CHAPTER XVII

CROMWELL’S DOMESTIC POLICY 1654–1658

Cromwell came into power as the nominee of the army, and in domestic affairs the programme which he set himself to carry out was that which the army had set forth in its petitions and manifestoes. For the moment he was invested with all the authority of a dictator. According to the “Instrument of Government,” the first triennial Parliament was to meet in September, 1654, and in the interval the Protector and his Council were empowered to issue ordinances, which had the force of law “until order shall be taken in Parliament concerning them.” Cromwell made a liberal use of this provision, and the period of nine months which followed his accession was the creative period of his government. Between December, 1653, and September, 1654, he issued eighty-two ordinances, nearly all of which were confirmed in 1656 by his second Parliament. Hallam, in a disparaging comparison between Cromwell and Napoleon, concludes by saying that Cromwell, unlike Napoleon, “never showed any signs of a legislative mind, or any desire to fix his renown on that noblest basis, the amelioration of social institutions.” In reality, nothing could be farther from the truth, and if Cromwell’s reforming zeal has left no trace on the statute book, the reason is that all the laws passed during the Protectorate were annulled at the Restoration.

All the leading principles of Cromwell’s domestic policy are contained in the small folio volume of his ordinances. A few are merely prolongations of expiring acts, others are personal or local in their application. There is an ordinance for the relief of poor prisoners, another codifying the law relating to the maintenance of highways, and there are three devoted to the reorganisation of the Treasury. The settlement of Ireland and Scotland, and the completion of the union of the three kingdoms, which the Long Parliament had left unfinished, form the subject of a third series. But none exhibit so plainly the Protector’s domestic policy as the three sets of ordinances dealing with the reform of the Law, the reformation of manners, and the reorganisation of the national Church.

Ever since 1647, the army had demanded that the laws of England should be so reformed, “that all suits and questions of right may be made more clear and certain in their issues, and not so tedious nor chargeable in their proceedings.” The Long Parliament took the task in hand, made some slight progress, and then stuck fast. The Little Parliament attempted it with so much rude vigour that it seemed likely to end in the subversion of all law. The Protector took up the work where the Long Parliament left off, and persistently pursued it as long as he ruled.

Cromwell realised its difficulty. “If any man,” he once said, “should ask me, ‘Why, how will you have it done?’ I confess I do not know.” All he could do was to select the best men for the purpose, and to leave them a free hand. Therefore he applied to the lawyers to co-operate, “being resolved to give the learned of the robe the honour of reforming their profession,” and hoping “that God will give them hearts to do it.” His chief assistant was Matthew Hale, who was made a judge by the Protector early in 1654. At the opening of Parliament in September, 1654, Cromwell announced that the Government had called together “persons of as great ability and great interest as are in the nation, to consider how the laws might be made plain and short, and less chargeable to the people,” and that they had prepared several bills. The most important of these schemes was the ordinance for the regulation of the Court of Chancery, published August 21, 1654, and confirmed by Parliament in 1656. It contained a reduced scale of fees, and embodied, according to modern lawyers, many valuable reforms. Contemporary practitioners, such as Whitelocke, held that there was much in the new procedure which it was impossible or undesirable to carry out, but with some subsequent modifications it was duly put in force.

Cromwell was equally zealous for the reform of the Criminal Law. In April, 1653, as soon as he had turned out the Long Parliament, he gave pardons to all prisoners sentenced to death except those guilty of murder. His object was to make the laws “conformable to the just and righteous laws of God.” Some English laws, he told Parliament, were “wicked and abominable laws.”

“To hang a man for six and eightpence and I know not what—to hang for a trifle and acquit murder, is in the ministration of the law through ill framing of it.... To see men lose their lives for petty matters is a thing God will reckon, and I wish it may not be laid on this nation a day longer than you have opportunity to give a remedy.”

To carry out these schemes required not merely the help of lawyers to devise them, but the co-operation of Parliament to make them law. The Protector’s first Parliament spent all its time in constitutional debates, and did nothing to reform the Law. His second, busy most of its existence in the like manner, discussed the bills introduced by the Government for the establishment of county registers and local courts, but allowed them to drop. It completed the abolition of feudal incidents which the Long Parliament had commenced, and which Charles II.’s Parliament finally placed on the statute book, but it left the harshness and cruelty of the criminal code for the nineteenth century to redress.

The “Reformation of Manners” was an object in which the Protector obtained more support from Parliament. All Puritans were eager for it, and the Long Parliament had made a beginning by acts enjoining the stricter observance of Sunday, punishing swearing with greater severity, and making adultery a capital offence. Of the Protector’s ordinances, one declared duelling “unpleasing to God, unbecoming Christians, and contrary to all good order and government.” A person sending a challenge was to be bound over to keep the peace for six months, and a duellist who killed his opponent was to be tried for murder. A second ordinance supplemented the act against swearing by special provisions for the punishment of carmen, porters, and watermen, “who are very ordinarily drunk and do blaspheme.” A third forbade cock-fighting, because it often led to disturbances of the peace and was accompanied by gaming and drunkenness. A fourth suppressed horse-racing for six months, not because of its accompaniments, but because the Cavaliers made use of race-meetings “to carry on their pernicious designs.”

When Cromwell’s second Parliament met, he appealed to it to further the work.

“I am confident,” said he, “our liberty and prosperity depend upon reformation. Make it a shame to see men bold in sin and profaneness and God will bless you. Truly these things do respect the souls of men, and the spirits, which are the men. The mind is the man. If that be kept pure the man signifies somewhat; if not, I would very fain see what difference there is betwixt him and a beast. He hath only some activity to do some more mischief.”

Parliament answered by confirming the ordinances against duelling, swearing, and cock-fighting, and passing similar acts of its own. One was directed against the vagrants and “idle, dissolute” persons who abounded in all parts of the country. Amongst them, “the bigots of that iron time” included fiddlers and minstrels taken “playing or making music” in taverns, who were declared punishable as “rogues and vagabonds.” A second act was aimed at the professional gamesters about London, who made it their trade “to cheat and debauch the young gentry.” A third act enforced the Puritan Sabbath in all its severity. On that day, no shops might be opened and no manufactures carried on. No travelling was to be allowed, except in cases of necessity attested by a certificate from a justice, and persons “vainly and profanely walking on the day aforesaid” were to be punished. Sunday closing was the rule for all inns and alehouses, though the dressing or sale of victuals in a moderate way, “for the use of such as cannot otherwise be provided for,” was permitted.

Much of this drastic legislation was ineffective. In some cases it went far beyond the feeling of the times. Juries steadily refused to convict persons charged with adultery under the act of 1650, and it is doubtful whether the capital penalty was ever actually inflicted. In many places, the local authorities were indifferent or timid. “We may have good laws,” said the Protector, “against the common country disorders that are everywhere, yet who is to execute them?” Hardly the country justices. “A justice of the peace shall by most be wondered at as an owl, if he go but one step out of the ordinary course of his fellow justices in the reformation of these things.” Hence the value in Cromwell’s eyes of the Major-Generals established throughout England in the autumn of 1655. They were not simply military officers charged to keep an eye on the political enemies of the government, but police magistrates required to repress crime and immorality in their respective districts. Pride put a stop to bear-baiting in London by killing the bears, and to cock-fighting by wringing the necks of the cocks. Whalley boasted, after he had been a few months in office, that there were no vagrants left in Nottinghamshire, and in every county his colleagues suppressed unnecessary alehouses by the score. Nor was it only humble offenders who were struck at: neither the rich nor the noble escaped the impartial severity of these military reformers. “Let them be who they may that are debauched,” said Cromwell, “it is for the glory of God that nothing of outward consideration should save them from a just punishment and reformation.” He claimed that the establishment of the Major-Generals had been “more effectual towards the discountenancing of vice and the settling of religion than anything done these fifty years.” Their rule ended in the spring of 1657, and Cromwell feared that the work of reformation would come to a stop. But the experiment had infused new vigour into the local administration, which lasted as long as the Protectorate endured.

In spite of these restrictive laws, it must not be imagined that there was any general suppression of public amusements or sports. “Lawful and laudable recreations” even Puritans encouraged. In 1647, when the Long Parliament prohibited the observation of Christmas and of saints’ days in general, it passed an act giving servants, apprentices, and scholars a whole holiday once a month, for “recreation and relaxation from their constant and ordinary labours.” The Protector himself hunted, hawked, and played bowls, just as if he had been a Royalist country-gentleman. He told Parliament that he suppressed race-meetings not because they were unlawful, but because they were temporarily inexpedient. With all his zeal for Sunday closing, the suppression of unnecessary alehouses, and the punishment of drunkenness, it never occurred to him to stop the sale of drink altogether. He drank wine and small beer himself, and quoted as illogical and absurd “the man who would keep all wine out of the country lest men should be drunk.” The idea was contrary to his conception of civil freedom. “It will be found,” he said, “an unjust and unwise jealousy to deprive a man of his natural liberty upon a supposition he may abuse it. When he doth abuse it, judge.”

In the moral crusade he had undertaken, the Protector relied not so much on restrictive legislation as on the influence of education and religion. It was to their defective education that he attributed much of the misconduct of the “profane nobility and gentry of this nation.” “We send our children to France,” he said, “before they know God or good manners, and they return with all the licentiousness of that nation. Neither care taken to educate them before they go, or to keep them in good order when they come home.” As a party, the Puritans showed a great zeal for education, and the pamphlet literature of the time is full of schemes for its reformation or extension. In these discussions, the modern conception of the duty of the State with regard to education gradually took shape. While the plan of education which Milton published in 1644 was intended only for “a select body of our noble and gentle youth,” in 1660, he advocated the foundation of schools in all parts of the nation, in order to spread knowledge, civility, and culture to “all extreme parts which now lie numb and neglected.” In his _Oceana_, Harrington asserted that the formation of future citizens by means of a system of free schools was one of the chief duties of a republic.

As usually happens, practical men lagged behind the theorists, but during the Commonwealth a portion of the revenue of confiscated Church lands was systematically devoted to the maintenance of schools and schoolmasters. The Protector pursued the same policy, and publicly declared when appropriating a grant for educational purposes in Scotland, that it was “a duty not only to have the Gospel set up, but schools for children erected and maintenance provided therefor.” His government undertook the task of ejecting incapable schoolmasters and of licensing persons fit to teach. It made the proper administration of educational endowments in general a part of its business, and one of Cromwell’s earliest ordinances appointed fresh commissioners for the visitation of the universities, and established a permanent board of visitors for the great public schools. Personally, he was far more interested in the reorganisation of the universities than in primary or secondary education. He vigorously defended them against the attacks of the zealots of the Little Parliament who threatened their disendowment or abolition. In 1651, he had been elected Chancellor of Oxford, and held that office till July, 1657, when he was succeeded by his son Richard, signalizing his connection with the university by the foundation of a new readership in Divinity, and the presentation of some Greek manuscripts to the Bodleian. He appointed John Owen his Vice-Chancellor, under whose efficient rule Oxford prospered greatly. Even Clarendon is forced to admit that in spite of visitations and purgings the university “yielded a harvest of extraordinary good and sound knowledge in all parts of learning.”

The Protector also endeavoured to found a new university in the north of England. There was a widespread feeling that the two existing universities were not enough for the country. In 1641, petitions were presented praying for the foundation of a university at York or Manchester, and later it was proposed to establish one in London. In 1651, Cromwell strongly recommended the endowment of a school or college for all the sciences and literature, out of the property of the Dean and Chapter of Durham. The scheme, he wrote, was “a matter of great concernment and importance, as that which by the blessing of God may conduce to the promoting of learning and piety in these poor, rude, ignorant parts,” and bring forth in time “such happy and glorious fruits as are scarce thought of or foreseen.” But Parliament did nothing, and it was reserved for Oliver himself to found a college at Durham in 1657, which throve greatly until the Restoration put an end to its existence.

The Protector encouraged learned men and men of letters. With his relative, the poet Waller, he was on terms of considerable intimacy; he allowed Hobbes and Cowley, both Royalists, to return from exile, and he released Cleveland when he was arrested by one of the Major-Generals, although Cleveland’s fame rested mainly on satires against the Puritans. Milton and Marvell were in Cromwell’s service as Latin secretaries, and he also employed Marvell as tutor to one of his wards. Brian Walton was assisted in the printing of his Polyglot Bible, and Archbishop Ussher was honoured by a public funeral.

But both learning and education were, in Cromwell’s eyes, inseparably connected with religion. When he accepted the Chancellorship he congratulated Oxford on the learning and piety “so marvellously springing up there,” adding a hope that it might be “useful to that great and glorious kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Thinking that the chief function of the universities was to provide ministers for the Church, he held piety more important than learning. “I believe,” he told his Parliament, five years later, “that God hath for the ministry a very great seed in the youth of the universities, who, instead of studying books, study their own heart.” Cromwell’s desire to develop higher education, and his defence of the universities against their assailants, were the natural consequences of his resolve to maintain a national Church against those who wished to sever the connection between Church and State. On this question, the army, as a whole, supported Cromwell. In the “Agreement of the People,” presented to Parliament in 1649, the army had demanded that “the Christian religion be held forth and recommended as the public profession of this nation,” and it included “the instructing of the people thereunto, so it be not compulsive,” and “the maintaining able teachers for that end,” amongst the legitimate functions of the government. These principles had been embodied in the “Instrument of Government,” and the duty of devising means to carry them out fell to the Protector.

The first question to be decided was the question of the maintenance of the clergy. The Little Parliament had proposed to abolish tithes altogether, and in the “Instrument of Government” the substitution of some other provision was suggested. As no satisfactory scheme for the commutation of tithes could be devised, Cromwell felt bound to preserve them. “For my part,” said he, “I should think I were very treacherous if I took away tithes till I see the legislative power settle maintenance to ministers another way.” To abolish tithes before that was done, would be “to cut the throats of the ministers.” Under the Protectorate, as under the rule of the Long Parliament, it was the permanent policy of the government to increase the income of the parochial clergy. The endowments of poor livings were systematically augmented out of the fund supplied by episcopal lands and the fines imposed on royalist delinquents.

The basis of the Protector’s plan for the reorganisation of the Church was the scheme which John Owen had presented to the Long Parliament in 1652. On March 20, 1654, Cromwell issued an ordinance “for the approbation of public preachers,” which appointed thirty-eight commissioners, lay and clerical, to sit permanently in London and examine into the qualifications of all candidates for livings. Their business was to certify that they found the candidate “to be a person for the grace of God in him, his holy and unblamable conversation, as also for his knowledge and utterance, able and fit to preach the Gospel,” and without obtaining this certificate no one was in future to be admitted to a benefice. The commissioners were not empowered to impose any doctrinal tests, and it was expressly declared that approbation by them “is not intended nor shall be construed to be any solemn or sacred setting apart of any person to any particular office in the ministry.” All that the “Triers” undertook to do was to see that none but fit and proper persons should receive “the public stipend and maintenance” guaranteed by the State.

After provision for the appointment of the fit, came provision for the elimination of the unfit. A second ordinance, issued in August, 1654, appointed local commissioners in every county to remove scandalous and inefficient ministers and schoolmasters within its limits. Amongst the reasons which justified ejection were included not merely immoral conduct or Popish and blasphemous opinions, but disaffection to the government and the use of the Prayer-book. In September, the work was completed by a third ordinance for the union of small and the division of large and populous parishes.

Cromwell’s speeches are full of expressions of satisfaction at the results that these ordinances produced. He was proud of the character of his clergy. “In the times of Episcopacy,” said he, “what pitiful certificates served to make a man a minister. If any man understood Latin or Greek, he was sure to be admitted.” But now, “neither Mr. parson nor doctor in the university hath been reckoned stamp enough by those that made these approbations, though I can say they have a great esteem for learning.” The rule with the Triers was, “that they must not admit a man unless they were able to discern something of the grace of God in him.”

He was equally proud of the comprehensiveness of the Church. There were “three sorts of godly men,” that is, three sects, to be provided for in it: the Presbyterians, the Independents, and the Baptists. The Triers were drawn impartially from all three bodies, and “though a man be of any of those three judgments, if he have the root of the matter in him he may be admitted.” Summing up the work of the Triers and Ejectors, he emphatically declared: “There hath not been such a service to England since the Christian religion was perfect in England.”

In the main, Cromwell’s satisfaction was justified. Both bodies of commissioners did the work they were charged to do with fidelity. Some good men were expelled merely for royalism or using the liturgy, but the bulk of those who lost their livings deserved their fate, and those admitted were generally fit for their office. The Presbyterian Richard Baxter, an opponent on principle of Cromwell and his works, felt bound to praise the commissioners:

“To give them their due, they did abundance of good to the Church. They saved many a congregation from ignorant, ungodly, drunken teachers. That sort of men that intended no more in the ministry than to say a sermon as readers say their common prayers, and so patch up a few good words together to talk the people asleep with on Sunday, and all the rest of the week go with them to the alehouse and harden them in sin; and that sort of ministers that either preached against a holy life, or preached as men that were never acquainted with it; all those that used the ministry but as a common trade to live by, and were never likely to convert a soul:—all these they usually rejected, and in their stead admitted of any that were able, serious preachers, and lived a godly life, of what tolerable opinion soever they were. So that though they were many of them somewhat partial for Independents, Separatists, Fifth Monarchy-men, and Anabaptists, and against the Prelatists and Arminians, yet so great was the benefit above the hurt to the Church, that many thousands of souls blessed God for the faithful ministers whom they let in.”

Outside the bounds of the national Church, the constitution promised liberty of worship to “all such as do profess faith in God by Jesus Christ.” Anglicanism and Catholicism, however, labelled Prelacy and Popery, and regarded as idolatrous or politically dangerous, were excepted by name from this promise. In practice, although the use of the liturgy had been prohibited since 1645, many orthodox Anglicans had contrived to retain their livings, sometimes using portions of the Prayer-book from memory, in other cases confining themselves to preaching and to the administration of the sacraments. Many ejected ministers gathered little congregations in private houses, and were not molested by the Government. The royalist insurrection of 1655 led to greater severity, and in October, 1655, Cromwell issued a proclamation prohibiting the employment of the ejected clergy as chaplains or schoolmasters. It was meant as a warning, rather than to be rigidly enforced, and the promise was made that any man whose “godliness and good affection to the present government” were capable of proof should be treated with tenderness. Congregations of Royalists continued to meet in London throughout the Protectorate, and the Government winked at their use of Anglican services and ceremonies. But whenever there was a new plot discovered, their meetings were liable to be interrupted by the soldiery.

The case of the Catholics was harder than that of the Anglicans, although their lot was less hard than it had been. In 1650, the acts imposing fines on recusants for not coming to church were repealed, and there were persistent rumours that the Independents were about to make proposals for their toleration. In June, 1654, a Catholic priest was executed in London for no crime except being a priest. Cromwell, it is said, wished to pardon him, but was prevented by the opposition of his Council. In 1656, Mazarin urged Cromwell to grant toleration to the Catholics.

“I cannot,” answered the Protector, “as to a public declaration of my sense on that point; although I believe that under my government your Eminency on behalf of the Catholics has less cause for complaint than under the Parliament. For I have of some and those very many had compassion, making a difference. I have plucked many out of the fire,—the raging fire of persecution, which did tyrannise over their consciences and encroach by arbitrariness of power over their estates. And herein it is my purpose, as soon as I can remove impediments and some weights that press me down, to make a further progress, and discharge my promise to your Eminence.”

The Protector’s purpose was never fulfilled. Public opinion in England was too hostile to the Catholics to permit of their legal toleration, and the same thing happened when Cromwell wished to readmit the Jews to England. In November, 1655, Manasseh Ben Israel, a learned Portuguese Jew, settled in Amsterdam as a physician, petitioned the Protector to allow the Jews to reside and trade in England, and to grant them the free exercise of their religion. Cromwell, who was personally in favour of their petition, called together a committee of divines, merchants, and lawyers to confer with the Council on the question. The Protector himself took part in the conferences. “I never heard a man speak so well,” said one of his hearers, but the divines feared for their religion and the merchants for their trade, so the legal toleration the Jews asked for was not granted. Cromwell, however, granted them leave to meet in private houses for devotion, and showed them such encouragement and favour that their resettlement in England really dates from the Protectorate.

The Protector’s tolerant nature showed itself again in his dealings with the Quakers. Under the Commonwealth, the Quakers were persecuted and imprisoned, not simply because their opinions were regarded as blasphemous, but because they were held dangerous to the public peace. Their attacks on the clergy and their misconduct and brawling in churches gave colour to these accusations. Under the Protectorate, this persecution continued, till it was mitigated by the intervention of the Protector and his Council. In 1654, George Fox had a long interview with the Protector. “I spake much to him,” writes Fox, “of truth; and a great discourse I had with him about religion, wherein he carried himself very moderately.” The earnestness and enthusiasm of Fox impressed Cromwell greatly. “As I spake, he would several times say, it was very good, and it was truth. And as I was turning to go away, he catches me by the hand, and with tears in his eyes, said: ‘Come again to my house; for if thou and I were but an hour of a day together we should be nearer one to the other’; adding, that he wished me no more ill than he did to his own soul.” Convinced that the Quakers were not inclined to “take up a carnal sword” against his government, the Protector ordered Fox to be set free, and in October, 1656, he released a number of imprisoned Quakers. Again in November, 1657, he issued a general circular to all justices in England and Wales, stating that though he was far from countenancing the mistaken practices or principles of the Quakers, yet as those proceeded “rather from a spirit of error than a malicious opposition to authority,” they were “to be pitied, and dealt with as persons under a strong delusion,” to be discharged from prison, and to be treated in the future with tenderness rather than severity.

Yet tolerant as Cromwell was, there were limits to his toleration, and certain opinions he regarded as outside the pale. The Instrument refused liberty to “such as under the profession of Christ hold forth and practise licentiousness” and the Petition and Advice added to them those who “published horrible blasphemies.”

“As for profane persons,” said Cromwell, “blasphemers, such as preach sedition; the contentious railers, evil-speakers, who seek by evil words to corrupt good manners; persons of loose conversation—punishment from the civil magistrate ought to meet with these. Because if they pretend conscience; yet walking disorderly and not according but contrary to the Gospel, and even to natural lights, they are judged by all. And their sins being open make them subjects of the magistrate’s sword, who ought not to bear the sword in vain. The discipline of the army was such that a man would not be suffered to remain there, of whom we could take notice that he was guilty of such practices as these.”

A well-ordered state, thought Cromwell, should in this respect resemble an army, but, even with regard to opinions which he held blasphemous, he was not willing to suffer the extreme penalties to be inflicted which the law sanctioned and the voice of most Puritans demanded.

In 1656, James Naylor, an old soldier who was one of Fox’s early disciples, allowed himself to be hailed by his enthusiastic followers as a new Messiah, and was consequently thrown into prison as a blasphemer. The Parliament then sitting assumed judicial powers, and, after many days’ debate, voted that he should be branded, pilloried, whipped, and imprisoned at pleasure. The Protector vainly pointed out to the House that it was going beyond its powers, and all the influence of the Government was required to save Naylor from capital punishment. What the Protector would probably have done if the punishment of Naylor had been left to him was shown by his treatment of John Biddle. Unitarians were by implication excluded from toleration by the Petition and Advice. In 1655, Biddle was prosecuted under the Blasphemy Act of 1648, and would undoubtedly have been sentenced to death. The Protector was petitioned to interfere, and replied by soundly rating the petitioners. “If it be true,” said he, “what Mr. Biddle holds, to wit, that our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ is but a creature, then all those who worship Him with the worship due to God are idolaters.” No Christian, was his conclusion, could give any countenance to such a person, but nevertheless he stopped the trial by issuing a warrant for Biddle’s confinement at St. Mary’s Castle in the Scilly Islands. Biddle’s life was undoubtedly saved by this intervention.

In spite of the liberality and comprehensiveness of Cromwell’s ecclesiastical policy, there were several sections of Puritans whom it failed to satisfy. Some Independents opposed any established Church, and denied that the State ought in any way to meddle with religious matters. The most distinguished adherents of this view were Vane and Milton. The magistrate, said Milton, had no coercive power at all in matters of religion. It was not his business “to settle religion,” as it was popularly termed, “by appointing either what we shall believe in divine things or practise in religious.” His duty was simply to defend the Church. “Had he once learned not further to concern himself with Church affairs, half his labour might be spared and the Commonwealth better tended.”

Another section, in the name of liberty of conscience, denied the State any right to punish blasphemous or immoral doctrines. “They tell the Magistrate,” said the Protector, “that he hath nothing to do with men holding such notions; these are matters of conscience and opinion; they are matters of religion; what hath the Magistrate to do with these things? He is to look to the outward man, not to the inward.” Cromwell’s own position with regard to dangerous opinions was that, if they were but opinions, they were best left alone. “Notions will hurt none but those that have them.” When they developed into actions, it was a different matter, and especially when they led to rebellion and bloodshed. “Our practice hath been,” he said in 1656, “to let all this nation see that whatever pretensions to religion would continue quiet and peaceable, they should enjoy conscience and liberty to themselves.” But to be quiet and peaceable was the indispensable condition. Fifth Monarchy preachers were frequently arrested for sermons against the government, both before and after the attempted rising of the Fifth Monarchy men in the spring of 1657. On one occasion, some of the congregation of John Rogers, one of their preachers, came to Whitehall to argue with the Protector, complaining that their pastor was suffering for religion’s sake. Cromwell answered that Rogers suffered as a railer, a seducer, and a stirrer-up of sedition: that to call suffering for evil-doing suffering for the Gospel was to make Christ the patron of such things. “God is my witness,” he concluded, “no man in England doth suffer for the testimony of Jesus. Nay do not lift up your hands and your eyes, for there is no man in England which suffers so. There is such liberty—I wish it be not abused, that no man in England suffereth for Christ.”

It was true. Cromwell’s was the most tolerant government which had existed in England since the Reformation. In practice, he was more lenient than the laws, and more liberal-minded than most of his advisers. The drawback was, that even the more limited amount of religious freedom which the laws guaranteed seemed too much to the great majority of the nation. Englishmen—even Puritans—had not yet learnt the lesson of toleration. “Is there not yet,” said Cromwell in 1655, “a strange itch upon the spirits of men? Nothing will satisfy them unless they can press their finger upon their brethren’s consciences to pinch them there.” To prevent this, was, he avowed, his task as a ruler.

“If the whole power was in the Presbyterians, they would force all men their way, and the Fifth Monarchy men would do the same, and so the Rebaptised persons; and his work was to keep several judgments in peace, because, like men falling out in the streets, they would run their heads one against another; he was as a constable to part them and keep them in peace.”

To induce these jarring sects to co-operate was more difficult, but that also Cromwell attempted to do. In the Puritan Church, which he organised, no agreement about ritual or discipline or doctrine was required, save only the acceptance of the main principles of Christianity. It was not so much a Church as a confederation of Christian sects working together for righteousness, under the control of the State. The absence of agreement in details and of uniformity in externals was no defect in Cromwell’s eyes. To him it was rather a merit. “All that believe,” he had once written, “have the real unity which is more glorious because inward and spiritual.”[8]

Footnote 8:

See p. 152.

The originality of the Protector’s ecclesiastical policy lay in this attempt to combine the two principles of toleration and comprehension. It reflected his character. His tolerance was not the result of scepticism or indifference, but arose from respect for the consciences of others. The comprehensiveness of his Church was the outcome of his large-hearted sympathy with every form of Puritanism. To local magistrates in local religious quarrels, he enjoined “a charity as large as the whole flock of Christ”; and the same spirit inspired his exhortation to the Little Parliament.

“Have a care of the whole flock. Love the sheep. Love the lambs. Love all; tend all; cherish and countenance all in all things that are good. And if the poorest Christian, the most mistaken Christian, shall desire to live peaceably and quietly under you: I say if any desire but to live a life of godliness and honesty, let him be protected.”

Mr. Greatheart, under whose protection all pilgrims to the Celestial City walked securely—Feeble-Mind and Ready-to-Halt, as well as Valiant-for-Truth,—is but an allegorical representation of what Cromwell was to the Puritans. Cromwell’s ecclesiastical system passed away with its author, but no man exerted more influence on the religious development of England. Thanks to him, Nonconformity had time to take root and to grow so strong in England that the storm which followed the Restoration had no power to root it up.