Oliver Cromwell

by Samuel Rawson Gardiner

So far as in him lay, Oliver took care that his family should be an example to all the families in the land. Strict as he was in banishing not merely vice, but the folly that leads to vice, he was no more opposed to reasonable amusement than other more sober Puritans of the day. Music and song had a special charm for him, and amongst his soldiers he showed his appreciation of a healthy jest, laughing heartily, for instance, on his way to the campaign of Dunbar, when one of them slammed an overturned cream-tub on the head of another. After the victory at Worcester he was heard of in a hawking party near Aylesbury, and if he prohibited horse-races, together with the drama, cock-fights and bear-baitings, it was not because he disliked amusement, but partly because he set himself against the immorality with which these particular amusements were accompanied, and partly because the confluence of spectators concealed the assembling of Royalist and other conspirators. Of horses he was quite as good a judge as his son Richard, and it was from a spirited pair of runaway steeds which had been given to him by the Count of Oldenburg that he nearly met his death in the early days of the Protectorate. Of late years Oliver's enjoyment of country life had been much curtailed. Other rulers had been in the habit of making summer progresses which took them away from business and the life of towns. Oliver—if he invented nothing else—may be regarded as the inventor of that modified form of enjoyment to which hard-worked citizens have, in our day, given the name of the 'week-end'. Liable to assault on every hand, he did not venture to leave the seat of Government for long, and he found repose in a weekly visit to Hampton Court, which lasted from Saturday to Monday, the length of his sojourn being only rarely extended by illness or some unusual family occurrence.

The domestic life of the Protector was all that might be expected from a man whose heart was as warm as his spirit was high. In the midst of his most arduous labours he seldom passed a day, as long as he was at Whitehall, on which he did not dine and sup in the family circle, and up till his aged mother's death in 1654 he was in the habit of visiting her every night before she retired to rest. Of his four daughters two were already married, the eldest, Bridget, after the death of her first husband, Ireton, having become the wife of Fleetwood; and the second, the sprightly and graceful Elizabeth, had married John, otherwise Lord Claypole, whom the Protector had entrusted with the charge of his stables, under the style of Master of the Horse. On November 11, 1657, some months after the commencement of the second Protectorate, Frances, the youngest of the four, was married to Robert Rich, the grandson of the Earl of Warwick, the Lord High Admiral of the Long Parliament, and in the following week her sister Mary was married to Lord Fauconberg. The first of these two marriages was long delayed by the Protector's doubts as to the character of the suitor, as well as by his dissatisfaction with the proposed settlement—Oliver's moral sense once more entwining itself with his practical decisions. It was said at the time that he valued the Fauconberg alliance more than that with the Warwick family, as winning over a Royalist peer to his side.

Not one of Oliver's four daughters ever gave their father cause for real anxiety. Though they were less strenuous than himself and sometimes needed, in his judgment, to be spurred on to higher spiritual aims, he never seems to have addressed them otherwise than as those who were worthy of parental love. If he really preferred Lady Claypole to his other daughters, it was most likely because she was more sprightly and less outwardly pious than her sisters. "Your sister Claypole," he had written to Bridget soon after she had become Ireton's wife, "is, I trust in mercy, exercised with some perplexed thoughts. She sees her own vanity and carnal mind; bewailing it. She seeks after—as I hope also—what will satisfy: and thus to be a seeker is to be of the best sect next to a finder; and such an one shall every faithful humble seeker be at the end. Happy seeker, happy finder! Who ever tasted that the Lord is gracious, without some sense of self, vanity, and badness? Who ever tasted that graciousness of His, and could go less in desire—less than pressing after full enjoyment?" Of Bridget herself he writes with fuller assurance. "Dear Heart," he continues, "press on; let no husband, let not anything cool thy affections after Christ. I hope he will be an occasion to inflame them. That which is best worthy of love in thy husband is that of the image of Christ he bears. Look on that, and love it best, and all the rest for that. I pray for thee and him; do so for me." Yet even Bridget was far from answering to the modern conception of the Puritan lady, as is testified by the splendid yellow silk petticoat which has been handed down from generation to generation in the family of her eldest daughter. Nevertheless it was not Bridget's vanity which was most on her father's mind. Five years later, in writing to his wife from Edinburgh, he begs her to 'mind poor Betty,' i.e. Elizabeth, Lady Claypole, 'of the Lord's great mercy,' and to urge her to 'take heed of a departing heart and of being cozened with worldly vanities and worldly company, which I doubt she is too subject to'. The liveliness which caused such searchings of heart was doubtless the tie which bound more firmly Oliver's love to her. One day we hear of her demurely assuring Whitelocke that it was fear of his great influence which had caused her father to send him out of the way to Sweden when he was about to assume the Protectorate. At another time we are told of her driving with her cousin Ingoldsby and two of her sisters, all the three ladies dressed in green, whilst the courtier-like crowd watch their movements and bow as they pass. Then we hear of the scornful language in which, with the pride of a lady by birth as well as by her father's advancement, she accounted for the absence of the wives of some of the Major-Generals from an entertainment at which she took part: "I warrant you they are washing their dishes at home as they used to do". Yet withal she had an open ear for trouble, and a ready tongue to plead not in vain the cause of the innocent with her father. By the summer of 1657 her health had been failing, and at one time her life had been despaired of.

Oliver's own health was far from being such as to promise length of days. Though he had had no serious illness since the time when his life was in danger in Scotland after the toils and anxiety of the Dunbar campaign, short spells of ill-health are frequently mentioned, and the Venetian Ambassador, presented to him in the autumn of 1655, noticed the shaking hand with which he held his hat in welcoming him, a symptom of weakness which left its mark on his hand-writing during the later period of his life. In the summer of 1657 he was detained at Hampton Court by illness, apparently of the character of malarial fever, for more than a week. Yet his spirit was as high, his resolution as strong as ever. At no time had the state of public affairs made larger demands upon his mental powers than in the last fourteen months of his life. It is true that the adoption of the new Parliamentary constitution had appeared for a moment to have solved the problem of domestic government, but his sagacity would have been far less than it was if he had imagined that all his difficulties were at an end.

If, on the other hand, the Protector looked abroad, fortune appeared to smile. Whilst Parliament was still in session, news arrived that Blake had destroyed the Spanish treasure fleet under the protection of forts in the harbour of Santa Cruz in Teneriffe. It was the most hazardous, and consequently the most glorious action of a noble and patriotic life. Worn out by toils and exposure, Blake sought and obtained leave to come home in search of the rest he so sorely needed. Before the vessel that bore him reached Plymouth his spirit had passed away. The great admiral was honoured with a public funeral in Westminster Abbey.

Spain, with her supply of treasure from the Indies cut short, was incapacitated from serious warlike effort, and already the alliance was forged which was to force her into submission. Even before the victory was won at Santa Cruz a treaty had been signed between Oliver and Louis XIV., arranging for a joint attack on the Spanish fortresses of Dunkirk, Mardyke and Gravelines, the first two to fall to the share of England, the last to that of France. An English force of 6,000 men was to be combined with a French force of 20,000, the blockade at sea being entrusted to an English fleet. Half the English contingent was at once despatched under Sir John Reynolds, but either the necessities of war, or the reluctance of Mazarin to carry out his engagements, led him to prefer the distant siege of Montmédy to an attack on the coast towns, and it was only after a warm expostulation from the Protector that measures were taken to carry out the treaty. Of the quality of the English contingent there could be no doubt. Turenne—whose praise in military matters was praise indeed—declared that he had never seen finer troops. As soon as Mazarin was found to be in earnest, the remaining 3,000 men were despatched to Flanders, and before the end of October Mardyke was captured and loyally placed in the hands of an English garrison. Farther than this it was impossible to go at so advanced a season. In the summer of 1658, the combined armies defeated the Spaniards on the Dunes, and Dunkirk itself was added to the possessions of England on the Continent.

The wisdom of a foreign policy which gave England a land-frontier in Europe has been often discussed, and the conflict of argument has not yet died away. It is true that in later years this country has had forced on it the task of securing colonial possessions which, in some cases for thousands of miles, march with territories held by independent, and possibly hostile States. There is, however, no comparison between an enormous territory, such as the Dominion of Canada, inhabited by an increasing and loyal population, and a fortified post, such as that of Dunkirk, the inhabitants of which were alien in race and religion from the English garrison which was to hold them down, especially as Dunkirk was a mere port on the edge of a Continent held by great nations, two of which coveted its possession, and would certainly leave no stone unturned to recover it. The only parallels in our history worth considering are the occupation of Calais in the middle ages, and of Gibraltar in modern times. It is idle to speculate whether, if Dunkirk had not been surrendered amicably to France by Charles II., it would have undergone the fate of Calais, but it is not idle to remind ourselves that, whilst Gibraltar is occupied in order to keep the sea open, and has never been used as a threat to the independence of Spain, Dunkirk, as we know from Thurloe, to whom all the secrets of Oliver's mind were revealed, was occupied in the first place, as a menace to the Dutch maritime power, and in the second place, to enable England to interfere with effect against either France or Spain, whilst it was believed by Mazarin that Oliver's main object was to crush the growing power of France. These pretensions might be condemned or defended on abstract grounds, leaving out of account any particular circumstances or any particular time. What is absolutely certain is that such a policy, if it were to be successful, required not merely the prolongation of Oliver's life, but the continuation, and more than the continuation of his military system. At a time when the English nation—it matters not whether with just cause, or from mere impatience of a taxation which it was well able to bear—was bitterly complaining of the heavy burdens imposed by the necessity of keeping up the existing army, Oliver was embarking on a foreign policy which would topple down with a crash unless that army were doubled—perhaps even trebled—to make head against the enemies it would arouse. It was a policy condemned in advance if only by the desperate financial embarrassments which must follow in its train, when France was no longer bound to England by her need of help against Spain. The hostility of France might indeed be confronted by a Government strong in the devotion of its people, and in the accumulated wealth of another half-century of commerce—strong too in an alliance with military Powers, based on the need of joining in resistance to a common danger. If Oliver had been granted those twenty more years of life which enthusiastic worshippers hold necessary for the success of his schemes, it can hardly be doubted that a European coalition would have been formed against the Protector long before it was formed against Louis XIV.

Such a danger, great as it was from the mere political claims of the Protector, was immensely increased by his attempt to inspire his foreign policy—hazardous enough in itself—with a moral and religious sentiment which found but little echo in England, and none whatever on the Continent. No doubt it was Oliver's highest glory that he aimed at something more satisfying than the material gain and the material power which are often held to be the sufficing objects of a nation's endeavour, and his interference on behalf of the victims of Piedmontese cruelty has sunk as deeply into the memories of Englishmen as the massacre of Drogheda has sunk into the memories of Irishmen. It is to be hoped that no one whose opinion is worth having will ever reproach Oliver for having sought to use his strength in defence not only of the power and interests of his country, but also of her honour—an honour which consists, not in a touchy resentment of slights, but mainly in her readiness to help in the higher service of mankind beyond her own borders as well as within them. Yet there is no effort requiring greater discretion, greater accuracy in ascertaining the relative importance of complex facts, greater knowledge of the temper of those who are likely to be affected by the action intended for the benefit of others.

It was precisely in this direction that Oliver's mind was most defective. From the beginning of the Protectorate he had overestimated the danger to Protestantism from the Roman Catholic Powers, and had striven in vain to form a great Protestant alliance to resist what was scarcely more than an imaginary danger. The massacre of the Vaudois had confirmed his belief that the danger was a permanent one, and his war with Spain had brought him into sharp antagonism with a Roman Catholic Power of intensest bigotry. We may therefore give full credence to Thurloe when he adds to the causes which induced Oliver to occupy Dunkirk, his hope that the possession of the place would be serviceable to his great design of weakening not merely Spain, but the whole House of Austria, as being engaged in a conspiracy for the injury and, if possible, the destruction of Protestantism. That this view of the case was a gross anachronism, no one familiar with the history of Europe will now deny. Isolated instances indeed there were—and there were likely to be more—of the persecution of Protestants by Roman Catholic Governments, but the tendency to form European alliances on the basis of religion was a thing of the past. So far indeed as Dunkirk was in question—and both critics and admirers of the foreign policy of the Protectorate have been apt to argue as if it concerned France and Spain alone—Oliver's intentions in this direction are of little interest, as he did not live long enough even to attempt to make his new port the basis of a European war. It is in his Baltic policy that the defects of his method were most clearly revealed.

The policy of Sweden had long been directed to the acquisition of possessions on the opposite coast of the Baltic, a policy which Oliver had more recently followed on a smaller scale with regard to the lands beyond the Channel. With a territory more thinly populated and poorer than that of England, the Kings of Sweden had, like the Commonwealth and Protectorate, gathered an army too large to be supported except by offensive war. The command of the Baltic Sea was the object in view, and in 1648, at the end of the Thirty Years' War, Sweden found herself in possession, not merely of Finland and the coast districts as far south as Riga, but of Western Pomerania, of the port of Wismar and of the secularised Bishoprics of Bremen and Verden. It was a policy even more provocative than that pursued by Oliver, because it concerned not merely the possession of a solitary point beyond the sea, but the possession of territories commanding the mouths of such rivers as the Oder, flowing into the Baltic, and the Elbe and the Weser, flowing into the North Sea. In 1655 the warrior-king, Charles X., who in the year before had succeeded to the Swedish throne upon the abdication of Christina, plunged into a war with Poland, which threatened to give him the command of the Vistula as well. In all this England had an interest because it was of great importance to her that the whole trade of the Baltic, whence she derived the materials without which she would have been unable to send her fleets to sea, should not pass entirely into the hands of one great military Power. It was this view of the case which commended itself to the Dutch, and led in 1656 to their sending a fleet into the Baltic to preserve the independence of Dantzic. Such a view could not be lost sight of by Oliver, but it was not in his nature to content himself with the chase after purely material interests. Ever since the summer of 1655, when Charles X. made overtures for his alliance, the Protector had been striving to give to it the character of a general Protestant League for the purpose of striking a blow at the German branch of the House of Austria.