Oliver Cromwell and the Rule of the Puritans in England

by C. H. Firth

Meanwhile a dangerous excitement was spreading in the army. From an agreement between the Presbyterians and the Royalists, an Independent army had much to fear. The first result of the treaty would be a general disbanding. To be dismissed with a few shillings in his pocket, but without security for his arrears, or indemnity for his acts during the war, was the most a soldier could expect. If any sectary who had fought for the Parliament hoped that it would give him freedom to worship as his conscience dictated, the act against heresy and blasphemy, passed in May, 1648, had shown the futility of his hopes. Whether Episcopacy or Presbyterianism gained the upper hand, toleration would be at an end as soon as he laid down his arms. Add to this, that the soldiers were firmly convinced that the proposed treaty afforded no security for the political liberties of the nation. Once restored to his authority, Charles would, either by force or by intrigue, shake off the restrictions the treaty imposed, and rear again that fabric of absolutism, which it had cost six years’ fighting to overthrow. The renewal of the war had heightened their distrust of Charles, and embittered their hostility to him. The responsibility for the first Civil War had been laid upon the King’s evil counsellors; the responsibility for the second was laid upon the King himself. It was at his instigation, said the officers, that conquered enemies had taken up arms again, old comrades apostatised from their principles, and a foreign army invaded England. In a great prayer-meeting held at Windsor before they separated for the campaign, they pledged themselves to bring this responsibility home to the King. “We came,” wrote one of them, “to a very clear resolution, that it was our duty, if ever the Lord brought us back again in peace, to call Charles Stuart, that man of blood, to an account for the blood he had shed, and mischief he had done to the utmost, against the Lord’s cause and people in these poor nations.” They were equally determined to punish the King’s instruments. At the close of the first war, the army had shown itself more merciful than the Parliament, but the second war made it fierce, implacable, and resolute to exact blood for blood. Fairfax’s execution of Lucas and Lisle, two royalist leaders taken at Colchester, “in part of avenge for the innocent blood they have caused to be spilt,” was a sign of this change of temper.

Cromwell shared this vindictive feeling towards the authors of the second war. When he took Pembroke, he excepted certain persons from the terms of the capitulation and reserved them for future punishment.

“The persons excepted,” he wrote to Parliament, “are such as have formerly served you in a very good cause; but being now apostatised, I did rather make election of them than of those who had always been for the King; judging their iniquity double, because they have sinned against so much light, and against so many evidences of Divine Providence going along with and prospering a just cause, in the management of which they themselves had a share.”

He was equally exasperated against those who had promoted the Scottish invasion.

“This,” he said, “is a more prodigious treason than any that hath been perfected before; because the former quarrel was that Englishmen might rule over one another, this to vassalise us to a foreign nation. And their fault that appeared in this summer’s business is certainly double to theirs who were in the first, because it is the repetition of the same offence against all the witnesses that God hath borne.”

The moral he drew from his victory at Preston was that Parliament should use it to protect peaceable Christians of all opinions, and punish disturbers of the peace of every rank.

“Take courage,” he told them, “to do the work of the Lord in fulfilling the end of your magistracy, in seeking the peace and welfare of this land—that all that will live peaceably may have countenance from you, and they that are incapable, and will not leave troubling the land, may speedily be destroyed out of the land. If you take courage in this God will bless you, and good men will stand by you, and God will have glory, and the land will have happiness by you in despite of all your enemies.”

When Cromwell returned from Scotland, he found the Parliament preparing to replace the King on his throne, and to content itself with banishing some dozen of the royalist leaders. Regiment after regiment of Fairfax’s army was presenting its general with petitions against the treaty and demands for the punishment of the authors of the war. Cromwell’s troops imitated their example, and in forwarding their petitions to Fairfax, their leader expressed his complete agreement with his soldiers.

“I find,” he wrote, “a very great sense in the officers ... for the sufferings and ruin of this poor kingdom, and in them all a very great zeal to have impartial justice done upon all offenders; and I do in all from my heart concur with them, and I verily think they are things which God puts into our hearts.”

On November 20, 1648, the army in the south sent Parliament a “Remonstrance,” demanding the rupture of the negotiations, and the punishment of the King as “the grand author of all our troubles.” Cromwell approved of this declaration, and told Fairfax he saw “nothing in it but what is honest, and becoming honest men to say and offer.” It would have been better, he thought, to wait till the treaty was concluded, before making their protest, but now that it had been made he was prepared to support it. The Newport treaty seemed to him to be a complete surrender to Charles. “They would have put into his hands,” he said later, “all that we had engaged for, and all our security would have been a little bit of paper.” No one knew better than Cromwell that a mere protest would not stop the Parliament, and he was ready to use force if necessary. The arguments by which he justified its employment are fully stated in his letter to his friend, Robert Hammond, whose scruples he sought to overcome.