Cromwell, the Lord Protector

by Antonia Fraser

  This Irish expeditionary force was not however to be allowed the luxury of those rampant Independent opinions which had made the philosophy of its members so odious to many Presbyterians during the war. For one thing all officers were to take the Covenant. But this projected emasculation of the Independent army sounded better on paper than in practice. It did not seem to strike the Presbyterian clique within Parliament that since the mood of the men themselves was getting increasingly ugly, and the heroes who had cried “God and our Strength” so lustily, were turning to other less spiritual cries in peacetime, more attention should be paid to their paramount needs, principal among them pay. With ugly incidents galore – such as threats of blood-letting made by some soldiers at Covent Garden – an order was given to Fairfax on 17 March that the rule which forbade his men to approach nearer than a twenty-five-mile radius of London must be more strictly enforced. But in the meantime any pacific intention of such an order had been quite undone by the fact that already by early March a multitude of troops had become concentrated at Saffron Walden in Essex. The idea was that disbandment and reorganization for the Irish expedition should proceed from this point; but such large congregations of disaffected men were undoubtedly ripe breeding-grounds for more tumultuous decisions.

  In all this rising crisis between the Army and Parliament, where was the one man who had successfully straddled both, and whose mediatory powers were surely much needed? But after some Parliamentary work in January, Oliver Cromwell had vanished from the scene at Westminster altogether in the throes of a severe illness. Of its primarily physical nature there can be no doubt: Cromwell told Fairfax afterwards that he had suffered a dangerous sickness from which he had nearly died, and the official story was “an impostume in the head” (an infected swelling which we should now call an abscess).10 But as always with Cromwell’s health in these early days up until the incontrovertible pressures of old age, there must be some question whether psychosomatic pressures did not at least add to his collapse. The autumn had seen the slow falling-off of those high ideals for which Cromwell imagined, in his prayers at any rate, that the war had been fought. The spring only seemed to confirm the lack of understanding in Parliament of the very real nature of the claims of those honest men who had fought for them. The delicate relationship between psychosomatic illness and physical disease is of course famously difficult to analyse with any precision. It is clear that Cromwell’s ill-health had an original nervous strain in it, hence the early crisis at Huntingdon, the breakdown and the consultation with Sir Theodore Mayerne. Later, with equal certainty, he suffered from a series of physical complaints including low malarial fevers and the stone. It is the borderline between the two which needs to be trodden with care by the historian. But we can believe with safety that these troubles, showing every sign of worsening as the year wore on, worked heavily on one of Cromwell’s nervous temperament and produced at least a disturbed and run-down condition in which he was highly prone to receive infection.

  What is more certain is that Cromwell remained extremely depressed for a long while after the course of his illness was theoretically over. Describing his symptoms to Fairfax, he wrote: “And I do most willingly acknowledge that the Lord (in this visitation) exercised the bowels of a Father toward me. I received in myself the sentence of death, that I might learn to trust in him that raiseth from the dead, and have no confidence in the flesh.” More significant for the future was his comment on his own mood in such travail: “It’s a blessed thing to die daily, for what is there in this world to be accounted of…”11 It was in this state of gloom and resignation, in marked contrast to the confident hilarity of wartime, and much debilitated in health, that Cromwell embarked on that critical period of his career from which afterwards so many accusations of treachery and double-dealing flowed. These charges were of course inflamed by the subsequent course of events which fell out so favourably for Cromwell: yet no one at the time, not even Cromwell if he had been feeling in his full vigour, could have predicted such an outcome with any certainty. As it was, the very last picture Cromwell presented in the spring of 1647 was that of a man confident enough of himself to embark on what would surely have been the most elaborate conspiracy in British history.

  Far more evocative of his overcast state of mind was a conversation he probably had about this time with Edmund Ludlow. Encountering Ludlow as he strolled in the Westminster gardens which had formerly belonged to the great antiquary Sir Robert Cotton, Cromwell revealed to him the depths of his unhappiness. What had once been a glorious outing of crusaders in the cause of the Lord had now relapsed into something much more like a pack of hounds squabbling over the meat of power. How simple life had been in the army days! Or indeed in the days before the outbreak of the Civil War when at least Parliamentarians had been united in contrast to today’s bickering members: “If thy father were alive,” he sighed to Ludlow (Sir Henry Ludlow had been an extreme member of the Long Parliament who in May 1642 had been rebuked by the Speaker for saying that the King was not worthy of his office), “he would let some of them hear what they deserved; that it was a miserable thing to serve Parliament to whom let a man be never so faithful if one pragmatical fellow amongst them rise up and asperse them, he shall never wipe it off. Whereas, when one serves under a General, he may do as much service and yet be free from all blame and envy.”12

  As Cromwell convalesced, his sour mood with those who failed to understand the justice of the Army’s cause continued: in a letter to Fairfax on ii March, before he was well enough apparently to return to the House of Commons, he talked of men in all places who had so much malice against the Army that it besotted them. In general, never had the spirits of men been more embittered than they were now. On the other hand Cromwell himself, as he also confided to Fairfax, was only too well aware that the disaffection within the Army’s ranks was spreading apace, and for all his sympathies with their grievances, he did not care to see discipline undermined; for example he approved the keeping of the twenty-five-mile rule. The truth was that the complaints of the soldiers now gathered in unhealthily large numbers at Saffron Walden were in most respects fully justified: it has been calculated that a total of over ,Ł300,000 was now owed to the New Model Army in terms of arrears of pay.13 Of course money troubles were nothing new: the previous year the soldiers at York under Major-General Poyntz had mutinied, shouting plainly and unequivocally: “Money, money, money” as they held cocked pistols to his chest. But now infantry regiments were eighteen weeks in arrears, and those of the cavalry forty-three; while Parliament only offered a beggarly six weeks of what was owed at disbandment.

  At the same time the disgust of the Army with their lack of pay was paralleled by the resentment of much of the country that they should continue to exist under arms – an illogical reaction perhaps, but not unexpected from a civilian population who in many cases felt themselves plagued by the habitual turbulence of the military. At Saffron Walden, for example, quite apart from sporadic outbreaks of mutiny in other parts of the country, the influence of the more orthodox officers over their men was waning. Two separate forces were seen to be sprouting up among the Army ranks: on the one hand, a politically extremist sect known as the Levellers, originally formed outside the Army, was beginning to find recruits within its ranks. On the other hand, groups known as “Agents” or “Agitators” were being formed from within the Army to lobby Parliament over the subject of disbandment.

  On 21 March commissioners from Parliament instructed to discuss the disbandment preliminary to the formation of the Irish army met a body of officers at Saffron Walden. The officers responded not so much with an agreement to disband, but with a petition, signed by amongst others Independents such as Okey, Pride, Robert Lilburne, brother of John, and Ireton, demanding further enlightenment on vexed subjects such as future pay, past arrears and indemnity for services made hitherto. At the same time the ordinary soldiers weighed in with further demands for the payment of arrears, exemption from impressment in t
he future, indemnities and fair treatment for the widows and orphans of soldiers. Although such requests in no way transgressed the line drawn by common humanity, it is interesting to notice that Cromwell was of the number who felt that the common soldiers had nevertheless gone distinctly too far in presenting their own petition.

  Yet it is about this date – most probably at the time of the vote of 22 March – that Cromwell must have stood up in the House of Commons, placed his hand on his heart and as Clement Walker testified later in his History of the Independency swore that the Army would consent to peaceful dismantlement: “In the presence of Almighty God, before whom he stood, that he knew that the Army would disband and lay down their Arms at their door, whensoever they should command them.” To those contemporaries who believed afterwards in the conspiracy theory of Cromwell’s career, it was this public avowal, afterwards proved so singularly false a prophecy, which more than anything else lingered in the mind as proof of his hypocrisy. But Cromwell’s ill-fated prediction, while it serves to show him up as a bad political prophet, does not make him a devious rascal. He genuinely believed his own assurances based on the fact the Army’s grievances would be met. John Lilburne, who reacted hysterically to Cromwell’s rejection of the soldiers’ petition, accused him of thwarting it “because forsooth you had engaged to the House they shall lay down their arms whensoever they shall command them”. He also thought Cromwell was led astray by those “two unworthy covetous earthworms” Vane and St John.14

  Of all his many capabilities, political foresight was one that Cromwell never did show much signs of possessing although at times he displayed a lucky knack for political opportunism which his angry opponents sometimes confused with conspiracy. Clarendon later detailed the charges against him: he pretended disgust at the insolence of the soldiers, inveighed bitterly against their presumption and suggested that their mutinous spirits should be quieted by the imposition of penalties, most hypocritical of all, “when he spake of the nation’s being to be involved in new troubles, he would weep bitterly, and appear the most afflicted man in the world”.15 Most of this can be read as a reliable report of Cromwell’s behaviour. No doubt he did weep – he was prone to tears at such moments and although as Protector he was to be accused by rumour of producing “tears at will” and weeping in Council to get his own way, the real truth seems to have been that even at this early stage Cromwell was a naturally emotional orator. No doubt Cromwell did also feel both lost and afflicted, and disgusted with the Army’s sullen attitude. It was the dissimulation which Clarendon insisted in adding into the equation which was the mistake: Cromwell in the spring of 1647 was genuinely unhappy.

  Meanwhile a stormy debate in the House of Commons on 29 March gave further proof of how little sympathy existed in the breasts of the Presbyterian members for even the most manifest grievances of the soldiers. They declared their furious dislike of the soldiers’ petition; the next day Holies carried an even more aggressive resolution which declared that all those who continued in their present distempered condition should be proceeded against as enemies of the State. The future of the Army in Ireland was however decided by a type of compromise, with Skippon, elected as Field-Marshal and Sir Edward Massey as Lieutenant-General of the horse, a post for which the Independents had not unnaturally nominated Cromwell. Cromwell’s own regiment was however among those designated to stay in England under Major Huntington.

  But while Parliament proposed, the Army on the contrary saw its role as disposing: when the news of the new arrangements was broken to them at Saffron Walden on 15 April by commissioners sent down from London there was no meek acceptance. Two hundred officers gathered in the fine Perpendicular church there to put their own counter case, under the tacit presidency of Fairfax who, while he personally disapproved of their conduct, did not actively resist it, to the annoyance of the commissioners. How much better it would be to enjoy in Ireland the same “conduct” or leadership as before: “All! All! Fairfax and Cromwell and we all go!” was the disconcerting cry. The next day most of the cavalry officers and many of the infantry officers signed an appeal to Parliament to this effect.

  As the breach between Army and Parliament widened, it was a measure of Cromwell’s disgust with the mismanagement of the Presbyterian clique that his visits to the House of Commons during April were noticeably infrequent, as also were those of Vane. Nor had his deep inner depression, his dissatisfaction with the whole progress of his life, lifted. It seems that about this time Cromwell took an interest in yet another scheme for leaving England, this time in order to serve abroad in the cause of King Charles’s Protestant nephew, the Elector Palatine.16 Although the Elector himself was a poor-spirited creature compared to his younger brother Rupert, his strongest determination being to remain on the winning side regardless of honour or family loyalty, nevertheless his present predicament was one that might well have appealed to Cromwell’s religious sympathies. It was a moment when the Lutherans were trying to exclude the Calvinists from the European peace even then being negotiated to end the Thirty Years’ War, and the Elector wanted a Parliamentary army to help him recover his German estates. The French Ambassador reported that the Elector had had long conferences with Cromwell on the subject. Since the cause was just and Cromwell’s frustration inside the confines of England considerable, he may well have weighed up whether the Elector’s need did not constitute the newest sign from the Lord indicating at least a temporary retreat from England’s shores. Once again the impression is of a bewildered seeker after guidance rather than a single-minded machinator.

  At the beginning of May Cromwell was among the commissioners including Ireton, Skippon and Charles Fleetwood sent down by Parliament to cool the boiling Army. All four commissioners were of course in the extremely delicate situation of senior Army officers who were also members of Parliament. Fleetwood had begun the war in the Earl of Essex’s life-guard, but his regiment in Manchester’s army had quickly become notorious for sectaries, and was among those which had refused to go to Ireland; like Ireton, who had become MP for Appleby in 1645, Fleetwood had recently joined the House of Commons as MP for Marlborough. They now heard from the officers of an unsatisfactory conference earlier in which Skippon had entirely failed to persuade the regiments to take off for Ireland. It was decided that the officers should first take the opportunity to confer with their regiments, and then return to make a further report. In this manner a meeting of some two hundred officers was convened in the church at Saffron Walden on 15 May, presided over by Skippon, with Cromwell sitting beside him. The intention was to heat the true voice of the Army, delegated to their immediate superiors.

  The demands thus made were in fact astonishingly reasonable, although Skippon several times had to admonish the more junior officers such as Lambert, Whalley and Okey, for their hectic style in making them and suggest that they listen to one another with more sobriety. The first request was that more of their own pay – the arrears – should be made available than the miserable six weeks’ worth hitherto promised by Parliament. Then they should be allowed to petition their General, Parliament should consider their original petition of March, they should be permitted to publish a vindication of their conduct, and Parliament should no longer tolerate attacks made upon them (the Army). These were hardly revolutionary claims, whatever the language in which they were couched. The commissioners, when they reported back to Parliament the next day that they had to acknowledge they found the Army under a deep sense of grievance and the common soldiers much unsettled, must have sympathized in their hearts with the sufferings, if not the unsettlement.

  Before the meeting broke up, Cromwell himself made a significant speech in the church; beyond announcing, at Parliament’s orders, an extra two weeks’ pay to be granted out of the arrears making a total of eight, he also urged the officers to make the best use of their position at the head of their men. They should see to it that their consultations led to a general support of Parliament, otherwise much worse might follow
. The officers’ duty was to bring their men to a good opinion of the authority which was over them all: “If that authority falls to nothing, nothing can follow but confusion.” In May at least, for all the Presbyterian majority in the House of Commons, Cromwell still saw Parliament as the true repository of the peaceful order which all desired. On 21 May Cromwell and Fleetwood returned to London and at Parliament’s request presented to them a full account of proceedings at Saffron Walden. Particular care was taken by the two commissioners to acquit the officers of any possible charge of conspiracy with their men: the officers had merely tidied up the soldiers’ language which was full of “tautologies, impertinences or weaknesses”, and had persuaded them to lay aside many more offensive charges.17 In all this good work their laudable intention had been to avoid giving further offence to the Parliament, so that Army and Parliament might get on better together in the future.