The transition of power in monarchies is brutally simple: The king is dead, Long live the king. After Charles the First’s execution, Charles his son, became king1. Power remained with parliament and the army as he was a fugitive in Europe. The principal implicit challenge for the Republican government was the transition to the next generation. Their discussions became intense as they contemplated Oliver Cromwell’s death. Maintaining the Republic required agreement on who would succeed Oliver. Agreement was necessary to prevent civil war or a royalist coup.
Although the civil wars of the 1640s were fought on behalf of parliament, the apolitical army gradually acquired a political ‘personality’. Cromwell epitomised this. He was a parliamentarian and a general. He held unique pre-eminent positions and was pivotal in every major decision made in negotiations with Charles the First. Importantly, the army’s desire to put the ‘Man of Blood’ on trial guaranteed that regime change was, effectively, a coup. The army prejudged the trial and barred anyone likely to favour Charles:
“On 6 December 1648 Colonel Thomas Pride and his soldiers stood outside the entrance to St Stephen’s Chapel and, as the Commons convened that morning, arrested 45 Members and excluded a further 186 whom the Army thought were unlikely to support its goal of punishing the King.”3
Notwithstanding his role in filleting parliament, Cromwell retained a love-hate with them. His most famous outburst came in 1653,
“Come, come, I will put an end to your prating.’ Then, walking up and down the House of Commons like a madman, and kicking the ground with his feet, he cries out, ‘You are no Parliament, I say you are no Parliament, I will put an end to your sitting. Call them [troopers] in, call them in.”4
Cromwell persisted with parliamentary government even after multiple disappointments,
“Cromwell and his officers purged or dissolved Parliaments half a dozen times – in 1648, 1653 (in effect, twice in that year), 1654, 1655, 1656 and 1658 – in order to avoid a hostile outcome.”5
The logic of this would,
“….soon be spelled out by the Republican theorist James Harrington, who remarked that England could be governed only through a nobility or an army.”6
The 1657 Humble Petition and Advice7 attempted to square the circle. The political standing of the army was irreparably damaged by the rule of the Major-Generals, leaving parliament in prime position. Only they had legitimacy as political decision-makers. Regardless of their loss of political credibility, the army retained a menacing political presence. Resolution of the succession problem required their agreement by virtue of a potential veto by force majeure. The crisis was seemingly resolved by the Humble Petition, which gave Cromwell the final say in nominating his successor.
Conclusion
Cromwell had had 17 years’ experience of parliamentary confrontations additional to the cauldron of civil and international wars. He had a supreme ability in assessing situations and people. Yet he was trapped by bounded rationality.8 Cromwell was in thrall to the dynastic imperative. Disregarding the disastrous Stuart regime, he used a ‘monarchial’ dynastic mechanism for the transition of power after his death. Worse, he chose his eldest son: Richard (see Addendum). The restoration of the Stuarts by General Monck’s Scottish army group was a continuation of Cromwellian tactics. That is, the imposition of political solutions.
The importance of Oliver Cromwell’s death was revealed with the restoration of Charles the Second in 1660. In the post-restoration years there were three civil wars and a successful invasion of Britain. Cromwell’s bounded rationality cost Britain dearly.
Addendum: Richard Cromwell (1626 – 1712)
“Richard Cromwell was the worst prepared adult head of state in British history. He had never been mentored in politics by his father, nor, more importantly, had he been encouraged to develop links with the army, the foundation of the regime. One of the most significant, dominant and extraordinary figures in British political and military history had been replaced by an ingénue who, since the end of the Civil Wars and for almost the entirety of his father’s rule, had lived on a country estate in Hampshire, happily married by all accounts to his wife, Dorothy, sharing the settled and conservative world view of the Presbyterian squires whose company he kept. Other than an appointment to the Council of State at the end of 1657, he had no experience of politics at all.”
Notes
1 Charles automatically became king when his father was executed under dynastic transition tradition.
2 Escape of Charles II – Wikipedia
3 Pride’s Purge, ‘the Rump’ and regicide – UK Parliament a further 86 Members left in protest
4 Ferdinand Mount · You are a milksop · LRB 7 May 2020 This happened 20th April 1653. Compare this with the attempt of Charles the First at asserting his authority over parliament with the failed arrest of the Five Members. This attempt was one of the building blocks leading to the civil war. Five Members – Wikipedia
5 loc.cit
6 Blair Worden · ‘Wondered at as an owl’: Cromwell’s Bad Idea · LRB 7 February 2002
7 Humble Petition and Advice – Wikipedia
8 Bounded rationality – Wikipedia
9 Lay, Paul. Providence Lost (p. 261). Bloomsbury Publishing. Kindle Edition.
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