The new republic was embattled. The army under Cromwell and his conservative officers clearly dominated – but its ranks seethed with dangerously radical ideals of democracy. In Ireland, Catholic rebels attacked Protestant settlers. The parliamentarians had been terrified of a royal Irish army crushing England, but English colonizers had long treated the Irish as semi-barbarian, outside the usual rules of warfare. The fact that they were also Catholic placed them beyond redemption. Cromwell crossed to Ireland. In a frenzy of self-righteous hatred, he stormed Drogheda, burning soldiers sheltering in a church; priests had their heads shattered after surrendering; captured units were decimated; 3,000 were killed. ‘This is a righteous judgement of God upon these barbarous wretches,’ Cromwell explained, ‘who have imbrued their hands in so much innocent blood.’
Charles II, aged twenty, now landed in Scotland where the Scots under Leven, alarmed by Cromwell, switched sides. Fairfax finally resigned as commander-in-chief, and Cromwell was appointed captain-general. Warning, ‘I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken,’ Cromwell smashed the Scots at Dunbar, whereupon Charles marched south with another army. Cromwell gave chase, defeating the boy at Worcester in ‘a crowning mercy’ that fortified his invincible prestige as what his Latin secretary, a half-blind poet named John Milton, called ‘our chief of men’. Cromwell ordered Parliament to agree on a new British state, but when they resisted his management he barged into the chamber in a fit of fury, ranting like a madman at ‘whoremasters’: ‘I’ll put an end to your prating. You are no parliament.’ He then summoned soldiers: ‘Call them in!’ Seeing the Speaker in his chair, he snarled, ‘Fetch him down!’, and seized the ceremonial mace. ‘What shall we do with this bauble? Here, take it away!’ Next, addressing the amazed parliamentarians, he declared, ‘It’s you who forced me to do this for I have sought the Lord night and day.’ Cromwell disdained Parliament: ‘There wasn’t so much as the barking of a dog!’
As one radical general proposed a theocracy that he called the Sanhedrin of Saints – an optimistic name for any group of politicians – the gifted general John Lambert crafted a mixed monarchy under Cromwell, a council of state and an elected parliament. At Westminster Hall, on 16 December 1653, wearing black, escorted by his old ally Warwick and other peers, he was sworn in as ‘His Highness Lord Protector’. He was granted royal apartments in Hampton Court and Whitehall, he was to be greeted with a raised hat like a king, his wife was to be addressed as ‘Your Highness’, his sons and daughters were to be princes and princesses, his decrees were to be signed ‘Oliver P’ – and he could name his own successor. Oliver’s court lacked Stuart splendour, nor would there be a whisper of Jacobean scandal, but it was not completely joyless either: Oliver enjoyed the company of his bevy of cheerful daughters and the glamorous countess of Dysart. He ruled through a coterie of generals and relatives; one daughter married two top generals; two married Cromwellian peers; and the fourth married into the greatest puritan–colonial dynasty – that of the earl of Warwick.* Both his sons, Richard, known as Dick, and Henry, joined the council of state, but the future depended on Dick, chinless, long-faced and extravagant, drowning in debt – very different from His Highness Oliver, who tried to groom him, advising, ‘Seek the Lord and His face continually.’ He preferred the capable Henry, but Dick was the eldest, so Dick must succeed.
Oliver, like many dictators, sought power yet pitied himself for attaining it: ‘You see how I am employed. I need pity. I know what I feel. Great place and business in the world is not worth the looking after; I should have no comfort but my hope is in the Lord’s presence. I have not sought these things; I have been called to them by the Lord.’ Oliver was just God’s ‘poor worm and weak servant’.
The ‘worm’ was now almost king of a new Israel: ‘You’re as like the forming of God as ever people were,’ he told his new Parliament. ‘You’re at the edge of promises and prophecies.’ This Second Coming could happen only when biblical prophecies were honoured, the Jews returned to Zion and then either converted or destroyed in the End of Days. It was this role in cosmic providence that endeared the Jews, long banned from England, to Cromwell, who met the Dutch rabbi Menasseh ben Israel and began the process that allowed them to return.
While he acted to seize control of the American colonies,* Oliver envisioned a sacred offensive against the Catholic Habsburgs to establish an English empire. This was inspired by Thomas Gage, a Catholic monk turned Protestant avenger who proposed a ‘Western Design’ – the conquest of the Spanish Caribbean and south America.
