Oliver Cromwell and the Rule of the Puritans in England

“I was by birth a gentleman living neither in any considerable height nor yet in obscurity,” said the Protector to one of his Parliaments. Cromwell’s family was one of the many English families which rose to wealth and importance at the time of the Reformation. It owed its name and its fortune to Thomas Cromwell, Earl of Essex, the minister of Henry VIII., and the destroyer of the monasteries. In 1494, Thomas Cromwell’s sister Katherine had married Morgan Williams, a wealthy brewer of Putney, whose family sprang from Glamorganshire. Her eldest son Richard took the surname of Cromwell, entered the service of Henry VIII., and assisted his uncle in his dealings with refractory Churchmen. Grants of land flowed in upon the lucky kinsman of the King’s vicegerent. In 1538, he was given the Benedictine priory of Hinchinbrook near Huntingdon. In 1540, the site of the rich Benedictine abbey of Ramsey and some of its most valuable manors were added to his possessions. Honour as well as wealth fell to his lot. At the tournament held at Westminster on May Day, 1540, to celebrate the espousals of Henry VIII. and Anne of Cleves,—a marriage which was to unite English and German Protestantism,—Richard Cromwell was one of the six champions who maintained the honour of England against all comers. Pleased by his prowess with sword and lance, the King gave him a diamond ring and made him a knight.

Six weeks later fortune turned against the all-powerful Earl of Essex. He had pushed forward the Reformation faster than the King desired and bound the King to a woman he detested. “Say what they will, she is nothing fair,” groaned Henry, and suddenly repudiated wife, policy, and minister. On June 10th, Thomas Cromwell was arrested in the Council Chamber itself and committed to the Tower on the charge of high treason. “He had left,” it was said, “the mean, indifferent, virtuous, and true way” of reforming religion which his master trod. In his zeal to advance doctrinal changes, he had dared to say that if the King and all his realm would turn and vary from his opinions, he would fight in the field in his own person with his sword in his hand against the King and all others; adding that if he lived a year or two he trusted “to bring things to that frame that it should not lie in the King’s power to resist or let it.” On July 28th, Cromwell passed from the Tower to the scaffold.

Few pitied him and only one mourned him. Sir Richard Cromwell, said tradition, dared to appear at the Court in the mourning raiment which the King hated, and Henry, respecting his fidelity, pardoned his boldness. He retained the King’s favour the rest of his life, was made a gentleman of the Privy Chamber and constable of Berkeley Castle, got more grants of lands, and died in 1546.

Sir Richard’s son Henry built Hinchinbrook House, was knighted by Queen Elizabeth, whom he entertained during one of her progresses, and was four times sheriff of Huntingdonshire. As marshal of the county he organised its forces at the time of the Spanish Armada, raised, besides the four soldiers he was bound to furnish, twenty-six horsemen at his own cost, and called on the trained bands to practise “the right and perfect use of their weapons,” and fight for “the sincere religion of Christ” against “the devilish superstition of the Pope.” In their mixture of military and religious ardour his harangues recall the speeches of his grandson. People called him “the golden knight” because of his wealth and his liberality, and he matched his children with the best blood of the eastern counties. One daughter was the mother of Major-General Edward Whalley, one of the Regicides; another married William Hampden, and her son was John Hampden.

Of Sir Henry’s sons, Oliver, his heir, was a man who from love of ostentation pushed his father’s liberality to extravagance. When James I. came to England he was received at Hinchinbrook, “with such entertainment as had not been seen in any place before, since his first setting forward out of Scotland.” James made him a Knight of the Bath at the coronation, and paid him three other visits during his reign.