Letters and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell
Thomas Carlyle, the celebrated literary moralist, was born at Ecclefechan, Scotland, Dec. 4, 1795. He was educated at the village school and at the Annan Grammar School, proceeding to Edinburgh University in 1809. The breakdown of his dogmatic beliefs made it impossible for him to enter the clerical profession, and neither school-teaching nor the study of law attracted him. Supporting himself by private teaching, Carlyle made the beginnings of a literary connection. He fought his way under great difficulties; he was hard to govern; he was a painfully slow writer; and ignorance and rusticity mar his work to the very end. Yet a fiery revolt against impostures, an ardent sympathy for humanity, a worship of the heroic, an immutable confidence in the eternal verities, and occasionally a wonderful perception of beauty, made Carlyle one of the most influential English writers of the nineteenth century. His marriage in 1826 with Jane Baillie Welsh was an unhappy one. Carlyle died on February 4, 1881, having survived his wife fifteen years. The three volumes of "Cromwell's Letters and Speeches," with elucidations by Carlyle, were published in 1845; the first work, one might say, conveying a sympathetic appreciation of the great Protector, all histories of the man and his times having been hitherto written from the point of view either of the Royalists or of the revolutionary Whigs. To neither of these was an understanding of Puritanism at all possible. Moreover, to the Cavaliers, Cromwell was a regicide; to the Whigs he was a military usurper who dissolved parliaments. To both he was a Puritan who applied Biblical phraseology to practical affairs--therefore, a canting hypocrite, though undoubtedly a man of great capacity and rugged force.
I.--Puritan Oliver
One wishes there were a history of English Puritanism, the last of all our heroisms. At bottom, perhaps, no nobler heroism ever transacted itself upon this earth; and it lies as good as lost to us in the elysium we English have provided for our heroes! The Rushworthian elysium. Dreariest continent of shot-rubbish the eye ever saw. Puritanism is not of the nineteenth century, but of the seventeenth; it is grown unintelligible, what we may call incredible. Heroes who knew in every fibre, and with heroic daring laid to heart, that an Almighty justice does verily rule this world; that it is good to fight on God's side, and bad to fight on the devil's side. Well, it would seem the resuscitation of a heroism from the past is no easy enterprise.
Of Biographies of Cromwell, there are none tolerable. Oliver's father was a country gentleman of good estate, not a brewer; grandson of Sir Richard Cromwell, or Williams, nephew of Thomas Cromwell "mauler of monasteries"; his mother a Stuart (Steward), twelfth cousin or so of King Charles. He was born in 1599, went to Cambridge in the month that Shakespeare died. Next year his father died, and Oliver went no more to Cambridge. He was the only son. In 1620 he married.
He sat in the Parliament of 1628-29; the Petition of Right Parliament; a most brave and noble Parliament, ending with that scene when Holles held the Speaker down in his chair. The last Parliament in England for above eleven years. Notable years, what with soap-monopoly, ship-money, death of the great Gustavus at Lûtzen, pillorying of William Prynne, Jenny Geddes, and National Covenant, old Field-Marshal Lesley at Dunse Law and pacification thereafter nowise lasting.
To chastise the Scots, money is not attainable save by a Parliament, which at last the king summons. This "Short Parliament," wherein Oliver sits for Cambridge, is dismissed, being not prompt with supplies, which the king seeks by other methods. But the army so raised will not fight the Scots, who march into Northumberland and Durham. Money not to be had otherwise than by a Parliament, which is again summoned; the Long Parliament, which did not finally vanish till 1660. In which is Oliver again, "very much hearkened unto," despite "linen plain and not very clean, and voice sharp and untuneable."
Protestations; execution of Strafford, "the one supremely able man the king had"; a hope of compromise being for a time introduced by "royal varnish." Then, in November, 1641, an Irish rebellion blazing into Irish massacre; and in Parliament, the Grand Remonstrance carried by a small majority. In January, the king rides over to St. Stephen's to arrest the "five members." Then on one side Commissions of Array, on the other Ordinance for the Militia. In July and August, Mr. Cromwell is active in Cambridgeshire for the defence of that county, as others are elsewhere. Then Captain Cromwell, with his troop of horse, is with Essex at Edgehill, where he does his duty; and then back in Cambridgeshire, organising the Eastern Association. So we are at 1643 with the war in full swing.
Letters have been few enough so far; vestiges, traces of Cromwell's doings in the eastern counties; a successful skirmish at Grantham, a "notable victory" at Gainsborough. In August, Manchester takes command of the Association, with Cromwell for one of his colonels; in September, first battle of Newbury, and signing of the Solemn League and Covenant at Westminster. Cromwell has written "I have a lovely company; you would respect them did you know them"--his "Ironsides." In October, Colonel Cromwell does stoutly at Winceby fight; has his horse shot under him. Lincolnshire is nearly cleared.
On March 20, 1643, there is a characteristic letter to General Crawford, concerning the dismissal of an officer, whom Cromwell would have restored. "Ay, but the man is an Anabaptist. Are you sure of that? Admit he be, shall that render him incapable to serve the public? Sir, the state, in choosing men to serve it, takes no notice of their opinions. Take heed of being too sharp against those to whom you can object little but that they square not with you in every opinion concerning matters of religion."