Oliver Cromwell: Future England Captain?

Volume 2 | Issue 4 - Sport and Leisure

Article by James Mawdesley. Edited by Cathy Humphreys. Additional Research by Robyn Hall.

Empathising with historical personalities is not always a prerequisite to studying them, which is probably just as well, for as interesting as I find Oliver Cromwell, I. do not feel like I really empathise with him. I have never fought in a war, nor known a world where it is feared that an ‘other’ (Catholics, and in the 1650s, Quakers, occupied this ‘fifth column’ role for Cromwell’s contemporaries) was considered capable of rising at any moment to seize control of the state. This lack of empathy may explain why, as a sometime amateur cricketer myself, I was intrigued to see a reference in a recent book to Oliver Cromwell having played cricket while an undergraduate at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, in 1616-1617. Much of what is often said about Cromwell’s brief time at Cambridge (he left after one year without completing a degree) comes from James Heath’s Flagellum, a post-Restoration biography of Cromwell published in 1663 with the intention of slandering his memory. Far from being godly, Cromwell had lived a debauched youth, including wasting his undergraduate year playing ‘Football, Cudgels, or any other boisterous sport or game’.

Cricket in a way that resembled its modern form was in the early seventeenth century played mostly in Kent and Sussex, but cudgel-playing may have resembled cricket. A cudgel was essentially a weapon like a baton, but it could also be used in a sporting sense, resembling a cross between modern-day baseball and cricket bats. Still, the image of Oliver Cromwell wielding a cricket bat (even if he more likely wielded a cudgel) could not escape my mind, and, by a jump of logic, the most famous Cambridge-educated cricketer of my lifetime is arguably Mike Atherton. As a prodigious young batsman for Cambridge University and Lancashire, Atherton was nicknamed ‘Future England Captain’, and, continuing the jumps of logic, I began to think...

If cricketing observers believed that the young Atherton was destined to captain England, a destiny he did fulfil, then what about Cromwell’s destiny? How did he assume the high office of Lord Protector in December 1653? After all, he was a man who believed that the world operated according to a divine plan, and indeed, that even his own salvation had been predestined by God. It is perhaps too close to Whig history to argue that Cromwell’s career inevitably followed an upward curve to this high office of state. His parliamentary and military activities both had ineffective periods. Nevertheless, the ways in which contemporaries reacted to Cromwell, particularly after his pivotal role in the victory of Parliament and their Scottish allies at Marston Moor in 1644, often strikes me as being indicators that, to some people at least, he was a respected figure. George Joyce spoke to Cromwell before he seized King Charles I for the New Model Army in the summer of 1647, and Cromwell’s role in Thomas Pride’s Purge of December 1648, which created a parliament less sympathetic to the king and which ultimately voted to place him on trial, is notably opaque. I wonder, therefore, if Cromwell was maybe a ‘Future England Captain’?

Firstly, Cromwell’s worldview was ‘English’, as is shown by his attitudes towards Scotland and Ireland. In a religious sense, Cromwell recognised that these two kingdoms had very different attitudes. Like England, Scotland was fundamentally Protestant. After the execution of Charles I in January 1649, Cromwell’s attitude was that if the Scots would shed their allegiance to Charles II and live peacefully, then their Presbyterian Kirk had much in common with his religious vision for England. On the other hand, Cromwell perceived Ireland to be deeply Catholic, a faith which was the anathema to his own Protestantism. However, as things stood in 1649, both posed a threat to English security, and David Stevenson has argued that although the cultivating of the godly in Ireland and Scotland was an aim of Cromwell, it was the preservation of English security which was at the forefront of his mind, and inspired his (in his mind, pre-emptive) invasions of those two kingdoms in 1649 and 1650 respectively.

Assessing the label of ‘Future Captain’ for Cromwell is more difficult, not least because Cromwell’s actions and motivations are often shrouded in mystery. For me, the most striking year in the history of the Republic is 1653, as, by the end of that year, by a combination of his own actions and the actions of prominent contemporaries, Cromwell had emerged as Lord Protector.

On 20 April 1653, Oliver Cromwell arranged for troops to enter the House of Commons whilst he dissolved the Rump Parliament. This parliament had been a disappointment to the Army, not least because of the parliament’s failure to enact significant religious reforms. Cromwell then played a key role in the Council of (Army) Officers which discussed constitutional reform, and which selected 140 men who would form a nominated assembly. Thenceforth, Cromwell could only watch as the nominated assembly divided over issues of church reform. On 12 December 1653, in collusion with one of Cromwell’s fellow army officers, John Lambert, some 80 of the assembly’s 140 members, alarmed by the radicalism of some of their fellow members which threatened the very fabric of property rights, came before Cromwell to resign their positions, and effectively bring an end to the assembly.

What strikes me most about this episode is that the members went to Whitehall to hand their resignations to the individual Oliver Cromwell, even though they had been appointed by the group of the Council of Officers. The role of John Lambert is also intriguing. In the latter months of 1653, he had been writing a new constitution, the Instrument of Government, which would enshrine new political and religious ideals for the state, including, crucially, a king at the head of the body politic. The historian Austin Woolrych, who wrote the fullest account of this period, believed that Cromwell knew that Lambert was writing a new constitution to supersede the nominated assembly (which was only due to sit for a fixed term of sixteen months), but Woolrych still accepted Cromwell’s protestations that at the time of the collapse of the nominated assembly, he had no intention of holding the ultimate office of state. Another historian, Ronald Hutton, whose portrayals of Cromwell often depict a more duplicitous man than other historians present him, nevertheless also sees Cromwell as being genuinely surprised by the sudden collapse of the assembly. Yet, as the Council of Officers proceeded to debate Lambert’s new constitution, it would be Cromwell who would emerge as Lord Protector, being inaugurated on 16 December 1653.

In 1653, Oliver Cromwell had dissolved one parliament, and had accepted the resignations which brought down another. Backed by the Army, he was operating at the centre of English politics, and the resignations of December 1653 show that it was acknowledged that he was the pivotal figure in the Republic. The moderate members of the nominated assembly knew that Cromwell would not take the lead role in government by choice, but what if they forced his hand? This is seemingly what their mass resignation did.

If Cromwell was in any way ‘destined’ towards the ultimate office, in my opinion it was only after the events of April 1653, when he took the initiative and dissolved the Rump Parliament. This army officer, with a stunning service record in England, Ireland and Scotland, was arguably the obvious choice to take the ultimate office when the nominated assembly collapsed in the manner that it did. Cromwell may have believed that he was living out a divine plan, but in 1653, his ‘destiny’ had not been a long term one, but rather a very short term one.

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Cromwell was born 15th April 1599.

On 22nd August 1620, he married Elizabeth Bouchier and they had nine children.

Cromwell became a member of parliament for Huntingdon in 1628.

He was present and a series of significant battles including Edgehill and Gainsborough. By the battle of Marston Moor in 1644 Cromwell had become a Lieutenant General of horse.

In 1645 Parliament conducted a series of military reforms which prevented members of parliament from serving as military commanders. Cromwell decided to remain a military man and became Lieutenant General of cavalry in the New Model Army.

It was during 1648 that Cromwell became steadily more religious and eventually began to see himself and the army as ‘God’s chosen people’.

Cromwell was particularly keen to see the King put on trial and was one of the men that signed his death warrant.

The Commonwealth of England was then established along with the Rump Parliament.

16 Dec 1653 Cromwell was sworn in as Lord Protector of England.

His response to being offered the crown: “I would not seek to set up that which Providence hath destroyed and laid in the dust, and I would not build Jericho again”

He died on 3rd September 1658, at Whitehall.

Oliver Cromwell: Future England Captain?

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