Part 4

CROMPTON, SAMUEL (1753-1827), English inventor, was born on the 3rd of December 1753 at Firwood near Bolton-le-Moors, Lancashire. While yet a boy he lost his father, and had to contribute to the family resources by spinning yarn. The defects of the spinning jenny imbued him with the idea of devising something better, and for five or six years the effort absorbed all his spare time and money, including what he earned by playing the violin at the Bolton theatre. About 1779 he succeeded in producing a machine which span yarn suitable for use in the manufacture of muslin, and which was known as the muslin wheel or the Hall-in-the-Wood wheel (from the name of the house in which he and his family resided), and later as the spinning mule. After his marriage in 1780 a good demand arose for the yarn which he himself made at Hall-in-the-Wood, but the prying to which his methods were subjected drove him, in the absence of means to take out a patent, to the choice of destroying his machine or making it public. He adopted the latter alternative on the promise of a number of manufacturers to pay him for the use of the mule, but all he received was about L60. He then resumed spinning on his own account, but with indifferent success. In 1800 a sum of L500 was raised for his benefit by subscription, and when in 1809 Edmund Cartwright, the inventor of the power-loom obtained L10,000 from parliament, he determined also to apply for a grant. In 1811 he made a tour in the manufacturing districts of Lancashire and Scotland to collect evidence showing how extensively his mule was used, and in 1812 parliament allowed him L5000. With the aid of this money he embarked in business, first as a bleacher and then as a cotton merchant and spinner, but again without success. In 1824 some friends, without his knowledge, bought him an annuity of L63. He died at Bolton on the 26th of June 1827.

CROMPTON, an urban district of Lancashire, England, 2(1/2) m. N. of Oldham, within the parliamentary borough of Oldham. Pop. (1901) 13,427. At Shaw, a populous village included within it, is a station on the Lancashire & Yorkshire railway. Cotton mills and the collieries of the neighbourhood employ the large industrial population.

CROMWELL, HENRY (1628-1674), fourth son of Oliver Cromwell, was born at Huntingdon on the 20th of January 1628, and served under his father during the latter part of the Civil War. His active life, however, was mainly spent in Ireland, whither he took some troops to assist Oliver early in 1650, and he was one of the Irish representatives in the Little, or Nominated, Parliament of 1653. In 1654 he was again in Ireland, and after making certain recommendations to his father, now lord protector, with regard to the government of that country, he became major-general of the forces in Ireland and a member of the Irish council of state, taking up his new duties in July 1655. Nominally Henry was subordinate to the lord-deputy, Charles Fleetwood, but Fleetwood's departure for England in September 1655 left him for all practical purposes the ruler of Ireland. He moderated the lord-deputy's policy of deporting the Irish, and unlike him he paid some attention to the interests of the English settlers; moreover, again unlike Fleetwood, he appears to have held the scales evenly between the different Protestant sects, and his undoubted popularity in Ireland is attested by Clarendon. In November 1657 Henry himself was made lord-deputy; but before this time he had refused a gift of property worth L1500 a year, basing his refusal on the grounds of the poverty of the country, a poverty which was not the least of his troubles. In 1657 he advised his father not to accept the office of king, although in 1634 he had supported a motion to this effect; and after the dissolution of Cromwell's second parliament in February 1658 he showed his anxiety that the protector should act in a moderate and constitutional manner. After Oliver's death Henry hailed with delight the succession of his brother Richard to the office of protector, but although he was now appointed lieutenant and governor general of Ireland, it was only with great reluctance that he remained in that country. Having rejected proposals to assist in the restoration of Charles II., Henry was recalled to England in June 1659 just after his brother's fall; quietly obeying this order he resigned his office at once. Although he lost some property at the Restoration, he was allowed after some solicitation to keep the estate he had bought in Ireland. His concluding years were passed at Spinney Abbey in Cambridgeshire; he was unmolested by the government, and he died on the 23rd of March 1674. In 1653 Henry married Elizabeth (d. 1687), daughter of Sir Francis Russell, and he left five sons and two daughters.

CROMWELL, OLIVER (1599-1658), lord protector of England, was the 5th and only surviving son of Robert Cromwell of Huntingdon and of Elizabeth Steward, widow of William Lynn. His paternal grandfather was Sir Henry Cromwell of Hinchinbrook, a leading personage in Huntingdonshire, and grandson of Richard Williams, knighted by Henry VIII., nephew of Thomas Cromwell, earl of Essex, Henry VIII.'s minister, whose name he adopted. His mother was descended from a family named Styward in Norfolk, which was not, however, connected in any way, as has been often asserted, with the royal house of Stuart. Oliver was born on the 25th of April 1599, was educated under Dr Thomas Beard, a fervent puritan, at the free school at Huntingdon, and on the 23rd of April 1616 matriculated as a fellow-commoner at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, then a hotbed of puritanism, subsequently studying law in London. The royalist anecdotes relating to his youth, including charges of ill-conduct, do not deserve credit, the entries in the register of St John's, Huntingdon, noting Oliver's submission on two occasions to church censure being forgeries; but it is not improbable that his youth was wild and possibly dissolute.[1] According to Edmund Waller he was "very well read in the Greek and Roman story." Burnet declares he had little Latin, but he was able to converse with the Dutch ambassador in that language. According to James Heath in his _Flagellum_, "he was more famous for his exercises in the fields than in the schools, being one of the chief match-makers and players at football, cudgels, or any other boisterous game or sport." On the 22nd of August 1620 he married Elizabeth, daughter of Sir James Bourchier, a city merchant of Tower Hill, and of Felstead in Essex; and his father having died in 1617 he settled at Huntingdon and occupied himself in the management of his small estate. In 1628 he was returned to parliament as member for the borough, and on the 11th of February 1629 he spoke in support of puritan doctrine, complaining of the attempt by the king to silence Dr Beard, who had raised his voice against the "flat popery" inculcated by Dr Alabaster at Paul's Cross. He was also one of the members who refused to adjourn at the king's command till Sir John Eliot's resolutions had been passed.

During the eleven years of government without parliament very little is recorded of Cromwell. His name is not connected with the resistance to the levy of ship-money or to the action of the ecclesiastical courts, but in 1630 he was one of those fined for refusing to take up knighthood. The same year he was named one of the justices of the peace for his borough; and on the grant of a new charter showed great zeal in defending the rights of the commoners, and succeeded in procuring an alteration in the charter in their favour, exhibiting much warmth of temper during the dispute and being committed to custody by the privy council for angry words spoken against the mayor, for which he afterwards apologized. He also defended the rights of the commoners of Ely threatened by the "adventurers" who had drained the Great Level, and he was nicknamed afterwards by a royalist newspaper "Lord of the Fens." He was again later the champion of the commoners of St Ives in the Long Parliament against enclosures by the earl of Manchester, obtaining a commission of the House of Commons to inquire into the case, and drawing upon himself the severe censure of the chairman, the future Lord Clarendon, by his "impetuous carriage" and "insolent behaviour," and by the passionate vehemence he imparted into the business. Bishop Williams, a kinsman of Cromwell's, relates at this time that he was "a common spokesman for sectaries, and maintained their part with great stubbornness"; and his earliest extant letter (in 1635) is an appeal for subscriptions for a puritan lecturer. There appears to be no foundation for the statement that he was stopped by an order of council when on the point of abandoning England for America, though there can be little doubt that the thoughts of emigration suggested themselves to his mind at this period. He viewed the "innovations in religion" with abhorrence. According to Clarendon he told the latter in 1641 that if the Grand Remonstrance had not passed "he would have sold all he had the next morning and never have seen England more." In 1631 he converted his landed property into money, and John Hampden, his cousin, a patentee of Connecticut in 1632, was on the point of emigrating. Cromwell was perhaps arrested in his project by his succession in 1636 to the estate of his uncle Sir Thomas Steward, and to his office of farmer of the cathedral tithes at Ely, whither he now removed. Meanwhile, like Bunyan and many other puritans, Cromwell had been passing through a trying period of mental and religious change and struggle, beginning with deep melancholy and religious doubt and depression, and ending with "seeing light" and with enthusiastic and convinced faith, which remained henceforth the chief characteristic and impulse in his career.

Cromwell's first parliamentary efforts.

He represented Cambridge in the Short and Long Parliaments of 1640, and at once showed extraordinary zeal and audacity in his opposition to the government, taking a large share in business and serving on numerous and important committees. As the cousin of Hampden and St. John he was intimately associated with the leaders of the parliamentary party. His sphere of action, however, was not in parliament. He was not an orator, and though he could express himself forcibly on occasion, his speech was incoherent and devoid of any of the arts of rhetoric. Clarendon notes on his first appearance in parliament that "he seemed to have a person in no degree gracious, no ornament of discourse, none of those talents which use to reconcile the affections of the standers by; yet as he grew into place and authority his parts seemed to be renewed." He supported stoutly the extreme party of opposition to the king, but did not take the lead except on a few less important occasions, and was apparently silent in the debates on the Petition of Right, the Grand Remonstrance and the Militia. His first recorded intervention in debate in the Long Parliament was on the 9th of November 1640, a few days after the meeting of the House, when he delivered a petition from the imprisoned John Lilburne. He was described by Sir Philip Warwick on this occasion:--"I came into the House one morning well clad and perceived a gentleman speaking whom I knew not, very ordinarily apparelled; for it was a plain cloth suit which seemed to have been made by an ill country tailor; his linen was plain and not very clean; ... his stature was of a good size; his sword stuck close to his side; his countenance swollen and reddish; his voice sharp and untunable and his eloquence full of fervour ... I sincerely profess it much lessened my reverence as to that great council for he was very much hearkened unto." On the 30th of December he moved to the second reading of Strode's bill for annual parliaments. His chief interest from the first, however, lay in the religious question. He belonged to the Root and Branch party, and spoke in favour of the petition of the London citizens for the abolition of episcopacy on the 9th of February 1641, and pressed upon the House the Root and Branch Bill in May. On the 6th of November he carried a motion entrusting the train-bands south of the Trent to the command of the earl of Essex. On the 14th of January 1642, after the king's attempt to seize the five members, he moved for a committee to put the kingdom in a posture of defence. He contributed L600 to the proposed Irish campaign and L500 for raising forces in England--large sums from his small estate--and on his own initiative in July 1642 sent arms of the value of L100 down to Cambridge, seized the magazine there in August, and prevented the king's commission of array from being executed in the county, taking these important steps on his own authority and receiving subsequently indemnity by vote of the House of Commons. Shortly afterwards he joined Essex with sixty horse, and was present at Edgehill, where his troop was one of the few not routed by Rupert's charge, Cromwell himself being mentioned among those officers who "never stirred from their troops but fought till the last minute."

Beginning of Civil War.

During the earlier part of the year 1643 the military position of Charles was greatly superior to that of the parliament. Essex was inactive near Oxford; in the west Sir Ralph Hopton had won a series of victories, and in the north Newcastle defeated the Fairfaxes at Adwalton Moor, and all Yorkshire except Hull was in his hands. It seemed likely that the whole of the north would be laid open and the royalists be able to march upon London and join Charles and Hopton there. This stroke, which would most probably have given the victory to the king, was prevented by the "Eastern Association," a union of Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, Cambridgeshire and Hertfordshire, constituted in December 1642 and augmented in 1643 by Huntingdonshire and Lincolnshire, of which Cromwell was the leading spirit. His zeal and energy met everywhere with conspicuous success. In January 1643 he seized the royalist high sheriff of Hertfordshire in the act of proclaiming the king's commission of array at St Albans; in February he was at Cambridge taking measures for the defence of the town; in March suppressing royalist risings at Lowestoft and Lynn; in April those of Huntingdon, when he also recaptured Crowland from the king's party. In May he defeated a greatly superior royalist force at Grantham, proceeding afterwards to Nottingham in accordance with Essex's plan of penetrating into Yorkshire to relieve the Fairfaxes; where, however, difficulties, arising from jealousies between the officers, and the treachery of John Hotham, whose arrest Cromwell was instrumental in effecting, obliged him to retire again to the association, leaving the Fairfaxes to be defeated at Adwalton Moor. He showed extraordinary energy, resource and military talent in stemming the advance of the royalists, who now followed up their victories by advancing into the association; he defeated them at Gainsborough on the 28th of July, and managed a masterly retreat before overwhelming numbers to Lincoln, while the victory on the 11th of October at Winceby finally secured the association, and maintained the wedge which prevented the junction of the royalists in the north with the king in the south.

Cromwell's soldiers.

One great source of Cromwell's strength was the military reforms he had initiated. At Edgehill he had observed the inferiority of the parliamentary to the royalist horse, composed as it was of soldiers of fortune and the dregs of the populace. "Do you think," he had said, "that the spirits of such base, mean fellows will ever be able to encounter gentlemen that have honour and courage and resolution in them? You must get men of a spirit that is likely to go as far as gentlemen will go or you will be beaten still." The royalists were fighting for a great cause. To succeed the parliamentary soldiers must also be inspired by some great principle, and this was now found in religion. Cromwell chose his own troops, both officers and privates, from the "religious men," who fought not for pay or for adventure, but for their faith. He declared, when answering a complaint that a certain captain in his regiment was a better preacher than fighter, that he who prayed best would fight best, and that he knew nothing could "give the like courage and confidence as the knowledge of God in Christ will." The superiority of these men--more intelligent than the common soldiers, better disciplined, better trained, better armed, excellent horsemen and fighting for a great cause--not only over the other parliamentary troops but over the royalists, was soon observed in battle. According to Clarendon the latter, though frequently victorious in a charge, could not rally afterwards, "whereas Cromwell's troops if they prevailed, or though they were beaten and routed, presently rallied again and stood in good order till they received new orders"; and the king's military successes dwindled in proportion to the gradual preponderance of Cromwell's troops in the parliamentary army. At first these picked men only existed in Cromwell's own troop, which, however, by frequent additions became the nucleus of a regiment, and by the time of the New Model included about 11,000 men.

In July 1643 Cromwell had been appointed governor of the Isle of Ely; on the 22nd of January 1644 he became second in command under the earl of Manchester as lieutenant-general of the Eastern Association, and on the 16th of February 1644 a member of the Committee of Both Kingdoms with greatly increased influence. In March he took Hillesden House in Buckinghamshire; in May was at the siege of Lincoln, when he repulsed Goring's attempt to relieve the town, and subsequently took part in Manchester's campaign in the north. At Marston Moor (q.v.) on the 2nd of July he commanded all the horse of the Eastern Association, with some Scottish troops; and though for a time disabled by a wound in the neck, he charged and routed Rupert's troops opposed to him, and subsequently went to the support of the Scots, who were hard pressed by the enemy, and converted what appeared at one time a defeat into a decisive victory. It was on this occasion that he earned the nickname of "Ironsides," applied to him now by Prince Rupert, and afterwards to his soldiers, "from the impenetrable strength of his troops which could by no means be broken or divided."

The movements of Manchester after Marston Moor were marked by great apathy. He was one of the moderate party who desired an accommodation with the king, and was opposed to Cromwell's sectaries. He remained at Lincoln, did nothing to prevent the defeat of Essex's army in the west, and when he at last advanced south to join Essex's and Waller's troops his management of the army led to the failure of the attack upon the king at Newbury on the 27th of October 1644. He delayed supporting the infantry till too late, and was repulsed; he allowed the royal army to march past his outposts; and a fortnight afterwards, without any attempt to prevent it, and greatly to Cromwell's vexation, permitted the moving of the king's artillery and the relief of Donnington Castle by Prince Rupert. "If you beat the king ninety-nine times," Manchester urged at Newbury, "yet he is king still and so will his posterity be after him; but if the king beat us once we shall all be hanged and our posterity be made slaves." "My lord," answered Cromwell, "if this be so, why did we take up arms at first? This is against fighting ever hereafter. If so let us make peace, be it ever so base." The contention brought to a crisis the struggle between the moderate Presbyterians and the Scots on the one side, who decided to maintain the monarchy and fought for an accommodation and to establish Presbyterianism in England, and on the other the republicans who would be satisfied with nothing less than the complete overthrow of the king, and the Independents who regarded the establishment of Presbyterianism as an evil almost as great as that of the Church of England. On the 25th of November Cromwell charged Manchester with "unwillingness to have the war prosecuted to a full victory"; which Manchester answered by accusing Cromwell of having used expressions against the nobility, the Scots and Presbyterianism; of desiring to fill the army of the Eastern Association with Independents to prevent any accommodation; and of having vowed if he met the king in battle he would as lief fire his pistol at him as at anybody else. The lords and the Scots vehemently took Manchester's part; but the Commons eventually sided with Cromwell, appointed Sir Thomas Fairfax general of the New Model Army, and passed two self-denying ordinances, the second of which, ordering all members of both houses to lay down their commissions within forty days, was accepted by the lords on the 3rd of April 1645.

The battle of Naseby.

Meanwhile Cromwell had been ordered on the 3rd of March by the House to take his regiment to the assistance of Waller, under whom he served as an admirable subordinate. "Although he was blunt," says Waller, "he did not bear himself with pride or disdain. As an officer he was obedient and did never dispute my orders or argue upon them." He returned on the 19th of April, and on the 23rd was sent to Oxfordshire to prevent a junction between Charles and Prince Rupert, in which he succeeded after some small engagements and the storming of Blechingdon House. His services were felt to be too valuable to be lost, and on the 10th of May his command was prolonged for forty days. On the 28th he was sent to Ely for the defence of the eastern counties against the king's advance; and on the 10th of June, upon Fairfax's petition, he was named by the Commons lieutenant-general, joining Fairfax on the 13th with six hundred horse. At the decisive battle of Naseby (the 14th of June 1645) he commanded the parliamentary right wing and routed the cavalry of Sir Marmaduke Langdale, subsequently falling upon and defeating the royalist centre, and pursuing the fugitives as far as the outskirts of Leicester. At Langport again, on the 10th of July 1645, his management of the troops was largely instrumental in gaining the victory. As the king had no longer a field army, the war after Naseby resolved itself into a series of sieges which Charles had no means of raising. Cromwell was present at the sieges of Bridgwater, Bath, Sherborne and Bristol; and later, in command of four regiments of foot and three of horse, he was employed in clearing Wiltshire and Hampshire of the royalist garrisons. He took Devizes and Laycock House, Winchester and Basing House, and rejoined Fairfax in October at Exeter, and accompanied him to Cornwall, where he assisted in the defeat of Hopton's forces and in the suppression of the royalists in the west. On the 9th of January 1646 he surprised Lord Wentworth's brigade at Bovey Tracey, and was present with Fairfax at the fall of Exeter on the 9th of April. He then went to London to give an account of proceedings to the parliament, was thanked for his services and rewarded with the estate of the marquess of Worcester. He was present again with Fairfax at the capitulation of Oxford on the 24th of June, which practically terminated the Civil War, when he used his influence in favour of granting lenient terms. He then removed with his family from Ely to Drury Lane, London, and about a year later to King Street, Westminster.