OLIVER CROMWELL - HERO OR VILLAIN? PART FIVE
OLIVER CROMWELL – HERO OR VILLAIN? PART FIVE
Through the winter of 1644/45 Parliament had been debating the ‘Self Denying Ordinance’, which proposed that members of Parliament could not also hold military commands. The act was finally passed in April 1645, and there was to be a period of grace of forty days, after which all commissions held by members of the Commons or the Lords must be relinquished.
Although Oliver supported the Self Denying Ordinance, he was much more involved in arrangements for the raising of a new, national, army that would be commanded by Parliament and be free from local ties and thus deployable anywhere in the country. It was to be called the New Model and would have ten regiments of cavalry, each of 600 men, twelve regiments of foot, each of 1,200 men, one regiment of dragoons of 1,000 men and supporting artillery. It would be dressed in red coats, not, as has often been suggested, to hide the blood, but because the only available supply of cloth sufficient to clothe the whole army happened to be red. Regiments would be distinguished by different coloured facings on the lapel and collar. Ever after British soldiers would be referred to as ‘redcoats’, even after they had long stopped wearing red. All were agreed that the commander of the New Model should be Sir Thomas Fairfax, one of the few generals who was not a member of parliament, but MPs demanded that all officers above the rank of Lieutenant should be appointed by them. Oliver argued that the Commander in Chief, Fairfax, must be allowed to select his own officers, and the result was compromise whereby Fairfax presented a list of those he wanted to Parliament who would then approve or suggest alternatives. In fact although Parliament, particularly the Lords, frequently objected to Fairfax’s nominations, he nearly always got his way in the end. Philip Skippon, a professional soldier who had long experience of warfare on the continent, was appointed as sergeant major general, to command the infantry, and, significantly, the appointment of lieutenant general of horse was left unfilled for the moment. The army would be funded by a tax of £6,000 a month from those counties under Parliamentary control. While much of Essex’s army and that of the Eastern Association would be absorbed into the New Model, those local armies would still exist, but would become more and more local defence forces while the major battles would be fought by the New Model.
In the forty days before he was due to hand in his commission Oliver was deployed on various operations in the Midlands, and then Fairfax requested an extension for him as he wanted him to command his cavalry as he sought to prevent the combined army of the King and Prince Rupert from moving north. The King was heading for the royalist stronghold of Newark, and if he reached it would be in a good position either to strike north or to drive into East Anglia which was defended only by the depleted army of the Eastern Association. The House of Commons approved the request and recommended a three months extension on 10 June 1645, but the Lords were less well disposed, with Manchester and his clique still smarting from Oliver’s criticisms, and were still debating the matter when Oliver joined Fairfax. When the Parliamentary horse began harrying the King’s rearguard Charles now had two options. He could continue towards Newark, hoping to get there before the main body of the New Model caught up with him, or he could turn and fight. What decided him, against Rupert’s advice, was the knowledge that, if he continued, the march would very probably become a disorganised rout and while he knew he was grossly outnumbered by Fairfax, by around 15,000 to 12,000, better commanders and better control could still win the day. He had reckoned without the newly constituted New Model Army.
The result was the Battle of Naseby, with both armies drawn up on ridges with a valley between them. Both were deployed in the traditional way with the infantry in the middle and the cavalry on the wings. The royalist infantry was commanded by that stout old warrior Sir Jacob Astley, the cavalry on the right wing by Rupert and Prince Maurice, his brother, while on the left was the Northern Horse under Sir Marmaduke Langdale, a Yorkshireman who had agitated against ship money but when war was imminent declared for the King. On the opposite ridge stood Skippon’s infantry with Cromwell’s cavalry on the right flank and that on the left commanded by Henry Ireton, who like Oliver had no military experience before the war, but again like Oliver seems to have been a natural leader. He was well known to Oliver, who had recommended him to Fairfax, and had been Oliver’s deputy governor of Ely and quartermaster general in Manchester’s Eastern Association Army when Oliver was its lieutenant general of horse. He would become Oliver’s son in law when he married Bridget Cromwell in 1646. Both sides held a mixed force of cavalry and infantry in reserve, behind their main bodies, commanded by Fairfax and the King respectively.
Prince Rupert knew that the only hope of victory was to strike first, and he charged Ireton’s cavalry, dispersed them and then supported the advance of the royalist infantry. Up to this point things boded well for the King, but when Oliver’s ironsides charged the Northern Horse, drove them off in confusion, and then instead of chasing them wheeled in behind Astley’s infantry and attacked them in rear, the balance tipped. The King wished to lead his reserve into battle but was persuaded by his staff to leave the field, and although the King’s infantry – the best infantry the royalists had – fought bravely the result was a decisive victory for the New Model. When the news of the battle reached London the Lords approved the extension of Oliver’s commission, but for three months only. On 12 August they extended it again, for four months this time, and on 23 January 1646 for a further six months.
By the spring of 1646 the royalist cause was desperate. Parliament’s armies and particularly the New Model continued to defeat royalist forces and take royalist towns and fortifications. In December Bristol fell, and Charles blamed Rupert; in February 1647 at Torrington Fairfax, with Cromwell commanding the cavalry, defeated the western royalist army and began to mop up the West Country. At Stow on the Wold Jacob Astley’s last royalist field army was beaten by Colonels Birch, Morgan and Brereton on 21 March 1646. Now began a steady trickle of royalist garrisons surrendering or falling to Parliament. In June the New Model was besieging the royalist capital of Oxford and the King, realising that defeat was inevitable, escaped from the city in disguise and headed for Newark, where he surrendered to the besieging Scottish Covenanter army, with whom he thought he might get better terms than from the English parliament. Oxford surrendered on 24 June, and although mopping up operations went on until 1647, when the last royalist outpost, Harlech Castle, surrendered, it was the end of the First Civil War. The Scots handed the King over to Parliament who housed him as a comfortable guest (they avoided the term ‘prisoner’) in Holmby House in Northamptonshire. Parliament did not renew Oliver’s exemption from the Self Denying Ordinance, and from July 1646 he was a civilian.
Parliament now began to negotiate with the King, and for the next eleven months Oliver had no formal dealings with the army, but then Parliament, in which the conservatives had formed a majority, decided in February 1647 to disband the army, which with the war over they considered was no longer needed. That in itself might have been reasonable, but they determined to do it without paying the arrears of pay owing, nor to fund pensions for the wounded, nor to make provision for the widows of men killed in its service. The reaction was predictable, and the army’s Other Ranks, supported by most of the officers, made it clear that they would not disband until all monies owing were paid. Parliament panicked, promised two weeks of the arrears, but this was not enough, so they despatched a commission of Cromwell and three other MPs to negotiate with the soldiers. Unsurprisingly the Commissioners, led by Cromwell, produced a report in which they sided with the army. Oliver could hardly come to any other conclusion. Although he believed in a strict discipline, and in no sense could approve of mutiny – for that is what it was – he also believed in fairness and it was abundantly clear that the army was not being treated fairly. Had he come to any other conclusion he would have lost all credibility with the army that he had helped to create.
In the meantime negotiations with the King dragged on, and at this stage Oliver would have accepted a king – even the King – on the throne, but now Charles became a pawn between the army, which was first promised all that they were owed, and Parliament. The latter body, in an extraordinary example of political chicanery, now proposed to divide the army and disband regiments separately with the soldiers told that they could accept enlistment for Ireland or be discharged with nothing. On 3 June 1647 Cornet George Joyce, a twenty-nine years old junior officer of the New Model, who had been a tailor in London before the war and a political agitator during it, and who had served in both Cromwell’s Ironsides and Fairfax’s regiment, turned up at Holmby House with a force of 500 cavalry troopers and removed the king, claiming that he had Cromwell’s authority to do so, and delivered him to Newmarket where Fairfax had his headquarters. Fairfax loudly proclaimed that he knew nothing of this and threatened to court martial Joyce, but it is inconceivable that a junior officer would have done what he did on his own initiative. It is much more likely that Fairfax and Cromwell knew all about it and had given the job to a junior officer so that if it all went wrong it would be deniable. Parliament was furious and Oliver only escaped arrest by leaving London and returning to the Army in East Anglia. The King was moved to Hampton Court where he began to negotiate with the various factions in Parliament, the army, the Scots and the Irish, trying play one off against the other. Thinking he was in a strong position the King refused very reasonable terms that would have allowed him to keep his throne, but he stuck to his principles and would not compromise.
Then on 11 November 1647 the King escaped from Hampton Court, made his way to the Isle of Wight and arrived at an agreement with the Scots whereby they would provide an army to restore him to the throne, in return for Charles imposing the Scottish Presbyterian system of religious practice upon England. At this both Fairfax and Cromwell decided that there was no further point in negotiating with the duplicitous King, although Parliament was divided between those who thought that agreement could still be reached and those who considered that no compromise was possible and that the monarchy should be abolished. Now there were royalist risings all over the country and some desertions from the army to the King. The Second Civil War was soon over, however. Once Fairfax had taken royalist Colchester and Cromwell had defeated the Scots army at Preston and placed a garrison in Edinburgh, resistance crumbled, and in December 1648 Cromwell, with Fairfax’s agreement, sent Colonel Pride into Parliament to arrest those members who opposed the army and wanted to treat with the King. Now the ‘Rump Parliament’ would do what the army told it to do, and the army decided that the King should be brought to trial charged with waging war on his own people. Fairfax was nominated to the panel of judges, but refused to sit. He did not desire the death of the King, but the exasperated Cromwell did, believing that the only way to secure peace was to eliminate forever the cause of the war.
The trial began on 20 January 1649. The King put up no defence, saying that the court had no right to try him – and in strict legality he was correct – and he was found guilty and sentenced to death. The death warrant was signed by fifty-nine members of Parliament, including Oliver, Henry Ireton and Colonel Pride, although Fairfax refused to sign it, and the King was executed by beheading on a platform outside Westminster Hall on 30 January. Soon Parliament passed laws abolishing the monarchy, the bishops and the House of Lords.