Cromwell, the Lord Protector

by Antonia Fraser

  Povey, who had been a member of the Long Parliament in 1647, was himself an intimate friend of Noell and another West Indian magnate. It is to his Letter book, a series of accounts of affairs at home relevant to the colonies for the benefit of Governor Searle of Barbados, that we owe a picture of the knighting of a prominent Barbadan dignitary, Colonel James Draxe, at the Protector’s hands.23 It was clearly done at the direct instigation of Noell, and to signify general Protectoral cordiality to the island, for, wrote Povey: “Mr Noell this morning with Colonel Draxe waited upon his Highness who heard him, and by his mediation, all your Affairs very patiently and favourably … and upon the reasons handsomely given and enforced, he ordered, that which you most desire, and as a respect to your Island (testified by an honour done to the Person employed by you) his Highness was pleased to give the honour of Knighthood to Sir James Draxe; ... although Mr Noell escaped the title, it was evident that upon his intimations the dignity was conferred.”* ( * In the great tradition of financiers Noell survived the holocaust of the Restoration, and was in fact knighted by King Charles II. However he seems to have died bankrupt.)

  Yet for all Cromwell’s intimacy with and reliance upon such men, West Indian affairs continued to present a spectacle of much confusion in which personal applications to him always stood the best chance of securing success. There was no proper practical West Indian policy. It is difficult to escape the conclusion that his own romantic temperament where settlement was concerned only aggravated the possibilities of anarchy. In his sincere adjurations to New England, for example, that they should fulfil the will of the Lord by passing on to Jamaica, Cromwell certainly demonstrated this capacity for optimistic unreality to a high degree. He had always displayed much interested kindness towards the New Englanders, whose number he might even in the remote past have once swelled; it was an interest reciprocated, or as Samuel Desborough reported to him in 1651, “your highness, in particular hath a great share in New England’s prayers”. In an audience with Captain John Leverett however, the agent for New England, in December 1656, Cromwell went much further in explaining his inspirational view of all colonizations. Cromwell began by asking Leverett how affairs stood in New England itself, before going on to emphasize his pet project for the removal of New Englanders to Jamaica. While admitting that the first colonists had been sickly, the Protector explained that this was said to be “a climacterical year” (i.e. a year of special significance) and in the meantime other colonists were coming round to the project.24

  Leverett in reply raised a number of sensible points: “I objecting the contrariety of spirits, principles, manners, and customs of the People of New England to them that were at the island or in any other plantations that could remove thither, so as not to cement.” Cromwell swept all this aside with sublime confidence. It was time for them to leave their “barren country” (New England) and go into a land of plenty (Jamaica): “He did apprehend the people of New England had as clear a call to transport themselves from thence to Jamaica as they had from England to New England.” Evidently it seemed to Cromwell only yesterday that the Mayflower had sailed. But it was in fact thirty-five years. The Pilgrim Fathers were not inclined to get back into their ships. Their economical successors were far more interested in the possibilities of supplying Jamaica with wheat, beef and pork to the tune of Ł10,000-12,000 a year. Although Daniel Gookin was further entrusted by Cromwell with the task of inspiring this fresh emigration, few ever made the removal south from New England, and those who did were so horrified by the diseases, that their accounts home were the reverse of encouraging.

  Although by the Restoration, the population of Jamaica was only just over two thousand, counting those soldiers who remained, Cromwell did at least have more success with the inhabitants of Bermuda. Some hundred and fifty men, women and children did transport thence to Jamaica early in 1658, despite the efforts of one William Phillips who tried to warn them of the fearful conditions prevalent on the island, and “none but the scum of the Indies was there”. For this insult however he was duly imprisoned for obstructing the Lord Protector’s designs over Jamaica and briefly put in irons. Barbados and St Kitts both turned a deaf ear to Oliver’s appeals: far too many of their citizens had found their graves in Jamaica already. But some colonists did come from the tiny Leeward Island of Nevis.

  Here the gallant and elderly Governor Luke Stokes set an example by emigrating with his family. Although getting on in years, he answered to the fiery call, speaking of “his Highness’ undeserved and unexpected favours, he hath been pleased to throw some of them upon myself, wherein he hath in some particulars declared his Highness’s design concerning Jamaica, and made me an instrument to declare it to the people of the colony”. Obediently in their turn, the people of Nevis answered their Governor’s call. Fifteen hundred men and women sailed off undaunted on the journey, to land at Port Morant, at the east end of Jamaica, a fertile area cut off by the Blue Mountains. Two-thirds of their number died of sickness, including Stokes himself. Yet the remainder, by occupying this remote but important corner, did much to help the young colony survive.25 At least one small but stalwart body of men and women had shared the Protector’s vision of how they should go to work not only at home but also in the wider world.

  * * *

  Cromwell’s policies in Europe were subject to the same mixed pressures of Protestant evangelism on the one hand and national or commercial interest on the other. Naturally there would be clashes between the two courses, the one dictated by religious sympathy, the other by more worldly preferences of power and trade. But Cromwell never started from the viewpoint that such clashes were insoluble. On the contrary he was supported by a strong inner belief that they must be reconcilable somehow if only by his old Parliamentary methods of waiting and juggling. In this manner, not only was he original, but he also managed to tread an uncommonly successful course through the maze of European politics in the last four years of his life.

  The high summer of 1655 was complicated by the furious reaction of the Spanish King to the rape of Jamaica. The Spanish Ambassador Cardenas was instructed to return, having lodged the strongest protest at this unprovoked attack. But Cromwell was by now sufficiently engaged in his own mind in the anti-Spanish struggle, to reply in kind. A manifesto was issued describing the recent raid as a piece of pure self-defence for all the injuries England had received in recent years; and other Spanish injuries were refreshed in the memory, once more going back as far as the Armada. Cardenas told his King that many members of the Council were hostile to the idea of the Anglo-Spanish struggle that must soon follow. Nevertheless the Protector, even if he had not anticipated this outcome of his Western Design, was not reluctant to see it come about. And he was borne up not only by Protestant enthusiasm, but by the favourable changes in England’s European position brought about during the last twelve months.

  Cromwell had always taken the question of his Navy extremely seriously: his personal predilection could be seen from the fact that in 1657 he had a picture of the English fleet off Mardyck painted by Isaac Sailmaker, a pupil of Gildrop. Throughout the Interregnum ship-building reached heights unknown in the age of King Charles I – five warships a year were planned,* ( * It was for this reason that Sir Winston Churchill as First Lord of the Admiralty in 1911 was so anxious to name a new battleship the Cromwell; he was defeated by stern opposition not only in official circles but from King George V.) compared with less than one a year in the previous reign. While for recruitment, the method of impressment was for the first time put to serious use. The launching of the one-thousand-ton Naseby in 1655 was an impressive occasion, witnessed by John Evelyn, who allowed himself to be worked into a fury at the sight of Oliver on horseback as a figurehead on its prow, trampling six nations beneath his feet – a Scot, Irishman, Dutchman, Frenchman, Spaniard and Englishman – with “a laurel over his insulting head”.26

  An effective fleet was intended not only as a striking force but also as a menacing escort to
merchant shipping. And the prolonged tour on which Cromwell despatched his great Admiral Robert Blake early in 1654 was intended literally to show the British flag – that was to protect the merchants where they wished to trade, harry those who had harried them and generally make it clear in the Mediterranean and its environs that the power of England was now not to be disregarded with impunity.

  Blake, who was by now fifty-five – a year older than the Protector was capable of being described by the Grand Duke of Tuscany as a very touchy and sensitive old man (Un vechio assai sensitive et delicato); his health was failing and he was to die a year earlier than his great employer. Nevertheless Blake was not only a brilliant Admiral, the hero in English eyes of many Commonwealth engagements, including the Dutch War, but he was also a great patriot. England’s reputation was felt to be safe in the hands of this man who in the tradition of a professional sailor interested himself in service rather than politics. When asked to declare himself against Cromwell, he is said to have replied sturdily: “It is not for us to mind state affairs, but to keep foreigners from fooling us.”

  For the next twelve months Blake did indeed prevent many a foreigner from fooling England: he attacked the French, attacked African pirates, and in the course of seeing to reparations for British ships which had suffered, visited Cadiz, Gibraltar, Alicante, Naples and Leghorn. It was at Leghorn that he was said to have made the glorious if apocryphal reply to one who would have punished an English seaman for insulting a Catholic procession: “I would have you know, and the whole world know, that none but an Englishman shall chastise an Englishman.” While his chance anchorage at Gibraltar was in itself of sufficiently momentous consequence to English naval history to have justified the whole expedition:27 by this separating of the two French squadrons at Brest and Toulon respectively, he demonstrated the enormous strategic importance which could belong to the fortress of Gibraltar in the future.

  In 1653 negotiations had been begun for an Anglo-Portuguese commercial alliance: the fact that Portugal was a Catholic power meant that the English merchants had a particular desire to be free from the possible encroachments of the Inquisition. In 1654 certain preliminary rights were granted, although Anglo-Portuguese relations remained strained, especially in view of a highly upsetting incident in which the brother of the Portuguese Ambassador was executed for a murder performed in a London brawl. Finally in 1656, helped on by the threat of Blake’s guns, the Portuguese ratified the commercial treaty. In one spirited attack however, against some Tunisian pirates in April 1655, Blake did wonder if he had exceeded his brief, despite the fact that he had forced the Bey to release all his English prisoners. But Cromwell’s reply of June was affability itself, showing that the two men were made in much the same mould.28 “We have great cause to acknowledge the good hand of God towards us in this action,” he wrote, “who, in all the circumstances thereof (as they have been represented by you) was pleased to appear very signally with you.” In the same letter Cromwell urged Blake to proceed off Cadiz: there he might intercept the famous Plate ships on their great golden lumbering journey back to Europe. However the health of his men and the strain on his ships necessitated in Blake’s view a return to England in October. It was not until the following spring of 1656 that Blake, this time accompanied by Montagu as General-at-sea, returned to the same stamping-grounds for a more concerted effort against the Spanish.

  Such prudent employment of the Navy was matched at roughly the same period by the most famous instance of Cromwell’s inspirational Protestantism, his appeals on behalf of the suffering Waldensians of Piedmont. It was an incident, perhaps small in itself, which illuminated the attitudes of a whole age.* ( * To be compared to the Spanish Civil War in the late 1930s, as a test of opinions.) The crisis came about in this manner: the Roman Catholic Duke of Savoy had a number of Protestant subjects who were supposed by an original treaty to confine themselves to the mountainous areas of the Vaudois (or Waldenses). In the spring of 1655 the Duke began a policy of persecution towards these dissidents, driving them with much brutality exercised by troops, back to their former limits on the excuse that they had transgressed them. Some died as a result of these actions, and added to which the suffering of women and children was immense. Religious feeling inflamed reports still further. By May Mercurius Politicus was reporting from Lyons that it was “that Devilish Crew of Priests and Jesuits” who had thus incited the Duke, adding that “all the true Protestants” were “bound by charity to have a fellow feeling of their miseries”. A fortnight later it was making reference to “such cruelties and inhumanities as was never heard heretofore”.29

  The news did indeed shock Europe to the core, and nowhere more than in Protestant England. Whitelocke’s account for example spoke of children abducted and forcibly converted to Catholicism, churches and houses fired while their wretched inhabitants, “these poor quiet People and loyal Subjects”, fled in terror and distress. John Milton gave these feelings of horrified outrage their finest fulfilment, when he called on the Lord not only to avenge his “slaughtered Saints” but also

  In thy book record their groans

  Who were thy Sheep and in their Ancient Fold

  Slain by the bloody Piedmontese that roll’d

  Mother with Infant down the Rocks…

  Cromwell himself was determined to give practical outlet to his indignation. Although he had two agents in Switzerland already, he sent out a special commissioner Samuel Morland, and Morland responded to the challenge by invoking the names of Nero and his kind: were they alive again “they would be ashamed at finding that they had contrived nothing that was not even mild and humane in comparison”.

  Cromwell also initiated a public collection on behalf of these unfortunates, heading’the subscription list with a personal gift of Ł2,000. Haifa million pounds was said to have been raised as a result, perhaps because the names of subscribers were listed: even if the figure was exaggerated, the Venetian Ambassador bore witness to the immense public concern and the fact that even the Catholic Ambassadors of foreign powers were expected to contribute. Some of the interiors of English churches were actually painted red to hammer home the message of massacre to the congregations. Collections were held on board the ships at sea. The correspondence of the Council of State shows them obsessed with this subject from late May onwards, many of the most stirring letters probably concocted by Milton himself. Thurloe, writing to one agent already in Switzerland, John Pell, to enquire about all the hideous details, told him in early May: “I do assure you it is a matter which his highness lays very much to heart”; a fortnight later it was described as very much afflicting him. When it was pointed out that the finances of the Protectorate made it difficult to spare quite so much money, the answer came that Oliver on the contrary desired to “strain himself” in this cause; in November he was worrying over the details of the distribution, lest it should not reach those most deserving.30

  Money for relief apart, the solutions that Cromwell proposed to the Waldensian problem had two elements. On the one hand he saw a genuine opportunity for some kind of concerted Protestant action, of the sort that had long represented a favourite dream, in an eminently righteous cause. Thus the Swedish envoy, visiting the Protector for the quite different purpose of obtaining English soldiers for Swedish service, was unable to drag his attention away from the problems of religious action and received a long lecture on the subject (of much vagueness, he said later). Cromwell further suggested that the Prince of Transylvania, whose envoy had visited him in November 1654, might find in this episode an opportunity for mutual co-operation. Transylvania occupied a perilous position in Central Europe, menaced by Poland, Austria or the Ottoman Empire by turns; many of its inhabitants were Protestant. The Piedmontese business, wrote the Protector, although “first begun upon those poor and helpless People, however threatens all that Profess the same Religion, and therefore imposes upon all a greater necessity for providing themselves in general and consulting the common safety”.31 C
romwell also suggested that the Protestant cantons of Switzerland might attack Savoy, and himself contemplated the use of Blake’s fleet to capture Nice or Villefranche.

  Secondly, and as it turned out, more successfully from the point of view of the Piedmontese, Cromwell entered into much closer relations with Catholic France on the subject. And in fact it was due to the efforts of Cardinal Mazarin that the Duke of Savoy was eventually persuaded that some more lenient treatment of his Protestant subjects might be politic. The “pacification” of Pignerol of October 1655, to which Savoy agreed, although the result of no grand Protestant drive, did at least ameliorate the lot of the Waldensians. Even more to the point of Cromwell’s own policies, it hastened on the tentative processes by which England and France had already been drawing into an alliance with each other. One obvious difficulty was the close family relationship of the Stuarts to the French King. Yet it was this very problem that, if overcome, could make an Anglo-French alliance of such enormous potential advantage to the Protectoral regime.

  It was a point much appreciated at the time. Even before the initiation of the Western Design, when the question of attacking either France or Spain was debated in the Army Council, it was felt that Spain should be preferred as a target, because France might so easily retaliate by launching the Stuart King back at England. Now collaboration over the Piedmontese had made the Huguenot problem seem newly soluble to both sides. Previously Cromwell had not wished to engage himself formally against helping on their cause, but in the Anglo-French commercial treaty of October 1655, a formula was found by which each side agreed not to help those rebels “now declared” in the other’s country. This of course in turn precluded the French from giving further assistance to the Stuarts, and some secret clauses of the treaty provided for Charles n and some other prominent Royalists to be expelled from France. In return for this certain Condean insurgents in England would also be compelled to leave.