Oliver Cromwell and the Rule of the Puritans in England

by C. H. Firth

“Parliament,” wrote Thurloe, “will not be persuaded that there can be a settlement any other way. The title is not the question, but it’s the office, which is known to the laws and to the people. They know their duty to a king and his to them. Whatever else there is will be wholly new, and upon the next occasion will be changed again. Besides they say the name Protector came in with the sword, and will never be the ground of any settlement, nor will there be a free Parliament so long as that continues, and as it savours of the sword now, so it will at last bring all things to be military.”

But the same reasons which made the revival of monarchy seem so desirable to Parliament and the lawyers, made it obnoxious to the army. A month before the offer of the crown to Cromwell, Major-General Lambert and a hundred officers petitioned him to refuse it. Cromwell answered with firmness; to him their objections to the title seemed overstrained and unreasonable. “Time was,” he reminded them, “when they boggled not at the word king.” “For his own part,” he added, “he loved the title as little as they did.” It was only “a feather in a hat.” But the policy of the officers had failed. The constitution they had drawn up needed mending. The experiment of the major-generals had ended in failure. “It is time,” he concluded, “to come to a settlement, and to lay aside arbitrary proceedings so unacceptable to the nation.”

Cromwell was desirous to accept the constitution drawn up by Parliament, because it seemed to secure that settlement by consent of the nation, so long and so vainly sought. “I am hugely taken with the thing, settlement, with the word, and with the notion of it,” declared Cromwell to the parliamentary committee. “I think he is not worthy to live in England that is not.”

In itself the constitutional scheme contained in the Petition and Advice seemed a good scheme. There was the monarchical element which Cromwell had pronounced desirable in 1657. There were the checks on the arbitrary power of the House of Commons which he always thought necessary, not only in the existence of a written constitution, such as the officers had devised in 1653, but in the revival of a Second Chamber as a balance to the Commons. Civil liberty seemed fully provided for, and “that great natural and civil liberty, liberty of conscience,” securely guaranteed. “The things provided in the Petition,” asserted Cromwell, “do secure the liberties of the people of God so as they never before had them.”

For five weeks these conferences continued. “I do judge of myself,” said the Protector soon after they began, “that there is no necessity of this name of king, for the other name may do as well.” He was even disposed to think that God had blasted the title as well as the family which had borne it. Moreover, he told Parliament, many good men could not swallow the title, and they should not run the risk of losing one friend or one servant for the sake of a thing that was of so little importance. If left to himself the Protector would probably have waived his scruples, and accepted, but this last consideration decided his answer. From many a staunch Cromwellian outside the army, letters and pamphlets against kingship reached Cromwell. He was plainly told that for him “to re-edify that old structure of government” which God by his instrumentality had overthrown, and to set up again that monarchy which Parliament had declared burdensome and destructive to the nation, would be “a fearful apostacy.” In the army, it was clear that his acceptance of the crown would create an irreconcilable schism. When the day for his final answer came, Fleetwood, Desborough, and Lambert threatened to lay down their commissions if he accepted, and that morning about thirty officers presented a petition to Parliament, begging it to press the Protector no more, and protesting against the revival of kingship. On May 8, 1657, Cromwell answered Parliament with another refusal, saying: “Though I think the act of government doth consist of very excellent parts in all but that one thing of the title as to me, I cannot undertake this government with the title of King.”

Parliament, though much disappointed, took the hint these words contained. Had Cromwell definitely refused when the Petition and Advice was first offered to him, Parliament would have thrown up the whole scheme in disgust. As it was, in its anxiety to obtain his acceptance, it had adopted all the amendments which he suggested during the conferences, and had gone too far to abandon the constitution so carefully elaborated. On May 25th, the Petition and Advice was presented to Cromwell again, with the title of Protector substituted for that of King, and this time he gave his assent to it. In Westminster Hall, on Friday, the 26th of June, he was for the second time installed as Protector, with great pomp and ceremony. The Speaker, as representative of Parliament, invested him with a robe of purple velvet, lined with ermine, “being the habit anciently used at the investiture of princes,” presented him with a Bible, girt a sword to his side, and put a golden sceptre into his hands. He took the oath to maintain the Protestant religion and to preserve the peace and the rights of the three nations, and sat down in the chair of state. The trumpets sounded, the people shouted “God save the Lord Protector,” and the heralds made proclamation after the ancient fashion when kings were crowned.

Cromwell had gained what he desired. At last his authority rested upon a constitutional basis. Henceforth he was not merely the nominee of the army, but the elect of the representatives of the people. Moreover, under the Petition and Advice his powers were more extensive than they had been under the Instrument of Government. He had acquired the right to nominate his own successor and to appoint, subject to the approval of Parliament, the seventy members of the new Second Chamber. He had obtained a permanent revenue of one million three hundred thousand pounds, which Parliament held sufficient to cover the ordinary expenditure of Government in time of peace, while for the next three years he had been granted an additional revenue of six hundred thousand pounds to meet the cost of the war. On the other hand, the authority of Parliament had been enlarged, and that of the Protector’s Council diminished. Parliament had gained control over its own elections, and the arbitrary exclusion of its members was made henceforth impossible. But it remained to be seen whether a Parliament, representing all sections of the Puritan party, would accept a settlement made by a packed Parliament, or whether the newly devised Second Chamber would be a more effectual check to the Lower House than the paper limitations of the Instrument of Government.

In January, 1658, when Parliament met again after a six months’ vacation, the situation was altered. About forty of the Protector’s chief supporters in the Lower House had been called to the new Second Chamber, and their places had not been filled up by fresh elections. At the same time all the leading Republicans, excluded at the opening of the first session,—old parliamentary hands, skilful in debate, and bitterly hostile to the Protectorate,—swelled the ranks of the Opposition. Instead of there being a strong Government majority, the two parties in the House of Commons were pretty equally balanced. Nevertheless, the Protector’s opening speech was full of hope and confidence. Looking back on the past work of this Parliament and the settlement achieved by it, his heart overflowed with gratitude and gladness. “How God hath redeemed us as we stand this day! Not from trouble and sorrow and anger only, but into a blessed and happy estate and condition, comprehensive of all interests.” We have “peace and rest out of ten years’ war,” religious freedom after years of persecution. “Who could have forethought, when we were plunged into the midst of our troubles, that ever the people of God should have had liberty to worship God without fear of enemies?” Let them own what God had done, and build on this foundation of civil and spiritual liberties which he had given them.

“If God shall bless you in this work,” continued Cromwell, “and make the meeting happy on that account, you shall be called the blessed of the Lord. The generations to come shall bless us. You shall be ‘the repairers of breaches, and the restorers of paths to dwell in.’ And if there be any higher work which mortals can attain unto in the world beyond this, I acknowledge my ignorance of it.”

Cromwell was speedily undeceived. As soon as the proceedings began, it was evident that a breach between the two Houses was imminent. In Cromwell’s second speech to them, four days after the session began, he spoke of his fears rather than his hopes. Abroad, he said, the Protestant cause was in danger through the complications in Northern Europe, and Charles II. had got together an army and was projecting a landing in England. At home, the Cavaliers were planning another insurrection, but the greatest danger lay in their own divisions. “Take us in that temper we are in: it is the greatest miracle that ever befell the sons of men that we are got again to peace.” Consider how many different sects and parties there were in the nation, each striving to be uppermost. “If God did not hinder, it would all make up one confusion. We should find there would be but one Cain in England, if God did not restrain; we should have another more bloody civil war than ever we had in England.” What stood between England and anarchy except the army, and except the Government established by the Petition and Advice? “Have you any frame or model of things which would satisfy the minds of men if this be not the frame?”