The Rump restored.
Henry Cromwell recalled.
Richard Cromwell probably knew quite well that the dissolution of Parliament was virtually an abdication, and he resisted to the utmost. But the officers were determined to depose him, and he had no hold upon soldiers whom he had never led to victory. His brother in Ireland could only wait upon events, rejoicing ‘that our dear father went off in that glory which was due to his actings.’ He sent over Bury, Lawrence, and Dr. Henry Jones to confer with Fleetwood as to what was to be done. The Rump was restored in less than three weeks, but so attenuated was that once formidable assembly that a quorum of forty was with difficulty got together. Ninety-one members in all were admitted to sit, several of whom had been elected in an unconstitutional manner, and the number meeting at any one time never reached sixty. Lenthall, notwithstanding his new-fangled peerage, was induced to take the chair. Immediately after the late dissolution Coote had hurried to Ireland with the news, and Broghill went over about the same time. On June 7 the House resolved that Henry Cromwell, whose opposition they feared, should come over to give an account of the state of Ireland, and that on the same day the government should be handed over to five commissioners. Steele, Jones, and Goodwin were named at once, Corbet and Tomlinson being added two days later. Ludlow’s name was rejected by twenty-six votes against twenty-two, but a month later he was appointed to command the army, and he reached Dublin about the end of July.[295]
The Royalists endeavour to gain Henry.
He prefers private life.
The rumour of his recall reached Henry Cromwell before he had any official notice, and he decided to resign without waiting for it. Great offers had been made to him on the part of the exiled King, and he seems to have wavered for a moment, though finally he thanked God for having been enabled to resist temptation. The Royalists had relied on Fauconberg’s powers of persuasion, and Charles expected Broghill’s help, though he prudently avoided making any direct advance to that astute politician. In his letter of resignation to the Speaker he complained that he had had ‘the unhappiness of late to receive intelligence only from common fame and very private hands, and to be forced rather to guess what to do upon all emergencies than to be intrusted with the clear commands of superiors.’ He had secured the fidelity of the army to the English Government so that that ‘dangerous, numerous, and exasperated people, the Irish natives and Papists,’ might be no cause for anxiety. He warned the Parliament that as they had been turned out of doors in 1653, so they might well be again and by the same people. He was himself a lover of peace and of orderly civil government, but ‘I cannot,’ he said, ‘promote anything which infers the diminution of my late father’s honour and merit.’ The Royalists, having failed to gain him over, were afraid of his heading a separate interest; and Clarendon, who had been concerned in the abortive negotiations, says that ‘by the jolliness of his humour and a general civility towards all, he had rendered himself gracious and popular to all sorts of people.’ He left Ireland soon after his resignation, told his story to the Council of State on July 6, and retired to Cambridgeshire.[296]
Public character of Henry Cromwell.
It is probable that materials do not exist for a full account of Henry Cromwell. His public career ended at the age of thirty-one, and he had no opportunity of showing much originality. The confiscation of Irish land to pay the expenses of conquering the country was decided upon when he was quite a boy, and he had no voice in the subsequent legislation. So far as Protestants were concerned, he leaned towards comprehension, and allowed no sect or party to dominate over the rest. As to the Roman Catholics, there was little scope for any movement in the direction of toleration, but he disliked the oath of abjuration. ‘I wish,’ he said, ‘this extreme course had not been so suddenly taken, coming like a thunder-clap upon them. I wish the oath for the present had provided (though in severest manner) for their renouncing all foreign jurisdiction; and as for other doctrinal matters, that some means had been first used to have informed their judgments with such ordinary smaller penalties as former experience has found effectual. I wish his Highness were made sensible thereof in time.’ He was fain to dispense with the oath, but Thurloe thought this could not be done without an Act of Parliament, though it might be modified in practice by those on the spot; and this was just what Henry Cromwell did. In other political matters he showed good judgment, questioning the real value of Dunkirk, objecting to penal taxation of the Cavaliers, and showing how impossible it was to bind a nation by oaths or any other contrivance. ‘To what,’ he asked, ‘shall men swear? Have you any settlement? Does not your peace depend upon his Highness’s life, and upon his peculiar skill and faculty and personal interest in the army as now modelled and commanded?’ He was always loyal to his father, but he had been in love with Dorothy Osborne, and he had no objection to Royalists as such. It seems that he might have made a party for himself at the cost of much bloodshed, and he deserves nothing but praise for preferring to retire quietly. Oliver had warned him against the temptation to build up a great estate, and though he did not refuse to take grants of land like everyone else, he had at the end of his government scarcely money enough to carry him back to England.[297]
FOOTNOTES:
[279] Fleetwood to Thurloe, December 15, 1654, Thurloe, iii. 23.