Oliver Cromwell and the Rule of the Puritans in England

by C. H. Firth

Whitelocke relates an interview between himself and Cromwell, in which the latter dwelt on the pride, ambition, and self-seeking of the members of Parliament, their engrossing all places of honour and profit for themselves and their friends, their delays, their factions, their injustice and partiality, and their design to perpetuate themselves in power. It was necessary, continued Cromwell, that there should be some other authority strong enough to restrain and curb the exorbitances of a body which claimed supreme power and was so unfit to rule. Whitelocke hoped that the Parliament would mend its ways, and thought it would be hard to create such an authority. “What if a man should take upon him to be king?” asked Cromwell. All Whitelocke could answer was, that if Cromwell were to take upon himself that title the remedy would be worse than the disease, and that his best plan was to make terms with Charles II.

These conferences came to nothing, and in January, 1653, the impatience of the army grew uncontrollable. The officers held regular meetings at St. James’s, sent a circular letter to the armies in Ireland and Scotland, appealed to their fellow soldiers to stand by them, and drew up threatening addresses to Parliament. Most of the council of officers would be content with nothing less than an immediate dissolution, and were ready to effect it by force. Cromwell opposed any resort to violence, and succeeded, though with difficulty, in holding them back. To a friend, he complained that he was pushed on by two parties to do an act, “the consideration of the issue whereof made his hair to stand on end.” Major-General Lambert headed one party, eager to be revenged on the House for depriving him of the Lord Deputyship of Ireland. The other was headed by Major-General Harrison, an honest man, “aiming at good things,” but too impatient to obtain them “to wait the Lord’s leisure.”

Meanwhile Parliament, thoroughly alarmed by the rising agitation, took up once more the “Bill for a New Representative,” and began to press it forward in earnest. They determined what the constituencies should be, and fixed the qualification for the franchise. By the middle of April, the bill was nearly through committee, and required nothing but a third reading to make it law. In the hands of the parliamentary leaders, however, it had become a scheme for perpetuating themselves in power. The bill was to be a bill for recruiting the numbers of the House, and the present members were to keep their seats without the necessity of re-election. They would be the sole judges of the validity of the votes given, and the eligibility of the persons chosen. Nor was it only at the next election that this system of recruiting was to be adopted; it was to be applied also to all future Parliaments.

To this ingenious scheme the officers of the army had many objections. One was, that the right of election was too loosely defined, and that its interpretation was entrusted to men in whom they had no confidence. They insisted on a political as well as a pecuniary qualification for the franchise, and complained that neutrals and men who had deserted the cause would be able to vote. To put power into the hands of such men, was to throw away the liberties of the nation.

Equally objectionable was the system of election proposed. It gave the people no real right of choice, but only a seeming right. Leicestershire might be tired of Haslerig, and Hull have lost confidence in Vane, yet both must continue to be represented by the men they had chosen in 1640. Lancashire would cease to be unrepresented, but the members it elected might be kept out by the veto of men who had practically elected themselves. Though the army was prepared to restrict the franchise and limit the choice of the electors, it was not prepared to acquiesce in so complete a mockery of representative government.

To Cromwell and the constitutional theorists amongst the officers, there was another insurmountable objection to the bill. What they disliked most in the rule of the Long Parliament was the union of legislative and executive power in the hands of a body possessing unlimited authority and always in session. They wanted short Parliaments, sitting for not more than six months in the year, and limited in their power as well as in their duration. What the bill offered instead of the perpetuation of the Long Parliament, was a succession of perpetual Parliaments, sitting all the year round, following each other without any interval, and exercising the same arbitrary power which the Long Parliament had exercised.

“We should have had fine work then,” said Cromwell.... “A Parliament of four hundred men, executing arbitrary government without intermission, except some change of a part of them; one Parliament stepping into the seat of another, just left warm for them; the same day that the one left, the other was to leap in.... I thought, and I think still, that this was a pitiful remedy.”

For these reasons, the officers resolved to prevent the passage of the bill at any cost. The whole future of the Cause seemed to depend on the issue.

“We came,” said Cromwell, “to this conclusion amongst ourselves: That if we had been fought out of our liberties and rights, necessity would have taught us patience, but to deliver them up would render us the basest persons in the world, and worthy to be accounted haters of God and His people.”

Cromwell became reluctantly convinced that if persuasion failed, it was his duty to use force.