Oliver Cromwell

The Oliver Cromwell entry in the 1911 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica is the composite work of three historians, one of whom was Charles Francis Atkinson, who also wrote   The Wilderness and Cold Harbor.

One great source of Crowell’s strength was the military reforms he initiated. At Edgehill he had observed the inferiority of the parliamentary to the royalist horse, composed as it was of soldiers of fortune and the dregs of the populace. “Do you think,” he said, “that the spirits of such base men, mean fellows will ever be able to encounter gentlemen who have honor and courage and resolution in them?”  The royalist were fighting for a great cause, the parliamentary soldiers must also be inspired by some great principle.

Cromwell  thus chose his own troops, both officers and privates, from the “religious men, “ who fought not for pay or adventure, but for their faith. He declared, when answering a complaint that a certain captain in his regiment was a better preacher than fighter, that he who prayed best would fight best, and that he knew nothing could “give courage and confidence as the knowledge of God in Christ will. The superiority of these men – more intelligent than the common soldiers, better disciplined, better trained, better armed, excellent horsemen and fighting for a great cause – not only over the other parliamentary troops but over the royalists, was soon observed in battle. According to Clarendon the later, though frequently victorious in a charge,the royalists could not rally afterwards, “whereas Cromwell’s troops if the prevailed, or though they were beaten and routed, presently rallied again and stood in good order till they received new orders”; and the king’s military successes dwindled in proportion to the gradual preponderance of Cromwell’s troops in the parliamentary army. At first these picked men only existed in Cromwell’s own troop, which, however, by frequent additions became the nucleus of a regiment, and by the time of the New Model Army included about 11,000  men.

Cromwell’s early military education could have consisted at most of a perusal of the Swedish Intelligencer and the practice of riding. It is not, therefore, strange that his first essays in war were characterized more by energy than technical skill. It was some time before he realize the spirit of cavalry tactics, of which he was later so complete a master, a credit he shares with Fredrick the Great. Not even Sheridan’s horsemen in 1864-65 did their work more effectively than did the English squadrons in the Preston campaign.  His pre-eminence in the Civil War was due to his gifts as a general, the power of feeling the pulse of his army. Resolution, vigor and clear sight masked his conduct as commander-in-chief. He aimed at nothing less than the annihilation of the enemy’s forces, which Clausewitz was the first to define, a hundred and fifty years later, as the true objective of military operations. A military critic who maintains that Cromwell’s art of war was two centuries in advance of his time, finds universal acceptance.

Cromwell’s  military prowess gave him an unsurpassed political influence even before he became the supreme general of the Parliamentary Army.

The nature of Cromwell’s statesmanship is to be seen more in his struggles against the retrograde influences and opinions of his time, in the many political reforms anticipated though not originated or established by himself, and in his religious, perhaps fanatical, enthusiasm than in the outward character of his administration, which, in spite of its despotism shows itself in its inner spirit of justice, patriotism and self-sacrifice, so immeasurably superior to that of the Stuarts.

[To which spirit I will return shortly. First  the historiographical]

 

Cromwell’s personal character has been inevitably the subject of unceasing controversy. According to Clarendon he was “a brave bad man”, with “all the wickedness against which damnation is pronounced and for which hell fire is prepared.” Yet he cannot deny that “he had some virtues which have caused some men in all ages to be celebrated”; and he admits that “he was not a man of blood,” and that he possessed “a wonderful understanding in the natures and humour of men,” and “a great spirit, an admirable circumspection and sagacity and a most magnanimous resolution.” According to contemporary Republicans he was a mere selfish adventurer, sacrificing the national cause ‘to the idol of his own ambition.”   Richard Baxter thought him a good man who fell before great temptation., The writers of the next century generally condemned him as a mixture of knave, fanatic and hypocrite, and in 1839 John Forster endorsed Landor’s verdict that Cromwell lived a hypocrite and died a traitor. These crude ideas of Cromwell’s character were extinguished by Macaulay’s irresistible logic and by the publication of Cromwell’s letters by Carlyle in 1845, which showed Cromwell clearly to be ” not a man of falsehoods, but a man of truth”, and by Gardiner, whom, however, it is somewhat difficult to follow when he represents Cromwell as “a typical Englishman.”

In particular, that conception which regarded “ambition” as the guiding motive in his career has been dispelled by a more intimate and accurate knowledge of his life; this shows him to have been very little the creator of his own career, which was largely the result of circumstances outside his control, the influence of past events and of the actions of others, the pressure of the national will, the natural superiority of his own genius. “A man never mounts so high,” Cromwell said to the French ambassador in 1647, “as when he does not know where he is going.” “These issues and events,” he said in 1556, “have not been forecast, but were providences in things.” His  “hypocrisy” consists principally in the biblical language he employed, which with  Cromwell, as with many of his contemporaries, was the most natural way of expressing his feelings, and in the ascription of every incident to the direct intervention of  God’s providence, which was really Cromwell’s sincere belief and conviction.

Thus, in the  beginning of his speech to the Barebones (Little) Parliament- July 1653:

. . . You very well know, after divers turning of affairs, it pleased God, much in the midst of this war, to winnow the forces of this nation; and put them in the hands of other men of other principles than those that did  engage at first. By what ways and means that was brought about, would ask more time than allotted me to mind you of it. Indeed there are stories that do recite those transactions, and give you narratives of the matters of fact; but those things wherein the life and power of them lay; those strange windings and turnings of Providence; those very great appearances of God, in crossing and thwarting the purposes of men, neither versed in military affairs, nor having much natural propensity to them, even through the owning of a principle of godliness and of religion; which soon as it came to be owned, and the state of affairs put upon the foot of that account, how God blessed them, furthering all undertakings, yet using the most improbable and the most contemptible and despicable  means (for that we shall ever own): you very well know.

At the end of Volume Two of The Letters and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell, Carlyle recites ‘the latest of commentators” on the one given to Parliament  17 Sept 1656


 On the whole, the cursory modern Englishmen cannot be expected to read this speech: - yet it is a pity; the Speech might do him good if he understood it. We shall not again hear a Supreme governor speak in this strain. The dialect of it is very obsolete; much more than the grammar and diction, forever obsolete – not to my regret the dialect of it. But the spirit of it is a thing that should never have grown obsolete . . . Since that spirit did go obsolete and men took to “dallying” with the Highest, to “being bold” with the Highest, and not “bold with men” (only Belial, and not “Christ" in any shape, assisting them, we have had but sorry times in Parliament and out of it [England in the 1840s was a very sorry time!]. There has not been a Supreme  Governor worth the meal on his periwig in comparison. Belial is a desperately bad sleeping partner in any concern whatever. Cant did not ever yet, that I know of, turn ultimately to a good account, for any man or thing. May the Devil swiftly be compelled to call-in large masses of our current stock of Cant, and withdraw it from circulation! Let the people ‘run for gold’, as the Chartists say; demand veracity, performance, instead of measly mouth Speaking; and force him to recall this cant. Thank Heaven, stern Destiny, merciful were it even to death, does now compel them verily to ‘run for gold’’: Cant in all directions is swiftly ebbing into the Bank it was issued by.


The grammar and diction, however, familiar to readers of Shakespeare ( with allusions to a few of the phrases in that playwright’s works), sans verse and delivered extemporaneously- without script or teleprompter- with support of the habit of a dialect repeated often enough in all his speeches and letters.


Most of Cromwell’s speeches- all really- contain lengthy sermons.  in justifying the reign of the Major-Generals* he spoke thusly (this being but one occasion of many):

That men believe in Jesus Christ – that’s the form that gives the being to true religion, faith in Christ and walking in a profession answerable to that faith; – men believe the remission of sins through the blood of Christ, and free justification by the blood of Christ, and live upon the grace of God. Whoever hath this faith, let his form be what he will; he walking peaceably, without the prejudicing of others unto another form – it is a debt due to God and Christ; and He will require it, if he be “that Christian’  may not enjoy this liberty.

But if a man of one form will be trampling upon the heals of another form; if an Independent, for example, will despise him who is under Baptism, and will revile him, and reproach and provoke him, - I will not suffer him in it. If, on the other side, those on the Anabaptist judgment shall be censoring the Godly ministers of the nation that professed under that of Independency; or those that profess Presbytery, shall be reproaching or speaking evil of them, traducing and censoring of them, -as I would not be willing to see the day on which England shall be in the power of the Presbytery to impose upon the consciences of the others that profess faith in Christ, - so I will not endure any to reproach them. But God give us hearts and spirits to keep things equal.


Never-the-less, he would not stand the Papists- often hanging any priest to be found in the armies he defeated or associated with the machinations of Charles Stuart and Spain, the military arm of the great Anti-Christ, the chief existential  threat to the English nation and the Protestant cause in Europe generally; God’s Providential challenge to self-improvement for all good Christian men. He also established a Commission to examine all the ministers in England to weed out those inadequately qualified to teach the new dispensation or suspect of loyalties to the old Prelacy  though it cannot be that his Parliament or Commission was ever entirely compliant to his wishes but fell into the fruitless disputes and hair-splittings which were his constant complaint.


To Cromwell the matter was of pressing educational concern, analogous to what is attempted in modern times with public departments of Education and introduction of such infeasible things as “Common Core’ curriculum into communities of widely diverse  and jealous legacies, capacities and interests.  Here from that same remarkable (Fifth) Speech to Parliament 17 Sept, 1656:

But I forgot one thing I must remember. It is the Church’s work, you know, in some measure: yet give me leave to say, and I appeal to your consciences, whether or no there hath not been an honest care taken for rejecting of scandalous ministers, and for the bringing-in of them that have passed an Approbation? [ our two Commissions of Triers and Expurgators]. I dare say, such an one as never passed in England before! And give me leave to say, it hath been with this difference ‘from the old practice,’ that neither Mr. Doctor nor Parson in the University hath reckoned stamp enough by those that made these Approbations: though, I can say so, they have great esteem of learning, and look at grace as most useful when it fall unto men with it rather than without it, and wish, with all their hearts, the flourishing of all those institutions of Learning, as much as any, yet I must say it hath been counted nothing with them that have passed the best with them or me. I think there hath been a conscience exercised, both by myself and the Ministers, towards them that have been approved; I may say, such as one, as I truly believe was never known in England in regards to this matter. And I do verily believe that God hath, for the ministry a very great seed in the youth now in the Universities; who, instead of studying books, study their own hearts.  I think in my very conscience God will bless and favor that; and hath blessed it, to the gaining of very many souls – it was never so upon the thriving hand since England was as it is to this day. Therefore I say, in these things, in these arrangements made by us, that tend to the profession of the Gospel and Public Ministry, I think you will be so far from hindering, that you will further it. And I shall be willing to join with you.

This is perhaps, Cromwell at his ironic best, being diplomatic, giving what is essentially an admonishment and command (under clear threat of dissolution) that Parliament exercise its powers to get at the root and branch of ‘the old practice’: the ordinations (by ‘apostolic succession’), pastoral ‘livings' and vestry appointments handed out by the personal preferences according to material interest of the great Lords and Grand Gentry  ( he continued) countenancing Profaneness, Disorder and Wickedness in all places, and whatever is kin to that, and most agrees with that which is Popery. In my conscience , it was a shame to be a Christian within these fifteen, sixteen or seventeen years, in this Nation either in Caesar’s house or elsewhere!

There is much else besides miscellany in these letters and speeches. In suspending Parliament, excluding some elected members from the new, appropriating revenues without Parliaments approval, keeping a large standing army, expanding the fleet beyond anybody’s  expectation without explanation, seizing ‘disorderly persons ( many who were originally of his own party, Levellers and Fifth Monarchy men) he made fine arguments “Of Necessity”, which despots do but rarely so well and with such good cause. . To little avail except perhaps to posterity.

He was kind and friendly to George Fox who approved the Protector as a man of genuine ‘light’ but was compelled  to restrain some of his followers. He spoke well of James the First and used his translation of the Bible. He refused the crown, regarding the question of title as a mere ‘feather in the cap. A shining bauble for the crowds to gaze at our kneel to”.  various attempts to assassinate him, which he referred contemptuously to as a ‘little fiddling things’ were anticipated and prevented by an excellent system of police, spies and by a bodyguard of 160 men. It has been reported that he knew what went on in the very closet of Charles Stuart II.

Cromwell’s health was long impaired by the hardships of campaigning. At the age of 58 he was already old, and his firm strong signature had become feeble and trembling. “ It has hitherto,” Cromwell said, “a matter, I think, but philosophical discourse, that a great place, a great authority, is a great burden. I know it is. I can say in the presence of God, in comparison of who we are but like poor creeping ants upon the earth, I would have lived under my woodside to have kept a flock of sheep rather than undertook such a government as this.” “I doubt not to say,” declared his steward Maidston, “it drank up his spirits, of which his natural constitution afforded a vast stock, and brought him to his grave.

On the 2Oth of August  165 George Fox met him riding at the head of his guards in the park at Hampton Court, but declared ‘he looked like a dead man.”  On the 3^rd of September he was.

*He divided England into twelve districts with commanding generals to keep the peace, exact taxes, forbid cock-fighting and horse-racing (gambling sports), close Alehouses (his most unpopular measure) and guard against conspiracies, uprisings and  invasion.