Oliver Cromwell and the Rule of the Puritans in England

by C. H. Firth

It was not only as “the great apostate to the commonwealth,” the oppressor of the English colonists in Ireland, the moving spirit of the unjust war against the Scots, that Strafford was accused. The essence of the charge against him was that he had endeavoured by words, acts, and counsels to subvert the fundamental laws of England and Ireland, in order to introduce an arbitrary and tyrannical government. In him seemed incarnate the rule of arbitrary will as opposed to the reign of law which the Parliament strove to restore. Pym’s speeches against Strafford are, throughout, a glorification of the reign of law. “Good laws,” he said, “nay, the best laws, were no advantage when will was set above law.” All evils hurtful to the State were comprehended in this one crime.

“The law is that which puts a difference betwixt good and evil, betwixt just and unjust. If you take away the law, all things will fall into a confusion. Every man will become a law to himself, which, in the depraved condition of human nature, must needs produce great enormities. Lust will become a law, envy will become a law, covetousness and ambition will become laws; and what dictates, what decisions such laws will produce, may easily be discerned in the government of Ireland.”

Nor was the substitution of arbitrary power for law hurtful to subjects only.

“It is dangerous to the King’s person, and dangerous to his Crown. If the histories of those Eastern countries be pursued, where princes order their affairs according to the mischievous principles of the Earl of Strafford, loose and absolved from all rules of government, they will be found to be frequent in combustions, full of massacres and of the tragical ends of princes.”

Strafford struggled to show that the offences proved against him did not legally amount to high treason. Parliament through the Attainder Bill answered that it was necessary for the safety of the State to make them treasonable. “To alter the settled frame and constitution of government,” said Pym, “is treason in any state. The laws whereby all other parts of a kingdom are preserved would be very vain and defective, if they had not a power to secure and preserve themselves.”

Charles was anxious to save Strafford’s life, but his blundering interventions during the course of the trial ended in failure. When it was discovered that the King’s agents were plotting to get possession of the Tower and to bring the English army up from Yorkshire to overawe the Parliament, the Earl’s fate was sealed. Pressed by both Houses to yield, and threatened by the London mob if he refused, Charles assented to the Bill of Attainder, and on May 12, 1641, Strafford was beheaded.

Side by side with the prosecution of the King’s evil advisers went on the work of providing against arbitrary government in the future. The extraordinary courts which had been the instruments of oppression were swept away. Down went the Star Chamber and the High Commission Court, the Council of the North, and the Council of Wales and the Marches. The Tonnage and Poundage Act declared that henceforward it was illegal to levy customs duties without a parliamentary grant. The extension of the forests was prohibited, the exaction of knighthood fines forbidden, and Ship-money declared unlawful. Henceforward to govern without a Parliament was to be as impossible as to tax without a Parliament. On February 15, 1641, Charles assented to the Triennial Act, which bound him to call a Parliament every third year, and provided machinery for its convocation, if he neglected to summon it at the appointed time. On May 11th, he assented to a second act, which prohibited him from dissolving the present Parliament, or even proroguing it save by its own consent.

Cromwell had taken no part in the prosecution of Strafford, for he was neither an orator nor a lawyer, but his name is closely associated with one of these constitutional changes. The origin of the Triennial Act was a bill introduced by Strode for reviving the old law of Edward III. by which a Parliament must be summoned every year. On December 30th, Cromwell moved its second reading, and he was one of the committee from whose deliberations it finally issued as a bill for summoning a Parliament every three years. In ecclesiastical affairs, he was more prominent by far. On constitutional questions, the popular party had been almost unanimous, but on religious questions its unanimity ended. The general aim of its leaders was to subject the Church to the control of the State as represented by Parliament, instead of leaving it to the authority of the King as its “supreme governor.” But while some desired to abolish the Prayer-book, and to make the doctrine of the Church more frankly Calvinistic, others wished merely the abolition of a few offensive formulas or ceremonies. On Church government there was the same diversity of opinion. A few wished to maintain bishops as they were, a few to abolish them altogether; the majority desired to retain Episcopacy, but to limit the power of the bishops. Hence the popularity of Ussher’s plan for a limited Episcopacy, in which every bishop was to be assisted and controlled by a council of diocesan clergy. As yet there was no party in Parliament which proposed to introduce Presbyterianism or Independency, but those who wished for the complete extirpation of Episcopacy were very numerous. In the Commons, Fiennes and Sir Henry Vane were for its abolition, “root and branch,” and Hampden afterwards joined them. Amongst these “root and branch” men was Cromwell, and he was more closely connected with the attack on the Church than with any other part of the proceedings of the Long Parliament. The only one of his letters which belongs to this period shows his interest in religious questions. It is addressed to a bookseller, and asks for a copy of the printed “reasons of the Scots to enforce their desire of uniformity in religion.” “I would peruse it,” he writes, “against we fall upon the debate, which will be speedily.”

The only recorded speech of Cromwell in these ecclesiastical discussions was delivered on February 9, 1641, about the question whether a petition for the total abolition of Episcopacy, signed by fifteen thousand citizens of London, should be referred to a committee. A member urged its rejection, arguing that the bishops were one of the estates of the realm, and a part of the constitution. Equality (or, as he termed it, “parity”) in the Church would lead to equality in the State. Cromwell stood up, and very bluntly denied his inferences and suppositions, on which “divers interrupted him and called him to the bar.” Pym and Holles defended him, and he was allowed to continue.

“Mr. Cromwell went on and said: ‘He did not understand why that gentleman that last spake should make an inference of parity from the Church to the State, nor that there was any necessity of the great revenues of bishops. He was more convinced touching the irregularity of bishops than even before, because like the Roman hierarchy they would not endure to have their condition come to a trial.’”