Oliver Cromwell and the Rule of the Puritans in England

by C. H. Firth

This “standing militia of horse” as it was termed, consisted of about six thousand men, paid a small sum as a retaining fee, and liable to be called out at a day’s notice. The eighty thousand pounds a year required to maintain them was to be procured by a tax of ten per cent. on the income of the royalist gentry, the assessment and collection of which were entrusted to the major-generals assisted by local commissioners.

As a measure of police the institution was a great success, but politically it was a great mistake. It was a reversal of the policy which Cromwell had hitherto followed. By the amnesty he had carried in 1652, and by the repeal of the compulsory engagement to be faithful to the Commonwealth, Cromwell had sought to induce the Royalists to forget their defeat and to become good citizens. In the declaration now published, to justify his proceedings for securing the peace of the nation, he adopted the view that the Royalists were irreconcilable. They had laboured, he complained, to keep themselves distinct and separate from the well-affected, “as if they would avoid the very beginning of union.” They bred their children under the ejected clergy, and confined their marriages within their own party, “as if they meant to entail their quarrel and prevent the means to reconcile posterity.” People might say it was unjust to punish all the Royalists for the fault of a few, but “the whole party generally were involved in this business,” either directly or indirectly. Therefore, “if there were need of greater forces to carry on the work, it was a most righteous thing to put the charge on that party which was the cause of it.”

The defence convinced only the supporters of the Government. To the rest of England, the arbitrary and inquisitorial proceedings of the major-generals were sufficient to condemn the institution. It was evident that the military party amongst the Protector’s advisers had obtained the upper hand of the lawyers and civilians. The Protectorate, which had hitherto striven to seem a moderate and constitutional government, stood revealed as a military despotism.

Meanwhile a legal opposition more dangerous than royalist plots threatened the Protector’s authority. The lawyers began to call in question the validity of his ordinances, and the judges to manifest scruples about enforcing them. Whitelocke and Widdrington, two of the Commissioners of the Great Seal, resigned their posts because of scruples about executing the ordinance for the reform of Chancery. Judges Newdigate and Thorpe declined to act on the commission appointed for the trial of the insurgents in the north. A merchant named Cony refused to pay customs duties not imposed by act of Parliament, and his counsel, Serjeant Twysden, asserted that their levy by Cromwell’s ordinance was contrary to Magna Carta, Chief-Justice Rolle, before whom the case came, resigned his place to avoid determining the question.

Cromwell met this opposition by arresting those who refused to pay taxes, sending Cony’s lawyers to the Tower, and replacing the doubters by more compliant judges. Cony, intimidated or cajoled, withdrew his plea, and the lawyers apologised and submitted. Necessity was the Protector’s only excuse for these despotic acts. “The people,” he had asserted when he dissolved Parliament, “will prefer their safety to their passions, and their real security to forms, when necessity calls for supplies.” Convinced that the maintenance of his Government was for the good of the people, he was resolved to maintain it by force, and did not shrink from the avowal. “’Tis against the will of the nation: there will be nine in ten against you,” Calamy is reported to have told Cromwell, when he assumed his protectorship. “Very well,” said Cromwell, “but what if I should disarm the nine, and put a sword in the tenth man’s hands. Would not that do the business?”

Nevertheless, neither the argument from necessity nor the appeal to force could persuade the Republican leaders to recognise the authority of the Government. Men like Vane and Ludlow steadily refused even an engagement not to act against it.

“Why will you not own this Government to be a legal government?” said Lambert to Ludlow. “Because,” replied Ludlow, “it seems to me to be in substance a re-establishment of that which we all engaged against, and had with a great expense of blood and treasure abolished.” “What is it you would have?” asked the Protector himself. “That which we fought for,” said Ludlow, “that the nation might be governed by its own consent.” “I am as much for government by consent as any man,” answered Cromwell, “but where shall we find that consent?”

That was the difficulty. Ludlow said that the consent required was that of “those of all sorts who had acted with fidelity and affection to the public.” Vane in his Healing Question said that a convention representing “the whole body of adherents to this cause” was the only body that had a right to determine the government of the nation. Both were blind to the fact that the divisions of the Puritan party had made agreement impossible, and that government by consent would necessarily bring about the restoration of the Stuarts.

In the summer of 1656, the Protector summoned a second Parliament, although according to the terms of the “Instrument” he need not have done so till 1657. He needed money to carry on the war with Spain, and the major-generals told him that they could secure the election of members favourable to the Government. When the elections came, the major-generals had an unpleasant surprise. Everywhere the arbitrary measures of the last eighteen months had aroused general discontent. “No courtiers, nor swordsmen,” was the popular cry, and in the counties, where the electorate was too large to be overawed, a large number of opposition candidates were returned. When Parliament met, the Protector’s Council assumed the right to decide on the qualifications of the persons elected, and excluded a hundred members as disaffected to the Government.

Those excluded protested, but their protest was unheeded; those allowed to sit submitted with hardly a murmur. They were in general moderate Presbyterians or Independents, willing to support any Government which promised tranquillity to a nation weary of political strife. Their willingness to accept Cromwell as Protector was shown by an act annulling the title of the Stuarts to the throne, and by another making it high treason to plot for the overthrow of his Government. The capture of the Spanish treasure ships by Stayner, which happened just about the opening of the session, gave Cromwell’s foreign policy the prestige of success, and the House responded to his appeal for supplies by approving the Spanish war and voting £400,000 for its expenses.