Chapter V: Part 5

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.