Cromwell’s personal character has been inevitably the subject of unceasing controversy. According to Clarendon he was “a brave bad man,” with “all the wickedness against which damnation is pronounced and for which hell fire Personal character.is prepared.” Yet he cannot deny that “he had some virtues which have caused the memory of some men in all ages to be celebrated”; and admits that “he was not a man of blood,” and that he possessed “a wonderful understanding in the natures and humour of men,” and “a great spirit, an admirable circumspection and sagacity and a most magnanimous resolution.” According to contemporary republicans he was a mere selfish adventurer, sacrificing the national cause “to the idol of his own ambition.” Richard Baxter thought him a good man who fell before a great temptation. The writers of the next century generally condemned him as a mixture of knave, fanatic and hypocrite, and in 1839 John Forster endorsed Landor’s verdict that Cromwell lived a hypocrite and died a traitor. These crude ideas of Cromwell’s character were extinguished by Macaulay’s irresistible logic, by the publication of Cromwell’s letters by Carlyle in 1845, which showed Cromwell clearly to be “not a man of falsehoods, but a man of truth”; and by Gardiner, whom, however, it is somewhat difficult to follow when he represents Cromwell as “a typical Englishman.” In particular that conception which regarded “ambition” as the guiding motive in his career has been dispelled by a more intimate and accurate knowledge of his life; this shows him to have been very little the creator of his own career, which was largely the result of circumstances outside his control, the influence of past events and of the actions of others, the pressure of the national will, the natural superiority of his own genius. “A man never mounts so high,” Cromwell said to the French ambassador in 1647, “as when he does not know where he is going.” “These issues and events,” he said in 1656, “have not been forecast, but were providences in things.” His “hypocrisy” consists principally in the Biblical language he employed, which with Cromwell, as with many of his contemporaries, was the most natural way of expressing his feelings, and in the ascription of every incident to the direct intervention of God’s providence, which was really Cromwell’s sincere belief and conviction. In later times Cromwell’s character and administration have been the subject of almost too indiscriminate eulogy, which has found tangible shape in the statue erected to his memory at Westminster in 1899. Here Cromwell’s effigy stands in the midst of the sanctuaries of the law, the church, and the parliament, the three foundations of the state which he subverted, and in sight of Whitehall where he destroyed the monarchy in blood. Yet Cromwell’s monument is not altogether misplaced in such surroundings, for in him are found the true principles of piety, of justice, of liberty and of governance.
John Maidston, Cromwell’s steward, gives the “character of his person.” “His body was compact and strong, his stature under six foot (I believe about two inches), his head so shaped as you might see it a storehouse and a shop both of a vast treasury of natural parts.” “His temper exceeding fiery, as I have known, but the flame of it, ... kept down for the most part, was soon allayed with those moral endowments he had. He was naturally compassionate towards objects in distress even to an effeminate measure; though God had made him a heart wherein was left little room for fear, ... yet did he exceed in tenderness towards sufferers. A larger soul I think hath seldom dwelt in a house of clay than his was. I believe if his story were impartially transmitted and the unprejudiced world well possessed with it, she would add him to her nine worthies.” By his wife Elizabeth Bourchier, Cromwell had four sons, Robert (who died in 1639), Oliver (who died in 1644 while serving in his father’s regiment), Richard, who succeeded him as Protector, and Henry. He also had four daughters. Of these Bridget was the wife successively of Ireton and Fleetwood, Elizabeth married John Claypole, Mary was wife of Thomas Belasyse, Lord Fauconberg; and Frances was the wife of Sir Robert Rich, and secondly of Sir John Russell. The last male descendant of the Protector was his great-great-grandson, Oliver Cromwell of Cheshunt, who died in 1821. By the female line, through his children Henry, Bridget and Frances, the Protector has had numerous descendants, and is the ancestor of many well-known families.[1]
Bibliography.—A detailed bibliography, with the chief authorities for particular periods, will be found in the article in the Dict. of Nat. Biography, by C. H. Firth (1888). The following works may be mentioned: S. R. Gardiner’s Hist. of England (1883–1884) and of the Great Civil War (1886), Cromwell’s Place in History (1897), Oliver Cromwell (1901), and History of the Commonwealth and Protectorate (1894–1903); Cromwell, by C. H. Firth (1900); Oliver Cromwell, by J. Morley (1904); The Last Years of the Protectorate, 1656–1658, 2 vols., by C. H. Firth (1909); Oliver Cromwell, by Fred. Harrison (1903); Letters and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell, by T. Carlyle, ed. by S. C. Lomas, with an introd. by C. H. Firth (the best edition, rejecting the spurious Squire papers, 1904); Oliver Cromwell, by F. Hoenig (1887); Oliver Cromwell, the Protector, by R. F. D. Palgrave (1890); Oliver Cromwell ... and the Royalist Insurrection ... of March 1655, by the same author (1903); Oliver Cromwell, by Theodore Roosevelt (1900); Oliver Cromwell, by R. Pauli (tr. 1888); Cromwell, a Speech delivered at the Cromwell Tercentenary Celebration 1899, by Lord Rosebery (1900); The Two Protectors, by Sir Richard Tangye (valuable for its illustrations, 1899); Life of Sir Henry Vane, by W. W. Ireland (1905); Die Politik des Protectors Oliver Cromwell in der Auffassung und Tätigkeit ... des Staatssekretärs John Thurloe, by Freiherr v. Bischofshausen (1899); Cromwell as a Soldier, by T. S. Baldock (1899); Cromwell’s Army, by C. H. Firth (1902); The Diplomatic Relations between Cromwell and Charles X. of Sweden, by G. Jones (1897); The Interregnum, by F. A. Inderwick (dealing with the legal aspect of Cromwell’s rule, 1891); Administration of the Royal Navy, by M. Oppenheim (1896); History of the English Church during the Civil Wars, by W. Shaw (1900); The Protestant Interest in Cromwell’s Foreign Relations, by J. N. Bowman (1900); Cromwell’s Jewish Intelligencies (1891), Crypto-Jews under the Commonwealth (1894), Menasseh Ben Israel’s Mission to Oliver Cromwell (1901), by L. Wolf. (P. C. Y.; C. F. A.; R. J. M.)
CROMWELL, RICHARD (1626–1712), lord protector of England, eldest surviving son of Oliver Cromwell and of Elizabeth Bourchier, was born on the 4th of October 1626. He served in the parliamentary army, and in 1647 was admitted a member of Lincoln’s Inn. In 1649 he married Dorothy, daughter of Richard Mayor, or Major, of Hursley in Hampshire. He represented Hampshire in the parliament of 1654, and Cambridge University in that of 1656, and in November 1655 was appointed one of the council of trade. But he was not brought forward by his father or prepared in any way for his future greatness, and lived in the country occupied with field sports, till after the institution of the second protectorate in 1657 and the recognition
of Oliver’s right to name his successor. On the 18th of July he succeeded his father as chancellor of the university of Oxford, on the 31st of December he was made a member of the council of state, and about the same time obtained a regiment and a seat in Cromwell’s House of Lords. He was received generally as his father’s successor, and was nominated by him as such on his death-bed. He was proclaimed on the 3rd of September 1658, and at first his accession was acclaimed with general favour both at home and abroad. Dissensions, however, soon broke out
between the military faction and the civilians. Richard’s elevation, not being “general of the army as his father was,”
was distasteful to the officers, who desired the appointment of a commander-in-chief from among themselves, a request refused by Richard. The officers in the council, moreover, showed jealousy of the civil members, and to settle these difficulties and to provide money a parliament was summoned on the 27th
of January 1659, which declared Richard protector, and incurred the hostility of the army by criticizing severely the arbitrary military government of Oliver’s last two years, and by impeaching one of the major-generals. A council of the army accordingly established itself in opposition to the parliament, and demanded
on the 6th of April a justification and confirmation of former proceedings, to which the parliament replied by forbidding
meetings of the army council without the permission of the protector, and insisting that all officers should take an oath not
to disturb the proceedings in parliament. The army now broke into open rebellion and assembled at St James’s. Richard was
completely in their power; he identified himself with their cause, and the same night dissolved the parliament. The Long
- ↑ Frederic Harrison, Cromwell, p. 34.
