Gardiner Samuel Rawson
Oliver Cromwell
Cromwell was evidently for strong measures. Yet there are signs that now, as at other times in his life, he underestimated the forces opposed to him. His allies in the Commons, Pym and Hampden at their head, were now bent on obtaining the assent of the House to the Grand Remonstrance, less as an appeal to the King than as a manifesto to the nation. The long and detailed catalogue of the King's misdeeds in the past raised no opposition. Hyde was as ready to accept it as Pym and Hampden. The main demands made in it were two: first, that the King would employ such councillors and ministers as the Parliament might have cause to confide in; and secondly, that care should be taken 'to reduce within bounds that exorbitant power which the prelates have assumed to themselves,' whilst maintaining 'the golden reins of discipline,' and demanding 'a general synod of the most grave, pious, learned and judicious divines to consider all things necessary for the peace and good government of the Church'. So convinced was Cromwell that the Remonstrance would be generally acceptable to the House, that he expressed surprise when Falkland gave his opinion that it would give rise to some debate. It was perhaps because the Remonstrance had abandoned the position of the Root-and-Branch Bill and talked of limiting episcopacy, instead of abolishing it, that Cromwell fancied that it would gain adherents from both sides. He forgot how far controversy had extended since the summer months in which the Root-and-Branch Bill had been discussed, and how men who believed that, if only Charles could be induced to make more prudent appointments, intellectual liberty was safer under bishops than under any system likely to approve itself to a synod of devout ministers, had now rallied to the King.
It was, by this time, more than ever, a question whether Charles could be trusted, and Cromwell and his allies had far stronger grounds in denying than their opponents had in affirming that he could. After all, the ecclesiastical quarrel could never be finally settled without mutual toleration, and neither party was ready even partially to accept such a solution as that. As for Cromwell himself, he regarded those decent forms which were significant of deeper realities even to many who had rebelled against the pedagogic harshness of Laud, as mere rags of popery and superstition to be swept away without compunction. With this conviction pressing on his mind, it is no wonder that, when the great debate was over late in the night, after the division had been taken which gave a majority of eleven to the supporters of the Remonstrance, he replied to Falkland's question whether there had been a debate with: "I will take your word for it another time. If the Remonstrance had been rejected, I would have sold all I had the next morning, and never have seen England any more; and I know there are many other honest men of the same resolution."
There was in Cromwell's mind a capacity for recognising the strength of adverse facts which had led him – there is some reason to believe2– to think of emigrating to America in 1636 when Charles's triumph appeared most assured, and which now led him to think of the same mode of escape to a purer atmosphere if Charles, supported by Parliament, should be once more in the ascendant. On neither of the two occasions did his half-formed resolution develop into a settled purpose, the first time because, for some unknown reason, he hardened his heart to hold out till better times arrived; the second time because the danger anticipated never actually occurred.
In the constitutional by-play which followed – the question of the Bishops' protest and the resistance to the attempt on the five members – Cromwell took no prominent part, though his motion for an address to the King, asking him to remove the Earl of Bristol from his counsels on the ground that he had formerly recommended Charles to bring up the Northern army to his support, shows in what direction his thoughts were moving. The dispute between Parliament and King had so deepened that each side deprecated the employment of force by the other, whilst each side felt itself justified in arming itself ostensibly for its own defence. It was no longer a question of conformity to the constitution in the shape in which the Tudors had handed it down to the Stuarts. That constitution, resting as it did on an implied harmony between King and people, had hopelessly broken down when Charles had for eleven years ruled without a Parliament. The only question was how it was to be reconstructed. Cromwell was not the man to indulge in constitutional speculations, but he saw distinctly that if religion – such as he conceived it – was to be protected, it must be by armed force. A King to whom religion in that form was detestable, and who was eager to stifle it by calling in troops from any foreign country which could be induced to come to his aid, was no longer to be trusted with power.
So far as we know, Cromwell did not intervene in the debates on the control of the militia. He was mainly concerned with seeing that the militia was in a state of efficiency for the defence of Parliament. As early as January 14, 1642, soon after the attempt on the five members had openly revealed Charles's hostility, it was on Cromwell's motion that a committee was named to put the kingdom in a posture of defence, and this motion he followed up by others, with the practical object of forwarding repression in Ireland or protection to the Houses at Westminster. Though he was far from being a wealthy man, he contributed £600 to the projected campaign in Ireland, and another £500 to the raising of forces in England. Mainly through his efforts, Cambridge was placed in a state to defend itself against attack. Without waiting for a Parliamentary vote, he sent down arms valued at £100. On July 15 he moved for an order 'to allow the townsmen of Cambridge to raise two companies of volunteers, and to appoint captains over them'. A month later the House was informed that 'Mr. Cromwell, in Cambridgeshire, hath seized the magazine in the castle at Cambridge,' that is to say, the store of arms – the property of the County – ready to be served out to the militia when called upon for service or training, 'and hath hindered the carrying of the plate from that University; which, as was reported, was to the value of £20,000 or thereabouts'. Evidently there was one member of Parliament prompt of decision and determined in will, who had what so few – if any – of his colleagues had – the makings of a great soldier in him.
When at last Essex received the command to create a Parliamentary army, Cromwell accepted a commission to raise a troop of arquebusiers – the light horse of the day – in his own county. He can have had no difficulty in finding recruits, especially as his popularity in the fen-land had been, if possible, increased by his conduct in a committee held in the preceding summer, where he bitterly resented an attempt of the Earl of Manchester to enclose lands in defiance of the rights of the commoners. He was, however, resolved to pick the sixty men he needed. We can well understand that in choosing his subordinates he would be inspired by an instinctive desire to prize those qualities in his soldiers which were strongly developed in his own character, in which strenuous activity was upheld by unswerving conviction and perfervid spiritual emotion. He could choose the better because he had neighbours, friends and kinsmen from whom to select. The Quarter-master of his troop was John Desborough, his brother-in-law, whilst another brother-in-law, Valentine Wauton, though not actually serving under Cromwell, rallied to his side, and became the captain of another troop in the Parliamentary army. To the end of his career Cromwell never forwarded the prospects of a kinsman or friend unless he was persuaded of his efficiency, though he never shrank from the promotion of kinsmen whom he believed himself able to trust in order to shake off the charge of nepotism from himself.
The sobriety of Cromwell's judgment was as fully vindicated by his choice of the cavalry arm for himself, as by the selection of his subordinates. If the result of the coming war was to be decided by superiority in cavalry, as would certainly be the case, the chances were all in favour of the Royalist gentry, whose very nickname of 'cavaliers' was a presage of victory, and who were not only themselves familiar with horsemanship from their youth up, but had at their disposal the grooms and the huntsmen who were attached to their service. "Your troops," he said some weeks later to his cousin Hampden, after the failure of the Parliamentary horse had become manifest, "are most of them old decayed serving men and tapsters, and such kind of fellows; and their troops are gentlemen's sons and persons of quality. Do you think the spirits of such base and mean fellows will ever be able to encounter gentlemen that have honour and courage and resolution in them?.. You must get men of spirit, and, take it not ill what I say – I know you will not – of a spirit that is likely to go on as far as gentlemen will go, or else you will be beaten still." The importance of a good cavalry was in those days relatively much greater than it is now. A body of infantry composed in about equal proportions of pikemen and musketeers, the latter armed with a heavy and unwieldy weapon, only to be fired at considerable intervals, and requiring the support of a rest to steady it, needed to be placed behind hedges to resist a cavalry charge. It was a recognised axiom of war that a foot regiment marching across open country required cavalry as a convoy to ward off destructive attacks by the enemy's horse. So unquestioned was the inferiority of infantry, that unless the horsemen who gathered round Charles's standard when it was displayed on the Castle Hill at Nottingham could be overpowered, the resistance of the Parliamentary army could hardly be prolonged for many months. That they were overpowered was the achievement of Cromwell, and of Cromwell alone.
It was something that Cromwell had gathered round him his sixty God-fearing men. It was more, that he did not confide, as a mere fanatic would have done, in their untried zeal. His recruits were subjected to an iron discipline. The hot fire of enthusiasm for the cause in which they had been enlisted burnt strongly within them. They had drawn their swords not for constitutional safeguards, but in the service of God Himself, and God Himself, they devoutly trusted, would shelter His servants in the day of battle against the impious men who were less their enemies than His. It was no reason – so they learnt from their captain – that they should remit any single precaution recommended by the most worldly of military experts. Cromwell almost certainly never told his soldiers – in so many words – to trust in God and keep their powder dry. Yet, apocryphal as is the anecdote, it well represents the spirit in which Cromwell's commands were issued. The very vividness of his apprehension of the supernatural enabled him to pass rapidly without any sense of incongruity from religious exhortations to the practical satisfaction of the demands of the material world.
When on October 23, 1642, the first battle of the war was fought at Edgehill, Cromwell's troop was one of the few not swept away by Rupert's headlong charge, probably because coming late upon the field he did not join the main army till the Royalist horse had ceased to trouble it. At all events, he took his share in the indispensable service rendered by the little force of cavalry remaining at Essex's disposal, when in the opposing ranks there was no cavalry at all. It was the co-operation of this force which, by assailing in flank and rear the King's foot regiments, whilst the infantry broke them up in front, enabled the Parliamentary army to claim at least a doubtful victory in the place of the rout which would have befallen it if Rupert, on his late return, had found his master's foot in a condition to carry on the struggle. Whatever else Cromwell learnt from his first experience of actual warfare, he had learnt from Rupert's failure after early success never to forget that headlong valour alone will accomplish little, and that a good cavalry officer requires to know when to draw rein, as well as when to charge, and to subordinate the conduct of the attack in which he is personally engaged to the needs of the army as a whole.
Many months were to pass away before Cromwell was to measure swords with Rupert. He remained under Essex almost to the end of the year, and was present at Turnham Green, when Essex saw Charles, after taking up a position at Brentford in the hope of forcing a passage to London, march off to Reading and Oxford without attempting to strike a blow. Towards the end of 1642, or in the early part of 1643, Cromwell had work found for him which was eventually to breathe a new spirit into the Parliamentary army. Enormous as was the advantage which the devotion of London conferred upon Parliament, London by no means exercised that supreme influence which was exercised by Paris in the times of the French Revolution. Both parties, therefore, put forth their efforts in organising local forces, but of all the local organisations which were brought into existence, the only one entirely successful was the Eastern Association, comprising Essex, Suffolk, Norfolk, Cambridge and Herts, and that mainly because Cromwell was at hand to keep it up to the mark. There was to be a general fund at the service of the association, whilst the forces raised in the several shires of which it was composed were to be at the disposal of a common committee.
In England generally the first half of 1643 was a time of desultory fighting, alternating with efforts to make peace without the conditions which might have brought peace within sight. It was not to be expected either that Parliament would accept Charles on his own terms, or that Charles would bow down to any terms which Parliament was likely to offer. Cromwell, at least, took no part in these futile negotiations, and did all that in him lay to clear the counties of the Eastern Association from Royalists, and to put them in a state of defence against Royalist incursions. At some time later than January 23, and before the end of February, he was promoted to a colonelcy. In March he was fortifying Cambridge, and urgently pleading for contributions to enable him to complete the work. Again we find him sending to arrest a Royalist sheriff who attempted to collect soldiers at St. Alban's, and then hurrying to Lowestoft to crush a Royalist movement in the town. After this no more is heard of Royalism holding up its head in any corner of the association, and to the end of the war no Royalist in arms again set foot within it. By the end of May it was joined by Huntingdonshire, the county of Cromwell's birth.
Cromwell's superabundant energy was employed in other ways than in contending against armed men. Laud's enforcement of at least external signs of respect to objects consecrated to religious usage had provoked a reaction which influenced Puritanism on its least noble side. A certain Dowsing has left a diary, showing how he visited the Suffolk churches, pulling down crosses, destroying pictures and tearing up brasses inscribed with Orate pro animâ, the usual expression of mediæval piety towards the dead. At Cambridge, Cromwell himself, finding opposition amongst those in authority in the University, sent up three of the Heads of Houses in custody to Westminster, and on a cold night in March shut up the Vice-Chancellor and other dignitaries in the public schools till midnight without food or firing, because they refused to pay taxes imposed by Parliament.
Nor was it only with open enemies that Cromwell and those who sympathised with him had to deal. Of all forms of war civil strife is the most hideous, and it is no wonder that the hands of many who had entered upon it with the expectation that a few months or even weeks would suffice to crush the King were now slackened. Was it not better, they asked, to come to terms with Charles than to continue a struggle which promised to drag out for years? Negotiations opened at Oxford in the spring failed, indeed, to lead to peace, because neither party had the spirit of compromise, but they were accompanied or followed by the defection from the Parliamentary ranks of men who, at the outset, had stood up manfully against the King, such as Sir Hugh Cholmley, who hoisted the royal colours over Scarborough Castle, which had been entrusted to him by the Houses; and the Hothams, father and son, who, whilst nominally continuing to serve the Parliament, were watching for an opportunity of profitable desertion. Such tendencies were encouraged by the vigour with which the King's armies were handled, and the successes they gained in the early summer. On May 16 the Parliamentary General, the Earl of Stamford, was defeated at Stratton, with the result that Sir Ralph Hopton was able to overrun the Western counties at the head of the Royalist troops, and though defeated on Lansdown by Sir William Waller, was succoured by a Royalist army which, on July 13, crushed Waller's army on Roundway Down; whilst on July 26 Bristol was taken by Rupert, and the whole of the Southern counties thrown open to the assaults of the King's partisans. Farther east, though Essex succeeded in capturing Reading, his army melted away before disease and mismanagement. On June 18 Hampden was mortally wounded at Chalgrove Field. Lord Fairfax and his son, Sir Thomas Fairfax, were with difficulty holding their own in the West Riding of Yorkshire against a Royalist force under the command of the Earl of Newcastle. By the middle of the year, the Parliamentary armies were threatened with ruin on almost every side.
The one conspicuous exception to these tales of disaster was found in the news from the Eastern Association, where Cromwell's vigour upheld the fight. Yet Cromwell had no slight difficulties against which to contend. When, by the end of April, he had cleared the shires of the association from hostile forces, he made his way into Lincolnshire, and called on the neighbouring military commanders of his own party to join him in an attack on the Royalist garrison at Newark, from which parties issued forth to overawe and despoil the Parliamentarians of the neighbourhood. Those upon whom he called – Sir John Gell at Nottingham, the Lincolnshire gentry, and Stamford's son, Lord Grey of Groby, in Leicestershire, were in command of local forces, and placed the interests of their own localities above the common good. Stamford's mansion at Broadgates, hard by Leicester, was exposed to attack from the Royalist garrison at Ashby-de-la-Zouch, and consequently Lord Grey hung back from joining in an enterprise which would leave Leicester at the mercy of the enemy, and his example was followed in other quarters. "Believe it," wrote Cromwell wrathfully, "it were better, in my poor opinion, Leicester were not, than that there should not be found an immediate taking of the field by our forces to accomplish the common ends." To subordinate local interests to the 'common ends' was as much the condition of Cromwell's success as the discipline under which he had brought the fiery troops under his command.
The result of that discipline was soon to appear. On May 13 he fell in near Grantham with a cavalry force from Newark far outnumbering his own. Taking a lesson from Rupert, who had taught him at Edgehill that the horse, and not the pistol, was the true weapon of the mounted horseman, he dashed upon the enemy, who weakly halted to receive the charge, and was thoroughly beaten in consequence. Cromwell, as usual, piously attributed his success to the Divine intervention. "With this handful," he wrote "it pleased God to cast the scale."
The success of Cromwell's horse was all the more reason why financial support should be accorded to its commander. Voluntary contributions were still the backbone of the resources of Parliament, though a system of forced payments was being gradually established. "Lay not," wrote Cromwell to the Mayor of Colchester, "too much on the back of a poor gentleman who desires, without much noise, to lay down his life and bleed the last drop to serve the cause and God. I ask not money for myself; I desire to deny myself, but others will not be satisfied."
Cromwell once more called on the local commanders to gather their forces, not for an attack on Newark, but for a march into Yorkshire to the relief of the Fairfaxes. Early in June some 6,000 men were gathered at Nottingham. Once more the effort came to nothing. The commanders excused themselves from moving, on the plea that the Fairfaxes did not need their help. One of their number, the younger Hotham, was detected in an intrigue with the enemy. Mainly by Cromwell's energy he was seized, and ultimately, together with his father, was sent to London, where they were both executed as traitors. In Yorkshire the tide was running against the Fairfaxes. On June 30 they were defeated at Adwalton Moor. The whole of the West Riding was lost, and the commanders forced to take refuge in Hull. Newcastle, with his victorious army, would soon be heard of in Lincolnshire, where Lord Willoughby of Parham had lately seized Gainsborough for Parliament. Among the troops ordered to maintain this advanced position was Cromwell's regiment, and on July 28 that regiment defeated a strong body of Royalist horse near Gainsborough. Later in the day news was brought that a force of the enemy was approaching from the North. Cromwell, whose cavalry was supported by a body of foot, went out to meet it, only to find himself face to face with Newcastle's whole army. Though the Parliamentary infantry took flight at once, the horse retired by sections, showing a bold front, and regaining the town with the loss of only two men. This cavalry, which combined the dash of Grantham with the discipline of Gainsborough, spelt victory for the Parliamentary side.
Yet, at the moment, the prospect was gloomy enough. On July 30 Gainsborough surrendered, and unless Cromwell's forces could be augmented, there was little to intervene between Newcastle's army and London. "It's no longer disputing," wrote Cromwell to the Committee at Cambridge, "but out instantly all you can. Almost all our foot have quitted Stamford; there is nothing to interrupt an enemy but our horse that is considerable. You must act lively. Do it without distraction. Neglect no means."
Cromwell knew that more than his own name was required to rally the force needed at this desperate conjuncture. At his instance Parliament appointed the new Earl of Manchester – who, as Lord Kimbolton, had been the one member of the House of Lords marked out by the King for impeachment together with the five members of the House of Commons – as Commander of the Eastern Association, and ordered an army of 10,000 men to be raised within its limits. Whilst in the South, Essex raised the siege of Gloucester, and was successful enough at Newbury to make good his retreat to London, Manchester's new army, in which Cromwell commanded the horse, defeated a party of Royalists at Winceby, compelled Newcastle to raise the siege of Hull, and retook Lincoln, which had fallen into the hands of the enemy. Lincolnshire was now added to the Eastern Association, the one part of England on which the eyes of the Parliamentary chiefs could rest with complete satisfaction.
Sooner or later Cromwell would have to face other questions than those of military efficiency. When Pym and his supporters drew up the Grand Remonstrance, they did not contemplate the introduction of any principle of religious liberty. The Church was to be exclusively Puritan, on some plan to be settled by Parliament upon the advice of an Assembly of Divines. That Assembly met on July 1, 1643, and if it had been left to itself, would probably have recommended the adoption of some non-episcopalian system of Church-government; whilst Parliament, faithful to the traditions of English governments, would have taken care that the clergy should be placed under some form of lay government emanating from Parliament itself. In the summer of 1643 it was impossible to separate questions of ecclesiastical organisation from those arising out of the political necessities of the hour. It was known that Charles was angling for the support of Ireland and Scotland, and if Parliament was not to be overborne, it was necessary to meet him on the same ground. In Ireland Charles was fairly successful. On September 15 his Lord Lieutenant obtained from the Confederate Catholics, who were in arms against his Government, a cessation of hostilities, which would enable him to divert a portion of his own troops to the defence of the King's cause in England; ultimately, as he hoped, to be followed by an army levied amongst the Irish Catholics. Charles's attempt to win Scotland to his side was less successful. The predominant party at Edinburgh was that led by the Marquis of Argyle, who had climbed to power with the help of the Presbyterian organisation of the Church, and who justly calculated that, if Charles gained his ends in England, the weight of his victorious sword would be thrown into the balance of the party led by the Duke of Hamilton. That party however, embracing as it did the bulk of the Scottish nobility, would not only have made short work of Argyle's political dictatorship, but would have taken good care that the Presbyterian clergy should, in some way or other, be reduced to dependence on the laity. When, therefore, English Parliamentary Commissioners arrived in Edinburgh to treat for military assistance, they were confronted by a demand that they should accept a document known as the Solemn League and Covenant, binding England to accept the full Scottish Presbyterian system with its Church Courts, claiming as by Divine right to settle all ecclesiastical matters without the interference of the lay government. It is true that this demand was somewhat veiled in the engagement to reform religion in the Church of England, 'according to the example of the best reformed Churches,' so as to bring the Churches in both nations to the nearest conjunction and uniformity. The leading English Commissioner, however, the younger Sir Henry Vane, was one of the few Englishmen who at this time championed a system of religious liberty, and he now succeeded in keeping a door open by proposing the addition of a few words, declaring that religion was to be reformed in England according to the Word of God, as well as by the example of the best reformed Churches. In this form the Covenant was brought back to Westminster, and in this form it was sworn to by the members of Parliament, and required to be sworn to by all Englishmen above the age of eighteen. Few indeed amongst the members of Parliament willingly placed their necks under the yoke. It was the price paid for Scottish armed assistance, simply because that assistance could be had on no other terms. The alliance with the Scots was the last work of Pym, who died before the Scottish army, the aid of which he had so dearly purchased, crossed the Borders into England.
There were two ways of opposing the Scottish system of Divine-right Presbyterianism, the old one of the Tudor and Stuart Kings, placing the Church under lay control; and the new one, proclaiming the right of individuals to religious liberty, which was advocated by Vane, and was in the course of the next few months advocated by a handful of Independent ministers in the Assembly of divines, and by writers like Roger Williams and Henry Robinson in the press. Like all new doctrines, it made its way slowly, and for long appeared to the great majority of Englishmen to be redolent of anarchy. The freedom from restraint which every revolution brings, together with the habit of looking to the Bible as verbally inspired, had led to the growth of sects upholding doctrines, some of which gave rational offence to men of cultivated intelligence and encouraged them to look for a remedy to the repressive action of the State. On the other hand, a small number of men, most of them attached to the Independent or Baptist bodies, fully accepted the principle of religious liberty, at least within the bounds of Puritanism. For the present the question was merely Parliamentary; but it might easily be brought within the sphere of military influence, and it was not without significance that, though Essex and Waller, who had comparatively failed as generals, were on the side of Presbyterian repression, Cromwell, who had shown himself to be the most successful soldier in England, declared himself on the side of liberty. In the sectarian sense indeed, Cromwell never attached himself to the Independent or to any other religious body. In firm adherence to the great doctrine of toleration, which spread abroad from the Independents or from the Baptists, who were but Independents with a special doctrine added to their tenets, Cromwell was the foremost Independent of the day.
Not that Cromwell indeed reached his conclusions as did Roger Williams, by the light of pure reason. The rites prescribed in the Prayer Book were to him a mockery of God. On January 10, 1644, he ordered a clergyman, who persisted in using the old service in Ely Cathedral, to leave off his fooling and come down from his place. But he had no liking for the Covenant, and avoided committing himself to it till the beginning of February, 1644, when he swore to it on his appointment as Lieutenant-General in Manchester's army, doubtless laying special stress in his own mind on the loop-hole offered by Vane's amendment. The cause of religious liberty appealed to him on practical grounds. How was he to fight the enemy, unless he could choose his officers for their military efficiency, and not for their Presbyterian opinions? The Major-General of Manchester's army – Crawford, a Scot of the narrowest Presbyterian type – had objected to the promotion of an officer named Packer, who was an Anabaptist. "Admit he be," wrote Cromwell in reply, "shall that render him incapable to serve the public?.. Sir, the State in choosing men to serve it takes no notice of their opinions. If they be willing faithfully to serve it – that satisfies. Take heed of being sharp, or too easily sharpened by others, against those to whom you can object little but that they square not with you in every opinion concerning matters of religion."
