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OLIVER CROMWELL AND THE PROTECTORATE

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 November 2010

Blair Worden
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Abstract

It is often said that if Oliver Cromwell had lived longer the Puritan Revolution could have survived. The monarchical component of protectoral rule, and the protector's endeavours to broaden the base of his regime, are taken to have signalled a return towards normality and thus towards stability. That mood has been contrasted with the self-destruction of the revolution in the two years after Cromwell's death, a period of twilit anarchy which only the restoration of the Stuarts could end. That interpretation has its points but is misleadingly one-sided. The protectorate had frailties which it never overcame. It failed to live down its origins in the military coups of 1653. Those episodes affronted principles of civilian rule and parliamentary supremacy which commanded widespread support but which have been obscured by the ‘revisionist’ trend of parliamentary history. Though he aimed at ‘healing and settling’, the protector healed little and settled nothing. His attempts to woo mainstream opinion were unsuccessful. In so far as he won its compliance or tolerance, the achievement was conditional upon his readiness to submit to the principles of rule which his seizure of power had broken. It was a condition he could not or would not meet. By the end of his life, military obstruction to civilian and parliamentary rule had reduced his regime to paralysis, and had deepened the divisions between civilian and military aspirations that would soon bring down his successor and would destroy each of the fleeting regimes that followed.

Type
Research Article
Information
Transactions of the Royal Historical Society , Volume 20 , December 2010 , pp. 57 - 83
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Historical Society 2010

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References

1 Swedish Diplomats at Cromwell's Court, 1655–1656, ed. Michael Roberts (Camden Society, fourth series, 36, 1988), 114, 127, 289; Worden, Blair, ‘Oliver Cromwell and the Council’, in The Cromwellian Protectorate, ed. Little, Patrick (Woodbridge, 2007), 97Google Scholar.

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14 Collection, ed. Birch, ii, 620, iii, 294; Diary of Thomas Burton, ed. J. T. Rutt (4 vols., 1828), iii, 211; Writings and Speeches, ed. Abbott, iv, 879; Peter Toon, God's Statesman. The Life and Work of John Owen (Exeter, 1971), 100.

15 Worden, ‘Oliver Cromwell and the Sin of Achan’, 42–6, 50–1.

16 Writings and Speeches, ed. Abbott, i, 577, 676–8, 696–9.

17 Ibid., i, 646, ii, 189–90, 328–9, 453, 560–1.

18 Ibid., iii, 88–9, 756.

19 Speeches of Oliver Cromwell, ed. Roots, 7, 75.

20 Ibid., 74.

21 The Clarke Papers V, ed. Frances Henderson (Camden Society, fifth series, 27, 2005), 272.

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23 I have said something of the latter in my ‘Oliver Cromwell and the Sin of Achan’, and in my ‘Providence and Politics in Cromwellian England’, Past and Present, 109 (1985), 55–99.

24 Collection, ed. Birch, iii, 150.

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28 Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (ODNB): ‘Howe, John’; and see Lee Prosser, ‘Writings and Sources XXII: The Palace of the Republic’, Cromwelliana (2009), 82.

29 ODNB: ‘Manton, Thomas’.

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33 Collection, ed. Birch, ii, 163.

34 Correspondence of Henry Cromwell, ed. Gaunt, 76; Writings and Speeches, ed. Abbott, iii, 756.

35 ‘Johannes Cornubiensis’, The Grand Catastrophe (1654), 13. As well as the familiar sources for the public roles given to Richard and Henry Cromwell, see the eminence accorded to Henry by the secretariat of the council of state in minutes of council meetings in the month before Oliver's assumption of the protectorate: The National Archives (TNA), SP25/4–6, 25/72.

36 Desborough: Worden, Blair, Literature and Politics in Cromwellian England (Oxford, 2007), 328Google Scholar; Whalley: ‘The Correspondence of Henry Cromwell, 1655–1659’, ed. Clyve Jones (M.Litt. thesis, University of Lancaster, 1969), 213; Goffe: Writings and Speeches, ed. Abbott, i, 541; Conscience-Oppression (1657), 52; Berry: Collection, ed. Birch, iv, 498 (cf. ibid., vii, 365). I am most grateful to Mr Jones for enabling me to use a copy of his invaluable dissertation. On the officers see too Correspondence of Henry Cromwell, ed. Gaunt, 277.

37 Worden, ‘Oliver Cromwell and the Council’, 101–2.

38 Speeches of Oliver Cromwell, ed. Roots, 132–3, 140.

39 Writings and Speeches, ed. Abbott, iii, 67.

40 Constitutional Documents of the Puritan Revolution, ed. S. R. Gardiner (Oxford, 1899), 414.

41 On them see Peter Gaunt, ‘“To Create a Little World out of Chaos”: The Protectoral Ordinances of 1653–1654 Reconsidered’, in Cromwellian Protectorate, ed. Little, 105–26.

42 On it see Paul Hunneyball, ‘Cromwellian Style: The Architectural Trappings of the Protectorate Regime’, in Cromwellian Protectorate, ed. Little, 53–81.

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44 TNA, SP 18/67, no. 56, 25/75: 6 Aug. 1657, item 6; Writings and Speeches, ed. Abbott, iii, 774, 784; Calendar of State Papers Domestic (CSPD) 1655, 128, 1656–7, 82; Severall Proceedings of State Affaires, 30 Mar. – 6 Apr. 1654, 3749; Swedish Diplomats at Cromwell's Court, ed. Roberts, 74; Collection, ed. Birch, ii, 106, 245, vi, 428, vii, 64; F. P. G. Guizot, History of Oliver Cromwell and the English Commonwealth, trans. A. R. Scoble (2 vols., 1854), ii, 436 (though cf. ibid., ii, 446–9). In the minutes of the protectoral council he was often called ‘Mr. Secretary’, the courtesy title that had customarily been given to secretaries of state.

45 TNA, SP25/75, 10 (CSPD 1653–4, 309).

46 Clarke Papers, ed. Firth, iii, 47.

47 Ibid., iii, 141; Bodleian Library, Carte MS 73, fo. 187v; CSPD 1657–8, 344.

48 These inconsistencies and confusions can be glimpsed in Collection, ed. Birch, ii, 285; Writings and Speeches, ed. Abbott, iii, 296–7, 507, 809; and the references of petitions to the council by Cromwell (e.g. TNA, SP 18/69, no. 71, 18/76, no. 7, 18/99, no. 58). The suggestion in Peter Gaunt's admirable article, ‘“The Single Person's Confidants and Dependants”? Oliver Cromwell and his Protectoral Councillors’, Historical Journal, 32 (1991), 553, that Cromwell used the word ‘we’ to refer to decisions taken by him together with the council could explain only some of the cases.

49 Historians consequently cannot agree whether he did: Complete Prose Works of John Milton, ed. D. M. Wolfe et al. (8 vols., New Haven, 1953–82), vii, 4–5.

50 Collection, ed. Birch, vi, 506.

51 Ibid., vii, 193, 269.

52 Ibid., vi, 858.

53 Worden, ‘Oliver Cromwell and the Council’, 103.

54 Collection, ed. Birch, vi, 93.

55 Ibid., vii, 451.

56 Ibid., vii, 348; cf. ibid., vii, 269.

57 Ibid., vii, 365, 366.

58 Hyde, Edward, earl of Clarendon, The History of the Rebellion, ed. Macray, W. D. (6 vols., Oxford, repr. 1958), vi, 98Google Scholar.

59 C. H. Firth, Oliver Cromwell and the Rule of the Puritans in England (1900), 425–6, 428; Firth, Last Years of the Protectorate, ii, ch. 12.

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63 Worden, Literature and Politics in Cromwellian England, 142.

64 Clarendon, History of the Rebellion, i, 476–7, ii, 82, 461, 479 (cf. ii, 25), iii, 117, 181, 259.

65 Ibid., ii, 202, 279.

66 Ibid., ii, 66, 149.

67 The Trial of Charles I, ed. David Iagomarsino and Charles J. Wood (Dartmouth, NH, 1989), 81, 140.

68 Speeches of Oliver Cromwell, ed. Roots, 51; Diary of Thomas Burton, ed. Burton, i, xxxii, xl; Journal of the House of Commons, 14, 15 Nov. 1654.

69 The conduct and motives of its members, and the composition of its membership, are described in my The Rump Parliament 1648–1653 (Cambridge, 1974).

70 TNA, SP25/62: 19 Feb. 1649, 3; Hughes, Ann, Politics and Civil War in Warwickshire, 1620–1660 (Cambridge, 1987), 223Google Scholar.

71 Worden, The Rump Parliament, 180.

72 Underdown, Pride's Purge, 140–1.

73 Diary of Thomas Burton, ed. Burton, iii, 97.

74 Whitelocke, Bulstrode, Memorials of the English Affairs (4 vols., Oxford, 1853), ii, 526Google Scholar.

75 Worden, Rump Parliament, 277.

76 Idem, ‘Oliver Cromwell and the Council’, 85.

77 Writings and Speeches, ed. Abbott, iii, 67.

78 Worden, Rump Parliament, 26.

79 Woolrych, Austin, Commonwealth to Protectorate (Oxford, 1982), 384–5Google Scholar.

80 CSPD 1653–4, 309.

81 CSPD 1654, 284; Memoirs of Edmund Ludlow, ed. Firth, i, 372.

82 Barclay, Andrew, ‘The Lord Protector and his Court’, in Oliver Cromwell: New Perspectives, ed. Little, Patrick (Basingstoke, 2009), 205Google Scholar.

83 Woolrych, Commonwealth to Protectorate, 389–90.

84 TNA, SP25/77, 311–12.

85 Collection, ed. Birch, iv, 593.

86 CSPD 1655–6, 354.

87 Sir John Trevor of Surrey is another candidate (CSPD 1655–6, 354; see too SP25/153: 1 Jan. 1657, item 1), but the evidence does not always allow us to distinguish him from his son, John.

88 Collection, ed. Birch, iv, 644 (William Masham's father and fellow-rumper Sir William Masham), v, 711 (Thomas Scot), vi, 624 (Dennis Bond); Bodleian Library, Rawlinson MS A24, 74 (James Ashe).

89 Collection, ed. Birch, iv, 589.

90 Ibid., iv, 413.

91 Ibid., iv, 606.

92 Writings and Speeches, ed. Abbott, iv, 64 (Godfrey Bosvile and William Purefoy), 97 (John Jones); CSPD 1655, 240 (Oliver St John, Dennis Bond and the republican Thomas Chaloner).

93 Collection, ed. Birch, iv, 583: George Fleetwood, Richard Ingoldsby, Edmund West, Cornelius Holland and Simon Maine.

94 The rumper John Dove, the sheriff of Wiltshire who was captured by the royalist insurrectionaries of March 1655, subsequently assisted the government in their suppression: Collection, ed. Birch, iii, 318–19.

95 Ibid., iv, 359. An opponent of the protectorate in Cheshire, Robert Duckenfield (who like Alured was not an MP, but who like him had been happy to serve the Rump), offered to accept from Cromwell a ‘handsome military command’ to fight on the Continent, but was unwilling to accept a commission ‘within this nation’ (ibid., iii, 294).

96 Ibid., iii, 350, v, 711.

97 Ibid., iii, 161.

98 Ibid., iii, 369, iv, 549, 573–4. On Morley, and the conduct of Sussex MPs associated with him, see Anthony Fletcher, A County Community in Peace and War: Sussex 1600–1660 (1975).

99 Collection, ed. Birch, v, 490.

100 Peter Gaunt, ‘The Councils of the Protectorate’ (Ph.D. thesis, Exeter University, 1983), 129; cf. Collection, ed. Birch, vii, 587.

101 Collection, ed. Birch, v, 313.

102 Ibid., iv, 423.

103 Coleby, Andrew, Central Government and the Localities: Hampshire 1649–1689 (Cambridge, 1987), 72, 78CrossRefGoogle Scholar. In Coleby's account (p. 61) the rumper John Dunch was a supporter of the regime in Hampshire.

104 ODNB: ‘Thorpe, Francis’.

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106 Writings and Speeches, ed. Abbott, i, 346.

107 Memoirs of Edmund Ludlow, ed. Firth, i, 414.

108 Ibid., i, 414; Gardiner, History of the Commonwealth and Protectorate, iii, 226–7, 229, 269.

109 Diary of Thomas Burton, ed. Burton, iii, 48.

110 Collection, ed. Birch, vi, 706, vii, 84. When parliamentary rule was restored in May 1659 Fairfax was appointed to the council of state, though he did not take his seat (CSPD 1658–9, xxiv, 349; 1659–60, xxiii–xxv), and we cannot tell whether he agreed to the appointment.

111 This can be deduced from the names of members which appear or do not appear in the Journal of the House of Commons. The only significant exception, if we count him as a commonwealthman, was Herbert Morley.

112 ‘Three Letters Illustrative of English History’, ed. Henry Ellis, Archaeologia, 25 (1832), 139–40; and see Diary of Thomas Burton, ed. Burton, i, xxxv–xxxvi.

113 Speeches of Oliver Cromwell, ed. Roots, 48–9; Diary of Thomas Burton, ed. Burton, i, xxix, xxx.

114 Journal of the House of Commons, 19 Dec. 1654.

115 Diary of Thomas Burton, ed. Burton, iii, 107.

116 Ibid., i, xxx.

117 Ibid., i, xxix.

118 Ibid., i, xxxii.

119 Ibid., i, lvi.

120 Ibid., i, liii.

121 Ibid., i, lxv; cf. ibid., i, xxx–xxxi.

122 Ibid., i, lxvi–vii; Journal of the House of Commons, 10, 11 Nov. 1654.

123 The two assemblies are penetratingly analysed in Little, Patrick and Smith, David L., Parliaments and Politics during the Cromwellian Protectorate (Cambridge, 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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125 Ibid., vi, 360.

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128 Firth, Last Years of the Protectorate, i, 193–8; Fletcher, County Community in Peace and War, 315; cf. Little and Smith, Parliaments and Politics, 107–8.

129 Diary of Thomas Burton, ed. Burton, iii, 132; Little and Smith, Parliaments and Politics, 160.

130 Warmington, Andrew, Civil War, Interregnum and Restoration in Gloucestershire 1640–1672 (Woodbridge, 1997), 118, 120Google Scholar.

131 Diary of Thomas Burton, ed. Burton, iii, 158, 357–8.

132 Ibid., iv, 11.

133 The point is astutely conveyed by Little and Smith, Parliaments and Politics, esp. ch. 7.

134 Hughes, Politics and Civil War in Warwickshire, 292.

135 CSPD 1654, 284, 411; CSPD 1655, 173; Journal of the House of Commons, 24 Oct. 1654.

136 CSPD 1658–9, xxiv, 349; CSPD 1659–60, xxiii–xxv.

137 Writings and Speeches, ed. Abbott, iv, 866.

138 Spalding, Contemporaries of Bulstrode Whitelocke, 166.

139 Ibid., 374.

140 Speeches of Oliver Cromwell, ed. Roots, 30, 48; cf. ibid., 44.

141 Gaunt, ‘“To Create a Little World”’, 121–2.

142 Diary of Thomas Burton, ed. Burton, iii, 567.

143 Glenn Burgess, The Politics of the Ancient Constitution. An Introduction to English Political Thought 1603–1642 (1992), 96.

144 ODNB: ‘Bacon, Nathaniel’.

145 Worden, Rump Parliament, 73, 127.

146 ‘Three Letters Illustrative of English History’, ed. Ellis, 140; Journal of the House of Commons, 10 Oct. 1654.

147 TNA, SP18/126, no. 123, 125, 18/127, no. 19, 18/128, nos. 5–6, 56, 78–9, 82, 18/129, nos. 25, 57, 69–70, 110, 18/130, nos. 77–8.

148 Diary of Thomas Burton, ed. Burton, iii, 357.

149 Bulstrode Whitelocke, A Journal of the Swedish Embassy (2 vols., 1855), i, 5, 322; Whitelocke, Memorials, iv, 188; The Diary of Bulstrode Whitelocke, ed. Ruth Spalding (Oxford, 1990), 401–2, 414, 438, 464, 476, 477, 478.

150 Diary of Bulstrode Whitelocke, ed. Spalding, 407; Whitelocke, Memorials, iv, 204.

151 Diary of Bulstrode Whitelocke, ed. Spalding, 415, 417, 477, 485, 488, 489 (cf. ibid., 400).

152 Whitelockes Notes upon the Kings Writt, ed. Charles Morton (2 vols., 1766), i, xxii.

153 British Library, Stowe MS. 333.

154 Whitelocke, Memorials, iv, 187; Diary of Bulstrode Whitelocke, ed. Spalding, 401.

155 Longleat House, Whitelocke Papers, xxiv, 399–400; Spalding, Contemporaries of Bulstrode Whitelocke, 459–60.

156 Whitelocke, Memorials, iv, 6.

157 Diary of Bulstrode Whitelocke, ed. Spalding, 514.

158 Collection, ed. Birch, vii, 772; cf. ibid., vii, 794.

159 See e.g. ibid., vii, 772–3, 797.

160 Correspondence of Henry Cromwell, ed. Gaunt, 202.

161 Collection, ed. Birch, iv, 238.

162 Coleby, Central Government and the Localities, 81; cf. ibid., 21, 33, 71 (though also 79); Collection, ed. Birch, iv, 452; Peacey, Jason, ‘The Upbringing of Richard Cromwell’, in Oliver Cromwell. New Perspectives, ed. Little, Patrick (Basingstoke, 2009), 250–1Google Scholar.