Oliver Cromwell and the Rule of the Puritans in England

by C. H. Firth

“Whatever the world might judge of them,” said Cromwell to one of the King’s agents, “the army would be found no Seekers of themselves, further than to have leave to live as subjects ought to do and to preserve their own consciences; and they thought no men could enjoy their lives and estates quietly without the King had his rights.”

When Charles raised objections to the first draught of the “Proposals,” Cromwell and Ireton persuaded the Council of the Army to lower their demands, and to make important alterations in the scheme finally published. If the King accepted it the army leaders assured him that no further concessions should be demanded. And supposing that after he had accepted it Parliament refused its assent, they would purge the Houses of opponents “till they had made them of such a temper as to do his Majesty’s business.”

Such was the talk amongst the officers, but it soon became evident they had reckoned without their host. The King was little inclined to submit to the permanent restrictions on his royal power which the army demanded, and thought he could avail himself of the quarrel between it and the Parliament to impose his will on both. He avowed it frankly. “You cannot do without me. You will fall to ruin if I do not sustain you,” he told the officers, when the “Proposals” were first offered to him. “Sir,” answered Ireton, “you have an intention to be the arbitrator between the Parliament and us, and we mean to be it between your Majesty and the Parliament.” Another time Charles answered Ireton’s remonstrances with the defiant announcement: “I shall play my game as well as I can.” “If your Majesty have a game to play,” replied Ireton, “you must give us also the leave to play ours.”

They could come to no agreement. Charles persisted in his policy of playing off one party against another, confident that his diplomatic skill would secure his ultimate victory. In September, the Parliament once more offered the King the Newcastle Propositions, to which he answered that the “Proposals” of the army offered a better foundation for a lasting peace, and asked for a personal treaty. The advanced party amongst the Independents, headed by Harry Marten and Colonel Rainsborough, urged that Parliament should proceed to the settlement of the kingdom without consulting the King. They compared Charles to Ahab, whose heart God hardened, and to a Jonah who must be thrown overboard if the ship of the state was to come safe to port. Cromwell, backed by Ireton and Vane, argued in favour of a new application to the King, and by eighty-four votes to thirty-four the House decided to draw up fresh propositions. It seemed to Cromwell that the re-establishment of monarchy was the only way to avoid anarchy. Already an officer had been expelled from the Council of the Army for declaring that there was now no visible authority in England but the power of the sword, and Cromwell warned Parliament that men who thought the sword ought to rule all were rapidly growing more numerous amongst the soldiers. He argued that a speedy agreement with the King was necessary, but to persuade the Parliament to reduce its demands proved beyond his power. The new terms it proceeded to draw up showed no sign of any willingness for a compromise. As before, all the leading Royalists were to be excluded from pardon, the establishment of Presbyterianism for an indefinite period was once more insisted upon, and toleration was refused not only to Catholics, but to all who used the liturgy. Cromwell’s efforts to limit the duration of Presbyterianism to three or to seven years were unsuccessful. Parliament was as impracticable as the King, and while it was fruitlessly discussing proposals which could produce no agreement, the progress of the democratic movement in the army threatened a new revolution.

Cromwell’s negotiations with the King, his speeches in favour of monarchy, his modification of the terms offered by the army to Charles, and his attempt to moderate the terms offered by Parliament, all exposed him to suspicion. While Charles distrusted Cromwell and Ireton because they asked for no personal favours or advantages for themselves, both were freely accused of having made a private bargain with the King for their own advancement. Cromwell, it was said, was to be made Earl of Essex as his kinsman had been, Captain of the King’s guard, and a Knight of the Garter; Ireton was to be Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland. Royalists spread these stories in order to sow division between Cromwell and the army; the soldiers swallowed them because they feared the restoration of the monarchy. The pamphleteers of the Levellers, as the extreme Radicals were popularly termed, published broadcast vague charges of treachery and double-dealing against the army leaders. Sometimes Cromwell was described as an honest man led astray by the ambitious Ireton; at other times the two were regarded as confederates in evil, whose occasional differences of opinion were merely a device to throw dust in the eyes of the world. In their appeals to Cromwell there was a touch of surprise and sorrow. “O my once much honoured Cromwell,” wrote Wildman, “can that breast of yours—the quondam palace of freedom—harbour such a monster of wickedness as this regal principle?” While Wildman hoped “to waken Cromwell’s conscience from the dead,” Lilburn, confessing that his good thoughts of Cromwell were not yet wholly gone, threatened to pull him down from his fancied greatness before he was three months older.

These attacks shook the confidence of the soldiers in their chiefs, and fanned the sparks of discontent into a flame. The Agitators, once ardent for an agreement with the King, began to demand the immediate rupture of the negotiations with him. Let the army, said they, take the settlement of the nation into its own hands, since neither their generals nor the Parliament could accomplish it. In October, five regiments of horse cashiered their old representatives as too moderate, elected fresh Agents, and laid their demands before Fairfax.

The existing Parliament was to be dissolved within a year, and in future there were to be biennial parliaments, equal constituencies, and manhood suffrage. Nothing was said of King or House of Lords, but the abolition of both was tacitly assumed. A declaration accompanied this draught constitution, by which freedom of conscience, freedom from impressment, and equality before the law were asserted to be the native rights of every Englishman—rights which no Parliament or Government had power to diminish or to take away. The officers had proposed a more limited monarchy—an adaptation of the old constitution to the new conditions which the Civil War had created. What the soldiers demanded was a democratic republic, based on a written constitution drawn up in accordance with abstract principles new to English politics.

The soldiers asked that their scheme, which they termed “The Agreement of the People,” should be at once submitted to the nation for its acceptance. Parliament was to be set aside by a direct appeal to the people as the only lawful source of all political authority. Against this, Cromwell and Ireton protested. The army, they said, had entered into certain engagements in its recent declarations to the nation, and the pledges made in them must be observed. Both declared that unless these public promises were kept they would lay down their commissions, and act no longer with the army. Equally strong were their objections to some of the principles which the “Agreement” contained, and the method in which it was proposed to impose it upon the nation. “This paper,” said Cromwell, “doth contain in it very great alterations of the government of the kingdom—alterations of that government it hath been under ever since it was a nation. What the consequences of such an alteration as this would be, even if there were nothing else to be considered, wise and godly men ought to consider.” The proposed constitution contained much that was specious and plausible, but also much that was very debatable. And while they were debating it, other schemes equally plausible might be put forward by other parties.

“And not only another and another, but many of this kind. And if so, what do you think the consequences of that would be? Would it not be confusion? Would it not be utter confusion? Would it not make England like Switzerland, one canton of the Swiss against another, and one county against another? And what would that produce but an absolute desolation to the nation? I ask you,” he concluded, “whether it be not fit for every honest man seriously to lay that upon his heart?”

Moreover, not only the consequences but the ways and means of accomplishing a thing ought to be considered. Granted that this was the best possible constitution for the people of England, still the difficulty of its attainment was a very real objection.