Cromwell, the Lord Protector

by Antonia Fraser

  It was finally on 23 February that the document then called the Humble Address and Remonstrance, and later adapted into the Humble Petition and Advice, which called for the return of the monarchy and the House of Lords together with a highly generous monetary settlement to the Crown, was presented to Parliament by Sir Christopher Packe. A man of much standing zndgravitas – he was well over sixty, a former Lord Mayor of London, still an Alderman, and member of many influential committees – it was clear at the time that he had been put up to the gesture by Broghill and the lawyers. The issue was now certainly fairly in the open. The reactions not only of Parliament and the Army but also of the Protector himself would have to be seen and scrutinized. Was it perhaps time at last to beat that Spanish gold into a royal sceptre, as Waller had suggested, with which to dazzle some members of the community and dominate the others?

  * * *

  On one half of the package, the return of the House of Lords, it was easy to gauge the Protector’s reactions. Indeed, his conviction that some kind of second chamber was necessary to modify the actions and reactions of the surviving single chamber of the former Commons showed one of the clearest instances of the way time and experience had radically transformed many of Cromwell’s theories. The man who in the 16408 was supposed to have spoken enthusiastically of turning the Duke of Manchester into “plain Mr Montagu” had now no time for such fantasies. It was the sheer problems of rule which interested him. Perhaps the House of Lords, in whatever form it was to be resurrected, did not represent the acme of political perfection, but in an imperfect society it was sometimes necessary to accept imperfect solutions. Nothing had demonstrated more clearly the dangerous driving power of a single chamber out of control (the Protector’s control, that is) than the Naylor case. And when the officers protested to him forthwith against the idea of the reintroduction of the Lords, Cromwell made his feelings clear. “Unless you have some such thing as a balance, we cannot be safe … By the proceedings of this Parliament, you see they stand in need of a check, or balancing power for”, continued Cromwell, “the case of James Naylor might happen to be your case”. The Instrument of Government permitted Parliament to fall upon “life and member” of the people, “and” he added, “doth the Instrument enable me to control it?”16

  The question was – what sort of second chamber should be now constituted, or indeed reconstituted? This problem, one which subsequent ages faced with the same issue have found attended by similar difficulties, was eventually solved in the form of a nominated second chamber. It was not so much that Cromwell seemed to retain any great dislike of the principle of hereditary titles, for there are indications that he later deliberately created a few as distinct from this new type of political lord and he also created some baronets. His thoughts on this complicated subject were perhaps never quite fully thought out. At the present time however he was engaged in no piece of social strategy, but in constructing something which would above all be administratively powerful in his own good cause. His aim, in which he ultimately succeeded after some opposition had been quelled, was therefore to secure the nomination of these second chamber members – Lords or not, and they were eventually termed Lords - exclusively for himself. The consequent strengthening of the executive could hardly fail to be valuable. It was Thurloe who rather engagingly put forward the great argument for this nominated body: “We judge here,” he wrote, “that this House just constituted will be a great security and bulwark to the honest interest… and will not be so uncertain as the House of Commons which depends upon the electing of the people.”17

  The other House finally established by a bill passed by Parliament on II March was to consist in the first instance of seventy members all to be nominated by the Protector. But to Cromwell also was to go all subsequent influence over this body, for in addition he was to be allowed to fill up their ranks, as they might empty, by nominating once again: and to these nominations it was agreed, after some protests, that the Commons need not assent. The question of who was now to be chosen was held over till the summer as the great central issue of the kingship remained to be debated and the writs for the new House were not issued till the end of the year. Nevertheless from the first moment such a method of choice was agreed the result was likely to be not so much the base-born aristocracy of jumped up fellows of satirical imagination, nor indeed the new noblesse of officers which Bordeaux for example believed Cromwell intended to create, so much as a simple Cromwellian clique of men united by the patronage which had promoted them. That after all was basically what Cromwell had hoped to bring about with his balancing second chamber even if he did not present it in quite such bald terms. The revival of a form of House of Lords was therefore a straightforward political achievement, not a piece of romantic social legislation.

  The question of accepting the kingship raised more profound issues in Cromwell’s mind. It is not necessary to accept the extreme hostile view of his calculations and ambitions to suppose that there were certain natural attractions of a private nature in such a course. For one thing the position of his family was at present highly ambivalent: on the one hand accused of regal pretensions, on the other hand dreading the question mark that lay over the future after their father’s death if the unforgiving King should return, they were watched at every turn for some clue to their father’s intentions. The assumption of the crown would make them royalty at last, first generation royalty perhaps, but covered at least by the settlement made by their father in future years. The vengeance of King Charles n, which many of those in a position to know suggested that these lesser stars round Cromwell’s sun constantly discussed and dreaded, would be further averted. As it was, in the present situation, they endured many of the disadvantages of those close to the throne, with few of the advantages.

  At one point Henry Cromwell confessed in a letter to Thurloe, that he was the only person to whom he could open his heart freely, without his words being regarded as “tainted” (by ambition). Yet Richard Cromwell told his brother in Ireland at the beginning of March he was actually lucky to be abroad: “I can say that you are somewhat more happy than others [of] your relations for that you are out of the spattering dirt which is thrown about here.”18 As for the two unmarried girls, Mary and Frances, not yet technically princesses although they were generally addressed as such by Ambassadors, they were also not exempt from the usual fate of such royal ladies, their marriages being already subject to outside pressures. All these persuasions existed to convince Cromwell, the committed family man, of the need in some way to regularize the position of his relations and this was without taking into account the natural human desire we may believe, without undue scorn, burned in the breasts of some of them, actually to enjoy the glorious possible new position.

  Frances for example, now past eighteen, had been having a long-drawnout romance with a young man Cromwell had originally considered highly unsuitable for her hand on moral grounds. He was Robert Rich, grandson of Lord Warwick, and back in the May of the previous year his grandfather had cavilled at Cromwell’s extravagant financial demands, as a result of which the match had hung fire. However Cromwell told Frances and the rest of his family privately that he had actually taken “a dislike to the young person, which he had from some reports of his being a vicious man given to play and such like things”. And there was further the matter of the will of John Dutton, uncle of Marvell’s pupil William, which though not proved till mid-1657, referred in early 1655 to a match arranged between himself and His Highness “betwixt my said nephew William Dutton and Lady Frances Cromwell”. Frances might not be the prettiest of the Cromwell girls: at least in middle age her portrait shows a long nose and prim mouth to balance the best family feature of beautiful widelyspaced eyes. But she showed all their spirit,and thekindof humorous determination to get her own way characteristic of the youngest member of a large family who often gives the impression that she has long ago sized up both the world in general and her parents in particular. So now, nearly a year later,
Richard Cromwell still referred to Rich as “my lady Frances’ gallant, flying his plumes in Whitehall”. Frances however found the course of true love still further roughened by the business of the kingship. A correspondent to Paris, referring to the previous project of the Rich marriage, ended his letter: “but this new dignity has altered it”. There was now a chance of a match “in your parts” i.e. in France.19 So matters rested for the unfortunate Frances, her romantic life as unresolved as the political situation.

  In the case of Mary, it was her father who seems to have taken the initiative about the same time in attempting to arrange a useful alliance with a recently widowed member of a prominent northern family, Thomas Belasyse Viscount Fauconberg, of Newburgh Priory near York. Himself neither a Catholic nor a practising Royalist, Fauconberg nevertheless had connexions with both: his father’s estate in the North Riding had been subject to the attentions of the Committee of Compounding, many of his relations were Catholics, including his uncle, that Belasyse who had been one of the founder members of the Sealed Knot. But Fauconberg evidently appeared to the Protector in the guise of a good middle-of-the-road State servant, a future Lockhart or perhaps a Broghill. He was also incidentally a man of much personal charm. Having gone abroad after his first wife’s death at the end of 1656, by early next year he was being subjected to searching enquiries concerning his background and religious views by Lockhart, who was not only Ambassador in Paris but also of course connected to the Protector by marriage.

  The answers proved satisfactory: by March Lockhart was able to turn in a glowing report. Fauconberg, he wrote, was “a person of extraordinary parts, and hath (appearingly) all those qualities in a high measure that can fit one for his Highness’ and country’s service, for both of which he owns a particular zeal”. However these good qualities also included caution, and perhaps Fauconberg was also understandably anxious to be a little more certain concerning his future father-in-law’s actual status. At any rate by May Lockhart was reduced to dropping a somewhat heavy hint that he should come forward and actually court the young lady: “I waited last night on the gentleman,” he wrote, “and told him the advantage his pretensions might receive from his own addresses to the person principally concerned.” And when Fauconberg still replied that he expected “a clearer invitation” Lockhart retorted that he feared he had already gone too far in assuring him of a welcome, spoke of the “rules of modesty” and left the rest, pointedly, to Fauconberg’s “own merit and application”.20* ( * Owing to the many Catholic connexions of the name Belasyse, in 1658 the Baptists attacked Oliver for having let his daughter marry one: but already in 1653 over the matter of his father’s estate and the compounding, young Fauconberg had indignantly rebutted the notion that he was a Catholic. He seems on his record to have been on the contrary a convinced Anglican.21) So this match too hung fire.

  In the case of Frances’s new destiny, there were definite rumours that she was proposed as a bait for King Charles, or alternatively that the King would take her in marriage as a way of getting back on to his own throne. Oliver’s chaplain later told Pepys that he knew “for certain” that offers had been made to “the old man” for marriage between the King and his daughter, but he would not have it. Indeed at the very height of the kingship crisis, Henry’s father-in-law (who was in Whitehall) told him that the Protector and Protectress were more concerned over the question of Frances’s marriage than anything else. BroghiU’s story, told to Burnet by himself, was even more circumstantial: how he raised the subject of the rumours concerning Frances and Charles with the Protector, only to find that his patron showed no particular indignation at it. Broghill then went further and said daringly that “a better expedient” might be actually to bring the King back because they could then make with him what terms they wished, with Cromwell retaining all his present authority. The Protector still remained calm. He simply answered that the King would never forgive the shedding of his father’s blood. BroghiU’s answer to this was that Cromwell had been merely one of the many responsible for the execution, whereas he would be alone in bringing about the Restoration. Cromwell then countered that the young King was so “damnably debauched” that he would undo them all, and so dismissed the subject.*22 (* It is interesting to note that Charles’s debauchery was already a feature of his reputation before he reached the throne: he himself wrote a letter of witty complaint on the subject to Lord Taaffe in 1659, concerning those “blind harpers … they have done me too much honour in assigning me so many fair ladies as if I were able to satisfy the half”. Leaving the question of the King’s modesty on one side, the answer was of course that it was in the interests of those in power in England to exaggerate such stories in order to stress his unsuitability for the throne, just as stories of Cromwell’s drunkenness and sickness or madness were disseminated by the Royalists.23)

  Certainly the whole question of the bachelor monarch across the water could not fail to occupy one corner of the Protector’s mind at this moment. Any resurrection of the monarchical issue must inevitably call into question the future of the family who had until recently occupied the throne, and were now represented by an energetic and undoubtedly attractive sprig of twenty-seven who on many popular grounds beyond that of sheer legality, might compare favourably with a brooding, chronically sick man of fifty-eight. The point has been well made that the spring of 1657 presented by far the best opportunity for a Royalist invasion from the Continent, with English politics in a state of flux, and no firm bastions of republican defence established to beat off the challenge of a returning King.24 Although the chance of restoration by a military coup was let drop, because the foreign support was not considered to be ready, the notion of the return of the King from across the water by more peaceful means of invitation was not so easily dismissed.

  A story told of the Marquess of Hertford about the same period cast further light on Oliver’s reaction to such a prospect.25 Hertford was asked by the Protector to a private dinner of condolence following the death of his eldest son Lord Beauchamp (Oliver being ever-sensitive to such griefs). At dinner the Protector turned to his guest and to his considerable surprise asked if he could have the benefit of his advice, since he was no longer able to bear the burden of government. “You my lord, are a great and wise man, and of great experience,” he was supposed to have said, “and have been much versed in the business of government. Pray advise me what I shall do.” Hertford was a man of nearly seventy who was certainly experienced, having in his far-off youth as plain William Seymour been the lover and would-be husband of the ill-fated Arbella Stuart, before settling down to a long and honourable career as friend and adviser of King Charles i. Hertford allowed himself to show some natural surprise at the question. It would, he said, be unseemly for him to reply since as Oliver knew he had always been for the King. But when the Protector pressed him, he did point out that there was one method by which he could establish himself for ever, and that was by restoring “our young master that is abroad – that is, my master and the master of us all”. But to this Oliver merely answered sedately but firmly that he had gone so far that the “young gentleman” could never forgive him.

  Even allowing for the post-Restoration atmosphere in which both these tales were ultimately recounted for posterity – it should be noted that both protagonists emerge with honour where Charles n was concerned together they amount to a plausible tradition of Cromwell mulling over the position of the uncrowned King across the water, that King, as Broghill later told Burnet “to whom the law certainly pointed more than any other”. Nevertheless it is difficult to believe that for all Broghill and Hertford’s persuasions, Oliver was seriously contemplating for a moment the restoration of Charles at his own hands. It seems far more likely that he was testing out his own position in the eyes of these great magnates, Hertford in particular being chosen as one who could be relied upon to represent the extreme Royalist point of view. If he could be converted to the notion of Oliver’s crown, that indeed would be a favo
urable omen.

  For there were by now a series of extremely cogent reasons, of a more serious and public nature, why Cromwell should accept the crown now that he so fully occupied the royal role, or as Mazarin had impatiently put it over the arguments on his ambassadorial address – “Qu’il prenne le titre de roi”. Such reasons could easily be translated into positive dispensations in the mind of one accustomed to seek such. The strongest of these, put forward by Broghill and his supporters, was the strength of the kingship in the laws of the country, not possessed by any other “usurping” office. The whole concept of treason could easily be brought into play over the question of opposition to a King, yet was difficult to marshal with any conviction with regard to the person of a Protector. This argument was recognized not only by Cromwell’s own allies but also by soi-disant Royalists: it was Penruddock himself, at the time of his rising, who confessed that he would not have rebelled against Cromwell had he been King, for that would have been treasonable. Then again, and importantly for those who surrounded him, the servants of a King would not it was thought be subject to a future royal vengeance, because their actions would be covered by law, having been dictated by another monarch. That was an argument whose force Cromwell had recognized as long ago as 1652 in his discussions on sovereignty with Whitelocke. A Protector’s servants could expect no such immunity. These feelings, translated into strong practical arguments for the assumption of the office, undoubtedly weighed all the more strongly with Cromwell because at the same time they coincided with his troubles with Parliament, his unease with the Army, and for that matter his problems with the Major-Generals. Such failures could genuinely be held to be signs of the necessity of change. Officially the Protector denied foreknowledge of Packe’s Humble Remonstrance, and certainly he had not yet made up his mind on the subject; nevertheless it is easy to accept Bordeaux’s story that Richard Cromwell had been shown the document several days before; this meant that its proposals can hardly have come as a surprise to his father.26