Oliver Cromwell

by Samuel Rawson Gardiner

In England, the news of the great victory was enthusiastically received. One hundred and sixty Scottish flags were hung up in Westminster Hall, and Parliament ordered that a medal, known as the 'Dunbar Medal,' the first war medal granted to an English army, should bear Cromwell's likeness on one side. Against this glorifying of himself Cromwell protested in vain, but for all that he could say, his own lineaments were not excluded. His work in Scotland was however far from being accomplished. The victory of Dunbar was in time followed by the surrender of Edinburgh Castle, brought about, it is said, by the treachery of the governor; but it was in vain that the conqueror attempted to win over the extreme Covenanters who held out in the west under Strachan and Ker, and in the end he had to send Lambert against them. Lambert fell upon them at Hamilton and broke their power of resistance.

In the meantime, the tendency to resist the pretensions of the clergy was slowly making its way. On January 1, 1651, Charles was duly crowned at Scone, swearing not only to approve of the Covenants in Scotland, but to give his Royal assent to acts and ordinances of Parliament, passed and to be passed, enjoining the same in his other dominions. The young King protested his sincerity and begged the Ministers present to show him so much favour as 'that if in any time coming they did hear or see him breaking that Covenant, they would tell him of it, and put him in mind of his oath'. For all that, Charles was busily undermining the party of the Covenant. One by one the leaders of the Hamilton party—Hamilton himself—a brother of the Duke who had been beheaded at Westminster,—and who, when still only Earl of Lanark, had been deeply concerned in patching up the Engagement with Charles I.—Middleton, the rough soldier who had fought Charles I., and Lauderdale, the ablest of those Presbyterians who had rallied to the throne, were admitted, after humbly acknowledging their offences to the Kirk, to take their seats in Parliament, and to place their swords at the King's disposal. Argyle, who had triumphed over these men in his prosperity, was driven to seek refuge in his Highland home at Inverary. His policy of heading a democratic party organised by the clergy had fallen to the ground without hope of recovery. The national movement had passed into the hands of the nobility.

In the spring and early summer of 1651 Cromwell had thus to face a resistance based on a national policy rather than on extreme Covenanting grounds. For the present he had to leave his enemies unassailed. He was lying at Edinburgh, stricken down by illness, and for some time his life was despaired of. More than ever, indeed, he had the strength of England to fall back on. Englishmen had no desire to submit to Scottish dictation. Conspiracies for a Royalist insurrection were firmly suppressed, and suspected Royalists committed to prison as a preventive measure. At the same time a body of the new militia, which had been recently organised, was entrusted to Harrison—the fierce enthusiast who had been left in charge of the forces remaining in England, and who was now directed to guard the northern border against the Scottish invasion.

At last Cromwell was himself again. In the first days of June Charles's new army lay at Stirling. The seizure and imprisonment of his English partisans had deprived him of all hope of raising a diversion in the south, and Leslie was compelled to fall back on the defensive tactics by which he had guarded Edinburgh the year before. During the first fortnight of July Cromwell laboured in vain to bring on an engagement. Leslie, strongly posted amongst the hills to the south of Stirling, was not to be induced to repeat the error he had committed at Dunbar, and this time provisions and water could be obtained without difficulty. If Cromwell did not intend to waste his army away, he must transfer it to the enemy's rear, with a certain result of leaving the road open for their advance into England. Six months before, whilst the chiefs of English royalism were still at large, it would have been a most hazardous plan. Now that they were under arrest, it might be attempted with impunity. Lambert was sent across to North Queensferry, and on July 20 he defeated, at Inverkeithing, a Scottish force sent out from Stirling against him. Before long Cromwell followed his lieutenant, and on August 2 Perth fell into his hands. The communications of the Scottish army at Stirling were thus cut, and there was nothing before it but to march southwards on the uncertain prospect of being still able to find allies in England. That Cromwell had been able to accomplish this feat was owing partly to his command of the sea, which had enabled him with safety to send Lambert across the Forth, partly to his knowledge that the materials of the Scottish army were far inferior to those of his own. Had Leslie been at the head of a force capable of meeting the invaders in the field, Cromwell at Perth might indeed have found himself in an awkward position, as, in case of defeat, he might easily have been driven back to perish in the Highlands. On the other hand, it must be acknowledged that the English General had been learning from his opponent. It was now—unless the campaign of Preston be excepted, when his march upon Hamilton's flank had been decided by the necessity of picking up his artillery in Yorkshire—that Cromwell, for the first time in his life, developed strategical power, that is to say, the power of combining movements, the result of which would place the enemy in a false position. Already, before he followed Lambert, he had summoned Harrison to Linlithgow, and had ordered him to keep the Scots in check as they marched through England.

The first rumour that the Scottish army had broken up from Stirling and was on its way to the south reached Cromwell on August 1. On the 2nd, leaving 6,000 men under Monk—a soldier well tried in the Irish wars—to complete the subjugation, he started in pursuit. "The enemy," he wrote to Lenthall, "in his desperation and fear, and out of inevitable necessity, is run to try what he can do this way." Cromwell was never less taken by surprise. "I do apprehend," he continued, "that if he goes for England, being some few days' march before us, it will trouble some men's thoughts, and may occasion some men's inconveniences, of which I hope we are as deeply sensible, and have been, and I trust shall be as diligent to prevent as any. And indeed this is our comfort that in simplicity of heart as towards God we have done to the best of our judgments, knowing that if some issue were not put to this business it would occasion another winter's war to the ruin of your soldiery, for whom the Scots are too hard in respect of enduring the winter difficulties of this country, and would have been under the endless expense of the treasure of England in prosecuting this war. It may be supposed we might have kept the enemy from this by interposing between him and England, which truly I believe we might; but how to remove him out of this place without doing what we have done, unless we had a commanding army on both sides of the river of Forth, is not clear to us; or how to answer the inconveniences above mentioned we understand not. We pray, therefore, that—seeing there is a probability for the enemy to put you to some trouble—you would, with the same courage grounded upon a confidence in God, wherein you have been supported to the great things God hath used you in hitherto, improve, the best you can, such forces as you have in readiness as may on the sudden be gathered together to give the enemy some check until we shall be able to reach up to him, which we trust in the Lord we shall do our utmost endeavour in."

Instructions were despatched to Harrison to attend the enemy's march upon his flanks whilst Lambert hung upon his rear as he moved by way of Carlisle and Lancaster. Cromwell himself pushed on by the eastern route to head off the Scots as soon as he could gain sufficiently upon their slower march. The only question of importance was to know which of the opposing armies could gain most assistance in England. In Lancashire indeed the Earl of Derby raised a force for the King, but he was defeated by Robert Lilburne at Wigan, and was himself captured. When on August 22 Charles reached Worcester, scarcely a single Englishman had joined him. Large bodies of militia, on the other hand, flocked to Cromwell's standard; and when on September 3—the anniversary of Dunbar—the final battle was fought at Worcester, Cromwell commanded some 31,000 men, whilst the Scottish army did not number above 16,000. Cromwell having laid bridges of boats across the Severn and the Teme, was able to shift his regiments from one bank to the other of either stream as occasion served, and the Scots, fighting their best, were crushed by superior numbers as well as by superior discipline. Charles, when all was lost, rode away from the place of slaughter, and after an adventurous journey, made his escape to France. "The dimensions of this mercy," wrote Cromwell, "are above my thoughts. It is, for aught I know, a crowning mercy. Surely if it be not, such a one we shall have, if this provoke those that are concerned in it to thankfulness, and the Parliament to do the will of Him who hath done His will for it and for the nation, whose good pleasure it is to establish the nation and the change of government, by making the people so willing to the defence thereof, and so signally blessing the endeavours of your servants in this great work."

Was it really in defence of 'the change of government' that the people had sided with Cromwell? Or was it merely that they would not tolerate a Scottish conquest? At all events, the tide of feeling gave to the Parliament a momentary strength. Of the notable Scots engaged, Hamilton had fallen at Worcester, and the greater number of the remainder were now consigned to English prisons. Of the few Englishmen who had risen, Derby was beheaded at Bolton-le-Moors, four of his followers being subsequently executed. The subjugation of Scotland was completed by Monk.

As for Cromwell, he settled down into a quiet and unpretentious life, attending to the discipline of the army, and ready in his place in Parliament to forward the cause which he had most at heart—the establishment of that Commonwealth to which his victories had given a breathing-space. To him, as to many disinterested observers, the time had come to found the government no longer on the sword, but on the consent of the nation, and there can be little doubt that at no time between 1642 and 1660 was there more chance of gaining a majority for the new system than this. Cromwell, at least, did everything in his power to procure a vote for an early dissolution. It was only, however, by a majority of two that Parliament agreed to fix a date for its dissolution, following the vote by a resolution postponing that event for three years. There can be little doubt that this resolution found support amongst those members who were fattening on corruption; but there was also something to be said for the view taken some time before by Marten, when he compared the Commonwealth to Moses, because the members now sitting 'were the true mother to this fair child, the young Commonwealth,' and therefore its fittest nurses. A general election is always somewhat of a lottery, and it was the weakest part of the system—or want of system—on which the Commonwealth was based, that it never represented the people as a whole, and that its actions might easily have been repudiated by them if they had been consulted.

Baffled in his desire to secure an immediate appeal to the electors, Cromwell prepared to use the time which the members had secured for themselves, by coming to an understanding with the leading statesmen on the principles of the future Government. He had never committed himself to the doctrine that the executive authority ought to be placed directly in the hands of an elected assembly or of a council subordinated to it. When at the conference now held the lawyers pleaded that Charles II. or the Duke of York might be called on to accept the government if the rights of Englishmen could be safeguarded, he replied somewhat oracularly: "That will be a business of more than ordinary difficulty; but really, I think, if it may be done with safety and preservation of our rights as Englishmen and Christians, that a settlement with somewhat of a monarchical power in it would be very effectual". It is very unlikely that Cromwell, being what he was, had as yet formed any settled design in his own mind, but the tendency towards the course which eventually established the Protectorate is quite evident. To secure the rights of Englishmen and Christians rather than to strengthen the absolute supremacy of Parliaments had been his constant aim. Whether he reflected that if the monarchical power was to be given to some one not of the House of Stuart, it could hardly be given to any other man than himself, is a question which every one must answer as he thinks fit.

The conference had led to no decision, and during the first half of 1652 Cromwell had enough to do in defending religious liberty against those who had constituted themselves its champions. Before the Battle of Worcester had been fought, Parliament had passed a Blasphemy Act, for the punishment of atheistical, blasphemous and execrable opinions. In the following February, the publication of a Socinian catechism startled even the professed tolerationists. John Owen, the foremost Independent minister of the day, now—owing to the influence of Cromwell—Dean of Christchurch and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Oxford, was almost certainly the author of a scheme of ecclesiastical organisation presented by himself and twenty-six others to the Committee for the Propagation of the Gospel. This scheme in its main lines was subsequently adopted under the Protectorate. There was to be an established Church, ministered to by orthodox persons accepted by a body of triers, without regard to smaller points of discipline, on condition that they presented a testimonial 'of their piety and soundness of faith,' signed by six orthodox persons, and these ministers upon proof of unfitness were liable to be removed by a body of Ejectors. Other religious bodies were to be allowed to meet for worship, but Unitarians and those opposing the principles of Christianity were to be excluded from toleration. A list of fifteen fundamental propositions which no one was to be permitted to deny was set forth by Owen and his supporters. At this Cromwell took alarm. "I had rather," he said, "that Mahometism were permitted amongst us than that one of God's children be persecuted." The stand taken by him secured the warm approval of Milton. "Cromwell," wrote the poet, whose blindness had been hastened by his services to the State: