Oliver Cromwell and the Rule of the Puritans in England

by C. H. Firth

The army of the Commonwealth, if small for the tasks before it, was amply sufficient to suppress rebellion or prevent invasion. The twenty-one thousand men of the “New Model” had swollen to a host of double that size. The standing army, in 1649, amounted to forty-four thousand men, of whom twelve thousand were destined for the reconquest of Ireland. In character and composition it differed little from the “New Model.” The uniform had become universal, and henceforth redcoat and soldier were synonymous. As the pay of the troops was high, and discharged with comparative regularity, it was no longer necessary to raise recruits by pressing. For the officers the army had become a career, and few retired, unless disabled or cashiered. Officers of all grades were inspired by a certain corporate feeling, and accustomed to act together in politics. But between officers and privates a serious divergence of opinion was beginning to reveal itself. The agitation of the Levellers had found a ready response in the lower ranks of the army. Many of the soldiers demanded, like Lilburn, the immediate realisation of the democratic Republic. Others wanted the re-establishment of the Council of Agitators and the abolition of martial law. As in 1647, reluctance to serve in Ireland and the question of arrears of pay swelled the discontent.

Lilburn seized the opportunity to attack the council of officers, and Cromwell as its guiding spirit. He and his disciples denounced the Lieutenant-General as a tyrant, an apostate, and a hypocrite. “You shall scarce speak to Cromwell about anything,” says one of their pamphlets, “but he will lay his hand on his breast, elevate his eyes, and call God to record. He will weep, howl, and repent, even while he doth smite you under the fifth rib.”

Personal abuse had no effect on Cromwell, but he felt the danger with which this agitation threatened the Republic. Tenaciously attached to the existing social order, he regarded the teaching of the Levellers as calculated to overthrow authority and destroy property. In one of his later speeches he sums up his views on the levelling movement. The distinction between class and class was the corner-stone of society. “A nobleman, a gentleman, a yeoman, that is a good interest of the land and a great one.” But the “levelling principle” tended to reduce all the orders and ranks of men to an equality. Consciously or unconsciously it aimed at that, “for what was the purport of it but to make the tenant as liberal a fortune as the landlord?” The preaching of such a doctrine was a danger to the State “because it was a pleasing voice to all poor men, and truly not unwelcome to all bad men.”

When it came to propagating levelling views in the army, and inciting soldiers to disobey their officers, Cromwell’s way with the ringleaders was short and sharp. In March, 1649, Lilburn and three other incendiaries were brought before the Council of State.

“I tell you,” said Cromwell, thumping the council table, “you have no other way to deal with these men but to break them, or they will break you; yea, and bring all the guilt of the blood and treasure shed and spent in this kingdom upon your heads, and frustrate and make void all that work that, with so many years’ industry, toil, and pains you have done; and therefore I tell you again, you are necessitated to break them.”

Lilburn and his friends went to the Tower, but the effervescence amongst the soldiers still continued. At Salisbury, in May, 1649, three of the regiments selected to go to Ireland broke into open mutiny, and declined to march till the liberties of England were secured. Their watchword was “England’s freedom, soldiers’ rights,” and they expected other regiments to join them. But Cromwell and Fairfax left them no time to gather strength. Hurrying from London to Oxfordshire by forced marches, the two generals fell on the mutineers at Burford, took four hundred prisoners, and scattered the rest. Little blood was shed. Three non-commissioned officers were shot; the rest of the mutineers were told that they deserved to be decimated; nevertheless, they were re-embodied in the ranks, and shipped off to Ireland.

Cromwell did not limit himself to the soldier’s task of striking down the enemies of the cause; he laboured with equal zeal to conciliate doubtful supporters and regain lost friends. Many Independents were willing to accept the Republic, now it was established, if they could do so without approving the method by which it had been brought into being. Cromwell was probably the author of the compromise by which these men were induced to take their seats in the Council of State side by side with the authors of the late revolution. Equally conciliatory was his attitude on the question of the House of Lords. To fanatical republicans like Ludlow, it was a proof of his want of principle that he objected to the abolition of that institution, and wished to retain it as a purely consultative body. In reality, his natural conservatism disinclined him to make more constitutional changes than necessity required, and he sought to keep the support of those few peers who had hitherto stood by the cause. In April, 1649, Cromwell even made overtures to the Presbyterians. He offered, as he had offered in 1647, to consent to the establishment of the Presbyterian system, if there were toleration for men of other creeds who “walked peaceably.” He was willing to consent to the readmission of the members excluded by Pride’s Purge, if they would promise fidelity to the Republic. But the Presbyterians refused his offers.

Of these attempted compromises there is little trace in history, but Cromwell’s letters show his efforts to convert individuals. Robert Hammond and Lord Wharton had once been his comrades in the struggle, but now, as Cromwell put it, they had reasoned themselves out of the Lord’s service. To win them back, it was to faith rather than to reason that he appealed, for that was the way he had quieted his own scruples.

“It were a vain thing,” he told Wharton, “to dispute over your doubts, or undertake to answer your objections. I have heard them all, and I have rest from the trouble of them, and of what has risen in my own heart, for which I desire to be humbly thankful. I do not condemn your reasonings. I doubt them.”

Pride’s Purge and the King’s execution stuck in Wharton’s throat. He condemned the illegality by which the Republic had been established and the character of some of the men concerned.