University of Virginia Library

APPENDIX.

ON CROMWELL.

To the Editor of the ‘Morning Post.’

Sir,—As author of the play entitled ‘Charles I.’ at present being performed at the Lyceum Theatre, I beg to support my view of Cromwell's character by a few statements and quotations, which last I shall select from Liberal authorities alone. “Good wine needs no bush,” and the character of Oliver Cromwell may bear a little good-humoured discussion without alarming his most jealous admirers. I may be allowed to premise that in the obnoxious interview between the King and Cromwell I have only endeavoured to paint the humble yet influential burgess of Cambridge—not the Protector; whose sagacity was in effect almost equivalent to principle, and whose outrageous despotism grew to a sort of grandeur. The play is of Charles, and not of Cromwell.

The degrading terms which Cromwell is supposed to advance to the King, namely, an offer of his support in consideration of an earldom, almost his hereditary right, awaken a chorus of indignation against me, and I am accredited with a slanderous invention. I really supposed the matter to be familiar to all readers of history: numerous contemporary pamphlets attest the statement which I have only antedated, and they certainly warrant the dramatist, if not the historian, in accepting it as a fact. All historians, favourable or unfavourable to Cromwell, admit that at Hampton Court he

had frequent conferences with Charles, and it was generally believed that the gist of his proposals amounted to this, that he should govern and the King might live. Furthermore, considering the unblushing rapacity which he displayed at this very period, by accepting from the government the confiscated estates of a loyal nobleman, the Marquis of Worcester, it seems to me that in exclaiming against the paltry charge above we swallow a camel and strain at a gnat.

In the character which figures in my play I have endeavoured, with one exception, to bring forward the popular qualities of a demagogue—a fearless front, bluff independence, pithy expression, and a certain command of the situation. His affection for his daughter displays itself; and, instead of the hideous levity of the great regicide, a measure of remorse for his great crime. In the Cromwell of history I find everywhere behind those vast public qualities which we all admit —duplicity, greed, cruelty, and tyranny. In support of this view, which I confess is, with many old truths, somewhat out of fashion to-day, I shall begin by quoting from an ultra-Republican author, Godwin, a stanch admirer of Cromwell. Where in all history shall we seek for a stronger instance of meanness and duplicity?—“Cromwell considered this the occasion (when suspected of being at the bottom of the army's discontent) to bring forward his masterpiece of dissimulation. He stood up in his place in Parliament and protested that to his knowledge the army was greatly misunderstood and calumniated. They willingly put themselves into the hands of the national representatives, and would conform to anything Parliament would please to ordain. If the House of Commons commanded them to disband, they would obey without a murmur, and pile up their arms at the door of that assembly. For himself, he entreated them to accept his assurance of his entire submissive obedience,” &c. This from the man who presently outrages all privilege, all fealty, all this saintly outcry, by turning Parliament out of doors and

packing the benches with his regicides! Parliament voted by a majority of 129 to 83 to come to terms with the King. On the next day every man of the majority was a prisoner, or had flown; of the remaining minority only 53 voted for the death of Charles. Was this, then, the act of the nation, or of the individual? For the rapacity of Cromwell I need only point to the numerous confiscated estates he appropriated, so that he was enabled to settle upon one of his daughters at an early period of his career what would be equal to nearly £10,000 of our money at the present time.

For his cruelty I am embarrassed by the multitude of examples, and have only room for an ordinary passage:—“We refused them quarter,” writes Cromwell, referring to the siege of Drogheda; “I believe we put to the sword the whole number of the defendants. I do not think a hundred escaped with their lives. Those that did are in safe custody for the Barbadoes,” i.e., slavery. Again: “The governor, Sir Arthur Ashton, and divers considerable officers being there, our men getting up to them were ordered by me to put them all to the sword; and indeed, being in the heat of action, I forbade them to spare any under arms in the town.” And the cause of this rebellion was for liberty of conscience.

Why do we English revile Tilly and Wallenstein, Alva and Parma, &c., if this man be the idol of Englishmen? “It hath been a marvellous great mercy,” he continues; “I wish that all honest hearts may give the glory of this good to God alone, to whom indeed the praise of this mercy belongs.” This is the man who stabled his horses in St. Paul's, and turned our most venerable cathedrals into barracks! For the last five years of his life he governed England without a Parliament, and by martial law. “To govern according to law,” writes Hallam, a Liberal, “may sometimes be the usurper's wish, but can seldom be in his power. The Protector abandoned all thought of it. Dividing the kingdom into districts, he placed at the head of each a major-general

as a sort of military magistrate, responsible for the subjection of his prefecture. These were eleven in number, men bitterly hostile to the Royalist party, and insolent towards all civil authority. .... All illusion was now gone as to the pretended benefit of the civil war. This unparalleled tyranny had ended in a despotism compared to which all the illegal practices of former reigns, all that had cost Charles his life and crown, appeared but as dust in the balance.”

These quotations are familiar, but we forget their import in our worship of this historical “new-born gaud,”

“And give to dust that is a little gilt
More praise than gilt o'er dusted.”
I have the honour to be, Sir, yours, &c.,