BOOKS.

OLIVER CROMWELL'S PLACE IN HISTORY.*

• G.) Orem:isles Placs in History. Founded on Biz Lec.urex delivered in the University of Oxford. By Samuel B. Gardiner, D.C.L., Fora's Lecturer in Englidt History, 1896. London Longman:, Green, and Co.—(2.) Oliver Cromwell : a Study in Personal Itsligion. By B. F. Horton, M.A., D.D. London: James Clarke and Co.

IT would be diffieult to speak too highly of the tone and temper of Dr. Gardiner's study of Cromwell's place in history. The book has but one hundred and sixteen pages, yet in it is con- tained an extraordinarily perfect appreciation of Cromwell as a statesman and ruler. It is true that we hear little of Cromwell as a soldier, and find no criticism on his strategy and tactics, and, again, that there is no attempt made by Dr. Gardiner to deal, except incidentally, with Cromwell's personality. With these intentional limitations, however—it was not Dr. Gardiner's desire to treat of Cromwell in detail—we have the soundest, the most moderate, and, we believe, also the truest, view of Cromwell ever presented by an English historian. One of the chief points noted and urged by Dr. Gardiner has been made on former occasions in these columns. It is that Cromwell was the typical Englishman, with all the defects and good qualities of the Englishman strongly marked. Dr. Gardiner makes Cromwell,

as it were, an epitome of the English nation. After noting the incongruities of nature to be traced in Cromwell's career, he points out that this union of apparently contradictory forces "is precisely that which is to be found in the English r people, and which has made England what she is at the present day." On this follows a passage of rare insight. We must quote it in full:— "Many of us think it strange that the conduct of our nation should often appear to foreign observers in colours so different from those in which we see ourselves. By those who stand aloof from us we are represented as grasping at wealth and territory, Incapable of imaginative sympathy with subject races, and decking our misconduct with moral sentiments intended to im- pose on the world. From our own point of view, the extension of our rule is a benefit to the world, and subject races have gained far more than they have lost by submission to a just and bene- ficent administration, whilst our counsels have always, or almost always, been given with a view to free the oppressed and to put a bridle in the mouth of the oppressor. That both these views have truth in them no serious student of the present and the past can reasonably deny. Whatever we may say, we are and have been a forceful nation, full of vigorous vitality, claiming empire as our due, often with scant consideration for the feelings and desire of other peoples. Whatever foreigners may say, we are prone, with- out afterthought, to place our strength at the service of nr)rality and even to feel unhappy if we cannot convince ourselves tlitt the progress of the human race is forwarded by our action. W hen we enter into possession, those who look on us from the outsi.i • dwell upon the irregularity of our conduct in forcing ourselr.•s into possession ; whilst we, on the contrary, dwell upon the justice and order maintained after we have once established ourselves. With Cromwell's memory it has fared as with ourselves. lt, 'yalists painted him as a devil. Carlyle painted him as the ma ,terful saint who suited his peculiar Valhalla. It is time for us to r.Icard him as he really was, with all his physical and moral ass lacity, with all his tenderness and spiritual yearnings, in the world of action what Shakespeare was in the world of thought, the greatest because the most typical Englishman of all time. This, in the most enduring sense, is Cromwell's place in history. He stands there, not to be implicitly followed as a model, but to hold up a mirror to ourselves, wherein we may see alike our weakness and our strength."

" The greatest because the most typical Englishman of all time." That is a very remarkable verdict. It may be, of course, challenged by those who think that a man is least great when 'le most approaches the English archetype.

Those, however, who think that the typical Englishman is worthy of praise and honour will hardly deny Cromwell the

epithet of "great." Cromwell never had a motive, or an aspiration, or a belief which was not " right English." Dr. Gardiner warns us, however, that we must not expect that Cromwell will ever be regarded as more than the typical Englishman. "Even if Scotchmen forget the memories of Dunbar and Worcester, it is certain that Drogheda and Wexford will not pass out of the minds of Irishmen." That, alas, is too true. It was only the other day that the leaders of the so-called Liberal party actually withdrew at the bidding of their Irish allies a proposal to erect a statue to

Cromwell. Cromwell, then, must be content with being the hero not of the United Kingdom, but of England alone. But this being acknowledged, we think that the Irish might allow their allies to pay a small and belated honour to the national hero. No doubt Cromwell is also the typical Unionist as well as the typical Englishman; but it was a long time ago, and we do not see why the Nationalists should not now relent. After all, they owe a good deal to the English Noncon- formists, and might, one would think, indulge them with a harmless piece of marble.

Another very interesting piece of historical and political criticism is to be found in Dr. Gardiner's description of Puritanism. He dwells upon the great and important effect which Puritanism has had on the national history and the national character, but declares, and, as we think, rightly, that it was meant far more to influence men's minds than to rule their bodies. " Though the checks which it placed upon worldly amusements have been over-estimated, it certainly did not regard such amusements with favour. Like all great spiritual movements, it was too strenuous, too self-contained to avoid drawing the reins over tightly on the worldling. All that was noblest in it would be of better service when it was relegated from the exercise of power to the employ-

ment of influence." This is, we take it, literally true. Puritanism did least for the nation when it held supreme power. Before the great Rebellion, and even since the Restoration, it has, however, exercised a vast influence for good within the State. Cromwell, we believe, saw this. He did not want to put political power into the hands of Puritanism, but rather to rule a united nation in which every form of political and religious thought should be tolerated. The force of circumstances was, however, too much for him. The bitterness and unreasonableness of the

Royalist opposition on the one hand, and the fanaticism of the extreme Puritans on the other, made it necessary for him to uphold that Puritan regime from which the Restoration was the natural reaction. Cromwell, if he could have had his own way, would have ruled like the wise and valiant man he was, but he would not have countenanced the pedantries of sectarian zeal which in the end brought destruction on Puritanism,

We have not noted half, nor indeed a tenth, of the good things said by Dr. Gardiner, and yet our space is nearly filled. We will only add one more quotation, one in which Dr. Gardiner, with extraordinary skill, shows Cromwell's attitude towards what he rightly describes as the two great forces of the Cromwellian epoch,—Puritanism and Pdrliamentarism :—

" In some sort Cromwell is best understood by fixing his rela- tions to the two great tendencies of the Revolution. In his nature

the destructive aims of Puritanism were most clearly revealed.

He was intolerant of everything opposed to the highest and most spiritual religion, and of the forms which, as he thought, choked

and hindered its development. With a strong arm be pronounced a distinct negative to everything persistently antagonistic to what he regarded as the interest of the people of God. After the

Battle of Marston Moor he reported with the highest approba- tion the dying words of one of his officers : One thing lay on his epirit : that God had not suffered him to be any more the

executioner of His enemies' Armed with this faith, Cromwell himself struck blow after blew. He dashed down Laud's mitre and Charles's throne; he was foremost in sending Charles himself to the scaffold; in later years he destroyed Parliament after Par- liament. Nor was it merely that his blows were hard. The notice- able thing about them was that they were permanently successful. Never again did there appear in England a persecuting Church sup- porting itself on royal absolutism ; a monarchy resting its claims solely on divine right ; a Parliament defying the constituencies by which it had been elected as well as the Government by which it had been summoned. Constitutionalists might challenge the Negative Voice as claimed by Charles to obstruct reform. Crom- well exercised it in right of conformity with the permanent requirements of the nation. With the other tendency of the times, that towards Parliamentarisrn, he was certainly not formally in sympathy. He fought for Parliament against the King, not because it was a representative body, but because it was an authority sheltering the principles he championed. He did not, in short, regard it as absolutely essential that a nation shall be governed in all times and under all circumstances by a representa- tive assembly. For all that, no man ever appeared more warmly in defence of the two bases on which Parliamentary government can alone prosper : liberty of thought and speech, so far as is con- sistent with the security of the State, and the committal of the decision in doubtful cases to argument, thrusting the employment of force as far as possible into the background. If ever there was a man who suffered fools gladly, who sought to influence and persuade, and who was ready to get something tolerable done by consent rather than get something better done by forcing it on unwilling minds, that man was Cromwell. When the Second Civil War was brought to an end by the victory at Preston and the reduction of Colchester, the King's supporters in Parliament were ejected by military violence and his trial and execution promptly followed. Cromwell cast about for the means of saving him, but in the end he too gave way, and cried for judgment more loudly than any one else. A King who dealt in equivocations, and could never be trusted to give frankly what he conceded in appearance, must be restrained from doing harm, and the army as a whole, and Cromwell in particular, at last came to the con- clusion, to use the expression employed by Essex when Strafford's trial was pending. that stone dead hath no fellow."

Dr. Horton has called his interesting little book on Cromwell "a study in personal religion," but the reader must not expect to find therein any specially detailed account of Cromwell's religious views. Instead, the book is a general account of Cromwell's life and doings. As a rule the facts are correct, but occasionally Dr. Horton blunders badly. For instance, when the King set up his standard at Nottingham, he tells us that " round him at once rallied all the gentry, all who were trained in arms, and on his side were all the traditional sentiments of a conservative people." Nothing could be more misleading than to say that " all the gentry " were on the King's side. It would indeed be truer to say that the gentry were against the King. The nobility of the Court—a very different thing—were with the King, but the mass of the gentry, and some of the very best blood in the Kingdom, were on the side of the Parliament. Bradshaw's pedigree, it was once said, was as good as that of the man be tried. Hampden was not only one of the greatest territorial magnates of the time but also a man of old family, and there were hundreds of squires who were as well-born as he. When the war began it was not the support of the gentry that the Parliament wanted so much as the support of the democracy. To find this old Cavalier legend, that the King's opponents were all men of no family or position, appearing upside-down in Dr. Horton's pages is really too absurd. Of Dr. Horton's dedica- tion of his book " to the young Free Churchmen of England " we must also say a word. He is quite right to say that Hngland needs them and their efforts in good causes, and to tell them to try to realise in England some of Cromwell's ideas,—"his great, orderly, godly state, religious, tolerant, powerful." When, however, he tells them that England at

present scorns them and averts her eyes from them, and again that "Charles and Land are the hero and spirit of the day," he is talking preposterous rubbish. On the contrary, there never was a time when Cromwell's memory was more honestly cherished, and his fame better regarded. It is true that the men who, if we mistake not, are Dr. Horton's political leaders refused. as we have mentioned above, to insist on giving Cromwell a statue because they were forbidden to do so by their Irish allies. We were glad to note at the time, however, that the country was disgusted at this cowardice, and that independent opinion everywhere proclaimed Crom- well's right to be considered one of the greatest of Englishmen.