OLIVER CROMWELL - HERO OR VILLAIN? PART TWO
OLIVER CROMWELL – HERO OR VILLAIN? PART TWO
In 1628 Oliver’s life began to change, for in that year he was elected to attend Parliament as one of the two Burgesses for the constituency of Huntingdon. Parliament in the early years of the seventeenth Century was not the body elected by universal suffrage that we know today, rather it consisted of representatives of the landed gentry, nominated by their peers, and increasingly merchants and lawyers, as the House of Commons, and the hereditary nobility sitting as the House of Lords. While not drawn from the population at large, it was more representative than any comparable body in Europe. It had long been a precedent that taxation could only be approved by Parliament, and as the keepers of the purse strings this gave its members a hold over excessive royal spending. Again, unlike today, Parliament was not in permanent session: rather it was called by the king when he wished to secure support for his foreign policy or when the government needed money. At the beginning of a reign a king would normally be granted a regular income – customs duties on certain exports and imports was usual – and was then expected to finance the running of the country with that and the income from crown lands. Often, however, that proved insufficient, particularly when the country was at war, and Parliament would be asked to approve additional taxation or loans. It was the attempt by the king to circumvent Parliament’s right to approve taxation and raise money, added to the increasing religious differences within the nation, that would lead to the bloodshed and horrors that were to come.
James I died in 1625. His relationship with Parliament had on occasion been tumultuous, largely due to a chronic shortage of cash and a foreign policy that failed, dragging England into the Thirty Years War against both France and Spain. While James was careful not to push Parliament too far he was aware of its growing influence and did warn his heir of problems to come. James was succeeded by his second son, Charles, created Prince of Wales in 1616. He was only five feet four inches tall, considered short even then, and suffered from a stammer. He was a shy, and after the death of his brother and the departure of his sister in marriage, a lonely child, although King James was noted as a loving and supportive father. He was educated by a Scottish Presbyterian tutor and was, in theory at least, Protestant, but he did not enhance his popularity with his subjects by marrying Henrietta Maria, the sister of the king of France, who was not only Catholic but brought with her a large train of French Catholic priests, advisers, companions and servants. Charles had originally rather hoped to marry one of the undoubtedly sensuous Spanish princesses, but none would consider a union with a protestant heretic. Henrietta Maria was not so discriminatory. Coming to the throne at the age of twenty-five Charles was well grounded in Latin grammar and spoke several foreign languages fluently. He was a connoisseur of the arts, appointing Inigo Jones as his surveyor and patronising the painters Rubens and Van Dyke. By no means unintelligent – and with a better grip of military affairs than he is credited with – Charles was lazy. He preferred to go hunting, which he did three times a week, and develop his art collection, rather than attend to affairs of state. When problems arose, as they often did, he tended to postpone them rather than dealing with them.
By the time that Charles came to the throne many of the crown lands – traditionally the major source of royal income – had been sold off and more and more he would have to depend on taxation and customs duties, all of which were to a large extent under the control of parliament. Despite his shortage of money Charles might have been able to resolve matters had he been more attuned to public opinion, or at least the opinion of that segment of the public that mattered. What eventually did for him, apart from his shortage of money, was his insistence on the subordination of parliament and the customs and traditions of the kingdom to royal prerogative, and perceived differences in matters of religion. Charles lacked the political cunning of his father and did believe and often said that kings were appointed by God and answerable only to God, which contravened the accepted relationship between king and people that had developed in the three hundred years since the reign of Edward 1.
Charles was thought be many parliamentarians to be too much under the influence of dubious favourites, and so when he called his first parliament, instead of granting him custom duties for life as was the normal practice, it would only allow it for one year, to be reviewed annually. Deprived of what he saw as his rightful income Charles began to seek other ways of raising money. Prior to calling his second parliament Charles attempted to weed out those opposed to him by appointing them as county sheriffs. As the sheriff was supposed to remain in his county, this meant that he could not attend parliament, which sat in February 1626. The ploy failed, and the king dissolved parliament, without receiving the grant of money he asked for. In order to raise the money needed the king now resorted to methods which while not necessarily illegal (although some undoubtedly were) were strongly objected to by the populace at large. Distraint of knighthood, where men offered knighthoods who refused the honour (because of the expense it would entail) were fined; forced loans from wealthy subjects, with scant hope of them ever being paid back; the sale of honours; the collection of customs dues regardless of parliament’s refusal to grant them; the sale of his wife’s dowry; failing to pay the rent due for soldiers’ billets were all resorted to, but even this was not enough and with the war with Spain bleeding money and men without any sign of resolution, Charles called his third Parliament in March 1628, the parliament of which Oliver Cromwell was now a member. Arriving at Westminster Oliver had already decided to oppose the king’s policies, for a number of his relations had been imprisoned for refusing the king’s request for a loan.
Before agreeing to any discussion of financial matters parliament presented four demands: no taxation without the agreement of parliament; no imprisonment of subjects without cause; no billeting of soldiers on householders without their consent, and no separate legal code for soldiers and sailors. None of these were new proposals, but merely restatements of rights that stemmed from various enactments from Magna Carta onwards. Reluctantly, and after taking legal advice, the King accepted the petition in June 1628, but dissolved parliament before it could proceed further, still without a grant of money. With the removal by assassination of the Duke of Buckingham, one of the king’s advisers whom parliament particularly distrusted, the King thought that parliament would now be more amenable to seeing things his way and he recalled it in January 1629. This time Parliament brought up the matter of religion. While the established Church of England acknowledged the king as its head, many of its practices were thought by those of the Puritan tendency to be far too close to Rome: the use of incense, the wearing of vestments, the insistence on ritual rather than long sermons all smacked of ‘popery’ and while Charles had been brought up a Presbyterian – which he later described as ‘no religion for a gentleman’ – he much preferred the traditional forms of worship to the bleak, colourless Puritan version.
It is perhaps difficult in this day and age for us to understand why on earth different ways of worshiping the same god should be the source of so much passion, and often bloodshed, but people really did believe in a god that observed what they did and how they did it and who should be approached – or not approached – in a certain way. Hatred of Catholics was based more on a suspicion of foreigners rather than a logical analysis of belief, and for centuries, long before the reformation, the English had been wary of popes who were generally held to be far too much under the influence of the French, England’s traditional enemies. That the Queen was French and unashamedly catholic, despite her speaking excellent English and having many English friends, did not help.
The House of Commons determined to set up a committee to examine religion, and Oliver was appointed a member. In his first speeches he fulminated against certain divines whom he considered to be closet Catholics, but when the time came for the members to vote on a resolution condemning popish practices and on a second resolution stating the King’s revenue raising to be illegal, Charles attempted to dissolve Parliament before the vote could be taken. Members forcibly held the Speaker in his chair, thus preventing dissolution, until both resolutions had been passed. Furious, the king would now govern for the next eleven years without Parliament. With the war with Spain deteriorating into an embarrassing fiasco, and devoid of funds to continue to prosecute it, Charles brought it to an end in 1630 with the Treaty of Madrid. From now on he would attempt to stay out of the Thirty Years War.
Running the country without parliament would not have been as difficult as it might be today when government edict penetrates every facet of everyday living. Then foreign and defence policy were the King’s and much internal administration was devolved to local magnates. That said, with income from the crown lands much reduced, and parliament’s refusal to grant what was needed, one of the ways in which the King raised money was by ‘Ship Money’. This had been used in the past to build and buy warships and had always been applied to counties bordering the seas, which was regarded as fair enough. Charles then extended it inland, and even then it was generally accepted as being necessary. The money raised was all spent on refurbishing and expanding the navy, tempting though it must have been to divert some of it to other purposes. It was not the tax itself but the employment of the re-invigorated navy that aroused dissent. Opposition to the levying of Ship Money became vocal in 1636 when it transpired that the navy had been used to assist the Spanish garrison of Dunkirk by dispersing the Franco-Dutch siege. To actually assist Catholic Spain against the Protestant Dutch was too much, and refusal to pay became widespread. Rather than prosecute one of the more powerful men who were refusing to pay, the King’s government decided to make an example of a more humble opponent, Oliver Cromwell’s cousin, the forty-two year old John Hampden, a member of parliament who had already spent a year in jail for refusing one of the King’s forced loans, and who as a matter of principle refused to pay the £1 ship money demanded. The case was heard by a bench of twelve judges, so serious was it considered to be, and argument centred around whether Ship Money was levied as part of the King’s undoubted right – obligation even – to arrange for the defence of the nation, or whether it was a tax pure and simple, which was the prerogative of Parliament. While the bench found for the king, and Hampden went to prison, the narrow margin of seven to five made Hampden a national hero and intensified opposition to the King.
Oliver was close to his cousin and when he first attended Parliament he was absorbed very quickly into the anti-monarchical group of which Hampden was a prominent member. Oliver’s first speeches in parliament were directed against what he and others saw as the surreptitious return of ‘Popery’, by which they meant the use of incense, vestments and the erection of altars, which they saw as idolatry. Oliver quoted preachers whom he accused of popery who had been appointed to lucrative livings within the church, he supported the anti popery resolution which the king had tried so hard to prevent and when he returned to Huntingdon after the king had dissolved parliament he was already committed politically to those who demanded reform in church and state.
Oliver and those who thought like him were further incensed by the appointment of the sixty-year-old William Laud as Archbishop of Canterbury in 1633. Laud was an authoritarian who wished to impose conformity on the church, that is to ensure that every parish conducted religious observances in the same way. To us that would appear simple common sense, but what enraged those of the Puritan tendency was Laud’s insistence on ritual and what they saw as popery by the back door. Scotland now became a particular problem for the king. Archbishop Laud was already regarded with great suspicion by the majority of the Scots, and now Charles seemed to confirm their fears by ordering that the Anglican Book of Common Prayer be used by the Scottish church. That the new one was not so very different from the 1552 prayer book was immaterial – it was to be imposed upon them without their consent, and it led to riots and general mayhem throughout the land. Charles was not to be thwarted and when in 1638 the Scottish gentry supported by the Scottish clergy and backed by most of the populace drew up the National Covenant, vowing to preserve the Scottish Kirk and resist any backsliding towards Roman Catholicism, Charles decided to settle the matter by force and raised an army to march into Scotland. So began what became known as the Bishops Wars, and it was the king’s misfortune that his army was composed of the dregs of the gutter led by reluctant incompetents and was met by a better trained and far better motivated Scottish army. The first foray was inconclusive and ended with the ‘Pacification of Berwick’ in June 1639 when the king agreed to refer all outstanding points of disagreement to the Scottish Parliament. Inevitably, perhaps, that body passed all the resolutions that the king had objected to in the first place and declared itself free from royal control.
In April 1640 Charles recalled parliament, desperate to obtain the money needed to enforce supremacy over the Scots. Parliament, including Oliver, refused to even consider the royal finances until all grievances had been addressed, the royal claim to have the right to levy ship money abandoned and a complete reform of the church agreed. These demands were completely unacceptable to the king, who dissolved what was afterwards known as the ‘Short Parliament’. The Second Bishops War was also a disaster and Charles had little choice but to sign the Treaty of Ripon in October 1640, in which he agreed to resolve Scottish grievances and pay the Scottish expenses of the wars. As Charles had no money to pay this indemnity he had to recall Parliament – afterwards known as the ‘Long Parliament’ because it sat until 1660 – to plead for money.
Charles signed the ‘Self Perpetuating Act’, which said that Parliament could only be dissolved with its own consent. He had no option but to sign, and Parliament knew that, for the situation had now deteriorated to the extent that only by the will of Parliament could Charles continue to rule. In Parliament John Pym and others demanded that the king dismiss his present circle of advisers and he and his supporters, which included Oliver Cromwell, announced the ‘Grand Remonstrance’ which was a list of all the grievances with the king’s rule. When the king returned to London from Scotland in November 1641 a struggle for control began. The king had the Tower, some of the city alderman and soldiers assembled for an expedition to put down the Irish rebellion. Pym and his supporters had Parliament and the London mob. Charles announced the impeachment of his chief critic, Pym, and four of his supporters, John Hampden (Oliver’s cousin), Arthur Hesilrige, Denzil Holles and William Strode, but when he arrived at the House with soldiers to arrest them they had fled. Realising that he had lost control of London the King, the Queen and their immediate entourage left London on 10 January 1642. It seemed that the struggle for supremacy between King and Parliament could now only be resolved by force.