Oliver Cromwell and the Rule of the Puritans in England

by C. H. Firth

Justice to crave, and succour at your court;

And then your highness, not for ours alone

But for the world’s protector shall be known.”

To such a land, with such a leader, asked Waller, what could be thought impossible? Ere long, however, the Protector discovered that even the best-laid schemes did not always prosper. The Panegyric was published at the end of May: in August news came to England of the disastrous defeat of the expedition sent to the West Indies at Hispaniola.[^[9]] The Protector fell ill, and everyone attributed his illness to vexation at the evil tidings. Contrary to his expectation also, Spain laid an embargo on English shipping, withdrew its ambassador, and declared war. The breach with Spain was accompanied by the completion of the long-delayed agreement with France, which was signed on the very day that the Spanish Ambassador left England (October 24, 1655). In substance, it was merely a commercial treaty, with a secret clause added for the expulsion of the leading Royalists from France, and the Protector contented himself with a private promise that the rights of the Huguenots should not be infringed. The conditions under which the agreement took place made a more intimate connection between the two powers inevitable. But for the present Cromwell was busily engaged in negotiations with Sweden, which he hoped to make the basis of a general league of Protestant states. In June, 1655, Charles Gustavus, the successor of Queen Christina, invaded Poland and sent an ambassador to England to ask for aid in men, ships, and money. Cromwell treated the King’s envoy with distinguished favour. “They dine, sup, hunt, and play bowls together,” and “never was ambassador, or indeed any man, so much caressed and regarded by Cromwell as this man is, nor did he ever seek the friendship of anyone so much as this King of Sweden.” From the first he declared his willingness to “enter into a more strict and close alliance” with Sweden both for the sake of the two nations, and for the sake of the Protestant cause. Yet it was impossible to come to an agreement. The Swedish King’s conquest of Catholic Poland seemed to the Protector a gain to Protestantism; “Wresting a horn from the head of the Beast,” he termed it. But he saw plainly that it was not to the interest of England that the Baltic should fall completely under the dominion of Sweden, and that to support the designs of the King on the Baltic coast-lands would necessarily embroil him with the Danes, the Dutch, and the Brandenburgers. For a time he hoped to turn the arms of Gustavus against the House of Austria, and to convert the offered alliance into the Protestant league he longed for. But it was all in vain, and the sole result of the embassy was a commercial treaty signed in July, 1656.

Meanwhile, at sea, the war with Spain was vigorously prosecuted. During the latter part of 1655 and through 1656, an English fleet cruised on and off the Spanish coast in order to prevent the Spaniards from sending reinforcements to the West Indies and to intercept the silver ships from America. It served also to protect English traders to the Mediterranean, and to force the King of Portugal to carry into effect the treaty of 1654. At one time Cromwell with prophetic foresight proposed the seizure of Gibraltar. “If possessed and made tenable by us,” he wrote to Blake, “would it not be an advantage to us and an annoyance to the Spaniards, and enable us, without keeping so great a fleet on that coast, with six nimble frigates lodged there to do the Spaniards more harm than by a fleet and ease our own charge?” But without a force to land, the Admiral judged the design impracticable. Blake’s perseverance in the blockade was at last crowned with success. On September 8, 1656, Captain Stayner with a squadron of cruisers detached from his fleet met eight Spanish ships from America off Cadiz, of which he destroyed four bearing treasure worth two millions, and captured a fifth with a cargo of silver valued at six hundred thousand pounds. More glorious, however, was the action at Santa Cruz in Teneriffe on April 20, 1657. Blake sailed into the harbour, where the Spanish treasure-fleet from the West Indies had taken refuge, fought batteries and galleons at close quarters, and sunk or burnt all the sixteen ships without losing one of his own. It was the most brilliant of all his exploits, and the last: he died on his return to England, worn out with the fatigues of the long blockade, just as his ship was entering Plymouth Sound (August 7, 1657).

Meanwhile, events forced Cromwell into closer union with France. The Spaniards had zealously adopted the cause of Charles II., hoping to overthrow Cromwell by means of an insurrection in England. In April, 1656, Philip IV. made a treaty with Charles II. by which he promised him a pension, helped to maintain a little army of English and Irish Royalists in Flanders, and undertook to provide ships for their transport to the English coast. Spanish money, also, was employed to further the plots of the Levellers for the assassination of the Protector. It became evident that, in order to force Spain to peace, it must be attacked on the continent as well as on the seas. On March 23, 1657, Cromwell signed an offensive alliance with France, by which England supplied six thousand soldiers, supported by a fleet, to attack the Spaniards in Flanders, and was to receive Mardyke and Dunkirk as its share of the spoils. He thought that the possession of Dunkirk would give him increased control of the Channel, enable him to exercise a greater pressure upon France, and provide a secure basis for land operations against Spain. “It would be,” said Secretary Thurloe, “a bridle to the Dutch, and a door into the continent.”

Six weeks later, Sir John Reynolds, with six thousand men, landed at Boulogne and joined the French army under Turenne. Turenne at first employed the English contingent in the interior of Flanders, in sieges and operations which seemed to serve French interests only, and his delay to attack the coast towns made Cromwell suspicious. It seemed, he wrote to Sir William Lockhart, the English Ambassador, as if the French “would not have us have any footing on that side the water.” The French excuses for their delay were but “parcels of words for children.” Unless they set about the business at once, he would withdraw his troops and demand the repayment of his expenses. “I desire you to take boldness and freedom to yourself in your dealing with the French on these accounts.” Lockhart spoke boldly and freely, and the effect was immediate. The French army drew towards the Flemish coast. Mardyke was besieged, taken, and handed over to an English garrison (October 3, 1657).

When the next campaign opened, Turenne laid siege to Dunkirk, and a Spanish army of fourteen thousand men under Don John and Condé advanced to its relief. Turenne routed them on June 4, 1658, amongst the sandhills on the south of Dunkirk, with the loss of five thousand men. No troops did better service in the battle than the English contingent under Lockhart. The joyful cheer the redcoats gave when they saw their enemy roused the admiration of Turenne, and the Duke of York, who served in the Spanish army, was full of praises of his countrymen’s courage. On their hands and knees they stormed the sandhill which was the key of the Spanish left, and at push of pike drove the Spaniards from it. This victory decided the long struggle between France and Spain, and ten days later Dunkirk surrendered. It was all over now with the plans of Charles II.: half his little army had been destroyed in the battle, and the ships provided for their transport had been captured by the English fleet.

Cromwell had at last the foothold on the continent which he desired, and England was safe from attempted invasion, but the Protestant alliance he dreamed of was farther off than ever. A storm had risen in northern Europe which threatened to make any such combination permanently impossible. As soon as Charles Gustavus conquered Poland, his ambition had brought him into collision with his Protestant neighbours. A great coalition was forming against him, and in the spring of 1657 he appealed to Cromwell for help. But before Cromwell would risk either men or money he required as a guarantee the temporary possession of Bremen. It would serve as a basis for military operations, if necessary, and as a means of bringing pressure to bear upon Denmark, if Denmark attempted to break the peace. Gustavus refused, and all Cromwell could do was to endeavour to mediate between Sweden and Denmark. In May, 1657, the Danes declared war, and forced Gustavus to relax his hold on Poland. Brandenburg, Holland, and Austria joined the coalition, and at the end of 1657, it seemed as if Sweden must succumb. Cromwell had refused to join Gustavus in his designs to partition Denmark, but just as little could he consent to allow Denmark and its allies to complete the overthrow of Sweden. He regarded the coalition as a Catholic plot against a Protestant power—a plot in which misguided Protestant states were furthering the work of the Pope and the House of Hapsburg. In imagination, he saw the Austrian eagle once more stretching her wings towards the Eastern sea and planting herself upon the Baltic, as in the dark days of the Thirty Years’ War, before Sweden came to the rescue of the German Protestants.

The speech which the Protector made to Parliament, in January, 1658, was full of these apprehensions. The question, he said, was, “whether the Christian world should be all popery.” The Protestant interest abroad was “struck at, nay, quite trodden under foot.” The Spanish and Austrian Hapsburgs were leagued together to destroy it. In Poland and in the Empire, Protestants were persecuted and driven out; the Swiss were threatened, and Sweden, the chief champion of the Protestant cause, was in danger. What resistance was there to “this mighty current coming from all parts against all Protestants?” Only that made by Gustavus: