Rebellion: The History of England from James I to the Glorious Revolution (51 page)

Parliament was variously and continually employed with private petitions and private bills as well as matters of state. A member complained that ‘one business jostled out another’. It seemed likely that, just as its predecessor, it would achieve nothing of any consequence. Yet the religious zeal of its members was not in doubt when the case of James Naylor was put before them. He was a Quaker whose preachings aroused apocalyptic yearnings among his disciples; he was ‘the hope of Israel’ and ‘the Lamb of God’. In the summer of the year he had entered Bristol as Christ had once gone into Jerusalem; two women led his horse while others cried out ‘Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of Israel’. He was arrested and brought before the bar of parliament where he was questioned. ‘I was set up,’ he said, ‘as a sign to summon this nation.’

A debate of nine days followed his appearance in which it was agreed that this horrid blasphemy was more dangerous to the nation than any Spanish warship; it struck at the heart of its relationship with God, than which nothing was more precious. ‘Let us all stop our ears,’ one member said, ‘and stone him.’ It was not clear whether parliament had the judicial power to punish him, yet the members voted that Naylor should be placed in the pillory and whipped through the streets; his tongue was to be bored through with a hot iron and the letter ‘B’ for blasphemer branded on his forehead. He would then be sentenced to an indefinite imprisonment.

The ordeal of the tongue and forehead took place at the end of the year. A diarist, Thomas Burton, noted that ‘Rich, the mad merchant, sat bare-headed at Naylor’s feet all the time. Sometimes he sang, and cried, and stroked his hair and face, and kissed his hand, and sucked the fire out of his forehead.’ Naylor was patient, and the spectators were sympathetic to the plight of one who had endured the wrath of this parliament. Cromwell himself wished to know ‘the grounds and reason’ for its assumption of judicial power, but no response was ever made for the very good reason that the sentence was both arbitrary and unjustified. Some contemporaries warned that, if parliament felt itself able to condemn and punish one misguided man, who could feel safe?

At the beginning of 1657 a debate was held on a bill for maintaining the ‘decimation tax’ to subsidize the major-generals. To the surprise of many Cromwell’s son-in-law, John Claypole, opposed the measure; this was generally believed to mean that the Protector had withdrawn his support from the godly commanders in the field. Parliament itself was in large measure composed of people from the communities who had been subject to the strict measures of the major-generals, and the bill was rejected by thirty-six votes. The pietistic experiment was ended.

Another question of governance was raised. Should not Cromwell now become king and the House of Stuart be replaced by the House of Cromwell? This would satisfy the yearning of many people for a return to a traditional form of government. If Cromwell were sovereign, he might be able to curb the pretensions of parliament that had already gone beyond its powers. The newsletters anticipated a sudden ‘alteration of government’. On 19 January 1657, one member, John Ashe of Freshford, moved that Cromwell ‘take upon him the government according to the ancient constitution’.

On 23 February Sir Christopher Packe brought forward a remonstrance, under the title of the ‘humble petition and advice’, to the effect that Cromwell should assume ‘the name, style, title and dignity of king’ and that the House of Lords should be restored. The fury of the opponents of monarchy, most particularly the military element, was unrestrained. General John Lambert declared that any such reversal would be contrary to the principles for which he and his fellow soldiers had fought. Kingship had been so bathed in blood that it could not be restored. This was not a theoretical point. Cromwell was informed that a group of soldiers had bound themselves on oath to kill him as soon as he accepted the title.

Four days after the ‘humble petition’ had been advanced, one hundred representatives of the army visited Cromwell at Whitehall where they pleaded with him to resist the offer of advancement. He told them that he liked the title of king as little as they did; it was nothing but a bauble or a feather in the hat. He then reviewed the history of the last few years, in which he stated that he had faithfully followed the advice of the army; he said that ‘they had made him their drudge upon all occasions’, yet they had not met with success. None of the parliaments, none of the constitutional proposals, had worked. He told them that ‘it is time to come to a settlement’. A House of Lords, for example, was needed to check the pretensions of the Commons; they left him with their fury ‘much abated’, and a few days later another army delegation assured him that they would acquiesce in whatever he decided ‘for the good of these nations’.

The debate in parliament lasted for more than a month and occupied twenty-four sittings, some of them lasting all day. Eventually, at the end of March, Cromwell was formally requested to assume the crown. He replied that he had lived for the last part of his life ‘in the fire, in the midst of trouble’, and he requested more time for reflection. It was thought that he would accept the role of king, if only to unite a predominantly conservative nation, but in truth he was in conflict with himself. He knew that his senior military colleagues were passionately opposed to the change, but he knew also that this might prove his last and best chance to return the country to its traditional ways. It was in his means to provide the conditions for a regular and stable government.

It was not a question of private ambition; as he had said many times, the crown and sceptre meant very little to him. He already had more power than any English king. So he struggled. Thurloe said that Cromwell had ‘great difficulties in his own mind’ and that ‘he keeps himself reserved from everybody that I know of’; when a parliamentary delegation came to him, in the middle of April, ‘he came out of his chamber half unready in his gown, with a black scarf around his neck’. No doubt he prayed incessantly for divine guidance, hoping that as in the past a resolve or a decision would be presented to him as if by an act of grace.

He heard vital news of God’s providence in England’s affairs when he was told that Admiral Blake had successfully maintained a siege of the Spanish coast and had destroyed another treasure fleet, thus disabling Spain as a maritime power. England now effectively controlled the high seas, an ascendancy that was unprecedented in its history. With colonies in Jamaica and Barbados, as well as those such as Virginia on the American mainland, Cromwell was the first statesman since the days of Walsingham to contemplate a global empire. As Edmund Waller put it,

Others may use the ocean as their road

Only the English make it their abode.

Pepys noted, in the pusillanimous years of Charles II, that ‘it is strange how everybody do nowadays reflect upon Oliver and commend him, what brave things he did, and made all the neighbour princes fear him’.

Yet on the most pressing matter of monarchy he could not, or dare not, come to a decision. On 3 April he declared to a parliamentary delegation that he could not discharge his duties ‘under that title’; five days later parliament urged him to reconsider, on which occasion it is reported that he delivered ‘a speech so dark, that none knows whether he will accept it or not’. He may still have been waiting for divine guidance. He knew that it was proper and expedient that he should take the crown but, as he said, ‘I would not seek to set up that which providence hath destroyed and laid in the dust, and I would not build Jericho again.’ In the first week of May it is reported that he told a group of members of parliament that he had decided to accept the title; yet once more he changed his mind.

On 8 May he told parliament that he could not and would not become King Oliver I. ‘At the best,’ he said, ‘I should do it doubtingly. And certainly what is so [done] is not of faith.’ The protests of the army officers had in the end proved to be persuasive; two of them, Fleetwood and Desborough, had in fact married into Cromwell’s family. They had told him that, if he accepted the crown, they would resign from all their offices and retire into private life. Other officers, who had been with him from the beginning and had fought with him through fire, also registered their strong disapproval. This was decisive. He could not at this late stage abandon his comrades and colleagues; he could not betray their trust or spoil their hopes. So his final answer to parliament was that ‘I cannot undertake this government with the title of king’.

The only way forward was by means of compromise. Even if Cromwell would not be king, he could accept the other constitutional measures recommended by parliament; in particular it seemed just, and necessary, to re-establish the House of Lords as a check upon the legislature. On 25 May the ‘humble petition’ was presented again with Cromwell named as chief magistrate and Lord Protector, an appointment which he accepted as ‘one of the greatest tasks that ever was laid upon the back of a human creature’. On 26 June 1657, Oliver Cromwell was draped in purple and in ermine for the ceremony of installation in Westminster Hall; upon the table before his throne rested the sword of state and a sceptre of solid gold. The blast of trumpets announced his reign. His office was not declared to be hereditary but he had been given the power to name his successor; it was generally believed that this would be one of his sons. So began the second protectorate, which was now a restored monarchy in all but name.

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Is it possible?

There was a time for celebration. At the end of 1657 one of Cromwell’s daughters, Frances, married Robert Rich, the grandson of the earl of Warwick, and the ceremonial matched the status of the pair. Music and song echoed through the corridors of Whitehall in honour of the occasion; the orchestra comprised forty-eight violins and fifty trumpets. Guns were fired from the Tower in the manner of previous royal weddings. There was even ‘mixt dancing’, men and women together, that continued until five o’clock the following morning. In the spirit of the festivity Cromwell was moved to spill sack-posset, a rich and creamy drink, over the dresses of the women and to daub the stools where they were to sit with sugar and spice. He had an almost rustic sense of fun. At the subsequent wedding of another daughter, Mary, the ceremony at Hampton Court included a masque in which Cromwell played the non-speaking role of Jove. It was an astonishing return to the customs of the Stuart kings.

The French envoy reported that ‘another spirit’ was abroad and that ‘the preachers of old time are retiring because they are found too melancholic’. When Cromwell gave banquets for foreign envoys ‘rare music’ was always part of the occasion and, in the great hall of Hampton Court, two organs were placed for the use of a resident organist. It is to the credit of Cromwell, too, that under his rule the opera was introduced into England. The Protector was known to be a great lover of harmony, both of instruments and of voices.

Immediately after his installation Cromwell had adjourned parliament until the new year; when it reappeared, it would be in its old constitutional form of two houses. He had named his new council; it was the same as its predecessor, with the solitary exception of John Lambert who had resigned all of his offices and retired with a large pension. He had once believed that he would be the Protector’s successor but he now realized that he would be pre-empted by another, and younger, Cromwell.

One of the principal tasks of the re-established council was to decide upon the nature of the new upper chamber, but some of their proceedings took place in the absence of the Protector. Cromwell was now being called, even by his intimates, ‘the old man’; his signature was no longer bold and striking but tremulous. He spent much of the summer in the healthful air of Hampton Court, but he was suffering from painful catarrh.

The second session of the second protectorate parliament reassembled on 20 January 1658, but immediately it began to confront the military regime. The members of the new House of Lords were largely chosen from Cromwell’s most loyal supporters and, as a result, the Commons became antagonistic; some of the most inveterate of Cromwell’s opponents, who had been excluded from the previous session on the grounds of ‘immorality’ or ‘delinquency’, were returned to Westminster where at once they began to question the authority of the ‘other house’.

Cromwell summoned both houses to the Banqueting House, five days after they had first met, and urged them to be faithful to the cause. But his intervention had no material effect, and the Commons remained as hostile as before. One of its most formidable members, Sir Arthur Haselrig, made a speech in which he scorned the actions of the House of Lords in the past. ‘And shall we now rake them up,’ he asked, ‘after they have so long laid in the grave?’ An observer at Cromwell’s court noted that the assertions of the Commons, and the divisions between the two houses, threw the Protector ‘into a rage and passion like unto madness’. His anger was augmented by the fact that elements of the army in fact supported the Commons in its affirmation of supremacy.

On a cold morning, 4 February, Cromwell rose early and announced his determination to go to Westminster. He could not journey down the frozen Thames, and so impulsively he took the first coach for hire he could find. When he arrived in the retiring room of the Lords, his son-in-law and close military colleague, Charles Fleetwood, remonstrated with him on learning his intention. ‘You are a milksop,’ Cromwell said to him, ‘by the living God I will dissolve the house.’ And that was what he proceeded to do.

He told the Commons that ‘you have not only disquieted yourselves, but the whole nation is disquieted’. With the prospect of invasion from abroad, and rebellion from within, they had done nothing. ‘And I do declare to you here that I do dissolve this parliament. And let God be judge between you and me.’ To which pious aspiration some of the members cried out, ‘Amen!’ Cromwell’s latest, and last, constitutional experiment had come to an end. It was a sign of the radical anomaly of military rule that none of his parliaments had succeeded. He was now being openly criticized. The envoy from Venice reported that the people were ‘nauseated’ by the present government; the Dutch ambassador similarly noted that Cromwell’s affairs were ‘in troubled and dangerous condition’ while a visitor from Massachusetts remarked that many men ‘exclaim against him with open mouths’.