Oliver Cromwell and the Rule of the Puritans in England

by C. H. Firth

The real cause of the King’s flight was his intrigue with the Scottish Commissioners. In October, they had promised him Scotland’s assistance in recovering his throne, if he would make satisfactory concessions about religion. But the one thing essential to the completion of the bargain was that Charles should escape from the hands of the army, and be able to treat freely. The plan for the King’s flight was arranged early in November. The Scots urged him to take refuge at Berwick; he thought of Jersey, but preferred to remain in England; finally he determined on the Isle of Wight, at the suggestion of one of his attendants who believed Hammond to be a Royalist at heart. Safe in the Isle of Wight, Charles thought he could negotiate with Parliament, Scots, and officers, and accept the terms offered by the highest bidder. If negotiation failed, escape to France would not be difficult.

For six months Charles had succeeded in playing off Parliament against Army, and Army against Parliament. But the result had been to make him thoroughly distrusted by both, and his flight from Hampton Court united them against him. The King had hoped much from the divisions of the army, but simultaneously with his arrival at Carisbrooke Cromwell and Fairfax reduced their troops to obedience again. On November 8th, Cromwell carried a vote for the temporary suspension of the sittings of the Council, and sent Agitators and officers back to their regiments. A week later Fairfax held a general review of the army, dividing it into three brigades, which met at three different places. At each review he solemnly engaged himself to the soldiers to stand by them in securing the redress of their military grievances and the reform of Parliament, exacting from them in return a signed pledge to obey the orders of the General and council of war. At the first rendezvous, which took place near Ware on November 15th, there was some opposition. The Levellers tried to convert it into a general demonstration in favour of the “Agreement of the People.” Two regiments came there unsummoned, wearing the “Agreement of the People” in their hats, with the motto, “England’s Freedom, Soldiers’ Rights.” They had driven away their own officers, called on other regiments to do the like, and planned the seizure of Cromwell as a traitor to the cause of the people. But when he rode up to the mutineers none dared to lay hands on him. “Lieutenant-General Cromwell’s carriage, with his naked waved sword, daunted the soldiers with the paper in their hats, and made them pluck it out and be subjected to command.” One soldier was tried, and shot on the field; others, including several officers, were reserved for the judgment of a future court-martial. On November 19th, Cromwell was able to report to Parliament that the army was very quiet and obedient, and received the thanks of the Commons for his services.

Meanwhile the King sent a message to Parliament from the Isle of Wight, offering various concessions and asking to be admitted to a personal treaty at London. He applied also to the army leaders, urging them to support his request, to which they coldly replied that they were the Parliament’s army, and must refer those matters to it. Parliament, equally distrustful of Charles, answered his overtures by drawing up an ultimatum, consisting of four bills, to which his assent was required before any treaty should begin. Their chief demand was the direct control of the militia for the next twenty years, and a share in its control when that period ended. Other constitutional questions might be left to discussion, but they must make sure that the King could never use force to impose his will upon the nation. Driven to extremity by this demand, Charles turned once more to the Scottish Commissioners, who had now arrived at Carisbrooke. He found them ready enough to sacrifice the liberties of Englishmen, and they promised him restoration to all the rights of his crown in return for the three years’ establishment of Presbyterianism in England, the rigid suppression of Independents and other heretics, and certain privileges for Scotland and the Scottish nobility. If Parliament refused to disband its forces and to treat with the King in London, an army was to cross the border and replace Charles on his throne (December 27, 1647). “The Engagement,” as this treaty was termed, was wrapped in lead and buried in the castle garden till it could be safely smuggled out of the island. The next day the King definitely rejected the ultimatum of the English Parliament, and prepared to effect his escape to the continent.

It was too late. As soon as the King’s answer was delivered, his guards were doubled and he was made a close prisoner. The two Houses were well aware that his refusal of their terms was due to some agreement with the Scots, although they were ignorant of its precise nature.

“The House of Commons,” wrote Cromwell to Hammond, “is very sensible of the King’s dealings and of our brethren’s in this late transaction. You should do well, if you have anything that may discover juggling, to search it out, and let us know it. It may be of admirable use at this time, because we shall I hope go upon business in relation to them tending to prevent danger.”

On January 3, 1648, the House of Commons voted that they would make no further addresses to the King, and receive no more messages from him. Cromwell and Ireton, who had opposed the resolution to that effect which Marten had brought forward in the previous September, now spoke earnestly in its favour. “It was now expected,” said Cromwell, “that the Parliament should govern and defend the kingdom by their own power, and not teach the people any longer to expect safety and government from an obstinate man whose heart God had hardened.” In such a policy, he added, the army would stand by the Parliament against all opposition: but if the Parliament neglected to provide for its own safety and that of the nation, the army would be forced to seek its own preservation by other means.

Events had thus driven Cromwell to be the foremost advocate of that policy of completely setting aside the King which he had long so stubbornly opposed. Yet, though convinced that the King could not be trusted, he was not prepared to abandon monarchy. At a conference on the settlement of the government which took place early in 1648, the “Commonwealth’s-men,” as the republicans were termed, pressed for the immediate establishment of a free commonwealth and the trial of the King. Ludlow noted with great dissatisfaction that Cromwell and his friends “kept themselves in the clouds, and would not declare their judgments either for a monarchical, aristocratic, or democratic government; maintaining that any of them might be good in themselves, or for us, according as Providence should direct us.” When he pressed Cromwell privately for the grounds of his objection to a republic, Cromwell replied that he was convinced of the desirableness of what was proposed, but not of the feasibility of it. There is evidence that during the spring of 1648 the Independent leaders discussed a scheme for deposing Charles I., and placing the Prince of Wales or the Duke of York upon the throne. But the unwillingness of the Prince and the escape of the Duke to France frustrated this plan.

While seeking to find some compromise which would prevent a new war, Cromwell endeavoured to unite all sections of the parliamentary party to meet it, if it came. The reunion of the army had already been effected. It was completed in a series of council meetings held at London during December, 1647, in which the officers under arrest for insubordination were pardoned, and a personal reconciliation took place between Cromwell and Rainsborough. In February and March, 1648, Cromwell made conciliatory overtures to the Presbyterians of the City, but as nothing short of the restoration of the King to his authority would content them, the negotiations failed. As little could Cromwell succeed in overcoming the distrust and hostility which the advanced party amongst the Independents now felt towards him. On January 19, 1648, John Lilburn, at the bar of the House of Lords, publicly accused him of high treason. Nor was it only his dealings with the King that made him the object of suspicion. During the last year his political attitude had continually altered. In April, he had urged the army to disband peaceably; in June, he had headed its revolt; in November, he had forced it into obedience to the Parliament again. And besides his apparent inconsistency, he was notoriously indifferent to principles which Levellers and Commonwealth’s-men held all-important. To them a republic meant freedom and a monarchy bondage. For him the choice between the two was a question of expediency, and dependent upon circumstances. In open council he had declared that he “was not wedded or glued to forms of government,” and in private he was said to have avowed that it was lawful to pass through all forms of government to accomplish his ends. It was not surprising, therefore, that men to whom his opportunism was unintelligible thought self-interest or ambition the natural explanation of his conduct, and that charges of hypocrisy and apostacy were freely made against him.

Through this cloud of detraction Cromwell pursued his way unmoved. Sometimes he answered his accusers with blunt defiance. “If any man say that we seek ourselves in doing this, much good may it do him with his thoughts. It shall not put me out of my way.” At other times he referred to these slanders with a patient confidence that justice would be done to him in the end. “Though it may be,” he wrote in September, 1647, “for the present a cloud may lie over our actions to those not acquainted with the grounds of them; yet we doubt not but God will clear our integrity from any other ends we aim at but His glory and the public good.” Neither loss of popularity, misrepresentations, nor undeserved mistrust could diminish Cromwell’s zeal for the cause. “I find this only good,” he wrote on his recovery from a dangerous illness in the spring of 1648: “to love the Lord and His poor despised people, to do for them, and to be ready to suffer with them, and he that is found worthy of this hath obtained great favour from the Lord.”

Not Cromwell’s utterances only but his acts testify to the integrity of his motives. In March, 1648, Parliament settled an estate upon him as a reward for his services, to which he responded by offering to contribute a thousand a year, out of the seventeen hundred it brought in, to be employed in the recovery of Ireland. And so little did he dream of ever becoming himself the ruler of England, that at the very moment when fortune had opened the widest field to ambition, he began negotiations for the marriage of his eldest son to the daughter of a private gentleman of no great influence or position.