era nwell _a 1a CROMWELL'S DAY The Cromwell Association The address by Dr Gerald Aylmer Master of St Peter's College, Oxford at the Annual Commemoration Service, 3 September 1982. President: Professor IVAN ROOTS M.A., F.S.A. Every historical event or individual can be seen in two ways: either in Vice-Presidents: THE LORD CARADON OF SJ CLEER terms of the meaning and significance which they have for the present Mr MAURICE ASHLEY, C.B.E., B.A., D.Phil. LADY (DINGLE) FOOT day or in the strictly contemporary context of that person or Dr E.S. DE BEER, M.A., D.Litt., F.SA. happening. This applies alike to the remote and to the recent past. It is Chairman: Mr TREWIN COPPLESTONE as true of Oliver Cromwell as it is of the Battle of Hastings or the Council Battle of Waterloo, of Queen .Elizabeth I or of Sir Winston Churchill. Major R. D. BATTCOCK, The Rev. D. A. GREEVES, M.A., It is all too tempting to claim Cromwell for one's own prejudices, Miss J. S. HENDERSON, Mr JOHN LANGFORD, Mrs K. A ROBINSON, principles, or party position. Alternatively one is drawn into The Rev. R. S. PAUL, M.A., D.Phil., Miss P. BARNES, Mr L. COLLYER, spending time apologising for him: apologising for the fact that he Mr. E. A. C. GOODMAN, Mr G. NEWPORT-TINGLEY was not a democrat or a liberal, or a socialist, and was not prepared to Hon. Secretary: Miss H. PLATT, B.A. extend religious toleration to Catholics and unbelievers. Combe Lodge, Ringley Park Avenue, Reigate, Surrey. Instead I wish this afternoon to make a plea for Cromwell's Hon. Treasurer: Mr G. WOOLLARD, treatment as a man of his own time and circumstances. This is not, I Chalk Farm, Bottisham, Cambridge. hope, to down-grade him, out rather to try to locate and define his Hon. Editor of Cromwel/iana greatness more precisely. Firstly, he was an Englishman, born in the Professor IVAN ROOTS M.A., F.S.A. twilight of the Elizabethan era, raised in the Jacobean age, matured in THE CROMWELL ASSOCIATION WAS founded in 1935 by the late R. Hon. Isaac Foot and others to commemorate Oliver Cromwell, the great the traumatic decade of the 1620s. Secondly, he was what we would Puritan statesman, and to encourage the study of the history of his times, his call a 'born-again' puritan, a Calvinist believer in divine providence ·achievements and influence. It is neither political nor sectarian, its aims being and - although this was of far less importance to him - in matters of essentially historical. The Association seeks to advance its aims in a variety of church government a congregationalist. Thirdly, he was a member of ways which have included: the lesser landed gentry, one whose. family had gone down in the (a) the erection of commemorative tables! (e.g. at Naseby, Dunbar, world, but who then came to inherit additional property, giving him a Worcester, Preston etc.). (From time to time appeals are made for funds to pay for projects of this sort); particular interest in the wool trade through his flocks of sheep.. By (b) helping to establish the Cromwell Museum in the Old Grammar School at 1640, when.he was already well into middle age according to the ideas Huntingdon; of the 17th century, he had made his mark as a political and religious (c) holding two annual meetings, one the now traditional Memorial Service by the Statue outside the Houses of Parliament; the other a business critic of the Court and as an opponent of the Court's fen drainage meeting at which the Council presents a report on its year's work for schemes, though not offen drainage as such. His election for the town discussion by members. At both meetings an Address is given by a of Cambri.dge in the two successive parliaments of 1640 marks a distinguished Cromwellian; decisive stage in his career, as is so well broughtoutin that brilliantly (d) producing an annual publication Cromwel/iana which is free to members; 1 (e) awarding an annual prize for an essay on a Cromwellian theme; perceptive historical novel, Rose Macaulay's They Were Defeated. (f) maintaining a small reference library for the use of members; I He was an educated and literate person without being academic or (g) supporting the formation of local groups of paid-up members of the intellectual. His positive principles and his, negative reactions alike Association meeting for study or social purposes; were usually based on common-sense Intuitions; sometimes, perhaps (h) acting as a 'lobby' at both national and local levels whenever aspects or items of our Cromwellian heritage appear to be endangered. 'f as with the Rump Parliament's bill for a new representative, based on misunderstanding. His reaction to the Leveller spokesmen at Putney, to tell them that, although he realised that they were not anarchists themselves, what they stood for would lead to anarchy, may seem like class~biased prejudice, or else a self-fulfilling prophecy. But when we Printed in Great Britain by The Short Run Press, Exeter recollect that scarcely any popular revolution in history ever that event his would have been the case, any more than it was to be so succeeded before the 20th century, and that all popular uprisings with the only partially reformed parliaments of 1654-5 and 1656-8, were either snuffed out prematurely, or else degenerated into called under Lambert's Instrument of Government. pointless violence, can we be so sure that he was wrong? Yet he was You will notice that I have not so far mentioned Barebone's not typical of his class and his time in his reactions and his prejudices. parliament or the Major-Generals. Do these show Cromwell i~ his His opposition to King Charles I and to Archbishop Laud went true colours, respectively as a millenarian fanatic and as a puntan­ further and in a more individual direction than did that of other militarist represser of popular customs and pastimes? No one who puritan parliamentarians. His perception of the kind of military force has read Austin Woolrych's masterly account in Commonwealth to that parliament would need in order to defeat the King, once civil war Protectorate with an open mind can hold to that view of 1653. As to had begun, carried within it the seeds of a religious and political, even 1655-6, the story of the Major-Generals remains open to fuller if not also of an economic or social, revolution. Cromwell's retelling. Clearly it was never intended by Cromwell as a pe:manent leadership of the radical Independents in the House of Commons, his substitute for a constitutional settlement, although paradoxically, as almost impregnable position as second-in-command and then David Underdown has so cogently argued, it made the very sort of commander-in-chief of the Army, and his championship of the settlement that he so passionately wanted all the more difficult if not puritan sects, Baptists and Millenarians as well as Congre­ impossible of attainment. gationalists, led him - granted the character of King Charles and the Was Cromwell then successful only in what he defeated and at least other circumstances of the later 1640s, especially the clericalist claim temporarily destroyed, a failure in more lasting or creative terms? He of presbyterianism - inexorably to the revolutionary events of would not be alone among the great figures of the past if that were so. December 1648 to February 1649. And here we need to return to a strictly historical view: a As S. R. Gardiner wrote in the 1890s, a close study of the year 1647 determination to see Cromwell's successes and failures in his own provides the test case for Cromwell's sincerity. His reactions in that terms as a man of his own time, and not according to our ideas of year dispel the suspicion held by Leveller, Republican, and Royalist what he ought or ought not to have done. He failed ~s a heredit~ry enemies, that he was a scheming hypocrite, aiming from an early date ruler because of the timing of his ·own death (somethmg over which at the attainment of supreme personal power. But even ifhe was not a few of us have much control) and the inadequacy of his eldest hypocrite, may he not - granted the non-intellectual, non-analytic, surviving son as a successor. Given all the other elements in the yet introspective nature of his reactions to events - have been situation during the years 1658-60, this in turn was to lead to the capable of self-deception? We do not need to take entirely at their face restoration of the monarchy, of episcopalian anglicanism and of a value the descriptions by Bulstrode Whitelocke of their various hereditary House of Lords, and to the defeat of much more for_whi_ch conversations and discussions between 1649 and 1652, to suppose Cromwell had fought and which he had then struggled to mamtam. that Cromwell must have envisaged his personal situation changing, Of the institutions which returned in 1660 and after, only the Bishops, namely that a more lasting and durable political settlement would together with a semi-Catholic form of worship and an all-inclusive, indeed require his own elevation to a position having, in his own intolerant state church would, I believe, have been utterly immortal words,' something monarchical in it'. At the same time, as incompatible with his principles. The Stuarts possibl~, the Ho~se of C. H. Firth perceived in 1900 - and this is partly what makes his in Lords almost certainly, he could have accommodated m some kmd of many ways the best biography that we have of Oliver - dependence settlement.