Heads Of State

"At dinner we talked much of Cromwell, all saying he was a brave fellow and did owe his crown he got to himself, as much as any man that ever got one."

"He has arrogated to himself despotic authority and the actual sovereignty of these realms under the mask of humility and the public service....Obedience and submission were never so manifest in England as at present,...their spirits are so crushed..yet...they dare not rebel and only murmur under their breath, though all live in hope of the fulfilment one day of the prophecies foretelling a change of rule ere long."

"Was not Oliver's name dreadful to neighbour nations?"

"I've been dreaming of a time when the English are sick to death of Labour and Tories and spit upon the name Oliver Cromwell and denounce this royal line that still salutes him and will salute him forever."

"The figure of Cromwell has emerged from the floating mists of time in many varied semblances, from bloodstained and hypocritical usurper up to transcendental hero and the liberator of mankind. The contradictions of his career all come over again in the fluctuations of his fame. He put a king to death, but then he broke up a parliament. He led the way in the violent suppression of bishops, he trampled on the demands of presbytery, and set up a state system of his own; yet he is the idol of voluntary congregations and the free churches. He had little comprehension of that government by discussion which is now counted the secret of liberty. No man that ever lived was less of a pattern for working those constitutional charters that are the favourite guarantees of public rights in our century. His rule was the rule of the sword. Yet his name stands first, half warrior, half saint, in the calendar of English-speaking democracy."

"Cromwell, our chief of men, who through a cloud, Not of war only, but detractions rude, Guided by faith and matchless fortitude, To peace and truth thy glorious way has ploughed And on the neck of crowned fortune proud Has reared God’s trophies, and his work pursued, While Darwen stream with blood of Scots imbrued, And Dunbar field resounds thy praises loud, And Worcester’s laureate wreath. Yet much remains To conquer still; peace hath her victories No less renowned than war: new foes arise, Threatening to bind our souls with secular chains: Help us to save free conscience from the paw Of hireling wolves whose gospel is their maw."

"So restless Cromwell could not cease In the inglorious Arts of Peace, But through adventrous war, Urged his active star... To ruine the great work of time, And cast the kingdom old Into another Mold..."

"Of late I have not given so free and full a power unto (Cromwell) as formerly I did, because I heard that he used his power so as in honour I could not avow him in it....for his expressions were sometimes against the nobility, that he hoped to live to see never a nobleman in England, and he loved such (and such) better than others because they did not love Lords. And he further expressed himself with contempt of the Assemberly of Divines...these he termed persecutors, and that they persecuted honester men than themselves."

"His body was wel compact and strong, his stature under 6 foote ( I beleeve about two inches) his head so shaped, as you might see it a storehouse and shop both of vast tresury of natural parts. His temper exceeding fyery as I have known, but the flame of it kept downe, for the most part, or soon allayed with those moral endowments he had. He was naturally compassionate towards objects in distresse, even to an effeminate measure; though God had made him a heart, wherein was left little roume for any feare, but what was due to himselfe, of which there was a large proportion, yet did he exceed in tenderness towards suffrerers. A larger soule, I thinke, hath seldom dwelt in a house of clay than his was."

"The Protector's foreign policy at the same time extorted the ungracious approbation of those who most detested him. The Cavaliers could scarcely refrain from wishing that one who had done so much to raise the fame of the nation had been a legitimate King; and the Republicans were forced to own that the tyrant suffered none but himself to wrong his country, and that, if he had robbed her of liberty, he had at least given her glory in exchange. After half a century during which England had been of scarcely more weight in European politics than Venice or Saxony, she at once became the most formidable power in the world, dictated terms of peace to the United Provinces, avenged the common injuries of Christendom on the pirates of Barbary, vanquished the Spaniards by land and sea, seized one of the finest West Indian islands, and acquired on the Flemish coast a fortress which consoled the national pride for the loss of Calais. She was supreme on the ocean. She was the head of the Protestant interest. All the reformed Churches scattered over Roman Catholic kingdoms acknowledged Cromwell as their guardian."

"The choice lay, not between Cromwell and liberty, but between Cromwell and the Stuarts. That Milton chose well, no man can doubt who fairly compares the events of the protectorate with those of the thirty years which succeeded it, the darkest and most disgraceful in the English annals. Cromwell was evidently laying, though in an irregular manner, the foundations of an admirable system. Never before had religious liberty and the freedom of discussion been enjoyed in a greater degree. Never had the national honour been better upheld abroad, or the seat of justice better filled at home. And it was rarely that any opposition, which stopped short of open rebellion, provoked the resentment of the liberal and magnanimous usurper. The institutions which he had established, as set down in the Instrument of Government, and the Humble Petition and Advice, were excellent."

"The ambition of Oliver was of no vulgar kind. He never seems to have coveted despotic power. He at first fought sincerely and manfully for the Parliament, and never deserted it, till it had deserted its duty. If he dissolved it by force, it was not till he found that the few members who remained after so many deaths, secessions, and expulsions, were desirous to appropriate to themselves a power which they held only in trust, and to inflict upon England the curse of a Venetian oligarchy. But even when thus placed by violence at the head of affairs, he did not assume unlimited power. He gave the country a constitution far more perfect than any which had at that time been known in the world. He reformed the representative system in a manner which has extorted praise even from Lord Clarendon. For himself he demanded indeed the first place in the commonwealth; but with powers scarcely so great as those of a Dutch stadtholder, or an American president. He gave the Parliament a voice in the appointment of ministers, and left to it the whole legislative authority, not even reserving to himself a veto on its enactments; and he did not require that the chief magistracy should be hereditary in his family. Thus far, we think, if the circumstances of the time, and the opportunities which he had of aggrandizing himself, be fairly considered, he will not lose by comparison with Washington or Bolivar."

"I am," said he, "as much for a government by consent as any man; but where shall we find that consent? Amongst the Prelatical, Presbyterian, Independent, Anabaptist, or Leveling Parties?"… then he fell into the commendation of his own government, boasting of the protection and quiet which the people enjoyed under it, saying, that he was resolved to keep the nation from being imbrued in blood. I said that I was of the opinion too much blood had already been shed, unless there were a better account of it. "You do well," said he, "to charge us with the guilt of blood; but we think there is a good return for what hath been shed."

"In the common course of selfish policy, Oliver Cromwell should have cultivated the friendship of foreign powers, or at least have avoided disputes with them, the better to establish his tyranny at home. Had he been only a bad man, he would have sacrificed the honour of the nation to the success of his domestic policy. But, with all his crimes, he had the spirit of an Englishman. The conduct of such a man must always be an exception to vulgar rules. He had abilities sufficient to reconcile contradictions, and to make a great nation at the same moment unhappy and formidable."

"A complex character such as that of Cromwell, is incapable of creation, except in times of great civil and religious excitement, and one cannot judge of the man without at the same time considering the contending elements by which he was surrounded. It is possible to take his character to pieces, and, selecting one or other of his qualities as a corner-stone, to build around it a monument which will show him as a patriot or a plotter, a Christian man or a hypocrite, a demon or a demi-god as the sculptor may choose."

"In a word, as he was guilty of many crimes against which Damnation is denounced, and for which hell-fire is prepared, so he had some good qualities which have caused the memory of some men in all Ages to be celebrated; and he will be look’d upon by posterity as a brave bad man."

"His character does not appear more extraordinary and unusual by the mixture of so much absurdity with so much penetration, than by his tempering such violent ambition, and such enraged fanaticism with so much regard to justice and humanity."

"Generally he respected, or at least pretended a love to, all ingenious persons in any arts, whom he arranged to be sent or brought to him. But the niggardliness and incompetence of his reward shewed that this man was a personated act of greatness, and that Private Cromwell yet governed Prince Oliver."

"That slovenly fellow which you see before us, who hath no ornament in his speech; I say that sloven, if we should ever come to have a breech with the King (which God forbid) in such case will be one of the greatest men of England."

"With Cromwell's memory it has fared as with ourselves. Royalists painted him as a devil. Carlyle painted him as the masterful saint who suited his peculiar Valhalla. It is time for us to regard him as he really was, with all his physical and moral audacity, with all his tenderness and spiritual yearnings, in the world of action what Shakespeare was in the world of thought, the greatest because the most typical Englishman of all time. This, in the most enduring sense, is Cromwell's place in history. He stands there, not to be implicitly followed as a model, but to hold up a mirror to ourselves, wherein we may see alike our weakness and our strength."

"When I came in I was moved to say, "Peace be in this house"; and I exhorted him to keep in the fear of God, that he might receive wisdom from Him, that by it he might be directed, and order all things under his hand to God's glory. l spoke much to him of Truth, and much discourse I had with him about religion; wherein he carried himself very moderately. But he said we quarrelled with priests, whom he called ministers. I told him I did not quarrel with them, but that they quarrelled with me and my friends. "But," said I, "if we own the prophets, Christ, and the apostles, we cannot hold up such teachers, prophets, and shepherds, as the prophets, Christ, and the apostles declared against; but we must declare against them by the same power and Spirit." Then I showed him that the prophets, Christ, and the apostles declared freely, and against them that did not declare freely; such as preached for filthy lucre, and divined for money, and preached for hire, and were covetous and greedy, that could never have enough; and that they that have the same spirit that Christ, and the prophets, and the apostles had, could not but declare against all such now, as they did then. As I spoke, he several times said, it was very good, and it was truth. I told him that all Christendom (so called) had the Scriptures, but they wanted the power and Spirit that those had who gave forth the Scriptures; and that was the reason they were not in fellowship with the Son, nor with the Father, nor with the Scriptures, nor one with another. Many more words I had with him; but people coming in, I drew a little back. As I was turning, he caught 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. I told him if he did he wronged his own soul; and admonished him to hearken to God's voice, that he might stand in his counsel, and obey it; and if he did so, that would keep him from hardness of heart; but if he did not hear God's voice, his heart would be hardened. He said it was true. Then I went out; and when Captain Drury came out after me he told me the Lord Protector had said I was at liberty, and might go whither I would. Then I was brought into a great hall, where the Protector's gentlemen were to dine. I asked them what they brought me thither for. They said it was by the Protector's order, that I might dine with them. I bid them let the Protector know that I would not eat of his bread, nor drink of his drink. When he heard this he said, "Now I see there is a people risen that I cannot win with gifts or honours, offices or places; but all other sects and people I can." It was told him again that we had forsaken our own possessions; and were not like to look for such things from him."

"He lived a hypocrite and died a traitor."

"Oliver Cromwell carried the reputation of England higher than it ever was at any other time."

"This day (to the stupendous and inscrutable Judgements of God) were the Carcasses of that arch-rebell Cromwell and Bradshaw the judge who condemned his Majestie & Ireton, son-in-law to the Usurper, dragged out of their superbe tombs (in Westminster among the Kings), to Tyburn & hanged on the Gallows there from 9 in the morning til 6 at night, and then buried under that fatal and ignominious monument, in a deepe pitt: Thousands of people who (who had seen them in all their pride and pompous insults) being spectators: look back at November 22, 1658, & be astonish’d - And fear God & honour the King, but meddle not with those who are given to change."

"Saw the superb funeral of the Protector:...but it was the joyfullest funeral that I ever saw, for there were none that cried, but dogs, which the souldiers hooted away with a barbarous noise; drinking and taking tobacco in the streets as they went."

"Things will shortly happen which have been unheard of, and above all would open the eyes of those who live under Kings and other Sovereigns, and lead to great changes. Cromwell alone holds the direction of political and military affairs in his hands. He is one who is worth all the others put together, and, in effect, King."

"Arguing over the legacy of Oliver Cromwell has provided fine sport for historians since the day he died. Was he a defender of English liberty? A military dictator? A genocidal maniac? A republican visionary? An uncompromising religious zealot? A perfectly willing-to-compromise religious zealot? Depending on your point of view, it’s easy to put Cromwell in a box labeled good or bad and walk away. But having gone through all of this, he turns out to be one of the more ambiguous historical leaders I’ve come across. Genuinely hesitant about amassing greater power while simultaneously amassing greater power. A devout man of God who concluded it was necessary to make way for freedom of worship. A ruthless general who took great pride in limiting the body count in his battles because he hated throwing lives away for nothing. The pacification of Ireland was obviously appalling, but Cromwell neither started that brutal process nor did he finish it. There is more than enough blame to go around on that front. He killed the king, but only after he spent years trying to figure out a way to put the king back on the throne. He dissolved or purged practically every legislative assembly he encountered, but then he just kept going back for more because maybe the next one will work out. He is portrayed as a dictator, but he kept supporting constitutions that denied anyone or anything unlimited political power. He was an obscure country gentleman who became king in all but name. And we will never stop arguing about who he really was, what he really did, or why he really did it."

"He made us Freemen of the Continent, Whom Nature did like Captives treat before, To nobler Preys the English Lyon sent, And taught him first in Belgian walks to roar."

"His ashes in a peaceful urn shall rest, His name a great example stands to show How strangely high endeavours may be blest, Where piety and valour jointly go."

"His grandeur he deriv’d from heaven alone, For he was great e’er fortune made him so And wars like mists that rise against the sun Made him but greater seem, not greater grow.No borrow’d bays his temple did adorn, But to our Crown he did fresh jewels bring; Nor was his virtue poison’d soon as born, With the too early thoughts of being King."

"We have seen many ties which at one time or another have joined the inhabitants of the Western islands, and eve in Ireland itself offered a tolerable way of life to Protestants and Catholics alike. Upon all of these Cromwell's record as a lasting bane. By an uncompleted process of terror, by an iniquitous land settlement, by the bloody deeds already described, he cut new gulfs between the nations and the creeds. "Hell or Connaught" were the terms he thrust upon the native inhabitants, and they for their part, across three hundred years, have used as their keenest expression of hatred, "the curse of Cromwell on you." The consequences of Cromwell's rule in Ireland have distressed and at times distracted English politics even down to the present day. To heal them baffled the skill and loyalties of successive generations. They became for a time a potent obstacle to the harmony of the English-speaking peoples throughout the world. Upon all of us there still lies "the curse of Cromwell.""

"Above all, the conscience of man must recoil from the monster of a faction-god projected from the mind of an ambitious, interested politician on whose lips "righteousness" and "mercy" were mockery. Not even the hard pleas of necessity or the safety of the State can be invoked. Cromwell in Ireland, disposing of overwhelming strength and using it with merciless wickedness, debased the standards of human conduct and sensibly darkened the journey of mankind. Cromwell's Irish massacres find numberless compeers in the history of all countries during and since the Stone Age. It is therefore only necessary to strip men capable of such deeds of all title to honour, whether it be the light which plays around a great captain of war or the long repute which covers the severities of a successful prince or statesman."

"We must not be led by Victorian writers into regarding this triumph of the Ironsides and of Cromwell as a kind of victory for democracy and the Parliamentary system over Divine Right and Old World dreams. It was the triumph of some twenty thousand resolute, ruthless, disciplined, military fanatics over all that England has ever willed or wished. Long years and unceasing irritations were required to reverse it. Thus the struggle, in which we have in these days so much sympathy and part, begun to bring about a constitutional and limited monarchy, had led only to the autocracy of the sword. The harsh, erratic, lightning-charged being, whose erratic, opportunist, self-centred course is laid bare upon the annals, was now master, and the next twelve years are the record of his well-meant, puzzling plungings and surgings."

"By the end of 1648 it was all over. Cromwell was Dictator. The Royalists were crushed; Parliament was a tool; the Constitution was a figment; the Scots were rebuffed, the Welsh back in their mountains; the Fleet was reorganized, London overawed. King Charles, at Carisbrooke Castle, where the donkey treads the water wheel, was left to pay the bill. It was mortal."

"During the winter months the Army was reconstituted in accordance with Cromwell's ideas. The old personally raised regiments of the Parliamentary nobles were broken up ad their officers and men incorporated in entirely new formations. These, the New Model, comprised eleven regiments of horse, each six hundred strong, twelve regiments of foot, twenty-two hundred strong, and a thousand dragoons, in all twenty-two thousand men. Compulsion was freely used to fill the ranks. In one district of Sussex the three conscriptions of April, July, and September 1645 yielded a total of 149 men. A hundred and thirty-four guards were needed to escort them to the colours. At the King's headquarters it was thought that these measures would demoralise the Parliamentary troops; and no doubt at first this was so. But the Roundhead faction now had a symmetrical military organisation led by men who had risen in the field and had no other standing but their military record and religious zeal. Sir Thomas Fairfax was appointed Command-in-Chief. Cromwell, as Member for Cambridge, was at first debarred from serving. However, it soon appeared that his Self-denying Ordinance applied only to his rivals. The urgency of the new campaign and military discontents which he alone could quell forced even the reluctant Lords to make an exception in his favour. In June 1645 he was appointed General of the Horse, and was thus the only man who combined high military command with an outstanding Parliamentary position. From this moment he became the dominant figure in both spheres."

"Cromwell rode in from the Army to his duties as a Member of Parliament. His differences with the Scots and his opposition to Presbyterian uniformity were already swaying Roundhead politics. He now made a vehement and organised attack on the conduct of the war, and its mismanagement by lukewarm generals of noble rank, namely Essex and Manchester. Essex was discredited enough after Lostwithiel, but Cromwell also charged Manchester with losing the second Battle of Newbury by sloth and want of zeal. He himself was avid for the power and command which he was sure he could wield; but he proceeded astutely. While he urged the complete reconstitution of the Parliamentarian Army upon a New Model similar to his own in the Eastern Counties, his friends in the House of Commons proposed a so-called "Self-Denying Ordinance," which would exclude members of either House from military employment. The handful of lords who still remained at Westminster realised well enough that this was an attack on their prominence in the conduct of the war, if not on their social order. But there were such compelling military reasons in favour of the measure that neither they nor the Scots, who already dreaded Cromwell, could prevent its being carried. Essex and Manchester, who had fought the king from the beginning of the quarrel, who had raised regiments and served the Parliamentary cause in all fidelity, were discarded. They pass altogether from the story."

"Oliver Cromwell, who astonished mankind by his intelligence, did not derive it from spies in the cabinet of every prince in Europe; he drew it from the cabinet of his own sagacious mind. He observed facts, and traced them forward to their consequences. From what was, he concluded what must be, and he never was deceived."

"I confess I have an interest in this Mr. Cromwell; and indeed, if truth must be said, in him alone. The rest are historical, dead to me; but he is epic, still living. Hail to thee, thou strong one; hail across the longdrawn funeral-aisle and night of time!..."

"Sylla was the first of victors; but our own The sagest of usurpers, Cromwell; he Too swept off the senates while he hewed the throne Down to a block — immortal rebel! See What crimes it costs to be a moment free And famous through all ages."

"The king Charles II] told him...how they had used both himself and his brother. Borel, in great simplicity, answered: Ha! sire, c'estoit une autre chose: Cromwell estoit un grand homme, et il se faisoit craindre et par terre et par mer ['Ha! sire, it was another thing: Cromwell was a great man, and he made himself feared both by land and by sea.']. This was very rough."

"Cromwell...said, he hoped he should make the name of Englishman, as great as ever that of a Roman had been."

"[H]is maintaining the honour of the nation in all foreign countries gratified the vanity which is very natural to Englishmen; of which he was so careful, that though he was not a crowned head, yet his ambassadors had all the respects paid them which our king's ambassadors ever had: he said, the dignity of the crown was upon the account of the nation, of which the king was only the representative head; so the nation being still the same, he would have the same regards paid to his ministers."

"His ambassador in France at this time was Lockhart... [who] told me, that when he was sent afterwards ambassador by king Charles, he found he had nothing of that regard that was paid him in Cromwell's time."

"Cromwell had delivered England from anarchy. His government, though military and despotic, had been regular and orderly. Under the iron, and under the yoke, the soil yielded its produce."

"Cromwell was a man in whom ambition had not wholly suppressed, but only suspended, the sentiments of religion."

"A devotee of law, he was forced to be often lawless; a civilian to the core, he had to maintain himself by the sword; with a passion to construct, his task was chiefly to destroy; the most scrupulous of men, he had to ride roughshod over his own scruples and those of others; the tenderest, he had continually to harden his heart; the most English of our greater figures, he spent his life in opposition to the majority of Englishmen; a realist, he was condemned to build that which could not last."

"When he quitted the Parliament, his chief dependence was on the Army, which he endeavoured by all means to keep in unity, and if he could not bring it to his sense, he, rather than suffer any division in it, went over himself and carried his friends with him into that way which the army did choose, and that faster than any other person in it."

"The next morning I sent Colonel Cook to Cromwell, to let him know that I had letters and instructions to him from the King. He sent me word by the same messenger, that he dared not see me, it being very dangerous to us both, and bid me be assured that he would serve his Majesty as long as he could do it without his own ruin; but desired that I should not expect that he should perish for his sake."

"He was of a sanguine complexion, naturally of such a vivacity, hilarity and alacrity as another man is when he hath drunken a cup too much."

"He thought secrecy a virtue, and dissimulation no vice, and simulation, that is in plain English, a lie, or perfideousness to be a tolerable fault in case of necessity."