Oliver Cromwell and the Rule of the Puritans in England

by C. H. Firth

Richard’s first care was his father’s funeral. The body of the late Protector was embalmed and removed from Whitehall to Somerset House, there to lie in state, as that of James I. had done. His waxen effigy, clad in royal robes of purple and ermine, with a golden sceptre in the hand and a crown on the head, was for many weeks exhibited. The corpse was privately buried in the chapel of Henry VII., in Westminster Abbey, on September 26th, but the public funeral took place with extraordinary pomp on November 23rd. All the great officers of state and public officials, with officers from every regiment in the army, walked in solemn procession from Somerset House to the Abbey, through streets lined with soldiers in new red coats with black buttons.

The funeral ceremonies cost sixty thousand pounds, and this profusion, which the Government could ill afford, excited angry criticism amongst the Republicans. Their dissatisfaction would have mattered little, but there were already signs of coming trouble in a more dangerous quarter. A quarrel began between the civil and the military faction in the Protector’s council. Oliver had been Commander-in-chief, as well as Protector, but now the superior officers demanded a commander-in-chief of their own choosing, and put forward Fleetwood as their candidate. Their aim was to shake off the control of Richard’s civilian advisers, and make the army independent of the civil power. Richard firmly refused their demand, and the storm seemed to blow over, but the officers only waited for a more convenient opportunity.

In January, 1659, the necessity of providing money for the public service obliged Richard to call a Parliament. All the Republican leaders obtained seats, but more than two-thirds of the members elected were supporters of the Government. There was a long struggle over the recognition of Richard as Protector, followed by excited debates about the right of the members for Scotland and Ireland to sit in Parliament, and over the old question of the House of Lords. On all these points, the Government carried the day, but in the meantime the agitation in the army had begun again, and a council of officers repeated the demands made in the previous autumn. The Protector, backed by his Parliament, which was indignant at military dictation, ordered the council to cease meeting. The military leaders, allying themselves with the Republican minority in the House, refused obedience. A few colonels adhered to the Protector, and obeyed his orders, but they were deserted by their men, and all the regiments in London gathered round Fleetwood at St. James’s. On behalf of the council of officers, Fleetwood and Desborough demanded the immediate dissolution of Parliament. “If he would dissolve Parliament,” said Desborough, “the officers would take care of him; if he refused, they would do it without him and leave him to shift for himself.” Richard might have resisted with some chance of success, for Monk and the army in Scotland remained faithful, and Henry Cromwell, with the Irish army, would have supported him. But he trusted the promises of his uncles, and, whatever the result to himself, he shrank from beginning a civil war. “I will not have one drop of blood spilt for the preservation of my greatness,” he is reported to have said. Yielding to the pressure put upon him, he dissolved Parliament (April 21, 1659), and a fortnight later he had ceased to reign.

Thus the Protectorate fell before that alliance between the Republicans and the malcontents in the army which Cromwell had always been strong enough to prevent. Fleetwood had no wish to overthrow his brother-in-law, Desborough no animosity to his nephew; they meant to make him their tool, and to govern under his name. But the inferior officers declared for the restoration of the Republic, and threw over the House of Cromwell. On May 7th, the Long Parliament was restored to power by the men who had expelled it in April, 1653, and the Revolution was completed.

There was no real union between these temporary allies. The fifty or sixty members of the Long Parliament who governed England in the name of the Republic had learnt nothing and forgotten nothing. The soldiers, conscious that the Government could not live for a day without their support, grew restive and indignant when their claims were ignored and their requests slighted. After the suppression by Major-General Lambert of a royalist insurrection in August, 1659, Parliament and army came to an open breach. Parliament cashiered Lambert and eight other officers for promoting a petition which it had declared seditious, and Lambert retaliated (October 13, 1659), by putting a stop to its sittings.

Lambert—the real leader of the army, though Fleetwood was its nominal head—stood now in the position which Cromwell had occupied in April, 1653; but this time the army was divided. In Scotland, Monk declared for the restitution of the Parliament, and by dilatory negotiations kept Lambert and Fleetwood from acting until the desertion of their soldiers, the defection of the fleet, and the opposition of London obliged them to give way. At the end of December, 1659, the Long Parliament was a second time restored, and Monk, with six thousand men, entered England unopposed. It was not zeal for that assembly which caused its restoration, but hostility to military government. Under the opprobrious nickname of “The Rump,” Parliament was the laughing stock of every ballad-maker, but for the moment it represented all that was left of the constitution. Weary of experiments, and most weary of the rule of the sword, the English people wished to return to the known laws and the old government. As Monk marched to London, petitions poured in urging him to declare for a free Parliament, and every petitioner knew that a really representative Parliament meant the restoration of Charles II. Monk answered by protesting unalterable fidelity to the Republic, but made up his mind to use his power to let the nation determine freely its own future. When he reached London he availed himself of the disaffection of the City to oblige Parliament to readmit the Presbyterian members whom Pride had expelled in 1648 (Feb. 21, 1660). Having thus secured a majority ready to do his bidding, he obliged the House to vote its own dissolution, and issue writs for the calling of a free Parliament (March 16, 1660). As commander-in-chief, he maintained the freedom of the elections, kept the army under control, and watched over the peace of the nation.

Monk’s greatest service to England was not the restoration of Charles II. After the breach between army and Parliament that was inevitable. “The current,” said Cowley, “was so irresistible, that the strongest strove against it in vain, and the weakest could sail with it to success.” Monk’s merit was that he brought about the Restoration without a civil war. His dexterous and unscrupulous policy blinded the Republicans to his intentions till it was too late for them to resist, and made the army instrumental in effecting what the bulk of it would have fought to prevent. But for him, England would have been, in Cromwell’s phrase, “one Cain.” Thanks to him, the transition from the government of an armed minority to the government which an overwhelming majority of the nation desired was a peaceable and constitutional revolution. So the rule of Puritanism, founded with blood and iron, fell without a blow. The alliance between the Presbyterians and the Royalists, begun thirteen years ago, was now at last completed. The once triumphant Independents were divided and powerless. Maidston, the steward of Cromwell’s household, in a letter to John Winthrop, wrote the epitaph of militant Independency.

“The interest of religion lies dreadfully in the dust, for the eminent professors of it, having achieved formerly great victories in the war, and thereby great power in the army, made use of it to make variety of changes in the government, and every one of those changes hazardous and pernicious.... They were all charged upon the principles of the authors, who, being Congregational men, have not only made men of that persuasion cheap, but rendered them odious to the generality of the nation.”

At the end of April, 1660, a free Parliament met, the first for twenty years. On May 29th, Charles II. re-entered London “with a triumph of above twenty thousand horse and foot, brandishing their swords and shouting with inexpressible joy; the ways strewed with flowers, the bells ringing, the streets hung with tapestry, the fountains running with wine.”

“I stood in the Strand and beheld it, and blessed God,” wrote John Evelyn. “And all this was done without one drop of blood shed, and by that very army which rebelled against him; but it was the Lord’s doing, for such a restoration was never mentioned in any history, ancient or modern, since the return of the Jews from the Babylonish captivity; nor so joyful a day, and so bright, ever seen in this nation, this happening when to expect or to effect it was past all human policy.”