Progress served under his command in the English Civil War, and John
Milton, who penned Paradise Lost, served as his personal secretary.
Cromwell's early years were ordinary, but after a conversion experience
at age 27, he was seized by a sense of divine destiny. He became suddenly
zealous for God. He was a country squire, a bronze-faced, callous-handed
man of property. He worked on his farm, prayed and fasted often and
occasionally exhorted the local congregation during church meetings. A
quiet, simple, serious-minded man, he spoke little. But when he broke his
silence, it was with great authority as he commanded obedience without
question or dispute. As a justice of the peace, he attracted attention to
himself by collaring loafers at a tavern and forcing them to join in
singing a hymn. This exploit together with quieting a disturbance among
some student factions at the neighboring town of Cambridge earned him the
respect of the Puritan locals and they sent him to Parliament as their
representative. There he attracted attention with his blunt, forcible
speech as a member of the Independent Party which was made up of Puritans.
The English people were bent upon the establishment of a democratic
parliamentary system of civil government and the elimination of the "Divine
Right of Kings." King Charles I, the tyrant who had long persecuted the
English Puritans by having their ears cut off and their noses slit for
defying his attempts to force episcopacy on their churches, finally clashed
with Parliament over a long ordeal with new and revolutionary ideas. The
Puritans, or "Roundheads" as they were called, finally led a civil war
against the King and his Cavaliers.
When he discerned the weaknesses of the Roundhead army, Cromwell made
himself captain of the cavalry. Cromwell had never been trained in war, but
from the very beginning he showed consummate genius as a general. Cromwell
understood that successful revolutions were always fought by farmers so he
gathered a thousand hand-picked Puritans - farmers and herdsmen - who were
used to the open fields. His regiment was nicknamed "Ironsides" and was
never beaten once, although they fought greatly outnumbered - at times
three to one.
It was an army the likes of which hadn't been seen since ancient Israel.
They would recite the Westminster Confession and march into battle singing
the Psalms of David striking terror into the heart of the enemy. Cromwell's
tactic was to strike with the cavalry through the advancing army at the
center, go straight through the lines and then circle to either the left or
the right milling the mass into a mob, creating confusion and utterly
destroying them. Cromwell amassed a body of troops and soon became
commander-in-chief. His discipline created the only body of regular troops
on either side who preached, prayed, paid fines for profanity and
drunkenness, and charged the enemy singing hymns - the strangest
abnormality in an age when every vice imaginable characterized soldiers and
mercenaries.
In the meantime, Charles I invited an Irish Catholic army to his aid, an
action for which he was tried for high treason and beheaded shortly after
the war. After executing the national sovereign, the Parliament assumed
power. The success of the new democracy in England was short-lived.
Cromwell found that a democratic parliamentary system run by squires and
lords oppressed the common people and was almost as corrupt as the
rulership of the deposed evil king. As Commander-in-Chief of the army, he
was able to seize rulership and served a term as "Lord Protector."
During the fifteen years in which Cromwell ruled, he drove pirates from
the Mediterranean Sea, set English captives free, and subdued any threat
from France, Spain and Italy. Cromwell made Great Britain a respected and
feared power the world over. Cromwell maintained a large degree of
tolerance for rival denominations. He stood for a national church without
bishops. The ministers might be Presbyterian, Independent or Baptist.
Dissenters were allowed to meet in gathered churches and even Roman
Catholics and Quakers were tolerated. He worked for reform of morals and
the improvement of education. He strove constantly to make England a
genuinely Christian nation and she enjoyed a brief "Golden Age" in her
history.
When Charles I was beheaded, the understanding was that he had broken
covenant with the people. The view of Cromwell and the Puritans was that
when the magistrate breaks covenant, then he may legitimately be deposed.
The Puritan understanding of the covenantal nature of government was the
foundation for American colonial government. This was true of Massachusetts
and Connecticut and to a lesser extent in the Southern colonies. When the
Mayflower Compact was written, the Pilgrims had a covenantal idea of the
nature of civil government. This was a foundation for later colonies
established throughout the 1600s. These covenants were influenced by what
Knox had done in Scotland and what the Puritans had done in England.
RICHARD CROMWELL (1658-1659)
The eldest surviving son of Oliver Cromwell, Richard was Lord Protector
of England from September 1658 to May 1659, but failed in his efforts to
lead the Commonwealth.
Richard served in the Parliaments of 1654 and 1656 and some government
posts, but showed little of his father's ability. Constitutional changes in
1657 allowed Cromwell to choose his successor. He began to prepare Richard,
appointing him to the council of state and the House of Lords.
He was proclaimed Lord Protector immediately after his father's death, on
3rd September 1658. Unfortunately, the Commonwealth had been held together
by his father and Richard was no Oliver. It was an unstable mixture of
zealous reform and a yearning for stability, Parliamentary authority and
military power.
Richard soon faced serious problems. The army were disillusioned with a
government that had grown increasingly ceremonious. They grew more restless
when Richard appointed himself commander in chief. A new Parliament was
elected in 1659 but a vacuum of power prompted the army council to seize
power. In April 1659 it forced Richard to dissolve Parliament.
The officers now recalled the Rump Parliament, dissolved by Oliver
Cromwell in 1653. It dismissed Richard as Lord Protector; he officially
abdicated in May. Yet the Rump was incapable of governing without financial
and military support and the army itself remained bitterly divided. George
Monck, one of the army's most capable officers, marched south from Scotland
to protect Parliament but, on arriving in London, realised that only the
restoration of Charles II could put an end to the political chaos that now
gripped the state.
Richard, having amassed large debts during his time in office, left for
Paris in 1660 to escape his creditors, living under the name of John
Clarke. After living in Geneva, he returned to England in around 1680,
where he lived quietly until his death.
CHARLES II (1660-85)
Although those who had signed Charles I's death warrant were punished
(nine regicides were put to death, and Cromwell's body was exhumed from
Westminster Abbey and buried in a common pit), Charles pursued a policy of
political tolerance and power-sharing. In April 1660, fresh elections had
been held and a Convention met with the House of Lords. Parliament invited
Charles to return, and he arrived at Dover on 25 May.
Despite the bitterness left from the Civil Wars and Charles I's
execution, there were few detailed negotiations over the conditions of
Charles II's restoration to the throne. Under the Declaration of Breda of
May 1660, Charles had promised pardons, arrears of Army pay, confirmation
of land purchases during the Interregnum and 'liberty of tender
consciences' in religious matters, but several issues remained unresolved.
However, the Militia Act of 1661 vested control of the armed forces in the
Crown, and Parliament agreed to an annual revenue of Ј1,200,000 (a
persistent deficit of Ј400,000-500,000 remained, leading to difficulties
for Charles in his foreign policy). The bishops were restored to their
seats in the House of Lords, and the Triennial Act of 1641 was repealed -
there was no mechanism for enforcing the King's obligation to call
Parliament at least once every three years. Under the 1660 Act of Indemnity
and Oblivion, only the lands of the Crown and the Church were automatically
resumed; the lands of Royalists and other dissenters which had been
confiscated and/or sold on were left for private negotiation or litigation.
The early years of Charles's reign saw an appalling plague which hit the
country in 1665 with 70,000 dying in London alone, and the Great Fire of
London in 1666 which destroyed St Paul's amongst other buildings. Another
misfortune included the second Dutch war of 1665 (born of English and Dutch
commercial and colonial rivalry). Although the Dutch settlement of New
Amsterdam was overrun and renamed New York before the war started, by 1666
France and Denmark had allied with the Dutch. The war was dogged by poor
administration culminating in a Dutch attack on the Thames in 1667; a peace
was negotiated later in the year.
In 1667, Charles dismissed his Lord Chancellor, Clarendon - an adviser
from Charles's days of exile (Clarendon's daughter Anne was the first wife
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