Oliver Cromwell and the Rule of the Puritans in England

by C. H. Firth

Parliament answered by confirming the ordinances against duelling, swearing, and cock-fighting, and passing similar acts of its own. One was directed against the vagrants and “idle, dissolute” persons who abounded in all parts of the country. Amongst them, “the bigots of that iron time” included fiddlers and minstrels taken “playing or making music” in taverns, who were declared punishable as “rogues and vagabonds.” A second act was aimed at the professional gamesters about London, who made it their trade “to cheat and debauch the young gentry.” A third act enforced the Puritan Sabbath in all its severity. On that day, no shops might be opened and no manufactures carried on. No travelling was to be allowed, except in cases of necessity attested by a certificate from a justice, and persons “vainly and profanely walking on the day aforesaid” were to be punished. Sunday closing was the rule for all inns and alehouses, though the dressing or sale of victuals in a moderate way, “for the use of such as cannot otherwise be provided for,” was permitted.

Much of this drastic legislation was ineffective. In some cases it went far beyond the feeling of the times. Juries steadily refused to convict persons charged with adultery under the act of 1650, and it is doubtful whether the capital penalty was ever actually inflicted. In many places, the local authorities were indifferent or timid. “We may have good laws,” said the Protector, “against the common country disorders that are everywhere, yet who is to execute them?” Hardly the country justices. “A justice of the peace shall by most be wondered at as an owl, if he go but one step out of the ordinary course of his fellow justices in the reformation of these things.” Hence the value in Cromwell’s eyes of the Major-Generals established throughout England in the autumn of 1655. They were not simply military officers charged to keep an eye on the political enemies of the government, but police magistrates required to repress crime and immorality in their respective districts. Pride put a stop to bear-baiting in London by killing the bears, and to cock-fighting by wringing the necks of the cocks. Whalley boasted, after he had been a few months in office, that there were no vagrants left in Nottinghamshire, and in every county his colleagues suppressed unnecessary alehouses by the score. Nor was it only humble offenders who were struck at: neither the rich nor the noble escaped the impartial severity of these military reformers. “Let them be who they may that are debauched,” said Cromwell, “it is for the glory of God that nothing of outward consideration should save them from a just punishment and reformation.” He claimed that the establishment of the Major-Generals had been “more effectual towards the discountenancing of vice and the settling of religion than anything done these fifty years.” Their rule ended in the spring of 1657, and Cromwell feared that the work of reformation would come to a stop. But the experiment had infused new vigour into the local administration, which lasted as long as the Protectorate endured.

In spite of these restrictive laws, it must not be imagined that there was any general suppression of public amusements or sports. “Lawful and laudable recreations” even Puritans encouraged. In 1647, when the Long Parliament prohibited the observation of Christmas and of saints’ days in general, it passed an act giving servants, apprentices, and scholars a whole holiday once a month, for “recreation and relaxation from their constant and ordinary labours.” The Protector himself hunted, hawked, and played bowls, just as if he had been a Royalist country-gentleman. He told Parliament that he suppressed race-meetings not because they were unlawful, but because they were temporarily inexpedient. With all his zeal for Sunday closing, the suppression of unnecessary alehouses, and the punishment of drunkenness, it never occurred to him to stop the sale of drink altogether. He drank wine and small beer himself, and quoted as illogical and absurd “the man who would keep all wine out of the country lest men should be drunk.” The idea was contrary to his conception of civil freedom. “It will be found,” he said, “an unjust and unwise jealousy to deprive a man of his natural liberty upon a supposition he may abuse it. When he doth abuse it, judge.”

In the moral crusade he had undertaken, the Protector relied not so much on restrictive legislation as on the influence of education and religion. It was to their defective education that he attributed much of the misconduct of the “profane nobility and gentry of this nation.” “We send our children to France,” he said, “before they know God or good manners, and they return with all the licentiousness of that nation. Neither care taken to educate them before they go, or to keep them in good order when they come home.” As a party, the Puritans showed a great zeal for education, and the pamphlet literature of the time is full of schemes for its reformation or extension. In these discussions, the modern conception of the duty of the State with regard to education gradually took shape. While the plan of education which Milton published in 1644 was intended only for “a select body of our noble and gentle youth,” in 1660, he advocated the foundation of schools in all parts of the nation, in order to spread knowledge, civility, and culture to “all extreme parts which now lie numb and neglected.” In his Oceana, Harrington asserted that the formation of future citizens by means of a system of free schools was one of the chief duties of a republic.

As usually happens, practical men lagged behind the theorists, but during the Commonwealth a portion of the revenue of confiscated Church lands was systematically devoted to the maintenance of schools and schoolmasters. The Protector pursued the same policy, and publicly declared when appropriating a grant for educational purposes in Scotland, that it was “a duty not only to have the Gospel set up, but schools for children erected and maintenance provided therefor.” His government undertook the task of ejecting incapable schoolmasters and of licensing persons fit to teach. It made the proper administration of educational endowments in general a part of its business, and one of Cromwell’s earliest ordinances appointed fresh commissioners for the visitation of the universities, and established a permanent board of visitors for the great public schools. Personally, he was far more interested in the reorganisation of the universities than in primary or secondary education. He vigorously defended them against the attacks of the zealots of the Little Parliament who threatened their disendowment or abolition. In 1651, he had been elected Chancellor of Oxford, and held that office till July, 1657, when he was succeeded by his son Richard, signalizing his connection with the university by the foundation of a new readership in Divinity, and the presentation of some Greek manuscripts to the Bodleian. He appointed John Owen his Vice-Chancellor, under whose efficient rule Oxford prospered greatly. Even Clarendon is forced to admit that in spite of visitations and purgings the university “yielded a harvest of extraordinary good and sound knowledge in all parts of learning.”

The Protector also endeavoured to found a new university in the north of England. There was a widespread feeling that the two existing universities were not enough for the country. In 1641, petitions were presented praying for the foundation of a university at York or Manchester, and later it was proposed to establish one in London. In 1651, Cromwell strongly recommended the endowment of a school or college for all the sciences and literature, out of the property of the Dean and Chapter of Durham. The scheme, he wrote, was “a matter of great concernment and importance, as that which by the blessing of God may conduce to the promoting of learning and piety in these poor, rude, ignorant parts,” and bring forth in time “such happy and glorious fruits as are scarce thought of or foreseen.” But Parliament did nothing, and it was reserved for Oliver himself to found a college at Durham in 1657, which throve greatly until the Restoration put an end to its existence.

The Protector encouraged learned men and men of letters. With his relative, the poet Waller, he was on terms of considerable intimacy; he allowed Hobbes and Cowley, both Royalists, to return from exile, and he released Cleveland when he was arrested by one of the Major-Generals, although Cleveland’s fame rested mainly on satires against the Puritans. Milton and Marvell were in Cromwell’s service as Latin secretaries, and he also employed Marvell as tutor to one of his wards. Brian Walton was assisted in the printing of his Polyglot Bible, and Archbishop Ussher was honoured by a public funeral.

But both learning and education were, in Cromwell’s eyes, inseparably connected with religion. When he accepted the Chancellorship he congratulated Oxford on the learning and piety “so marvellously springing up there,” adding a hope that it might be “useful to that great and glorious kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Thinking that the chief function of the universities was to provide ministers for the Church, he held piety more important than learning. “I believe,” he told his Parliament, five years later, “that God hath for the ministry a very great seed in the youth of the universities, who, instead of studying books, study their own heart.” Cromwell’s desire to develop higher education, and his defence of the universities against their assailants, were the natural consequences of his resolve to maintain a national Church against those who wished to sever the connection between Church and State. On this question, the army, as a whole, supported Cromwell. In the “Agreement of the People,” presented to Parliament in 1649, the army had demanded that “the Christian religion be held forth and recommended as the public profession of this nation,” and it included “the instructing of the people thereunto, so it be not compulsive,” and “the maintaining able teachers for that end,” amongst the legitimate functions of the government. These principles had been embodied in the “Instrument of Government,” and the duty of devising means to carry them out fell to the Protector.

The first question to be decided was the question of the maintenance of the clergy. The Little Parliament had proposed to abolish tithes altogether, and in the “Instrument of Government” the substitution of some other provision was suggested. As no satisfactory scheme for the commutation of tithes could be devised, Cromwell felt bound to preserve them. “For my part,” said he, “I should think I were very treacherous if I took away tithes till I see the legislative power settle maintenance to ministers another way.” To abolish tithes before that was done, would be “to cut the throats of the ministers.” Under the Protectorate, as under the rule of the Long Parliament, it was the permanent policy of the government to increase the income of the parochial clergy. The endowments of poor livings were systematically augmented out of the fund supplied by episcopal lands and the fines imposed on royalist delinquents.

The basis of the Protector’s plan for the reorganisation of the Church was the scheme which John Owen had presented to the Long Parliament in 1652. On March 20, 1654, Cromwell issued an ordinance “for the approbation of public preachers,” which appointed thirty-eight commissioners, lay and clerical, to sit permanently in London and examine into the qualifications of all candidates for livings. Their business was to certify that they found the candidate “to be a person for the grace of God in him, his holy and unblamable conversation, as also for his knowledge and utterance, able and fit to preach the Gospel,” and without obtaining this certificate no one was in future to be admitted to a benefice. The commissioners were not empowered to impose any doctrinal tests, and it was expressly declared that approbation by them “is not intended nor shall be construed to be any solemn or sacred setting apart of any person to any particular office in the ministry.” All that the “Triers” undertook to do was to see that none but fit and proper persons should receive “the public stipend and maintenance” guaranteed by the State.