The Protectorate (2)

A 1658 issue Cromwell half-crown, with the Latin inscription
OLIVAR D G RP ANG SCO ET HIB &c PRO,
 translated as "Oliver, by the Grace of God
of the Republic of England, Scotland and Ireland etc. Protector".
Public domain

Penruddock’s Rising

In January 1655 Cromwell dissolved his first Parliament. So far he was proving no more successful than Charles I in managing his parliaments. The situation became still more tense in March-April 1655 when the Protectorate faced the first serious royalist conspiracy to confront the regime since the Second Civil War. 

The rising led by Colonel John Penruddock was a royalist revolt in the west of England. Cromwell was to be assassinated (though the plans for this were intercepted by his secretary John Thurloe,  the highly efficient head of the security operation. The general rising planned for March failed to come off, but Penruddock captured Salisbury and proclaimed Charles II. The rebellion was suppressed by Major-General John Desborough in command of the militia. The rebels were convicted of treason. About fourteen, including Penruddock, were executed and about seventy sent to Barbados. The rebellion had been put down quite easily but it revealed a worrying apathy among the population. There was no popular support either for the royalists or for the Protectorate.  

Foreign policy: the 'Western Design'

The regime's successful war against the Dutch left Cromwell over-confident, leading him to make the biggest military mistake of his career. 

Although the Thirty Years' War had ended in 1648, the war between the two European superpowers, France and Spain, was continuing. England could have stayed out of this war but, in a mood of bellicose providentialism, Cromwell and the majority of his Council took the decision to relive the glories of the Elizabethan age by attacking the Spanish Empire in what came to be known as the 'Western Design'. 

In December 1654 a fleet of thirty ships left England for the Caribbean under the command of Admiral William Penn carrying an army of about 3,000. In March the expeditionary force left Barbados to attack the valuable colony of Hispaniola and landed on the island on 14 April. The attack was a predictable disaster as the English were repulsed at San Domingo. On 4 May Penn re-embarked what was left of his men and transported them to the undefended island of Jamaica, which surrendered on 17 May. The 1500 Spanish settlers were forced to leave. 

When the news of the defeat at Hispaniola reached Cromwell in July he experienced a deep crisis of self-doubt. He shut himself in his room for the whole day and inaugurated a series of exercises in national humiliation and self-scrutiny that went on until September 1656.  At the time the failure to take Hispaniola overshadowed the occupation of Jamaica, though this was to have huge long-term implications for British history. (Spain finally surrendered Jamaica by the Treaty of Madrid, 1670.)  

In October 1655 England formed a defensive alliance with France and declared war with Spain. This forced Charles Stuart to take refuge in Bruges.

England was punching above her weight and grave mistakes were made in the war, but Blake continued to organize the navy, and pirates and royalists were swept from the seas. England’s diplomatic standing had never been higher.

The major-generals

In spite of Penruddock's defeat there was continuing worrying intelligence of conspiratorial alliances of Royalists, Levellers, Commonwealth men, and Fifth Monarchists. In addition, the monthly assessment that paid for the army was being reduced and the government was sliding into debt. But the regime's fundamental problem was its lack of constitutional legitimacy and its failure to gain widespread support. Through all this, Cromwell never lost sight of his fundamental agenda: to solve the problem of the army, and to promote ‘godly reformation’. But how was he to bring this about without causing the collapse of the Protectorate?

His solution to his complex dilemmas was a military one: to combine policing and tax gathering (those two essential functions of the state) by creating major-generals to carry out these duties. In doing so, he hoped to find a cheaper alternative to a standing army and also (perhaps) finally bring about the reformation which God demanded. 

In August 1655 the nation was divided into ten (then eleven) administrative districts, each with a major-general supported by a core of seasoned soldiers, and with the task of recruiting and training new regional militias totalling 6,000 horse which would enable the disbandment of some 10,000 men of the New Model Army.  The militias were to be paid for by a Decimation Tax levied on royalists who had not demonstrated their change of heart, and who were referred to as ‘malignants’ and ‘delinquents’. This looked less like devolved government and more like extreme centralisation. Charles I had never attempted anything like it.

The major-generals were issued with orders  to suppress ale-houses, drunkenness, swearing, sabbath-breaking and plays. Horse-racing and cock-fighting were banned. Charles Worsley, the most energetic of them all, suppressed 215 alehouses in a single hundred of Lancashire and almost 200 in the city of Chester.  Edmund Whalley in the midlands checked weights and measures. 

Major-general Charles Worsley
scourge of alehouses

There was nothing especially new about this moral agenda, and the major-generals were primarily criticized because they came from outside the ranks of the county elites and because they represented direct rule from Westminster rather than local interests. They were often met by a policy of non-cooperation, and because of the costs of the war with Spain they lacked the resources to implement the law. 

The Second Protectorate Parliament

Cromwell summoned a new Parliament for September 1656. All prospects for harmony were shattered in October by the case of James Nayler. 

By the 1650s Quaker numbers had reached perhaps 50,000, with particular successes in the north, with disproportionate numbers of women responding, and with strong representation in the army. The diarist John Evelyn described them as 

a new phanatic sect, of dangerous principles, they shew no respect to any man, magistrate or other, and seem a melancholy proud sort of people, and exceedingly ignorant. Quoted Adrian Davies, The Quakers in English Society (Oxford, 2000), p. 1.

In October 1656 James Nayler, an ex-soldier in Lambert’s northern army, who had become an itinerant evangelist, re-enacted Christ’s entry into Jerusalem by riding into Bristol on an ass, with women throwing palms at his feet. The horrified Bristol magistrates arrested Nayler but did not know what to do with him. He was taken to London, and the Commons set up a committee of fifty-five to consider his case. On 16 December the House voted against the death penalty but agreed to a more 'merciful' punishment: Nayler was to be branded, bored through the tongue, flogged twice and then imprisoned for life. The first part of the sentence was carried out on 18 December, though Nayler was so weakened by his ordeal that the next part had to be postponed.

James Nayler in the pillory
Public domain

Cromwell had no sympathy for Nayler – his definition of religious liberty did not extend to those who behaved as outrageously as the Quakers.  Nevertheless he was worried about the implications of the sentence and on 25 December he wrote to Parliament asking it to explain its ‘grounds and reasons’ for its action. However, Parliament went ahead with the second part of the sentence. On 27 February 1657 he told some army officers that if nothing were done to check parliament’s religious intolerance, might not ‘the case of James Nayler … happen to be your own case?’ 

The Humble Petition and Advice

The case of James Nayler had shown the disadvantages of a single legislature with no check on its powers. Cromwell himself was backing away from the authoritarian strategies of 1655-56 and allowing the experiment of the major-generals to lapse quietly.


On 25 March 1657 Parliament voted 123/62 to offer Cromwell the crown. On 31 March the offer was made formal when they presented him with the Humble Petition and Advice.  It provided for a two-chamber legislature, with the other House composed of between forty and seventy life peers appointed by the Protector and Council, approximating more to a Senate than the old House of Lords. The Protector would have the power to name his successor.. 

Cromwell spent five weeks agonizing over the offer, and while he hesitated, a number of army officers informed him that they would not serve under a monarch. Faced with their opposition, he turned down the crown:

 I would not seek to set up that that providence hath destroyed and laid in the dust, and I would not build Jericho again.   

On 25 May, two weeks after his rejection, he was offered an amended version of the Humble Petition and Advice by which he was to retain the title of Protector. On 26 June he was installed as Lord Protector in Westminster Hall in a ceremony that reeked of regal pomp, with the Speaker of the Commons taking the role of the Archbishop of Canterbury.  

Cromwell’s whole style was now unmistakably regal. He received ambassadors at the Banqueting House; ambassadors had to come into his presence cap in hand and address him as Highness; he insisted that in formal letters of state monarchs should call him brother.  Though his household was run at a fraction of the cost of Charles I’s, his court at Hampton Court began to look more like a conventional court. He was an enthusiastic patron of music. In the country at large, puritan austerity began to relax.  

By now it was apparent that the regime was held together by Cromwell alone. Within his complex personality - conservative country gentleman and millenarian enthusiast -  rested all the contradictions of the Revolution. Could they be resolved?

Parliament dissolved

In January 1658 the House met for its second session, with an Upper House now established in accordance with the Humble Petition. But the new session saw many acrimonious attacks on the new constitution, especially on the Upper House, which to republican MPs looked suspiciously like the old House of Lords. To Cromwell’s alarm, elements in the army seemed to agree and a republican petition began circulating demanding the abolition of the Protectorate and the Upper House. On 4 February, the day the petition was to be presented to Parliament, Cromwell dissolved it abruptly and angrily.

The end of the Protectorate

In spite of Cromwell's failure to manage his parliaments and to secure godly reformation, he was presiding over a regime that could boast many successes. He had successfully defeated royalist conspiracies so that the Stuarts seemed as far away from the throne as ever. In March 1657 he had signed a formal treaty with France, and in June 1658 an Anglo-French army defeated a Spanish force at the battle of the Dunes, by which England acquired Dunkirk. 

Marshall Turenne at the Battle of the Dunes
Palais de Versailles
Public domain

In a development that was to have long-term implications, in September 1655 he had received Menassah ben Israel, the chief rabbi of Amsterdam. In the following year he had used his protectoral prerogative to readmit the Jews to England. 

But his health was deteriorating. In August George Fox met him and 

I saw and felt a waft of death go forth against him and he looked like a dead man.

He died on 3 September 1658, the anniversary of Dunbar and Worcester. The office of Lord Protector was transmitted peacefully to his son Richard, aged thirty-one. On 23 November (some time after his burial) he was given a magnificent state funeral. 

Showing the wooden and wax effigy
set up in Somerset House
after Cromwell's death.

There was little enthusiasm for the Stuarts but when Richard Cromwell soon showed himself incapable of managing his only parliament, there was a growing acceptance that there was no alternative to a return of the monarchy. But how was this to be brought about? Clearly the army would have to play a role - but which army? There were now three armies - one in England, one in Ireland, and one in Scotland, commanded by General George Monck. Which would break the deadlock?

In May 1659 Richard was ousted from power and the military leaders in England recalled the Rump, which now had only forty-two members. It was dissolved by the Army on 13 October. It was now a power struggle between generals. From his headquarters in Edinburgh General Monck demanded the recall of the Rump, and prepared to march into England. On 26 December three regiments reinstated the Rump. 

On 1 January 1660, Monck crossed into England with 7,000 soldiers. By the time he arrived in London on 3 February civil government was in a state of confusion. On 11 February, seeing that the Rump was no longer fit for purpose, he dissolved it. That night saw a piece of street theatre, the ‘roasting of rumps’ witnessed by Samuel Pepys. On 21 February the members of the Long Parliament excluded by Pride’s Purge were reinstated. They made Monck Lord General, appointed a Council of State, set a date for new elections, and dissolved themselves.

By this time Monck was in touch with the exiled court in the Low Countries and on 4 April at his suggestion Charles Stuart issued the Declaration of Breda promising a monarchy that would respect parliament, a ‘free and general pardon’ to all his subjects (except for a few named individuals) and ‘liberty to tender consciences’ – a promise that would return to haunt him.

The new assembly, the Convention Parliament, opened on 25 April and was overwhelmingly royalist in its composition. For the first time since 1649 the House of Lords was present. On 8 May the Parliament, passed a motion that a fleet should be sent to bring Charles Stuart back to England. Charles landed at Dover on 25 May and began his triumphant progress to London. However, the fundamental issues that had caused the Civil War were unresolved.

Conclusion

1. The Declaration of Breda was a clever papering over the cracks and did nothing to resolve the underlying issues. Would Charles II be able to keep his promise to respect religious differences?
2. The Stuarts were being restored but the issue of the respective powers of king and parliament was unresolved.
3. It looked as if the restored monarchy might be a strong one. The king was being restored free of the limitations his father had agreed to in 1641-  there was no parliamentary control of the army or the king’s ministers. But could this situation continue? What had the Civil War achieved? What was being restored at the Restoration?