In terms of historical interest, Cromwell's protectorate is
a poor relation to the English bourgeois revolution. As Ted Valance points out,
the Protectorate“has too often been dismissed as merely a dreary Puritanical
prelude to the restoration of monarchy”.
Having said that Providence Lost does go a little way in
rectifying this anomaly. The book is well written and researched and is a
solid albeit conservative piece of historical study.
Paul lay is a gifted writer. His book is mostly
narrative-driven but does contain some useful insights, but even his skill and
experience cannot make the Protectorate as dramatic as the English revolution.
The book covers the years 1653 to 1659. The Protectorate
replaced the short-lived English republic and replaced it with the dictatorship
of the Major Generals with Cromwell at its head.
While Lay's book is not without analysis, but it would be
better for the use of work of the great
social historian as Lay calls Christopher Hil. Hill succinctly describes the
social, political and economic processes that“ dissolved the Long Parliament
forcibly in 1653, nominated a convention of his own adherents (the Barebones
Parliament), which revived the social and economic demands of the petty
bourgeoisie and had to be hastily dissolved. Cromwell has then proclaimed Protector under a Constitution (the Instrument of Government”), which was
rigged to conceal the dictatorship of the Army officers. He called a Parliament
under this constitution on a new £200 franchise, by which moneyed men were
admitted to vote and the lesser freeholders excluded. But Parliament and Army
quarrelled, Parliament was dissolved, and a period of naked military
dictatorship followed under the Major-Generals, in which the Cavaliers were
finally disarmed. Ultimately Cromwell and his Court circle (representing
especially the new civil service), under pressure from the City, came to
realise that the Army had done its job and that its maintenance now meant a
crushing burden of taxation on the propertied classes, for which no
compensating advantages were obtained”
.
Once Cromwell had crushed all opposition to his and the
army's rule, he gave the bourgeoisie free rein to launch their conquests both
at home and abroad. The short term failure of the conquests abroad gave Lay his
book title.
The launching of Cromwell's imperial enterprises gave a massive
impulse to the early capitalist class. It is, therefore, no accident that
perhaps the most dubious and money-grabbing members of the petty bourgeoisie
were chosen to lead the attempted overseas conquests. In doing so they marked
the end of the “Good Old Cause” leading Edward Burrough, later to lament “where
is the good old cause now?...and what is become of it? In whose hands does it
lie?
Like many aspects of the English revolution to the
Protectorate is open to many interpretations not all historians agree that
there was a naked military dictatorship, some like Austin Woolrych
tend to downplay the extent of the
dictatorship.
Although not a historian in the strictest sense the Russian
Marxist Leon Trotsky took a different view in that “Under Cromwell's leadership
the revolution acquired all the breadth vital for it. In such cases as that of
the Levellers, where it exceeded the bounds of the requirements of the
regenerate bourgeois society, Cromwell ruthlessly put down the “Lunaticks.”
Once victorious, Cromwell began to construct a new state law that coupled
biblical texts with the lances of the 'holy' soldiers, under which the deciding
word always belonged to the pikes. On 19th April 1653, Cromwell broke up the
rump of the Long Parliament. In recognition of his historical mission, the
Puritan dictator saw dispersed members on the way with biblical denunciations:
“Thou drunkard!” he cried to one; “Thou adulterer!” he reminded another. After
this Cromwell forms a parliament out of representatives of God-fearing people,
that is, an essentially class parliament; the God-fearers were the middle class
who completed the work of accumulation with the aid of strict morality and set
about the plunder of the whole world with the Holy Scriptures on their lips”
.
Trotsky had a specific economic and class approach. This
type of approach is mostly absent from Lay's book. The book is mainly devoid of
economic analysis, especially the economic base of the Major Generals. When he
does mention other historians, they are mostly conservative in nature.
Christopher Hill is only mentioned once as a footnote. Hill did not write much
on this subject, but when he did, it was worth reading, especially his early
work.
His study of some of the Russian historians in work such as
Soviet Interpretations of the English Interregnum was groundbreaking. Hill
takes a far more historical materialist approach to the Protectorate in that he
saw historical developments in class terms as this quote from his essay Soviet
Interpretations of the English Interregnum highlights "There were rifts within
classes as well as between them. The squires particularly occupied a double
position-they were hostile to the old order but were themselves landlords,
interested in enclosing, in keeping the peasantry in their place. This accounts
for their re-alliance with the defeated Cavaliers after they had attained their
ends: there was a common enemy to fear. Their fear of further social revolution
held the squires back from completely finishing with the old landed order and
so destroying the economic roots of the monarchy. 1659 marks a series of
desperate attempts to conserve the republic without social reforms. But none of
the groups that won power could reunite the interests of their class as a
whole. Charles II was the most satisfactory heir to Oliver Cromwell if he was
prepared to accept the revolution. And that is what the declaration of Breda
did by referring all questions to parliament. " Let the king come
in," Harrington had said, " and call a parliament of the greatest
cavaliers in England, so they be men of estates, and let them sit but seven
years and they will all turn commonwealth's men”.
One question Lay's book does not satisfactorily answer is
why did so much power end up in so few hands? While Lay would not be caught
dead using Leon Trotsky and Hill for political reasons could not, Trotsky is
well worth reading for his clear-sighted analysis on the class nature of Cromwell's
rule. In his essay Two traditions: the seventeenth-century revolution and
Chartism he shows that "Different
classes in different conditions and for different tasks find themselves
compelled in particular and indeed, the most acute and critical periods in
their history, to vest an extraordinary power and authority in much of their
leaders as can carry forward their fundamental interests most sharply and
fully". Cromwell's Protectorate was one such example. "For one era
Oliver Cromwell, and for another, Robespierre expressed the historically
progressive tendencies of development of bourgeois society."
Western Design
As Lay points out the foreign policy of Cromwell would set
the template for British capitalism imperialist conquests for centuries to
come. The future empire, as was the protectorate, would be built on slavery.
A significant part of Cromwell's foreign policy or Western
Design” was based on the writings of a dubious former Dominican friar, Thomas Gage
.
Gage himself writes, “I humbly pray your Excellency [Cromwell] . . . direct
your noble thoughts to employ the soldiery of this Kingdom upon such just an
honorable design in those parts of America. The fact that Cromwell took advice
from Gage was a severe miscalculation that would end in disaster and
humiliation for the English bourgeoisie. It is perhaps fitting that Cage met
his end dying of dysentery upon arrival in Jamaica.
The failure of the western Design” caused significant
problems for the Cromwell and his generals. A regime based on military power is
only as good as its last victory. The defeat of Cromwell’s army and navy by the
Spanish despite having numerical superiority caused Cromwell to increase his
power at the expense of the already narrow franchise. Thus began the Rule of the Major-Generals”.
This “military dictatorship" carried out a campaign of
intimidation and brutality that would have been unthinkable even under the
Monarchy. Parliament's brutal punishment of the Quaker James Nayler in 1656 (his
tongue was bored with a red-hot iron) for imitating Christ's entry in Jerusalem
was one such episode. As Rowan Williams writes in his book review, this was one
of only many cases of “judicial sadism.”
The debacle at the hands of the Spanish also led to the
escalation of attacks by class forces hostile to the Cromwell regime. A spate
of Royalist/Leveller plots and assassination attempts were only foiled because
of Cromwell's vast spy network under the leadership of John Thurloe.
Historiography
Lay's book has been reviewed by substantial sections of both
big and small media with the majority praising the book. The book is attractive
to review because of its conservative historiography. Lay somewhat unusually
presents very little in the way of a conclusion at the end of the book.
Despite Lay being a trustee of the Cromwell Museum even a
cursory read of the book tells us that Lay only goes so far with his admiration
for Oliver Cromwell. He certainly feels ill at ease with the revolutionary
nature of the Cromwellian revolution. Lay expresses horror at Cromwell's and
other regicides killing of the King and believes the act was illegal.
Lay's hostility to the revolutionary acts carried out by the
English bourgeoisie is mirrored by Rowan Williams former Archbishop of
Canterbury who in his review of Lay's book said “It is a pattern familiar in
revolutionary narratives: the point at which it ought, at last, to be obvious
to all that the revolution was right and justified when one could be confident
of being on the side of history, keeps slipping over the horizon. Someone must
be blamed, and the revolution inexorably descends into factional warfare. In
recent decades, analysis by political thinkers such as Raymond Williams and
Gillian Rose has stressed the inevitability of “long revolutions”, and the
dangers of messianic end-of-history aspirations and the bloodshed that
accompanies them. This should remind us of the foolishness of speaking as
though history had “sides”, yet still the left and the right resort to
such defaults. Lay’s book sheds light on this process, despite the fact that
Cromwell’s must have been, historically, one of the least terror-ridden of
revolutions”.
Whether you could call Lay, a Whig historian is open to
debate. His book does have a whiff of the Whig interpretation of history. As
revolutions go you get the feeling that Lay would be more at home with the
“Glorious Revolution” when James II quit his throne and his kingdom overnight,
and William of Orange was installed as king. This was the kind of palace
revolution that Lay would prefer rather than the 1640 revolution.
Conclusion
To conclude my criticisms of Lay should not put off anyone
who would like to know more about the subject. Readers also should not be put
off by any significant criticisms from reviewers of Lay's conservative
approach to history.
Lay probably feels the Protectorate was a failure, and with
the restoration of the monarchy, not much had really changed. But as Trotsky said “Charles II swung Cromwell's corpse upon the gallows. But
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”.
Soviet Interpretations of the English Interregnum-Christopher Hill-The Economic
History Review, Vol. 8, No. 2 (May 1938), pp. 159-167
