Oliver Cromwell and the Rule of the Puritans in England

by C. H. Firth

On Monday, December 12th, the Moderates rose early and came to the House betimes. As soon as business began, Colonel Sydenham and other leaders of the party rose up and inveighed against the policy of their opponents. They charged them with seeking to destroy the army by not making sufficient and timely provision for its pay, with endeavouring to overthrow the Law, the Clergy, and the property of the subject. In conclusion they moved, “that the sitting of this Parliament any longer, as it is now constituted, will not be for the good of the Commonwealth, and that therefore it is requisite to deliver up to the Lord General Cromwell the powers which they had received from him.”

Everything went off with the precision of a field-day. The debate was very short. One party strove to spin it out till the House grew fuller and their reinforcements came up. The other had resolved to carry the enemy’s position by storm. It was no time to debate, said the Moderates, but to do something to prevent the calamities which threatened the State. Old Rouse, the Speaker, who was in the plot himself, ended the discussion by rising from the chair, and left the House without stopping to put the question or to hear the opponents of the motion. In vain they called to him to stop. Preceded by the mace, and accompanied by the clerk of the House, he marched off with fifty or sixty members to Whitehall. Arrived there, they proceeded to sign their names to a paper returning their powers to Cromwell, and became once more private persons. Eventually about eighty members signed this act of abdication.

About twenty-seven members had stayed behind in the House. They were too few to form a quorum, and could not act as a Parliament. While they were drawing up a protest against the late proceedings, two colonels entered and ordered them to come out. “We are here,” said one of the members, “by a call from the General, and will not come out by your desire unless you have a command from him.” The colonels had no order from Cromwell to produce, but they fetched in two files of musketeers, and the members took the hint.

Cromwell had taken no part in the plot for procuring the abdication of the Little Parliament. “I can say it,” he told the members of the next Parliament, “in the presence of divers persons here who know whether I lie, that I did not know one tittle of that resignation, till they all came and brought it, and delivered it into my hands.” As none of the said persons ever contradicted his statement, it may be accepted as true. It sufficed for him to remain passive, and power came back to his hands by a sort of natural necessity. Once more he was in possession of the dictatorship he had sought to lay down. “My power was again by this resignation as boundless and unlimited as before, all things being subject to arbitrariness, and myself a person having power over the three nations without bound or limit set; all government being dissolved, and all civil administration at an end.” For the second time Lambert and his allies urged Cromwell to accept the government under the constitution which they had drawn up. The difficulty of getting rid of the Little Parliament no longer stood in the way, and the title of King had been replaced by the title of Protector. They also pointed out to him that the acceptance of the Protectorship in no way increased his power. On the contrary, it put an end to his dictatorship, and reduced his power by imposing constitutional restrictions upon its exercise. It bound him to do nothing without the consent of either a Council or a Parliament. Another argument was still more effective. Once more they warned Cromwell, that, unless he would undertake the government, anarchy was inevitable, and made him responsible for the “blood and confusion” which would be the result. After three or four days’ discussion, Cromwell accepted the constitution, to which a general meeting of officers had in the interim given their approval and adhesion. He was solemnly installed as Protector on December 16, 1653, dressed not like a general in scarlet, but like a citizen in a plain black coat, to show all men that military rule was over, and civil government restored.

The new constitution, like the Agreement of the People in 1649, represented the political ideas of the officers of the army. But since 1649 the officers had lost confidence in the people, and they sought now to erect a government based on something firmer than the will of a fickle multitude. A written constitution was asserted to be a better foundation for a government than popular consent, for the express reason that the people would have no power to alter it. There had been enough of commotion, and confusion, and change. “It was high time that some power should pass a decree upon the wavering humours of the people, and say to this nation, as the Almighty Himself said once to the unruly sea: ‘Here shall be thy bounds; hitherto shalt thou come, and no farther.’” This was what Lambert and the officers assumed the right to say when they imposed the “Instrument of Government” upon England.

Throughout its provisions their distrust of the English people is evident. Little boroughs were abolished and constituencies made more equal, but the franchise instead of being extended was restricted. In boroughs, the franchise remained unaltered—that is, the right of election was generally in the hands of the corporation; in counties, the forty-shilling freeholders were abolished, and a new franchise was created, which gave the vote to all men possessing property worth two hundred pounds. Henceforth, therefore, Parliament would represent the opinions and interests of the middle classes.

Distrust of the electors was naturally accompanied by distrust of the representatives. For the future, the legislative and executive powers were to be kept permanently separate. The authority and the duration of Parliament were strictly limited. It was to meet once in three years, but to sit for five months only. It had power to legislate as it thought fit, but its laws must not contravene the provisions of the constitution. Its consent to levy money for extraordinary expenses was necessary, but a constant yearly revenue was to be raised to meet the ordinary charge of civil government, army, and navy, which Parliament had no right to diminish.

The Protector possessed the executive power, but his authority was limited also. Except when bills contained something contrary to the constitution, he had no right to veto them. In domestic administration and in foreign affairs, he could not act without the consent of the Council; in taxation and for the employment of the army, he needed the consent of Parliament or Council. The members of the new Council were, in Cromwell’s phrase, “the trustees of the Commonwealth in the intervals of Parliament,” and possessed far more power than the Council of State erected in 1649. The councillors, most of whom were appointed by the “Instrument” itself, held office for life, and in their hands lay the choice of the Protector’s successor.

The object of this complicated system of checks and balances was to prevent either Parliament or Protector from becoming absolute, and to render religious liberty unassailable. None knew better than the leaders of the army how slight a hold upon the nation the principle of toleration had obtained, or how little religious parties were willing to accept it. “This hath been one of the vanities of our contest,” said Cromwell. “Every sect saith, ‘Oh give me liberty,’ but give it him and to his power he will not yield it to anybody else.” For the ingenious political devices of the constitution the Protector cared very little, but the religious settlement was a settlement after his own heart. There was to be a national Church, maintained for the present by tithes, in the future, it was hoped, by some better way. Outside the Church, there was to be full liberty of worship for those who did not belong to it, “provided they did not abuse their liberty to the civil injury of others, or to the actual disturbance of the public peace.” But this liberty was not to extend to Popery or Prelacy, which were politically dangerous, or “to such as under the profession of Christ hold forth and practise licentiousness.”

This was the religious freedom which ever since 1647 the army had demanded, and had at last realised. Yet in spite of all the new constitution promised, there was little prospect that it would obtain the acceptance of the nation. England was the last country in which the attempt to transform a military dictatorship into a sort of constitutional government was likely to succeed.