The last few decades have seen an extraordinary growth of popular
interest in Oliver Cromwell. It is unfortunate that most of the books, articles
have not increased our understanding of this complex historical figure. The
same cannot be said about Barclay's book.
Based on meticulous research using a huge range of newly
discovered primary sources, this book has increased our understanding of the life
and career of Oliver Cromwell.
Barclay's task was not an easy one. Very little is known of
how Cromwell became an MP as Jonathan Fitzgibbons of Christ's College,
Cambridge points out "among the many mysteries that shroud the career of
Oliver Cromwell, his election as MP for Cambridge in 1640 remains one of the
most baffling.
Cromwell was hardly the town's typical choice for MP; he was not
a member of the civic ruling élite, nor did he have any useful ties to the
court. Yet this outsider, from a relatively humble background, was elected as
MP for Cambridge in 1640 not once but twice: it was no fluke. For almost two
decades the default explanation for this anomaly has been John Morrill's claim
that Cambridge saw Cromwell as a man with connections worth
cultivating—specifically, his links to a godly network centred upon the earl of
Warwick. Andrew Barclay's book seeks to demolish this interpretation of
aristocratic patronage—which the author politely dismisses as nothing more than
a 'suggestive possibility".[1]
It is clear from the preface that Barclay would like to
present a "warts and all" picture of Cromwell. His book is very much
a product of his work Barclay' with the History of Parliament Trust House of
Commons project. Barclay's work for the trust covers the period 1640-1660. The
book is a comprehensive examination of Cromwell's early political life in
Cambridge borough politics and is as Sabrina Alcorn Baron writes "a model
for interrogating the silences in the historical record."[2]
Barclay rejects placing Cromwell within the context of the
times. According to him"If Cromwell has loomed large in the histories of
Civil War Cambridge, he has also done so, more debatably, in more general
histories of the Civil War. While few have ever seen him as being wholly
typical, his career has conventionally been used to exemplify many of the war's
major themes. He is the most famous soldier in a political conflict that was
ultimately won on the battlefield. He remains by far the most obvious example
of a man for whom the war was the making of him. He is the archetypal Puritan.
This temptation to place him in the foreground of these events has, naturally
enough, been least resisted by his many biographers. Linking Cromwell's career
to the wider social drama, so that one becomes an implicit microcosm for the
other, has proved itself to be one of the more perennial ways in which
historians have tried to make sense of his remarkable story. Furthermore, just
because so much that is new has now been discovered from the years before he
became famous does not lessen that temptation." [3]
Not all historians agree with Barclay's method. Christopher
Hill while appreciating Barclay's hard work would have been slightly critical
as regards solely concentrating on one aspect of Cromwell's early political
career. In his essay The Pre-Revolutionary Decade he wrote "not all
historians, unfortunately, read literary criticism (and I fear some do not even
read English literature), if they did, they would realise that there was a
revolution in English literature as well as in science, even if they cannot
persuade themselves that there were revolutions in politics, economics, and
society. Those historians, who concentrate on Parliamentary debates, state
papers and the correspondence of the gentry, fail to notice what is going on
elsewhere. It is one of the disastrous consequences of specialisation".[4]
Having said that Barclay does put his knack of
specialisation to good use to provide a tremendously detailed look at a massive
range of original sources. In his bibliography section, he has examined
forty-six archival collections. The book provides an incredibly original piece
of research into Cromwell's election as Member of Parliament for Cambridge
borough in both April and November 1640. The book complements John Morrill's
work on a New Critical Edition of all the Writings and Speeches of Oliver
Cromwell.
One aspect of this re-evaluation is an extensive look at
James Heath's Flagellum. A word of warning if you are unfamiliar with this
book, a word of caution as John Morrill said in his History Today review
"If the Daily Sport had existed in the 1660s Heath would have been its
editor". Heath's book has for a very long time been held by historians to
be unreliable, and in many places, his book has outright falsifications.
Barclay has sought to resurrect Heath as a semi-reliable source of Cromwell's
early political career. According to Barclay, Heath's words are the
most"accurate account of the election that exists." It is not
possible in the space of this article to agree or refute Barclay's claim.
Suffice to say the reader should be aware that Barclay's
work is not just a piece of pure research. Historians do not function in a
vacuum, and Barclay has a definite agenda regarding the use of Heath's work. Barclay rejects past historiography regarding Cromwell's
election. The resurrection of Heath fits with Barclay's and other historians
such as John Adamson view that the civil war was primarily a conspiratorial
affair. Adamson's book has a theoretical premise that the Civil War as
basically a coup de état by a group of nobles or aristocrats who no longer
supported the King. According to Diane Purkiss, these nobles were "driven
by their code of honor; they acted to protect themselves and the nation. Names
such as Saye, Bedford, Essex, and Warwick move from the sidelines to occupy
centre stage, as do their counterparts among Scottish peers. It was they and
not the ignorant masses who plucked a king from his throne. Oliver Cromwell,
for Adamson, was merely one of their lesser lackeys".[5]
Sabrina Alcorn Baron supports Heath's usefulness with some reservation
saying "the disreputable Heath correctly described the machinations of a
group of like-minded godly who had encountered Cromwell in Fenland conventicles
and believed him to be a man of action who would successfully plead their case
at the national level. They then manoeuvre the mayor, who had no acquaintance
with or prior knowledge of him, into appointing Cromwell a freeman of the
borough, and from there Cromwell made his way into the parliamentary election
for the district, a process that historically had been fractious. Indeed, in
the Long Parliament election, he ignored a double return and took his seat
anyway. And the rest, as they say, is history. Barclay ends with crediting the
institution of Parliament as the great catalyst that set Cromwell in place to
become a national hero and head of state".[6]
Barclay's work has been defended in some revisionist
circles. John Morrill says "Barclay's account 'challenges and overturns'
my own earlier work with its highly tentative suggestions as to why Cromwell
was elected for Cambridge. Excellent! Barclay has burrowed deep into archives
in Cambridge, Ely and parts of the National Archives (such as 'Petty Bag')
which few have dared to enter. Many of his sources can be described as terra
incognita. Even more remarkably, there are citations of manuscripts in no less
than 45 depositories. This is an unintended rebuke to much current academic
laziness, the world of quick-fix scholarship, in which books and articles are
compiled through word-searches in Early English Books Online and British
History Online".
To conclude, this is a very specialised piece of revisionist
writing and is not aimed at the wider reading public. However, it is a goldmine
for researchers.
[1]
The English Historical Review, Volume 127, Issue 529, December 2012, Pages
1524–1526, https://doi.org/10.1093/ehr/ces244
[2]
Sabrina Alcorn Baron, www.academia.edu
[3]
Andrew Barclay. Electing Cromwell: The Making of a Politician. Political and
Popular Culture in the Early Modern Period, London: Pickering and Chatto, 2011.
pp. xi + 288
[4]
see Christopher Hill, “The Pre-Revolutionary Decades,” in Writing and
Revolution in Seventeenth-Century England.
[5]
https://www.ft.com/content/617713ea-0e56-11dc-8219-000b5df10621
[6]
Sabrina Alcorn Baron, www.academia.edu
