OLIVER CROMWELL, HERO OR VILLAIN? - PART 6

OLIVER CROMWELL – HERO OR VILLAIN? – PART 6

The appointment of Oliver Cromwell as Lord Protector, head of state and government, was generally popular.  An ‘Instrument of Governance’, a written constitution, was drawn up, largely influenced by the army, which provided for the Lord Protector to rule through a council of state and required him to call a parliament every three years, which could not be dissolved save by its own consent until at least five months had passed, and it granted him £70,000 per annum for the upkeep of himself and his family.  Initially the Council of State was, not unsurprisingly, packed with generals and army appointees.  What was now needed was to turn the army from an ideology based organisation into a professional force, and this meant the careful weeding out of radicals, who wanted to go much further in reform of church and state than did Oliver.  He made it clear that he believed that the existing social order, of ‘Nobleman, Gentleman and Yeoman’ should remain and had no time for the Levellers’ demands that all men should be equal.  As an indication that he did not bear grudges, Oliver appointed the Earl of Manchester’s son as an admiral with a brief to reform and strengthen the navy. Even in Scotland Oliver was broadly accepted, even if only as the lesser of many possible evils.

The first Protectorate parliament was summoned on 3 September 1654, but was mainly composed of members who had been expelled by Oliver when he dissolved the rump of the Long Parliament, and they blocked all the Protector’s efforts to get reforming legislation through.  Not only that but they attempted to alter the Instrument of Governance to give it the right to select the Protector and to nominate his successor. Cromwell’s supporters saw that one off, and they also kicked into the long grass an act that would have made it compulsory for people to attend church on Sundays. As soon as the five months were up, Oliver dissolved Parliament without a single act having been passed.

  As with any form of government finance was always an issue.  The army of occupation in Ireland was hugely expensive, and had to be kept there to prevent another rising, but it was reduced from 34,000 men to 20,000 with the strength of the New Model at home fixed at 30,000, this number laid down in a constitutional instrument which could not therefore be changed by any parliament that might be called in the future. In foreign policy Oliver was determined to expand England’s overseas markets, and fought a war with the Dutch from August 1655 to January 1657 in order to reinforce the Navigation Act, passed by the Rump Parliament to give English merchants a monopoly of trade with English colonies and settlements overseas.   In 1655 he went to war with Spain – painted to the public as an anti-Catholic crusade, but in reality to impose English power and influence on the West Indies.  Although an attack on Hispaniola was a dismal failure Jamaica was captured in 1655 and formed the basis of English wealth from the Caribbean for the next hundred and fifty years, firstly as the centre of the slave trade and then as a supplier of sugar and molasses.  The Protectorate’s Admiral Blake subdued piracy off the North African coast and obtained naval bases there, while a treaty with Sweden ensured English access to the Baltic trade.  The rights and privileges of the East India Company were reinforced and strengthened and Oliver’s son, Henry, now a major general, was appointed lord lieutenant in Ireland, while Major General George Monck held Scotland.  It was Oliver’s foreign policy that gave England a global reach and laid down the first steps to England becoming a world power and the ruler of the seven seas, a far cry from the situation during the times of James I and Charles I when French and Spanish fleets could move at will even in English waters.

At home not all resistance had been snuffed out, and there were constant royalist plots and rumours of plots.  To stop the flow of subversive tracts, pamphlets and religious leaflets that went farther than the Protectorate was prepared to allow, a censorship bureau was established and nothing could now be printed without its approval.  Many newspapers disappeared overnight and only two, both edited by Cromwell’s supporters, survived while anything against the government could only be produce clandestinely. From 1655 the whole country was subjected to direct military rule, being divided into eleven areas with a major general in each, in command of both regular and militia units in the area and responsible for the local administration and for enforcing the law, particularly those in regard to blasphemy and Sabbath breaking, and reporting directly to the Lord Protector.  The rule of the major generals was far from popular, partly because many of the generals were seen as low born upstarts who were replacing the natural local rulers, the Lords Lieutenant and the Justices of the Peace, and partly because many of them went too far in the execution of what they saw as their duties, interfering with horse racing, hare coursing and bear baiting, all popular amusements, banning dancing and excessive drinking and attempting to forbid Christmas celebrations. 

Oliver called his second parliament in September 1656, and members presented to him the ‘Humble Petition and Advice’ which among other requests asked for the end of the rule of the major generals.  It also tried to address the question of the succession to Oliver, and here was the nub of the argument between democrats, who were opposed to any hereditary aspect (the Instrument of Governance had allowed Oliver to create peerages, but only life peerages), republicans who were anti any form of monarchy, the ambitious who might have seen Oliver’s eventual successor as being themselves, and those who thought that some form of kingship, which would eliminate any instability that might be caused by a disputed succession, was the only solution. This was an argument that had been going on ever since the beginning of the Civil Wars, and the offering of the crown to Oliver had been mooted before, but now the Humble Petition, sanctioned by Parliament, had made it official and public.  Whether Oliver ever seriously considered accepting the crown is doubtful.  After all, he had brought down one king and abolished the monarchy by law so was hardly likely to agree to the establishment of the House of Cromwell.  Any thoughts of acceptance that he might have had were soon abandoned when the army made clear that they would not have it. It was the army that had insisted on bringing the king to trial and the army that had wanted him dead.  Colonel Pride, he of the Purge, organised a letter signed by over 100 junior officers asking Oliver to reject the offer, and Pride said to his clique that if Oliver ever took the crown he, Pride, would shoot him in the head.  Oliver accepted much of the Humble Petition, including a request to set up an ‘Other House’ similar in role to the abolished House of Lords, but he refused the crown.

Oliver’s religious views had moderated with the years, and power had perforce made them more practical.  While never a religious fanatic he had held strict views as to religious observance, but now he espoused liberty of conscience, whereby men could hold what views they wished provided, of course, that they stayed within limits.  He was increasingly irritated by the constant sniping by the various sects, the Fifth Monarchists, the Baptists, the Quakers, the Levellers who seemed to him to demand toleration for themselves but to deny it to others.  He was accused of allowing the sects to exist so that he could play one off against the other, and he certainly spent much time in discussions with their various representatives, but it is more likely that he simply believed in fairness, however much he might disagree with some of the policies advocated.  He had managed to remove most of the army radicals by posting them to Ireland, or Scotland, or Jamaica.  While he had refused the offer of the crown from Parliament he had accepted their suggestion that henceforth he could appoint his own council and he did reshuffle that body to reflect his views and policies.  He invited the Jews, expelled for England by Edward I in 1290, to return, which was much less an act of tolerance and much more a knowledge that with their network of international finance they could resolve England’s budgetary difficulties.  He now tolerated Roman Catholics, while opposing ‘Popery’ and sought to unite the various factions in society in order to get what he called a ‘settlement’.  In November of 1657 Oliver’s daughter, Mary, married Lord Fauconberg, who had replaced the competent Major General John Lambert, long an associate of Oliver but who had fallen out with him, and the ceremony was conducted according to the Book of Common Prayer, a right denied the funeral service of King Charles after his execution.  The matter of tithes, effectively a tax for the upkeep of the established church but paid by everybody whether a member of that church or not, had still to be resolved.  Most, except possibly some of the recipients, were agreed that tithing was an unsatisfactory system, but could not find an acceptable replacement for it.

The rule of the major generals ended in January 1657, and gradually the older order returned, at least in rural areas.  It had been an expensive experiment, for while the Lords Lieutenant and the Justices of the Peace were unpaid, the major generals and their staff were, and an insistence on keeping the militia embodied was a drag on the public purse for their maintenance. Oliver had persuaded Parliament to alter the Instrument of Governance to grant more power to the Lord Protector, including the right to veto acts of parliament, and from now on he had less need to worry about Parliament, except when he needed money, for the Instrument of Governance stated that no new tax could be imposed without the approval of that body.