Oliver Cromwell and the Rule of the Puritans in England

by C. H. Firth

But the moment when the King seemed to have fallen lowest marked the success of his policy. His refusal to accept the terms offered him at Newcastle rested mainly on the conviction that he was indispensable. “Men,” he said in one of his letters, “will begin to perceive that without my establishing there can be no peace.” Even his adversaries must see it: “without pretending to prophesy I will foretell their ruin unless they agree with me.” Sooner or later, he felt certain some party amongst his opponents must, for their own sake, accept his terms and come to an understanding with him. What he had anticipated was now coming to pass. Before he arrived at Holmby, a number of the Presbyterian Peers had agreed to accept the King’s concessions as the basis of an agreement, upon the completion of which Charles was to be restored to the exercise of his power. It was the beginning of that alliance between the Royalists and the Presbyterians which produced the Second Civil War, and finally the restoration of Charles II. On May 12th, a new message from the King embodying these concessions reached Westminster, and it was not doubtful that a majority in the two Houses would accept them as satisfactory.

An agreement on such a basis was a truce, not a peace. It left unsettled the questions which had caused the war, and threw away all the fruits of the victory. Parliament and the King had fought for sovereignty, but now, at the price of temporary concessions, sovereignty would be left in the King’s hands. As long as the King’s right to veto bills was left intact he could prevent any of his temporary concessions from becoming permanent, and he meant to do so. The Independents felt all the danger of such a one-sided compromise, but they were now in a hopeless minority in both Houses. When the army was disbanded, they would be entirely without influence. Its disbandment would have taken place in October, 1646, but for the strained relations of Parliament with the Scots, and a scheme for disbandment was voted on, February, 1647. Out of the forty thousand men in arms in England, Parliament proposed to form a new army consisting of six thousand four hundred horse, and about ten thousand foot for garrison service. It seized the opportunity to get rid of all the Independent officers of the “New Model.” Fairfax was to be retained as General, but all the other general officers were to be dismissed. No member of Parliament was to hold a commission in the new army, and no officer was to be employed who did not conform to the Presbyterian Church. Of the soldiers of the “New Model,” four thousand horse were to be retained in service in England; the rest of the horse and the infantry were to be employed for the reconquest of Ireland.

In Ireland, ever since the cessation of 1643, Ormond, the King’s Lord-Lieutenant, had maintained himself in Dublin, struggling ever to turn the cessation into a peace, and to send help to the King in England. But the refusal of the Catholic clergy to accept less than the establishment of Catholicism in Ireland frustrated his negotiations, and, in 1646, Dublin was again besieged. With few troops and with no money to pay them, Ormond found himself obliged to submit to either Irish or English rebels. He chose the latter as the only way to preserve Ireland to the English nation, and in February, 1647, offered to deliver up his charge to the Parliament. Nothing could have fallen in more opportunely for the plans of the Presbyterians, and on March 6, 1647, Parliament voted that 12,600 men, drawn from the ranks of the “New Model,” should be promptly despatched to Ireland, and sent commissioners to the headquarters of the army to persuade the soldiers to enlist for Irish service.

If the soldiers had been justly treated there would have been no difficulty in persuading them either to volunteer for Ireland or to disband quietly. But the folly of the Presbyterian leaders created a military revolt which changed the face of English politics. As was natural, the soldiers wanted to be paid for their past service before disbanding or re-enlisting. The pay of the foot was eighteen weeks in arrears; that of the horse, forty-three weeks. They petitioned Fairfax to represent their desires to Parliament, asking particularly to be indemnified against legal proceedings for acts done in the late war, and to be guaranteed their back pay. The House of Commons ordered the petition to be suppressed, and declared those who persisted in petitioning to be enemies of the State and disturbers of the public peace. As to their arrears, it offered only six weeks’ pay, and even that offer was delayed till the end of April. The result was that out of the whole twenty-two thousand men of the “New Model,” only twenty-three hundred volunteered for Ireland, and the discontent of the army swelled to a formidable agitation. In April, the horse regiments elected representatives, called Agitators or Agents, to concert united action, and in May the foot followed their example. At the end of April, the Agitators of eight regiments sent a joint letter to Skippon and Cromwell, urging them to represent the wrongs of the army to Parliament, and to procure redress. Cromwell and Skippon laid the letter before the House, and the House ordered the two, accompanied by Ireton and Fleetwood, to go down to the army, and endeavour to quiet the distempers of the soldiers. It promised the soldiers a considerable part of their arrears on disbanding, and good security for the payment of the remainder. The six weeks’ pay offered was increased to eight.

Up to this point Cromwell had taken no part in the negotiations with the soldiers, much less in the movement amongst them against disbanding. In February, 1647, when the first votes for disbanding were passed, he was dangerously ill, and for some time absented himself both from the House and from the Committee of Both Kingdoms. All men knew his dissatisfaction with the policy which the Presbyterian leaders were following, and some attributed his abstention to that cause. “We are full of faction and worse,” was Cromwell’s comment on the state of affairs in Parliament, in August, 1646. He marked with anxiety the growth of royalist feeling in London and the increasing hostility of the citizens to the army and the Independents.

“We have had a very long petition from the City,” he wrote to Fairfax on December 21, 1646; “how it strikes at the army and what other aims it has you will see by the contents of it; as also what is the prevailing temper at this present, and what is to be expected from men. But this is our comfort, God is in heaven, and He doth what pleaseth Him; His and only His counsel shall stand, whatsoever the designs of men and the fury of the people be.”

In March, 1647, the feeling in the city was still worse.

“There want not in all places,” he told Fairfax, “men who have so much malice against the army as besots them.... Never were the spirits of men more embittered than now.... Upon the Fast-day divers soldiers were raised, both horse and foot, near two hundred in Covent Garden, to prevent us soldiers from cutting the Presbyterians’ throats! These are fine tricks to mock God with.”

He was irritated also by the suspicions with which he himself was regarded and the reception they met with from people who ought to have known better.

“It is a miserable thing,” he told Ludlow, “to serve a Parliament, to which, let a man be never so faithful, if one pragmatical fellow amongst them rise and asperse him, he shall never wipe it off; whereas when one serves a general he may do as much service, and yet be free from all blame and envy.”