Global Crisis
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Its first target was North America. Although most of London's merchant elite had supported the king during the Civil Wars, most of those who traded with the American colonies supported his opponents: they repeatedly loaned money to Parliament and eight of them sat in judgement on Charles I. In return for their material and moral support, the ‘colonial merchants’ demanded protection for their trade against royalist privateers, and the Rump obliged by building sleek frigates, suitable for long voyages escorting convoys, to replace unwieldy battleships suitable only for fleet actions in the Channel; by creating a Council of Trade (on which many ‘colonial merchants’ sat) to promote overseas commerce; and by prohibiting foreign vessels from trading with England's American colonies without prior licence. In 1651, again at the insistence of the ‘colonial merchants’, the Rump passed the Navigation Act, which stipulated that all goods imported into the territories of the Republic should be carried either on English vessels or ships from the country of origin.
The following year, a fleet left England to enforce the Commonwealth's new policies in the Caribbean, and captured 27 Dutch ships trading with the prosperous royalist outpost of Barbados. The Dutch regarded this as a declaration of war, but after 18 months of bitter naval conflict, made peace and promised to respect the Navigation Act. The Republic's warships also secured Barbados and forced the royalist governor of Virginia to surrender (albeit only after securing a compromise that acknowledged the authority of the Commonwealth without renouncing the king). The Rump now deported its defeated opponents from both Britain and Ireland, and increased the forced migration of African slaves, to England's New World colonies, whose population may have quadrupled during the 1650s.55
The Commonwealth also brought Scotland to heel. Immediately after the ‘crowning mercy’ at Worcester in September 1651, Cromwell called on the Rump to incorporate Scotland and England into a single polity, and a month later a parliamentary Declaration called for a political union predicated on religious toleration; a pardon for virtually everyone not still in arms; the abolition of all existing legal jurisdictions in favour of the English system of justices of the peace; and the destruction of all insignia of royalty. Parliamentary commissioners met representatives from each Scottish shire and town who reluctantly accepted the ‘incorporation’ of the two kingdoms and agreed on Scottish representation in a new Union Parliament (thus succeeding where James VI and I had failed: see chapter 11 above). Meanwhile, English troops established garrisons in the Highlands and Islands where no central government – from Edinburgh let alone from London – had ever ruled. As David Scott ironically observed, ‘What had begun back in 1637 as a rebellion to prevent Scotland's reduction to the status of an English province had ended in precisely that fate.‘56
These measures were mild compared with the Rump's treatment of Ireland. Once again the ‘colonial merchants’ took the lead. They had ‘adventured’ large sums of money to uphold the Protestant cause in Ireland; now they demanded the confiscated lands that Parliament had offered as collateral security. In August 1652 the Rump passed a comprehensive ‘Act for the settling of Ireland’, which required all Irish to accept the authority of the Commonwealth; condemned all priests and all participants in the 1641 Uprising to lose their lives and property; deprived all landowners (Protestant or Catholic) who had ‘born [sic] arms against the Parliament of England or their forces’ of two-thirds of their estates; and confiscated between one-fifth and one-third of the lands of any Irish Catholic who could not demonstrate ‘constant good affection to the interest of the Commonwealth of England’ between 1641 and 1650.57 The Act thus declared all Irish landowners guilty unless they could prove themselves innocent – and now the ‘depositions’ taken down after 1641 by Henry Jones and his colleagues, which named all those who had terrorized and robbed the Protestant settlers, came into their own. Organized by county, and ominously entitled ‘Books of Discrimination’, the evidence served to deprive hundreds of Catholics of their lives and over 44,000 more of their property. Whereas in the 1640s Catholics owned about 60 per cent and Protestants 40 per cent of the island's cultivable land, after the 1650s the Protestants owned 80 per cent and the Catholics only 20 per cent. The redistribution of Irish land represented one of the most dramatic and permanent consequences of the seventeenth-century crisis (Fig. 38).
The Rump had thus achieved a great deal in a short time. It had created a Republic; it had defeated the Dutch; it had crafted new administrative and economic structures for its colonies in America; and it had imposed effective English rule on both Scotland and Ireland. In short, it had created the first British empire. Nevertheless, the ‘Commonwealth’ lasted fewer than five years, because the Rump failed to take one final step dear to the New Model Army, whose troops had largely created that empire: it refused to arrange elections for a new Parliament according to a franchise based on personal assets, not just property, with additional representatives for Scotland and Ireland.
The Road to Restoration
In April 1653 Cromwell lost patience. At his direction, in the middle of one of the Rump's debates on constitutional reform, a detachment of musketeers marched in, removed the Speaker by force from his seat, cleared the chamber, and finally locked up the premises. A wit pinned a notice to the door of the Commons’ chamber: ‘This House is to be let, now unfurnished'; while Dorothy Osborne, a royalist who had lost two brothers in the Civil War, wrote wickedly: ‘Well, tis a pleasant world, this: if Mr. Pim were alive again, I wonder what hee would think of these proceedings and whither this would apeare as great a breach of the Privilidge of Parliament as the demanding of the five members’ in 1642.58 It was an astute comparison, for by invading the Palace of Westminster, Cromwell, like Charles I a decade before, had made a permanent constitutional settlement more elusive.
38. The redistribution of confiscated Irish land, 1653–60.
The overall pattern of redistribution, which reduced the proportion of lands owned by Catholics from almost half to less than one-quarter, conceals even more dramatic regional shifts. A detailed reconstruction for three Ulster counties showed that only 5 of 58 Gaelic Catholic landowners in 1641 retained their lands 20 years later. Most of the rest had been forcibly resettled in the far west.
Cromwell at first replaced the Rump with a new Council of State (numbering, with suitable biblical symbolism, 12 besides the Lord General), as a caretaker executive, and he invited 140 representatives, nominated by godly communities in Scotland and Ireland, as well as in England and Wales, to assemble in London and frame a new Constitution for the state. After four months of fruitless discussion by the Nominated Parliament, however, Cromwell again sent his troops to clear the chamber, and instead considered a written Constitution drawn up by General John Lambert, called the Instrument of Government, which entrusted the ‘supreme legislative authority’ in ‘England, Scotland and Ireland, and the Dominions’ to a Lord Protector, advised by a council. Every three years the Protector was required to convene a Parliament comprising 30 members from Scotland, 30 from Ireland, and 400 representatives from England, Wales and the Channel Islands, elected from new constituencies created according to their respective tax obligations. Every Englishman with assets worth £200 or more could vote in the elections (unless they had fought against Parliament). Cromwell, who now became ‘Lord Protector of England, Scotland and Ireland’ for life, summoned the first Parliament elected by the new franchise to assemble on the next ‘national holiday’, 3 September 1654. The ‘Instrument’ thus created a new political framework that balanced monarchy (Protector), aristocracy (Council) and democracy (Parliament); but it did much more. Above all, for the first time in Western history, it guaranteed freedom of public worship to almost all Christians; and for the only time in its history, Britain had a written Constitution. It did not last long.59
An attempt to carve out a British empire in Latin America fatally undermined the Protectorate. Cromwell seems to have fallen under the sway of visionaries like John Cotton of Massachusetts (w
ho begged him to ‘take from the Spaniards in America’ the island of Hispaniola), and Thomas Gage (a Dominican missionary for 12 years in Spanish America before he converted to Protestantism and published The English-American, which advocated an English empire in Guatemala and Mexico, failing which in the Caribbean). Both men argued that England's existing American colonies would supply sufficient settlers; and the same ‘colonial merchants’ who had invested in the subjugation of Ireland, Barbados and Virginia now offered to fund a ‘Western Design’ aimed at ‘promoting the glory of God, and enlarging the bounds of Christ's kingdom’ by creating a British empire in the Caribbean.60
Cromwell overcame the doubts of his Council of State (who, according to the Instrument of Government, had to give their consent before Britain could make war) by emphasizing the religious aspect of the venture. ‘God has not brought us hither where we are but to consider the work that we may do in the world as well as at home,’ he told them, ‘and to stay from attempting until you have superfluity is to put it off for ever, our expenses being such as will in probability never admit it. Now Providence seemed to lead us hither.’ He duly enjoined the commander of the expeditionary force ‘to set up the banners in the name of Christ, for undoubtedly it is His cause’, and to remember that ‘we fight the Lord's battles’.61 Late in 1654, 38 warships carrying 9,000 soldiers and sailors left England for the Caribbean, but they captured only Jamaica. Although the island later became a powerful base for future operations, most of those who landed (including Thomas Gage, who had sailed as a chaplain) died there. Soon afterwards, with sickness in the fleet as well, its commander abandoned all ashore and sailed for home.
According to one of the disappointed ‘colonial merchants’, the failure of the Western Design involved ‘the disgracefullest defeat’ that ‘ever this kingdom suffered in any age or time’. Cromwell reacted by suppressing all but a handful of newspapers (for fear of the political consequences of widespread press criticism); by dividing England into 12 military districts, each under a major general (through fear that the fiasco might encourage royalists to rebel); and to decree a day of public fast and humiliation throughout England and Wales (because ‘the Lord has been pleased in a wonderful manner to humble and rebuke us, in that expedition to the West Indies’). Fearful that he had somehow provoked God's wrath, Cromwell also summoned another Parliament to advise him. The assembly produced The humble petition and advice, a Constitution to replace the Instrument (and the major generals), with Cromwell as hereditary monarch, a second chamber (known as ‘The Other House’), and a reformed Council of State (renamed the Privy Council). After much soul-searching, Cromwell rejected the crown but accepted the rest of the constitutional amendments, and in June 1657 he was reinstalled as hereditary Lord Protector.62
Nevertheless, ‘the Lord’ continued to ‘humble and rebuke’ the regime. In London, burials exceeded baptisms in 1652, 1654, 1656 and 1658; and the winter of 1657–8 seemed ‘the severest’ that any ‘man alive had known in England: the crow's feet were frozen to their prey; islands of ice enclosed both fish and fowl frozen, and some persons in their boats’. In the depths of this landmark winter Cromwell convened a Parliament with two chambers, but after a month of wrangling once again he dissolved it – the third time he had so acted.63 He had made plans to summon another when he died on the National Holiday and the anniversary of his two greatest victories: 3 September 1658. Under the terms of the Humble petition and advice, Cromwell's eldest son Richard automatically became Lord Protector, despite the fact that he lacked any military or executive experience (he had served on the council for only nine months). As his father had intended, he immediately convened a new Parliament.
The Humble petition allowed the Protector and his council to choose the franchise for the new assembly, and they decided to revert to the traditional franchise in England, allowing all free men with more than £2 of property (as opposed to £200) to vote in the traditional constituencies – a fatal error, because broadening the electorate created a less manageable assembly. Moreover, Parliament convened during ‘tedious winter weather, formerly frost, now rain, snow, cold: [a] hard time for the poor, who pine exceedingly, nipped with want and penury’. It soon became clear that many opposed the new regime (the motion to recognize Richard Cromwell as Lord Protector passed by only 191 votes to 168) and, soon after the session started, Sir Arthur Haselrig (one of the ‘five members’ whom Charles I had tried to arrest and now a vigorous opponent of the Protectorate) launched into a bitter denunciation: ‘In five years we have had greater mal-administration than in five hundred years before. . . The people care not what Government they live under, so as they may plough and go to market.‘64 But although Haselrig and other opponents of the Protectorate proved adept at pulling down what they did not like, they could not agree on what should take its place.
The fundamental obstacle to creating a stable Republic lay in Oliver Cromwell's practice of employing men from a wide spectrum of political opinions, from former royalists to ardent Presbyterians, in order to create a broadly based polity – because it created a regime cemented only by loyalty to the Protector. Once Oliver's death removed that bond, the regime was doomed. In April 1659 the General Council of the Army demanded that Richard Cromwell dissolve Parliament, since in three months it had achieved so little; but, having done so, he resigned as Lord Protector. After two weeks of anarchy, the army leaders reconvened the Rump, which resumed its discussions on how to create a permanent form of republican government. It, too, made little progress, and frustrated army units led by General John Lambert (who had drafted the Instrument of Government) therefore surrounded Westminster and dissolved the assembly yet again. A ‘Committee of Safety’ served as a provisional government while Lambert and his colleagues decided what to do next.
By December 1659, a vacuum of power existed. In England the central law courts, which had continued to function despite all previous changes of regime, ceased to operate; taxpayers united to oppose the levy of any imposition that lacked parliamentary sanction; and local garrisons, left without financial support, began to collect their wages directly from the local community. Three groups, apparently operating independently, now intervened. In England, the Republic's navy sailed up the Thames, blockaded London, and demanded the restoration of the Rump; in Scotland, General George Monck, commander of the English garrisons, assembled an army with the same intention – marching on London to restore the Rump; while in Ireland, army officers loyal to the Rump seized Dublin Castle (just as the conspirators of 1641 had hoped to do) and gradually gained control of the other garrison towns of Ireland. On 26 December 1659 the ‘Committee of Safety’ accepted the inevitable and restored the Rump, which (although now barely 50 strong) resumed its executive and legislative functions; but its survival depended on solving two pressing problems. First, it needed to pay the Republic's armed forces not only their wages but also their mounting arrears. Cromwell's conquests had created standing armies in Ireland, Scotland, Jamaica and Dunkirk (captured from Spain in 1658), as well as throughout England; and paying for the army and navy now absorbed over three-quarters of the Republic's expenditure, while its debts totalled at least £2 million – equivalent to a whole year's revenue.
The Rump's second pressing problem was George Monck. He had condemned the seizure of power by his army colleagues in London, and purged the English garrisons in Scotland of officers whom he considered unreliable. Now, on 2 January 1660, he led 7,000 of his troops across the border into England. Although his forces were far inferior in strength to the various regiments opposing him, repeated purges since the death of Oliver Cromwell and the lack of wages shattered their morale. ‘Honest George Monck’ therefore reached York, where he received the Rump's commission to bring his army south to protect them. Once he reached London on 3 February, Monck held the political fate of the entire Anglo-Atlantic world in his hands. Over the next two weeks, he tried to persuade the Rump to readmit the other surviving members of the Long Parliament, exclud
ed because they had opposed the trial of Charles I (page 375 above), and when they refused he approached the excluded members directly and secured a promise from each one that, if readmitted, they would immediately authorize writs for new parliamentary elections and then dissolve themselves. Once the excluded members had agreed to his terms, on 21 February 1660 Monck's musketeers escorted them back to the Commons Chamber and stood guard until they kept their promise. Monck, for his part, agreed to accept whatever constitutional arrangement the new assembly should approve; and he, too, kept his promise.
The first general election held since 1640 was contested by an unprecedented number of candidates and produced, perhaps surprisingly, an assembly dominated by royalists. It convened on 25 April 1660 and immediately authorized all peers currently in England to come to Westminster and form a House of Lords in the traditional manner. Some members of Parliament, including Monck (who sat in the Commons as well as holding the rank of commander-in-chief of all army units in Britain), may have hoped to impose conditions on Charles in return for his restoration, but the king-in-exile pre-empted this by his ‘Declaration of Breda’ (named after the Dutch city where he had taken up residence), because it made four key concessions. Charles promised a free and general pardon to all who pledged loyalty to him, except those whom Parliament should exclude; the resolution by Parliament of all disputed titles to property; religious toleration for all who lived in peace, unless Parliament decided otherwise; and a promise to honour whatever measures Parliament took to pay the arrears of Monck's soldiers. Despite its apparent magnanimity, the Declaration cleverly made Parliament responsible for all the difficult and unpopular outstanding decisions: whom to punish, whom to tolerate, whom to reward, whom to tax.65 On 1 May, after hearing the Declaration read out, the peers at Westminster formally resolved ‘that according to the ancient and fundamental laws of this kingdom, the government is, and ought to be, by King, Lords and Commons’. A week later, both chambers declared that Charles II had been England's lawful king since the death of his father, and invited him to return. Monck was the first person to embrace the king when he landed at Dover on 25 May. According to a contemporary, ‘There is nothing now to be seen or heard but joys and jubilees throughout the British Empire, for the royal physician is come to heal the three bleeding nations and to give them again the life of free-born subjects.’ To this end, Charles immediately issued writs for a new Parliament to assemble in each of the three ‘bleeding nations’ according to the traditional franchise.66