Chapter 2

AnAutobiographical Sketch of James Croll, with Memoir of his Life and Work, was prepared by J. C. Irons, and published in 1896.

CROLY, GEORGE(1780-1860), British divine and author, son of a Dublin physician, was born on the 17th of August 1780. He was educated at Trinity College, Dublin, and after ordination was appointed to a small curacy in the north of Ireland. About 1810 he came to London, and occupied himself with literary work. A man of restless energy, he claims attention by his extraordinary versatility. He wrote dramatic criticisms for a short-lived periodical called theNew Times; he was one of the earliest contributors toBlackwood’s Magazine; and to theLiterary Gazettehe contributed poems, reviews and essays on all kinds of subjects. In 1819 he married Margaret Helen Begbie. Efforts to secure an English living for Croly were frustrated, according to theGentleman’s Magazine(Jan. 1861), because Lord Eldon confounded him with a Roman Catholic of the same name. Excluding his contributions to the daily and weekly press his chief works were:—Paris in 1815(1817), a poem in imitation ofChilde Harold; Catiline(1822), a tragedy lacking in dramatic force;Salathiel: A Story of the Past, the Present and the Future(1829), a successful romance of the “Wandering Jew” type;The Life and Times of his late Majesty George the Fourth(1830);Marston; or, The Soldier and Statesman(1846), a novel of modern life;The Modern Orlando(1846), a satire which owes something toDon Juan; and some biographies, sermons and theological works.

Croly was an effective preacher, and continued to hope for preferment from the Tory leaders, to whom he had rendered considerable services by his pen; but he eventually received, in 1835, the living of St Stephen’s, Walbrook, London, from a Whig patron, Lord Brougham, with whose family he was connected. In 1847 he was made afternoon lecturer at the Foundling hospital, but this appointment proved unfortunate. He died suddenly on the 24th of November 1860, in London.

HisPoetical Works(2 vols.) were collected in 1830. For a list of his works see Allibone’sCritical Dictionary of English Literature(1859).

CROMAGNON RACE,the name given by Paul Broca to a type of mankind supposed to be represented by remains found by Lartet, Christy and others, in France in the Cromagnon cave at Les Eyzies, Tayac district, Dordogne. At the foot of a steep rock near the village this small cave, nearly filled with debris, was found by workmen in 1868. Towards the top of the loose strata three human skeletons were unearthed. They were those of an old man, a young man and a woman, the latter’s skull bearing the mark of a severe wound. The skulls presented such special characteristics that Broca took them as types of a race. Palaeolithic man is exclusively long-headed, and the dolichocephalic appearance of the crania (they had a mean cephalic index of 73.34) supported the view that the “find” at Les Eyzies was palaeolithic. It is, however, inaccurate to state that brachycephaly appears at once with the neolithic age, dolichocephaly even of a pronounced type persisting far into neolithic times. The Cromagnon race may thus be, as many anthropologists believe it, early neolithic, a type of man who spread over and inhabited a large portion of Europe at the close of the Pleistocene period. Some have sought to find in it the substratum of the present populations of western Europe. Quatrefages identifies Cromagnon man with the tall, long-headed, fair Kabyles (Berbers) who still survive in various parts of Mauritania. He suggests the introduction of the Cromagnon from Siberia, “arriving in Europe simultaneously with the great mammals (which were driven by the cold from Siberia), and no doubt following their route.”

See A. H. Keane’sEthnology(1896); Mortillet,Le Préhistorique(1900); Sergi,The Mediterranean Race(1901); Lord Avebury,Prehistoric Times, p. 317 of 1900 edition.

CROMARTY, GEORGE MACKENZIE,1st Earl of(1630-1714), Scottish statesman, was the eldest son of Sir John Mackenzie, Bart., of Tarbat (d. 1654), and belonged to the same family as the earls of Seaforth. In 1654 he joined the rising in Scotland on behalf of Charles II. and after an exile of six years he returned to his own country and took some part in public affairs after the Restoration. In 1661 he became a lord of session as Lord Tarbat, but having been concerned in a vain attempt to overthrow Charles II.’s secretary, the earl of Lauderdale, he was dismissed from office in 1664. A period of retirement followed until 1678 when Mackenzie was appointed lord justice general of Scotland; in 1681 he became lord clerk register and a lord of session for the second time, and from 1682 to 1688 he was the chief minister of Charles II. and James II. in Scotland, being created viscount of Tarbat in 1685. In 1688, however, he deserted James and soon afterwards made his peace with William III., his experience being very serviceable to the new government in settling the affairs of Scotland. From 1692 to 1695 Tarbat was again lord clerk register, and having served for a short time as a secretary of state under Queen Anne he was created earl of Cromarty in 1703. He was again lord justice general from 1704 to 1710. He warmly supported the union between England and Scotland, writing some pamphlets in favour of this step, and he died on the 17th of August 1714. Cromarty was a man of much learning, and among his numerous writings may be mentioned hisAccount of the conspiracies by the earls of Gowry and R. Logan(Edinburgh, 1713).

The earl’s grandson George, 3rd earl of Cromarty (c.1703-1766), succeeded his father John, the 2nd earl, in February 1731. In 1745 he joined Charles Edward, the young pretender, and he served with the Jacobites until April 1746 when he was taken prisoner in Sutherlandshire. He was tried and sentenced to death, but he obtained a conditional pardon although his peerage was forfeited. He died on the 28th of September 1766.

This earl’s eldest son was John Mackenzie, Lord Macleod (1727-1789), who shared his father’s fortunes in 1745 and his fate in 1746. Having pleaded guilty at his trial Macleod was pardoned on condition that he gave up all his rights in the estates of the earldom, and he left England and entered the Swedish army. In this service he rose to high rank and was made Count Cromarty. The count returned to England in 1777 and was successful in raising, mainly among the Mackenzies, two splendid battalions of Highlanders, the first of which, now the Highland Light Infantry, served under him in India. In 1784 he regained the family estates and he died on the 2nd of April 1789. Macleod wrote an account of the Jacobite rising of 1745, and also one of a campaign in Bohemia in which he took part in 1757; both are printed in Sir W. Fraser’sEarls of Cromartie(Edinburgh, 1876).

Macleod left no children, and his heir was his cousin, Kenneth Mackenzie (d. 1796), a grandson of the 2nd earl, who also died childless. The estates then passed to Macleod’s sister, Isabel (1725-1801), wife of George Murray, 6th Lord Elibank. In 1861 Isabel’s descendant, Anne (1829-1888), wife of George, 3rd duke of Sutherland, was created countess of Cromartie with remainder to her second son Francis (1852-1893), who became earl of Cromartie in 1888. In 1895, two years after the death of Francis, his daughter Sibell Lilian (b. 1878) was granted by letters patent the title of countess of Cromartie.

CROMARTY,a police burgh and seaport of the county of Ross and Cromarty, Scotland. Pop. (1901) 1242. It is situated on the southern shore of the mouth of Cromarty Firth, 5 m. E. by S. of Invergordon on the opposite coast, with which there is daily communication by steamer, and 9 m. N.E. of Fortrose, the most convenient railway station. Before the union of the shires of Ross and Cromarty, it was the county town of Cromartyshire, and is one of the Wick district group of parliamentary burghs. Its name is variously derived from the Gaeliccrom, crooked, andbath, bay, orard, height, meaning either the “crooked bay,” or the “bend between the heights” (the high rocks, or Sutors, which guard the entrance to the Firth), and gave the title to the earldom of Cromarty. The principal buildings are the town hall and the Hugh Miller Institute. The harbour, enclosed by two piers, accommodates the herring fleet, but the fisheries, the staple industry, have declined. The town, however, is in growing repute as a midsummer resort. The thatched house with crow-stepped gables in Church Street, in which Hugh Miller the geologist was born, still stands, and a statue has been erected to his memory. To the east of the burgh is Cromarty House, occupying the site of the old castle of the earls of Ross. It was the birthplace of Sir Thomas Urquhart, the translator of Rabelais.

Cromarty, formerly a county in the north of Scotland, was incorporated with Ross-shire in 1889 under the designation of the county of Ross and Cromarty. The nucleus of the county consisted of the lands of Cromarty in the north of the peninsula of the Black Isle. To this were added from time to time the various estates scattered throughout Ross-shire—the most considerable of which were the districts around Ullapool and Little Loch Broom on the Atlantic coast, the area in which Ben Wyvis is situated, and a tract to the north of Loch Fannich—which had been acquired by the ancestors of Sir George Mackenzie (1630-1714), afterwards Viscount Tarbat (1685) and 1st earl of Cromarty (1703). Desirous of combining these sporadic properties into one shire, Viscount Tarbat was enabled to procure their annexation to his sheriffdom of Cromarty in 1685 and 1698, the area of the enlarged county amounting to nearly 370 sq. m. (SeeRoss and Cromarty.)

CROMARTY FIRTH,an arm of the North Sea, belonging to the county of Ross and Cromarty, Scotland. From the Moray Firth it extends inland in a westerly and then south-westerly direction for a distance of 19 m. Excepting at the Bay of Nigg, on the northern shore, and Cromarty Bay, on the southern, where it is about 5 m. wide (due N. and S.), and at Alness Bay, where it is 2 m. wide, it has an average width of 1 m. and a depth varying from 5 to 10 fathoms, forming one of the safest and most commodious anchorages in the north of Scotland. Besides other streams it receives the Conon, Peffery, Skiack and Alness, and the principal places on its shores are Dingwall near the head, Cromarty near the mouth, Kiltearn, Invergordon and Kilmuir on the north. The entrance is guarded by two precipitous rocks—the one on the north 400 ft., that on the south 463 ft. high—called the Sutors from a fancied resemblance to a couple of shoemakers (Scotice, souter), bending over their lasts. There are ferries at Cromarty, Invergordon and Dingwall.

CROME, JOHN(1769-1821), English landscape painter, founder and chief representative of the “Norwich School,” often called Old Crome, to distinguish him from his son, was born at Norwich, on the 21st of December 1769. His father was a weaver, and could give him only the scantiest education. His early years were spent in work of the humblest kind; and at a fit age he became apprentice to a house-painter. To this step he appears to have been led by an inborn love of art and the desire to acquaint himself by any means with its materials and processes. During his apprenticeship he sometimes painted signboards, and devoted what leisure time he had to sketching from nature. Through the influence of a rich art-loving friend he was enabled to exchange his occupation of house-painter for that of drawing-master; and in this he was engaged throughout his life. He took great delight in a collection of Dutch pictures to which he had access, and these he carefully studied. About 1790 he was introduced to Sir William Beechey, whose house in London he frequently visited, and from whom he gathered additional knowledge and help in his art. In 1805 the Norwich Society of Artists took definite shape, its origin being traceable a year or two further back. Crome was its president and the largest contributor to its annual exhibitions. Among his pupils were James Stark, Vincent, Thirtle and John Bernay (Barney) Crome (1794-1842), his son. J. S. Cotman, too, a greater artist than any of these, was associated with him. Crome continued to reside at Norwich, and with the exception of his short visits to London had little or no communication with the great artists of his own time. He first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1806; but in this and the following twelve years he exhibited there only fourteen of his works. With veryfew exceptions Crome’s subjects are taken from the familiar scenery of his native county. Fidelity to nature was his dominant aim. “The bit of heath, the boat, and the slow water of the flattish land, trees most of all—the single tree in elaborate study, the group of trees, and how the growth of one affects that of another, and the characteristics of each,”—these, says Frederick Wedmore (Studies in English Art), are the things to which he is most constant. He still remains, says the same critic, of many trees the greatest draughtsman, and is especially the master of the oak. His most important works are—“Mousehold Heath, near Norwich,” now in the National Gallery; “Clump of Trees, Hautbois Common”; “Oak at Poringland”; the “Willow”; “Coast Scene near Yarmouth”; “Bruges, on the Ostend River”; “Slate Quarries”; the “Italian Boulevards”; and the “Fishmarket at Boulogne.” He executed a good many etchings, and the great charm of these is in the beautiful and faithful representation of trees. Crome enjoyed a very limited reputation during his life, and his pictures were sold at low prices; but since his death they have been more and more appreciated, and have given him a high place among English painters of landscape. He died at Norwich on the 22nd of April 1821. His son, J. B. Crome, was his assistant in teaching, and his best pictures were in the same style, his moonlight effects being much admired.

A collection of “Old” Crome’s etchings, entitledNorfolk Picturesque Scenery, was published in 1834, and was re-issued with a memoir by Dawson Turner in 1838, but in this issue the prints were retouched by other hands.

CROMER, EVELYN BARING,1st Earl(1841- ), British statesman and diplomatist, was born on the 26th of February 1841, the ninth son of Henry Baring, M.P., by Cecilia Anne, eldest daughter of Admiral Windham of Felbrigge Hall, Norfolk. Having joined the Royal Artillery in 1858, he was appointed in 1861 A.D.C. to Sir Henry Storks, high commissioner of the Ionian Islands, and acted as secretary to the same chief during the inquiry into the Jamaica outbreak in 1865. Gazetted captain in 1870, he went in 1872 as private secretary to his cousin Lord Northbrook, Viceroy of India, where he remained until 1876, when he became major, received the C.S.I., and was appointed British commissioner of the Egyptian public debt office. Up to this period Major Baring had given no unusual signs of promise, and the appointment of a comparatively untried major of artillery as the British representative on a Financial Board composed of representatives of all the great powers was considered a bold one. Within a very short time it was recognized that the Englishman, though keeping himself carefully in the background, was unmistakably the predominant factor on the board. He was mainly responsible for the searching report, issued in 1878, of the commission of inquiry that had been instituted into the financial methods of the Khedive Ismail; and when that able and unscrupulous Oriental had to submit to an enforced abdication in 1879, it was Major Baring who became the British controller-general and practical director of the Dual Control. Had he remained in Egypt, the whole course of Egyptian history might have been altered, but his services were deemed more necessary in India, and under Lord Ripon he became financial member of council in June 1880. He remained there till 1883, leaving an unmistakable mark on the Indian financial system, and then, having been rewarded by the K.C.S.I., he was appointed British agent and consul-general in Egypt and a minister plenipotentiary in the diplomatic service.

Sir Evelyn Baring was at that time only a man of forty-two, who had gained a reputation for considerable financial ability, combined with an abruptness of manner and a certain autocracy of demeanour which, it was feared, would impede his success in a position which required considerable tact and diplomacy. It was a friendly colleague who wrote—

“The virtues of Patience are known,But I think that, when put to the touch,The people of Egypt will own, with a groan,There’s an Evil in Baring too much.”

“The virtues of Patience are known,

But I think that, when put to the touch,

The people of Egypt will own, with a groan,

There’s an Evil in Baring too much.”

When he arrived in Cairo in 1883 he found the administration of the country almost non-existent. Ismail had ruled with all the vices, but also with all the advantages, of autocracy. Disorder in the finances, brutality towards the people, had been combined with public tranquillity and the outer semblance of civilization. Order, at least, reigned from the Sudan to the Mediterranean, and such trivial military disturbances as had occurred had been of Ismail’s own devising and for his own purposes. Tewfik, who had succeeded him, had neither the inclination nor character to be a despot. Within three years his government had been all but overthrown, and he was only khedive by the grace of British bayonets. Government by bayonets was not in accord with the views of the House of Commons, yet Ismail’s government by the kourbash could not be restored. The British government, under Mr Gladstone, desired to establish in Egypt a sort of constitutional government; and as there existed no single element of a constitution, they had sent out Lord Dufferin (the first marquess of Dufferin) to frame one. That gifted nobleman, in the delightful lucidity of his picturesque report, left nothing to be desired except the material necessary to convert the flowing periods into political entities.1In the absence of that, the constitution was still-born, and Sir Evelyn Baring arrived to find, not indeed a clean slate, but a worn-out papyrus, disfigured by the efforts of centuries to describe in hieroglyph a method of rule for a docile people.

From that date the history of Sir Evelyn Baring, who became Baron Cromer in 1892, G.C.B. in 1895, viscount in 1897, and earl in 1901, is the history of Egypt, and requires the barest mention of its salient points here. From the outset he realized that the task he had to perform could only be effected piecemeal and in detail, and his very first measure was one which, though severely criticized at the time, has been justified by events, and which in any case showed that he shirked no responsibility, and was capable of adopting heroic methods. He counselled the abandonment, at least temporarily, by Egypt of its authority in the Sudan provinces, already challenged by the mahdi. His views were shared by the British ministry of the day and the policy of abandonment enforced upon the Egyptian government. At the same time it was decided that efforts should be made to relieve the Egyptian garrisons in the Sudan and this resolve led to the mission of General C. G. Gordon (q.v.) to Khartum. Lord Cromer subsequently told the story of Gordon’s mission at length, making clear the measure of responsibility resting upon him as British agent. The proposal to employ Gordon came from the British government and twice Sir Evelyn rejected the suggestion. Finally, mistrusting his own judgment, for he did not consider Gordon the proper person for the mission, Baring yielded to pressure from Lord Granville. Thereafter he gave Gordon all the support possible, and in the critical matter of the proposed despatch of Zobeir to Khartum, Baring—after a few days’ hesitation—cordially endorsed Gordon’s request. The request was refused by the British government—and the catastrophe which followed at Khartum rendered inevitable.

The Sudan crisis being over, for the time, Sir Evelyn Baring set to work to reorganize Egypt itself. This work he attacked in detail. The very first essential was to regulate the financial situation; and in Egypt, where the entire revenue is based on the production of the soil, irrigation was of the first importance. With the assistance of Sir Colin Scott Moncrieff, in the public works department, and Sir Edgar Vincent, as financial adviser, these two great departments were practically put in order before he gave more than superficial attention to the rest. The ministry of justice was the next department seriously taken in hand, with the assistance of Sir John Scott, while the army had been reformed under Sir Evelyn Wood, who was succeeded by Sir Francis (afterwards Lord) Grenfell. Education, the ministryof the interior, and gradually every other department, came to be reorganized, or, more correctly speaking, formed, under Lord Cromer’s carefully persistent direction, until it may be said to-day that the Egyptian administration can safely challenge comparison with that of any other state. In the meantime the rule of the mahdi and his successor, the khalifa, in the temporarily abandoned provinces of the Sudan, had been weakened by internal dissensions; the Italians from Massawa, the Belgians from the Congo State, and the French from their West African possessions, had gradually approached nearer to the valley of the Nile; and the moment had arrived at which Egypt must decide either to recover her position in the Sudan or allow the Upper Nile to fall into hands hostile to Great Britain and her position in Egypt. Lord Cromer was as quick to recognize the moment for action and to act as he had fifteen years earlier been prompt to recognize the necessity of abstention. In March-September 1896 the first advance was made to Dongola under the Sirdar, Sir Herbert (afterwards Lord) Kitchener; between July 1897 and April 1898 the advance was pushed forward to the Atbara; and on the 2nd of September 1898, the battle of Omdurman finally crushed the power of the khalifa and restored the Sudan to the rule of Egypt and Great Britain. In the negotiations which resulted in the Anglo-French Declaration of the 8th of April 1904, whereby France bound herself not to obstruct in any manner the action of Great Britain in Egypt and the Egyptian government acquired financial freedom, Lord Cromer took an active part. He also successfully guarded the interests of Egypt and Great Britain in 1906 when Turkey attempted by encroachments in the Sinai Peninsula to obtain a strategic position on the Suez Canal. To have effected all this in the face of the greatest difficulties—political, national and international—and at the same time to have raised the credit of the country from a condition of bankruptcy to an equality with that of the first European powers, entitles Lord Cromer to a very high place among the greatest administrators and statesmen that the British empire has produced. In April 1907, in consequence of the state of his health, he resigned office, having held the post of British agent in Egypt for twenty-four years. In July of the same year parliament granted £50,000 out of the public funds to Lord Cromer in recognition of his “eminent services” in Egypt. In 1908 he published, in two volumes,Modern Egypt, in which he gave an impartial narrative of events in Egypt and the Sudan since 1876, and dealt with the results to Egypt of the British occupation of the country. Lord Cromer also took part in the political controversies at home, joining himself to the free-trade wing of the Unionist party.

Lord Cromer married in 1876 Ethel Stanley, daughter of Sir Rowland Stanley Errington, eleventh baronet, but was left a widower with two sons in 1898; and in 1901 he married Lady Katherine Thynne, daughter of the 4th marquess of Bath.

1In 1892 Lord Dufferin wrote to Lord Cromer: “These institutions were a good deal ridiculed at the time, but as it was then uncertain how long we were going to remain, or rather how soon the Turks might not be reinvested with their ancient supremacy, I desired to erect some sort of barrier, however feeble, against their intolerable tyranny.” In 1906 Lord Cromer bore public testimony to the good results of the measures adopted on Lord Dufferin’s “statesmanlike initiative.” Such results were, however, only possible in consequence of the continuance of the British occupation.

CROMER,a watering-place in the northern parliamentary division of Norfolk, England, 139 m. N.E. by N. from London by the Great Eastern railway; served also by the Midland and Great Northern joint line. Pop. of urban district (1901) 3781. Standing on cliffs of considerable elevation, the town has repeatedly suffered from ravages of the sea. A wall and esplanade extend along the bottom of the cliffs, and there is a fine stretch of sandy beach. There is also a short pier. The church of St Peter and St Paul is Perpendicular (largely restored) with a lofty tower. On a site of three acres stands the convalescent home of the Norfolk and Norwich hospital. There is an excellent golf course. The herring, cod, lobster and crab fisheries are prosecuted. The village of Sheringham (pop. of urban district, 2359), lying to the west, is also frequented by visitors. A so-called Roman camp, on an elevation overlooking the sea, is actually a modern beacon.

CROMORNE,alsoCRUMHORNE1(Ger.Krummhorn; Fr.tournebout), a wind instrument of wood in which a cylindrical column of air is set in vibration by a reed. The lower extremity is turned up in a half-circle, and from this peculiarity it has gained the French nametournebout. The reed of the cromorne, like that of the bassoon, is formed by a double tongue of cane adapted to the small end of a conical brass tube or crook, the large end fitting into the main bore of the instrument. It presents, however, this difference, that it is not, like that of the bassoon, in contact with the player’s lips, but is covered by a cap pierced in the upper part with a raised slit against which the performer’s lips rest, the air being forced through the opening into the cap and setting the reed in vibration. The reed itself is therefore not subject to the pressure of the lips. The compass of the instrument is in consequence limited to the simple fundamental sounds produced by the successive opening of the lateral holes. The length of the cromornes is inconsiderable in proportion to the deep sounds produced by them, which arises from the fact that these instruments, like all tubes of cylindrical bore provided with reeds, have the acoustic properties of the stopped pipes of an organ. That is to say, theoretically they require only half the length necessary for the open pipes of an organ or for conical tubes provided with reeds, to produce notes of the same pitch. Moreover, when, to obtain an harmonic, the column of air is divided, the cromorne will not give the octave, like the oboe and bassoon, but the twelfth, corresponding in this peculiarity with the clarinet and all stopped pipes or bourdons. In order, however, to obtain an harmonic on the cromorne, the cap would have to be discarded, for a reed only overblows to give the harmonic overtones when pressed by the lips. With the ordinary boring of eight lateral holes the cromorne possesses a limited compass of a ninth. Sometimes, however, deeper sounds are obtained by the addition of one or more keys. By its construction the cromorne is one of the oldest wind instruments; it is evidently derived from the Gr. aulos2and the Roman tibia, which likewise consisted of a simple cylindrical pipe of which the air column was set in vibration, at first by a double reed, and, we have reason to believe, later by a single reed (seeAulosandClarinet). The Phrygian aulos was sometimes curved (see Tib. ii. i. 85Phrygio tibia curva sono; Virgil,Aen.xi. 737curva choros indixit tibia Bacchi).3

Notwithstanding the successive improvements that were introduced in the manufacture of wind instruments, the cromorne scarcely ever varied in the details of its construction. Such as we see it represented in the treatise by Virdung4we find it again about the epoch of its disappearance.5The cromornes existed as a complete family from the 15th century, consisting, according to Virdung, of four instruments; Praetorius6cites five—the deep bass, the bass, the tenor or alto, the cantus or soprano and the high soprano, with compass as shown. A band, or, to use the expression of Praetorius, an “accort” of cromornes comprised 1 deep bass, 2 bass, 3 tenor, 2 cantus, 1 high soprano = 9.Mersenne7explains the construction of the cromorne, giving careful illustrations of the instrument with and without the cap. From him we learn that these instruments were made in England, where they were played in concert in sets of four, five and six. Their scheme of construction and especially the reed and cap is very similar to that of the chalumeau of the musette (seeBag-pipe), but its timbre is byno means so pleasant. Mersenne’s cromornes have ten fingerholes, Nos. 7 and 8 being duplicates for right and left-handed players. They were probably sometimes used, as was the case with the hautbois de Poitou (seeBag-pipe), without the cap, when an extended compass was required.The cromornes were in very general use in Europe from the 14th to the 17th century, and are to be found in illustrations of pageants, as for instance in the magnificent collection of woodcuts designed by Hans Burgmair, a pupil of Albrecht Dürer, representing the triumph of the emperor Maximilian,8where a bass and a tenor Krumbhorn player figure in the procession among countless other musicians. In the inventory of the wardrobe, &c., belonging to Henry VIII. at Westminster, made during the reign of Edward VI., we find eighteen crumhornes (see British Museum, Harleian MS. 1419, ff. 202b and 205). The cromornes did not always form an orchestra by themselves, but were also used in concert with other instruments and notably with flutes and oboes, as in municipal bands and in the private bands of princes. In 1685 the orchestra of the Neue Kirche at Strassburg comprised two tournebouts or cromornes, and until the middle of the 18th century these instruments formed part of the court band known as “Musique de la Grande Écurie” in the service of the French kings. They are first mentioned in the accounts for the year 1662, together with the tromba-marina, although the instrument was already highly esteemed in the 16th century. In that year five players of the cromorne were enrolled among the musicians of the Grande Écurie du Roi;9they received a yearly salary of 120 livres, which various supplementary allowances brought up to about 330 livres. In 1729 one of the cromorne players sold his appointment for 4000 francs. This was a sign of the failing popularity of the instrument. The duties of the cromorne and tromba-marina players consisted in playing in the greatdivertissementsand at court functions and festivals in honour of royal marriages, births and thanksgivings.Cromornes have become of extreme rarity and are not to be found in all collections. The Paris Conservatoire possesses one large bass cromorne of the 16th century, the Kgl. Hochschule für Musik,10Berlin, a set of seven, and the Ambroser Sammlung, Vienna, a cromorne in E♭.11The museum of the Conservatoire Royal de Musique at Brussels has the good fortune to possess a complete family which is said to have belonged to the duke of Ferrara, Alphonso II. d’Este, a prince who reigned from 1559 to 1597. The soprano (cantus or discant) has the same compass as above, while those of the alto, the tenor (furnished with a key) and the bass are as shown.The bass (see figure), besides having two keys, is distinguished from the others by two contrivances like small bolts, which slide in grooves and close the two holes that give the lowest notes of the instrument. The use of these bolts, placed at the extremity of the tournebout and out of reach of the fingers of the instrumentalist, renders necessary the assistance of a person whose sole mission is to attend to them during the performance. E. van der Straeten12mentions a key belonging to a large cromorne bearing the date 1537, of which he gives a large drawing. A cromorne appears in a musical scene with a trumpet in Hermann Finck’sPractica Musica.13The “Platerspil,” of which Virdung gives a drawing, is only a kind of cromorne. It is characterized by having, instead of a cap to cover the reed, a spherical receiver surrounding the reed, to which the tube for insufflation is adapted. The Platerspiel is also frequently classified among bagpipes. In theCantigas di Sante Maria,14a MS. of the 13th century preserved in the Escorial, Madrid, two instruments of this type are represented. One of these has two straight, parallel pipes, slightly conical; the other is frankly conical with wide bore turned up at the end.Other instruments belonging by their most important characteristics of cylindrical bore and double reed to the same family as the cromorne, although the bore was somewhat differently disposed, are the racket bassoon and the sourdine or sordelline. The latter was introduced into the orchestra by Cavaliere in his operaRappresentazione di anima e di corpo, and is described by Giudotto15in his edition of the score as “Flauti overo due tibie all’ antica che noi chiamiamo sordelline,” a description which tallies with what has been said above concerning the aulos and tibia.

Mersenne7explains the construction of the cromorne, giving careful illustrations of the instrument with and without the cap. From him we learn that these instruments were made in England, where they were played in concert in sets of four, five and six. Their scheme of construction and especially the reed and cap is very similar to that of the chalumeau of the musette (seeBag-pipe), but its timbre is byno means so pleasant. Mersenne’s cromornes have ten fingerholes, Nos. 7 and 8 being duplicates for right and left-handed players. They were probably sometimes used, as was the case with the hautbois de Poitou (seeBag-pipe), without the cap, when an extended compass was required.

The cromornes were in very general use in Europe from the 14th to the 17th century, and are to be found in illustrations of pageants, as for instance in the magnificent collection of woodcuts designed by Hans Burgmair, a pupil of Albrecht Dürer, representing the triumph of the emperor Maximilian,8where a bass and a tenor Krumbhorn player figure in the procession among countless other musicians. In the inventory of the wardrobe, &c., belonging to Henry VIII. at Westminster, made during the reign of Edward VI., we find eighteen crumhornes (see British Museum, Harleian MS. 1419, ff. 202b and 205). The cromornes did not always form an orchestra by themselves, but were also used in concert with other instruments and notably with flutes and oboes, as in municipal bands and in the private bands of princes. In 1685 the orchestra of the Neue Kirche at Strassburg comprised two tournebouts or cromornes, and until the middle of the 18th century these instruments formed part of the court band known as “Musique de la Grande Écurie” in the service of the French kings. They are first mentioned in the accounts for the year 1662, together with the tromba-marina, although the instrument was already highly esteemed in the 16th century. In that year five players of the cromorne were enrolled among the musicians of the Grande Écurie du Roi;9they received a yearly salary of 120 livres, which various supplementary allowances brought up to about 330 livres. In 1729 one of the cromorne players sold his appointment for 4000 francs. This was a sign of the failing popularity of the instrument. The duties of the cromorne and tromba-marina players consisted in playing in the greatdivertissementsand at court functions and festivals in honour of royal marriages, births and thanksgivings.

Cromornes have become of extreme rarity and are not to be found in all collections. The Paris Conservatoire possesses one large bass cromorne of the 16th century, the Kgl. Hochschule für Musik,10Berlin, a set of seven, and the Ambroser Sammlung, Vienna, a cromorne in E♭.11The museum of the Conservatoire Royal de Musique at Brussels has the good fortune to possess a complete family which is said to have belonged to the duke of Ferrara, Alphonso II. d’Este, a prince who reigned from 1559 to 1597. The soprano (cantus or discant) has the same compass as above, while those of the alto, the tenor (furnished with a key) and the bass are as shown.

The bass (see figure), besides having two keys, is distinguished from the others by two contrivances like small bolts, which slide in grooves and close the two holes that give the lowest notes of the instrument. The use of these bolts, placed at the extremity of the tournebout and out of reach of the fingers of the instrumentalist, renders necessary the assistance of a person whose sole mission is to attend to them during the performance. E. van der Straeten12mentions a key belonging to a large cromorne bearing the date 1537, of which he gives a large drawing. A cromorne appears in a musical scene with a trumpet in Hermann Finck’sPractica Musica.13

The “Platerspil,” of which Virdung gives a drawing, is only a kind of cromorne. It is characterized by having, instead of a cap to cover the reed, a spherical receiver surrounding the reed, to which the tube for insufflation is adapted. The Platerspiel is also frequently classified among bagpipes. In theCantigas di Sante Maria,14a MS. of the 13th century preserved in the Escorial, Madrid, two instruments of this type are represented. One of these has two straight, parallel pipes, slightly conical; the other is frankly conical with wide bore turned up at the end.

Other instruments belonging by their most important characteristics of cylindrical bore and double reed to the same family as the cromorne, although the bore was somewhat differently disposed, are the racket bassoon and the sourdine or sordelline. The latter was introduced into the orchestra by Cavaliere in his operaRappresentazione di anima e di corpo, and is described by Giudotto15in his edition of the score as “Flauti overo due tibie all’ antica che noi chiamiamo sordelline,” a description which tallies with what has been said above concerning the aulos and tibia.

(V. M. and K. S.)

1Crumhorne need not be regarded as a corruption of the German, since the two words of which it is composed were both in use in medieval England.Crumb= curved;crumbe= hook, bend;crome= a staff with a hook at the end of it. See Stratmann’sMiddle English Dictionary(1891), and Halliwell,Dictionary of Archaic and Provincial Words(London, 1881).2See A. Howard, “Aulos or Tibia,”Harvard Studies, iv. (Boston, 1893).3See also A. A. Howard, op. cit., “Phrygian Aulos,” pp. 35-38.4Musica getutscht und auszgezogen(Basel, 1511).5See Diderot and d’Alembert’sEncyclopédie(Paris, 1751-1780), t. 5, “Lutherie,” pl. ix.6Organographia(Wolfenbüttel, 1618).7L’Harmonie universelle(Paris, 1636-1637), book v. pp. 289 and 290. Cf. “Musette,” pp. 282-287 and 305.8See “Triumphzug des Kaisers Maximilian I.” Beilage zum II. Band desJahrb. der Sammlungen des Allerhöchsten Kaiserhauses(Vienna, 1884-1885), pl. 20. Explanatory text and part i. in Band i. of the same publication, 1883-1884. A French edition with 135 plates was also published in Vienna by A. Schmidt, and in London by J. Edwards (1796). See also Dr August Reissmann,Illustrierte Geschichte der deutschen Musik(Leipzig, 1881), where a few of the plates are reproduced.9See J. Écorcheville, “Quelques documents sur la musique de la grande écurie du roi,”Sammelband d. Intern. Musik. Ges.Jahrg. ii., Heft 4 (1901, Leipzig, London, &c.), pp. 630-632.10Oskar Fleischer,Führer(Berlin, 1892), p. 29, Nos. 400 to 406.11For an illustration see Captain C. R. Day,Descriptive Catalogue(London, 1891), pl. iv. E. and p. 99.12Histoire de la musique aux Pays-Bas avant le XIXesiècle(Brussels, 1867-1888), vol. vii. p. 336, and description, p. 333 et seq.13Wittenberg, 1556; reproduced by A. Reissmann, op. cit., pp. 233 and 226.14Reproduced in Riaño’sNotes on Early Spanish Music(London, 1887), pp. 119-127.15See Hugo Goldschmidt, “Das Orchester der italienischen Oper im 17. Jahrh.”Sammelband der Intern. Musikgesellschaft, Jahrg. ii., Heft 1 (Leipzig, 1900), p. 24.

2See A. Howard, “Aulos or Tibia,”Harvard Studies, iv. (Boston, 1893).

3See also A. A. Howard, op. cit., “Phrygian Aulos,” pp. 35-38.

4Musica getutscht und auszgezogen(Basel, 1511).

5See Diderot and d’Alembert’sEncyclopédie(Paris, 1751-1780), t. 5, “Lutherie,” pl. ix.

6Organographia(Wolfenbüttel, 1618).

7L’Harmonie universelle(Paris, 1636-1637), book v. pp. 289 and 290. Cf. “Musette,” pp. 282-287 and 305.

8See “Triumphzug des Kaisers Maximilian I.” Beilage zum II. Band desJahrb. der Sammlungen des Allerhöchsten Kaiserhauses(Vienna, 1884-1885), pl. 20. Explanatory text and part i. in Band i. of the same publication, 1883-1884. A French edition with 135 plates was also published in Vienna by A. Schmidt, and in London by J. Edwards (1796). See also Dr August Reissmann,Illustrierte Geschichte der deutschen Musik(Leipzig, 1881), where a few of the plates are reproduced.

9See J. Écorcheville, “Quelques documents sur la musique de la grande écurie du roi,”Sammelband d. Intern. Musik. Ges.Jahrg. ii., Heft 4 (1901, Leipzig, London, &c.), pp. 630-632.

10Oskar Fleischer,Führer(Berlin, 1892), p. 29, Nos. 400 to 406.

11For an illustration see Captain C. R. Day,Descriptive Catalogue(London, 1891), pl. iv. E. and p. 99.

12Histoire de la musique aux Pays-Bas avant le XIXesiècle(Brussels, 1867-1888), vol. vii. p. 336, and description, p. 333 et seq.

13Wittenberg, 1556; reproduced by A. Reissmann, op. cit., pp. 233 and 226.

14Reproduced in Riaño’sNotes on Early Spanish Music(London, 1887), pp. 119-127.

15See Hugo Goldschmidt, “Das Orchester der italienischen Oper im 17. Jahrh.”Sammelband der Intern. Musikgesellschaft, Jahrg. ii., Heft 1 (Leipzig, 1900), p. 24.

CROMPTON, SAMUEL(1753-1827), English inventor, was born on the 3rd of December 1753 at Firwood near Bolton-le-Moors, Lancashire. While yet a boy he lost his father, and had to contribute to the family resources by spinning yarn. The defects of the spinning jenny imbued him with the idea of devising something better, and for five or six years the effort absorbed all his spare time and money, including what he earned by playing the violin at the Bolton theatre. About 1779 he succeeded in producing a machine which span yarn suitable for use in the manufacture of muslin, and which was known as the muslin wheel or the Hall-in-the-Wood wheel (from the name of the house in which he and his family resided), and later as the spinning mule. After his marriage in 1780 a good demand arose for the yarn which he himself made at Hall-in-the-Wood, but the prying to which his methods were subjected drove him, in the absence of means to take out a patent, to the choice of destroying his machine or making it public. He adopted the latter alternative on the promise of a number of manufacturers to pay him for the use of the mule, but all he received was about £60. He then resumed spinning on his own account, but with indifferent success. In 1800 a sum of £500 was raised for his benefit by subscription, and when in 1809 Edmund Cartwright, the inventor of the power-loom obtained £10,000 from parliament, he determined also to apply for a grant. In 1811 he made a tour in the manufacturing districts of Lancashire and Scotland to collect evidence showing how extensively his mule was used, and in 1812 parliament allowed him £5000. With the aid of this money he embarked in business, first as a bleacher and then as a cotton merchant and spinner, but again without success. In 1824 some friends, without his knowledge, bought him an annuity of £63. He died at Bolton on the 26th of June 1827.

CROMPTON,an urban district of Lancashire, England, 2½ m. N. of Oldham, within the parliamentary borough of Oldham. Pop. (1901) 13,427. At Shaw, a populous village included within it, is a station on the Lancashire & Yorkshire railway. Cotton mills and the collieries of the neighbourhood employ the large industrial population.

CROMWELL, HENRY(1628-1674), fourth son of Oliver Cromwell, was born at Huntingdon on the 20th of January 1628, and served under his father during the latter part of the Civil War. His active life, however, was mainly spent in Ireland, whither he took some troops to assist Oliver early in 1650, and he was one of the Irish representatives in the Little, or Nominated, Parliament of 1653. In 1654 he was again in Ireland, and after making certain recommendations to his father, now lord protector, with regard to the government of that country, he became major-general of the forces in Ireland and a member of the Irish council of state, taking up his new duties in July 1655. Nominally Henry was subordinate to the lord-deputy, Charles Fleetwood, but Fleetwood’s departure for England in September 1655 left him for all practical purposes the ruler of Ireland. He moderated the lord-deputy’s policy of deporting the Irish, and unlike him he paid some attention to the interests of the English settlers; moreover, again unlike Fleetwood, he appears to have held the scales evenly between the different Protestant sects, and his undoubted popularity in Ireland is attested by Clarendon. In November 1657 Henry himself was made lord-deputy; but before this time he had refused a gift of property worth £1500 a year, basing his refusal on the grounds of the poverty of the country, a poverty which was not the least of his troubles. In 1657 he advised his father not to accept the office of king, although in 1634 he had supported a motion to this effect;and after the dissolution of Cromwell’s second parliament in February 1658 he showed his anxiety that the protector should act in a moderate and constitutional manner. After Oliver’s death Henry hailed with delight the succession of his brother Richard to the office of protector, but although he was now appointed lieutenant and governor general of Ireland, it was only with great reluctance that he remained in that country. Having rejected proposals to assist in the restoration of Charles II., Henry was recalled to England in June 1659 just after his brother’s fall; quietly obeying this order he resigned his office at once. Although he lost some property at the Restoration, he was allowed after some solicitation to keep the estate he had bought in Ireland. His concluding years were passed at Spinney Abbey in Cambridgeshire; he was unmolested by the government, and he died on the 23rd of March 1674. In 1653 Henry married Elizabeth (d. 1687), daughter of Sir Francis Russell, and he left five sons and two daughters.

CROMWELL, OLIVER(1599-1658), lord protector of England, was the 5th and only surviving son of Robert Cromwell of Huntingdon and of Elizabeth Steward, widow of William Lynn. His paternal grandfather was Sir Henry Cromwell of Hinchinbrook, a leading personage in Huntingdonshire, and grandson of Richard Williams, knighted by Henry VIII., nephew of Thomas Cromwell, earl of Essex, Henry VIII.’s minister, whose name he adopted. His mother was descended from a family named Styward in Norfolk, which was not, however, connected in any way, as has been often asserted, with the royal house of Stuart. Oliver was born on the 25th of April 1599, was educated under Dr Thomas Beard, a fervent puritan, at the free school at Huntingdon, and on the 23rd of April 1616 matriculated as a fellow-commoner at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, then a hotbed of puritanism, subsequently studying law in London. The royalist anecdotes relating to his youth, including charges of ill-conduct, do not deserve credit, the entries in the register of St John’s, Huntingdon, noting Oliver’s submission on two occasions to church censure being forgeries; but it is not improbable that his youth was wild and possibly dissolute.1According to Edmund Waller he was “very well read in the Greek and Roman story.” Burnet declares he had little Latin, but he was able to converse with the Dutch ambassador in that language. According to James Heath in hisFlagellum, “he was more famous for his exercises in the fields than in the schools, being one of the chief match-makers and players at football, cudgels, or any other boisterous game or sport.” On the 22nd of August 1620 he married Elizabeth, daughter of Sir James Bourchier, a city merchant of Tower Hill, and of Felstead in Essex; and his father having died in 1617 he settled at Huntingdon and occupied himself in the management of his small estate. In 1628 he was returned to parliament as member for the borough, and on the 11th of February 1629 he spoke in support of puritan doctrine, complaining of the attempt by the king to silence Dr Beard, who had raised his voice against the “flat popery” inculcated by Dr Alabaster at Paul’s Cross. He was also one of the members who refused to adjourn at the king’s command till Sir John Eliot’s resolutions had been passed.

During the eleven years of government without parliament very little is recorded of Cromwell. His name is not connected with the resistance to the levy of ship-money or to the action of the ecclesiastical courts, but in 1630 he was one of those fined for refusing to take up knighthood. The same year he was named one of the justices of the peace for his borough; and on the grant of a new charter showed great zeal in defending the rights of the commoners, and succeeded in procuring an alteration in the charter in their favour, exhibiting much warmth of temper during the dispute and being committed to custody by the privy council for angry words spoken against the mayor, for which he afterwards apologized. He also defended the rights of the commoners of Ely threatened by the “adventurers” who had drained the Great Level, and he was nicknamed afterwards by a royalist newspaper “Lord of the Fens.” He was again later the champion of the commoners of St Ives in the Long Parliament against enclosures by the earl of Manchester, obtaining a commission of the House of Commons to inquire into the case, and drawing upon himself the severe censure of the chairman, the future Lord Clarendon, by his “impetuous carriage” and “insolent behaviour,” and by the passionate vehemence he imparted into the business. Bishop Williams, a kinsman of Cromwell’s, relates at this time that he was “a common spokesman for sectaries, and maintained their part with great stubbornness”; and his earliest extant letter (in 1635) is an appeal for subscriptions for a puritan lecturer. There appears to be no foundation for the statement that he was stopped by an order of council when on the point of abandoning England for America, though there can be little doubt that the thoughts of emigration suggested themselves to his mind at this period. He viewed the “innovations in religion” with abhorrence. According to Clarendon he told the latter in 1641 that if the Grand Remonstrance had not passed “he would have sold all he had the next morning and never have seen England more.” In 1631 he converted his landed property into money, and John Hampden, his cousin, a patentee of Connecticut in 1632, was on the point of emigrating. Cromwell was perhaps arrested in his project by his succession in 1636 to the estate of his uncle Sir Thomas Steward, and to his office of farmer of the cathedral tithes at Ely, whither he now removed. Meanwhile, like Bunyan and many other puritans, Cromwell had been passing through a trying period of mental and religious change and struggle, beginning with deep melancholy and religious doubt and depression, and ending with “seeing light” and with enthusiastic and convinced faith, which remained henceforth the chief characteristic and impulse in his career.

He represented Cambridge in the Short and Long Parliaments of 1640, and at once showed extraordinary zeal and audacity in his opposition to the government, taking a large share in business and serving on numerous and importantCromwell’s first parliamentary efforts.committees. As the cousin of Hampden and St. John he was intimately associated with the leaders of the parliamentary party. His sphere of action, however, was not in parliament. He was not an orator, and though he could express himself forcibly on occasion, his speech was incoherent and devoid of any of the arts of rhetoric. Clarendon notes on his first appearance in parliament that “he seemed to have a person in no degree gracious, no ornament of discourse, none of those talents which use to reconcile the affections of the standers by; yet as he grew into place and authority his parts seemed to be renewed.” He supported stoutly the extreme party of opposition to the king, but did not take the lead except on a few less important occasions, and was apparently silent in the debates on the Petition of Right, the Grand Remonstrance and the Militia. His first recorded intervention in debate in the Long Parliament was on the 9th of November 1640, a few days after the meeting of the House, when he delivered a petition from the imprisoned John Lilburne. He was described by Sir Philip Warwick on this occasion:—“I came into the House one morning well clad and perceived a gentleman speaking whom I knew not, very ordinarily apparelled; for it was a plain cloth suit which seemed to have been made by an ill country tailor; his linen was plain and not very clean; ... his stature was of a good size; his sword stuck close to his side; his countenance swollen and reddish; his voice sharp and untunable and his eloquence full of fervour ... I sincerely profess it much lessened my reverence as to that great council for he was very much hearkened unto.” On the 30th of December he moved to the second reading of Strode’s bill for annual parliaments. His chief interest from the first, however, lay in the religious question. He belonged to the Root and Branch party, and spoke in favour of the petition of the London citizens for the abolition of episcopacy on the 9th of February 1641, and pressed upon the House the Root and Branch Bill in May. On the 6th of November he carried a motion entrusting the train-bands south of the Trent to the command of the earl of Essex. On the 14th of January 1642, after the king’s attempt to seize the five members, he moved for a committee to put the kingdom in aposture of defence. He contributed £600 to the proposed Irish campaign and £500 for raising forces in England—large sums from his small estate—and on his own initiative in July 1642 sent arms of the value of £100 down to Cambridge, seized the magazine there in August, and prevented the king’s commission of array from being executed in the county, taking these important steps on his own authority and receiving subsequently indemnity by vote of the House of Commons. Shortly afterwards he joined Essex with sixty horse, and was present at Edgehill, where his troop was one of the few not routed by Rupert’s charge, Cromwell himself being mentioned among those officers who “never stirred from their troops but fought till the last minute.”

During the earlier part of the year 1643 the military position of Charles was greatly superior to that of the parliament. Essex was inactive near Oxford; in the west Sir Ralph Hopton had won a series of victories, and in the northBeginning of Civil War.Newcastle defeated the Fairfaxes at Adwalton Moor, and all Yorkshire except Hull was in his hands. It seemed likely that the whole of the north would be laid open and the royalists be able to march upon London and join Charles and Hopton there. This stroke, which would most probably have given the victory to the king, was prevented by the “Eastern Association,” a union of Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, Cambridgeshire and Hertfordshire, constituted in December 1642 and augmented in 1643 by Huntingdonshire and Lincolnshire, of which Cromwell was the leading spirit. His zeal and energy met everywhere with conspicuous success. In January 1643 he seized the royalist high sheriff of Hertfordshire in the act of proclaiming the king’s commission of array at St Albans; in February he was at Cambridge taking measures for the defence of the town; in March suppressing royalist risings at Lowestoft and Lynn; in April those of Huntingdon, when he also recaptured Crowland from the king’s party. In May he defeated a greatly superior royalist force at Grantham, proceeding afterwards to Nottingham in accordance with Essex’s plan of penetrating into Yorkshire to relieve the Fairfaxes; where, however, difficulties, arising from jealousies between the officers, and the treachery of John Hotham, whose arrest Cromwell was instrumental in effecting, obliged him to retire again to the association, leaving the Fairfaxes to be defeated at Adwalton Moor. He showed extraordinary energy, resource and military talent in stemming the advance of the royalists, who now followed up their victories by advancing into the association; he defeated them at Gainsborough on the 28th of July, and managed a masterly retreat before overwhelming numbers to Lincoln, while the victory on the 11th of October at Winceby finally secured the association, and maintained the wedge which prevented the junction of the royalists in the north with the king in the south.

One great source of Cromwell’s strength was the military reforms he had initiated. At Edgehill he had observed the inferiority of the parliamentary to the royalist horse, composed as it was of soldiers of fortune and the dregsCromwell’s soldiers.of the populace. “Do you think,” he had said, “that the spirits of such base, mean fellows will ever be able to encounter gentlemen that have honour and courage and resolution in them? You must get men of a spirit that is likely to go as far as gentlemen will go or you will be beaten still.” The royalists were fighting for a great cause. To succeed the parliamentary soldiers must also be inspired by some great principle, and this was now found in religion. Cromwell chose his own troops, both officers and privates, from the “religious men,” who fought not for pay or for adventure, but for their faith. He declared, when answering a complaint that a certain captain in his regiment was a better preacher than fighter, that he who prayed best would fight best, and that he knew nothing could “give the like courage and confidence as the knowledge of God in Christ will.” The superiority of these men—more intelligent than the common soldiers, better disciplined, better trained, better armed, excellent horsemen and fighting for a great cause—not only over the other parliamentary troops but over the royalists, was soon observed in battle. According to Clarendon the latter, though frequently victorious in a charge, could not rally afterwards, “whereas Cromwell’s troops if they prevailed, or though they were beaten and routed, presently rallied again and stood in good order till they received new orders”; and the king’s military successes dwindled in proportion to the gradual preponderance of Cromwell’s troops in the parliamentary army. At first these picked men only existed in Cromwell’s own troop, which, however, by frequent additions became the nucleus of a regiment, and by the time of the New Model included about 11,000 men.

In July 1643 Cromwell had been appointed governor of the Isle of Ely; on the 22nd of January 1644 he became second in command under the earl of Manchester as lieutenant-general of the Eastern Association, and on the 16th of February 1644 a member of the Committee of Both Kingdoms with greatly increased influence. In March he took Hillesden House in Buckinghamshire; in May was at the siege of Lincoln, when he repulsed Goring’s attempt to relieve the town, and subsequently took part in Manchester’s campaign in the north. At Marston Moor (q.v.) on the 2nd of July he commanded all the horse of the Eastern Association, with some Scottish troops; and though for a time disabled by a wound in the neck, he charged and routed Rupert’s troops opposed to him, and subsequently went to the support of the Scots, who were hard pressed by the enemy, and converted what appeared at one time a defeat into a decisive victory. It was on this occasion that he earned the nickname of “Ironsides,” applied to him now by Prince Rupert, and afterwards to his soldiers, “from the impenetrable strength of his troops which could by no means be broken or divided.”

The movements of Manchester after Marston Moor were marked by great apathy. He was one of the moderate party who desired an accommodation with the king, and was opposed to Cromwell’s sectaries. He remained at Lincoln, did nothing to prevent the defeat of Essex’s army in the west, and when he at last advanced south to join Essex’s and Waller’s troops his management of the army led to the failure of the attack upon the king at Newbury on the 27th of October 1644. He delayed supporting the infantry till too late, and was repulsed; he allowed the royal army to march past his outposts; and a fortnight afterwards, without any attempt to prevent it, and greatly to Cromwell’s vexation, permitted the moving of the king’s artillery and the relief of Donnington Castle by Prince Rupert. “If you beat the king ninety-nine times,” Manchester urged at Newbury, “yet he is king still and so will his posterity be after him; but if the king beat us once we shall all be hanged and our posterity be made slaves.” “My lord,” answered Cromwell, “if this be so, why did we take up arms at first? This is against fighting ever hereafter. If so let us make peace, be it ever so base.” The contention brought to a crisis the struggle between the moderate Presbyterians and the Scots on the one side, who decided to maintain the monarchy and fought for an accommodation and to establish Presbyterianism in England, and on the other the republicans who would be satisfied with nothing less than the complete overthrow of the king, and the Independents who regarded the establishment of Presbyterianism as an evil almost as great as that of the Church of England. On the 25th of November Cromwell charged Manchester with “unwillingness to have the war prosecuted to a full victory”; which Manchester answered by accusing Cromwell of having used expressions against the nobility, the Scots and Presbyterianism; of desiring to fill the army of the Eastern Association with Independents to prevent any accommodation; and of having vowed if he met the king in battle he would as lief fire his pistol at him as at anybody else. The lords and the Scots vehemently took Manchester’s part; but the Commons eventually sided with Cromwell, appointed Sir Thomas Fairfax general of the New Model Army, and passed two self-denying ordinances, the second of which, ordering all members of both houses to lay down their commissions within forty days, was accepted by the lords on the 3rd of April 1645.

Meanwhile Cromwell had been ordered on the 3rd of March by the House to take his regiment to the assistance of Waller, under whom he served as an admirable subordinate. “Althoughhe was blunt,” says Waller, “he did not bear himself with pride or disdain. As an officer he was obedient and did never dispute my orders or argue upon them.” He returned on the 19th of April, and on the 23rd was sent to Oxfordshire to prevent a junction between Charles and Prince Rupert, in which he succeeded after some small engagements and the storming of Blechingdon House. His services were felt to be too valuable to be lost, and on the 10th of May his command was prolonged for forty days. On the 28th he was sent to Ely for the defence of the eastern counties against the king’s advance; and on the 10th of June, upon Fairfax’s petition, he was named by the Commons lieutenant-general, joining Fairfax on the 13th with six hundred horse. At the decisive battle of Naseby (the 14thThe battle of Naseby.of June 1645) he commanded the parliamentary right wing and routed the cavalry of Sir Marmaduke Langdale, subsequently falling upon and defeating the royalist centre, and pursuing the fugitives as far as the outskirts of Leicester. At Langport again, on the 10th of July 1645, his management of the troops was largely instrumental in gaining the victory. As the king had no longer a field army, the war after Naseby resolved itself into a series of sieges which Charles had no means of raising. Cromwell was present at the sieges of Bridgwater, Bath, Sherborne and Bristol; and later, in command of four regiments of foot and three of horse, he was employed in clearing Wiltshire and Hampshire of the royalist garrisons. He took Devizes and Laycock House, Winchester and Basing House, and rejoined Fairfax in October at Exeter, and accompanied him to Cornwall, where he assisted in the defeat of Hopton’s forces and in the suppression of the royalists in the west. On the 9th of January 1646 he surprised Lord Wentworth’s brigade at Bovey Tracey, and was present with Fairfax at the fall of Exeter on the 9th of April. He then went to London to give an account of proceedings to the parliament, was thanked for his services and rewarded with the estate of the marquess of Worcester. He was present again with Fairfax at the capitulation of Oxford on the 24th of June, which practically terminated the Civil War, when he used his influence in favour of granting lenient terms. He then removed with his family from Ely to Drury Lane, London, and about a year later to King Street, Westminster.

The war being now over, the great question of the establishment of Presbyterianism or Independency had to be decided. Cromwell, without naming himself an adherent of any denomination, fought vigorously for Independency as a policy. In 1644 he had remonstrated at the removal by Crawford of an anabaptist lieutenant-colonel. “The state,” he said, “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 ... against those to whom you can object little but that they square not with you in every opinion concerning matters of religion.” He had patronized Lilburne and welcomed all into his regiment, and the Independents had spread from his troops throughout the whole army. But while the sectarians were in a vast majority in the army, the parliament was equally strong in Presbyterianism and opposed to toleration. The proposed disbandment of the army in February 1647 would have placed the soldiers entirely in the power of the parliament; while the negotiations of the king, first with the Scots and then with the parliament, appeared to hazard all the fruits of victory. The petition from the army to the parliament for arrears of pay was suppressed and the petitioners declared enemies of the state. In consequence the army organized a systematic opposition, and elected representatives styled Agitators or Agents to urge their claims.

Cromwell, though greatly disliking the policy of the Presbyterians, yet gave little support at first to the army in resisting parliament. In May 1647 in company with Skippon, Ireton and Fleetwood, he visited the army, inquiredParliament and the army.into and reported on the grievances, and endeavoured to persuade them to submit to the parliament. “If that authority falls to nothing,” he said, “nothing can follow but confusion.” The Presbyterians, however, now engaged in a plan for restoring the king under their own control, and by the means of a Scottish army, forced on their policy, and on the 27th of May ordered the immediate disbandment of the army, without any guarantee for the payment of arrears. A mutiny was the consequence. The soldiers refused to disband, and on the 3rd of June Cromwell, whom, it was believed, the parliament intended to arrest, joined the army. “If he would not forthwith come and lead them,” they had told him, “they would go their own way without him.” The supremacy of the army without a guiding hand meant anarchy, that of the Presbyterians the outbreak of another civil war.

Possession of the king’s person now became an important consideration. On the 31st of May 1647 Cromwell had ordered Cornet Joyce to prevent the king’s removal by the parliament or the Scots from Holmby, and Joyce by his own authority and with the king’s consent brought him to Newmarket to the headquarters of the army. Cromwell soon restored order, and the representative council, including privates as well as officers chosen to negotiate with the parliament, was subordinated to the council of war. The army with Cromwell then advanced towards London. In a letter to the city, possibly written by Cromwell himself, the officers repudiated any wish to alter the civil government or upset the establishment of Presbyterianism, but demanded religious toleration. Subsequently, in the declaration of the 14th of June, arbitrary power either in the parliament or in the king was denounced, and demand was made for a representative parliament, the speedy termination of the actual assembly, and the recognition of the right to petition. Cromwell used his influence in restraining the more eager who wished to march on London immediately, and in avoiding the use of force by which nothing permanent could be effected, urging that “whatsoever we get by treaty will be firm and durable. It will be conveyed over to posterity.” The army faction gradually gathered strength in the parliament. Eleven Presbyterian leaders impeached by the army withdrew of their own accord on the 26th of June, and the parliament finally yielded. Fairfax was appointed sole commander-in-chief on the 19th of July, the soldiers levied to oppose the army were dismissed, and the command of the city militia was again restored to the committee approved by the army. These votes, however, were cancelled later, on the 26th of July, under the pressure of the royalist city mob which invaded the two Houses; but the two speakers, with eight peers and fifty-seven members of the Commons, themselves joined the army, which now advanced to London, overawing all resistance, escorting the fugitive members in triumph to Westminster on the 6th of August, and obliging the parliament on the 20th to cancel the last votes, with the threat of a regiment of cavalry drawn up by Cromwell in Hyde Park.

Cromwell and the army now turned with hopes of a settlement to Charles. On the 4th of July Cromwell had had an interview with the king at Caversham. He was not insensible to Charles’s good qualities, was touched by the paternal affection he showed for his children, and is said to have declared that Charles “was the uprightest and most conscientious man of his three kingdoms.” TheHeads of the Proposals, which, on Charles raising objections, had been modified by the influence of Cromwell and Ireton, demanded the control of the militia and the choice of ministers by parliament for ten years, a religious toleration, and a council of state to which much of the royal control over the army and foreign policy would be delegated. These proposals without doubt largely diminished the royal power, and were rejected by Charles with the hope of maintaining his sovereign rights by “playing a game,” to use his own words,i.e.by negotiating simultaneously with army and parliament, by inflaming their jealousies and differences, and finally by these means securing his restoration with his full prerogatives unimpaired. On the 9th of September Charles refused once mere theNewcastle Propositionsoffered him by the parliament, and Cromwell, together with Ireton and Vane, obtained the passing of a motion for a new application; but the terms asked by the parliament were higher than before and included a harsh condition—theexclusion from pardon of all the king’s leading adherents, besides the indefinite establishment of Presbyterianism and the refusal of toleration to the Roman Catholics and members of the Church of England.

Meanwhile the failure to come to terms with Charles and provide a settlement appeared to threaten a general anarchy. Cromwell’s moderate counsels created distrust in his good faith amongst the soldiers, who accused him of “prostituting the liberties and persons of all the people at the foot of the king’s interest.” The agitators demanded immediate settlement by force by the army. The extreme republicans, anticipating Rousseau, put forward theAgreement of the People. This was strongly opposed by Cromwell, who declared the very consideration of it had dangers, that it would bring upon the country “utter confusion” and “make England like Switzerland.” Universal suffrage he rejected as tending “very much to anarchy,” spoke against the hasty abolition of either the monarchy or the Lords, and refused entirely to consider the abstract principles brought into the debate. Political problems were not to be so resolved, but practically. With Cromwell as with Burke the question was “whether the spirit of the people of this nation is prepared to go along with it.” The special form of government was not the important point, but its possibility and its acceptability. The great problem was to found a stable government, an authority to keep order. If every man should fight for the best form of government the state would come to desolation. He reproached the soldiers for their insubordination against their officers, and the army for its rebellion against the parliament. He would lay hold of anything “if it had but the force of authority,” rather than have none. Cromwell’s influence prevailed and these extreme proposals were laid aside.

Meanwhile all hopes of an accommodation with Charles were dispelled by his flight on the 11th of November from Hampton Court to Carisbroke Castle in the Isle of Wight, his object being to negotiate independently with theFlight of the king.Scots, the parliament and the army. His action, however, in the event, diminished rather than increased his chances of success, owing to the distrust of his intentions which it inspired. Both the army and the parliament gave cold replies to his offers to negotiate; and Charles, on the 27th of December 1647, entered into theEngagementwith the Scots by which he promised the establishment of Presbyterianism for three years, the suppression of the Independents and their sects, together with privileges for the Scottish nobles, while the Scots undertook to invade England and restore him to his throne. This alliance, though the exact terms were not known to Cromwell—“the attempt to vassalize us to a foreign nation,” to use his own words—convinced him of the uselessness of any plan for maintaining Charles on the throne; though he still appears to have clung to monarchy, proposing in January 1648 the transference of the crown to the prince of Wales. A week after the signing of the treaty he supported a proposal for the king’s deposition, and the vote ofNo Addresseswas carried. Meanwhile the position of Charles’s opponents had been considerably strengthened by the suppression of a dangerous rebellion in November 1647 by Cromwell’s intervention, and by the return of troops to obedience. Cromwell’s difficulties, however, were immense. His moderate and trimming attitude was understood neither by the extreme Independents nor by the Presbyterians. He made one attempt to reconcile the disputes between the army and the politicians by a conference, but ended the barren discussion on the relative merits of aristocracies, monarchies and democracies, interspersed with Bible texts, by throwing a cushion at the speaker’s head and running downstairs. On the 19th of January 1648 Cromwell was accused of high treason by Lilburne. Plots were formed for his assassination. He was overtaken by a dangerous illness, and on the 2nd of March civil war in support of the king broke out.

Cromwell left London in May to suppress the royalists in Wales, and took Pembroke Castle on the 11th of July. Meanwhile behind his back the royalists had risen all over England, the fleet in the Downs had declared for Charles, and the Scottish army under Hamilton had invaded the north. Immediately on the fall of Pembroke Cromwell set out to relieve Lambert, who was slowly retreating before Hamilton’s superior forces; he joined him near Knaresborough on the 12th of August, and started next day in pursuit of Hamilton in Lancashire, placing himself at Stonyhurst near Preston, cutting off Hamilton from the north and his allies, and defeating him in detail on the 17th, 18th and 19th at Preston and at Warrington. He then marched north into Scotland, following the forces of Monro, and established a new government of the Argyle faction at Edinburgh; replying to the Independents who disapproved of his mild treatment of the Presbyterians, that he desired “union and right understanding between the godly people, Scots, English, Jews, Gentiles, Presbyterians, Anabaptists and all; ... a more glorious work in our eyes than if we had gotten the sacking and plunder of Edinburgh ... and made a conquest from the Tweed to the Orcades.”

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