It was Cromwell's habit to accept the second best, when the best proved unattainable. As to subjecting the King to a traitor's death, Cromwell, as on so many other occasions, exercised a moderating influence. Ireton, it seems, would have been satisfied if Charles were tried and sentenced, after which he might be left in prison till he consented 'to abandon his negative voice, to part from Church lands' and 'to abjure the Scots'. Cromwell even wanted the trial itself to be deferred. By a small majority the Army Council resolved that Charles's life should be spared. As a last effort in this direction, Lord Denbigh was despatched to Windsor—to which place Charles had been removed—to lay before him conditions on which he might yet be permitted to live. Charles, who cannot but have known the nature of the overtures now brought, refused even to see the messenger. Though no direct evidence has reached us, it can hardly be doubted that the terms offered included the renunciation of the negative voice and the abandonment of the Church, that is to say, of Bishops' lands; in other words, the abandonment of control over legislationand of episcopacy. Here at last Charles found no possibility of evasion, and driven as he was to the wall, the true gold which was in him overlaid by so much ignorance and wrong-headedness revealed itself in all its purity. For him the only question was whether he should betray the ordinance of God in Church and State. The incapable ruler—the shifty intriguer—was at once revealed as the sufferer for conscience' sake.
Neither Cromwell nor his brother-officers had an inkling of this. To them Charles, in refusing this final overture, had asserted his right to be the persecutor of the godly and the obstructor of all beneficent legislation. Their patience was at length exhausted. On January 1, 1649, an ordinance was sent up to the Lords creating a High Court of Justice for the trial of the King, accompanied by a resolution that 'by the fundamental laws of this kingdom it is treason in the King of England for the time being to levy war against the Parliament and Kingdom of England'. 'If any man whatsoever,' said Cromwell when this ordinance was under debate, 'hath carried on the design of deposing the King, and disinheriting his posterity; or, if any man hath yet such a design, he should be the greatest traitor and rebel in the world; but since the Providence of God hath cast this upon us, I cannot but submit to Providence, though I am not yet provided to give you advice'. In the last words were the lastsymptoms of hesitation on Cromwell's part. Somehow or other all his efforts to save Charles from destruction had failed, and it was as much in Cromwell's nature to attribute the failure to Providence as it was in Charles's nature to regard himself as the earthly champion of the laws of God.
The House of Lords having refused to pass the ordinance, the House of Commons declared 'the people to be, under God, the original of all just power,' and in consequence, 'the Commons of England in Parliament assembled' to be capable of giving the force of law to their enactments. From this time forth the name of an Act was given to the laws passed by a single House. On January 6, such an Act erected a High Court of Justice for the trial of the King, on the ground that he had had a wicked design to subvert his people's rights, and with this object had levied war against them, and also, having been spared, had continued to raise new commotions. Therefore, that no chief officer or magistrate might hereafter presume to contrive the enslaving or destroying of the nation, certain persons were appointed by whom Charles Stuart was to be tried.
Having once given his consent to the trial, Cromwell threw himself into the support of the resolution with all his vigour. "I tell you," he replied to some scruples of young Algernon Sidney on the score of legality, "we will cut off his head with the crownupon it." When a majority of the members of the Court refused to sit; when divisions of opinion arose amongst those who did sit; when difficulties, in short, of any kind arose, it was Cromwell who was ready with exhortation and persuasion to complete the work which they had taken in hand. His arguments appear to have been directed not to the technical point whether Charles had levied war against the nation or not, but to convince all who would listen that there had been a breach of trust in his refusal to do his utmost for the preservation of the people. Charles, on the other hand, maintained, as he was well entitled to do, that he was not being tried by any known law, and that the violence used against him would lead to the establishment of a military despotism over the land. Nothing he could say availed to change the determination of the grim masters of the hour. On January 27 sentence of death was pronounced by Bradshaw, the President of the Court, and on the 30th this sentence was carried into execution on a scaffold erected in front of the Banqueting House of his own palace of Whitehall.
That Cromwell, once his mind made up, had contributed more than any other to this result can hardly be doubted. If we are to accept a traditional story which has much to recommend it, we have something of a key to his state of mind. "The night after King Charles was beheaded," we are told, "my Lord Southhampton and a friend of his got leave to sit up by thebody in the Banqueting House at Whitehall. As they were sitting very melancholy there, about two o'clock in the morning, they heard the tread of somebody coming very slowly upstairs. By-and-by the door opened, and a man entered very much muffled up in his cloak, and his face quite hid in it. He approached the body, considered it very attentively for some time, and then shook his head—sighed out the words, 'Cruel necessity!' He then departed in the same slow and concealed manner as he had come. Lord Southhampton used to say that he could not distinguish anything of his face, but that by his voice and gait he took him to be Oliver Cromwell."
Whether there was indeed any such necessity may be disputed for ever, as well as that other question whether the army had a right to force on the trial and execution in the teeth of the positive law of the land. The main issue was whether, whatever positive law might say, a king was not bound by the necessities of his position to be the representative of the nation, acting on its behalf, merging his own interests in those of his people, refusing to coerce them by foreign armies, and owing to them, whenever it became prudent to speak at all, the duty of uttering words of simple truth. So Elizabeth had acted: so Bacon had taught. That Charles's own conduct was moulded on far different principles it is impossible to deny. Confidence in his own wisdom was inherent in his nature, and there isno reason to doubt that he soberly believed his critics and antagonists to be so heated by faction that he was actually unable to do his best for the nation as well as for himself unless he called foreign armies to his aid, and raised false expectations in the hope of throwing off each party with whom he was treating, as soon as a convenient opportunity arrived. Such an attitude could not but engender resistance, and when long persisted in, necessarily called forth an attitude equally unbending. That which to Cromwell was at one time a cruel necessity—at another time a decree of Providence—was but the natural result of the offence given by Charles to men who required plain dealing in a ruler from whom nothing but ill-concealed deceitfulness was to be had. The final struggle had come to be mainly one over the King's retention of the Negative Voice, which, if he had been permitted to retain it, would enable him to hinder all new legislation which did not conform to his personal wishes. No doubt he had both law and tradition on his side, but, on the other hand, his antagonists could plead that the law of the land must depend on the resolution, not of a single person, but of the nation itself.
"Fortunately or unfortunately," I can but repeat here what I have already said elsewhere, "such abstract considerations seldom admit of direct application to politics. It is at all times hard to discover what thewishes of a nation really are, and least of all can this be done amidst the fears and passions of a revolutionary struggle. Only after long years does a nation make clear its definite resolves, and, for this reason, wise statesmen—whether monarchical or republican—watch the currents of opinion, and submit to compromises which will enable the national sentiment to make its way without a succession of violent shocks. Charles's fault lay not so much in his claim to retain the Negative Voice, as in his absolute disregard of the conditions of the time, and of the feelings and opinions of every class of his subjects with which he happened to disagree. Even if those who opposed Charles in the later stages of his career failed to rally the majority of the people to their side, they were undoubtedly acting in accordance with a permanent national demand for that government by compromise which slowly, but irresistibly, developed itself in the course of the century.
"Nor can it be doubted that, if Charles had, under any conditions, been permitted to reseat himself on the throne, he would quickly have provoked a new resistance. As long as he remained a factor in English politics, government by compromise was impossible. His own conception of government was that of a wise prince, constantly interfering to check the madness of the people. In the Isle of Wight he wrote down with approval the lines in which Claudian, the servile poet of the Court of Honorius, declared it to be an error togive the name of slavery to the service of the best of princes, and asserted that liberty never had a greater charm than under a pious king. Even on the scaffold he reminded his subjects that a share in government was nothing appertaining to the people. It was the tragedy of Charles's life that he was utterly unable to satisfy the cravings of those who inarticulately hoped for the establishment of a monarchy which, while it kept up the old traditions of the country, and thus saved England from a blind plunge into an unknown future, would yet allow the people of the country to be to some extent masters of their own destiny.
"Yet if Charles persistently alienated this large and important section of his subjects, so also did his most determined opponents. The very merits of the Independents—their love of toleration and of legal and political reform, together with their advocacy of democratic change—raised opposition in a nation which was prepared for none of these things, and drove them step by step to rely on armed strength rather than upon the free play of constitutional action. But for this, it is probable that the Vote of No Addresses would have received a practically unanimous support in the Parliament and the nation, and that in the beginning of 1648 Charles would have been dethroned, and a new government of some kind or other established with some hope of success. As it was, in their despair of constitutional support, theIndependents were led, in spite of their better feelings, to the employment of the army as an instrument of government.
"The situation, complicated enough already, had been still further complicated by Charles's duplicity. Men who would have been willing to come to terms with him despaired of any constitutional arrangement in which he was to be a factor, and men who had been long alienated from him were irritated into active hostility. By these he was regarded with increasing intensity as the one disturbing force with which no understanding was possible and no settled order consistent. To remove him out of the way appeared, even to those who had no thought of punishing him for past offences, to be the only possible road to peace for the troubled nation. It seemed that, so long as Charles lived, deluded nations and deluded parties would be stirred up by promises never intended to be fulfilled, to fling themselves, as they had flung themselves in the Second Civil War, against the new order of things which was struggling to establish itself in England.
"Of this latter class Cromwell made himself the mouthpiece. Himself a man of compromises, he had been thrust, sorely against his will, into direct antagonism with the uncompromising King. He had striven long to mediate between the old order and the new, first by restoring Charles as a constitutionalKing, and afterwards by substituting one of his children for him. Failing in this, and angered by the persistence with which Charles stirred up Scottish armies and Irish armies against England, Cromwell finally associated himself with those who cried out most loudly for the King's blood. No one knew better than Cromwell that it was folly to cover the execution of the King with the semblance of constitutional propriety, and he may well have thought that, though law and constitution had both broken down, the first step to be taken towards their reconstruction was the infliction of the penalty of death upon the man who had shown himself so wanting in the elementary quality of veracity upon which laws and constitutions are built up. All that is known of Cromwell's conduct at the trial points to his contempt for the legal forms with which others were attempting to cover an action essentially illegal."
A further question which has been often mooted is whether Cromwell—whatever may be said on the purity of his motives—did not commit a blunder in respect of the interests of himself and his cause. If those who have discussed this problem mean that the attempt to establish a free government during Cromwell's lifetime was rendered more difficult by the execution of the King, it is hard to gainsay their opinion, though the estrangement of the bulk of the population from the new order, in consequence of theexecution, is probably very much exaggerated. Those who, like the Cavaliers, had been mulcted of a portion of their estates had an additional reason for detesting a government which had used them so ill, and there must have been a certain number amongst the crowds who read theEikon Basilike—the little book in which Charles's vindication of his life was supposed to have been written by his own hand—who were permanently affected by that sentimental production of Dr. Gauden. If, however, it is argued that Cromwell and his allies might possibly have succeeded in establishing a government to their taste if they had abstained from inflicting the last penalty on the King, it can only be answered that other causes made their success in the highest degree improbable. Their plans for the benefit of the people were on the one hand too far advanced to secure popular support; and, on the other hand, too defective in fair-play to their opponents to deserve it. Puritanism was not, and never could be the national religion, and though it made more enemies through its virtues than through its defects, those who strove to enforce its moral and social precepts needed a strong military force at their backs. The irritation caused by the interference of the army in religion and politics, and by the demands on the tax-payer which the maintenance of the army rendered necessary, would surely have been fatal to any government resting on such a basis, even if Charles had been suffered toprolong his days. If there remains any interest in Cromwell's career after the execution of the King it arises from his constantly renewed efforts to throw off this incubus, and his repeated failures to achieve his purpose.
During the last weeks of Charles's life, the army, in co-operation with some of the Levellers, had drawn up an enlarged edition ofThe Agreement of the People, a task which was completed on January 15. In accordance with Cromwell's wish, this proposed constitution was laid before Parliament on the 20th for its approval, instead of being imposed on Parliament by a previous vote amongst the so-called well affected. Parliament being sufficiently busy at the time, laid the proposal aside with a few well-chosen compliments. The members had no wish to engage, at such a moment, in the uncertainties of a general election.
There can be little doubt that in this matter Parliament was instinctively in the right. That mutilated Assembly to which modern writers give the name of 'the Rump,' though no such word was employed by contemporaries till its reappearance on the scene some time after Cromwell's death, was in possession of the field. It now contented itself withproclaiming England to be a Commonwealth without King or House of Lords, and with electing an annually renewable Council of State to perform executive functions under its own control. The first political act of the sovereign Parliament was to order the execution of the Duke of Hamilton, the Earl of Holland, and Lord Capel, who, having taken the King's part in the last war, had been condemned by a High Court of Justice, similar to the one that had sent Charles to the block. For the moment the most serious danger to the young Commonwealth arose from the opposition of Lilburne and the Levellers, who, not content with asking, on the ground of abstract principles, for the immediate foundation of a democratic Republic in the place of the existing makeshift arrangement, extended their propaganda to the army itself, appealing to the private soldiers against the officers. Lilburne and three of his supporters were summoned before the Council. Lilburne, having threatened to burn down any place in which he might be imprisoned, was directed to retire. From the outer room he listened to the voices in the Council chamber. "I tell you, sir," said Cromwell, "you have no other way of dealing with these men but to break them, or they will break you; yea, and bring all the guilt of the blood and treasure shed and spent in this kingdom upon your heads and shoulders; and frustrate and make void all that work that, withso many years' industry, toil and pains you have done, and so render you to all rational men in the world as the most contemptiblest generation of silly, low-spirited men in the earth, to be broken and routed by such a despicable, contemptible generation of men as they are, and therefore, Sir, I tell you again, you are necessitated to break them." We can sympathise with Lilburne now in his desire to establish government by the people, to confirm individual right, and to restrain the commanders of the army from political power. Yet, after all, the practical necessities of the hour were on Cromwell's side.
It was not long before the mutinous spirit to which Lilburne appealed showed itself in the army. A regiment quartered at Salisbury refused obedience to its officers, and roamed about the country seeking for other bodies of troops with which to combine. Fairfax set out from London in chase, and on the night of May 14 Cromwell, by a forced march with his cavalry, overtook the mutineers at Burford. Three were executed, and the remainder submitted to the inevitable.
It was the more necessary to keep the army in hand, as there was renewed fighting in prospect. The eldest son of the late King, now claiming the title of Charles II., was about to make an effort to seat himself on his father's throne, and hoped, as his father had hoped before him, to have on his side theforces of Scotland and Ireland. For many years the problem of the relations between the three countries had been inviting a solution. Both Scotland and Ireland had social and political interests of their own, and the natural reluctance of the inhabitants of either country to see these merged in those of the wealthier and more numerous people of England would in any case have called for delicate handling. The rise for the first time of a powerful army in England made her relations with the two other countries even more difficult than before, and had contributed fully as much as zeal for Presbyterianism to the ridiculous scheme of re-establishing Charles I. as a covenanting King. After the defeat of Hamilton, indeed, Argyle and the Scottish clergy had welcomed Cromwell's support in the overthrow of the power of the nobility, but the dread of English predominance had not been entirely dispelled, and the King's execution added a sentimental grievance to other causes of alarm. In refusing to allow any English government to dispose of Scotland, the Scots were undoubtedly within their rights; but when on February 5 they proclaimed Charles II. not merely as King of Scotland, but as King of Great Britain, France and Ireland, they took up a position which no English government could allow to remain unchallenged, whilst in adding a condition that Charles was to be admitted to power only on his engagementto rule according to the National Covenant and the Solemn League and Covenant, they put forward the monstrous claim to control the religious development of England and Ireland, as well as of their own country.
The necessity—according to these conditions—of coming to an understanding with Charles, made Scotland little dangerous for the moment, and enabled the English Parliament to turn its attention to Ireland, to which Charles I. had looked hopefully after the failure of the Hamilton invasion. Ormond, who had formerly headed Charles's partisans in Ireland, now returned to that country as the King's Lord Lieutenant, and brought under his leadership, not only his old followers, but the army of the Confederate Catholics. Though Owen O'Neill, at the head of an army raised amongst the Celts of Ulster, kept aloof, the way seemed open for Ormond to attack Dublin, which was now guarded by a Parliamentary garrison under Michael Jones, and was almost the only place in Ireland still holding out for England. As in Scotland, so in Ireland, the question was not so much whether England was to win forcible mastery over those portions of the British Isles outside her borders, as whether they were to be used to determine the political institutions of England herself. The attacks on Ireland and Scotland, which were now to follow, were in a certain sense acts of defensive warfare.
To no man more than Cromwell was this thought present. An Englishman of Englishmen—his bitterest complaint against the late King had been that he had attempted to 'vassalise' England to a foreign nation, and when on March 15 he was named to the command, he explained to his brother officers the reasons which inclined him to accept the post. "Truly," he said, "this is really believed:—If we do not endeavour to make good our interest there, and that timely, we shall not only have our interest rooted out there, but they will, in a very short time, be able to land forces in England and put us to trouble here; and I confess I have these thoughts with myself that perhaps may be carnal and foolish: I had rather be overrun with a Cavalierish interest than a Scottish interest; had rather be overrun by a Scottish interest than an Irish interest, and I think of all this is most dangerous; and, if they shall be able to carry on their work, they will make this the most miserable people in the earth; for all the world knows their barbarism—not of any religion almost any of them, but, in a manner, as bad as Papists—and truly it is thus far that the quarrel is brought to this State that we can hardly return into that tyranny that formerly we were under the yoke of ... but we must at the same time be subject to the kingdom of Scotland and the kingdom of Ireland for the bringing in of the King. Now it should awaken all Englishmen who perhaps are willing enough heshould have come in upon an accommodation; but now he must come in from Ireland or Scotland."
In these words are revealed the convictions that dominated Cromwell's action at this period of his life. So far as it lay in him, he would never admit that Scotland, still less that Ireland, should impose a government upon England. On July 12 he set out for Ireland. Before he could embark he received the welcome news that Michael Jones had defeated Ormond at Rathmines, and that Dublin was consequently out of danger. When he landed at Dublin, his intention was, as soon as possible, to make his way into Munster and rally round him the Protestant colonists who formed a considerable part of the population of the towns on the coast. It was, however, necessary first to protect Dublin from an attack from the north, from which quarter Owen O'Neill, who, after long hesitation, had thrown in his lot with Ormond, was expected to advance. Accordingly, on September 1, Cromwell marched upon Drogheda, which was held for the King by a garrison of about 2,800 men, mainly composed of Irishmen, under Sir Arthur Aston. On the 10th Cromwell summoned the place, and on the refusal of the governor to surrender opened a cannonade on the south-eastern angle. It was impossible for the garrison—short of ammunition as it was—to hold out long, and on the second day, when a breach had been effected, Cromwellgave the word to storm. The assailants, though twice driven back, were, on the third attempt, successful. Aston, with about three hundred men, took refuge on a huge artificial mound, known as the Mill Mount. Angry at the prolonged resistance, Cromwell gave the word to put to the sword all who were in arms. The hasty word was ruthlessly obeyed, and some two thousand men were slaughtered in cold blood. There is no doubt that in what he did, Cromwell was covered by the strict law of war, which placed a garrison refusing surrender outside the pale of mercy; but the law had seldom been acted on in the English war, and it is permissible to doubt whether Cromwell would have acted on it on this occasion, if the defenders had been others than 'Irish Papists,' as he scornfully called them. The memory of the Ulster massacre of 1641, not merely as it really was, but accompanied by all the exaggerations to which it had been subjected by English rumour, was ever present to his mind, and he regarded every Irishman in arms, not as an honourable antagonist, but as either a murderer or a supporter of murderers.
Yet even Cromwell seems to have thought the deed deserving of excuse. "Truly," he wrote to Bradshaw, the President of the Council, "I believe this bitterness will save much effusion of blood through the goodness of God. I wish that all honest hearts may give the glory of this to God alone, towhom indeed the praise of this mercy belongs." "I am persuaded," he assured Lenthall, "that this is a righteous judgment of God upon those barbarous wretches who have imbrued their hands in so much innocent blood, and it will tend to prevent the effusion of blood for the future, which are the satisfactory grounds for such actions, which otherwise cannot but work remorse or regret."
Leaving a garrison behind him in Drogheda, Cromwell marched to the south by way of Wexford. There too a slaughter took place, though this time it was brought on by the act of the townsmen, who continued their resistance after the walls had been scaled. The story often repeated of the two or three hundred women killed in the market place is pure fiction, of which nothing is heard till after the middle of the eighteenth century. On the other hand, both at Drogheda and Wexford priests were put to death without mercy. Whether these cruelties, in the long run, rendered Irishmen more ready to submit to the invaders may be doubted, but they certainly made Cromwell's path easier whilst the terror spread by them was recent. Wexford fell on October 11. On the 17th Cromwell summoned New Ross. "I have this witness for myself," he wrote to the Governor, "that I have endeavoured to avoid effusion of blood—this being my principle that the people and the places where I come may not suffer except throughtheir own wilfulness." Two days later he was asked whether he would grant liberty of conscience. "I meddle not," he answered, "with any man's conscience, but if by liberty of conscience, you mean liberty to exercise the mass, I judge it best to use plain dealing, and to let you know that where the Parliament of England have power that will not be allowed of." Cromwell's principle in Ireland was very much what Elizabeth's had been in England. Men might hold what religious opinions they pleased, but toleration was not to be extended to the Roman Catholic worship. The distinction may appear unjustifiable in the eyes of the present generation. It was perfectly familiar to the statesmen of the seventeenth century.
Before long Cromwell's hope of support from the Protestants in the south was amply justified. Cork was the first of the coast towns in Munster to rise in his favour, and others soon followed the example. Waterford, on the other hand, held out, being assisted by the winter rains. The first months of 1650 were employed in the reduction of towns further inland, such as Kilkenny and Clonmel, though the garrison of the latter place succeeded in making its escape. After the surrender of Clonmel Cromwell left Ireland, his services being required at home. Ireton, who remained behind as Lord Deputy, had nearly completed the conquest when he died in November 1651of a disease caused by his devotion to the calls of duty, though the last fortified post did not surrender till April 1653.
Cromwell's reason for treating the Irish Roman Catholics with peculiar harshness may be gathered from a controversy in which he took part some time before he left the country. In December 1649 the Irish Prelates assembled at Clonmacnoise issued a Declaration in which they warned their flocks that Cromwell was bent on extirpating the Catholic religion, and could not effect his purpose 'without the massacring or banishment of the Catholic inhabitants'. They proceeded to point out that those who were spared by the sword were doomed to impoverishment, as by English Acts of Parliament already passed, 'the estates of the inhabitants of this kingdom are sold, so there remaineth now no more but to put the purchasers in possession by the power of forces drawn out of England, and for the common sort of people, to whom they show any more moderate usage at present, it is to no other end but for their private advantage, and for the better support of their army, intending at the close of their conquest, if they can effect the same—as God forbid—to root out the commons also, and plant this land with colonies to be brought hither out of England—as witness the number they have already sent hence for the Tobacco Islands—and put enemies in their place'. The Prelates concluded by declaringthat, henceforth, clergy and laity would unite to defend the Church, the King and the nation.
In one part of this declaration the Prelates had referred to the English army as 'the common enemy'. "Who is it," asked Cromwell wrathfully in reply; "that created this common enemy? I suppose you mean Englishmen. The English! Remember, ye hypocrites, Ireland was once united to England; Englishmen had good inheritances, which many of them purchased with their money, they or their ancestors, from many of you and your ancestors. They had good leases from Irishmen for long time to come, great stocks thereupon, houses and plantations erected at their cost and charge. They lived peaceably and honestly amongst you; you had generally equal benefit of the protection of England with them, and equal justice from the laws—saving what was necessary for the State, upon reasons of State, to put upon some few people apt to rebel upon the instigation of such as you. You broke the union; you unprovoked put the English to the most unheard of and most barbarous massacre without respect of sex or age that ever the sun beheld, and at a time when Ireland was at perfect peace, and when, through the example of English industry, through commerce and traffic, that which was in the natives' hands was better to them than if all Ireland had been in their possession and not an Englishman in it; and yet then, I say, was this unheardof villainy perpetrated through your instigation, who boast of peace-making and union against the common enemy. What think you, by this time? Is not my assertion true? Is God—will God be with you? I am confident He will not."
Such was the picture which framed itself in Cromwell's mind in the contemplation of the troubles of 1641. It was no long by-past history that he ignored—though the race against which his sword was drawn was one singularly retentive of the tradition of days long-ago. It was the occurrences which had passed in his own life-time which he misinterpreted. The Irish peoples and tribes, it seemed, had had no grievances of which to complain. They had never, forsooth, been ousted from their land by the chicanery of English lawyers and English statesmen. As for their religion, it was hardly to be regarded as a religion at all. Favour enough was shown to them if they were allowed to bury their creed in their hearts, though they were deprived of those consolations on which those who held their faith were far more dependent than the adherents of other Churches. That Cromwell believed every word he said is not to be doubted. This representation of Irish problems and of Irish facts was no creation of his own mind. It was the common—probably the universal belief of Englishmen of his own day.
Nor was Cromwell any more original in propoundingremedies. "We are come," he continued, "to take an account of the innocent blood that hath been shed, and to endeavour to bring them to account—by the blessing of Almighty God, in whom alone is our hope and strength—who by appearing in arms seek to justify the same. We come to break the power of a company of lawless rebels who, having cast off the authority of England, live as enemies to human society, whose principles—the world hath experience of—are to destroy and subjugate all men not complying with them. We come—by the assistance of God—to hold forth and maintain the lustre and glory of English liberty, in a nation where we have an undoubted right to do it, whereas the people of Ireland—if they listen not to such seducers as you are—may equally participate in all benefits to use liberty and fortune equally with Englishmen, if they keep out of arms." Irishmen, in short, were to be what Englishmen were, or to bear the penalty. It was the old remedy of the Elizabethans and of Strafford. It is not so much the victorious sword that alienates as the contempt of the conqueror for all that the conquered are in themselves or for all that they hold dear. Yet it must be acknowledged that in whatever proportion the guilt of past errors may be divisible between English and Irish, no English government could endure longer to face that danger of invasion from the side of Ireland, which had soconstantly threatened England since first her civil broils began. Under these circumstances, an English conquest of Ireland was inevitable as soon as it was undertaken by a disciplined army. Irishmen were too deeply riven asunder by diversities of race and institutions to unite in common resistance; and even if these difficulties could be removed, there was no common leader who commanded universal devotion. Conquered—Ireland was bound to be, but it was unfortunate for both peoples that she was conquered at a time when the religious and political ideas of Englishmen were, more than ever before or since, the antithesis of those of Irishmen. It was when a Puritan Government took in hand what they hoped to be the regeneration of Ireland that the real difficulties of the task would be made manifest.
No such gulf was open between England and Scotland, yet the apprehension of fresh troubles approaching from Scotland caused the Government at Westminster to recall Cromwell in May 1650. For some time a negotiation had been carried on at Breda between the exiled Charles II. and a body of commissioners who had been sent by the extreme Presbyterians now dominant in Edinburgh, with the object of persuading the young King to accept their assistance to regain his other kingdoms on conditions which could not fail to be most repulsive to him. He was to disallow the treaty concluded byOrmond, by which the Irish were exempted from the penal laws, though in that treaty lay his sole hope of resisting Cromwell in that country; he was to establish Presbyterianism both in England and Ireland without a shred of toleration either for the sects or for that Church of which he was himself a member, and he was to sign the two Covenants, marking his own adhesion to the Scottish form of religion. Against these terms Charles long struggled, but on May 1 he signed the draft of an agreement assenting to them, which was sent to Scotland for approval, accompanied by a demand on his part for their modification. Before an answer was received, Charles heard that his most gallant champion, Montrose, had been defeated and hanged as a traitor. A day or two later, on June 1, he was informed that his request for the modification of the Scottish terms had been rejected at Edinburgh. On the 2nd Charles embarked for Scotland without signing anything, and it was only on June 11, off Heligoland, that he affixed his name to the treaty, and only on the 23rd, off Speymouth, that he swore to the Covenants, as the treaty required him to do. There can be little doubt that he intended to cast off the bondage as soon as an opportunity arrived. It is doubtful which was the greater, the ignorance of the Scottish Government in supposing that their conditions could be imposed on England, or their folly in imagining that Charles would be bound by his oathto become their accomplice. Of this Government Argyle was still the leading personality, but that shrewd statesman only held his own by submitting to the crowd of fanatics, clerical and lay, whom he had once hoped to control, and who now made themselves his masters. Secret communications had long been passing between Charles and his English supporters. They were expected to rise in support of the Scots, but as to the engagement to establish Presbyterianism, it 'was by most refused, and resolved to be broken by those who took it'.
Under these circumstances, Cromwell's return had been ardently expected by all who had attached themselves to the existing Government. Whilst he was still absent, Parliament had secured to him the use of the Cockpit—a house opposite Whitehall—and also of St. James's House and Spring Gardens; and had afterwards voted to him an additional grant of lands bringing in £2,500 a year. On June 1 he had a magnificent reception as he crossed Hounslow Heath, and on the 4th received the thanks of Parliament for his services. The first question mooted was on whom should be bestowed the command of the army destined for the north. As long as it was expected that the troops were to act on the defensive, Fairfax was ready to go with Cromwell serving under him, as in old days, as his Lieutenant-General.
On June 20, when it was resolved, doubtless atCromwell's suggestion, that the English army should invade Scotland to anticipate an attack which was regarded as inevitable, Fairfax's hesitations began, and after a brief delay he offered to resign his commission. Cromwell did his best to combat his arguments, which proceeded rather from a general feeling of distrust of the tendency of the Commonwealth Government than from any distinct resolve to separate himself from it. Cromwell's persuasions were of no avail, and on June 26 he received the appointment of Lord General, which Fairfax was now permitted to resign. Cromwell's mind was set on something more than military success. In a conversation with Ludlow who was about to leave for Ireland, he discoursed for an hour on the 110th Psalm. "He looked," he said, "on the design of the Lord in this day to be the freeing of the people from every burden." Especially he found hard words to fling at the lawyers—those sons of Zeruiah who had hitherto stood in the way of the simplifying of the law in favour of poorer litigants.
On June 28 Cromwell set out for his command. At Berwick on July 19 he found himself at the head of 16,000 men, whilst the Scottish army, under the command of David Leslie, numbered 26,000. For the first time in his life Cromwell was opposed to a general who was a capable strategist. The Scottish army, moreover, had the advantage of position. Occupying Edinburgh Castle and the fortified citysloping eastwards beneath it, Leslie had thrown up intrenchments from the foot of the Canongate to Leith, to bar the way to any army threatening to cut off the city from its port. Cromwell, having failed to carry this line, retreated to Musselburgh to prepare for his next step.
Though the Scots had the advantage of military position, their army had none of the coherence of the English. The clergy, under whose influence it had been gathered, had a shrewd suspicion that Charles was not whole-hearted in his devotion to the Kirk. They were afraid of his influence on the soldiers, and when he made his appearance at Leith they compelled him to withdraw. His expulsion was followed by a purge of the army, and in three days no fewer than 80 officers and 3,000 soldiers were dismissed as not coming up to the proper spiritual or moral standard. To the clergy Cromwell's appeal was directed in vain. "I beseech you," he wrote to them, "in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken." It was the very last thing they were prepared to do. To them sectarianism was an evil to be combated at all hazards, and Cromwell's entreaties to join him in brotherly union met with no response. Yet amongst the stricter Presbyterian laity there were some—such as Strachan and Ker—who felt uncomfortable at being told that they were fighting for a malignant King. Cromwell having posted himself, on August13, on Braid Hill, to the south of Edinburgh, committed one of the greatest faults of which a general is capable. His eagerness to win over those whom—in spite of their contumelious rejection of his claim—he persisted in regarding as his brothers in religion, led him to subordinate war to diplomacy. For the first time in his military career he was hesitating and tentative, prone to delay action, and above all inspired by the hope that action might be avoided. Even if he had acted more promptly it is possible that he might have failed against so wary an antagonist as Leslie. His plan, probably the best under the circumstances, was to march on Queensferry, in order to cut the communications of the Scottish army with its base of supplies in Fife, communications which could not be maintained lower down the Firth where the English fleet was master of the sea. Leslie held the inner line, and when at last, on August 27, Cromwell advanced towards Queensferry, he found Leslie across his path, posted behind a morass. He could but turn back once more to Musselburgh, after which, giving up the game he had been playing for some weeks, he found himself, on September 1, at Dunbar. Leslie followed, taking care to avoid a battle and drawing up his army on Doon Hill, whose steep slopes looked down on the flatter ground on which Cromwell's forces lay. Blocking the route to England by occupying the defile at Cockburnspath, Leslie had but to remainwhere he was to force Cromwell—now commanding less than half his former numbers—either to surrender or to ship the best part of his force for England—the fleet which accompanied him not affording space for the accommodation of his whole army. "The enemy," wrote Cromwell, "lieth so upon the hills that we know not how to come that way without difficulty, and our lying here daily consumeth our men who fall sick beyond imagination." There could be little doubt that even if the army secured its retreat to its own country, its failure to defeat the Scots would be followed by a general rising of the Cavaliers in England.
Humanly speaking, the prospect was a dark one, and Cromwell could but console himself with his trust in divine assistance. "All," he wrote, "shall work for good; our spirits are comfortable, praised be the Lord, though our present condition be as it is, and indeed we have much hope in the Lord, of Whose mercy we have had large experience." With him faith in Divine protection was consistent with the adoption of every military measure by which an adversary's mistakes could be turned to his own advantage. It was otherwise with the clergy and their adherents, who exercised so much influence on the Doon Hill. There had been fresh purging of the Scottish army, and soldiers had again been dismissed—not for any lack of military efficiency, but becausetheir views of the Covenant were insufficiently exalted. It is said that the men who were thus weakening their own fighting power grew impatient with Leslie for not crushing the enemy by an immediate onslaught. Other causes may have combined to make the postponement of a conflict almost impossible. There was no water on the Doon Hill, and provisions for 23,000 men must have been hard to come by in that bleak region. At all events, on the 2nd the Scots began to move down the Hill. The struggle was to be transformed from a competition in strategy to a competition in tactics, and Cromwell, sure of mastery in that field, was rejoiced at the sight which met his eyes. In the early morning of the 3rd a plan of action brilliantly conceived was skilfully carried into execution; and the Scots, after a brave resistance, broke and fled. As the sun rose out of the sea, Cromwell, with the joyful exclamation on his lips: "Let God arise, let His enemies be scattered," pushed his victorious cavalry in pursuit. Before they drew rein, 3,000 of the enemy had been slain, and 10,000 captured together with the whole of the artillery. Never again did a Scottish army take the field to impose its religion upon a recalcitrant England.
"Surely," wrote Cromwell, after the battle had been won, "it's probable the Kirk has done their do. I believe their King will set up upon his own score now, wherein he will find many friends." Charleshimself seems to have taken the same view of the situation if it be true that, on receiving the news from Dunbar, he gave thanks to God 'that he was so fairly rid of his enemies'. At all events the key to the history of the next twelve months in Scotland is the attempt to convert a clerical into a national resistance. To Cromwell, an attempt to force England into political conformity with Scotland was as much to be resisted as an attempt to impose on her the Scottish religion. It was the despotic tendencies, not the fervour of that religion, that he disliked. The association of the laity with the clergy in the government of the Church was insufficient for him. His ideal community was one in which every layman was capable of performing spiritual functions. He would not listen to the objection of a colonel who complained that one of his officers 'was a better preacher than fighter'. "Truly," he replied, "I think that he that prays and preaches best, will fight best. I know nothing will give like courage as the knowledge of God in Christ will, and I bless God to see any in this army able and willing to impart the knowledge they have, for the good of others; and I expect it be encouraged by all the chief officers in this army especially; and I hope you will do so. I pray receive Captain Empson lovingly; I dare assure you he is a good man and a good officer. I would we had no worse."
Unluckily there was no response amongst the Scottish laymen to such an appeal as this. They were satisfied—if religiously inclined—with the part assigned to them on Kirk Sessions or Presbyteries, and preferred to take their sermons from an ordained minister. Even those Presbyterians who distrusted a malignant King held aloof from the sectarian Englishman.
In England, the news of the great victory was enthusiastically received. One hundred and sixty Scottish flags were hung up in Westminster Hall, and Parliament ordered that a medal, known as the 'Dunbar Medal,' the first war medal granted to an English army, should bear Cromwell's likeness on one side. Against this glorifying of himself Cromwell protested in vain, but for all that he could say, his own lineaments were not excluded. His work in Scotland was however far from being accomplished. The victory of Dunbar was in time followed by the surrender of Edinburgh Castle, brought about, it is said, by the treachery of the governor; but it was in vain that the conqueror attempted to win over the extreme Covenanters who held out in the west under Strachan and Ker, and in the end he had to send Lambert against them. Lambert fell upon them at Hamilton and broke their power of resistance.
In the meantime, the tendency to resist the pretensions of the clergy was slowly making its way.On January 1, 1651, Charles was duly crowned at Scone, swearing not only to approve of the Covenants in Scotland, but to give his Royal assent to acts and ordinances of Parliament, passed and to be passed, enjoining the same in his other dominions. The young King protested his sincerity and begged the Ministers present to show him so much favour as 'that if in any time coming they did hear or see him breaking that Covenant, they would tell him of it, and put him in mind of his oath'. For all that, Charles was busily undermining the party of the Covenant. One by one the leaders of the Hamilton party—Hamilton himself—a brother of the Duke who had been beheaded at Westminster,—and who, when still only Earl of Lanark, had been deeply concerned in patching up the Engagement with Charles I.—Middleton, the rough soldier who had fought Charles I., and Lauderdale, the ablest of those Presbyterians who had rallied to the throne, were admitted, after humbly acknowledging their offences to the Kirk, to take their seats in Parliament, and to place their swords at the King's disposal. Argyle, who had triumphed over these men in his prosperity, was driven to seek refuge in his Highland home at Inverary. His policy of heading a democratic party organised by the clergy had fallen to the ground without hope of recovery. The national movement had passed into the hands of the nobility.
In the spring and early summer of 1651 Cromwell had thus to face a resistance based on a national policy rather than on extreme Covenanting grounds. For the present he had to leave his enemies unassailed. He was lying at Edinburgh, stricken down by illness, and for some time his life was despaired of. More than ever, indeed, he had the strength of England to fall back on. Englishmen had no desire to submit to Scottish dictation. Conspiracies for a Royalist insurrection were firmly suppressed, and suspected Royalists committed to prison as a preventive measure. At the same time a body of the new militia, which had been recently organised, was entrusted to Harrison—the fierce enthusiast who had been left in charge of the forces remaining in England, and who was now directed to guard the northern border against the Scottish invasion.
At last Cromwell was himself again. In the first days of June Charles's new army lay at Stirling. The seizure and imprisonment of his English partisans had deprived him of all hope of raising a diversion in the south, and Leslie was compelled to fall back on the defensive tactics by which he had guarded Edinburgh the year before. During the first fortnight of July Cromwell laboured in vain to bring on an engagement. Leslie, strongly posted amongst the hills to the south of Stirling, was not to be induced to repeat the error he had committed at Dunbar, andthis time provisions and water could be obtained without difficulty. If Cromwell did not intend to waste his army away, he must transfer it to the enemy's rear, with a certain result of leaving the road open for their advance into England. Six months before, whilst the chiefs of English royalism were still at large, it would have been a most hazardous plan. Now that they were under arrest, it might be attempted with impunity. Lambert was sent across to North Queensferry, and on July 20 he defeated, at Inverkeithing, a Scottish force sent out from Stirling against him. Before long Cromwell followed his lieutenant, and on August 2 Perth fell into his hands. The communications of the Scottish army at Stirling were thus cut, and there was nothing before it but to march southwards on the uncertain prospect of being still able to find allies in England. That Cromwell had been able to accomplish this feat was owing partly to his command of the sea, which had enabled him with safety to send Lambert across the Forth, partly to his knowledge that the materials of the Scottish army were far inferior to those of his own. Had Leslie been at the head of a force capable of meeting the invaders in the field, Cromwell at Perth might indeed have found himself in an awkward position, as, in case of defeat, he might easily have been driven back to perish in the Highlands. On the other hand, it must be acknowledged that theEnglish General had been learning from his opponent. It was now—unless the campaign of Preston be excepted, when his march upon Hamilton's flank had been decided by the necessity of picking up his artillery in Yorkshire—that Cromwell, for the first time in his life, developed strategical power, that is to say, the power of combining movements, the result of which would place the enemy in a false position. Already, before he followed Lambert, he had summoned Harrison to Linlithgow, and had ordered him to keep the Scots in check as they marched through England.
The first rumour that the Scottish army had broken up from Stirling and was on its way to the south reached Cromwell on August 1. On the 2nd, leaving 6,000 men under Monk—a soldier well tried in the Irish wars—to complete the subjugation, he started in pursuit. "The enemy," he wrote to Lenthall, "in his desperation and fear, and out of inevitable necessity, is run to try what he can do this way." Cromwell was never less taken by surprise. "I do apprehend," he continued, "that if he goes for England, being some few days' march before us, it will trouble some men's thoughts, and may occasion some men's inconveniences, of which I hope we are as deeply sensible, and have been, and I trust shall be as diligent to prevent as any. And indeed this is our comfort that in simplicity of heart as towardsGod we have done to the best of our judgments, knowing that if some issue were not put to this business it would occasion another winter's war to the ruin of your soldiery, for whom the Scots are too hard in respect of enduring the winter difficulties of this country, and would have been under the endless expense of the treasure of England in prosecuting this war. It may be supposed we might have kept the enemy from this by interposing between him and England, which truly I believe we might; but how to remove him out of this place without doing what we have done, unless we had a commanding army on both sides of the river of Forth, is not clear to us; or how to answer the inconveniences above mentioned we understand not. We pray, therefore, that—seeing there is a probability for the enemy to put you to some trouble—you would, with the same courage grounded upon a confidence in God, wherein you have been supported to the great things God hath used you in hitherto, improve, the best you can, such forces as you have in readiness as may on the sudden be gathered together to give the enemy some check until we shall be able to reach up to him, which we trust in the Lord we shall do our utmost endeavour in."
Instructions were despatched to Harrison to attend the enemy's march upon his flanks whilst Lambert hung upon his rear as he moved by way of Carlisleand Lancaster. Cromwell himself pushed on by the eastern route to head off the Scots as soon as he could gain sufficiently upon their slower march. The only question of importance was to know which of the opposing armies could gain most assistance in England. In Lancashire indeed the Earl of Derby raised a force for the King, but he was defeated by Robert Lilburne at Wigan, and was himself captured. When on August 22 Charles reached Worcester, scarcely a single Englishman had joined him. Large bodies of militia, on the other hand, flocked to Cromwell's standard; and when on September 3—the anniversary of Dunbar—the final battle was fought at Worcester, Cromwell commanded some 31,000 men, whilst the Scottish army did not number above 16,000. Cromwell having laid bridges of boats across the Severn and the Teme, was able to shift his regiments from one bank to the other of either stream as occasion served, and the Scots, fighting their best, were crushed by superior numbers as well as by superior discipline. Charles, when all was lost, rode away from the place of slaughter, and after an adventurous journey, made his escape to France. "The dimensions of this mercy," wrote Cromwell, "are above my thoughts. It is, for aught I know, a crowning mercy. Surely if it be not, such a one we shall have, if this provoke those that are concerned in it to thankfulness, and the Parliamentto do the will of Him who hath done His will for it and for the nation, whose good pleasure it is to establish the nation and the change of government, by making the people so willing to the defence thereof, and so signally blessing the endeavours of your servants in this great work."
Was it really in defence of 'the change of government' that the people had sided with Cromwell? Or was it merely that they would not tolerate a Scottish conquest? At all events, the tide of feeling gave to the Parliament a momentary strength. Of the notable Scots engaged, Hamilton had fallen at Worcester, and the greater number of the remainder were now consigned to English prisons. Of the few Englishmen who had risen, Derby was beheaded at Bolton-le-Moors, four of his followers being subsequently executed. The subjugation of Scotland was completed by Monk.
As for Cromwell, he settled down into a quiet and unpretentious life, attending to the discipline of the army, and ready in his place in Parliament to forward the cause which he had most at heart—the establishment of that Commonwealth to which his victories had given a breathing-space. To him, as to many disinterested observers, the time had come to found the government no longer on the sword, but on the consent of the nation, and there can be little doubt that at no time between 1642 and 1660 was theremore chance of gaining a majority for the new system than this. Cromwell, at least, did everything in his power to procure a vote for an early dissolution. It was only, however, by a majority of two that Parliament agreed to fix a date for its dissolution, following the vote by a resolution postponing that event for three years. There can be little doubt that this resolution found support amongst those members who were fattening on corruption; but there was also something to be said for the view taken some time before by Marten, when he compared the Commonwealth to Moses, because the members now sitting 'were the true mother to this fair child, the young Commonwealth,' and therefore its fittest nurses. A general election is always somewhat of a lottery, and it was the weakest part of the system—or want of system—on which the Commonwealth was based, that it never represented the people as a whole, and that its actions might easily have been repudiated by them if they had been consulted.
Baffled in his desire to secure an immediate appeal to the electors, Cromwell prepared to use the time which the members had secured for themselves, by coming to an understanding with the leading statesmen on the principles of the future Government. He had never committed himself to the doctrine that the executive authority ought to be placed directly in the hands of an elected assembly or of a council subordinatedto it. When at the conference now held the lawyers pleaded that Charles II. or the Duke of York might be called on to accept the government if the rights of Englishmen could be safeguarded, he replied somewhat oracularly: "That will be a business of more than ordinary difficulty; but really, I think, if it may be done with safety and preservation of our rights as Englishmen and Christians, that a settlement with somewhat of a monarchical power in it would be very effectual". It is very unlikely that Cromwell, being what he was, had as yet formed any settled design in his own mind, but the tendency towards the course which eventually established the Protectorate is quite evident. To secure the rights of Englishmen and Christians rather than to strengthen the absolute supremacy of Parliaments had been his constant aim. Whether he reflected that if the monarchical power was to be given to some one not of the House of Stuart, it could hardly be given to any other man than himself, is a question which every one must answer as he thinks fit.
The conference had led to no decision, and during the first half of 1652 Cromwell had enough to do in defending religious liberty against those who had constituted themselves its champions. Before the Battle of Worcester had been fought, Parliament had passed a Blasphemy Act, for the punishment of atheistical, blasphemous and execrable opinions. Inthe following February, the publication of a Socinian catechism startled even the professed tolerationists. John Owen, the foremost Independent minister of the day, now—owing to the influence of Cromwell—Dean of Christchurch and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Oxford, was almost certainly the author of a scheme of ecclesiastical organisation presented by himself and twenty-six others to the Committee for the Propagation of the Gospel. This scheme in its main lines was subsequently adopted under the Protectorate. There was to be an established Church, ministered to by orthodox persons accepted by a body of triers, without regard to smaller points of discipline, on condition that they presented a testimonial 'of their piety and soundness of faith,' signed by six orthodox persons, and these ministers upon proof of unfitness were liable to be removed by a body of Ejectors. Other religious bodies were to be allowed to meet for worship, but Unitarians and those opposing the principles of Christianity were to be excluded from toleration. A list of fifteen fundamental propositions which no one was to be permitted to deny was set forth by Owen and his supporters. At this Cromwell took alarm. "I had rather," he said, "that Mahometism were permitted amongst us than that one of God's children be persecuted." The stand taken by him secured the warm approval of Milton. "Cromwell," wrote the poet, whoseblindness had been hastened by his services to the State: