Oliver Cromwell and the Rule of the Puritans in England

by C. H. Firth

To Cromwell, it is evident, the acquisition of freedom of conscience seemed more important than any possible change in the constitution of Church or State. The task of formulating the political programme of the army fell to his son-in-law Ireton, who had more definite views than Cromwell as to the constitutional changes needed. Arbitrary power, Ireton asserted in the army’s Declaration of June 14th, was the root of all evil. The absolutism of Parliament must be guarded against as well as the absolutism of the King, and parliamentary privilege might become as dangerous to popular liberties as royal prerogative had been. The way to make the rights of the people secure was to make Parliament more really representative. Henceforward the demand for the speedy termination of the existing Parliament was accompanied by demands for equalisation of the constituencies, short Parliaments, and the vindication of the right to petition.

HENRY IRETON.
(From a painting by Robert Walker, in the National Portrait Gallery.)

The Long Parliament was not disposed to accept such democratic changes, but it was obliged to temporise. News came that the ten thousand men of the northern army under General Poyntz were on the verge of mutiny, and ready to join the forces under Fairfax. The eleven Presbyterian leaders impeached by the army saved the dignity of the House by a voluntary withdrawal, and negotiations were opened at Wycombe on July 1st. After a fortnight of negotiating, the Agitators murmured at the delay, and urged the immediate resumption of the march on London, and the enforcement of their demands. Cromwell and the higher officers opposed. “Whatsoever we get by a treaty,” argued Cromwell, “will be firm and durable. It will be conveyed over to posterity.” The friends of the army were daily gaining ground in the House.

“What we and they gain in a free way is better than twice so much in a forced way, and will be more truly ours and our posterity’s.... That you have by force I look upon as nothing. I do not know that force is to be used except we cannot get what is for the good of the kingdom without it.”

In Cromwell’s opinion, it would be sufficient peremptorily to demand certain concessions as a guarantee that the treaty was seriously meant, and to leave the terms of the political settlement for negotiation. Above all things it was essential that the army should be united. “You may be in the right and I in the wrong, but if we be divided I doubt we shall both be in the wrong.”

Cromwell’s plan was adopted, and the Long Parliament yielded. All preparations for armed resistance were abandoned. Parliament appointed Fairfax commander-in-chief of all the forces in England, including those lately under General Poyntz; it disbanded all the soldiers it had enlisted to oppose Fairfax; it restored the control of the London militia to the old committee, which the army trusted, in place of the exclusively Presbyterian committee appointed in the spring. But if Parliament saw the necessity of yielding, London did not. On July 21st, crowds of citizens signed an engagement for the maintenance of the Covenant, and the restoration of the King on his own terms, though both Houses united in denouncing their engagement. On the 26th, crowds of apprentices and discharged soldiers besieged the Houses and threatened their members with violence unless the command of the City forces were given back to the Presbyterians. The Lords gave way first; the Commons resisted some hours longer, but in the end they too obeyed the mob, and repealed their votes. The rioters also extorted from them a vote inviting the King to London. After this both Houses adjourned till the 30th of July, but before that day came the two Speakers, followed by eight Peers and fifty-seven members of the Commons, had taken refuge with the army, declaring that Parliament was not free, and the army, pledged to restore the freedom of Parliament, was marching on London. The Presbyterians prepared to fight, and placed the forces of the City under the command of Major-General Massey. The eleven impeached Presbyterian leaders took their places in Parliament again, assumed the direction of the movement, and appointed a Committee of Safety. But citizen militia and undisciplined volunteers would have stood a poor chance against the veterans of Naseby. Even the fanatical mob of the City knew it, and when Fairfax arrived at Hounslow with twenty thousand men, their courage fell to zero.

Crowds gathered outside Guildhall, where the City fathers were deliberating whether to fight or yield. “When a scout came in, and brought news that the army made a halt, or other good intelligence, they cried, ‘One and all.’ But if the scouts brought intelligence that the army advanced nearer to them, then they would cry as loud ‘Treat, Treat, Treat.’” On August 4th, London submitted unconditionally, and two days later the army escorted the fugitive members to Westminster, and made a triumphal progress through the City. The Agitators talked loudly of purging the House of Commons by expelling all members who had sat during the absence of the Speakers, but Cromwell and the officers contented themselves with demanding that the proceedings of the last ten days should be declared null and void. Even this could not be obtained till Cromwell threatened to use force, and drew up a regiment of cavalry in Hyde Park to give weight to his arguments. For the Presbyterians were still a majority in Parliament, though their leaders had now fled to the continent.

The army now rested its hopes on the King rather than on the Parliament. During the march on London it had published its proposals “for clearing and securing the rights of the kingdom, and settling a just and lasting peace.” The “Heads of the Proposals,” like the Newcastle Propositions, demanded that for the next ten years Parliament should have the control of the militia and the appointment of officers of State, but they were more lenient to the King’s party. Royalists were to be for a time incapacitated from office, but their fines were to be reduced, the number of exceptions from pardon diminished, and a general amnesty passed. Besides these temporary measures of security there were to be three permanent changes in the constitution. The religious settlement was to be based on toleration, not on the enforcement of Presbyterianism. No man was to be obliged to take the Covenant, bishops and ecclesiastical officials were to be deprived of all coercive power, and the statutes enforcing attendance at church or use of the Prayer-book were to be abolished. In future the royal power was to be limited by the institution of a Council of State which would share with the King the control of the military forces and the conduct of foreign affairs. Parliaments were to meet every two years, to sit for a limited space of time, and to be elected by more equal constituencies, while the existing Parliament was to end within a year.

Ireton was the chief author of these proposals, but Cromwell was equally eager for an agreement between the army and the King.