Barry Coward's book is a valuable introduction to the
complex and controversial world of Oliver Cromwell. His book has become a standard
textbook on the period. While not an orthodox biography Coward manages to keep
an open mind on the significant issues surrounding Cromwell and quite prepared
to change his mind, a hallmark of Coward.
Coward makes no secret of his admiration of Cromwell being a
paid-up member, and former president of the Cromwell Association means his
biography is a little partisan.
Coward's biography has entered into an already crowded
field. The high interest means that historians can finally begin to strip away
the myths surrounding Cromwell. Many of these myths and falsehoods were spread
by hostile biographers. The fact that we have started to learn more about
Cromwell's early life is down to significant work by historians such as Andrew
Barclay[1].
The previous historiography has acknowledged Cromwell's
early religious influences as a young man, especially from Dr Thomas Beard.
Coward, however, pours cold water on this. He does not believe that Cromwell
was 'Lord of the Fens' or "an opponent of capitalist syndicates."
Coward does not believe Cromwell's class position made him a champion of
popular rights.
Cromwell, in his own words, describes his class position
when he said "I was by birth a gentleman, living neither in any
considerable height nor yet in obscurity. I have been called to several
employments in the nation — to serve in parliaments, — and (because I would not
be over tedious) I did endeavour to discharge the duty of an honest man in
those services, to God, and his people's interest, and of the commonwealth;
having, when the time was, a competent acceptation in the hearts of men, and
some evidence thereof".[2]
One shortcoming of the book is that it fails to place
Cromwell within the huge changes, both socially and economically that was
taking place in England at the time. To do so would give the book a far more multi-dimensional
approach to Cromwell.
Such an approach was by F.A. Inderwick's who showed "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 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".[3]
Coward correctly believes that Cromwell's political views
were radicalised by his interpretation of the James Ist bible. Cromwell from a
very early period before hostilities had even broken out opposed the King. One
of his first actions before the war had officially broken out was to raise a
troop of soldiers to seize money bound for the King. Cromwell was adamant that
religion was an important factoir in the struggle against the King saying "Religion
was not the thing at first contested for at all but God brought it to that
issue at last; and gave it unto us by way of redundancy, and at last it proved
to be that which was most dear to us" [4].
Cromwell it must be said saw further than any of his
contemporaries in need from a proletarian army to combat the King. His famous
words "I had rather have a plain, russet-coated Captain, that knows what
he fights for, and loves what he knows, than that you call a Gentleman and is
nothing else." [5] Need
little explanation.
Coward's biography is a million miles away from a Marxists
approach to Cromwell contained in Christopher Hill's Gods Englishman. Coward
believed that because there were "middling sort "on both sides of the
revolution, hence there was no bourgeois revolution. For Coward it is "more
important in explaining why divisions over religious and policy issues did not
spill over into rebellion and attacks on the social order, is the fact that
such divisions cut across 'class' lines. Indeed, although there was (as has
been seen) a significant disparity in the distribution of wealth in early
modern London between 'the rich' and 'the poor', there was also a massive group
who it is best to call (as they did at the time) 'the middling sort',
tradesmen, merchants, craftsmen and their apprentices. It is significant that
analyses of different religious and political groups in Civil War London show
no significant difference in their social composition; most notably, they all
show large contingents of the middling sort.
People from the same social groups are to be found on all
sides. They are to be found amongst the Levellers and the radical gathered
churches, but also amongst the readers of Thomas Edwards's Gangraena and the
militant conservative crowd who invaded the chamber of parliament in July 1647.
The point quite simply is that what was lacking in Civil War London was the
ingredient of class division or class hostility that might have made, for
example, excise riots the breeding ground for radical protest and demands" [6].
Ann Talbot in her essay counters this argument saying "the
prevailing academic orthodoxy is that there was no bourgeois revolution because
there was no rising bourgeoisie and that people from all social classes can be
found on either side of the struggle. Even Cromwell, it is argued, can better
be understood as a representative of the declining gentry rather than the
rising bourgeois. He and those around him aimed not at revolution but wished
merely to restore what they believed to be the ancient constitution of the
kingdom.
The whole unpleasant episode could have been avoided if only
Charles II had been a little wiser. Hill, of course, was well aware that there
were gentlemen and landowners on the Parliamentary side in the civil war and
small farmers and artisans on the Royalist side. He had read enough Marx and
Lenin to know that one could not expect a chemically pure revolution in which
the members of one social class lined up one side of the barricades and those
of the other on the opposite side. However, he was sensitive enough to his
historical sources to detect the social currents that brought people of diverse
social backgrounds into a struggle against the King and well-grounded enough in
history to identify new and revolutionary ideas in the curious and archaic
guise in which they appeared—as the ideologists of the revolution ransacked the
Bible and half-understood historical precedent for some theory to explain what
they were doing".[7]
The logic of Coward's rejection of a class-based analysis of
the ideological battles that occurred during the revolution leads him to make
the outstanding claim that the New Model Army was not political from the outset
and that the Levellers did not politicise it. Coward says the army
spontaneously gravitated to radical solutions overpay and grievances. This
downplaying of the ideological debates that took place in the military is a
major weak point in the book. It is therefore not surprising that Coward
devotes so little to the Putney Debates 1647.
What conclusions did Cromwell draw from the debates at
Putney? The dangers of a Levellers inspired mutiny against the Grandees were a
real possibility. Alongside Ireton, he saw a growing danger of losing control
of the New Model Army to the radicals. This army was already to the left of
Cromwell and would move against both the King and Cromwell himself if left to
its own devices. Cromwell's nervousness over the Levellers was expressed when
he said: "I tell you sir; you have no other way to deal with these men
[the Levellers] but to break them in pieces" [8].
It does not need a leap of faith to believe that the
conclusions Cromwell drew from Putney was the need to purge the army of
radicals and began to move to military dictatorship under his control. In the
chapter Cromwell and the Godly Reformation, 1653-54 Coward outlines Cromwell
move towards a military dictatorship. On-Page 96, Cowards explains following
the Barebones Parliament; there was a definite playing up of a fear of social
revolution.
What was Cromwell's heritage? The fact that his name still
elicits such hatred or admiration is down to the still contemporary class
nature of the Civil War period. Even today, there are sections of the ruling
elite who still refuse to be reminded that Britain had a violent revolution
which was not the British way of doing things. Coward tends to hold this
position as well.
Coward's fixation with Cromwell's attempt at Godly
Reformation misses Cromwell's legacy in establishing the rule of the English
bourgeoisie. On this score, the great Russian Marxist Leon Trotsky
offers a better epitaph for Cromwell "In dispersing parliament after
parliament, Cromwell displayed as little reverence towards the fetish of
"national" representation as in the execution of Charles I he had
displayed insufficient respect for a monarchy by the grace of God. Nonetheless,
it was this same Cromwell who paved the way for the parliamentarism and
democracy of the two subsequent centuries. In revenge for Cromwell's execution
of Charles I, Charles II swung Cromwell's corpse upon the gallows. However,
pre-Cromwellian society could not be re-established by any restoration. The
works of Cromwell could not be liquidated by the thievish legislation of the
restoration, because what has been written with the sword cannot be wiped out
by the pen.[9]"
To conclude that Coward's biography of Cromwell is one of
the better ones and deserves to be the standard textbook on the subject. Any
biography of Cromwell involves a lot of hard work. As Karl Marx said,
"There is no royal road to science, and only those who do not dread the
fatiguing climb of its steep paths have a chance of gaining its luminous summits".
Reaching a scientific understanding was hard work. Conscientious, painstaking
research was required, instead of philosophical speculation and unwarranted,
sweeping generalisations" [10].
[1] Electing Cromwell: The
Making of a Politician (Political and Popular Culture in the Early Modern
Period)
[2] Speech to the First
Protectorate Parliament (12 September 1654)
[3] The Interregnum, 1648-60
[4] Speech made on the
Dissolution of the First Protectorate Parliament on 22 January 1654
[5] Letter to Sir William
Spring (September 1643) "A few honest men are better than numbers."
[6] (London and the Civil War)
[7] "These the times,
this the man": an appraisal of historian Christopher Hill
[8] The English Wars and
Republic, 1637–1660-By Graham E. Seel
[9] Two traditions: the
seventeenth-century revolution and Chartism
[10] 1872 Preface to the
French edition of Das Kapital Vol. 1,
