Cromwell, Oliver (1599–1658)

CROMWELL, OLIVER (1599–1658)

CROMWELL, OLIVER (1599–1658), military leader and ruler of England. Cromwell, Lord Protector of England, Scotland, and Ireland, was a descendant of Henry VIII's great minister Thomas Cromwell. A native of Huntingdon, he married Elizabeth Bourchier, the daughter of a London merchant, in 1620. Through her he established connections with the London merchant community and with leading Puritans in Essex. His long, stable marriage produced nine children.

In 1628 he was elected to Parliament for Huntingdon. At about the same time, he underwent a spiritual crisis and religious conversion, from being a conventional Protestant to a passionate, "born-again" Puritan, that shaped the rest of his life. By 1631, however, he had fallen on hard times, and had to move to smaller quarters in St. Ives, where he worked as a yeoman farmer for several years. In 1636 he inherited substantial property, and with this dramatic increase in his income he resumed the status of a minor country gentleman.

CIVIL WAR

In 1640 Cromwell was returned as member of Parliament (M.P.) for the borough of Cambridge. He quickly made his mark in the Long Parliament, serving on eighteen important committees. When in August 1642 civil war broke out, he went back to Cambridge to recruit a troop of cavalry. Soon he was promoted from captain to colonel and effectively became the senior army officer in East Anglia. Devoid of military experience, he nevertheless devised a strategic plan for the defense of the region and made it work. In recruiting he insisted that no test except that of godliness be applied to those volunteering for service. "If you choose godly men to be captains of horse," he wrote to the Suffolk committee, "honest men will follow them . . . I had rather have a plain, russet-coated captain that knows what he fights for, and loves what he knows, than that which you call a gentleman and is nothing else" (Carlyle, letter XVI, September 1643). In minor engagements Cromwell developed the ability to lead a cavalry charge and then regroup his men and lead them a second and third time against the foe. This would stand him in good stead later at Marston Moor and Naseby.

In August 1643 the Long Parliament created an army in East Anglia under the command of the earl of Manchester. Cromwell was named lieutenant general of the cavalry and Manchester's second-in-command. Early in 1644 he was appointed to the Committee of Both Kingdoms, the chief executive body in charge of the war against the king. His star was on the rise.

At the end of June 1644 the combined armies of the English Parliament and the Scottish Estates laid siege to York. When the king's main field army under Prince Rupert arrived to raise the siege, the result was the greatest of the battles of the civil war, Marston Moor (2 July 1644). Cromwell commanded the left wing of the 28,000-strong allied army and directed the final, decisive charge, scattering the royalist army and killing over four thousand of them. "God made them as stubble to our swords," he wrote afterward. (Carlyle, letter XXI).

The aristocratic generals on the parliamentary side were strangely reluctant to follow up this stunning victory. Open feuding erupted between Essex and Manchester on the one side, and Cromwell and his radical parliamentary allies on the other. The way out of the impasse was a resolution of self-denial (9 December 1644) under which all members of both houses were required to surrender their commissions and make way for new commanders. At the same time the Commons proceeded to construct a new army under centralized command and with solid financing on the ruins of the three older armies of Essex, Manchester, and Waller. By June 1645, on the eve of the battle of Naseby, the post of lieutenant-general of the cavalry of the New Model Army was still vacant. At the insistence of the commanderin-chief, Sir Thomas Fairfax, Cromwell was allowed to fill the post in defiance of the Self-Denying Ordinance.

He rode onto the battlefield at Naseby on 13 June 1645, and the outcome of the English Civil War was decided the next day in the space of two hours. Cromwell scattered the royalist cavalry facing him and then regrouped to assist Fairfax in shattering the royalist infantry in a great coordinated charge. The next twelve months were little more than a mopping-up operation culminating in the surrender of the royalist headquarters at Oxford and the king's flight to the Scots army.

For Cromwell the New Model Army's unbroken chain of victories was the incontestable proof that the sun of God's favor shone upon them. He used the army's successes to plead for the cause closest to his heart: liberty of conscience. Parliament's response was to thank him for his pains, but to ignore his heartfelt pleas. In June 1646 he returned to his seat in Westminster to join his war party friends in the struggle to win the peace.

When the Presbyterian peace party decided to disband most of the New Model Army and pack the rest off to Ireland to fight the rebels there, Cromwell threw in his lot with the officers and rank-and-file who chose to rebel rather than submit. The king was seized and removed to army headquarters; London was invaded and the Presbyterian ringleaders in Parliament expelled. Charles was offered a settlement—The Heads of the Proposals—more generous than any terms Parliament had put on the table. He chose instead to make a secret agreement with the Scots to renew the war for his English kingdom.

Meanwhile, at Putney, Cromwell and his son-inlaw Henry Ireton faced a challenge from Levellerinspired soldiers and officers disenchanted with his prolonged dallying with the king. With great difficulty he prevented the Army Council from adopting the radically democratic Agreement of the People as the army's preferred constitution for England.

Further political argument was curtailed by the second civil war, which broke out in early 1648. Before setting off to snuff out the brushfires of royalist discontent, Cromwell attended the officers' three-day prayer meeting at Windsor. His call to repentance unleashed a flood of bitter tears from his comrades over the army's failure to follow the ways of God. They then bound themselves to call "Charles Stuart, that man of blood" to account for all his mischief (Allen, p. 5). After quelling the revolts in Wales Cromwell marched north to link up with Lambert, who was guarding the northern approaches against a Scottish invasion. Together they fell upon the Scots at Preston, completely liquidating their dispirited army (17 August 1648). It was the first major battle in which Cromwell had been commander-in-chief.

REGICIDE AND REPUBLIC

By the time he arrived back in London the army had published its demand for the king's trial and purged the House of Commons (6 December 1648) for persisting in negotiations with the "man of blood." Cromwell supported these measures, and while he may initially have hoped that the king could be forced to abdicate, when this proved unfeasible he accepted the "cruel necessity" of regicide. No one was more zealous in rounding up signatures for the king's death warrant, and seeing that the beheading actually took place, than Cromwell. King Charles I was beheaded on 30 January 1649.

For the next decade Cromwell was continually torn between a yearning for constitutional respectability on the one hand and a hunger for godly reformation on the other. With Fairfax he marched to Burford in May 1649 to suppress a Levellerinspired army mutiny. Passionately committed to the suppression of the Catholic rebellion in Ireland and the elimination of support for Charles II, he led an expedition there in August. Despite his ruthless massacres at Drogheda and Wexford, the Irish were not subdued until 1652. Cromwell was forced to abandon the siege of Waterford, and at Clonmel he lost two thousand men. Before Ireland's subjugation could be accomplished he was recalled to England to prepare for the military threat from the Scots who had crowned Charles II king.

Marching north he met Leslie's army at Dunbar (3 September 1650), where he won his most sensational victory, in no small part because of his willingness to be guided by his brilliant major-general, John Lambert. The following year (to the day) he crushed Charles II and the last remnants of armed royalism at Worcester.

Back in London he found that Parliament was making no progress toward either constitutional settlement or godly reformation. When at last it was on the verge of passing a bill that would have excluded army officers from future Parliaments while erecting few safeguards against the election of conservatives or royalists, Cromwell expelled the members (20 April 1653), replacing them with a nominated assembly of "saints," that is, Puritan "godly men," commonly known as the Barebones Parliament. Their radicalism proved to be alarming, and within months they were prevailed upon to dissolve themselves.

THE PROTECTORATE

Next came a written constitution, the Instrument of Government (December 1653), which provided for a single-chamber Parliament, an elected council of state, and a lord protector. Although he was named to that post for life, Cromwell still had to meet his Parliaments, and he had little control over the makeup of the councils. Far from being a military dictator, and chastened by his many political setbacks, he now described himself as a good constable, set to keep the peace of the parish. During the tenure of the protectorate he formally readmitted the Jews to England, while also leaving Catholics undisturbed in the exercise of their religion. The main thrust of his foreign policy was hostility to Spain. When the expedition to seize Hispaniola ended in failure, Jamaica was taken as the consolation prize (1655).

In 1657, under the Humble Petition and Advice, an upper house was reestablished and Cromwell empowered to name his successor. But with an eye to army opinion and to God, he refused to accept the title of king. By the time he died (3 September 1658), of malaria complicated by pneumonia, the nation was weary of constitutional uncertainty, large standing armies, burdensome taxation, and a bankrupt exchequer. Although Cromwell was one of England's three or four military geniuses, a religious visionary, and a man of towering integrity, in the end he was an indifferent statesman.

Cromwell appears to have nominated his eldest son Richard (1626–1712) as his successor only hours before his death. A man of little military or political experience, Richard lacked totally the forceful personality of his father. He was eventually brought down by the intractable problems he inherited. Politically he found himself thwarted by the radical republicans in Parliament and the grandees in the army. When it came to a trial of strength with the grandees in April 1659, the grandees won hands down. Richard retired to private life, living in exile from 1660 to 1680.

See also Charles I (England) ; Charles II (England) ; Cromwell, Thomas ; English Civil War and Interregnum ; English Civil War Radicalism ; Military: Battle Tactics and Campaign Strategy ; Parliament ; Puritanism ; Reformation, Protestant .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Primary Source

Cromwell, Oliver. The Writings and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell. Edited by W. C. Abbott. 4 vols. Cambridge, Mass., 1937–1947.

Secondary Sources

Allen, William. A Faithful Memorial of That Remarkable Meeting of Many Officers of the Army in England, at Windsor Castle, in the Year 1648. London, 1659.

Buchan, John. Oliver Cromwell. London, 1934.

Coward, Barry. Oliver Cromwell. London, 1991.

Davis, J. C. Oliver Cromwell. London, 2001.

Firth, C. H. Cromwell and the Rule of the Puritans in England. London, 1901.

Fraser, Antonia. Cromwell, Our Chief of Men. London, 1973.

Hill, Christopher. God's Englishman: Oliver Cromwell and the English Revolution. London, 1970.

Morrill, John. Oliver Cromwell and the English Revolution. London, 1990.

Paul, Robert S. The Lord Protector: Religion and Politics in the Life of Oliver Cromwell. London, 1955.

Ian Gentles