cromwell's stifled republic -- 2/11/25

11 Feb 2025

cromwell's stifled republic -- 2/11/25

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Today's selection-- from The Blazing World by Jonathan Healy. Cromwell's rule stabilized England but prevented further progress by aligning with traditional elites

“The courting of Manasseh Ben Israel is a reminder that,even as Cromwell grew old and his Protectorate inched back towards something close to the traditional constitution, kingless England still had some radical goals, even at the top. Among the English people, Cromwell's rule was never especially popular except for the stability it brought. The English did, however, retain a radical streak, though the experience of the 1650s had seen the baton passed from the Levellers and Diggers towards religious groups, especially the Quakers. Religious radicalism, not secular, would be the immediate legacy of the Republic. Reform of the commonwealth had been supplanted by the radicalism of the soul.

“Cromwell's rule must be accounted a success, at least in terms of realpolitik. The atrocities in Ireland cannot be excused, though it speaks volumes of his English contemporaries that they saw his part in the regicide as the worse crime. His defenders point to his religious toleration, and they are right to do so, but even here he often failed to stand up to those who would persecute the sects. He abandoned Nayler to his fate, and, when the Humble Petition and Advice was accepted, he allowed the constitutional protections for religious dissent contained in the Instrument of Government to be quietly dropped.

“On the other side, the more excitable bouts of Puritanism under his rule were rather less about him than the people who came to power with the Revolution. He is remembered for cancelling Christmas, even banning mince pies. He is the man who closed the theatres and stopped music and dance. But the Christmas ban originated in 1644, the theatres were closed by the Long Parliament and any legislation about pies exists only as a figment of the popular imagination. The notorious Adultery Act was passed by the Rump, and even the slightly bizarre act of 1657 which proscribed such offences as 'profane walking' was a Parliamentary initiative not a Cromwellian one. Clearly he was in favour of moral reform, but the fact that the Republic ended up so Puritan was not just about the obsessions of one particular man. The truth is, the revolution brought to power a group of people who had grown up in a world of rising population, social stress and a crime wave. No wonder they wanted to reform society. Many of them could quite happily have worked with Charles I — who himself was a committed reformist — and many of them did end up working with his son.

Portrait by Samuel Cooper, 1656

“Either way, the country was settled and now becoming respected on the international stage. How much this can be attributed to Cromwell himself is moot. In reality, stability owed much to the fact that people were sick of the chaos of war, and to the existence of a sizable force of arms. Modern commentators sometimes suggest the Republic was a military dictatorship, backed only by the threat of violence. There's a degree of truth here: certainly Cromwell's army was stronger than that of the late king, though monarchies themselves are not averse to using violence to quell dissent — just ask the Scots Covenanters or Prynne, Burton and Eastwick. Cromwell always tried to rule with a veneer of constitutionalism based on checks and balances. He claimed that constitutions were 'but dross and dung' compared to Godliness, but this didn't stop him ruling through Parliament. It's sometimes pointed out with glee that Cromwell ended up dissolving more parliaments than Charles I ever did. Given that Parliaments were always dissolved by the executive, it's not the telling point many think it is. In the five years of his Protectorate, Parliament was an almost constant presence, and regular elections were written into the constitution. That can't be said for the reign of Charles I. Cromwell's dissolution of the Rump in 1653, by military force, needs to be seen in the context of a Parliament that had sat for nearly thirteen years. Even the Levellers might have admitted that he had a point.

“But one of the great tragedies of Cromwell was that he prevented the Republic being so much more. He was, at heart, a conservative East Anglian landowner. In the laudable goal of healing and settling, he took the path of least resistance, cosying up to the traditional rulers: 'a nobleman, a gentleman; a yeoman'. Had Providence put another figure as Fairfax's deputy, one of the many great constitutional brains of the New Model Army, someone who thought forms of government were more than just 'dross and dung', then who knows what could have been achieved. Had John Lambert occupied Cromwell's position, England could have gone down the path of a balanced, written constitution. Lambert was if anything the finer general and certainly the greater intellect. Instead, Lambert's fate was to have his constitution harried and hassled by republicans and conservatives alike, picked apart and undermined because it dared give protection to Quakers and because he happened to be a soldier. Then, in 1657, Cromwell betrayed him, looking for new counsels among the old social elite, the kinglings, even as he had rejected the kingship itself.”