Cromwell Read online

  In December 1640 Archbishop Laud had been impeached by the House of Commons: he was finally committed to the Tower of London in March. In the meantime the subject of religion and Church organization in England was thrown into relief by the actions of the Scots. In their Demands towards a Treaty, drawn up as a basis of negotiation with the King, they included one article which requested “uniformity in religion” – the Presbyterian religion – as a prerequisite before “a solid peace between the Nations” could be established. Later the whole question of uniformity, demanded by the Presbyterians and rejected by those known as Independents, became of vital import in the relations of Parliament, Army, and Scots.

  Independency had originated as “a form of decentralized Calvinism” as one historian has described it, based on the theory that religious authority rested with the local communities, since Christ had deliberately chosen certain people to “walk together”. Each particular local group of the Elect was therefore believed to hold within it the autonomous power to decide its own religious destiny. Thus the Independents would of their very nature tolerate many different shades of opinion, as represented by variations in the different communities. Congregationalists, for example, with their “gathered churches”, the assemblies in question being gathered together by the inspiration of Christ, were included among the Independents, although not all Independents were necessarily Congregationalists.4 Presbyterianism, on the other hand, whose own name sprang from the Greek word Presbuteros or elder, implied a central political control of the Church. This role was performed by the Scottish National Assembly whose religious duty it was to impose uniformity of belief. Where Presbyterians and Independents did join together was that bishops obviously had no part in the theocracy of either sect, hence Cromwell’s own fierce reaction.

  Later, in the battle within the Army between these two spearheads of the anti-episcopal attack, Cromwell was to emerge as one of the leading Independents. But at this point, he was evidently not yet a committed Independent, although he was devoting much serious thought to the subject. In February 1641 he sent off to another “loving friend”, Mr Willingham of Swithin’s Lane London, for some paper that gave the reasons of the Scots for wishing to enforce uniformity in religion, as expressed in the eighth article of their Covenant. Willingham must have had some Scottish contacts. “I mean that which I had before of you” wrote Cromwell: he wanted to read it again before the article was debated afresh, which was expected to take place shortly.5

  Perhaps such religious heart-searchings, once more contrasted with outward violence of expression, explain the blank silence of Cromwell on the subject of Strafford, the King’s servant who was impeached, tried, sentenced, and finally executed in early May 1641. Cromwell’s name appears only once in the proceedings, and then, by inference, on the subject of religion: he suggested, with regard to the worsening Irish situation for which Strafford was blamed, that the House of Commons might consider ways to “turn the Papists out of Dublin”.6 The suggestion shows at least the direction Cromwell’s thought was taking, and makes his prolonged involvement in Irish affairs from the spring of the next year onwards the more explicable.

  In the endorsement of a document known shortly as the Protestation, a sort of English National Covenant, assented to by both Houses of Parliament nem. con. on 3 and 4 May 1641, Cromwell was certainly very active. A note-book of the proceedings reveals that he would have liked it to have been backed up by a further Oath of Association to strengthen it. The text of the Protestation itself revealed how far dissatisfaction with what were held to be the policies of the King and his Church was now publicly and violently stated. There were references to “endeavours to subvert the Fundamental Laws of England and Ireland, and to introduce the exercise of an Arbitrary and Tyrannical Government”, as well as more familiar allusions to “Jesuits and other Adherents to the See of Rome” who were undermining the true religion. The jealousies which had been deliberately raised between the English Army and Parliament, the “Popish Army levied in Ireland” (in fact the Army raised by Strafford, where most of the officers and the commander Ormonde were Protestants) and the use of the royal revenues were also touched upon.

  The Protestation ended with an oath in which the juror not only promised to uphold the true reformed Protestant religion, and of course maintain his allegiance to the King, but also to uphold the “Power and Privileges of Parliament, the Lawful Rights of the Subjects”. Cromwell and his comember for Cambridge, Lowry, wrote to the Mayor and Aldermen of the town specially recommending both the preamble and the oath, which had been entered into by members of the House, they said, with alacrity and willingness. Their intention was clearly to inspire them to do likewise. It was an action “not unworthy of your imitation” observed the writers. In any case: “You shall hereby as the body represented avow the practice of the representative. The conformity is in itself praiseworthy; and will be by them approved. The result may (through the Almighty’s blessing) become stability and security to the whole kingdom. Combination carries strength with it. Its dreadful to adversaries.. .”7 Combination was indeed strength, as Parliament was rapidly discovering. The next cooperative venture with which Cromwell was publicly associated, the socalled Root and Branch Bill, could well have been lethal to his ecclesiastical adversaries, had it succeeded.

  The bill, in which it was proposed to do away with the bishops altogether, took its name from an earlier petition, demanding the abolition of episcopacy “with all its dependencies, roots and branches”. Although first put before Parliament by Sir Edward Dering, he related later how he himself had only received it from Sir Arthur Haselrig just before the debate. Haselrig in turn had got it from Cromwell and Sir Henry Vane the younger. Clarendon ascribed the authorship to Oliver St John, Cromwell’s cousin of “dark and clouded countenance” who had never forgiven the Star Chamber for summoning him for a seditious plot. But the joint authorship of Haselrig, Vane and Cromwell is far more likely, if only because Dering had little motive to fabricate such a story. Furthermore, having moved across to the Royalist and Episcopalian camp, Dering later published a book which gave the initials of those concerned over the Bill as S.A.H. and O.C.8

  Although the bill itself was subsequently abandoned, the House did pass measures for such manifestly Puritan steps as forbidding sports on the Lord’s Day, forbidding “corporal bowing” at the name of Jesus, taking down communion rails, and removing “scandalous pictures”, for example of the Trinity and the Virgin Mary, from the churches. Nor did Cromwell’s attitude towards Anglicanism soften as the year wore on: he took part in one debate in which he spoke out against the Common Prayer Book (“there were many passages in it which divers learned and wise Divines could not submit unto and practice”) and on 8 September a motion was passed, which he personally introduced, on what might be described as one of his pet subjects – sermons. Sermons, it was decided, should be heard in the afternoons in all parishes of England – and the charge was to be borne by those parishes where they were not already being held, presumably to teach them a lesson for not being in the vanguard of religious progress. At the beginning of the next session of Parliament on 20 October Cromwell supported a bill to exclude bishops from sitting in the House of Lords (which that House naturally rejected) and spoke bitterly in subsequent debates on the right of the bishops to continue to vote there.9

  As Laud languished in the Tower, as Stafford’s decapitated body lay at last at peace in its family grave at Wentworth-Woodhouse, the day-today attacks on the position of the monarchy in the summer of 1641 showed that their sacrifice, if not in vain, had at least proved useless to stem the rising tide of parliamentary criticism. Much radical legislation had been passed, or was being prepared. It included a Triennial Act to prevent the dissolution of this Parliament without its consent, and measures for the abolition of the Courts of Star Chamber and High Commission, shipmoney, afforestation and knighthood fines such as Cromwell had once been asked to pay. In August the King set out to visit Scotland
once more, an expedition much opposed by Pym and his associates including Cromwell who enquired rhetorically: what was the necessity of Charles’s going, and what was his “particular occasion” for the journey? The answer already supplied by the suspicious minds of some of Charles’s vigilant Commons was that he hoped to stir up the Scots sufficiently to gain some support against his intractable English subjects, and perhaps indulge in some form of Army plot, much easier to organize in the North, away from London. There had already been one scare of such an Army conspiracy. Cromwell provided his own public answer to his enquiry: there was danger to the King’s person “going through the Army” and “factions stand up in Scotland”.10

  Cromwell’s intervention and Pym’s objections show how early the devious nature of the King, the very real possibility that the unique advantage of his royal role would enable him to play off all sides to his ultimate victory, was taken into account by the Parliamentary party. It was also significant that Cromwell was one of those who attached great importance to the presence or otherwise of the eleven-year-old Prince of Wales – the future Charles II – on the expedition, and demanded that his governor, the Marquis of Hertford, should be joined by two other lords chosen from among the Puritans, Lord Bedford and Lord Saye and Sele. In the squabbles over the education of Prince Charles in October, to ensure that only “safe” people went near him, and later in January 1642, Cromwell also played his part. It was as though the unsatisfactory personality of Charles i was already making it clear how important the character of princes could be in the shaping of events. In which case the education of young princes (like the guidance of young children generally, a subject which Cromwell always took extremely seriously) was of great importance too.

  The Scottish visit did not produce for Charles the support he needed. Sir Patrick Wemyss reported the sad spectacle of a King surrounded by hostile Scots in a letter from Edinburgh at the end of September: “It would pity any man’s heart to see how he looks; for he is never at quiet amongst them, and glad he is, when he sees any man that he thinks loves him.” The discovery of a plot known as the “Incident”, the work of some of the King’s less scrupulous backers to murder the chief Scottish leaders including Argyll, scarcely endeared Charles further to those around him.11

  The Parliamentary extremists were, on the other hand, animated with much enthusiasm at this time, believing that they were witnessing, piece by piece, the joyous fulfilment of their own godly programme. In contrast to that of Charles, they believed that their own situation was full of promise. On 7 September the church bells were rung all over England in thanksgiving for the peace with Scotland, finally concluded. Parliament had the further privilege of listening to two ecstatic sermons by Stephen Marshall, a friend of Pym, and Jeremiah Burroughes, stressing the wonderful nature of the year 1641, an Annus Mirabilis, greater even than 1588, the year of the Armada. A “very jubilee and resurrection of Church and State” was shortly to be expected.12

  Yet for all Charles’s long face and the euphoria of Marshall and Burroughes, by the autumn the tide of general grievance against the Crown appeared to have turned, and there was some danger that as the waters subsided, Pym and his brethren might be left somewhat exposed on the shore. The spectre of an Army plot, always useful in raising popular suspicion of the King, was inconveniently laid to rest by the disbanding of the Army itself. Nor was the extravagant behaviour of some of the sectaries, incited perhaps by sentiments such as those of Marshall, particularly sympathetic to the country as a whole. Charles’s declaration that on return from Scotland he would restore the Elizabethan Church settlement had found much favour. Into this situation the kingdom of Ireland, so often the portent of the coming storm in English history, cast one of her perennial thunderbolts, and ignited suspicion once more against Charles by reinforcing those fears of “popery” which had always been the backbone of popular apprehension.

  The Irish rising of October 1641 was timed at a moment when the administration there – a Lord Deputy and Council, who ruled over a separate Irish Parliament – was much softened since the end of the firm rule of Strafford-Although the great strongman had reported as he left that the Irish were “as fully satisfied and as well affected to his Majesty’s person and service, as can possibly be wished for”, his very departure left a gaping hole, of which the various inhabitants of the island, representing a dozen different interests, whether religious, landed, or political, were quick to take advantage.13 Since the turn of the century there had been a resurgence of Catholicism due to the increased presence of priests, mainly Jesuits. In the meantime renewed waves of land plantation by the English, salubrious for those granted the lands, caused fury and resentment as well as actual physical suffering among those who had to make way.

  Perhaps the causes of the Irish rising can be sought as deep as the first alien settlement there of colonists of another nationality, be it Normans, English or Scots. In considering the actual state of seventeenth-century Ireland however, and the 1640s in particular, one must also pay practical attention to the enormous variety of shades of Anglican English, Anglican Anglo-Irish, Catholic Anglo-Irish, Catholic Irish and Presbyterian Scots who rightly or wrongly now inhabited the island. In many cases their residence there stretched back generations, even one generation being often enough to give the immigrant the feeling of patriotic right of presence. The very different natures of the various invasions of Irish land which had taken place at very different dates, had another divisive effect. Each wave of settlers tended to be assimilated into the pattern of Irish – or Anglo-Irish – life and thus gave the impression to the fresh band of English settlers of being more Irish than English. Sometimes their actual lands were granted away by the English Government in London, as if they were no better than the “mere Irish”. Great families of ancient Irish blood such as the Fitzgeralds were rarer than the many families of Norman and English descent, for example the Butlers headed by Lord Ormonde, who now considered Ireland their homeland but retained many links with England. Like the truth, which has been described as rarely pure and never simple, the ethnic situation in Ireland was hardly pure, its society the reverse of simple.

  The deep and complicated structure of Ireland in 1641 was however not a matter on which the Puritan element in the House of Commons, including Cromwell, was inclined to ponder. A reaction of simple passionate horror to the rising – or rebellion as it was always called by the English at the time – was occasioned by the news that the revolt had also been accompanied by a general massacre of English men, women and children, turned out of their homes, some dying by the sword, some out of starvation and exposure as they tried to make their way half-naked towards the English-held enclaves such as Dublin. The legend of the Irish massacres was born. So far as Cromwell is concerned, we are of course here concerned with the legend rather than the reality, because it was the legend which so greatly influenced his generation in England. It should nevertheless be pointed out for the sake of historical accuracy that there is no actual evidence that this deliberate massacre, as such, ever took place.* (* See Walter D. Love, “Civil War in Ireland: Appearances in Three Centuries of Historical Writing”.)

  Undoubtedly there were great sufferings among the English settlers driven out into the winter weather which followed, in the course of which exposure and starvation were surely responsible for many unnecessary deaths. On the question of violence, whatever individual deeds were done, they did not approach those offshoots of the officially vindictive policy of die English commander, Sir Charles Coote. In any case it is important to note that those on the spot did not start by trying to prove the existence of a massacre, only that there had been the intention of a rebellion. The first vital depositions taken on the subject, included in the report of Dean Henry Jones to the House of Commons in the spring of 1642, were mainly concerned with intention rather than accomplishment. Of eighty-five depositions, only sixteen concerned murder, and the first fifty-five referred only to threatening words used. It was rebellion whi
ch Jones sought to prove, and intended crimes were good proofs of rebellion: they were not however such good proofs of massacre. Yet in 1646 Sir John Temple in his History of the Horrid Rebellion in Ireland which had such an effect on his contemporaries – and was printed incidentally just three years before Cromwell landed in Ireland – transformed Jones’s own material to show that the massacres had not only been intended but had actually taken place.14

  But in considering the climate of English opinion at this date, which is of extreme importance in the case of Oliver Cromwell who stands permanently arraigned at the bar of humanity for his actions towards the Irish eight years later, the salient point is not whether the massacres took place or not, but whether they were believed to have taken place in England at the time. Here the evidence is unanimous: it was an article of faith among English Protestants that this wicked, inhuman slaughter of innocent women and children, with a strong overtone of a Catholic Holy War, had raged through Ireland. Sir John Temple in his influential account quoted a deposition mentioning over a hundred thousand persons killed from October to April: Clarendon estimated between forty and fifty thousand. Edmund Ludlow in his Memoirs displayed both the prevalent belief and the construction which many put upon it when he wrote: “The Papists throughout that kingdom (of Ireland) were in arms … News not displeasing to Charles tho’ it was attended with the massacre of many thousands of Protestants there.” To Whitelocke, in his Diary, it was “so horrid, black and flagitious rebellion as cannot be paralleled in.the stories of any other nation.”15 Dr Bate the Royalist doctor who, having acted for Cromwell, later wrote his memoirs, brought in a still more savage note: many thousands were barbarously butchered, without regard to age or sex “like so many human sacrifices to their superstition”. Some of the estimates of numbers killed positively soared. Lucy Hutchinson, for example, believed in a figure of over two hundred thousand, and if Dublin Castle had been surprised, as it nearly was, “there had not been any remnant of the Protestant name left in that country”. John Milton in his First Defence of the State of England published in 1649, also wrote of over I two hundred thousand slain, for which reason the Irish, “a mixed rabble, part papists and part savages, guilty in the highest degree of all these I crimes … by their own foregoing demerits and provocations had been justly made our vassals”.16