A New Estimate Of Cromwell

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Title:     A New Estimate Of Cromwell
Author: James Ford Rhodes [More Titles by Rhodes]

A paper read before the Massachusetts Historical Society at the January meeting of 1898, and printed in the Atlantic Monthly of June, 1898.

 

A NEW ESTIMATE OF CROMWELL

The most notable contributions to the historical literature of England during the year 1897 are two volumes by Samuel R. Gardiner: the Oxford lectures, "Cromwell's Place in History," published in the spring; and the second volume of "History of the Commonwealth and Protectorate," which appeared in the autumn. These present what is probably a new view of Cromwell.

If one loves a country or an historic epoch, it is natural for the mind to seek a hero to represent it. We are fortunate in having Washington and Lincoln, whose characters and whose lives sum up well the periods in which they were our benefactors. But if we look upon our history as being the continuation of a branch of that of England, who is the political hero in the nation from which we sprang who represents a great principle or idea that we love to cherish? Hampden might answer if only we knew more about him. It occurs to me that Gray, in his poem which is read and conned from boyhood to old age, has done more than any one else to spread abroad the fame of Hampden. Included in the same stanza with Milton and with Cromwell, he seems to the mere reader of the poem to occupy the same place in history. In truth, however, as Mr. Gardiner writes, "it is remarkable how little can be discovered about Hampden. All that is known is to his credit, but his greatness appears from the impression he created upon others more than from the circumstances of his own life as they have been handed down to us."

The minds of American boys educated under Puritan influences before and during the war of secession accordingly turned to Cromwell. Had our Puritan ancestors remained at home till the civil war in England, they would have fought under the great Oliver, and it is natural that their descendants should venerate him. All young men of the period of which I am speaking, who were interested in history, read Macaulay, the first volume of whose history appeared in 1848, and they found in Cromwell a hero to their liking. Carlyle's Cromwell was published three years before, and those who could digest stronger food found the great man therein portrayed a chosen one of God to lead his people in the right path. Everybody echoed the thought of Carlyle when he averred that ten years more of Oliver Cromwell's life would have given another history to all the centuries of England.

In these two volumes Gardiner presents a different conception of Cromwell from that of Carlyle and Macaulay, and in greater detail. We arrive at Gardiner's notion by degrees, being prepared by the reversal of some of our pretty well established opinions about the Puritans. Macaulay's epigrammatic sentence touching their attitude towards amusements undoubtedly colored the opinions of men for at least a generation. "The Puritan hated bear-baiting," he says, "not because it gave pain to the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectators." How coolly Gardiner disposes of this well-turned rhetorical phrase: "The order for the complete suppression of bear-baiting and bull-baiting at Southwark and elsewhere was grounded, not, as has been often repeated, on Puritan aversion to amusements giving 'pleasure to the spectators,' but upon Puritan disgust at the immorality which these exhibitions fostered." Again he writes: "Zealous as were the leaders of the Commonwealth in the suppression of vice, they displayed but little of that sour austerity with which they have frequently been credited. On his way to Dunbar, Cromwell laughed heartily at the sight of one soldier overturning a full cream tub and slamming it down on the head of another, whilst on his return from Worcester he spent a day hawking in the fields near Aylesbury. 'Oliver,' we hear, 'loved an innocent jest.' Music and song were cultivated in his family. If the graver Puritans did not admit what has been called 'promiscuous dancing' into their households, they made no attempt to prohibit it elsewhere." In the spring of 1651 appeared the "English Dancing Master," containing rules for country dances, and the tunes by which they were to be accompanied.

Macaulay's description of Cromwell's army has so pervaded our literature as to be accepted as historic truth; and J. R. Green, acute as he was, seems, consciously or unconsciously, to have been affected by it, which is not a matter of wonderment, indeed, for such is its rhetorical force that it leaves an impression hard to be obliterated. Macaulay writes: "That which chiefly distinguished the army of Cromwell from other armies was the austere morality and the fear of God which pervaded all ranks. It is acknowledged by the most zealous Royalists that in that singular camp no oath was heard, no drunkenness or gambling was seen, and that during the long dominion of the soldiery the property of the peaceable citizen and the honor of woman were held sacred. If outrages were committed, they were outrages of a very different kind from those of which a victorious army is generally guilty. No servant girl complained of the rough gallantry of the redcoats; not an ounce of plate was taken from the shops of the goldsmiths; but a Pelagian sermon, or a window on which the Virgin and Child were painted, produced in the Puritan ranks an excitement which it required the utmost exertions of the officers to quell. One of Cromwell's chief difficulties was to restrain his musketeers and dragoons from invading by main force the pulpits of ministers whose discourses, to use the language of that time, were not savory."

What a different impression we get from Gardiner! "Much that has been said of Cromwell's army has no evidence behind it," he declares. "The majority of the soldiers were pressed men, selected because they had strong bodies, and not because of their religion. The remainder were taken out of the armies already in existence.... The distinctive feature of the army was its officers. All existing commands having been vacated, men of a distinctly Puritan and for the most part of an Independent type were appointed to their places.... The strictest discipline was enforced, and the soldiers, whether Puritan or not, were thus brought firmly under the control of officers bent upon the one object, of defeating the king."

To those who have regarded the men who governed England, from the time the Long Parliament became supreme to the death of Cromwell, as saints in conduct as well as in name, Mr. Gardiner's facts about the members of the rump of the Long Parliament will be an awakening. "It was notorious," he records, "that many members who entered the House poor were now rolling in wealth." From Gardiner's references and quotations, it is not a strained inference that in subjection to lobbying, in log-rolling and corruption, this Parliament would hardly be surpassed by a corrupt American legislature. As to personal morality, he by implication confirms the truth of Cromwell's bitter speech on the memorable day when he forced the dissolution of the Long Parliament. "Some of you," he said, "are whoremasters. Others," he continued, pointing to one and another with his hands, "are drunkards, and some corrupt and unjust men, and scandalous to the profession of the gospel. It is not fit that you should sit as a Parliament any longer."

While I am well aware that to him, who makes but a casual study of any historic period, matters will appear fresh that to the master of it are well-worn inferences and generalizations, and while therefore I can pretend to offer only a shallow experience, I confess that on the points to which I have referred I received new light, and it prepared me for the overturning of the view of Cromwell which I had derived from the Puritanical instruction of my early days and from Macaulay.

In his foreign policy Cromwell was irresolute, vacillating and tricky. "A study of the foreign policy of the Protectorate," writes Mr. Gardiner, "reveals a distracting maze of fluctuations. Oliver is seen alternately courting France and Spain, constant only in inconstancy."

Cromwell lacked constructive statesmanship. "The tragedy of his career lies in the inevitable result that his efforts to establish religion and morality melted away as the morning mist, whilst his abiding influence was built upon the vigor with which he promoted the material aims of his countrymen." In another place Mr. Gardiner says: "Cromwell's negative work lasted; his positive work vanished away. His constitutions perished with him, his Protectorate descended from the proud position to which he had raised it, his peace with the Dutch Republic was followed by two wars with the United Provinces, his alliance with the French monarchy only led to a succession of wars with France lasting into the nineteenth century. All that lasted was the support given by him to maritime enterprise, and in that he followed the tradition of the governments preceding him."

What is Cromwell's place in history? Thus Mr. Gardiner answers the question: "He stands forth as the typical Englishman of the modern world.... It is in England that his fame has grown up since the publication of Carlyle's monumental work, and it is as an Englishman that he must be judged.... With Cromwell's memory it has fared as with ourselves. Royalists painted him as a devil. Carlyle painted him as the masterful saint who suited his peculiar Valhalla. It is time for us to regard him as he really was, with all his physical and moral audacity, with all his tenderness and spiritual yearnings, in the world of action what Shakespeare was in the world of thought, the greatest because the most typical Englishman of all time. This, in the most enduring sense, is Cromwell's place in history."

The idea most difficult for me to relinquish is that of Cromwell as a link in that historic chain which led to the Revolution of 1688, with its blessed combination of liberty and order. I have loved to think, as Carlyle expressed it: "'Their works follow them,' as I think this Oliver Cromwell's works have done and are still doing! We have had our 'Revolution of '88' officially called 'glorious,' and other Revolutions not yet called glorious; and somewhat has been gained for poor mankind. Men's ears are not now slit off by rash Officiality. Officiality will for long henceforth be more cautious about men's ears. The tyrannous star chambers, branding irons, chimerical kings and surplices at Allhallowtide, they are gone or with immense velocity going. Oliver's works do follow him!"

In these two volumes of Gardiner it is not from what is said, but from what is omitted, that one may deduce the author's opinion that Cromwell's career as Protector contributed in no wise to the Revolution of 1688. But touching this matter he has thus written to me: "I am inclined to question your view that Cromwell paved the way for the Revolution of 1688, except so far as his victories and the King's execution frightened off James II. Pym and Hampden did pave the way, but Cromwell's work took other lines. The Instrument of Government was framed on quite different principles, and the extension of the suffrage and reformed franchise found no place in England until 1832. It was not Cromwell's fault that it was so."

If I relinquish this one of my old historic notions, I feel that I must do it for the reason that Lord Auckland agreed with Macaulay after reading the first volume of his history. "I had also hated Cromwell more than I now do," he said; "for I always agree with Tom Macaulay; and it saves trouble to agree with him at once, because he is sure to make you do so at last."

I asked Professor Edward Channing of Harvard College, who teaches English History of the Tudor and Stuart periods, his opinion of Gardiner. "I firmly believe," he told me, "that Mr. Gardiner is the greatest English historical writer who has appeared since Gibbon. He has the instinct of the truth-seeker as no other English student I know of has shown it since the end of the last century."

General J. D. Cox, a statesman and a lawyer, a student of history and of law, writes to me: "In reading Gardiner, I feel that I am sitting at the feet of an historical chief justice, a sort of John Marshall in his genius for putting the final results of learning in the garb of simple common sense."

[The end]
James Ford Rhodes's essay: New Estimate Of Cromwell

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