Oliver Cromwell and the Rule of the Puritans in England

by C. H. Firth

But like Milton’s Satan, even after his fall “all his original virtue was not lost.” As ruler of England “it was his design to do good in the main, and to promote the interest of God more than any had done before him.”

Eighteenth-century writers judged Cromwell with the same severity as his contemporaries. “Cromwell, damned to everlasting fame,” served Pope to point a moral against the desire of making a name in the world. Voltaire summed up Cromwell as half knave, half fanatic, and Hume termed him a hypocritical fanatic. Even as late as 1839, John Forster quoted as “indisputably true” Landor’s verdict that Cromwell lived a hypocrite and died a traitor.

Six years later, Carlyle published his collection of Cromwell’s Letters and Speeches, which for every unprejudiced reader effectually dispelled the theory of Cromwell’s hypocrisy. “Not a man of falsehoods, but a man of truths,” was Carlyle’s conclusion, and subsequent historians and biographers have accepted it as sound. It is less easy to answer the question whether Cromwell was a fanatic or not. Fanaticism, like orthodoxy, is a word which means one thing to one man and something else to the next, and to many besides Hume enthusiast and fanatic are synonymous terms. It is plain, however, that Cromwell was a statesman of a different order from most. Religious rather than political principles guided his action, and his political ideals were the direct outcome of his creed. Not that purely political considerations exercised no influence on his policy, but that their influence instead of being paramount was in his case of only secondary importance.

In one of his speeches Cromwell states in very explicit language the rule which he followed in his public life. “I have been called to several employments in this nation, and I did endeavour to discharge the duty of an honest man to God and His people’s interest, and to this Commonwealth.”

What did these phrases mean? If anyone had asked Cromwell what his duty to God was in public affairs, he would have answered that it was to do God’s will. “We all desire,” he said to his brother officers in 1647, “to lay this as the foundation of all our actions, to do that which is the will of God.” He urged them to deliberate well before acting, “that we may see that the things we do have the will of God in them.” For to act inconsiderately was to incur the risk of acting counter to God’s design, and so “to be found fighting against God.”

But, in the maze of English politics, how were men to ascertain what that will was? Some Puritans claimed to have had it directly revealed to them, and put forward their personal convictions as the dictates of Heaven. Cromwell never did so. “I cannot say,” he declared in a prayer-meeting where such revelations had been alleged, “that I have received anything that I can speak as in the name of the Lord.” He believed that men might still “be spoken unto by the Spirit of God,” but when these “divine impressions and divine discoveries” were made arguments for political action, they must be received with the greatest caution. For the danger of self-deception was very real. “We are very apt, all of us,” said he, “to call that Faith, that perhaps may be but carnal imagination.” Once he warned the Scottish clergy that there was “a carnal confidence upon misunderstood and misapplied precepts” which might be termed “spiritual drunkenness.”

For his own part, Cromwell believed in “dispensations” rather than “revelations.” Since all things which happened in the world were determined by God’s will, the statesman’s problem was to discover the hidden purpose which underlay events. When he announced his victory at Preston he bade Parliament enquire “what the mind of God is in all that and what our duty is.” “Seek to know what the mind of God is in all that chain of Providence,” was his counsel to his doubting friend, Colonel Hammond. With Cromwell, in every political crisis this attempt to interpret the meaning of events was part of the mental process which preceded action. As it was difficult to be sure what that meaning was, he was often slow to make up his mind, preferring to watch events a little longer and to allow them to develop in order to get more light. This slowness was not the result of indecision, but a deliberate suspension of judgment. When his mind was made up there was no hesitation, no looking back; he struck with the same energy in politics as in war.

This system of being guided by events had its dangers. Political inconsistency is generally attributed to dishonesty, and Cromwell’s inconsistency was open and palpable. One year he was foremost in pressing for an agreement with the King, another foremost in bringing him to the block; now all for a republic, now all for a government with some element of monarchy in it. His changes of policy were so sudden that even friends found it difficult to excuse them. A pamphleteer, who believed in the honesty of Cromwell’s motives, lamented his “sudden engaging for and sudden turning from things,” as arguing inconstancy and want of foresight. Moreover the effect of this inconsistency was aggravated by the violent zeal with which Cromwell threw himself into the execution of each new policy. It was part of his nature, like “the exceeding fiery temper” mentioned by his steward. “I am often taken,” said Cromwell in 1647, “for one that goes too fast,” adding that men of such a kind were disposed to think the dangers in their way rather imaginary than real, and sometimes to make more haste than good speed. This piece of self-criticism was just, and it explains some of his mistakes. The forcible dissolution of the Long Parliament in 1653 would never have taken place if Cromwell had fully appreciated the dangers which it would bring upon the Puritan cause.

On the other hand, this failure to look far enough ahead, while it detracts from Cromwell’s statesmanship, helps to vindicate his integrity. He was too much taken up with the necessities of the present to devise a deep-laid scheme for making himself great. He told the French Ambassador in 1647, with a sort of surprise, that a man never rose so high as when he did not know where he was going. To his Parliaments he spoke of himself as having seen nothing in God’s dispensations long beforehand. “These issues and events,” he said in 1656, “have not been forecast, but were sudden providences in things.” By this series of unforeseen events, necessitating first one step on his part and then the next, he had been raised to the post of Protector. “I did out of necessity undertake that business,” said he, “which place I undertook, not so much out of a hope of doing any good, as out of a desire to prevent mischief and evil which I did see was imminent in the nation.”

Conscious, therefore, that he had not plotted to bring about his own elevation, Cromwell resented nothing so much as the charge that he had “made the necessities” to which it was due. For it was not merely an imputation on his own honesty, but a kind of atheism, as if the world was governed by the craft of men, not by the wisdom of God. People said, “It was the cunning of my Lord Protector that hath brought it about,” when in reality these great revolutions were “God’s revolutions.” “Whatsoever you may judge men for, however you may say this is cunning, and politic, and subtle, take heed how you judge His revolutions as the product of men’s invention.”