, and
after declaring against the rule of the major-generals, it offered
Oliver the kingship, an offer to which the army objected, and which
Oliver, therefore, refused; but even with this subservient assembly
Oliver could not get along, and it finally shared the fate of its
predecessor. The objection of the army to the kingship, was partly due
to the presence of so many Republican zealots in its ranks; but probably
the main reason for the objection was that the army, more or less
consciously, realized that its own overmastering importance in the
commonwealth would vanish as soon as the man it had made supreme by the
sword was changed into a constitutional king.
One by one almost all of Oliver’s old comrades and adherents left him,
and he was driven to put his own kinsfolk into as many of the higher
places, both in the State and the army, as possible; less from nepotism
than from the need of having in important positions men who would do his
will, without question. Eventually he had to abandon most of the ideas
of political liberty which he had originally championed, and, following
the path which the Long Parliament had already trod, he finally
established a rigid censorship of the press.
Yet, though it must be freely admitted that in its later years the
government of Cromwell was in form and substance a tyranny, it must be
no less freely acknowledged that he used with wisdom and grandeur the
power he had usurped. The faults he committed were the faults of the
age, rather than special to himself, while his sincerity and honesty
were peculiarly his own.
[Illustration:
Sir William Waller.
From the Portrait by Sir Peter Lely at Goodwood.
By permission of the Duke of Richmond and Gordon, K.G.
]
He fairly carried out his pledge of healing and settling, and he put
through a long series of administrative reforms. In England and Wales
his internal administration undoubtedly told for what was of moral and
material advantage to the country; and if there was heavy taxation, at
least it produced visible and tangible results, which was never the case
under the Stuarts, before or after him. Yet his rule could not but
produce discontent. In the first place, the Royalists were not well
treated. In that age the beaten party was expected to pay heavily for
its lack of success, both in purse and in body; and it was not to be
expected that the victorious Puritans should show toward their defeated
foes the generosity displayed by Grant and his fellow-victors in the
American Civil War. In the American Revolution, the Tories were at first
followed with much the same vindictiveness that the Royalists were
followed after King Charles had been brought to the block. But
Washington and all the leading American statesmen disapproved of this,
and after the first heat of passion was over the American Royalists were
allowed precisely the same civil and political rights as their
neighbors. On the contrary, in England, under the Commonwealth, the
Royalists were kept disfranchised, and taxation was arranged so as
always to fall with crushing weight upon them, thus insuring their
permanent alienation. As regards the rest of the people, while there was
considerable interference with political and religious liberty, it was
probably only what the times demanded, and was certainly much less than
occurred in almost any other country. Episcopalians were denied the use
of the Prayer-Book, and, like the Catholics, were given liberty of
conscience only on condition that they should not practise their faith
in public. Irritating though this was, and wrong though it was, it fell
infinitely short of what had been done to Protestants, under Queen Mary,
by the temporarily victorious Catholics, or to Puritans and Catholics
under Queen Elizabeth, or of what was to be done to the Covenanters of
Scotland, under the victorious Episcopalians; but such considerations
would not have altered the discontent, even had the discontented kept
them in mind. When provocation is sufficient to drive a man into
revolution, it matters little in practical politics how much beyond this
point it is carried. The breaking-point is reached sooner in some
nations than in others; but in all strong nations persecution will cause
revolt long before it takes the terrible form given it by Spaniards and
Turks; and, once the war is on, the men who revolt hate any persecutor
so much that there is scant room for intensification of the feeling.
Moreover, instead of the Cromwellian government growing more, it grew
less tolerant of Catholicism and Episcopacy as time went on.
The people at large were peculiarly irritated by what were merely the
defects inevitably incident to the good features of Puritanism in that
age. When faith is very strong and belief very sincere, men must possess
great wisdom, broad charity, and the ability to learn by experience, or
else they will certainly try to make others live up to their own
standards. This would be bad enough, even were the standards absolutely
right; and it is necessarily worse in practice than in theory, inasmuch
as mixed with the right there is invariably an element of what is wrong
or foolish. The extreme exponents and apologists of any fervent creed
can always justify themselves, in the realm of pure logic, for insisting
that all the world shall be made to accept and act up to their
standards, and that they must necessarily strive to bring this about, if
they really believe what they profess to believe. Of course, in
practice, the answer is that there are hundreds of different creeds, or
shades of creeds, all of which are believed in with equal devoutness by
their followers, and therefore in a workaday government it is necessary
to insist that none shall interfere with any other. Where people are as
far advanced in practical good sense and in true religious toleration as
in the United States to-day, the great majority of each creed gradually
grows to accept this position as axiomatic, and the smaller minority is
kept in check without effort, both by law and by public opinion.
In Cromwell’s time, such law did not obtain in any land, and public
opinion was not ripe for it. He was far in advance of his
fellow-Englishmen. He described their attitude perfectly, and indeed the
attitude of all Europe, when he remarked: “Every sect saith, Oh, give me
liberty! but, given it and to spare, he will not yield it to anyone
else. Liberty of conscience is a natural right, and he that would have
it ought to give it.... I desire it from my heart; I have prayed for it;
I have watched for the day to see union and right understanding between
the Godly people—Scots, English, Jews, Gentiles, Presbyterians,
Independents, Anabaptists, and all.”
The whole principle of religious toleration is summed up in these brief
sentences. In his higher and better moments, and far more than most men
of his generation, Cromwell tried to live up to them. When Mazarin, the
great French cardinal, in responding to Cromwell’s call for toleration
of the Vaudois, asked toleration for English Catholics, Cromwell
answered, truly, that he had done all he could in face of the hostile
spirit of the people, and more than had before been done in England. Of
course the position of the English Catholics was beyond all comparison
better than that of the Vaudois; but in such a controversy the ugly fact
was that neither side would grant to others what it demanded for itself.
To the most persecuted of all peoples Cromwell did render a signal
service. He connived at the settlement of Jews in London, after having
in vain sought to bring about their open toleration.
[Illustration:
Henry Cromwell,
Son of the Protector, and Governor of Ireland.
From the miniature by S. Cooper at Palmerstown.
By permission of the Earl of Mayo.
]
In Scotland, the rule of the Protector wrought unmixed good. There was
no persecution and no interference with religious liberty, save in so
far as the restraint of persecution and intolerance could itself be
called such. Monk, and Dean, after him, as Cromwell’s lieutenants, did
excellent work, and even cautiously endeavored to mitigate the horrors
of the persecutions for witchcraft—for these horrible manifestations of
superstition were then in full force in Scotland, even more than in
either old or New England.
On the whole, then, England and Scotland fared well under Oliver
Cromwell—“Old Noll,” as he was affectionately called by his mainstay,
the army. In Ireland, the case was different. Materially, even in
Ireland, the conditions greatly improved during the Protectorate,
because order was rigidly preserved and law enforced; and any system
which secured order and law was bound to bring about a temporary
bettering of conditions when contrasted with the frightful anarchy which
had preceded it. Anarchy always serves simply as the handmaiden of
despotism, as those who bring it about should know. But the religious
element in the Irish problem rendered it insoluble by the means then
adopted for its solution. Cromwell was not responsible for introducing
the methods known by his name. They were the methods then universally in
use by the representatives of every victorious nationality or religion,
in dealing with a beaten foe. The only difference was that Cromwell’s
immense energy and power enabled him to apply them with dreadful
effectiveness.
In England, Cromwell stood for religious toleration, so far as he was
able. Fanatics who thought themselves incarnations of the Saviour, or
prophets of a new dispensation, or who indulged in indecent or seditious
conduct, or who disturbed the public peace by breaking into regular
churches, of course had to be suppressed. Nowadays, most offenders of
this type would be ignored, and, if not, they would simply be arrested
by the police, in the course of the ordinary exercise of the police
power, just as any other disturbers of the peace are arrested. In those
days, however, such offenders would have been punished with death in
Spain, Italy, or Austria; and, indeed, in most continental countries. In
the England of Cromwell, they were merely temporarily imprisoned. The
attitude of mind, both of the public generally and of the best and most
religious people, toward Unitarians, Socinians, and those who would
nowadays be called Free-Thinkers, was purely mediæval; and even Cromwell
could only moderate the persecution to which they were subjected. But
these were minor exceptions. For the majority of the people in England,
there was religious liberty; and for the bulk of the minority, though
there was not complete religious liberty, there was a nearer approach to
it than obtained in Continental Europe.
In Ireland, on the other hand, the public exercise of the faith of the
enormous majority was prohibited, and their religious teachers expelled.
There is a popular belief that under Cromwell all Irishmen were expelled
from three-fourths of the island, and driven into Connaught, their
places being taken by English and Scotch immigrants. While exceedingly
cruel, this would have been an understandable policy, and would have
resulted in the substitution of one race and one creed for another race
and another creed throughout the major part of the island. What was
actually done, however, combined cruelty with ultimate inefficiency; it
caused great immediate suffering, while perpetuating exactly the
conditions against which it was supposed to provide. The Catholic
landholders were, speaking generally, driven into Connaught, and the
priests expelled, while the peasants, laborers, and artisans were left
as they were, but of course deprived of all the leadership which could
give them a lift upward. In Ulster there had been a considerable
substitution of one race for the other, among the actual tillers and
occupiers of the soil. Under Cromwell, the change elsewhere consisted in
the bringing in of alien landlords. In other words, to the already
existing antagonism of race, creed, and speech, was added the antagonism
of caste. The property-holder, the landlord, the man of means, was an
Englishman by race and speech, and a Protestant by faith; while the mass
of the laborers roundabout him were Catholic Celts who spoke Erse. Ultra
admirers of Cromwell and the Puritans have actually spoken as if this
plan, provided only that it had been allowed to work long enough, would
have produced a Puritan Ireland. There was never the remotest chance of
its producing such an effect. The mass of the Irish, when all their
native teachers were removed, did gradually tend to adopt English as
their tongue, but their devotion to their own faith, and their hatred of
English rule, were merely intensified; while the course of the governing
race was such as absolutely to insure the land troubles which have riven
Ireland up to the present day. The very unedifying intolerance of the
Protestant sects toward one another was manifested as strongly in
Cromwell’s time as later. It must be said for him that he did not, like
his successors for generations, shape English policy toward Ireland on
the lines of Spain’s policy toward her own colonies, and oppress the
Protestant descendants of the English in Ireland only less than the
native Irish themselves; but the great central fact remains that his
Irish policy was one of bitter oppression, and that the abhorrence with
which the Irish, to this day, speak of “the curse o’ Crummle,” is
historically justifiable.
It is a relief to turn from the Cromwellian policy in Ireland to the
Cromwellian policy in foreign affairs. England never stood higher in her
relations with the outside world than she stood under Cromwell; a height
all the more noteworthy because it lay between the two abysses marked by
the policy of the earlier and the later Stuart kings. The French
biographer of the great Turenne, du Buisson, Major of the Regiment de
Verdelin, writing in the days of Charles II., when England was despised
rather than hated on the Continent, spoke with a mixture of horror and
fear of Cromwell, as the man who “_après l’attentat le plus énorme dont
on a jamais ouï parler, avoit trouvé le secret de se faire craindre, non
seulement des Anglois, mais encore des Princes voisins_.” This was
written as expressing the attitude of the power with which he was in
alliance, and from it may be gathered how those felt who were opposed to
him.
Cromwell’s strong religious feelings and military instincts, alike bade
him meddle in the policy of the Continent. The era of the great
religious wars was closed. More than a century was to pass before the
era of religious persecution was to cease, but the time had gone by when
one Christian country would try, by force of arms, to conquer another
for the purpose of stamping out its religious belief. Cromwell, however,
did not see this, and he naturally chose as his special opponent the
power which itself was equally blind to the fact—that is, Spain. Beyond
a question, he was influenced partly by the commercial and material
interests of England in the policy he pursued, but the religious motive
was uppermost in his own mind, and he never could get over the feeling
that it ought to be uppermost in the minds of everyone else. The very
able Swedish King, Charles X., was then pursuing the fatal policy of the
Swedish kings of that century, and was endeavoring to conquer territory
at the expense of the Danes and North Germans, instead of establishing,
to the east and southeast of the Baltic, a dominion which could hold its
own against Russia. Cromwell selected the Swede as the natural enemy of
Antichrist, and wished to back him in a general religious war. He was
amusingly irritated with the English, because they would not feel as he
did, and even more with the Dutch, Danes, and Brandenburgers for
declining to let themselves be made the tools of the northern king’s
ambition.
[Illustration:
The Last Charge of the Ironsides.
At the Battle of Dunkirk the Ironsides—as usual singing psalms—charged
the Spanish Cavalry (who were in retreat) and literally cut them to
pieces.
]
The great European struggle of the day, however, was that between Spain
and France, and for some time Cromwell hesitated which side to take. He
has often been blamed for not striking against France, the rising power,
whose then youthful king was at a later day to threaten all Europe, and
only to be held in check by coalitions in which England was the chief
figure. But, though France persecuted the Huguenots more or less, just
as England did the Irish Catholics, she was far more advanced than
Spain, which was the most bigoted and reactionary power of Europe, both
in religion and in politics. The Spanish empire was still very great.
Though her power on sea had gone, on land she had on the whole held her
own against the French armies, and, with England as her ally, she might
for the time being have remained the leading power of the Continent.
This would have been a frightful calamity, and Cromwell was right in
throwing the weight of his sword on the other side of the scale.
His decision enabled him to do one of the most righteous of his many
righteous deeds. It was at this time that the Duke of Savoy, under
ecclesiastical pressure, indulged in dreadful persecutions of the humble
Protestants of the Vaudois valleys; persecutions which called forth the
noblest of Milton’s sonnets. Oliver interfered, with fiery indignation,
on behalf of the Vaudois, threatening that if the persecutions continued
he would not only bring the pressure of the English arms to bear, but
would hire a great force of mercenaries among the Protestant Swiss to
invade the territory of the Duke of Savoy. Largely through the influence
of Mazarin he succeeded in having the wrong partially undone; and later,
in the middle of the operations against the Spanish armies, he again
interfered, effectively, with the Cardinal-Statesman on behalf of his
obscure and helpless co-religionists in the remote mountain valleys.
This action was purely disinterested; and those who are loudest in their
denunciation of Cromwell would do well to remember that, if the European
rulers at the end of the nineteenth century had possessed his capacity
for generous indignation on behalf of the oppressed, the Armenian
massacres either would never have taken place, or would have been
followed by the immediate expulsion of the Turk from Europe.
Oliver’s first contest with the Spaniards was carried on by sea, the
great Puritan Admiral, Blake, winning renown by his victory over the
forts at Santa Cruz, as he had already won renown by the way in which he
crushed the forces of Tunis, and for the first time taught the Moors to
respect English arms. An expedition against San Domingo by Penn and
Venables failed, the English leaders being treacherous and inefficient,
but it resulted in the capture of Jamaica and the founding of English
power in the West Indies. On land, as the result of the convention with
France, the English fleet deprived the Spaniards in the Netherlands of
assistance from the sea, while an English force of 6,000 troops, clad in
the red uniform which has since become distinctive of the British army,
was sent to serve under Turenne. They overthrew the flower of the
Spanish infantry, and won the heartiest praise from the great French
leader. The help given by Cromwell was decisive; the Spaniards were
beaten and forced to make peace. By this peace France became the first
power on the Continent, but a power heartily afraid of England while
Cromwell lived, and obliged to yield him Dunkirk as the price of his
services. The possession of Dunkirk put a complete stop to the piracy
which had ravaged British commerce, and gave to Cromwell a foothold on
the Continent which rendered him able to enforce from his neighbors
whatever consideration the honor and interest of England demanded.
Meanwhile, the tone of his Court was a model of purity and honesty.
Alone among the Courts of Europe in that age, under Cromwell no man
could rise who was profligate in private life, or corrupt in public
life. How he had risen socially is shown by the fact that his remaining
daughters now married into the nobility. His domestic relations were
exceptionally tender and beautiful, and his grief at the loss of his
mother and his favorite daughter—his favorite son was already dead—was
very great. His letters to and about his sons are just what such letters
should be. He explains that he does not grudge them “laudable
recreations nor honorable carriage in them,” nor any legitimate expense,
but that he does emphatically protest against “pleasure and
self-satisfaction being made the business of a man’s life.”
The time had now come, however, when Oliver was to leave alike the
family for whom he had so affectionately cared, and the nation he had
loved and ruled, and go before the God to whom he ever felt himself
accountable. When 1658 opened, peace and order obtained at home, and the
crown had been put to England’s glory abroad by the victories in
Flanders and the cession of Dunkirk. There was not the slightest chance
of Cromwell’s hold on the nation being shaken. So far as human eye could
see, his policy was sure to triumph, as long as he lived; but he was
weakened by his hard and strenuous life, and the fever, by which he had
been harassed during his later campaigns, came on him with renewed
force. Even his giant strength had been overtaxed by the task of ruling
England alone, and, as he conscientiously believed, for her highest
interest. Supreme though his triumph seemed to outsiders, he himself
knew that he had failed to make the effects of this triumph lasting,
though he never seems to have suspected that his failure was due to his
incapacity to subordinate his own imperious will so that he might work
with others. He saw clearly the chaos into which his death would plunge
England, and he did not wish to die; but as he grew weaker he felt that
his hour was come, and surrendered himself to the inevitable.
“I would be willing to live to be further serviceable to God and His
people,” muttered the dying ruler, showing, as ever, his strange mixture
of belief in himself and trust in the Most High; “but my work is done!
Yet God will be with His people!”
September came in with a terrible storm, the like of which had rarely
been known in England, and as it subsided, on September 3d, the day
which had witnessed the victories of Dunbar and Worcester, the soul of
the greatest man who has ruled England, since the days of the Conquest,
passed quietly away.[2]
Footnote 2:
In the queer little weekly paper “The Commonwealth Mercury,” of the
issue “From Thursday September 2d to Thursday September 9th, 1658,”
which contains an account of Cromwell’s death and of his son’s
installation, it happens that there is also an advertisement of a
pamphlet: “A few sighs from Hell, or the Groans of a damned Soul: By
that poor servant of Jesus Christ, John Bunyan.” Cromwell, Milton,
Bunyan—what can non-Puritan England, of their day, show to match these
three names?
With his death came the chaos he had foreseen, though he had not
foreseen that it could be averted only by the substitution of some form
of self-government by the people, for the arbitrary rule of one
man—however great and good that man might be. For a few months his son,
Richard, ruled as Protector in his stead, but, the Protectorate having
become in effect a despotism, it was sure to slip from any but Oliver’s
iron grasp. Richard called a Parliament, but Parliaments had been
hopelessly discredited by Oliver’s method of dealing with them. The army
revolted, forced the dismissal of the Parliament, and then the
abdication of Richard. Richard’s abler brother, Henry, who was governing
Ireland as deputy, resigned also, and the Cromwells passed out of
history.
[Illustration:
Richard Cromwell.
Painter unknown.
By permission of Sir Charles Hartopp, Bart.
]
For some months there was confusion worse confounded, and the whole
nation turned toward Charles II., and the re-establishment of the Stuart
kingship. Monk, the ablest of Cromwell’s generals, a soldier who cared
little for forms of civil government, who had already fought for the
Stuarts against the Parliament, and who would have stood by Richard had
Richard possessed the strength to stand by himself, threw his weight in
favor of the exiled king, and thereby prevented the slightest chance of
opposition. Charles II. returned, greeted with transports of frantic
delight by seemingly almost the whole people.
The King and his followers then took revenge on the dead body of the man
whose living eyes they had never dared to face. The bones of Cromwell,
of his mother, and of Ireton, were disinterred and thrown into a
lime-pit; and the head of the great Protector was placed on a pole over
Westminster Hall, there to stand for twenty years.
The skull of the mighty crown-grasper, before whose untamable soul they
had shuddered in terror, was now set on high as a target for the jeering
mockery of all who sang the praises of the line of libertines and bigots
to whom the English throne had been restored. For twenty-eight shameful
years the Restoration lasted; years of misgovernment and persecution at
home, of weakness abroad, of oppression of the weak, and obsequious
servility to the strong; years when the Court of England—devoid of one
spark of true greatness of any kind—was a scene of tawdry and obscene
frivolity. Then, once again, the principles for which, in the last
analysis, Cromwell and the Puritans stood, triumphed; the Dutch
stadtholder came over the narrow seas to ascend the throne of England;
and once more the current of her national life set toward political,
intellectual, and religious liberty.
Cromwell and the Puritans had gone too far, and the reaction against
them had been so violent that those who called William of Orange into
England dared not invoke the memory of the mighty dead lest they should
hurt the cause of the living. Nevertheless, the Revolution of 1688 was
in reality but the carrying on of the work which had been done in the
middle of the century. James II. could never have been deposed had not
Charles I. been executed. The men of the second Revolution had learned
the moderation which the men of the first had lacked. They were careful
not to kill the king of whom they wished to rid themselves; for though,
by every principle of equity, a tyrant who has goaded his people into
Revolution—like the leader of an unjustifiable rebellion—should suffer
the fate which he has brought on so many others, yet, as a matter of
fact, it is often unwise to treat him as he deserves, because he has
become a symbol to his followers, each of whom identifies himself with
the man whose cause he has been supporting, and in whose name he has
been fighting, and resents, with passionate indignation, any punishment
visited upon his chief as a wrong in which he personally shares. The men
of 1688 were, as a whole, actuated by far less lofty motives than the
men of 1648; but they possessed the inestimable advantages of
common-sense, of moderation, of readiness to accept compromises. They
made no attempt to realize the reign of the saints upon earth; and
therefore they were able to work a permanent betterment in mundane
affairs, and to avoid provoking a violent reaction. William, both by
position and by temper, was far better fitted than great Oliver to
submit to interference with his plans, to get on with representative
bodies of freemen, and to make the best he could out of each situation
as it arose, instead of indignantly setting his own will above law and
above the will of the majority, because for the moment the result might
be better for himself and the nation. Speaker Reed once said, that “in
the long run, the average sense of the many is better for the many than
the best sense of any one man;” and this is undoubtedly true of all
people sufficiently high in the scale to be fit for self-government.
Oliver surely strove to live up to his lights as he saw them. He never
acted in levity, or from mere motives of personal aggrandizement, and he
saw, with sad, piercing eyes, the dangers that rolled around the path he
had chosen. He acted as he did because he conscientiously felt that only
thus could he meet the needs of the nation. He said to the second
Protectorate Parliament: “I am a man standing in the place I am in;
which place I undertook, not so much out of hope of doing any good, as
out of a desire to prevent mischief and evil—which I did see was
imminent on the nation (for we were running along into confusion and
disorder, and would have necessarily run into blood).”
[Illustration:
Exterior of Westminster Hall.
After Charles II. succeeded to the throne, the bones of Cromwell were
disinterred and his head exposed upon a pole over Westminster Hall,
almost on the identical spot where the Cromwell statue, shown in the
right of the drawing, has just been erected.
]
We are often told that the best of all possible governments would be a
benevolent despotism. Oliver’s failure is a sufficient commentary upon
this dictum of the parlor doctrinaires. There never has been, and
probably never will be, another despotism where the despot so sincerely
strove to do, for a people capable of some measure of freedom, better
than they themselves would have done with that freedom. The truth is,
that a strong nation can only be saved by itself, and not by a strong
man, though it can be greatly aided and guided by a strong man. A weak
nation may be doomed anyhow, or it may find its sole refuge in a despot;
a nation struggling out of darkness may be able to take its first steps
only by the help of a master hand, as was true of Russia, under Peter
the Great; and if a nation, whether free or unfree, loses the capacity
for self-government, loses the spirit of sobriety and of orderly
liberty, then it has no cause to complain of tyranny; but a really great
people, a people really capable of freedom and of doing mighty deeds in
the world, must work out its own destiny, and must find men who will be
its leaders—not its masters. Cromwell could, in all probability, have
been such a leader at the end as he was during his early years of public
life; and when he permitted himself to fall from the position of a
leader among free men, to that of a master over men for whose welfare he
sincerely strove, but in whose freedom he did not believe, he marred the
great work he had done. Nevertheless, it was a very great work. There
are dark blots on his career—especially his Irish policy—but on the
whole he was a mighty force for good and against evil, and the good that
he did, though buried for the moment with his bones, rose again and has
lived for ever since, while the evil has long withered, or is now
withering. The English-speaking peoples are free, and for good or for
ill hold their destinies in their own hands.
The effect of the attitude which not only the Puritans, but all other
Englishmen of every creed, assumed toward Ireland from the days of Queen
Mary to the days of King George the Fourth, was such as to steep the
island in centuries of misery, and to leave in her people a bitter and
enduring hatred against England. Yet this attitude has produced one
result of the most unforeseen kind. Had the Irish remained a Celtic
nation, separate in speech and government from Great Britain, they could
have had no share in the expansion of the English race, or at least
could have played only a very subordinate part. As it is, in the great
English-speaking commonwealths that have grown up in North America and
Australasia, the descendants of the Irish now stand on an exact equality
with those of the Scotch and English, and furnish their full proportion
of leadership in the government of the communities; while in all these
English-speaking countries the Catholic Church has become one of the
leading churches and has had its course of development determined by the
fact that the controlling force within it has been Irish. The English
Protestants failed to impress their creed upon Ireland, but they did
impress their language, and did bring Ireland under their own government
The strange outcome has been that the creed they hated now flourishes
side by side, on equal terms, with the creeds they professed, in the
distant continents held in common by their children and by the children
of those against whom they warred. In these new continents all,
Catholics and Protestants alike, are wedded to the principles of
political liberty for which the Puritans fought, and have grown to
extend to all creeds the principles of religious liberty in which only
the best and most advanced Puritans believed. Let us most earnestly hope
that, while avoiding the Puritan fanaticism and intolerance, the Puritan
lack of charity and narrowness, we may not lose the Puritan loftiness of
soul and stern energy in striving for the right, than which no nation
could ever have more precious heritages.
With Oliver’s death his memory passed under a cloud, through which his
greatness was to be but dimly seen until generations of men had lived
and died. He left many descendants, and there are now in England, and
also in America, and possibly Australia, very many men and women, in all
ranks of life, who have his blood in their veins—though in the direct
line his name has died out. Even during the present century, when among
the English upper classes it was still customary to speak of him with
horror, his very descendants in certain families felt keen shame for the
deeds of their great forefather. With a childishness in no way above
that of a Congo savage, it was actually the fashion in some of these
families to make the children do penance on the anniversary of the death
of Charles II., as a kind of atonement for the deeds of Cromwell. The
grotesque nature of this performance is added to by the fact that in
that very society a peculiarly high place of honor was accorded to the
titled descendants of Charles II. and his mistresses. One hardly knows
whether to be most amused or indignant at such fantastic incapacity to
appreciate what was really noble and what really ignoble. The men among
whom such false conventions obtained could not be expected to see in its
true proportions the form of mighty Oliver, looming ever larger across
the intervening centuries. Sooner or later, justice will be done him;
sooner or later, he will be recognized, not only as one of the greatest
of all Englishmen, and by far the greatest ruler of England itself, but
as a man who, in times that tried men’s souls, dealt with vast questions
and solved tremendous problems; a man who erred, who was guilty of many
shortcomings, but who strove mightily toward the light as it was given
him to see the light; a man who had the welfare of his countrymen and
the greatness of his country very close to his heart, and who sought to
make the great laws of righteousness living forces in the government of
the world.
[Illustration:
Oliver Cromwell.
From the bust by Bernini, presented to the House of Commons by Charles
Wertheimer, Esq.
From a photograph, by permission of the donor.
]
THE END.
INDEX
Abolition, in United States, 193
Abolitionists, 103, 192
Adamses, the, 36
Agathokles, 210
Ale-houses, suppressed under Protectorate, 213, 214
Alva, 156
America, Protestants and Catholics in, 12;
freedom from militarism in eighteenth century, 19;
power of compromise after Revolution, 100;
true greatness of, 179;
city government in, 214;
Cromwell’s descendants in, 239
American Civil War, compared with English Civil Wars, 5, 6, 61, 62;
citizen soldiers in, 64;
West Point in, 67;
cavalry in, 70;
compromises after, 102;
generosity of victors, 216
American Revolution, War of the, comparisons with English Revolution of
1688, 6;
with English Civil Wars, 61;
its citizen soldiers, 64;
regular soldiery, 91;
compromises after, 100;
Washington, 101;
events preceding, 114;
Continental Congress in, 177;
clemency following, 217
Americans, majority rule natural to, 25;
regicide sentimentalists among, 138;
religious toleration, 161;
character of, in eighteenth century, 190
Anabaptists, 77, 103, 143, 213, 220
Anglican Church, its Presbyterian trend under Elizabeth, 23;
its influence on Charles I.’s Third Parliament, 29
Antichrist, 226
Appomattox, Sheridan at, 171
Argyle, joins Whigamore raid, 130;
ally of Cromwell, 131
Armenian massacres, 228
Arminianism, in Holland, 12
Arminius, 12
Army, the Cavalier, 64
Army, American Continental, 102
Army, the English, in Civil Wars, composition of, 60;
first raised by nobles, 63;
reorganization of Parliamentary forces, 94;
character in Charles I.’s time, 107;
dissensions, 108, 111 _et seq._;
its strength against the Parliament, 116;
its struggles with the King and Parliament, 117 _et seq._;
its spirit, 121;
odds against it in Second Civil War, 124;
Charles I.’s negotiations with, 134;
march into London, 136;
revolt suppressed by Cromwell, 144;
its distinctive character, 145;
its influence in Long Parliament, 177 _et seq._;
offset by navy, 184;
rejects Parliamentary measures, 185;
supports Cromwell, 189;
attitude under Protectorate, 199;
protests against Cromwell’s accepting Kingship, 215;
serves under Turenne, 229;
revolts against Richard Cromwell, 232
Army, the Scottish, gives up Charles I., 117
Artillery, chief means of assault in Cromwell’s time, 59
Assembly, formed under Protectorate, 189, 191 _et seq._
Associations, of counties, 63;
assessed for Parliamentarians, 79.
_See also Eastern Association_
Astley, Sir Jacob, quoted, 99
Aston, Sir Arthur, at Drogheda, 153, 154
Atlantic Ocean, the, 179
Australasia, 238;
English expansion there, 238
Australia, Cromwell’s descendants in, 239
Australians, in South Africa, 67
Balgony, Lord, at Marston Moor, 88
Baltic Sea, the, 226
Baptists, the, origin under James I., 23;
tolerated by Cromwell, 78;
army sentiment toward, 108;
Parliamentary hatred of, 116;
under the Protectorate, 200
Barbadoes, Irish sent as slaves there, 153
Barbon, “Praise-God,” 191
“Barebones” Parliament, formation of, 191, 193 _et seq._;
attacks Courts of Chancery, 200, 212
Basing House, capture of, 98
Baxter, 74
Beard, Thomas, Cromwell’s tutor, 44
Bedford, Earl of, 45
Bench and bar, courage in, 181
Berwick, seized by Royalists, 121
Bishops, the, attitude of, toward Thirty Years’ War, 30;
Parliamentary resolutions against, 31;
army sentiment toward, 108
Bishops’ Wars, the cause of, 40;
Scotch share in, 124
Blake, Admiral, in Parliament, 116;
defeats Prince Rupert, 130;
his great fame, 182, 183, 184;
his indifference toward Cromwell, 201;
his victory at Santa Cruz, 228
Boers, as soldiers, 67;
belated Cromwellians, 144;
compared with Covenanters, 165
Border, the, in Civil Wars, 55, 84, 130, 131, 174
Boston, U. S. A., regicide sentimentalism in, 138
Boston Harbor, tea thrown overboard in, 35
Bouchier, Elizabeth, wife of Oliver Cromwell, 43
Brandenburgers, 226
Breast-pieces, 60
Bristol, capture of, 98;
Cromwell’s letter from, 105, 106
British Islands, the Commonwealth in, 177
Buchanan, President, his views on secession, 164
Buckingham, Duke of, his corrupt ministry, 26;
his assassination, 28
Buff coats, uniform of Parliamentarians, 60, 64;
worn by Royalists at Winchester, 83
Buisson, de, quoted, 225
Bunyan, John, 69, 232, note
Bureau of Intelligence, Chief of.
_See Scout-master_
Burleigh House, taken by Parliamentarians, 81
Byzantine Emperors, 172
Cadiz, Charles I.’s expedition against, 26
Calvin, his zeal for righteousness, 7
Calvinism, in Holland, 12;
its influence in England, 29;
in Scotland, 165
Calvinists, their intolerance of Roman Catholics, 13
Cambridge, University of, Cromwell’s residence there, 42, 43;
its plate seized by Cromwellians, 70
Canadians, in South Africa, 67
Cannon, Cromwell’s lack of, at Pembroke, 22
Captain-General, Cromwell’s office of, 163, 189
Carbines, 60;
discarded by Cromwellians, 79
Carlyle, taken by Royalists, 121
Carlyle, Thomas, his opinion of Cromwell, 1, 2;
of Puritanism, 2;
on regicide, 140
Carnworth, Earl of, 96
Casques, 64
Catholic Church, its recognition in Ireland demanded by the Pope, 148;
modern greatness of, 238
Catholics, aimed at by Third Parliament, 31;
unite with Royalists and Presbyterians in Ireland, 120, 122;
character of, in Ireland, 146;
aid of, for Charles II., 147;
dissensions in Ireland, 146–149;
Cromwellian hatred of, 152, 161;
persecutions of, 217, 218;
Mazarin’s plea for them in England, 220;
as landholders in Ireland, 223;
their share in British expansion to-day, 239.
_See also Roman Catholics_
Cavaliers, dress of, 64;
at Grantham, 79, 80;
at Marston Moor, 88;
at Naseby, 96;
rising against army, 120;
support Charles I. in the North, 121;
Cromwell’s opinion of, 123;
allegiance to Charles II. in Scotland, 172;
at Stirling, 174;
at Worcester, 175
Cavalry, its superiority to infantry, 59, 60;
among the Royalists, 70;
horse the true weapon of, 79;
at Gainsborough, 82;
Scotch at Marston Moor, 87, 88;
Naseby, 96;
Ironsides spirit in, 107;
Hamilton’s, 122;
at Preston, 127
Cavendish, Lord, at Gainsborough, 81, 82
Celtic, 16, 224
Celts, the, 16, 146, 224
Censorship of press, established under Protectorate, 216
Charles I., his ignoble peace, 19;
his private character, 25;
helplessness of English arms under his rule, 26;
his Third Parliament, 27;
yields to Petition of Right, 28;
his dissolution of his Third Parliament, 31;
rejects Petition of Right, 32;
embarks on Bishops’ Wars, 40;
his attitude toward the Long Parliament, 51;
betrays Strafford, 52;
makes terms with the Scotch, 55;
imprisons Puritan leaders, 57;
his adherents in the Commons, 61;
marches on London, 71;
turn of tide in his favor, 79;
makes overtures to the Irish, 84;
defeats Waller at Copredy Bridge, 91;
his army at Newbury, 92;
at Naseby, 95–97;
surrenders to Scotch army, 98;
English servility toward him, 101;
his treachery, 104;
supported by Presbyterians, 109;
“the man of blood,” 114;
his non-acceptance of his defeat, 115;
negotiates with the army and Parliament, 117 _et seq._;
Cromwell attempts terms with him, 119;
Yorkshire support for, 121;
Scotch attitude toward him, 123;
his tenacity, 132;
negotiations with the army, 134;
he rejects Fairfax’s proposals, 135;
his trial for treason, 136;
beheaded, 137;
his character, 137–140;
his policy in Ireland, 146;
Catholic allegiance to him, 147;
his imprisonment, 148;
effect of his execution on Ireland, 150;
his death due to Parliamentarians, 178;
his execution, 217;
anniversary of his death observed, 240
Charles II., the fleet loyal to him, 130;
proclaimed King at Cork, 150;
the Scotch declare for him, 162;
lands in Scotland, 165 _et seq._;
supported by Scotch Cavaliers, 172;
crosses into England, 174;
his escape from Worcester, 175;
his exile, 178;
influences for his restoration, 209;
England in his time, 225;
his re-establishment, 232;
his mistresses, 240
Charles X., of Sweden, 226
Chester, seized by Royalists, 121;
negotiations there, 148
Christianity, heterodoxy in Parliamentary, 108
Church and State, Puritan theories of, 114;
reform in, 195
Churchmen, arbitrary power of, 161
Civil War.
_See American Civil War_
Civil War, First English, the fiery ordeal of, 20;
begun by Charles, 57;
its chief leaders cavalrymen, 60;
its blunders contrasted with American Civil War, 62;
English soldiery in, 91;
its slow progress, 94;
type of its generals, 95;
practically ends at Naseby, 97;
its effects on Cromwell, 104;
Irish share in, 122;
exchange of prisoners, 128
Civil War, Second English, its beginning, 121;
ended at Preston, 130;
results, 131;
Carlyle’s opinion of, 235
Clergy, 78, 92;
threatened by Protectorate Assembly, 193
Clonmel, capture of, 162
Clubmen, peasant organization, 62
Cock-fighting, suppressed under Protectorate, 213
Colchester, seized by Royalists, 121;
capitulation of, 130
Colonial policy, Spain’s, 224
Colonial possessions, Spanish, 227;
Dutch, 17, 18, 182
Commercial policy, Cromwell’s, in war against Spain, 226
Committee of Both Kingdoms, the, 85, 92
Committee of Correspondence, in American Revolution, 114
Committee of the Eastern Association, 85
Common law, the, under the Protectorate, 200
Commons, House of, declares against tonnage and poundage, 31;
triennial meetings, 54;
favored by London, 57;
its adherents of the King, 61;
Cromwell’s share in, 93;
the Independents, 116;
defies the army, 118, 135;
disregards Lords in the King’s trial, 136;
Parliamentarian leaders, 185;
Republicans, 204;
agreement with Cromwell, 205.
_See also Parliament; Long Parliament, etc._
Commonwealth, established, 6;
reorganizes its forces, 93;
its supremacy, 139;
its character, 141;
European attitude against it, 143;
Cromwell its main support, 163;
authority, 177;
its religionist enemies, 198;
civil rights under it, 217
_Commonwealth Mercury, The_, 232, note
Compromise, Parliamentary incapacity for, 101;
after American Civil War, 102
Confederacy, the, of American Southern States, 72, 92
Confederates in Ireland, 150
Congregationalists, origin under Elizabeth, 23;
identified with Independent party, 49;
tolerated by Cromwell, 78;
in Parliament, 108;
Parliamentarian hatred of, 116;
under the Protectorate, 200
Congress, the American Continental, compared with Cromwellian
Parliaments, 102, 103, 114, 177
Connaught, 223
Conquest, the [Norman], 232
Constitution, the American, 189, 193, 196, 198
Constitution, English, 135;
under the Assembly, 195, 198;
under the Protectorate, 205
“Constitution-mongers,” Carlyle’s sneer at, 5
Continent, the, character of its armies, 60;
Cromwell’s interest in its politics, 225;
the power of France on, 229
Continental Army, the American, 102
Convention, Constitutional, in U. S., 189;
in English Assembly, 192–195
Coote, holds Derry for Parliamentarians, 150
Copredy Bridge, Battle of, 91
Cork, Charles II. proclaimed King there, 150;
Cromwell’s letter from there, 160
Cornwall, neutrality of, 63
Cotton, John, Cromwell’s letter to, 179
Council of Officers, in English Assembly, 195, 197 _et seq._
Council, the, in Parliamentary army, 114
Council of State, the, 189, 195
Court, purity of Cromwellian, 229;
disgracefulness under Restoration, 230
Courts of Chancery, English, 181, 192, 200
Covenant, National, of Scotland, the, 39;
taken by Parliamentarians, 78;
by English troopers, 84;
Hamiltonian devotion to, 123;
taken by Ulster Scotch, 148;
Fairfax declines campaign against, 163;
oath taken by Charles II., 165;
Cromwell’s exposition of, 172 _et seq._
Covenanters, the Scotch, defeated by Cromwell, 75;
intolerance of sectaries, 116;
treatment of Charles II., 165;
oppose Puritans at Dunbar, 170;
persecuted by Episcopalians, 217
Creed, in United States, 2, 9;
in Ireland, 224, 239
Cromwell, Bridget, daughter of Oliver, married to Ireton, 105
Cromwell, Elizabeth Steward, mother of Oliver, 42, 233
Cromwell, Henry, son of Oliver, 232
Cromwell, Oliver, his fame, 1;
forces which produced him, 7;
youth and early manhood, 14;
seat in Long Parliament, 41;
parentage and birth, 42;
his marriage, 43;
his Puritanism, 43;
hatred of Church of Rome, 44, 56;
removes to Ely, 45;
supports Petition of Rights, 45;
his indifference to political theory, 46;
his piety, 47;
his religion, 48;
personality, 50;
impatience of system, 53;
his suspicion of the Episcopacy, 56;
captain in 67th Regiment, 58;
his kinsmen at the battle of Nottingham, 58;
his troops, 65;
his military genius, 68;
his troop of horse, 70, 72, 73–75;
promoted to a colonelcy, 74;
his letters, 76;
his tolerant spirit, 77;
bearing toward Episcopalians, 78;
as cavalry commander, 79;
dubbed Ironsides by Rupert, 81;
his relief of Gainsborough, 82;
at Winceby, 83;
his generalship, 84;
member of Committee of Both Kingdoms, 85;
at Marston Moor, 87–90;
his training of troops, 91;
distrusted by Presbyterians, 92;
the real head of the army, 94;
Montrose not comparable with him, 95;
at Naseby, 96 _et seq._;
takes Winchester, 98;
his rule after First Civil War, 99;
compared with William III., 101 _et seq._;
his uncompromising spirit, 102;
his children’s marriages, 104;
his religious spirit, 105;
his letters and speeches, 105, 106;
on reconstruction, 109 _et seq._;
not extreme against Charles, 114;
efforts toward agreement with King and Parliament, 118;
favors army against Parliamentarians, 119;
at Pembroke, 121;
his view of the Scotch, 123;
his reception at Edinburgh, 131;
his position at close of Civil Wars, 132;
motives for joining Independents, 133–135;
favors the regicide, 137, 139–140;
his ambition, 142;
his army, 145;
his Irish campaign, 151 _et seq._;
his cruelty at Drogheda, 155;
Wexford, 158;
contradictions of his character, 159 _et seq._;
letter to John Cotton, 160;
excellent conduct of Irish campaign, 162;
summoned from Ireland by Parliament, 163;
advances on and retreats from Edinburgh, 167 _et seq._;
at Dunbar, 170–172;
his dispute with the Kirk party, 172 _et seq._;
his clemency, 174;
attacks Charles II. at Worcester, 175;
champions Independents, 179;
policy toward Parliamentarians, 180 _et seq._;
his views on Dutch War, 184;
defeats non-reëlection bill, 186;
his statesmanship, 188 _et seq._;
his sermon to the Assembly, 191 _et seq._;
despotism, 195;
first Protector, 197, 199;
his peace with the Dutch, 201;
his conflict with Parliament, 202 _et seq._;
his government a tyranny, 210 _et seq._;
suppresses the ale-houses, 213, 214;
declines the Kingship, 215;
his views on liberty, 219;
interferes in Continental affairs, 225 _et seq._;
revenges Vaudois massacres, 227, 228;
contests Spain on the sea, 228;
his court, 229;
last illness, 230, 231;
death, 232;
desecration of his remains by Restorationists, 233;
compared with William III., 235;
political ideals, 236 _et seq._;
cruelty of his Irish policy, 237;
posthumous reputation, 239
Cromwell, Richard, son of Oliver, as Protector, 232
Cromwell, Robert, father of Oliver, 42; his death, 43
“Crummle, the curse o’,” 225.
_See Cromwell, Oliver, and Ireland_
Cuirassiers, use in Parliamentary army, 60;
at Winceby, 83;
the Scotch at Marston Moor, 88
Czars, the, 9
Danes, the, Charles X.’s war against, 226
Dean, Colonel, at Preston, 126;
in Dutch War, 183;
his rule in Scotland, 221
Death penalty, a cause of sentimentalism, 137, 138;
its justice on tyrants, 234, 235
Declaration, Cromwell’s, in Ireland, 159, 161
Democracy, Cromwell’s bearing toward, 211
Derry, siege of, 150;
supports Parliamentarians, 152
De Ruyter, 182
Despotism, under republics, 22;
under the Stuarts, 28;
under Cromwell, 213;
a subject of doctrinaire notions, 236
Discipline, a military necessity, 91;
a source of soldiers’ ties, 107;
rigidly enforced by Cromwell, 152
Dissenters, persecuted under Elizabeth, 23;
aimed at by Third Parliament, 31;
position under the Protectorate, 200
Dragoons, 60, 79;
Royalists at Winceby, 83
Drake, 14, 18
Dreyfus case, the, 22
Drilling, excellence of Cromwell’s troops at Winceby, 83
Drogheda, siege of, 41, 48, 150;
Parliamentarian atrocities there, 153 _et seq._, 160
Dublin, Puritan rule there, 146, 147;
surrendered to Parliamentarians, 149;
Supreme Council of, 150;
siege of, 151;
Cromwell’s troops there, 152
Duke, Basil, 70
Dunbar, Leslie engages the English there, 169 _et seq._, 172, 173;
fate of Scotch prisoners captured there, 174;
anniversary of, 198, 231
Dundalk, surrender of, 150;
garrisoned by Cromwell, 157
Dunkirk, ceded to English, 229, 230
Dutch, the, their sailors in wars with Spain, 14;
oppressions under Spain, 36;
Parliamentarian war with, 181 _et seq._;
commercial supremacy, 184;
religious toleration, 200;
peace with England, 201;
war with Charles X., 226
Eastern Association, the, 63;
the Ironsides in, 81;
committee of, 85;
its infantry at Marston Moor, 86–89;
its training, 91;
the pattern for the New Model, 93.
_See also Associations_
Edgehill, battle of, 71–73;
Charles I.’s standard-bearer there, 154
Edinburgh, Laud’s attempt to introduce the Prayer-Book there, 39;
Cromwell’s reception there, 131;
besieged by Cromwell, 167;
surrendered to Cromwell, 174
Edinburgh, Governor of, 172
Eglinton, Earl of, at Marston Moor, 88
Eliot, Sir John, character of, 27;
his leadership in Parliament, 30, 31;
his imprisonment, 32;
death, 33;
Charles I.’s vengeance on, 137
Elizabeth, Queen, her absolutism, 8;
her bearing toward Anglican Church, 9;
yields to the monopolies, 10;
her veiled despotism, 22;
persecutes Dissenters, 23;
her war with Spain on the sea, 58;
compared with Cromwell, 212;
Puritan persecutions in her reign, 217
Ely, home of Cromwell’s mother, 42, 45
Ely Cathedral, Cromwell’s interference there, 78
England, champion of religious liberty, 15, 21;
overlordship in Ireland, 15, 16;
peace under James I., 19;
rural and agricultural population, 58;
military experience, 59;
political incapacity in Cromwell’s time, 111;
relation with Scotland in Second Civil War, 123;
pitted against Scotland under the Commonwealth, 164;
law of, 181;
her carrying trade in Dutch War, 183;
her commercial greed, 184;
self-government, 192;
political freedom, 197;
Parliamentarian supremacy in, 198;
representative government, 206;
condition under the Protectorate, 211 _et seq._, 216, 221 _et seq._,
225;
her Irish policy, 227;
foreign fame, 230;
condition after Cromwell, 231 _et seq._;
Cromwell’s descendants in, 239
England’s Freedom and Soldiers’ Rights, cry of, 119
English, the, as sailors in the Spanish wars, 14;
their excellence as military material, 58;
love of sports, 59;
serve as troops in Ireland, 84;
at Marston Moor, 86;
character of, in seventeenth century, 100 _et seq._;
in India, 151;
their treatment of the Irish, 162;
capacity for self-government, 190, 220;
immigrants into Ireland, 223;
in West Indies, 229;
expansion of, 238
English Presbyterians, for the King against the army, 120
Episcopacy rejected by the Scotch, 38–40;
abolition of, demanded by Long Parliament, 56;
under Cromwell’s government, 218
Episcopalian Royalists, 177
Episcopalians, 78;
clergy hated by Presbyterians, 92;
their intolerance, 104;
Parliament deserted by them, 108;
with the Royalists in Ireland, 122, 132, 146;
under the Protectorate, 197;
the Prayer-Book denied them by the Commonwealth, 217
Erse, 224
Essex, Earl of, leader of Parliamentary forces, 57;
his Guards, 63, 64;
at Northampton, 69;
his blunders, 91;
compared with McClellan, 92
Essex, Fairfax in, 121
Europe, armed against French Revolutionists, 120;
effect of regicide on, 138;
Dutch position in, 182, 184;
religious tolerance, 200;
liberty, 219;
struggles of Spain and France, 226, 227;
Turks in, 228;
profligacy in seventeenth century, 230
Evolution, of English political freedom, 197
Executive, English and American, compared, 198
Expansion, English, 237–239
Extremists, in English Parliament, 113, 206
Fairfax, Sir Thomas, his friendship with Cromwell, 79;
at Winceby, 83;
at York, 85;
Marston Moor, 86, 87;
in command of Parliamentarians, 93;
at Naseby, 96, 97;
captures Bristol, 98;
returned to Parliament, 116;
approves Cromwell’s joining army party, 119;
his march into Kent, 121;
takes Colchester, 130;
Cromwell’s letter to, 131;
counsels moderation toward the King, 135;
declines campaign against Covenanters, 163;
his indecision, 164 _et seq._
Falkland, Lord, 57
Fanaticism, consequent on English Revolution, 143
Fifth Monarchy, 103;
principles of, 112, 113
Flag, English, Dutch salute insisted on, 183
Flanders, English victories in, 230
Fleet, English, supports Parliamentarians, 122;
deserts to Royalists, 130;
its share in Dutch wars, 183;
supports Cromwell, 189;
under the Protectorate, 199
Foot, in seventeenth-century warfare, 59;
Parliamentarians’, at Gainsborough, 82;
Scots’, at Marston Moor, 88.
_See also Infantry_
Forrest, General, his inferiority to Grant, 68;
compared with Montrose, 94
Fortescue, Sir Faithful, deserts Parliamentarians at Edgehill, 71
Four Fundamentals, the, 205
France, serfs of, 59;
Prince Rupert in, 130;
Royalist refugees in, 149;
Protestants, 162;
in wars with Spain, 226, 227;
convention with England, 229
Franchise, the, redistribution of, under the Protectorate, 197
Frederick the Great, 145
Free State, the, 141.
_See also Commonwealth_
French, character of the, in eighteenth century, 100, 190
French Revolution, the, 120
Frobisher, 14
Gainsborough, siege of, 81
Galley slaves, English prisoners as, 129
Garrison, American Abolitionist, 103
Geddes, Jenny, at Edinburgh, 39
Geneva, 12
Gentiles, 220
Gentlemen, Cromwell’s opinion of, 76
Gentry, English, 59;
against Charles I., 61;
support of the King in Wales, 121
George III., his Government rejected by American Continental Congress,
36
George IV., 238
Germany, English adventurers in, 58;
serfs of, 59
Germans, the, Charles X.’s aggressions against, 226
Gladstone, early writings of, 49
Golden Rule, the, 47
Good government, Cromwell’s notion of, 204
Gordon, piety of, compared with Cromwell’s, 105
Goring, General, at Marston Moor, 87, 88, 89;
defeated by Fairfax, 98
Government, its development in Great Britain, 198;
Cromwell’s practice of, 211
Grand Remonstrance, the, against Charles I., 56, 57
Grant, General, his volunteer soldiery, 65;
his development of troops, 91;
his superiority to Forrest, 95;
his political supporters, 103;
his soldiers, 145;
his generosity, 216
Grantham, Cromwell at, 79
Great Britain, Charles II. declared King of, by the Scotch, 143;
government of, 198;
expansion of, 238
Greeks, the, under Agathokles, 210
Greene, General, 91
Guards, of Lord Essex, buff coats adopted by them as uniform, 64;
of Charles I., 64
Gunpowder, its use in Cromwellian times, 59
Gunpowder Plot, the, 44
Gustaphus Adolphus, his campaign against Spain, 14;
his career, 39, 167
Hamilton, Duke of, 120;
his campaigns in Second Civil War, 122–124;
at Preston, 127;
beheading of, 128;
Kirk attitude toward him, 166
Hampden, John, Carlyle’s opinion of, 3;
originality of type of, 5;
his tolerance, 5;
refuses to pay Ship Money, 35, 45;
his relations with Cromwell, 46;
his Puritanism defined, 50;
compared with Cromwell, 53;
his imprisonment, 57;
a cousin of Cromwell, 58;
uniform of his regiment, 64;
at Edgehill, 72;
Cromwell’s opinion of his troops, 73;
his death, 80;
in Parliament, 177
Hapsburg, House of, in Spain and Austria, 17
Harrison, English Republican general, 136;
his devotion to Cromwell, 186;
calls musketeers into Parliament, 187;
his fanaticism, 199
Hawkins, Admiral, in Spanish wars, 14, 18
Hein, Piet, Dutch admiral in Spanish wars, 210
Helmets, carried by Cromwellian cavalry, 60
Henrietta Maria, wife of Charles I., 25
Henry, Patrick, compared with Pym, 36
Henry VIII., King of England, his bearing toward the Reformation, 7;
his dealings with lower classes, 8;
with the Anglican Church, 9;
his career impossible under a Long Parliament, 11;
his oppressions, 22
High Court of Justice, Charles I. tried by, 136
Highlanders, the Scotch, in the Civil Wars, 95;
their chiefs at Stirling, 174;
at Worcester, 175
Highlands, the, General Monk in, 201
Hofer’s Tyrolese, 67
Holland, her stand against Spain, 15;
her colonial empire, 17;
House of Orange in, 135;
effect of regicide on, 138;
alliance with, desired by Cromwell, 184
Horse (cavalry), of the Parliamentarians, 57;
at Edgehill, 71;
Winceby, 83;
of the Parliamentarians at Marston Moor, 87, 88;
manœuvres with, at Marston Moor, 89;
use of, at Naseby, 96;
in retreat at Preston, 127, 128;
service at Dunbar, 170 _et seq._
Horse-racing, suppressed under the Protectorate, 213
Howard, English admiral, 14
Huguenots, Charles I.’s feeble move against them, 26;
persecuted in France, 227
Hume, his opinion of Cromwell’s speeches, 203
Huntingdon, birthplace of Cromwell, 41, 42, 44, 45
Immigration of the English and Scotch into Ireland, 223
Inchiquin, Lord, Parliamentarian leader in Ireland, 148, 149;
captures Drogheda, 150
Independent Movement, the so-called, under Elizabeth, 23
Independents, English political party, 49;
Cromwell at head of, 49;
bearing toward the Presbyterians, 80;
real source of their power the Ironsides, 81;
hated by the Presbyterians, 92;
their strength in the army, 94;
their spirit commended by Cromwell, 106;
their proposed reconciliation with Parliamentarians, 115;
Charles I.’s designs on them, 116;
they take refuge in the army, 118;
conquerors of the Royalists, 120;
their prompt action in Second Civil War, 121;
their political isolation, 133;
rupture with Irish Presbyterians, 150;
their strength in the Commonwealth, 164;
in Parliament, 177 _et seq._;
support of Cromwell in the Rump Parliament, 189;
under the Protectorate, 199, 220
Indian Mutiny, compared with state of Ireland under Cromwell, 151
Infantry, Parliamentarians’, at Nottingham, 57;
use of, in Cromwell’s time, 59, 60;
in action at Marston Moor, 87;
at Naseby, 96;
its importance at Preston, 127;
at Dunbar, 170;
Spanish, defeated by British in the Netherlands, 229
Inquisition, the, in Spain, 14;
the handmaid of tyranny, 17;
religious aspects of, 48
Instrument of Government, the, 195 _et seq._;
recognized by Parliament, 204
Insurgents, the Irish, 147 _et seq._
Ireland, England’s treatment of, 15, 16;
priesthood loyal to its peasantry, 17;
Protestantism in, 17;
its prosperity under Strafford, 36;
revolts against Charles I.’s government, 56;
English troops in, 84;
unites against the Parliament, 120;
complex political conditions, 122;
its loyalty, 143;
invaded by Cromwell, 144 _et seq._;
Cromwellian atrocities, 156;
subjugation by Parliamentarians, 178;
discontent under the Protectorate, 221;
under Richard Cromwell’s rule, 232;
its misery under English reigns, 238
Ireton, Henry, character of, 6;
captain of troop in Sixty-seventh Regiment, 58;
at Naseby, 96, 97;
marriage with Bridget Cromwell, 105;
his leadership of the army, 116;
approves Cromwell’s joining the army party, 119;
remonstrates against the King, 135;
counsels mercy toward Charles I., 136;
desecration of his remains, 233
Irish, the, Charles I.’s overtures to, 84;
Puritan cruelty toward, 129;
Catholics’ treaty with Charles II., 148;
troops at Dundalk, 157;
English treatment of, 162, 227, 238
Ironsides, the, real power of the Independents, 80;
in action at Marston Moor, 87, 89;
membership in Eastern Association, 93;
type of, 95;
their army spirit, 107;
support the army party, 120;
at Preston, 126;
as volunteers, 144;
veterans in Ireland, 152
“Irreconcilables,” 198
Issues, political, not always sharply drawn, 180
Ivan the Terrible, 210
Jackson, Andrew, his backwoodsmen, 67
Jackson, “Stonewall,” resemblance to Cromwell and Ireton, 6;
his piety, 105;
his strategy compared with Cromwell’s, 171
Jamaica, taken by the English, 229
James I., his ignoble peace, 21;
his belief in despotism, 22;
his weak policy toward Parliament, 23;
absolutism in Church and State, 25;
his policy in Ireland, 146
James II., compared with James I., 101, 234
Jehovah, invoked in massacres, 160
Jews, massacres of, compared with Puritans’, 160;
their settlement in London, 220
Johnston, American general, development of his troops compared with
Cromwell’s, 91
Jones, Colonel, Puritan leader, defeats Preston near Dublin, 149;
makes terms with Irish Papal party, 150;
routs Ormond at Dublin, 151
Joyce, Cornet, 117
Judges, under the Protectorate, 199
Kent, Fairfax in, 121
Kentucky, neutrality of, in American Civil War, 62
Kerne, the, in Ireland, 16;
Queen Mary’s expulsion of the, 16
Kilkenny, Cromwell’s manifesto there, 162
King Jesus, cry of, 112, 143
Kings, their divine right, 21;
English belief in, 100;
office of, abolished by the Commonwealth, 141;
arbitrary power of, 161
Kingship, offered to Cromwell, 215
Kirk party; in Scotland, 130, 131;
Cromwell’s dispute with, 172,173
Kirk, the, in Scotland, 166, 167;
its leaders urge Leslie on at Edinburgh, 169, 172;
its forces broken, 174
Knox, John, his influence on Scotch Calvinism, 18
_Laissez-faire_ economists, 183
Lambert, Puritan general, sent to the North, 121;
in action at Preston, 124–128
Lancashire, Presbyterian rising there, 121
Lancers, 60;
the Scots’, at Marston Moor, 87;
at Dunbar, 170
Landed proprietors, interests of, threatened under the Protectorate,
193;
English, in Ireland, 223, 224
Langdale, Sir Marmaduke, Cromwell’s foe at Naseby, 121;
his command at Preston, 124–126
Laud, his hostility to Protestants, 30;
his ecclesiastical absolutism, 33;
becomes archbishop, 34;
his “thorough” policy, 35;
attempts to introduce ceremonials at Edinburgh, 38;
supports Charles I. against Short Parliament, 41;
imprisoned by the Parliamentarians, 52;
his execution, 80;
his intolerance compared with Presbyterians’, 109
Laws, English, considered by Parliamentarians, 181
Lawyers, Cromwell’s dislike of, 181, 193
Lee, American Confederate general, his volunteer soldiery, 65;
development of his troops, 91;
his generalship compared with Cromwell’s, 95
Legislative power under the Protectorate, 197
Lenthall, Speaker of House of Commons, 180
Leslie, David, Scottish leader, his service under Gustaphus Adolphus,
167;
his defence of Edinburgh, 167 _et seq._;
operations at Dunbar, 169–172
Levellers, the, English Parliamentary party, distrusted by Cromwell,
112;
their agitation, 119;
their threatening attitude toward Cromwell, 143;
against the Commonwealth, 164;
suppressed under the Protectorate, 213
Leven, Earl of, Scottish leader, besieges York, 85;
at Marston Moor, 86
Liberty, political and religious, under the Stuarts, 24;
Cromwell’s views on, 79, 107;
under the Protectorate, 197
Lieutenant-general, Cromwell’s rank of, 144
Life Guards, Charles I.’s, 64
Lincoln, American President, his candidacy in 1864, 103;
his first election, 193;
compared with Cromwell, 207–208
London, its sympathy with the Commons, 57;
unification of the Parliamentary troops there, 64;
its troops at Copredy Bridge, 91;
Presbyterians of, 109;
its mobs in the army party, 118;
Presbyterian commotions there, 121;
the army’s march into, 136;
Cromwell’s return to, 163, 180;
Jewish settlement in, 220
Long Parliament, spirit of the, 5;
men of, 11;
its grievances compared with American Continental Congress’s, 36;
meets at Westminster, 41;
Cromwell’s issue with army party against it, 119;
the remnant of, 177;
its dissolution, 187, 188, 201, 204, 206;
comparison with the Protectorate, 216.
_See also Parliament, Rump, etc._
Lord Protector, position of, 197;
Cromwell as, 212
Lords, House of, in Charles I.’s trial for treason, 136;
abolished under the Commonwealth, 141
Louis XIV., 162
Louis XV., 162
Lower classes in England, their discontent under the Tudors, 10;
incapacity for political combination, 10
Lucas, Sir Charles, repulsed by Scotch at Marston Moor, 88, 89
Luther, his zeal for righteousness, 7
Lutherans, intolerant spirit of, 13
Lynch law, occasional need of, 54
Macaulay, Lord, his opinion of Cromwell, 1
McClellan, American general, compared with Essex, 92;
attitude of Abolitionists toward, 103;
Democratic support of, 208
Major-generals, government of, under the Protectorate, 213, 215
Manchester, Earl of, Parliamentary leader, 58;
commands Eastern Association, 85;
at Marston Moor, 86;
denounced by Cromwell in Parliament, 93;
Cromwell’s speech to, 110
Marlborough, Duke of, 145
Marriage, civil, proposed under the Protectorate, 193
Marston Moor, Battle of, 86–90, 94, 95, 96;
Scotch share in, 124;
David Leslie at, 167
Mary, Queen, her expulsion of the Irish kerne, 16;
her treatment of Protestants, 217;
Irish policy, 238
Maryland, 165
Mass, the, denied to Irish by Cromwell, 158;
prohibited under the Protectorate, 198
Maurice of Orange, 14
Mazarin, French Cardinal, 17;
Cromwell’s reply to, 220;
co-operates with Cromwell, 228
Middle classes in England, powerful under the Tudors, 10;
strength among Parliamentarians, 69
Midianitish woman, the, 160
Militarism, English avoidance of, under James I., 19
Military rule, Cromwell’s, 213
Military service, not differentiated on land and sea in seventeenth
century, 184
Military type, the, in Cromwellian army, 107;
influenced by religious zeal, 191
Militia, compared with regular soldiery, 66;
at Copredy Bridge, 91;
levy system of, 93
Mill Mount, 154
Milton, his contempt of political dreamers, 21;
his Puritanism, 50;
his political ideas, 111;
approves Cromwell’s joining with army party, 119;
his views on the regicide, 139;
supports the Protectorate, 209;
sonnet on the Vaudois, 227;
his greatness, 232, note
Ministers, their position under the Protectorate, 200
Moderate party, the, in the Long Parliament, 55
Monarchy, Cromwell’s dread of, 195, 211
Monasteries, Cromwell’s ancestors benefited by their spoliation, 44
Monk, General George, 84;
at Dundalk, 150;
as naval commander, 183, 201;
his rule in Scotland, 221;
supports Charles II., 233
Monopolies, under Elizabeth, 10
Montrose, Earl of, not a professional soldier, 69;
his victories in Scotland, 94, 95;
defeated at Philiphaugh, 98;
aided by Irish troops, 147;
his death, 166
Moors, defeated by Blake at Tunis, 228
Morgan, American Confederate commander, his cavalry, 70
Mountain, the, see French Revolution, 120
Munro, commands Hamiltonian cavalry, 122;
at Ulster, 123;
moves toward Preston, 124;
retreats across the border, 130;
bearing toward Charles II., 148, 150
Munster, Royalist Protestants in, 149
Muscovites, 210
Musketeers, clumsiness of their weapons, 59;
tactical uses of, 60;
at Winwick Church, 128;
their appearance in the House of Commons, 187
Nantes, Edict of, 39
Napoleon, 99;
his unscrupulousness, 104, 190
Naseby, Battle of, 95;
Sir Marmaduke Langdale at, 121
Navigation Acts, 182, 183
Navy, the English, its growth, 182, 184;
in Dutch wars, 201.
_See also Fleet_
Netherlands, the, British adventurers in, 58;
oppressions there compared with the Irish, 146, 156;
English and Spanish in, 229
Neutrality, in English Civil Wars, 63;
in Kentucky, 62
Newburn, Battle of, 41
Newbury, Battle of, 92
Newcastle, Cromwell’s letter to the Commandant there, 174
Newcastle, Lord, besieges Gainsborough, 81, 82;
his defence of York, 85;
at Marston Moor, 87–89
New England, 179
New Model, the, in Cromwellian army, 63, 93, 95;
strained relations with Independents, 106;
attempted disbandment of, 117;
results in Independents’ army, 120;
its veterans in Ireland, 152
New World, the, America’s position in, 179
New York, regicide sentimentalism in, 138
North America, 193, 238
North of England, the, Royalist rising in, 121
Northampton, Essex assembles troops there, 69
Northumbrian Regiment, Newcastle’s, 89
Nottingham Castle, scene of beginning of Civil Wars, 57;
Royalists there, 69;
held by Cromwell, 81
Offence, the best defence of nations, 164
Old-English Catholics, in Ireland, 146
“Old Noll,” 221
Old Testament, the, Puritanism in, 160
O’Neil, Irish Catholic leader, 149, 150;
joins Ormond, 151;
his troops in Ireland, 159
Orange, House of, 135
Ormond, Earl of, leader of loyal Irish, 146–148;
surrenders Dublin, 149;
heads moderate Irish Catholics, 150;
his supporters in Ireland, 151;
his troops at Drogheda, 153;
in Ireland, 159
“Ossawatomie Brown,” 145
Pale, the, in Ireland, 146, 147
Papacy, the, Henry VIII.’s attitude toward, 7;
“papacy or prelacy,” 197
Papal nuncio, in Ireland, 148
Parliament, Pym’s view of government by, 5;
growing powers under Elizabeth and James, 22;
Charles I.’s third, 27;
its struggles with the King, 29;
Covenant taken by, 78;
Cromwell’s speech against the generals as members in, 93;
Cromwell’s attitude toward, 101;
factions after First Civil War, 106, 108 _et seq._;
army majority in, 116;
negotiations with King and army, 117;
Irish coalition against, 120;
makes Blake admiral, 130;
Cromwell’s dealings with, after Second Civil War, 131;
plans of union with King against army, 134;
Irish support of, 143;
aided by Coote in Ireland, 150;
summons Cromwell from Ireland, 162;
heirship to royal powers, 178;
conflict with army after Scotch wars, 178 _et seq._;
law reform, 181;
Dutch Wars, 181;
non-reëlection bill, 185–187;
its rule distasteful to Cromwell, 195;
under the Protectorate, 198;
representation under the Protectorate, 201 _et seq._;
dissolution of the Rump, 209;
Second, under the Protectorate, 215;
summoned by Richard Cromwell, 232;
Cromwell’s speech to Second Protectorate Parliament, 236.
_See also Barebones; Commons; Rump; Long Parliament, etc._
Parliamentarians, military forces of, 57;
strength of, 61;
in Cornwall and Yorkshire, 63;
military leaders, 68;
resources, 69;
weakness of their cavalry, 73;
operations at Gainsborough, 81;
aided by the Scotch, 84;
at York, 85;
at Marston Moor, 88;
at Copredy Bridge, 91;
leader, removed by Cromwell, 93;
reorganization of army, 94;
reverses after Marston Moor, 95;
outnumber Royalists at Naseby, 95 _et seq._;
dissensions of, after First Civil War, 99 _et seq._;
opposition to Moderate Irish party, 152
Peace, slothfulness of, under James I., 21;
desire for, by mercantile communities, 182
Peasantry, in England, 61
Pembroke (Ireland), capture of, by Royalists, 121
Penal laws, English enforcement of, in Ireland, 162
Penances, observed by Royalists on anniversaries of Charles I.’s death,
240
Penn, at San Domingo, 229
Peter the Great, 237
Peters, Hugh, chaplain to Cromwell, 71
Petition of Right, becomes law, 28;
disregarded by the King, 32;
supported by Cromwell, 45
Philadelphia, church to Royal Martyr there, 138
Philip of Spain, bigotry of, 15;
merciless to persons of his own faith in other nationalities, 16, 156
Philiphaugh, Battle of, 98
Philippines, the, American volunteers in, 67
Phillips, Wendell, American Abolitionist, 103
Phineas, 160
Pikemen, their function in seventeenth-century war, 59;
tactical position of, 60;
at Winwick Church, 128
Pistols, use of, by seventeenth-century cavalry, 60
Plantations, English, in Ireland, 16, 146
Platform, American Republicans’ in 1860, 193
Plundering, suppressed by Cromwell, 75;
punishments for, at Winchester, 98;
Cromwell’s suppression of, in Scotland, 131, 153
Policy, necessity of adjusting a nation’s foreign and domestic, 20;
Cromwell actuated by, 93
Politics, as influenced by religious feeling, 19
Pope, the, Cromwell’s view of, 173
Portuguese, the, 16
Prayer-Book, the, Laud’s attempted introduction of, at Edinburgh, 39;
prohibited under the Protectorate, 198;
denied to Episcopalians under the Commonwealth, 217
Preachers, arrest of, under the Protectorate, 199
Presbyterian Church, in Scotland, 18
Presbyterian English, natural allies of Scotch, 55
Presbyterian ministers, in Scotland, 130
Presbyterian Royalists, against the army, 120;
in Parliament, 177
Presbyterianism, its growth in the Anglican Church under James I., 23;
sympathy with Scottish revolt, 40;
orthodoxy of, 80
Presbyterians, in Parliamentarian army, 76;
in Civil Wars, 92;
generals in House of Commons, 93, 94;
intolerance of, 104;
faith of, 106;
ascendancy of, in Parliament, 108;
their intolerance compared with Laud’s, 109;
feared by Puritans, 111;
efforts at reconciliation with Parliamentarians, 115;
take issue with the King against the army, 116, 120;
commotion of, in London, 121;
at Ulster, 122;
cruel treatment of, as Puritan prisoners, 126;
in Parliament after Second Civil War, 131 _et seq._;
in touch with Ulster Irish, 146;
rupture with Independents, 150;
stand against Cromwell, 164;
position under the Protectorate, 200, 220
“Presbyter but Priest writ large,” 111
Presidency, the American, Lincoln’s candidacy for, 103
Preston, Battle of, 124 _et seq._;
Second Civil War ended by, 130
Preston, Irish leader, 149
Pride, Colonel, Parliamentary leader, 76;
at Preston, 126;
at Winwick Church, 128;
in the Commons, 136
Pride’s Purge, 136
Priests, loyalty of, to peasants in Ireland, 17;
Milton’s view of, 111;
slaughter of, at Drogheda, 154;
persecuted in Ireland, 223
Prisoners, cruel treatment of, by Puritans, 129, 155, 174
Property, threatened under the Protectorate, 203
Protective tariffs, 183
Protector, the, office of, 197 _et seq._
Protectorate, the, 197 _et seq._;
rule of, in Ireland, 221–225
Protectorate Parliament, dismissed by Cromwell, 210, 212, 213
Protestantism, height of, in England, 9;
European sects, 11;
modern individual results of, 12;
the creed of liberty, 17
Protestants in Ireland, Parliament recognized by, 148;
Royalist, in Ireland, 150, 152;
war of Protestant powers, 184;
position of, under Queen Mary, 217;
in Ireland under the Protectorate, 224;
among the Swiss, 228;
influence of, in Ireland, 238, 239
Psalm-singing, by Puritans, at Winceby, 83;
at Marston Moor, 87;
Basing House, 98;
Dunbar, 171
Public opinion, Cromwell influenced by, 211
Puritanism, Carlyle’s opinion of, 3;
beginning of the modern epoch, 4;
growth under James I., 23;
not widespread under Charles I., 29;
character of, in Scotland, 38;
characteristics of, 160 _et seq._;
apologists for, 218 _et seq._
Puritans, sympathy of, with Scottish revolt, 40;
their suspicions of the Episcopacy, 56;
psalm-singing at Winceby, 83;
forces of, in army, 85;
at Marston Moor, 87;
phraseology of, in Cromwell’s time, 106;
Presbyterians feared by, 111;
hatred of Charles I., 114;
desire for vengeance on the King, 121;
opposed by the Irish, 122;
at Winwick Church, 128;
cruel treatment of prisoners, 129;
justice of their punishment of the King, 139;
disavow Irish alliance, 151;
cruelties at Drogheda, 154 _et seq._;
toleration, 165;
opposed to Covenanters at Dunbar, 170;
in New England, 179;
passion for religious regulation, 214;
lack of generosity to foes, 216;
rule of, in Ireland, 224;
great names among, 232;
attitude toward Ireland, 238;
true greatness of, 239
Pym, Carlyle’s opinion of, 3;
original type of, 5;
tolerance of, 5;
leadership in Parliament, 30;
first modern “leader,” 31;
speech on imprisonment of Strafford, 51, 52;
imprisonment of, 57;
death, 80;
his Parliament, 177
Quakers, 143
Reed, Speaker, quoted, 235
Reform, attempted by Parliament, 181;
by Rump Parliament, 185;
in the Assembly, 193;
practicability necessary in, 194
Reformation, the, in England, 7;
European results of, 8;
in Scotland, 8
Reformed Church, influence of, in European politics, 7
Reformers, contradictions of, 13;
fanaticism of, under the Protectorate, 199
Regicides, the, 139
Regulars (soldiery), advantages of, 65, 69;
discipline of, 91;
Ironsides as regulars, 145;
ordinary type of, 145
Religious liberty, under the Protectorate, 197;
Cromwell’s view of, 220;
incompleteness of, in Ireland, 223
Republican Convention (U. S.), 1860, 193
Republicanism in Parliamentary army, 108; Cromwell’s, 131
Republicans in England, not extremists, 112;
after the Revolution, 142;
under the Protectorate, 202;
in the Commons, 204;
in Second Protectorate Parliament, 215
Republicans (U. S.), after Civil War, 103
Republics, in South America, 193
Restoration, the, 214, 232;
disgraceful effects of, 233
Revolution of 1688, 6, 100;
compared with Civil Wars, 234, 235
Revolution, Puritan, Cromwell’s attempt to check it, 119;
Presbyterian support of, 132;
Cromwell’s attitude toward it, 142, 179;
impermanent effects of, 188.
_See also American Revolution; French Revolution, etc._
Rhode Island, 165
Ribble, river, 125, 127
Richelieu, 17
Ritual, Cromwell’s suppression of, at Ely, 78
Rochelle, Charles I.’s expedition against, 26, 27
Roman Catholicism identified with Spain in English opinion, 14;
liberality of, in France, 17;
Cromwell’s intolerance of, 77;
demanded for State religion by Irish, 147
Roman Catholics, intolerance of, 104;
Irish revolt supported by, 147;
position of, under the Protectorate, 197
Rome, 12
Root and Branch party, the, 56
Ross, capture of, by Cromwell, 158
“Roundhead,” term of reproach in Parliamentary army, 75
Roundhead army, 64;
its foot, 73;
at Marston Moor, 88
Royal Martyr, the, churches dedicated to, 138
Royalist Delinquents, 184
Royalist Protestants in Ireland, 149, 152
Royalists, at Nottingham, 57, 58;
strength of, 61;
driven out of Cornwall, 63;
military leaders of, 68;
natural taste for war, 69;
estates fined by Cromwell, 79;
at Grantham, 80;
defeated by Cromwell at Nottingham and Burleigh, 81;
stand at Gainsborough, 82;
defeated at Winceby, 83;
forces in Civil Wars unestimated, 86;
at Marston Moor, 86 _et seq._;
Copredy Bridge, 91;
hope of, in Scotland, 94;
outnumbered at Naseby, 95 _et seq._;
end of, in Scotland, 98;
surrender in 1646, 98;
union with Catholics and Presbyterians against Parliament, 120;
united in Ireland, 146;
in Irish wars, 149 _et seq._;
opposed to the Commonwealth, 164;
dissensions in Scotland, 166;
Scottish reverses, 174;
their end in England, 178;
position under the Protectorate, 199, 213, 216;
penances done by, on anniversary of regicide, 240
Royalists in American Revolution, 217
Rump, the, 177, 181;
dissolution, 185, 187
Rump Parliament, 185, 187, 188
Rupert, Prince, Royalist leader, military training, 68;
at Powick, 71;
his charge at Edgehill, 72;
at Grantham, 80;
dubs Cromwell Old Ironsides, 80;
his brilliant tactics, 84;
marches to relieve York, 85, 86;
against Cromwell at Marston Moor, 87, 88, 91;
his activity, 94, 95;
at Naseby, 96, 97;
in Parliament, 108;
his buccaneering cruise, 130
Russia, 9;
majority rule unnatural to, 25;
Charles X.’s policy toward, 226;
under Peter the Great, 237
Russians, the, under Ivan the Terrible, 210
Sabbath, observance of, under the Protectorate, 213
Sailors, fame of English, in seventeenth century, 14;
the Dutch as, 182
St. Bartholomew, Massacre of, 39
St. Fagan’s, Welsh defeat at, 121
St. Ives, Cromwell’s farm at, 45
St. John, Oliver, Cromwell’s cousin by marriage, 45, 46.
St. Peter’s, Drogheda, 154
San Domingo, English expedition against, 229
Santa Cruz, Blake’s victory over the Spanish there, 228
Savoy, Duke of, his persecutions of the Vaudois, 227, 228
Scotch, defeat Charles I.’s forces in Bishops’ Wars, 41;
adventurers in the Netherlands, 58;
relations with Parliamentarians, 78;
they aid the Parliamentarians, 84;
besiege York, 85;
at Marston Moor, 86, 87;
their military qualities, 94;
Charles I.’s surrender to, 98;
relations with Charles I. in Parliament, 116;
declare for King against army, 120;
they aid the cavaliers, 121;
in Second Civil War, 122;
Presbyterians at Ulster, 122;
union with Royalists, 124;
at Preston, 125–128;
Puritan treatment of, 129;
support Parliament after Second Civil War, 131;
in touch with Ulster, 146;
share in Irish war, 147;
at Trim, 157;
declare for Charles II., 162, 164;
losses at Dunbar, 171;
assemble at Stirling, 174, 220;
immigrants into Ireland, 223;
their share in British expansion, 238
Scotch Highlanders, military type of, in Civil Wars, 95
Scotch Presbyterians, support Charles II., 150
Scotland, character of, 18;
Episcopacy rejected there, 38, 40;
demands indemnity after Bishops’ Wars, 41;
its claims paid by the Long Parliament, 54;
makes terms with Charles I., 55;
brawls in, 58;
league with Parliamentarians, 80;
Royalist hope of, 94;
end of Royalist party there, 98;
complex political conditions, 122, 123;
Royalists and Covenanters, 165, 166;
subdued by Parliamentarians, 178;
definitive union with England, 201;
rule under the Protectorate, 220, 221
Scout-master, 84
Sea-power, Spanish, in sixteenth century, 227
Secession, right of, in American States, 62
Sectaries, Parliamentarian intolerance of, 116;
hatred of the Kirk for, 169
Self-denying Ordinance, the, 93, 94
Self-government, qualities of, 235
“Serving men and tapsters,” 73
Severn, river, 71
Seymour, American Vice-President, 103
Sheridan, American cavalry commander, 70;
compared with Cromwell in pursuit, 171
Ship Money, 34;
payment of, refused by Hampden, 35, 45;
declared illegal by Long Parliament, 54
Short Parliament, hostility of, to Charles I., 41.
_See also Parliament_
Sixty-seventh Regiment, Cromwell’s captaincy in, 58
Skippon, Parliamentarian major-general, wounded at Naseby, 97
Slavery, prisoners of Puritans sold into, 129, 153;
in the United States, 193
Sligo, captured, 148
Smithfield, 39
Soldiers, citizen and regular types compared, 64–69;
veterans at Marston Moor, 87;
pay neglected by Parliament, 116;
Scotch at Preston, 128;
their ready changes of allegiance, 129;
religion not always a cause of efficiency among them, 166
South Africa, volunteers in, 67
South American republics, 193
Southerners, in the United States, 102
Spain, feared by England in sixteenth century, 14;
supremacy of, 14;
her barbarities compared with those of Turkey, 15;
natural foe of France, 17;
sea-power crushed by the Dutch admirals, 18;
oppressions of the Dutch, 36, 146;
her cruelties, 162;
her colonial policy, 224;
Cromwell’s interference with, 226;
war with France, 226, 227;
defeated by England in the Netherlands, 229
Spaniards, English victories over them on the sea, 182;
their cruelty, 218
Speaker of the House, Cromwell’s letter to, 105
Speeches, character of Cromwell’s, 202, 205
Star Chamber, the, 28;
its subserviency to the King, 32;
Cromwell’s hatred of, 53;
abolished by Long Parliament, 54
States rights, doctrine of, in the United States, 62;
in English counties, 63
Steward.
_See Cromwell, Elizabeth S._
Stirling, assembling of Scotch forces there, 174
Strafford, Lord, minister of Charles I., his jealousy of Buckingham,
27;
his abetting of the King, 33;
raised to the Peerage, 34;
his rule in Ireland, 35, 36;
returns from Ireland, 41;
his impeachment and defence, 51;
death, 53;
the King’s treachery to him, 137
Strategy, lack of, in 1643, 79;
Cromwell’s principles of, 168;
“Stonewall” Jackson’s and Cromwell’s compared, 171
Stuart, American Confederate cavalry commander, 70
Stuart, House of the, 139;
its weakness against the Commonwealth, 139;
re-establishment of, 233
Stuarts, the English Kings, 7;
England under their rule, 8;
their supposed spiritual supremacy, 9;
their ignorance of their people, 11;
weakness of their domestic and foreign policy, 20;
their belief in the divine right of kings, 21;
reactionary type of, 24;
their power curtailed by Petition of Right, 28;
Charles I. the type of, 134;
their bearing in exile, 199;
comparisons with Cromwell, 211;
their Restoration, 214;
taxation during their reigns, 216, 225
Suffrage, manhood, advocated by the Levellers, 112;
under the Protectorate, 201
Sunday, observance of, 214
Supreme Council of Dublin, the, 150
Sweden, champion of the Reformation, 26
Swiss mercenaries, hired by Cromwell, 228
Swords, use of, by cavalry, 60
Syracusans, the, oppressions of, 210
Tactics, shock and fire compared, 59;
at Marston Moor, 86;
Scots’, at Preston, 125
Tartar yoke in Russia, the, 210
Taxation, in England, by Parliament, 184;
under the Protectorate, 216;
under the Commonwealth, 217
Ten Commandments, the, 46
Thirty Years’ War, the, France’s share in, 17;
in Germany, 26;
its height at death of Gustaphus, 39;
its influence on Cromwell, 44;
soldiery in, 65;
Cromwell’s inclination to take part in it, 118
Thornhaugh, Colonel, Parliamentary leader of horse, 128
Tilly, 129, 156
Timoleon, 208
Tithes, 193
Tolerance, in the modern world, 12;
falseness of, in seventeenth century, 19.
_See also Catholics; Cromwell; Puritans, etc._
Tonnage and poundage, 29;
declaration against its pay without Parliamentary consent, 31;
declared illegal by Long Parliament, 54
Tories, in America, 217
Tower of London, the, Eliot’s imprisonment there, 32;
Laud’s, 52
Trade, in Europe, in the seventeenth century, 182
Trim (Ireland), captured by Parliamentarians, 157
Tromp, the elder, in the Spanish wars, 18, 182
Tudors, English sovereigns, unarmed despots, 10, 11;
their relations with English commercial classes, 10;
with middle class, 10
Tunis, Blake at, 228
Turenne, regular soldiers under, 145;
service of British troops under, 229
Turks, cruelty of, 218, 228
Tyranny, English intolerance of, 11;
Cromwell’s tyranny defined, 210 _et seq._, 216;
Charles I.’s, 234
Ulster, Scotch Presbyterians at, 122;
Irish rising there, 146;
captured by Parliamentarians, 150;
massacres by Cromwellians there, 151, 157;
under the Protectorate, 223
Ultramontanes, the, 148, 150
Uniforms, variety of, in Parliamentary army, 64;
origin of present English, 229
Union, War of the, in the United States, 193;
its salutary effects, 208.
_See also American Civil War_
Unitarians, 78
United States, the, religious tolerance of, compared with Cromwell’s
England’s, 49;
political theorists, 113;
Abolitionists, 192;
Constitution of, 196;
government of, 198;
practical good sense of, 219
Valley Campaigns, Stonewall Jackson’s, 171
Vane, Sir Harry, 185, 187
Van Heemskirk, his prowess against Spain, 18
Vaudois, the, persecutions of, 220, 227
Venables, at San Domingo, 229
Venetian government, Puritans’ prisoners sold to, 129
Verdelin, Regiment of, 225
Verney, 154
Veto, the Protector’s, 197
Victoria, Queen, 135
Virginia, Puritans’ prisoners there, 129
Volunteers (soldiery), in American Civil War, 65;
compared with regulars, 66–69;
Ironsides as, 144;
rawness of, 167
Wales, Royalist rising there in Second Civil War, 121;
Cromwell’s administration there, 216
Wallenstein, 129, 156
Waller, Parliamentary general, at Copredy Bridge, 91
War-ships, Dutch, 182
Washington, compared with Pym and Hampden, 5, 36;
his superiority over Cromwell, 53;
his regular soldiery, 91;
character of, 101;
disinclination to dictatorship, 102;
his lofty plane, 103;
his judicious government, 110;
his statesmanship, 188, 190;
his influence on the United States Constitution, 196;
his forbearance, 207
Waterloo, Battle of, compared with Marston Moor, 90
Wayne, American Revolutionary general, 91
Wellington, 145
Welsh War, 121, 122
Wentworth, Sir Thomas, 27;
character of, 33.
_See also Strafford_
West Indies, English rule in, 229
Westminster, Long Parliament meets there, 41;
Cromwell installed there, 199
Westminster Hall, Cromwell’s head exposed there by Restorationists, 233
West Point, advantages of its training, 67
Wexford, Cromwellian atrocities there, 155;
Cromwell’s storming of, 157, 158, 160
Whigamore Raid, the, in Scotland, 130
Whitehall, Palace of, 42, 57;
Charles I. beheaded there, 137
Whitewarts, the, at Marston Moor, 89
William the Conqueror, his Lords, 108
William III., English King, 100;
his ability, 101;
the real successor of Cromwell, 234, 235
Williams, original name of the Cromwells, 42
Willoughby, Lord, Parliamentary general, at Gainsborough, 81, 82;
Cromwell’s charges against, 85
Wilson, American cavalryman, 70
Winceby, Battle of, 83
Winchester, occupied by Cromwell, 98
Winchester, Marquis of, Royalist leader, 98
Winwick Church, the Scotch at, 128
Worcester, Battle of, 175, 177, 180;
anniversary of, 231
“Word of the Lord, the,” 46, 47
Yeomanry, in England, 59, 61
York, the siege of, 85;
fall of, 90
Yorkshire, neutrality of, 63;
its troops at Marston Moor, 86 _et seq._;
rising for Charles I. there, 121;
troops in Second Civil War, 124;
at Preston, 127
------------------------------------------------------------------------
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
1. Silently corrected typographical errors and variations in spelling.
2. Archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings retained as printed.
3. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.
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