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Discovering Diverse Content Through
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life.” In November, 1655, however, the Protector appointed him one
of the Council of Trade, in order, no doubt, to give him some training
in public business. In 1657, after the Protector’s second installation, a
further change took place. Richard was suddenly brought to the
front; he succeeded his father as Chancellor of the University of
Oxford, was made a member of the Protector’s council, and was
given the command of a regiment of horse. When he travelled about
the country, he was received by the local authorities as if he were the
destined heir of his father’s authority. It was a poor training for a
future ruler, and, after he became Protector, Richard was heard to
complain that “he had thought to have lived as a country gentleman,
and that his father had not employed him in such a way as to prepare
him for such employment; which he thought he did designedly.” Yet
though Richard showed no political ability during his brief reign, he
was far from being the country clown which royalist satires
represented him. In his public appearances he displayed a dignity of
bearing which surprised even his friends, and an oratorical power
which they had never suspected. After the Restoration, the debts
which he had contracted as Protector, and the jealous suspicion with
which the Government of Charles II. always regarded him, obliged
him to live many years in exile. “I have been alone thirty years,” he
wrote to his daughter in 1690, “banished and under silence, and my
strength and safety is to be retired, quiet, and silent.” After his return
to England, which took place about 1680, he thought it safer to adopt
a feigned name, and lived in complete retirement. He died in 1712,
leaving three daughters, and his eldest son, who died in 1705, left no
issue.
Henry Cromwell, though a man of much greater natural capacity
than his brother, was also for a time kept back by his father. From
1650 to about 1653, he was colonel of a regiment of horse in Ireland,
and was reputed to be a good officer. In August, 1654, the Protector’s
council nominated him to command the forces in Ireland, but the
Protector was reluctant to allow his son to take the post, and kept
him a year longer in England. “The Lord knows,” wrote Cromwell to
Fleetwood, “my desire was for him and his brother to have lived
private lives in the country; and Harry knows this well, and how
difficultly I was persuaded to give him his commission.” As
Commander-in-chief and a member of the Irish council Henry
proved his ability, and in November, 1657, he succeeded his brother-
in-law, Fleetwood, as Lord Deputy of Ireland.
His task, like his father’s task in England, was to establish civil
government in place of military rule, and to unite all Protestant sects
in support of the Protectorate. He had many difficulties to contend
with, both political and financial; the Anabaptists and a faction
amongst the officers gave continual trouble. The land settlement was
but half completed, prosperity was slow to return, and order hard to
re-establish. Yet he was more successful than could have been
expected, and with the majority of the Protestant colony in Ireland
he gained great popularity. Rigid Puritans held that his way of living
and his ostentation in dress savoured too much of the world, but in
other respects his conduct was blameless. His chief defect was an
infirmity of temper. He was very sensitive to criticism and very
impatient of opposition; insomuch that his father warned him
against making it a business to be too hard for his opponents.
It is sometimes said that if the Protector had made Henry his
successor instead of Richard, the Protectorate might have lasted. But
the choice of Cromwell was dictated by the circumstances in which
he was placed. Among his councillors and generals there was no man
whom the rest would willingly have accepted as their ruler, and of his
sons Richard was far more acceptable to the chief supporters of the
Protectorate than his abler and more masterful brother would have
been. The military cabal which overthrew Richard would have
proved too strong for Henry, to whom, moreover, some of its leaders
were personally hostile.
A month after the fall of his brother, Henry Cromwell resigned the
government of Ireland, and rejecting all the overtures of the
Royalists, acquiesced in the re-establishment of the Republic. He
declared that he had formerly had an honourable opinion of the
Republic, but was satisfied also of the lawfulness of the “late
government under a single person.”
“And whereas my father (whom I hope you yet look upon as no inconsiderable
instrument of these nations’ freedom and happiness), and since him my brother,
were constituted chief in those administrations, and the returning to another form
hath been looked upon as an indignity to these my nearest relations, I cannot but
acknowledge my own weakness to the sudden digesting thereof, and my own
unfitness to serve you.... And as I cannot promote anything which infers the
diminution of my late father’s honour and merit, so I thank the Lord, for that He
hath kept me safe in the great temptation, wherewith I have been assaulted to
withdraw my affection from that cause wherein he lived and died.”
At the Restoration, Henry, thanks to his friends amongst the
Royalists, and to the moderation with which he had used his power,
was not molested, though he lost a portion of his estates by the
change. He lived in retirement on his property in Cambridgeshire,
dying there in 1674. Henry’s great-grandson, Oliver Cromwell of
Cheshunt, who died in 1821, was the last descendant of the Protector
in the male line.

HENRY CROMWELL.

(From a drawing by W. Bond.)

 CHAPTER XXIII
EPILOGUE

E ither as a soldier or as a statesman Cromwell was far greater

than any Englishman of his time, and he was both soldier and
statesman in one. We must look to Cæsar or Napoleon to find a
parallel for this union of high political and military ability in one
man. Cromwell was not as great a man as Cæsar or Napoleon, and he
played his part on a smaller stage, but he “bestrode the narrow
world” of Puritan England “like a colossus.”
As a soldier he not only won great victories, but created the
instrument with which he won them. Out of the military chaos which
existed when the war began he organised the force which made
Puritanism victorious. The New Model and the armies of the
Republic and the Protectorate were but his regiment of Ironsides on
a larger scale. As in that regiment, the officers were carefully chosen.
If possible, they were gentlemen; if gentlemen could not be had,
plain yeomen or citizens; in any case, “men patient of wants, faithful
and conscientious in their employment.” Character as well as
military skill was requisite. A colonel once complained that a captain
whom Cromwell had appointed to his regiment was a better preacher
than fighter. “Truly,” answered Cromwell, “I think that he that prays
and preaches best will fight best. I know nothing that will give the
like courage and confidence as the knowledge of God in Christ will. I
assure you he is a good man and a good officer.” Inefficiency, on the
other hand, certain heresies which were regarded as particularly
blasphemous, and moral backslidings in general, led at once to the
cashiering of any officer found guilty of them.
Officers, it has been well said, are the soul of an army; and the
efficiency and good conduct which Cromwell required of his, they
exacted from the rank and file. Most of the private soldiers were
volunteers, though there were many pressed men amongst them, and
it cannot be said that all those who fought for Puritanism were saints
in any sense of the word. But regular pay and severe discipline made
them in peace the best conducted soldiers in Europe, and in war an
army “who could go anywhere and do anything.” A common spirit
bound men and officers together. It was their pride that they were
not a mere mercenary army, but men who fought for principles as
well as for pay. Cromwell succeeded in inspiring them not only with
implicit confidence in his leadership, but with something of his own
high enthusiasm. He had the power of influencing masses of men
which Napoleon possessed. So he made an army on which, as
Clarendon said, “victory seemed entailed”—“an army whose order
and discipline, whose sobriety and manners, whose courage and
success, made it famous and terrible over the world.”
Cromwell’s victories, however, were due to his own military genius
even more than to the quality of his troops. The most remarkable
thing in his military career is that it began so late. Most successful
generals have been trained to arms from their youth, but Cromwell
was forty-three years old before he heard a shot fired or set a
squadron in the field. How was it, people often ask, that an untrained
country gentleman beat soldiers who had learnt their trade under the
most famous captains in Europe? The answer is that Cromwell had a
natural aptitude for war, and that circumstances were singularly
favourable to its rapid and full development. At the outset of the war
he showed an energy, a resolution, and a judgment which proved his
possession of those qualities of intellect and character which war
demands of leaders. The peculiar nature of the war, the absence of
any general direction, and the disorganisation of the parliamentary
forces gave him free scope for the exercise of these qualities. In the
early part of the war each local leader fought for his own hand, and
conducted a little campaign of his own. Subordinate officers
possessed a freedom of action which subordinates rarely get, and
with independence and responsibility good men ripened fast. At first,
Cromwell was matched against opponents as untrained as himself,
till by constant fighting he learnt how to fight. In a happy phrase
Marvell speaks of Cromwell’s “industrious valour.” If he learnt the
lessons of war quicker than other men it was because he
concentrated all his faculties on the task, let no opportunity slip, and
made every experience fruitful.
It was as a leader of cavalry that Cromwell earned his first laurels. In
attack he was sudden and irresistibly vigorous. Like Rupert he loved
to head his charging troopers himself, but in the heat of battle he
controlled them with a firmer hand. When the enemy immediately
opposed to him was broken he turned a vigilant eye on the battle,
ready to throw his victorious squadrons into the scale, either to
redress the balance or to complete the victory. At Marston Moor, as
on many another field, he proved that he possessed that faculty of
coming to a prompt and sure conclusion in sudden emergencies
which Napier terms “the sure mark of a master spirit in war.” When
the fate of the battle was once decided he launched forth his
swordsmen in swift and unsparing pursuit. “We had the execution of
them two or three miles” is the grim phrase in which he describes the
conclusion of his fight at Grantham, and after Naseby Cromwell’s
cavalry pursued for twelve miles.
When he rose to command an army, Cromwell’s management of it in
battle was marked by the same characteristics as his handling of his
division of cavalry. In the early battles of the Civil War there was a
strong family likeness: there was an absence of any generalship on
either side. The general-in-chief exhibited his skill by his method of
drawing up his army and his choice of a position; but when the battle
began the army seemed to slip from his control. Each commander of
a division acted independently; there was little co-operation between
the different parts of the army; there was no sign of a directing brain.
Cromwell, on the other hand, directed the movements of his army
with the same purposeful energy with which he controlled his
troopers. Its different divisions had each their definite task assigned
to them, and their movements were so combined that each played its
part in carrying out the general plan. The best example of Cromwell’s
tactical skill is the battle of Dunbar. There, though far inferior in
numbers, Cromwell held in check half the enemy’s army with his
artillery and a fraction of his forces, while he attacked with all his
strength the key of the enemy’s position, and decided the fate of the
day by bringing a strong reserve into action at the crisis of the battle.
Whenever the victory was gained it was utilised to the utmost. At
Dunbar the Scots lost thirteen thousand men out of twenty-two
thousand; after Preston less than a third of Hamilton’s army
succeeded in effecting their return to Scotland: after Worcester, not
one troop or one company made good its retreat.
Cromwell’s strategy, compared with that of contemporary generals,
was remarkable for boldness and vigour. It reflected the energy of his
character, but it was originally dictated by political as well as military
considerations. “Without the speedy, vigorous, and effectual
prosecution of the war,” he declared in 1644, the nation would force
Parliament to make peace on any terms. “Lingering proceedings, like
those of soldiers beyond seas to spin out a war,” must be abandoned,
or the cause of Puritanism would be lost. Therefore, instead of
imitating the cautious defensive system popular with professional
soldiers, he adopted a system which promised more decisive results.
“Cromwell,” says a military critic,. “was the first great exponent of
the modern method of war. His was the strategy of Napoleon and
Von Moltke, the strategy which, neglecting fortresses and the means
of artificial defence as of secondary importance, strikes first at the
army in the field.”
In his Preston campaign Cromwell had to deal with an invading army
more than twice the strength of his own, which ventured because of
that superiority to advance without sufficient scouting and without
sufficient concentration. He might have thrown himself across
Hamilton’s path and sought to drive him back; he chose instead to
fall upon the flank of the Scots, and thrust his compact little force
between them and Scotland. Thus he separated the different
divisions of Hamilton’s army, drove Hamilton with each blow farther
from his supports, and inflicted on him a crushing defeat instead of a
mere repulse. In 1650 and 1651, Cromwell had a much harder task
given him. He had to invade a country which presented many natural
difficulties, and which was defended by an army larger than his own
under the command of a man who was a master of defensive
strategy. All his efforts to make Leslie fight a pitched battle in the
open field completely failed until one mistake gave him the
opportunity which he seized with such promptitude at Dunbar. In
the campaign of 1651, Cromwell found himself brought to a standstill
once more by Leslie’s Fabian tactics. As Leslie gave him no
opportunity he had to make one, and with wise audacity left the way
to England open in order to tempt the Scots into the invasion which
proved their destruction.
In his Irish campaigns Cromwell had an entirely different problem to
solve. The opposing armies were too weak to face him in the field and
too nimble to be brought to bay. The strength of the enemy consisted
in the natural and artificial obstacles with which the country
abounded: fortified cities commanding points of strategic value;
mountains and bogs facilitating guerrilla warfare; an unhealthy
climate, a hostile people, a country so wasted that the invader must
draw most of his supplies from England. Under these conditions the
war was a war of sieges, forays, and laborious marches, but there
were no great battles. Cromwell combined the operations of his army
and his fleet so as to utilise to the full England’s command of the
seas. He attacked the seaports first, and after mastering them
secured the strong places which would give him the control of the
rivers, thus gradually tightening his grasp on the country till its
complete subjugation became only a matter of time.
Opinions may differ as to the comparative merits of these different
campaigns. What remains clear is that Cromwell could adapt his
strategy with unfailing success to the conditions of the theatre in
which he waged war and to the character of the antagonists he had to
meet. His military genius was equal to every duty which fate imposed
upon him.
Experts alone can determine Cromwell’s precise place amongst great
generals. Cromwell himself would have held it the highest honour to
be classed with Gustavus Adolphus either as soldier or statesman.
Each was the organiser of the army he led to victory, each an
innovator in war—Gustavus in tactics, Cromwell in strategy.
Gustavus was the champion of European Protestantism as Oliver
wished to be, and each while fighting for his creed contrived to
further also the material interests of his country. But whatever
similarity existed between their aims the position of an hereditary
monarch and an usurper are too different for the parallel to be a
complete one. On the other hand, the familiar comparison of
Cromwell with Napoleon is justified rather by the resemblance
between their careers than by any likeness between their characters.
Each was the child of a revolution, brought by military success to the
front rank, and raised by his own act to the highest. Each, after
domestic convulsions, laboured to rebuild the fabric of civil
government, and to found the State on a new basis. But the
revolutions which raised them to power were of a different nature
and demanded different qualities in the two rulers.
Cromwell’s character has been the subject of controversies which
have hardly yet died away. Most contemporaries judged him with
great severity. To Royalists he seemed simply, as Clarendon said, “a
brave, bad man.” Yet while Clarendon condemned he could not
refrain from admiration, for though the usurper “had all the
wickedness against which damnation is pronounced, and for which
hell fire is prepared, so he had some virtues which have caused the
memory of some men in all ages to be celebrated.” Though he was a
tyrant he was “not a man of blood,” and he possessed not only “a
wonderful understanding in the natures and humours of men,” but
also “a great spirit, an admirable circumspection and sagacity, and a
most magnanimous resolution.”
The Republicans regarded the Protector as a self-seeking apostate.
“In all his changes,” said Ludlow, “he designed nothing but to
advance himself.” He sacrificed the public cause “to the idol of his
own ambition.” All was going well with the State, a political
millennium was at hand, “and the nation likely to attain in a short
time that measure of happiness which human things are capable of,
when by the ambition of one man the hopes and expectations of all
good men were disappointed.”
Baxter, a Presbyterian, though as convinced an opponent of the
Protector as Ludlow, was a more generous critic. According to him,
Cromwell was a good man who fell before a great temptation. He
“meant honestly in the main, and was pious and conscionable in the main course of
his life, till prosperity and success corrupted him. Then his general religious zeal
gave way to ambition, which increased as successes increased. When his successes
had broken down all considerable opposition then was he in face of his strongest
temptations, which conquered him as he had conquered others.”
But like Milton’s Satan, even after his fall “all his original virtue was
not lost.” As ruler of England “it was his design to do good in the
main, and to promote the interest of God more than any had done
before him.”
Eighteenth-century writers judged Cromwell with the same severity
as his contemporaries. “Cromwell, damned to everlasting fame,”
served Pope to point a moral against the desire of making a name in
the world. Voltaire summed up Cromwell as half knave, half fanatic,
and Hume termed him a hypocritical fanatic. Even as late as 1839,
John Forster quoted as “indisputably true” Landor’s verdict that
Cromwell lived a hypocrite and died a traitor.
Six years later, Carlyle published his collection of Cromwell’s Letters
and Speeches, which for every unprejudiced reader effectually
dispelled the theory of Cromwell’s hypocrisy. “Not a man of
falsehoods, but a man of truths,” was Carlyle’s conclusion, and
subsequent historians and biographers have accepted it as sound. It
is less easy to answer the question whether Cromwell was a fanatic or
not. Fanaticism, like orthodoxy, is a word which means one thing to
one man and something else to the next, and to many besides Hume
enthusiast and fanatic are synonymous terms. It is plain, however,
that Cromwell was a statesman of a different order from most.
Religious rather than political principles guided his action, and his
political ideals were the direct outcome of his creed. Not that purely
political considerations exercised no influence on his policy, but that
their influence instead of being paramount was in his case of only
secondary importance.
In one of his speeches Cromwell states in very explicit language the
rule which he followed in his public life. “I have been called to several
employments in this nation, and I did endeavour to discharge the
duty of an honest man to God and His people’s interest, and to this
Commonwealth.”
What did these phrases mean? If anyone had asked Cromwell what
his duty to God was in public affairs, he would have answered that it
was to do God’s will. “We all desire,” he said to his brother officers in
1647, “to lay this as the foundation of all our actions, to do that which
is the will of God.” He urged them to deliberate well before acting,
“that we may see that the things we do have the will of God in them.”
For to act inconsiderately was to incur the risk of acting counter to
God’s design, and so “to be found fighting against God.”
But, in the maze of English politics, how were men to ascertain what
that will was? Some Puritans claimed to have had it directly revealed
to them, and put forward their personal convictions as the dictates of
Heaven. Cromwell never did so. “I cannot say,” he declared in a
prayer-meeting where such revelations had been alleged, “that I have
received anything that I can speak as in the name of the Lord.” He
believed that men might still “be spoken unto by the Spirit of God,”
but when these “divine impressions and divine discoveries” were
made arguments for political action, they must be received with the
greatest caution. For the danger of self-deception was very real. “We
are very apt, all of us,” said he, “to call that Faith, that perhaps may
be but carnal imagination.” Once he warned the Scottish clergy that
there was “a carnal confidence upon misunderstood and misapplied
precepts” which might be termed “spiritual drunkenness.”
For his own part, Cromwell believed in “dispensations” rather than
“revelations.” Since all things which happened in the world were
determined by God’s will, the statesman’s problem was to discover
the hidden purpose which underlay events. When he announced his
victory at Preston he bade Parliament enquire “what the mind of God
is in all that and what our duty is.” “Seek to know what the mind of
God is in all that chain of Providence,” was his counsel to his
doubting friend, Colonel Hammond. With Cromwell, in every
political crisis this attempt to interpret the meaning of events was
part of the mental process which preceded action. As it was difficult
to be sure what that meaning was, he was often slow to make up his
mind, preferring to watch events a little longer and to allow them to
develop in order to get more light. This slowness was not the result of
indecision, but a deliberate suspension of judgment. When his mind
was made up there was no hesitation, no looking back; he struck with
the same energy in politics as in war.
This system of being guided by events had its dangers. Political
inconsistency is generally attributed to dishonesty, and Cromwell’s
inconsistency was open and palpable. One year he was foremost in
pressing for an agreement with the King, another foremost in
bringing him to the block; now all for a republic, now all for a
government with some element of monarchy in it. His changes of
policy were so sudden that even friends found it difficult to excuse
them. A pamphleteer, who believed in the honesty of Cromwell’s
motives, lamented his “sudden engaging for and sudden turning
from things,” as arguing inconstancy and want of foresight.
Moreover the effect of this inconsistency was aggravated by the
violent zeal with which Cromwell threw himself into the execution of
each new policy. It was part of his nature, like “the exceeding fiery
temper” mentioned by his steward. “I am often taken,” said
Cromwell in 1647, “for one that goes too fast,” adding that men of
such a kind were disposed to think the dangers in their way rather
imaginary than real, and sometimes to make more haste than good
speed. This piece of self-criticism was just, and it explains some of
his mistakes. The forcible dissolution of the Long Parliament in 1653
would never have taken place if Cromwell had fully appreciated the
dangers which it would bring upon the Puritan cause.
On the other hand, this failure to look far enough ahead, while it
detracts from Cromwell’s statesmanship, helps to vindicate his
integrity. He was too much taken up with the necessities of the
present to devise a deep-laid scheme for making himself great. He
told the French Ambassador in 1647, with a sort of surprise, that a
man never rose so high as when he did not know where he was going.
To his Parliaments he spoke of himself as having seen nothing in
God’s dispensations long beforehand. “These issues and events,” he
said in 1656, “have not been forecast, but were sudden providences
in things.” By this series of unforeseen events, necessitating first one
step on his part and then the next, he had been raised to the post of
Protector. “I did out of necessity undertake that business,” said he,
“which place I undertook, not so much out of a hope of doing any
good, as out of a desire to prevent mischief and evil which I did see
was imminent in the nation.”
Conscious, therefore, that he had not plotted to bring about his own
elevation, Cromwell resented nothing so much as the charge that he
had “made the necessities” to which it was due. For it was not merely
an imputation on his own honesty, but a kind of atheism, as if the
world was governed by the craft of men, not by the wisdom of God.
People said, “It was the cunning of my Lord Protector that hath
brought it about,” when in reality these great revolutions were “God’s
revolutions.” “Whatsoever you may judge men for, however you may
say this is cunning, and politic, and subtle, take heed how you judge
His revolutions as the product of men’s invention.”
Cromwell said this with perfect sincerity. He felt that he was but a
blind instrument in the hands of a higher power. Yet he had shaped
the issue of events with such power and had imposed his
interpretation of their meaning upon them with such decision, that
neither contemporaries nor historians could limit to so little the
sphere of his free will.
It was possible to “make too much of outward dispensations,” and
Cromwell owned that perhaps he did so. His system of being guided
by events instead of revelations did not put an end to the possibility
of self-deception, though it made it less likely. “Men,” as Shakespeare
says, “may construe things after their fashion clean from the purpose
of the things themselves.” But if Cromwell sometimes mistook the
meaning of facts he never failed to realise their importance. “If the
fact be so,” he once said, “why should we sport with it?” and the
saying is a characteristic one. He was therefore more practical and
less visionary than other statesmen of his party; more open-minded
and better able to adapt his policy to the changing circumstances and
changing needs of the times. To many contemporary politicians, the
exact carrying out of some cut-and-dried political programme
seemed the height of political wisdom. The Levellers with their
Agreement of the People and the Scottish Presbyterians with their
Covenant are typical examples. The persistent adhesion of the
Covenanters to their old formulas, in spite of defeats and altered
conditions, Cromwell regarded as blindness to the teaching of events.
They were blind to God’s great dispensations, he told the Scottish
ministers, out of mere wilfulness, “because the things did not work
forth their platform, and the great God did not come down to their
minds and thoughts.” He would have felt himself guilty of the same
fault if he had obstinately adhered either to a republic or a monarchy
under all circumstances. Forms of government were neither good nor
bad in themselves. Either form might be good: it depended on the
condition of England at the moment, on the temper of the people, on
the question which was more compatible with the welfare of the
Cause, which more answerable to God’s purpose as revealed in
events. It was reported that Cromwell had said that it was lawful to
pass through all forms to accomplish his ends, and if “forms” be
taken to mean forms of government, and “ends” political aims, there
can be no doubt that he thought so. However much he varied his
means, his ends remained the same.
To understand what Cromwell’s political aims were, it is necessary to
enquire what he meant when he spoke of his discharging his duty to
“the interest of the people of God and this Commonwealth.” The
order in which he places them is in itself significant. First, he put the
duty to a section of the English people; last, the duty to the English
people in general. Cromwell was full of patriotic pride. Once, when
he was enumerating to Parliament the dangers which threatened the
State, he wound up by saying that the enumeration should cause no
despondency, “as truly I think it will not; for we are Englishmen: that
is one good fact.” “The English,” he said on another occasion, “are a
people that have been like other nations, sometimes up and
sometimes down in our honour in the world, but never yet so low but
we might measure with other nations.” Several times in his speeches
he termed the English “the best people in the world.” Best, because
“having the highest and clearest profession amongst them of the
greatest glory—namely, religion.” Best, because in the midst of the
English people there was as it were another people, “a people that are
to God as the apple of His eye,” “His peculiar interest,” “the people of
God.” “When I say the people of God,” he explained, “I mean the
large comprehension of them under the several forms of godliness in
this nation”; or, in other words, all sects of Puritans.
To Cromwell the interest of the people of God and the interest of the
nation were two distinct things, but he did not think them
irreconcilable. “He sings sweetly,” said Cromwell, “that sings a song
of reconciliation between these two interests, and it is a pitiful fancy
to think they are inconsistent.” At the same time the liberty of the
people of God was more important than the civil liberty and interest
of the nation, “which is and ought to be subordinate to the more
peculiar interest of God, yet is the next best God hath given men in
this world.” Religious freedom was more important than political
freedom. Cromwell emphatically condemned the politicians who
said, “If we could but exercise wisdom to gain civil liberty, religion
would follow.” Such men were “men of a hesitating spirit,” and
“under the bondage of scruples.” They were little better than the
carnal men who cared for none of these things. They could never
“rise to such a spiritual heat” as the Cause demanded. Yet the truth
was that half the Republican party and an overwhelming majority of
the English people held the view which he condemned.
Cromwell wished to govern constitutionally. No theory of the divine
right of an able man to govern the incapable multitude blinded his
eyes to the fact that self-government was the inheritance and right of
the English people. He accepted in the main the first principle of
democracy, the doctrine of the sovereignty of the people, or, as he
phrased it, “that the foundation of supremacy is in the people and to
be by them set down in their representatives.” More than once he
declared that the good of the governed was the supreme end of all
governments, and he claimed that his own government acted “for the
good of the people, and for their interest, and without respect had to
any other interest.” But government for the people did not
necessarily mean government by the people. “That’s the question,”
said Cromwell, “what’s for their good, not what pleases them,” and
the history of the Protectorate was a commentary on this text. Some
stable government was necessary to prevent either a return to
anarchy or the restoration of the Stuarts. Therefore he was
determined to maintain his own government, with the assistance of
Parliament if possible, without it if he must. If it became necessary to
suspend for a time the liberties of the subject or to levy taxes without
parliamentary sanction, he was prepared to do it. In the end the
English people would recognise that he had acted for their good.
“Ask them,” said he, “whether they would prefer the having of their
will, though it be their destruction, rather than comply with things of
necessity?” He felt confident the answer would be in his favour.
 STATUE OF
CROMWELL, BY
THORNEYCROFT.

ERECTED AT
WESTMINSTER IN
1899.

England might have acquiesced in this temporary dictatorship in the

hope of a gradual return to constitutional government. What it could
not accept was the permanent limitation of the sovereignty of the
people in the interest of the Puritan minority whom Cromwell
termed the people of God. Yet it was at this object that all the
constitutional settlements of the Protectorate aimed. It was in the
interest of this minority that the Instrument of Government
restricted the power of Parliament and made the Protector the
guardian of the constitution. It was in their interest that the Petition
and Advice re-established a House of Lords. That House, as Thurloe
said, was intended “to preserve the good interest against the
uncertainty of the Commons House,” for, as another Cromwellian
confessed “the spirit of the Commons had little affinity with or
respect to the Cause of God.”
Cromwell trusted that the real benefits his government conferred
would reconcile the majority of the nation to the rule of the minority
and “win the people to the interest of Jesus Christ.” Thus the long
hostility between the people and “the people of God” would end at
last in reconciliation.
It was a fallacious hope. Puritanism was spending its strength in the
vain endeavour to make England Puritan by force. The enthusiasm
which had undertaken to transform the world was being conformed
to it. A change was coming over the party which supported the
Protector; it had lost many of the “men of conscience”; it had
attracted many of the time-servers and camp-followers of politics; it
was ceasing to be a party held together by religious interests, and
becoming a coalition held together by material interests and political
necessities. Cromwell once rebuked the Scottish clergy for “meddling
with worldly policies and mixtures of worldly power” to set up that
which they called “the kingdom of Christ,” and warned them that
“the Sion promised” would not be built “with such untempered
mortar.” He had fallen into the same error himself, and the rule of
Puritanism was founded on shifting sands. So the Protector’s
institutions perished with him and his work ended in apparent
failure. Yet he had achieved great things. Thanks to his sword
absolute monarchy failed to take root in English soil. Thanks to his
sword Great Britain emerged from the chaos of the civil wars one
strong state instead of three separate and hostile communities. Nor
were the results of his action entirely negative. The ideas which
inspired his policy exerted a lasting influence on the development of
the English state. Thirty years after his death the religious liberty for
which he fought was established by law. The union with Scotland and
Ireland, which the statesmen of the Restoration undid, the statesmen
of the eighteenth century effected. The mastery of the seas he had
desired to gain, and the Greater Britain he had sought to build up
became sober realities. Thus others perfected the work which he had
designed and attempted.
Cromwell remained throughout his life too much the champion of a
party to be accepted as a national hero by later generations, but in
serving his Cause he served his country too. No English ruler did
more to shape the future of the land he governed, none showed more
clearly in his acts the “plain heroic magnitude of mind.”
 INDEX

A
“Agitators,” 158, 166–167, 176, 186
“Agreement of the People,” 177, 183, 236–237
Alablaster, Dr., 17
Anabaptists, 111, 147, 150–151, 360, 437, 465
Antinomianism, 147, 150
Argyle, Marquis of, 204, 276, 287, 293
Arminianism, 16–18, 147, 360
Army of the Commonwealth, corporate feeling in, 247–248;
Levellers’ principles rife in, 248–249;
expenditure on, 435;
reduction of, 415, 437;
character of, under Cromwell, 468–469
Ayscue, Sir George, 309, 315

B
Baillie, Major-General William, 200, 202, 298
Barbadoes, 392, 394, 401, 406
Barnard, Robert, 31–32
Basing House, 132–133
Bastwick, John, 22
Bath, capture of, 132
Baxter, Richard, 147–148, 345, 360, 475
Beard, Dr., 17
Berkeley, Sir William, 392
Berwick, Treaty of, 42
Bethell, Major, 131
Biddle, John, 365–366
Birmingham, Parliamentarians supported by, 71
Blair, Robert, 296
Blake, Admiral Robert, 308, 312, 315, 377–378, 382, 461
Bradock Down battle, 87
Bradshaw, John, 219, 222–223, 307–308, 324, 451
Brandenburg, 385, 387
Brayne, Major-General William, 406
Brentford battle, 82
Bridgwater, capture of, 131
Bristol, 88, 132, 136
Broghill, Lord, 421
Buckingham, Duke of, 13–16
Burnet, Bishop, 297–298, 388
Burton, Henry, 22
Byron, Lord, 103, 105

C
Cæsar, Cromwell compared with, 467
Cambridge, Parliamentarians supported by, 71
Carisbrooke Castle, 184
Carlyle, cited, 260, 476
Catholics, intolerance and persecution of, 10–11, 265, 267–268, 344,
359, 361–362;
establishment of Catholicism in Ireland offered by Charles, 137;
establishment denied, 157;
union with Royalists in Ireland, 255, 261–262;
Duke of Lorraine invited to Ireland by, 263;
conversion of, attempted, 268–271, 274
Cavaliers, see Royalists.
Chancery, Court of, 332
Charles I., Buckingham favoured by, 13–14;
forced loans exacted by, 14–15;
Parliament adjourned by, for eleven years, 17–19;
financial measures of, 20;
foreign policy of, 23–24;
attempt to crush Scots, 41–46;
efforts to save Strafford, 52–53;
resources of, in Civil War, 77–78;
movements during Civil War, 103, 111, 113, 129–130, 133–134, 139,
153;
offers three years’ establishment of Presbyterianism, 154;
removed to Holmby House, 155;
plays off Parliament against Army, 173, 186;
flees to Carisbrooke, 184;
intrigues with Scots, 184, 186;
concludes “The Engagement” with Scots, 188;
makes treaty with Parliamentary Commissioners, 207–208;
brought to Windsor, 216;
indictment, 217;
trial, 220–223;
takes leave of his children, 225–226;
execution, 226–229;
funeral, 230;
revenue of, in 1633, 246
Charles II., proclaimed king in Edinburgh, 276;
reaches Edinburgh, 278;
gains influence in Scotland, 287–288;
advances on England, 289–290;
 defeated at Worcester, 291–292;
flees to France, 293;
supported by Spain, 382;
foreign policy of, compared with Cromwell’s, 388;
proclaimed in Virginia, 392;
colonial policy of, compared with Cromwell’s, 408;
offers reward for assassination of Cromwell, 438;
restoration of, 449
Charles Gustavus, King of Sweden, 380–381, 384–387
Chester, Royalists supported by, 71
Christina, Queen of Sweden, 373
Church reform, 332, 337–338, 358–360
Clanricarde, Earl of, 263
Clarendon, Earl of, 388, 454, 474.
See Hyde, Edward.
Claypole, John, 141, 421
Cleveland, John, 356
Clonmel, 262–263
“Clubmen,” 135
Colchester, siege of, 195, 203
Committee of Both Kingdoms, 100, 123–125
Condé, Prince of, 310, 373, 375, 384
Connecticut, 391, 396
Cony, George, 418
Cooper, Sir Anthony Ashley, 431
Council of the North, 21–22, note 3
Covenanters, rise of, 41–42
Cowley, Abraham, 356
Crawford, Major-Gen. Laurence, 106, 108, 111, 151
Cromwell, Bridget, 461
Cromwell, Elizabeth (Claypole), 441, 461
Cromwell, Elizabeth (mother of Protector), 460
Cromwell, Elizabeth (wife of Protector), 8, 460–461
Cromwell, Frances, 141, 441
Cromwell, Henry, 3
Cromwell, Henry (son of Protector), 141, 264, 446, 462, 464, 466
Cromwell, Henry (cousin of Protector), 73
Cromwell, Mary, 141, 461
Cromwell, Oliver:
Historical Sequence of Career:
Birth and boyhood, 4–5;
Cambridge days, 5–7;
legal studies, 7;
marriage, 7;
elected for Huntingdon, 8;
defies order for adjournment of Parliament, 18;
succeeds Sir Thomas Cromwell at Ely, 28;
emigration contemplated, 37;
work in Long Parliament, 49;
raises regiment of horse, 91;
victories at Grantham, 94;
defeats Colonel Cavendish, 96;
made governor of Isle of Ely, 98;
retreats to Lincoln, 98;
victorious at Winceby, 99;
appointed member of Committee of Both Kingdoms, 100;
appointed Lieut.-General of army of Eastern Association, 100;
Marston Moor, 105–108;
Newbury, 113;
arraigns Manchester in House of Commons, 115;
joins Waller in the west, 119;
successes at Islip and Bampton, 124;
appointed Lieut.-General under Fairfax, 126;
Naseby, 127–129;
Langport, 130–131;
Basing, 132–133;
disperses “Clubmen,” 136;
defeats Wentworth, 137;
thanked and rewarded by Parliament, 139;
removes family from Ely to London, 141;
illness (1647), 159;
interviews with Elector Palatine, 160;
supports Army against Parliament, 163, 212–213;
sanctions the seizure of Charles I., 165;
suspected by Independents, 175, 191;
reconciled to Rainsborough, 190;
campaign in Wales, 194;
campaign against Hamilton, 198–203;
at Charles’s trial, 219;
quells mutiny in the army, 249–250;
appointed Lord Lieutenant and Commander-in-Chief in Ireland,
258;
campaign in Ireland, 258–262;
illness, 261;
return to England, 263;
appointed Captain-General and Commander-in-Chief, 280;
campaign in Scotland, 280–292;
illness, 288;
defeats Charles II. at Worcester, 291–292;
triumphal entry into London, 300;
dissolves Long Parliament, 323;
nominates Parliamentary Assembly of 140 members, 329;
refuses position of king, 337;
installed as Protector, 341;
Chancellor of Oxford (1651–1657), 355;
concludes treaties with Holland, Sweden, Denmark, and
Portugal, 372–374;
struggle with Parliament, 410–414;
reduces the army, 415, 437;
summons his second Parliament, 419;
attempted assassination of, 421;
refuses title of king, 422–423, 426;
second time installed as Protector (1657), 426;
 financial difficulties, 434–435;
illness and death of, 441–443;
funeral, 444;
corpse dishonoured, 451
Personal Characteristics:
Affection for his wife, 8
Appearance, 453–454
Compassion, 453–454
Conciliatory policy, 250–251
Courage, 292, 440
Energy, 469, 471
Enthusiasm, 110, 192, 476, 485
Fatalism, 252
Geniality, 148, 454, 456
Hot temper, 148, 453
Ill-health, 440
Integrity, 474, 477
Large-mindedness, 481, 486
Military ability, 198, 467, 469–473
Moderation and good sense, 181, 353, 367
Opportunism, 191, 478
Recreations, 456–458
Religious views, 35, 36;
doubts, 38–40
Severity of discipline, 197
Simplicity of tastes, 458
Tolerance, 150–153, 168, 205–206, 211, 307, 343, 367–369, 420
Cromwell, Oliver (uncle of Protector), 3, 9, 73
Cromwell, Captain Oliver (son of Protector), 110, 141
Cromwell, Sir Richard, 1–3, 8
Cromwell, Richard (son of Protector), 141, 436, 443, 446, 462–465
Cromwell, Thomas, 1–3, 10
Cropredy Bridge battle, 111

D
Denmark, 238, 371, 374, 387
Derby, Earl of, 291
Dering, Sir Edward, bill of, 56
Desborough, Col. John, 131, 301, 426, 445
Dorislaus, Dr., murder of, 238
Doyley, Col. Edward, 406–407
Drogheda, 259–260
Dunbar, 280–284, 471
Dunkirk, 311, 384
Durham, college founded at, 355–356

E
Eastern Association, 90, 100
Edgehill, 73, 79–80
Education, Cromwell’s care for, 353–357
Eikon Basilike, 240
Eliot, Sir John, 14–15, 18, 22, 25
Elizabeth, Princess, Charles’s farewell to, 225–226
Elizabeth, Queen, position of Parliament under, 9, 11
“Engagement, The,” 188
“Engagers,” disabilities of, 205
English nation, Cromwell’s estimate of, 482
Episcopacy, abolition of, advocated, 54
Essex, Earl of, 60, 68, 79–83, 86, 103
Evelyn, John, cited, 449

F
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