Historical Essays Part 17

In his foreign policy Cromwell was irresolute, vacillating and tricky.

"A study of the foreign policy of the Protectorate," writes Mr.

Gardiner, "reveals a distracting maze of fluctuations. Oliver is seen alternately courting France and Spain, constant only in inconstancy."

Cromwell lacked constructive statesmans.h.i.+p. "The tragedy of his career lies in the inevitable result that his efforts to establish religion and morality melted away as the morning mist, whilst his abiding influence was built upon the vigor with which he promoted the material aims of his countrymen." In another place Mr. Gardiner says: "Cromwell's negative work lasted; his positive work vanished away. His const.i.tutions perished with him, his Protectorate descended from the proud position to which he had raised it, his peace with the Dutch Republic was followed by two wars with the United Provinces, his alliance with the French monarchy only led to a succession of wars with France lasting into the nineteenth century. All that lasted was the support given by him to maritime enterprise, and in that he followed the tradition of the governments preceding him."

What is Cromwell's place in history? Thus Mr. Gardiner answers the question: "He stands forth as the typical Englishman of the modern world.... It is in England that his fame has grown up since the publication of Carlyle's monumental work, and it is as an Englishman that he must be judged.... With Cromwell's memory it has fared as with ourselves. Royalists painted him as a devil. Carlyle painted him as the masterful saint who suited his peculiar Valhalla. It is time for us to regard him as he really was, with all his physical and moral audacity, 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."

The idea most difficult for me to relinquish is that of Cromwell as a link in that historic chain which led to the Revolution of 1688, with its blessed combination of liberty and order. I have loved to think, as Carlyle expressed it: "'Their works follow them,' as I think this Oliver Cromwell's works have done and are still doing! We have had our 'Revolution of '88' officially called 'glorious,' and other Revolutions not yet called glorious; and somewhat has been gained for poor mankind.

Men's ears are not now slit off by rash Officiality. Officiality will for long henceforth be more cautious about men's ears. The tyrannous star chambers, branding irons, chimerical kings and surplices at Allhallowtide, they are gone or with immense velocity going. Oliver's works do follow him!"

In these two volumes of Gardiner it is not from what is said, but from what is omitted, that one may deduce the author's opinion that Cromwell's career as Protector contributed in no wise to the Revolution of 1688. But touching this matter he has thus written to me: "I am inclined to question your view that Cromwell paved the way for the Revolution of 1688, except so far as his victories and the King's execution frightened off James II. Pym and Hampden did pave the way, but Cromwell's work took other lines. The Instrument of Government was framed on quite different principles, and the extension of the suffrage and reformed franchise found no place in England until 1832. It was not Cromwell's fault that it was so."

If I relinquish this one of my old historic notions, I feel that I must do it for the reason that Lord Auckland agreed with Macaulay after reading the first volume of his history. "I had also hated Cromwell more than I now do," he said; "for I always agree with Tom Macaulay; and it saves trouble to agree with him at once, because he is sure to make you do so at last."

I asked Professor Edward Channing of Harvard College, who teaches English History of the Tudor and Stuart periods, his opinion of Gardiner. "I firmly believe," he told me, "that Mr. Gardiner is the greatest English historical writer who has appeared since Gibbon. He has the instinct of the truth-seeker as no other English student I know of has shown it since the end of the last century."

General J. D. c.o.x, a statesman and a lawyer, a student of history and of law, writes to me: "In reading Gardiner, I feel that I am sitting at the feet of an historical chief justice, a sort of John Marshall in his genius for putting the final results of learning in the garb of simple common sense."