Cromwelliana The Journal of The Cromwell Association 2015 The Cromwell Association President: Professor PETER GAUNT, PhD, FRHistS Vice Presidents: Rt Hon the LORD NASEBY, PC Rt Hon FRANK DOBSON, MP Rt Hon STEPHEN DORRELL, MP Professor JOHN MORRILL, DPhil, FBA, FRHistS Professor BLAIR WORDEN, FBA Dr STEPHEN K. ROBERTS, PhD, FSA, FRHistS PAT BARNES Chairman: Dr PATRICK LITTLE, PhD, FRHistS Honorary Secretary: JOHN NEWLAND Honorary Treasurer: GEOFFREY BUSH Membership Officer PAUL ROBBINS The Cromwell Association was formed in 1937 and is a registered charity (reg no. 1132954). The purpose of the Association is to advance the education of the public in both the life and legacy of Oliver Cromwell (1599-1658), politician, soldier and statesman, and the wider history of the seventeenth century. The Association seeks to progress its aims in the following ways: campaigns for the preservation and conservation of buildings and sites relevant to Cromwell commissions, on behalf of the Association, or in collaboration with others, plaques, panels and monuments at sites associated with Cromwell supports and encourages the Cromwell Museum and Cromwell Collection in Huntingdon run by Cambridgeshire County Council provides, within the competence of the Association, advice to the media on all matters relating to the period encourages interest in the period in all phases of formal education by the publication of reading lists, information and teachers’ guidance publishes news and information about the period, including an annual journal and regular newsletters organises an annual service, day schools, conferences, lectures, exhibitions and other educational events provides a web-based resource for researchers in the period including school students, genealogists and interested parties offers, from time to time grants, awards and prizes to individuals and organisations working towards the objectives stated above. Editor of Cromwelliana: Dr MAXINE FORSHAW, BSc, PhD www.olivercromwell.org. CROMWELLIANA 2015 Series III No 4 Editor: Dr Maxine Forshaw CONTENTS Editor’s Note 3 Cromwell Day Address (September 2014) 5 Oliver Cromwell and his Public By Prof Jason Peacey Cromwell Collection Lecture (November 2012) 19 Facts, Lies and Stereotypes – the background to the collections of the Cromwell Museum By John Goldsmith Cromwell Association AGM Address (April 2014) 36 Cromwell’s Generalship and the Conquest of Scotland 1650 - 1651 By Prof Malcolm Wanklyn Cromwell Study Day (October 2014) 51 ‘Cromwell’s whelps’: the death of the New Model Army By Dr David Appleby Cromwell Study Day (October 2014) 66 ‘…looked on as a wonder, that never beheld his enemies in the face but returned from them crowned always with renown and honour…’: Cromwell’s contribution to Parliament’s Military Victories, 1642 - 1651 By Prof Peter Gaunt ‘this little Judgement which I have through my industry 94 obtained unto, In Forraigne Countries’: Philip Skippon and the lessons learnt from contintental conflicts in the English Civil War. By Dr Ismini Pells CONTENTS (cont’d) Cromwellian Britain XXV 117 Putney, Greater London By Serrie Meakins Writings and Sources XVII 123 Minor Operations in the English Civil War By Prof Peter Gaunt Book Reviews 129 The English Civil War : A Military History by Peter Gaunt The English Civil Wars : A Beginner’s Guide by Patrick Little The Social World of Early Modern Westminster Abbey, Court and Community, 1525-1640 by Julia Merritt Westminster 1640-60 : A Royal City in a Time of Revolution by Julia Merritt The Last Ironsides : The English Expedition to Portugal, 1662-1668 by Jonathon Riley Reviews by Alan Turton, Nicola Turton, Dr Patrick Little and Dr Miranda Malins Obituary : Ivan Roots 137 By Dr Stephen Roberts Bibliography of Books 141 By Dr David Smith Bibliography of Journals 145 By Prof Peter Gaunt ISBN 0-905729-26-9 EDITOR’S NOTE This edition of Cromwelliana has a distinctly military theme. We have two papers originally presented at the Association’s study day in October 2014 by Peter Gaunt and David Appleby covering Cromwell’s contribution to Parliament’s military victories, and the fate of the New Model Army after the Restoration. In addition, related subjects include a study of Philip Skippon and the lessons he learnt from continental conflicts prior to the English civil war, and an account of Cromwell’s generalship and the conquest of Scotland 1650–51. In February we were very sorry to lose one of our most valued Cromwellian historians of recent times – Ivan Roots. He was a committed supporter and previous president of the Association; I am grateful to Stephen Roberts who has provided a fitting tribute to Ivan for this publication. If you are interested in contributing to future issues of the journal, please contact the Cromwell Association via the email address: [email protected] My thanks to all the contributors for their input to this edition. Cover image: Olivarus Britannicus heros. Print by William Faithorne, first published in Ludovici de Gand’s panegyric Parallelum Olivae, 1656. Courtesy of The Cromwell Museum, Huntingdon. 3 4 CROMWELL AND HIS PUBLIC By Prof Jason Peacey As anyone who has attended an event such as the Cromwell Day commemoration in recent years will attest, heightened security measures surrounding our Parliament provide very visible testimony to what many regard as the remoteness of modern politicians. This security is, of course, understandable given the fear of terrorist attacks, and yet it is hard to deny that the concrete barriers, armed police and airport-style security also send out a powerful message: the Houses of Parliament are a somewhat intimidating and unapproachable place. Security, in other words, comes at a price, just as the surveillance powers which some consider to be necessary to prevent terror plots inevitably impact on privacy and civil liberties. Such points are not necessarily intended to be politically loaded; rather they are intended to make the point that issues like terrorism provoke questions about how societies strike an appropriate balance between security, on the one hand, and liberty, privacy and an accessible political system on the other. That such things are worthy of debate seems to be clear from the fact that the physical remoteness of our representatives is, for some at least, a matter of serious concern. Indeed, it is hard not to think that there is a connection between the perceived insularity and inaccessibility of MPs – or perhaps even the sense that the Westminster bubble is somewhat easier to penetrate by lobbyists than by ordinary members of the public – and the much commented upon phenomena of voter apathy, public disgruntlement with political parties and general cynicism regarding the political system, not least in the wake of the expenses scandal. Like all of the most interesting and troubling modern issues, of course, there is scope for historians to reflect on what might usefully be gleaned from the past, and if it can justifiably be argued that we have not yet had a satisfactory debate about the trade-off between security and political accessibility in our own time, then there is value in focusing our attention on a period in the past when our ancestors grappled with such issues much more directly. My suggestion, therefore, is that it is worthwhile examining Cromwell’s age, and the parliaments of the mid-seventeenth century, for insights about how such a debate might be conducted. This is possible, in fact, because historians of political culture in the seventeenth century have become increasingly fascinated by the ways in which politicians and governments interacted with their publics, and engaged in what we would now call ‘public relations’ and 5 CROMWELL AND HIS PUBLIC ‘spin’. As a result, we have discovered that the political elite in early modern Britain thought about such things in fairly sophisticated ways, in terms of everything from royal progresses and civic pageantry to the management and manipulation of the media, not least in relation to the reputations of individual grandees, and the risks associated with ‘popularity’.1 This makes it possible to reach some fascinating conclusions regarding the changes that took place in political culture during the Tudor and Stuart age, and particularly during the civil wars and interregnum, and the aim of this piece is to suggest that this picture can also be informed by looking closely at Cromwell’s attitudes and behaviour, both before and during his time as lord protector. The result will hopefully be an instructive means of thinking about the kinds of ways in which it might be possible to have a productive debate about the political culture that we would like to foster in the twenty- first century. I In 1962, the German sociologist, Jürgen Habermas, published what was to become an extraordinarily controversial but influential book, entitled The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. His main purpose was to think about the media and communication in the twentieth century, but in critiquing what he considered to be the unfortunate effects of modern mass media, Habermas also discussed the past, and specifically the emergence of what he termed a ‘public sphere’ in England after 1695. This was marked, he believed, by a free press, and it involved the generation of a free space – between the private individual and the state – in which it was possible to conduct political discourse that was rational and commercial, and mostly free from government interference, at least amongst the bourgeoisie (or ‘middling sort’). This book, together with Elizabeth Eisenstein’s equally provocative account of The Printing Press as an Agent of Change (1979), has played a huge role in helping to provide structure for a wealth of scholarship on print culture and the ‘print revolution’ – or the ‘unacknowledged revolution’ in Eisenstein’s phrase – of the early modern period.2 Crucially, such scholarship has involved thinking about the ways in which the development of printing, and more specifically the kinds of printed texts that are likely to have had most ‘reach’, in terms of being accessible to a general audience, influenced political culture, and perhaps even political events.