Oliver Cromwell

by Theodore Roosevelt

The Constitution thus had very many points of difference from that under which the United States grew into a great nation. Yet it ranks with it, rather than with the system of Parliamentary supremacy which was ultimately adopted in England. It was, of course, less popular, in the true sense, than the government of either the United States or Great Britain at the present moment. Oliver, later on, insisted on what he called the “Four Fundamentals,” which answered to what we now style Constitutional Rights. His position was strictly in accord with the American, as opposed to the English, theory of embodying, by preference in some written document, propositions which neither the law-making body nor the executive could modify. It was not to be expected that he should hit on the device of a Supreme Court to keep guard over these propositions.

On December 16, 1653, Oliver was installed at Westminster, as Lord Protector. The judges, the army, the fleet, the mass of Independents, and the bulk of well-to-do citizens, concurred in the new departure; for the Protectorship gave stability, and the election of the new Parliament the assurance of liberty. There were plenty of opponents, however. The Royalists were implacable. The exiled House of Stuart, with a baseness of which their great opponent was entirely incapable, sought to compass his assassination. They could in no other way hope to reach the man whom they dared not look in the face on the field of battle. Plot after plot was formed to kill the Protector, but the plotters were invariably discovered and brought to justice; while every attempt at open insurrection was stamped out with the utmost ease. To the Royalist malcontents were added the extreme fanatics, the ultra-reformers of every type—religious, political, and social. These were, at the time, more dangerous than the Royalists, for they numbered supporters in the army, including some who had been prominent friends of Cromwell up to this time, like General Harrison. It was necessary, therefore, to arrest some of the most turbulent agitators, including preachers, and to deprive certain officers of their commissions.

The Protector and his Council acted wisely in their ordinances, redressing in practical shape many grievances. The Barebones Parliament had striven to abolish the Court of Chancery outright, and to hand its power over to the judges of the Common Law, which would merely have aggravated the existing hardships by checking the growth of the principle of equity. Oliver acted more conservatively: in fact, altogether too conservatively; but still he did something. In the Church government, also, a good deal was accomplished by the appointment of commissioners of good character to supervise the ministers, while allowing each to organize his congregation on any lines he chose—Presbyterian, Congregationalist, or Baptist. Dissenters were permitted to form separate congregations—“gathered churches” in the phrase of the day—if they so desired. Of course, this was not by any means complete religious toleration, but it was a nearer approach to it than any government in Europe, with the possible exception of the Dutch, had yet sanctioned, and it was so far in advance of the general spirit of the time that the new Parliament—a really representative body—took sharp exception to it. In point of religious toleration Oliver went just as far as the people of his day would let him—farther than any other ruler of the century was willing to go, save only Henry IV. of France—and Henry IV. really believed in nothing, and so could easily be tolerant, while Cromwell’s zealous faith was part of the very marrow of his being.

The Clock Tower, Hampton Court.

Cromwell also concluded peace with the Dutch. Before the Long Parliament was dissolved it had become evident that the navy would ultimately conquer this peace for England; but the stubborn Dutch had to undergo several additional defeats before they would come to terms. Blake, the great admiral, had no particular admiration for Cromwell, but finally threw in his lot with him on the ground that the fleet had no concern with politics, and should limit itself strictly to the effort “to keep foreigners from fooling us.” Monk was the admiral most in view in the later stages of the Dutch War. When it was over, he was sent back to keep the Highlands in order, which he and his fellow-Cromwellians did, with a thoroughness not afterward approached for a century. Scotland was now definitely united to England.

The new Parliament consisted of 400 members from England, 30 from Scotland, and 30 from Ireland. They were elected by a general suffrage, based on the possession of property to the value £200. The Parliament thus gathered was representative in a very wide sense. Nearly two hundred years were to elapse before any other as truly representative was to sit in England. The classes whose inclusion would certainly have made trouble were excluded; and, while the suffrage had been extended, and gross inequalities of representation abolished, there had been no such revolutionary action as suddenly to introduce masses of men unaccustomed to the exercise of self-government. Indeed, the house had arbitrarily erased from its roll of membership the names of a few ultra-Republicans. It was chiefly Cromwell’s own fault that he failed to get along with this Parliament, and, therefore, failed to put the government on a permanent basis of orderly liberty.

At the beginning, everything seemed to go well. He opened the Parliament with one of those noteworthy speeches of which some seventeen have been preserved; speeches in the proper sense, unquestionably better when spoken to listeners than when read by critics, but instinct with the rough power of the speaker, permeated with religious fervor and sincere striving after the right; and even where the reasoning is most wrong-headed, containing phrases and sentiments which show the keenest insight into the needs of the moment, and the needs of eternity as well. The sentences are often very involved, it being quite evident that the speeches were not written out, not even deliberately thought out, in advance; for Oliver, even as he spoke, kept dropping and rejecting such of his half-finished utterances as did not give sufficiently accurate or vehement expression to his thought. Yet they contain abundance of the loftiest thought, expressed in language which merely gains strength from its rude, vigorous homeliness. For generations after Cromwell’s death, the polished cynics and dull pedants, who abhorred and misunderstood him, spoke of his utterances with mixed ridicule and wrath: Hume hazarding the opinion that if his speeches, letters, and writings, were gathered together they would form “one of the most nonsensical collections the world had ever seen.” We could far better afford to lose every line Hume ever wrote than the speeches of Cromwell.

In his opening address he pointed out that what the nation most needed was healing and settling; and in a spirit of thoroughly English conservatism, denounced any merely revolutionary doctrines which would do away with the security of property, or would give the tenant “as liberal a fortune” as the landlord. In religious matters also, he condemned those who could do nothing but cry: “Overturn! Overturn!! Overturn!!!” and together with his praise of what had been done, and of the body to which he spoke, he mingled much advice, remarking: “I hope you will not be unwilling to hear a little again of the sharp as well as of the sweet.” He exhorted them to go to work in sober earnest; to remedy in practical shape any wrongs, and to join with him in working for good government. Unfortunately, he made the mental reservation that he should be himself the ultimate judge of what good government was.

Equally unfortunately, there was in the House a body of vehement Republicans who at once denied the legal existence of either Council or Protector, on the ground that the Long Parliament had never been dissolved. Of course such an argument was self-destructive, as it told equally against the legality of the new Parliament in which they sat. Parliament contented itself with recognizing the Instrument of Government as only of provisional validity, and proceeded to discuss it, clause by clause, as the groundwork of a new Constitution. It was unanimously agreed that Cromwell should retain his power for five years, but Parliament showed by its actions that it did not intend to leave him in a position of absolute supremacy. Instantly Oliver interfered, as arbitrarily as any hereditary King might have done.