Obverse—arms of Cromwell. Reverse—representation of Oliver Cromwell on horseback.
Seal of the Protectorate.
From an impression in wax in the British Museum.
This was the case, not only in England, but elsewhere. One of Cromwell’s letters of about this time is to the New England clergyman, John Cotton, in answer to one which showed the keen interest taken in Cromwell’s triumph by his fellow-Puritans, who, across the Atlantic, had begun the upbuilding of what is now the giant republic of the New World. The letter is marked by the continuous use of scriptural phrases and protestations of humility, so ostentatious and overstrained as to convey an uncomfortable feeling of hypocrisy; yet, without doubt, there was a base of genuineness for these expressions. Beyond question, Cromwell felt that he was doing the Lord’s work; and was sustained through the tremendous hours of labor and peril by the sense of battling for justice on this earth, and in accordance with the Eternal Will of Heaven.
In dealing with Cromwell and the Puritan Revolution it must ever be kept in mind, before judging too harshly the actors, that the era saw the overlapping of two systems, both in religion and in politics; and many incongruities resulted. It was the first great stride toward the practical achievement of civil rights and individual liberty as we now understand them. It was also the era in which the old theological theory of the all-importance of dogma came into sharp conflict with the now healthily general religious belief in the superior importance of conduct. Of course, as is invariably the case in real life, the issues were not sharply drawn at all points, and at some they were wholly obscured by the strong passions and ambitions which belong, not to any particular age, but to all time.
After Worcester, when Cromwell had returned to London, he one day summoned a conference, at Speaker Lenthall’s house, of the leaders of the Parliamentary army to decide how the national destiny was to be settled. He hoped that they would be able to form a policy among themselves; but the hope proved fruitless. Some of the members wished an absolute republic; some wished a setting-up of what we would now call a limited monarchy, with one of the late king’s sons recalled and put at the head.
Nothing came of the conference, and Parliament went its way. It had at last waked to the fact that it must do something positive in the way of reform, or else that its days were numbered. It began with great reluctance to make a pretence of preparing for its own dissolution, and strove to accomplish some kind of reform in the laws. At that time the law of England had been for generations little more than a mass of ingenious technicalities, and the Court of Chancery had become the synonym for a system of interminable delay, which worked as much injustice as outright spoliation. Even now there is a tendency in the law toward the deification of technicalities, the substitution of the letter for the spirit; a tendency which can only be offset by a Bench, and, indeed, a Bar, possessing both courage and common-sense. At that time, the condition of affairs was much worse, and the best men in England shared the popular feeling of extreme dislike for lawyers, as men whose trade was not to secure justice, but to weave a great web of technicalities which completely defeated justice. However, reform in the methods of legal procedure proved as difficult then as it ever has proved, and all that even Cromwell could do was to make a beginning in the right direction. The Rump was quite unable so much as to make this beginning.
The Parliament obtained a momentary respite by creating a diversion in foreign affairs, and bringing on a war with the Dutch. Throughout the first half of the seventeenth century, the Dutch were the leading mercantile and naval power of Europe, surpassing the English in trade and in colonial possessions. Unfortunately for them, their home authorities did not believe in preparedness for war; and the crushing defeats which the boldness and skill of their sailors had enabled them to inflict on the Spaniards, lulled them into the unwholesome faith—shared at times by great modern mercantile communities—that, by simple desire for peace, they could avert war; and that if war came, they could trust to their riches and reserve strength to win. Accordingly, in time of peace they laid up their warships and never built a fighting navy in advance, trusting to the use of armed merchant-vessels and improvised war-craft to meet the need of the hour. England, on the contrary, had a large regular navy, the ships being superior in size and armament to the Dutch, and the personnel of the navy being better disciplined, although none of the English Admirals, save Blake, ranked with Tromp and De Ruyter.
The cause of the quarrel was the Navigation Act, passed by England for the express purpose of building up the English commercial marine at the expense of the Dutch. The latter were then the world’s carriers on the ocean. They derived an immense profit from carrying the goods of other countries, in their own bottoms, from these other countries to England. The Navigation Act forbade this, allowing only English bottoms to be used to carry goods to England, unless the goods were carried in the ships of the country from which they came. This is the kind of measure especially condemned by the laissez-faire school of economists, and its good results in this case have always puzzled them; while, on the other hand, its success under one set of conditions has been often ignorantly held to justify its application under entirely different conditions. In other words, like the system of protective tariffs, it is one of those economic measures which may or may not be useful to a country, according to changes in time and circumstances. In the Cromwellian period it benefited the English as much as it hurt the Dutch, and laid the foundation of English commercial supremacy. Another cause of war was the insistance by the English upon their right to have their flag saluted by the Dutch as well as by other foreign powers.
There followed a bloody and obstinate struggle for the mastery of the seas. Battle after battle was fought between the Dutch and English fleets. The latter were commanded by Blake, Monk, Dean, and other officers, who had won distinction ashore—for the process of differentiation between military service on land and on the sea was far from complete. The fighting was most determined, and the Dutch won two or three victories; but they were defeated again and again, until finally beaten into submission. The war was one undertaken purely from motives of commercial greed, against the nation which, among all the nations of continental Europe, stood closest to England in religious belief, in form of government, in social ideas, and in its system of political liberty. Cromwell hated the thought of the two free Protestant powers battling one another to exhaustion, while every ecclesiastical and political tyranny looked on with a grin of approbation. He wished the alliance, not the enmity, of Holland; and though, when the war was once on, he and those he represented refused in any way to embarrass their own government, yet they were anxious for peace. The Parliament, on the other hand, hailed the rise of the Navy under Blake as a counterpoise to the power of the army under Cromwell. One effect of this Dutch War was to postpone the question of the dissolution of Parliament; another, to cause increased taxation, which was met by levying on the estates of the Royalist Delinquents, so-called.
