CHAPTER XV
THE END OF THE LONG PARLIAMENT
1651–1653
When the Parliament received the news of Worcester, they voted Cromwell four thousand pounds a year, gave him Hampton Court for a residence, and sent a deputation to present their thanks. On September 12th, he made a triumphal entry into London. Hugh Peters, the army chaplain, professed to perceive a secret exultation in his bearing, and whispered to a friend that Cromwell would yet make himself king. But Whitelocke recorded that “he carried himself with great affability, and in his discourses about Worcester would seldom mention anything of himself, but mentioned others only, and gave, as was due, the glory of the action to God.” From his despatch, it was evident that Cromwell regarded the “crowning mercy” of Worcester not only as the consummation of the work of war, but as a call to take in hand and accomplish the tasks of peace. It should provoke the Parliament, he told the Speaker,
“to do the will of Him who has done His will for it and for the nation—whose good pleasure it is to establish the nation and the change of government, by making the people so willing to the defence thereof, and so signally blessing the endeavours of your servants in this late great work.”
For in spite of its victories the government of the Commonwealth was essentially a provisional government, and acquiesced in, rather than accepted by, the nation. Even its adherents felt that something more permanent and more constitutional must be established in its place, now that the Civil War was over. In a conference between officers and members of Parliament, which Cromwell brought about soon after his return to London, this feeling plainly appeared. The lawyers were all for some monarchical form of government. Some suggested that the late King’s third son, the Duke of Gloucester, now twelve years old, should be made king. The soldiers would not hear of anything that smacked of monarchy. “Why,” asked Desborough, “may not this as well as other nations be governed in the way of a republic?” Cromwell said little, and seemed more anxious to learn what others thought, than to express his own views. He agreed with the lawyers that “a settlement of somewhat with monarchical power in it” would be most effectual. He knew that a strong executive power was needed either for the tasks of peace or war, but doubted whether a return to the Stuart line was possible. He agreed with the soldiers that a new Parliament was an immediate necessity, but, as in 1649, he held that it would be more honourable and more expedient to induce the Long Parliament to dissolve itself. Publicly and privately he used all his influence to persuade the House to do so. “I pressed the Parliament,” he says, “as a member to period themselves, once and again and again, and ten, nay, twenty times over.” But, in spite of “a long speech made by his Excellency,” it was only by two votes that the House resolved to fix a date for its dissolution, and then the date named was three years distant (November 3, 1654). Cromwell was obliged to resign himself to the delay, and do what he could for the settlement of the nation through the instrumentality of the existing Parliament. The task which was now before him was more difficult than fighting the Irish or the Scots; more was expected of him, and his power was less.
“Great things,” said a letter to Cromwell, “God has done by you in war, and good things men expect from you in peace: to break in pieces the oppressor, to ease the oppressed of their burdens, to release the prisoners out of bonds, and to relieve poor families with bread.”
For some months after Worcester, petitions were often addressed directly to the General and the Army instead of to the Parliament. But all power was in the hands of the Parliament, and as dangers grew more remote, this body grew less amenable to the influence of the man who had saved it. Of the sixty or seventy members who habitually took part in its proceedings, the ablest were also members of the Council of State, absorbed in the daily business of administration, and with little energy left for the consideration of far-reaching legislative plans. Of the rest, many were engrossed by local affairs, others occupied with their farms and their merchandise, many building up fortunes by speculating in confiscated lands. Some few were notoriously corrupt, but partisanship and favouritism were more general evils than corruption. Vane complained to Cromwell that some of his colleagues were so obstructive, that “without continual contestation they will not suffer to be done things that are so plain that they ought to do themselves.” “How hard and difficult a matter it was,” said Cromwell himself, “to get anything carried without making parties, without practices indeed unworthy of a Parliament.”
Yet difficult though it was, Cromwell and the officers succeeded in inspiring the Parliament with some portion of their own energy. Politically, the most pressing measure was the grant of an amnesty to the conquered Royalists. So long as they were liable to punishment and confiscation for acts done during the last ten years, the wounds of the Civil War could never be healed. In February, 1652, Cromwell at last persuaded Parliament to pass an act of pardon for all treasons committed before the battle of Worcester, but it was unhappily clogged with exceptions and restrictions which robbed it of much of its efficacy. More than once during the divisions on the bill, Cromwell was teller against these restrictions, and bigoted republicans afterwards thought he did so from sinister motives. He contrived that delinquents should escape due punishment, wrote Ludlow, “that so he might fortify himself by the addition of new friends for the carrying on his designs.” To Cromwell it seemed an act of political expediency. It was necessary, he held, to be just to Royalists as well as Puritans, to unbelievers as well as believers; perhaps even more necessary.
“The right spirit,” he added, “was such a spirit as Moses had and Paul had—which was not a spirit for believers only, but for the whole people.”
Next in importance to a general amnesty came the Reform of the Law—a phrase which, in the minds of those who used it, meant not simply legal changes, but social reforms in general. There was much need of both. The Civil War had ruined its thousands; society was disorganised by its consequences: the relations of landlord and tenant, of debtor and creditor, were complicated by unforeseen calamities; the prisons of London were crammed with poor debtors, and the country swarmed with beggars. For the lawyers it was the best possible of worlds, and they were never more prosperous or more unpopular.