Cromwell, the Lord Protector

by Antonia Fraser

  The first of these Declarations was specifically addressed “To all that are Saints, and Partakers of the Faith of God’s elect, in Scotland”. It was full of positively tender references to the Scots whom “we look upon as our brethren”. An immensely long justification for the English invasion was produced, in which all the issues of previous years between Scots and English, including the killing of the King, were fought over again. In particular the English signing of the Covenant was explained away. It was true that this had tied them to uphold the King’s interest, in order to “preserve religion and liberty”, but where the means were not consonant with the end, then “the end is to be preferred before the means”. The Declaration ended with further protestations of love towards the godly ahead of them the precious Scots as opposed to their vile comrades – tacked on to its official threat of war: “to the truth of this let the God of Heaven .. .judge of us when we come to meet our enemies in the field, if, through the perverseness of any in authority with you, God shall please us to order the decision of this controversy by the sword .. ,”13

  There is further evidence of Cromwell’s inner confusion at this time in the shape of one of his periodic pieces of self-reflection, part of a letter to Richard Mayor once more aimed at his son Dick’s spiritual progress. In this case, he began in friendly fashion by enquiring about his little granddaughter Elizabeth (Dorothy was backsliding as a correspondent again): “I should be glad to hear how the little brat doth. I could chide both father and mother for their neglects of me: I know my son is idle but I had better thoughts of Doll. I doubt now her husband has spoiled her; I pray, tell her so from me. If I had as good a leisure as they, I should write sometimes. If my daughter be breeding, I will excuse her, but not for her nursery.” It was the typical comment of the busy man to the supposedly less busy, and if he perhaps underrated the cares of the nursery Cromwell was certainly not the first or the last man to do so. But in getting into his stride over Dick’s deficiencies – “He is in the dangerous time of his age, and It’s a very vain world” – he struck a different note. Mayor must counsel his son-inlaw; of course it was properly Cromwell’s own duty, yet “you see how I am employed. I need pity. I know what I feel. Great place and business in the world is not worth the looking after; I should have no comfort in my mind but that my hope is in the Lord’s presence. I have not sought these things; truly I have been called unto them by the Lord . . ,”14

  It was lucky for Cromwell that, on his own admittance, at least he was not without assurance that God would enable “His poor worm and weak servant to do His Will”. Unfortunately the Scots were suffering from, or alternatively were inspired by, the same apocalyptic confidence. The first adversary Cromwell had to meet was in fact a clever propaganda campaign spread by the Scots that the English would impart fearful atrocities upon God’s people as soon as they crossed the border. To this possibility, the news from Ireland naturally contributed. The cutting off of the breasts of the women by English soldiers was a frequently mentioned if daunting prospect. John Nicoll, a Writer to the Signet, believed in such heinous English instincts implicitly, recorded Scots prisoners fettered naked in chains, a soldier whose eyes were put out for having “I am for King Charles” in chalk on his back, and women falling to their knees before the invaders begging for the mercy they did not expect to receive.

  In vain Cromwell tried to combat this in his second Declaration, which forbade plunder on the part of the English, and reminded the Scots of the calm English “deportment and behaviour” two years earlier: “What injury or wrong did we then do, either to the persons, houses or goods of any? Whose ox have we taken?” Honourable behaviour to the local population was already exercising his mind as he approached the frontiers of the two countries. On 17 July special letters of protection, signed by Cromwell, had been given to Lady Anne Thornton (a Royalist who had been an involuntary hostess to Cromwell’s troops camping in her grounds at Netherwitton), by which “all Officers and soldiers under my Command, And all others whom it may concern” were forbidden to “prejudice” the said lady “either by offering any Violence to her person, or any of her family, or by taking away any of her horses, cattle or other goods whatsoever without special order”. A few weeks later Lady Anne was repaid the Ł95- odd owing to her on that occasion for corn and grass by another signed order from Cromwell.*15 ( * Trevelyan (Longwitton) MSS. Not printed in W. C. Abbott.) But as regards the Scots, the trouble was that under Leslie they were in an excellent position to fight what would now be described as guerilla warfare, in the difficult lowland country south of Edinburgh. And in such a campaign, the fear of the local people of the invaders was a valuable weapon, not to be sacrificed easily.

  Cromwell finally crossed into Scotland on 22 July and six days later on a Sunday, which shocked John Nicoll – made his first attempt to engage the Scottish army at Haddington, lying between Edinburgh and the east coast. It was now that he had his first taste of the medicine which David Leslie intended to deal out for him for the next few weeks. For Leslie, instead of fighting, simply fell back on Edinburgh which like the neighbouring fortress of Leith had recently been considerably strengthened. At first sight Leslie’s decision might seem surprising, since the Scottish host on its home ground had vast numerical possibilities, and with ten years’ fighting behind it, one way and another, could surely muster as much in the way of training and experience as Cromwell’s New Model. The realities were somewhat different; the army had suffered greatly from the Covenanters’ purges and had lost many veterans. The Highlanders were beginning to fail the summons to the Lowland wars while some oldstagers in arms were still engaged in the north; and although Charles II ended by reviewing over twenty thousand men, many of these were unusually raw and green. Leslie, the old soldier trained by Gustavus Adolphus and a native Scotsman, hardly needed to look at the map of Scotland, between Edinburgh and the borders its network of hill ranges, the Pentland falls and the Lammermuirs, nor look out of the window at the driving rain (the Scottish summer was living up to its reputation), to realize that he too like Ormonde in Ireland had two potential champions against the invader in the Hunger and Sickness of the Commonwealth army.

  The dismal end to Leslie’s campaign should not blind one to the masterly resources with which he exploited the potentialities of his situation beforehand. As Charles Fleetwood wrote in despair by the end of August, the main problem of the English was “the impossibility of our forcing them [the Scots] to fight – the passes being so many and so great that as soon as we go on the one side, they go over the other”.16 Although Cromwell now followed Leslie up to Edinburgh and bombarded the town both from Arthur’s Seat, the foot of Salisberry Hill, and from the English ships off the coast, Leslie would not be drawn from his fortified lair. Falling back to Musselburgh, on the east coast a few miles south of Leith, Cromwell suffered from being harried by the Scots in the rear. A new Declaration issued from here to the Scots was more furious in tone, and referred to the national religion as “a covenant with death and hell”, a phrase which although echoing his thunderous denunciation of the Roman Catholic clergy at Clacmanoise, was particularly referred by him to its source, a half-chapter of Isaiah.17 This denunciation of the people of Judah, who would be obliterated by “the Lord of Hosts” having been led astray by false priests, he adjured the Scots to read.* ( * Isaiah, Chapter 28, v. 1-15. Cromwell was slightly misquoting. The prophet actually wrote: “Because ye have said, we have made a covenant with death, and with hell we are at agreement …” Cromwell was presumably also quoting the same passage in Ireland, although he did not think it worth giving the Roman Catholic clergy the Biblical reference.) Compelled by wet weather and the hilly country to seek further supplies Cromwell then fell back east to the better port of Dunbar.

  Thus August was spent by the English in a series of advances and retirements, in the course of which many of their men (it will be remembered that they were tentless) became sick. At one point Mercurius Politicus mentioned two thousand of them
as being useless. So their vital supplies were gradually eroded, and still there was no proper decisive engagement with the Scots. One rather limited contact did at least provide an amusing incident. Cromwell had taken a small party out, probably near Coltbridge, which encountered a Scottish picketing party. This body withdrew hastily, but not before one solitary soldier had fired his carbine. Cromwell shouted out that if it had been one of his own soldiers he would have cashiered him for firing at such a distance. The man retorted that it had not been such a random try as all that: having been with Leslie at Marston Moor he had recognized his target as being Cromwell himself. But in the main it was a merely frustrating time. Cromwell was further exacerbated by criticisms from London where it was considered by some that he was acting too softly towards the Scots by not living by ruthless confiscation off the country. William Rowe reported that he was also being accused of enriching one nation with the treasure of another. That there was some substance in the charge can be seen not only from the references of a man like Nicoll, who afterwards attributed the Scottish defeat to English gold, but by Cromwell’s genuine and continued desire to conquer the Scots by persuasion if possible.18 Alliance not extirpation was the aim, and English gold could be useful in the cause of the former and not the latter. Any opportunities presented to parley with the Scottish officers, were fully exploited.

  On 27 August a battle of sorts did take place at Gogar in Midlothian in which the successful employment by Leslie of some exceptionally boggy ground prevented Cromwell using his cavalry although the English in general had slightly the best of it. Thereafter Leslie withdrew once again, apparently thinking it necessary to cut Cromwell off from Edinburgh, while the English themselves drew back to the coast probably in order to cope with their increasing quantity of sick soldiers, by shipping them home from Musselburgh. But now Leslie decided at last to come after them. Having harried their rear, and challenged them further at Haddington, by 31 August he had the English marching down the narrow coastal strip, about eight miles in width, that stretched back from the sea before the vague shapes of the vast Lammermuirs began to rise. The Scots, with a vast army at their command – twenty-three thousand men – were able to march parallel to this procession, which certainly to outsiders must have had much of the character of a retreat. Finally on Monday, 2 September, they occupied a position of extraordinary strength on the very edge of the Lammermuir chain, known as Doon Hill, which loomed over the sick and wary forces of the English camped at Dunbar beneath. (See plate pp. 41213.) The position of the English, with about eleven thousand men still capable of fighting, and even those men at the fag end of a debilitating campaign, was perilous in the extreme. Cromwell’s situation as their General, with the chill North Sea to one side, the mighty Scots on their escarpment glowering like greedy wolves at the sick men, the road south to Berwick via Copperspath carefully blocked by Leslie, can only be compared to that of the hero of an adventure serial, who at the end of any given episode seems to have reached finally and unalterably the point of no escape.

  But like such a hero, Cromwell did in fact burst his bonds and struggle free for the next episode of his career, and coming from the improbabilities of fiction, to the probabilities of history, the question must arise as to what his own intentions were within the trap of Dunbar. Did he in fact intend to retreat, shipping his men away from the still unvanquished land of Scotland, temporarily defeated by exactly those weapons on which Leslie had confidently counted, hunger and sickness? Was the escape from Dunbar then merely a lucky break – one of many in a career where fortune certainly played its part – based on Leslie’s mistake? Such a decision of retreat would have been in effect a tremendous admission of defeat: no other English army could possibly have been sent against Scotland until the next spring. For the time being “the controversy by the sword” would have been settled by the divine umpirage in favour of the Scots, even if the two swords had never actually clashed. It was also temperamentally unlike Cromwell to consider such a defeatist course, one of his undoubted assets being his type of military optimism. By believing in the eternal possibility of victory, he took the exact risks that were necessary to bring it about. The recourse to Dunbar fits then more easily into a pattern of strategy by which he still hoped intensely to lure Leslie to fight. To this end Richard Deane, the artillery expert, was being summoned up from England and Cromwell was keenly awaiting his arrival (which again supposes that he did not intend to sail). When Cromwell wrote to Haselrig at Newcastle on 2 September, asking urgently for reinforcements, he certainly recognized the perilous fact of their predicament: “I would not make it public, lest danger should accrue thereby.” Yet he ended with his usual unfaltering confidence: “Our spirits are comfortable (praised be the Lord) though our present condition be such as it is. And indeed we have much hope in the Lord, of whose mercy we have had large experience.”19

  Cromwell, hemmed in as he might be, had one great strength which a General of his calibre could not fail to recognize. If Leslie wished to attack him, he could only do so by coming down off the escarpment, particularly as Cromwell’s men at Dunbar were out of reach of Leslie’s guns. The forces of the Commonwealth were grouped, some in the town itself, and some to the south of it, around about Broxmouth House, a property belonging to the Earl of Roxburgh, whose grounds ran down to the sea itself. Also running to the sea was a stream, known as the Broxburn. Encased in a wooden glen and small in scale, nevertheless its sides were so steep as to give it something of the character of a ravine in an otherwise flat coastal landscape. It was while at Broxmouth House, taking counsel with Lambert and other officers, that a slight movement was discerned (with the aid of perspective glasses) in the Scottish camp, which almost seemed to hang above their heads, so close was it, and yet so high. It was four o’clock in the afternoon of the Monday. According to a story Cromwell loved to tell afterwards, he had just finished praying and had received sufficient solace as a result to bid “all about him take heart for God had certainly heard them, and would appear for them”. Now, as though in direct answer to his prayer, he saw the Scots begin to desert their position, and prepare to descend on to the low ground. Cromwell’s reaction was instantaneous: “God is delivering them into our hands, they are coming down to us.”20

  And sure enough, on those seemingly impregnable heights, the decision had been taken, not by Leslie but by the Committee of the Estates, representing as it were the Scottish Covenanting command, that the Scots should descend and camp beneath the lee of the escarpment, preparatory to attack. As a decision it certainly illustrated the weaknesses of government by committee, although it is possible that Leslie had more hand in it than was afterwards admitted, since he may well have believed that this was the one pitched battle – on the most advantageous terms to the Scots for whose benefit he had been studiously avoiding all the other more dubious engagements. For him too, the season was wearing on, with the Scottish host notoriously prone to slip away round harvest time to bring it in. An anecdote told by an English soldier who was captured before the battle, cross-examined by Leslie and released to join his comrades, suggests that Leslie was under a genuinely false impression concerning Cromwell’s strength, as well as havering over his intentions. He asked the man whether the English intended to fight. What did he think they came there for? was the robust answer. “How will you fight,” replied Leslie, “when you have shipped half your men and all your great guns?” Although the soldier retorted that if Leslie came down off the hill, he would see many of both in great abundance, Leslie does not seem to have accepted the correction.21

  So now the Scots did make the fatal descent, and reformed their line in an enormous arc, like the spread of a huge fan, from the coast itself in the east to the Broxburn in the west, placing the majority of the horse which had been on the left wing, now across on the right, where the stream was narrowest, to guard against a crossing by the English. Outnumbering their enemies as they did by approximately two to one, the Scots lay down in the fields amid th
e corn, for happy slumbers, their match dowsed, their horses unsaddled, their officers in some cases even parted from their men and housed in farms, expecting a magnificent victory, the decision of the cause, on the morrow. But Cromwell was not disposed to wait for the morrow. The Scottish disposition was examined minutely and curiously by the Lord-General, aided by Lambert, at a conference at Broxmouth House. By Cromwell’s own account, their spirits remained resolute and Henry Fletcher later confirmed the tradition that Cromwell remained calm on the eve of what, in his own view, must be “his Masterpiece or his Misfortune”. Not a few of them, wrote Cromwell afterwards, shared the faith “that because of their numbers, because of their advantages, because of their confidence, because of our weakness, because of our strait, we were in the Mount and in the Mount the Lord would be seen; and that He would find out a way of deliverance and salvation for us . . ,”22

  The way that the Lord chose was to put into the minds of Cromwell and of Lambert, apparently at the identical moment, the significance of the enemy’s new posture, which by moving two-thirds of the left wing to the right, “shogging also their foot and train much to the right”, had caused the existing right wing of their horse to edge uncomfortably down towards the sea. They now had insufficient ground to manoeuvre. “I told him I thought it did give us an opportunity and advantage to attempt upon the enemy”, wrote Cromwell, to which Lambert immediately replied that “he had thought to have said the same thing to me”. They then sent for Monk and explained their idea, subsequently passed on to some of the other Colonels who “also cheerfully concurred”.* ( * Maurice Ashley in Cromwell’s Generals, p. 38, suggests that it was not so much the cramped Scottish right-wing which attracted the Generals’ attention as their strung-out position, presenting several openings; but although Cromwell was later to make lethal use of such an opening, his own letter specifies the “shogging” of the right (to shog, literally to shake, agitate, thus to jog) as being the feature which first caught their notice. He does not mention the openings in what was a detailed account of the incident.)