Cromwell, Oliver

Cromwell, Oliver (1599–1658). General and Lord Protector. Despite all that has been written about him, it is still difficult to appreciate the unique character of Cromwell's career, and the impact that it made on his contemporaries. No private person until then had taken power to rule a great European kingdom, no subject had taken it upon himself to sit in judgement on his lawful sovereign, condemn him with the formality of a lawful process, and publicly execute him as a criminal. In a country governed by custom, precedent, and the common law, Cromwell completely changed the ancient frame of government, reforming Parliament and imposing a written constitution. By conquest he incorporated the separate kingdoms of Scotland and Ireland into a single commonwealth with England. He remains the only British statesman whose entire career depended on the control and use of military power. Yet his achievement proved to be totally ephemeral. He left no political heirs or legacy. Two centuries were to elapse before his reputation recovered. The New England which his friends created across the Atlantic, and to which he once thought of emigrating, was to flourish: the new regenerate England he tried to create collapsed and vanished completely.

A provincial gentleman of modest means, Cromwell first became prominent in the second session of the Long Parliament (1641–2). When the abortive Army plot of royalist officers apparently showed that Charles I intended to renege on his acceptance of the constitutional safeguards enacted in the first session, and a catholic rebellion broke out in Ireland, Cromwell urged Parliament to assume control of both the army destined for Ireland and the home militia. He soon became identified with what has been termed the war party. He believed that the military defeat of the king's forces must precede negotiations for a settlement, whereas a more numerous ‘peace party’ advocated a defensive strategy while a compromise was negotiated, even if the royal forces continued offensive operations. A ‘middle party’ also hesitated before becoming committed to all-out war against their sovereign. Cromwell also had to overcome obstruction at the local level from the county committees preoccupied with the defence of their region, making a general offensive strategy impossible. He made the forces maintained by the Eastern Association the most formidable of the parliamentarian armies, but his practice of commissioning men of determination and ability, regardless of their social status and religious positions, provoked hostility. Cromwell's men contributed decisively to the victory at Marston Moor (July 1644), but his political associates had to publicize his role to counter their opponents' attribution of the victory to Parliament's Scottish allies.

Cromwell deplored the failure to follow up this victory effectively, and used it to oust irresolute leaders. He denounced his own neighbour and superior officer, Lord Manchester, and helped pass the self-denying ordinance. This barred peers and MPs, with exceptions of whom Cromwell was one, from commands and set up a central army, the New Model, of which he became second in command. This made short work of the royalists. At Naseby, Cromwell annihilated Charles's field army (June 1645). But once the war became concerned with mopping up royalist fortresses and islands, with Charles I in Scottish hands, a majority of peers and MPs worked to bring the army under direct parliamentary control. They allowed army pay to fall into arrears. Soldiers were refused indemnity to cover wartime actions. The reconquest of Ireland was not to be entrusted to the New Model. Instead its regiments were to be disbanded, the soldiers re-enlisted in new units commanded by a new set of officers nominated by Parliament. A new established church on presbyterian lines would mean restricted toleration for the independents and other sects who were strongly represented in the army. Cromwell shared his men's resentment. He emerged as the chief military politician, eclipsing his superior, Lord Fairfax. Cromwell took the lead, first in representing army grievances, but soon in a wider sense claiming to speak and act as the embodiment of the ‘cause’ for which it had fought the war. In June 1647 Cornet Joyce took Charles into the custody of the army. Marching on London the army forced the Commons to send away the most conspicuously anti-army MPs. In July it issued the Heads of the Proposals, a manifesto for a new constitutional settlement, which it discussed with Charles, whose responses were characteristically ambiguous. The manifesto did not go far enough to satisfy the more radical officers and men. Influenced by Leveller ideas, the radicals published an Agreement of the People: this was discussed in the Putney debates of the army council, a body representing all ranks and units which Cromwell had accepted as a sounding-board for opinions (October–November).

During this period of rapid and frequent change Cromwell developed the techniques which enabled him to keep control over the army for the rest of his life. Historians have condemned him for failing to manage Parliament effectively, but most have overlooked his skill and success in managing the army, manipulating patronage—promotions, appointments, secondments, and dismissals—and using intimidation or persuasion according to circumstances. He could not depend on politicized radicals obeying orders. He had to break up networks of officers that could develop into challenges to his authority, he had to balance the factions—ambitious opportunists (like Lambert), religious fanatics (Harrison), professionals (Monck, Montagu). He learned that neglect of the interests and grievances of ordinary soldiers led to their politicization. Above all he knew that army unity must be maintained—and it was disunity among the officers that brought down the Commonwealth in 1659–60 after Cromwell's death.

In November 1647 Cromwell personally suppressed a potentially infective Leveller-inspired mutiny in a single regiment. Early in 1648 royalist risings broke out in Wales, Kent, and Essex and a Scottish army invaded on Charles's behalf. Cromwell and Fairfax reacted with great speed, annihilating enemy forces. It was clear that Charles had planned these risings at a time when he was negotiating with both Parliament and the army, and trying to widen the breach between them. Despite this a majority in Parliament still wished to continue negotiating with him, whereas opinion in the army now accepted that as a ‘man of blood’ he had to be punished. Cromwell clearly inspired the action that followed although he personally stayed in the background. Colonel Pride, backed up by armed soldiers, prevented MPs who were unacceptable to the army from entering the Commons. Many were arrested; the purged House that subsequently worked with the army was known as the Rump. In similar fashion Cromwell did not himself decide that Charles should be put on trial but his was the guiding spirit that led the small group of army officers and their parliamentary associates to make and implement the decision. By killing the king the regicides made any future compromise impossible; they committed treason and their lives were forfeit. Cromwell's body was to be exhumed in 1660 and hung from a gallows in a macabre form of legal retribution—with obvious psychopathic overtones. It also made Cromwell and the regime outcasts in Europe. The survival of each successive form of republican government depended on the physical power of the army, and of the navy in preventing foreign intervention.

In 1649–51 Cromwell was almost continuously on campaign away from Westminster. His militarily successful Irish campaign of 1649–50 has been universally condemned for its ruthlessness, especially for the massacres at Drogheda and Wexford, and the planned ethnic cleansing of three Irish provinces. Cromwell's methods actually represented a direct revival of those used in Elizabeth's Irish wars and he saw them as a reprisal for atrocities committed by the Irish rebels in 1641. In 1650–1 he was engaged in war against the Scots who crowned Charles II king of Scotland. Cromwell defeated them at Dunbar and finally Worcester in successive Septembers, 1650 and 1651. Then in May 1652 the Rump became involved in war against the Dutch. These wars delayed half-hearted attempts to draft a definitive constitutional settlement, and necessitated heavy taxation and expenditure, of which many MPs and officials took corrupt advantage. Absorbed by routine work of government the Rump lost sight of the cause which to Cromwell remained paramount.

Cromwell's second major coup, his ejection of the Rump by force on 20 April 1653, opened the way for an experiment to create a form of government that would be in accord with what he took to be God's will. He and the army council named a constituent body to draft a godly constitution, Barebone's or the ‘Nominated’ Parliament. This reflected the influence on Cromwell of the religious radicals, the ‘fanatics’ or Fifth Monarchy men. He saw them as fellow-seekers for God's truth who believed that all public as well as private life should be governed by God's providential dispensation. By contrast Cromwell never sympathized with the Levellers because their principles and interests were secular and their leaders mainly deists or atheists. The fanatics in Barebone's Parliament disappointed Cromwell by wanting the abolition of tithe and universities, seeing a salaried and learned ministry as unnecessary. After moderates dissolved the ‘Parliament’ Cromwell infuriated the fanatics further, and interest groups associated with the Rump, by ending the Dutch War, giving the defeated enemy lenient terms (March 1654). After Barebone's Parliament came a written constitution, the Instrument of Government (December 1653), introducing a form of government based on a balance of power and duties between a reformed single-chamber parliament elected by a new representative system, an elected council, and the executive, Lord Protector Cromwell. But this constitution was to be superseded in 1657 by the Humble Petition and Advice which established an upper house in Parliament and empowered the lord protector to designate his successor. Neither constitution gave the impression of a governmental system built to last. This explains Cromwell's reluctant refusal in 1657 to assume the familiar title of king.

In the short term Cromwellian government worked, at a price. He maintained army discipline and unity but he could not eradicate all potential radical activists. Parliaments were called, but known opponents had to be kept out of the 1656 Commons. Quakers as well as catholics and Prayer Book Anglicans were excluded from toleration. The costs of maintaining the army, aggravated by a Spanish war that began in 1655, produced an accumulation of debt that would have ended in an insoluble crisis, the army demanding pay and resisting disbandment, the nation unable or unwilling to provide it. But the greatest change brought about by the institutionalization of the Protectorate was the erosion of the ‘cause’ which Cromwell embodied, the establishment of a form of government in which the godly, not a monarch, wielded power and guided (or compelled) the nation into ways laid down by God. Previous rulers—even Elizabeth—had failed to undertake and complete all the tasks required of a godly prince. Cromwell's missionary cause was to create a godly nation, but by 1658 few still shared his zeal. His court at Whitehall was full of civilian careerists, the army of mercenaries, ambitious officers, and political radicals biding their time. And the nation generally wanted no more than order, stability, lower taxes, and fewer soldiers, things that the exiled Stuarts could promise, as none of Cromwell's successors could.

J. R. Jones

Bibliography

Gregg, P. , Oliver Cromwell (1988);
Morrill, J. , Oliver Cromwell and the English Revolution (1990);
Smith, D. L. , Oliver Cromwell (Cambridge, 1991).