Cromwell, the Lord Protector

by Antonia Fraser

  On the Tuesday, Fauconberg writing to Henry added a postscript to his letter: Z – his code for the Protector – was now beyond all possibility of recovery. Fauconberg hinted that he might support Henry’s claim to succeed, if he chose to make it, and Lockhart too could be brought to that way of thinking. The officers, on the other hand, representing that rival faction from the Cromwellian family, had had a long prayer-meeting on the day before, but it was not known what they had decided. In any case Fleetwood himself continued to stress Oliver’s “great assurances of his recovery, which I do think, hath much in it”.33

  And Fleetwood was right. Oliver did not die. The fit passed as so many had done. On the Monday night, 30 August, the hot dry summer weather broke in a colossal storm, the like of which had not been known in the country for hundreds of years. Far away in the country a fifteen-year-old boy called Isaac Newton amused himself by jumping first with the storm and then against it to compute its force by the difference. So close was the tempest to the incidence of Oliver’s death that men afterwards transposed it for the two to coincide.

  Tossed in a furious hurricane

  Did Oliver give up his reign

  wrote Samuel Butler, and Heath even repeated “divers rumours” that Oliver had actually been carried off on the wings of the storm. Altogether the storm took the imagination of people and poets alike, Edmund Waller writing of “storms as loud as his immortal fame” and “trees uncut” which fell “for his Funeral pile”. Ludlow, trying to reach London in his coach, found his way actually blocked by the wind, not only by the mighty oaks crashing in his path, but also because the tempest itself was too strong for his horses to draw against. But on the Tuesday Oliver had sufficiently recovered consciousness to enquire whether Ludlow had come to London to stir up the Army. There was even some talk of moving him from Whitehall to St James’s Palace, the air being fresher there, since it was not on the river.34

  In the last days, as in so many hours throughout his life, Cromwell’s thoughts began to stray, sometimes ecstatically, sometimes fearfully, but ever humbly towards the religion of God’s Covenant with his Elect which had so long sustained him.* ( * We owe many of the sayings of his last hours to the account of one who was present for “the most part”, probably his groom of the Bedchamber Charles Harvey.35 Although its essentially hagiographical nature has led to some doubts, its broad outlines – the heavy emphasis on religion – are surely likely to be correct. It seems logical to suppose that Oliver Cromwell would be obsessed with religion on his deathbed, having been preoccupied with it throughout his life. The man who had invested even his battle reports with Scriptural allusions was scarcely likely to fail now.) His talk indeed was now all of the Covenant, how there were once two, but put into a single Covenant before the foundation of the world. At one moment he repeated of it the solemn words: “It is holy and true” three times. And he spoke continually of how man could do nothing unaided, but God could do what he willed. Yet he took comfort from the fact that the Lord had filled him with assurances of his Pardon and Love “as much as my soul can hold”. Children, he said to those around him, “live like Christians and I leave you the Covenant to feed upon … Love not this world, I say unto you, it is not good that you should love the world.” Yet he quoted also often from St John, that if anyone did sin “we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the Righteous”.

  Did the fears that haunt the deathbeds of the great, where lesser men go grateful for their ease, come also to the bedside of the Lord Protector? There was a story that Oliver on one occasion turned anxiously to a minister and asked: “Tell me, is it possible to fall from Grace?” The minister replied soothingly that no, it was not possible. At this the Protector relaxed once more and sighed: “I am safe, for I know that I was once in Grace.” Such words might conjure up a terrible picture: a man whose whole faith depended on the vital notion of Grace which once bestowed would never be withdrawn, was apparently wavering in his belief at this last and crucial moment. Yet it is credible that Cromwell did pose some such hesitating question, couched as it was in such a tentative form. No man is a total stranger to self-doubt, not even on his deathbed. Perhaps it was the failure of that mysterious revelation, that curious providence, whose nature remains unknown to us, giving Cromwell to believe he would be spared, which caused this momentary uncharacteristic aberration. Whatever the cause, it was only a temporary doubt. Cromwell in his last twenty-four hours showed no such uncertainties, only the humble confidence of salvation: or as he said himself, “Faith in the Covenant is my only support, yet if I believe not, He remains faithful.” Although he was heard to cry out three times the words from the epistle to the Hebrews: “It is a terrible thing to fall into the hands of the Living God”, he also took much comfort from the words of St John on the message of Christ: “I think I am the poorest wretch that lives. But I love God or rather am beloved of God . . . Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent us propitiation for our sins. We love him because he first loved us.”

  On Thursday, 2 September the Council at last galvanized itself to act concerning the succession, although the Independent ministers were still praying confidently in terms which presupposed the Protector’s recovery. Ludlow recorded the prayer of one such, Dr Goodwin: “Lord, we ask not for his life, for that we are sure of; but that he may serve thee better than ever before.” But the doctors shook their heads over men who persisted in thanking God for the “undoubted pledges of his recovery” instead of merely praying for it, and Ludlow said sardonically that the chaplains were trying to “impose on God”. It was a curious attitude of certainty which persisted in a fashion even after Cromwell’s death: at the fast held by the Cromwellian household thereafter, Goodwin informed God that he had deceived them. The Council finally showed themselves more realistic: late on the Thursday night, four or five of them gathered round the dying man’s bed and attempted to get him to name his successor. Fauconberg told Henry afterwards that at this point his father “declared my lord Richard his successor”. But the tradition that by now he was too comatose to speak is well-founded, repeated not only by Flecknoe in his biography printed the following year, but by Dr Bate who referred to “a drowsy fit”.36 The name of his son Richard was put to him by the Council. Still the Protector was incapable of answering. But the second time he heard the name of Richard, he did manage to give some sort of affirmative, either a nod or the whispered word “Yes”. So his earthly cares were shuffled off.

  During the night of the Thursday Cromwell rallied once more a little. He was after all approaching the anniversary of his most auspicious day, that day once adorned by the crowning mercies of Dunbar and Worcester. It is too extravagant to suppose that the titanic will of the Protector exerted itself once more to survive through the midnight hours into the day of the anniversary itself? Even if the effort was largely unconscious, he was nevertheless well enough again in the small hours to talk again of religion, having, said Dr Bate who was in attendance, made his private will. He was especially full of holy expressions during the night before his death, said Harvey. “Truly God is good, indeed he is” he would say “he will not -” but now his speech failed him. Harvey understood that he intended to say: “he will not leave me”. Frequently in the midst of his pains, he would cry out that God was good. And it is to Harvey that we owe the tradition of his last moving prayer beginning “Lord, though I am but a miserable and wretched Creature, I am in Covenant with Thee through grace.” Here again, as he had done to Harvey – “my work is done but God will be with his people” – he spoke humbly of those he would leave behind, his subjects in all but name: “Thou hast made me, though very unworthy, a mean instrument to do them some good, and Thee service; and many of them have set too high a value upon me, though others wish and would be glad of my death; Lord, however Thou do dispose of me, continue and do good for them…” In general, all through the night, wrote Harvey, he was extremely restless, speaking much to himself, and when he was offered
something to drink, he murmured: “It is not my design to drink or to sleep, but my design is to make what haste I can to be gone.”

  Now it was the morning of Friday, 3 September. According to Bate, who was present, the Protector was still holding his ground even at this late stage; indeed, turning to one of his doctors, he asked him why he looked so sad. The doctor replied gravely that it was surely becoming to look sad when he had the weight of the Protector’s life upon him. “You Physicians think I shall die,” said Oliver, and grasping the hand of his wife for strength, he went on firmly: “I tell you, I shall not die this hour; I am sure on’t… I speak the Words of Truth upon surer grounds than Galen or your Hippocrates furnish you with.” But later still as he weakened he told them “Go on Cheerfully”; he urged them to banish sadness altogether, and treat his death as no more to them than that of a serving-man. As he was slipping into unconsciousness once more, he told them that his own faith was all in God.37 And it was not in fact till some hours later, about three o’clock in the afternoon said Mercurius Politicus (although Thurloe said four o’clock and Whitelocke two), that the last crisis came. As John Owen had once written of the death of the saints, the Elect of God, it came surely at “the appointed season”; then were the chosen dismissed from their Watch.38 “The great captain of their salvation comes and saith Go Thy Ways, thou hast faithfully discharged thy duty; go now unto thy rest… And be they never so excellent at the discharging of their duty, they shall not abide one moment beyond the bounds which He hath set for them, who saith to all his creatures, Thus far shalt thou go and no further.” Even to Oliver Cromwell the Great Captain had come at last and at the appointed time. His Watch was over. He had gone on his ways. He was in his own sixtieth year, and the fifth year of his Protectoral rule over England.

  24 Cromwell’s dust

  Pardon such as desire to trample upon the dust of a poor worm, for they are thy people too

  LAST PRAYER OF OLIVER CROMWELL

  After the death of Oliver Cromwell, in private there were great cries of /- lamentation, in public only peace and quiescence in contrast. That evening the Privy Council met together and about eight o’clock at night went to Richard Cromwell’s lodgings “upon sure and certain knowledge” that he had been designated his father’s successor during his lifetime. The changeover was accomplished with the minimum of confusion or indeed disturbance, although the precaution was taken of stopping the foreign posts for three days. No Royalists stirred, being apparently as much taken by surprise by the unthinkable sudden extinction of their great adversary as the rest of the world. Perhaps Sir George Downing at the Hague was right when he said that Oliver’s death came two months too soon for the foreign conspirators: the outward tranquillity in England and Scotland was certainly remarkable. Wrote Thurloe: “there is not a dogg that wags his tongue, so great a calm are we in.”1

  In private the picture was very different. Thurloe himself was convulsed with grief, and in his letter to Henry Cromwell on the morrow of the death he cried: “I am not able to speak or write; this stroke is so sore, so unexpected, the providence of God in it so stupendous, considering the person that is fallen, the time and season wherein God took him away, with other circumstances, I can do nothing but put my mouth in the dust, and say, It is the Lord . . .” Oliver had gone to heaven, embalmed with the tears of his people, and on the wings of the prayers of his saints. Others of his friends, resorting to the familiar Bible, were heard to say frequently and with desolation: A great man is fallen in Israel. Fleetwood saw in Oliver’s death not only, as might have been expected, a rebuke for sin, but also a tragic deprivation for the Army, losing not only a General and a Protector, but also “a dear and tender father”. A sermon in October by George Lawrence, expanded both themes: first, it was their own sins which had hastened the removal of the Protector, “unthankfullness, pride animosities, avarice, formality and licentiousness”, these were the ague fits which had expelled his breath. Secondly, the deprivation itself was appalling in its extent: “We have lost a Captain, a Shield, the Head, an Heir of Restraint, the Breath of our Nostrils, an Healer, a Shepherd, a Father and a Nursing Father, a Corner-stone, a Builder, a Watchman, an Eye, a Saviour, a Steersman and Rector, a Pilot and a Common Husband.”2

  It was however the children of Oliver’s own blood, not those children of his sword, the soldiers – who would soon recover to scramble and intrigue for power once more – who showed understandably the greatest and most cruel sense of affliction. Five days after Oliver’s death Fauconberg wrote of Mary: “My poor wife, I know not what on earth to do with her; when seemingly quieted, she bursts out again into passion, that tears her very heart in pieces; nor can I blame her considering what she has lost.” A month later she was still weeping so extremely, sitting beside him, as he penned his letter, that he could hardly write.3 The Lady Protectress, who had watched one daughter die beneath her eyes only a few weeks before and was also sustaining another bereaved child, poor Frances, widowed only a few months before, was now robbed once more by death, of the helpmate to whom she had been married with perfect lasting contentment for close on forty years. But to her the consolations of religion, the deep belief, helped on perhaps by her superior age, in the great wisdom of God in all his undertakings even those hardest to bear, brought restraint. She had lived, it seemed, too long with a man who had tried to endure all earthly sorrow through the strength of Christ, for her stern self-discipline to break down now. It was the tears of “the little wenches”, those children of Oliver’s middle years, whom he had petted and spoiled, which now dewed the court of their brother.

  Elsewhere the coincidence of the Protector’s death upon the double anniversary of Dunbar and Worcester was much remarked upon. A letter to Scotland, which began “Pardon my trembling quill, ready to stop at the first line, as dreading to be the unwelcome messenger of so fatal news… went on: “Yesterday the sd of September Death overcame his Highness (“who overcame thousands upon that day of the month in the years 1650 and 1651)”. Mercurius Politicus turned the coincidence to neat if sententious advantage, by making a play with Cromwell’s rejection of the kingship: “It pleased the Lord, on this day to take him to rest” so ran the newsletter, “It having formerly been a day of labours to him . . . Thus it hath proved to him to be a day of triumph indeed, there being so much of Providence in it, that after so many glorious Crowns of victory placed on his head by God on this day, having neglected an Earthly Crown, he should now go to receive the Crown of Everlasting Life.” And of course it gave a pleasant twist to that Faustian tale of the devil’s compact before Worcester: Cromwell having been granted his victory, was duly taken away (presumably to the inferno) seven years to the day later.*4 ( * The date continued to be held in reverence amongst CromweU’s descendants. And in 1666 there was a curious incident reported in the London Gazette in which six soldiers were said to have chosen 3 September in advance for a military plot, because the date was astrologically favourable. Since that day was not in fact particularly propitious by these standards, perhaps they were seeking to benefit from the old coincidence of the LordGeneral’s victories.5)

  But above all it was the unbearable feeling of worldly transience that haunted those left behind, whether friend or foe. Wrote Marvell in his Ode of the next year on his death:

  Oh humane glory, vain, oh death, oh wings

  Oh worthless world, oh transitory things!

  The pious and reflective Lady Ranelagh wrote back a long letter from Ireland where she now lived, beginning with how she could hardly hear of his death “unmovedly”. Yet when she considered it, was it not one more repetition of the old lesson of the vanity to be expected of those in high estate? The very person who just a few days before had shaken all Europe by his fame and forces, was now himself shaken by fever, and shaken by it into the grave itself; nor could Cromwell, who “kept such a bustle in the world”, prevent himself in his turn from crumbling into dust. The hostile Lucy Hutchinson, with less philosophy, contemplated with f
rank amazement the fact that death had finally turned the tables on Oliver, had imprisoned him at last and “confin’d all his vast ambition, all his cruel designs into the narrow compass of a grave”.6

  This lastly earthly confinement of Cromwell’s corpse seemed – at the time at least – a simple if splendid matter to arrange. According to the custom of the time for the great, the actual burial of the corpse in its coffin was distinguished from the more symbolic State funeral. During the State ceremonies however there would continue to be references to the “corpse” and the “body”, confusing when accounts came to be disentangled but appropriate to the symbolic nature of the ceremony. There can be no absolute certainty as to the date when the body itself was interred in a vault in Westminster Abbey, at the east end of the Henry vn chapel, afterwards for many years known as Oliver’s Vault; for the event was not recorded in the muniment book there. A copper plate, doubly gilded, bearing the arms of the Commonwealth impaled with Cromwell’s own, was placed on the Protector’s breast within the coffin and was later discovered in excavations. On its reverse it bore this legend: OLIVARIUS PROTECTOR REPUBLICAE, ANGLIAE, SCOTIAE, ET HIBERNIAE NATUS 25 APRILIS ANNO 1599 INAUGURATUS 16 DECEMBRIS 1653. MORTUUS 3 SEPTEMBRIS ANNO 1658 hic situs est.

  On balance of probabilities the interment must have taken place comparatively soon after the death, even before 20 September; it was on this date that the official coffin, a rich one apparently, adorned with gilded hinges and nails, but by now of course empty, was transferred by night to Somerset House for the lying-in-state in what Mercurius Politicus significantly described as “a private manner”. In any case it was customary at such ceremonies for the coffin to be stowed beneath the bed of state and ignored, as had happened in the case of King James I. But over Oliver’s obsequies the lack of regard paid to the coffin was so marked as to further support the theory that it was in fact empty.7