In an earlier article, I discussed Cromwell’s speeches during his years as Lord Protector (1653-58). His private letters during this period show many similar characteristics, and especially the same religiosity and intensity. Also very striking was the considerable variety of tone: much depended on the contexts and the recipients of the different letters. A few examples will illustrate something of the diversity that is found among the 150 or so of his personal letters that survive from these years. These are now widely scattered: Cromwell kept no record of out-going correspondence unless it was in his capacity as Head of State, with the result that his letters have ended up in many different archives depending on where, and whether, their recipients preserved them.
In some of his letters, Cromwell could still adopt the tone of the military commander, especially when he found himself faced with a Royalist rebellion, as in March 1655, when John Penruddock attempted an insurrection in Wiltshire. Cromwell’s response was brisk and decisive. For instance, he wrote to the Mayor of Sandwich, on the Kent coast, warning of the ‘late insurrections and rebellions which have been raised in several parts of the nation by some vile and lewd persons of the old Cavalier party’. Through ‘the goodness and blessing of God’ the Royalist rebels had been ‘in a great measure dispersed, and put to flight’.
A few days later he wrote to the militia commissioners in several counties giving thanks for ‘the good hand of God going along with us in defeating the late rebellious insurrection’, and praising ‘the readiness of the honest people to appear’. Cromwell often used that word ‘honest’ as a synonym for godly or righteous. He now urged that ‘diligent watches be kept’ for ‘taking a strict account of all strangers, especially near the coast’. Some of Cromwell’s letters take on the urgent tone of military despatches.
Throughout his career, Cromwell regarded success in battle as a sign of God’s favour. This was seen repeatedly in his reactions to his own military victories during the English Civil Wars. But in 1655 he faced a major disappointment when he launched a campaign against Spanish power in the Caribbean. His attempt to invade the large island then known as Hispaniola (nowadays divided between Haiti and the Dominican republic) was repulsed with heavy loss of life, and it was only after a considerable struggle that his forces were able to capture Jamaica.
Cromwell’s letters show that he interpreted these setbacks as a ‘rebuke’ from God. He told Vice-Admiral William Goodson that ‘the Lord has greatly humbled us in that sad loss sustained at Hispaniola’, adding that ‘no doubt we have provoked the Lord,…and therefore we should lay our mouths in the dust’. Equally, Cromwell’s own faith gave him a means of coping with the difficulties and pointed a way forward: ‘let the reproach and shame that has been for our sins…work up your hearts to a confidence in the Lord, and for the redemption of his honour from the hands of men’. He saw the defeats as a divine punishment for the Army’s sins, and shortly afterwards he wrote to another senior officer, Major-General Richard Fortescue: ‘we have cause to be humbled for the reproof God gave us at Santo Domingo upon the account of our own sins, as well as others, so truly upon the reports brought hither to us of the extreme avarice, pride and confidence, disorders, and debauchedness, profaneness, and wickedness commonly practised in that Army’. He hoped that in future ‘virtue and godliness may receive due encouragement’.
Cromwell was a devoted family man, and within his family he adopted a gentler and more loving tone. For example, to his son Henry in October 1657, following a quarrel between Henry and his brother-in-law Charles Fleetwood, Cromwell wrote reassuringly: ‘none (I hope) can wrong you with me, and though all things answer not, be you humble, and patient, place value where it truly lies, viz. in the favour of God, in knowing him, or rather in being known of him. If your heart be truly here you cannot miscarry.’ The following year, in June 1658, only three months before his death, Cromwell ended another letter to Henry with the words: ‘My love to your dear wife and to the two babes.’
Such letters offer a charming sidelight on a man who clearly had a softer side than his military and political exploits might suggest. That compassion extended beyond his family to his friends as well. Thus, in January 1657, we find him writing to Anne Dutton, widow of his old friend John Dutton: ‘I wish you comfort after your great loss of your noble husband my very good friend, and shall be ready in what will lie in my way upon all occasions to serve you’. Such help could take very practical forms, as Cromwell continued: ‘I take notice by a copy which I have seen of your husband’s last will, that I have a great trust thereby committed to me, with relation to his heir [who was Cromwell’s ward], and to that estate which he has left him, which (God willing) I shall take care honestly to perform’.
The contrast between this letter and the one with which we began – with its reference to the ‘vile and lewd persons of the old Cavalier party’ – may help to explain Cromwell’s enduring capacity to polarise opinions and to inspire radically different perceptions of him, both positive and negative. His own religious faith explains much about his personality and how he saw the world, and it could lead him to treat others in very contrastive ways depending on whether he saw them as serving God’s purposes or as obstructing them. But, love him or loathe him, the one thing that his contemporaries could not do was ignore him. Cromwell dominated his times, and as John Maidstone, the Steward of the Protectoral Household, later wrote, ‘a larger soul has seldom dwelt in a house of clay’.
