Cromwell's House of Lords: Politics, Parliaments and Constitutional Revolution, 1642-1660 (Studies in Early Modern Cultural, Political and Social History, 30) 9781783272471, 1783272473

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HOUSE OF LORDS

Despite the execution of Charles I and the establishment of a kingless republic, the period of the English Civil Wars and their aftermath is rarely described as one of constitutional revolution.

Jonathan Fitzgibbons demonstrates how the Other House was much more integral to Cromwell’s aims for a lasting post-war settlement than the offer of the Crown. More broadly, this book reconceptualises the political and constitutional history of the 1640s and 1650s by looking beyond outward forms of government and visual culture. It argues that radical shifts in political thought were concealed by apparent continuities in forms of government. Even though the new Cromwellian upper chamber had the familiar appearance of a House of Lords, the very meaning of the House of Lords was contested and transformed by the experience of the Civil Wars and their aftermath.

Cover image: Front cover of the Additional and Explanatory Petition and Advice, 1657. Photo: author.

Studies in Early Modern Cultural, Political and Social History

HOUSE OF LORDS Politics, Parliaments and Constitutional Revolution, 1642-1660

FITZG IBBON S

JONATHAN FITZGIBBONS is Lecturer in Early Modern History at the University of Lincoln.

CROMWELL’S

HOUSE OF LORDS

The notion that the 1650s were politically conservative is exemplified by the tendency of historians to fixate upon the offer of kingship to Oliver Cromwell and his increasingly monarchical appearance. This book rethinks the political history of the 1640s and 1650s by focusing instead upon the upper parliamentary chamber. Besides exploring changing attitudes towards the House of Lords during the Civil Wars, and the circumstances that led to its abolition in 1649, it provides the first thorough study of the Cromwellian ‘Other House’ – a new upper parliamentary chamber of nominated life peers created in 1657.

CROMWELL’S

CROMWELL’S

J O N AT H A N F I T Z G I B B O N S

STUDIES IN EARLY MODERN CULTURAL, POLITICAL AND SOCIAL HISTORY Volume 30

CROMWELL’S HOUSE OF LORDS

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Studies in Early Modern Cultural, Political and Social History ISSN: 1476–9107 Series editors Tim Harris – Brown University Stephen Taylor – Durham University Andy Wood – Durham University

Previously published titles in the series are listed at the back of this volume

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CROMWELL’S HOUSE OF LORDS Politics, Parliaments and Constitutional Revolution, 1642–1660

Jonathan Fitzgibbons

THE BOYDELL PRESS

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© Jonathan Fitzgibbons 2018 All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system, published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast, transmitted, recorded or reproduced in any form or by any means, without the prior permission of the copyright owner The right of Jonathan Fitzgibbons to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 First published 2018 The Boydell Press, Woodbridge ISBN 978-1-78327-247-1 The Boydell Press is an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK and of Boydell & Brewer Inc. 668 Mt Hope Avenue, Rochester, NY 14620–2731, USA website: www.boydellandbrewer.com A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library The publisher has no responsibility for the continued existence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate This publication is printed on acid-free paper

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Contents

Acknowledgements vi Abbreviations vii Introduction 1 1. Parliamentarian Thought and the Abolition of the House of Lords, 1642–49

8

2. Oliver Cromwell, the Other House and the Humble Petition and Advice 36 3. The Membership of the Other House

78

4. The Other House and the Second Session of the Second Protectorate Parliament

122

5. Richard Cromwell, the Third Protectorate Parliament and the Other House Debates

155

6. The Other House, the Army and the Search for a Settlement

195

Conclusion 230 Appendix: The Membership of the Other House

239

Bibliography 247 Index 258

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Acknowledgements

My thanks go to the Arts and Humanities Research Council, as well as Balliol and St Anne’s Colleges, Oxford, and Christ’s College, Cambridge, for providing the funding and support without which this book would not have been possible. I would also like to thank all those archivists and librarians who have provided assistance and advice while I was researching material for this book. Especial mention goes to Adrian Ailes of the National Archives, Sally Larkin and Hazel Forsythe of the Museum of London and Nicholas Rogers at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge. I am also grateful to the Duke of Northumberland for kindly allowing permission to consult unpublished manuscripts in his Grace’s possession. I owe a great intellectual debt to many of my colleagues at numerous research seminars at Oxford, Cambridge, the Institute of Historical Research and the History of Parliament for their questions and comments on aspects of the research contained in this book. Particular thanks, however, go to John Morrill, David Smith, George Southcombe, Grant Tapsell and Blair Worden who have all generously offered their advice to help give focus to my ideas and research. I also wish to thank Paul Howard, Ruth Faram and Daniel Walters whose friendship and support has kept me sane while researching and writing this work. Special apologies go to Bea and all of my family who have not always had the attention they deserve while I have been deeply immersed in Cromwellian politics. Above all, however, I would like to thank Clive Holmes, who continues to be a boundless source of encouragement and wisdom. This book is dedicated to him.

vi

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Abbreviations

BL Bodl. Boyle State Letters

British Library, London Bodleian Library, Oxford T. Morrice (ed.), A Collection of the State Letters of the Right Honourable Roger Boyle (London, 1742) Burton J.T. Rutt (ed.), The Diary of Thomas Burton (4 vols, London, 1828) Carlyle T. Carlyle (ed.), The Letters and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell, rev. S.C. Lomas (3 vols, London, 1904) CCSP O. Ogle, W.H. Bliss, W.D. Macray and F.J. Routledge (eds), Calendar of the Clarendon State Papers (5 vols, Oxford, 1869–1970) CJ Journal of the House of Commons Clarke Papers C.H. Firth and F. Henderson (eds), The Clarke Papers: Selections from the Papers of William Clarke (5 vols, London, 1891–1901, 2005) CSPD Calendar of State Papers, Domestic CSPV Calendar of State Papers, Venetian DRO Derbyshire Record Office, Matlock EHR English Historical Review Firth and Rait C.H. Firth and R.S. Rait (eds), Acts and Ordinances of the Interregnum, 1642–1660 (3 vols, London, 1911) Gardiner, Documents S.R. Gardiner (ed.), The Constitutional Documents of the Puritan Revolution, 1625–1660, 3rd edn rev. (Oxford, 1906) Gaunt, Lansdowne P. Gaunt (ed.), The Correspondence of Henry Cromwell, 1655–1659: From the British Library Lansdowne Manu­ scripts, Camden Society, 5th series, 31 (London, 2007). G.E.C., Baronetage G.E. Cokayne, The Complete Baronetage (6 vols, Exeter, 1900–9) G.E.C., Peerage G.E. Cokayne, The Complete Peerage of England, Scotland, Ireland, Great Britain, and the United Kingdom, extant, extinct, or dormant, rev. V. Gibbs et al. (13 vols, 1910–59) vii

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CROMWELL’S HOUSE OF LORDS

Guizot, Richard  Cromwell HJ HMC Lords

LJ Ludlow Mus. of Lon. Nicholas Papers ODNB Schilling Stephen Sydney Papers Thurloe TNA TRHS Vaughan Wariston Diary Whitelocke Diary Wing

Worc. Col. Oxf.

F.G.P. Guizot, History of Richard Cromwell and the Restoration of Charles II, trans. A.R. Scoble (2 vols, London, 1856) The Historical Journal Historical Manuscripts Commission, The Manuscripts of the House of Lords, Volume IV: 1699–1702, new series (London, 1908), pp. 503–67 [Appendix: ‘The Journal of the Protectorate House of Lords’] Journal of the House of Lords C.H. Firth (ed.), Memoirs of Edmund Ludlow (2 vols, Oxford, 1894) Museum of London G.F. Warner (ed.), The Nicholas Papers: Correspondence of Sir Edward Nicholas (4 vols, London, 1920). Oxford Dictionary of National Biography W.A.H. Schilling, ‘The Parliamentary Diary of Sir John Gell, 5 February–21 March 1659’ (M.A. Thesis, Vanderbilt University, 1961) W.S. Stephen (ed.), Register of the Consultations of the Ministers of Edinburgh and some other Brethren of the Ministry (2 vols, Edinburgh, 1930) R.W. Blencowe (ed.), Sydney Papers: Consisting of A Journal of the Earl of Leicester, And Original Letters of Algernon Sydney (London, 1825) T. Birch (ed.), A Collection of the State Papers of John Thurloe (7 vols, London, 1742) The National Archives Transactions of the Royal Historical Society R. Vaughan (ed.), The Protectorate of Oliver Cromwell, and the State of Europe during the early part of the Reign of Louis XIV (2 vols, London, 1839) J.D. Ogilvie (ed.), The Diary of Sir Archibald Johnston of Wariston, Volume III, 1655–1660, Scottish History Society, 3rd series, 34 (Edinburgh, 1940) R. Spalding (ed.), The Diary of Bulstrode Whitelocke, 1605–1675, British Academy, Records of Social and Economic History, new series, 13 (Oxford, 1990) Donald Wing, Short-Title Catalogue of Books Printed in England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, and British America and of English Books Printed in Other Countries, 1641– 1700, rev. edn (4 vols, New York, 1982–98) Worcester College, Oxford

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Introduction

The House of Lords’ vote in October 2015 to delay controversial cuts to tax credits once again prompted politicians and political commentators to question the place of the upper chamber in Britain’s ‘unwritten’ constitution. It was not the first time that a frustrated government majority in the Commons raised the pertinent issue of whether an unelected assembly can legitimately defy the will of the people’s representatives – and it is unlikely to be the last. Indeed, for over a century, the House of Lords has been the subject of sporadic scrutiny over its constitutional role, leading to numerous reforms. The rejection in 1909 of the ‘People’s Budget’ by the Lords famously led to the Parliament Act of 1911, which denied them a veto over money bills and allowed them to delay public bills for two years only (reduced to one year by a subsequent Parliament Act of 1949). Besides redefining the relationship between the two Houses, however, the 1911 Parliament Act also hinted at, or threatened, more sweeping changes. The Act’s introduction announced that the ultimate aim was to replace the Lords with ‘a Second Chamber constituted on a popular instead of hereditary basis’. Yet, as the Act went on to lament, ‘such substitution cannot be immediately brought into operation’.1 In the intervening period there have been lurches towards reforming the Lords, including the admission of life peers and women (Life Peerages Act, 1958), and a significant reduction in its hereditary membership (House of Lords Act, 1999). In the past decade, proposals to have a wholly or mostly elected House have fallen by the wayside, yet recent clashes between the Commons and Lords suggest a lingering sense that the Lords must either be reformed further or replaced by a new chamber. Perhaps those considering the future of the upper chamber should pay more attention to its distant past, particularly the turbulent period in British history from 1640 to 1660. After all, during the course of those two decades the House of Lords was re-formed, abolished, replaced by a new second chamber and ultimately restored. It was the similarities between the events of the mid-seventeenth century and those of his own time that led C.H. Firth 1911 Parliament Act [accessed 3 Sept. 2016].

  1 

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to publish in 1910 his seminal study of The House of Lords During the Civil War. His aim was to ‘let the actors in these events, and those who witnessed them, speak for themselves … to set forth opinions and arguments for the instruction of their descendants’.2 Since the publication of Firth’s work, however, studies of the House of Lords in the seventeenth century have, until relatively recently, been few and far between. To some extent this was a hangover of historiographical trends in the earlier twentieth century that tended to portray the political history of the seventeenth century as a period when the House of Commons ‘won the initiative’ at the expense of both the monarchy and the House of Lords. The narrative neatly complemented socio-economic analyses of the period that stressed both the rise of the gentry and the decline of the nobility. In the later twentieth century, however, those assumptions were challenged from a number of directions. Most notably, from the 1970s onwards, a number of ‘revisionist’ historians stressed the inherent weakness of the Commons in the period before the Civil War; attention turned to the factional and episodic nature of debate, undermining any suggestions of an inexorable clash between a concerted gentry ‘country’ and the noble-dominated ‘court’. There has also been a growing realization that parliamentary politics in the seventeenth century was bicameral in nature. Since the 1980s, the House of Lords and the nobility have been reintegrated into the political narrative of early seventeenth-century England, particularly through the work of John Adamson. Adamson stresses the guiding hand of the Lords in parliamentary politics, with a number of godly magnates exerting a great deal of influence over the proceedings of the Commons through their ‘men of business’.3 While some aspects of Adamson’s thesis have met with heavy criticism, his work has undoubtedly underlined the fact that the parliamentary history of the period must be seen in bicameral terms.4 Divisions and allegiances were vertical rather than horizontal: like-minded individuals, striving for common goals, co-operated across the Commons and Lords to promote their interests or frustrate their opponents. This view of bicameral parliamentary politics has also been influential in studies of the post-Restoration period, not least Andrew Swatland’s important study on the House of Lords in the reign of Charles II.5 Aside from these works focusing on the relationship between the two Houses, there have also been in-depth institutional studies of the House of Lords itself. These include Elizabeth Read Foster’s indispensable volume on the House of Lords in the first half of the seventeenth century and James C.H. Firth, The House of Lords During the Civil War (London, 1910), pp. v–vi. J.S.A Adamson, ‘The English Nobility and the Projected Settlement of 1647’, HJ, 30:3 (1987), 567–602; idem, ‘Parliamentary Management, Men of Business and the House of Lords 1640–1649’, in A Pillar of the Constitution, ed. C. Jones (London, 1989), pp. 21–50; idem, The Noble Revolt: The Overthrow of Charles I (London, 2007).   4  For a critique of Adamson’s approach, see M. Kishlansky, ‘Saye What?’, HJ, 33:4 (1990), 917–37.   5  A. Swatland, The House of Lords in the Reign of Charles II (Cambridge, 1996).   2    3 

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Hart’s examination of the evolution of the judicial functions of the chamber across the seventeenth century.6 Yet, if the study of the seventeenth-century House of Lords has been rather sporadic, the examination of another parliamentary second chamber, the Cromwellian ‘Other House’, has been very slight indeed. Established under the terms of the 1657 parliamentary constitution, The Humble Petition and Advice, the Other House has occasionally merited brief discussion in histories of the House of Lords, bridging the narrative between that chamber’s abolition in 1649 and restoration in 1660.7 In studies of the Interregnum period specifically, however, it has been largely ignored. Institutional studies of the 1650s have focused primarily upon the Cromwellian Privy Council or the House of Commons, a notable exception being the study by Patrick Little and David Smith on parliaments and politics during the Protectorate that has drawn attention to some of the functions of the Other House.8 In some ways, the relative neglect of the Other House is understandable. It was a short-lived institution, sitting for two parliamentary sessions that collectively lasted barely fourteen weeks. The inescapable fact of the Restoration in May 1660 has also cast a long shadow on historical studies of the years that preceded it. While historians of the 1650s have focused on the genesis of the offer of the Crown to Oliver Cromwell, the period that followed his refusal of the kingly title has been largely ignored. Whether wittingly or not, most studies of the Interregnum tend to end with Cromwell’s death in September 1658, or cast only a perfunctory glance at the events of the year 1659, thereby giving the impression that the Restoration of Charles II was a foregone conclusion, demanding little explanation.9 This trend is complemented by E.R. Foster, The House of Lords 1603–1649: Structure, Procedure, and the Nature of its Business (Chapel Hill, 1983); J.S. Hart, Justice Upon Petition: The House of Lords and the Reformation of Justice, 1621–1675 (London, 1991).   7  See, for instance, Firth, House of Lords, chapter 8; M.P. Schoenfeld, The Restored House of Lords (The Hague, 1967), pp. 46–63; Corinne Comstock Weston, English Constitutional Theory and the House of Lords, 1556–1832 (London, 1965), pp. 62–78; Jason Peacey, ‘The House of Lords and the “Other House”, 1640–1660’, in A Short History of Parliament, ed. C. Jones (Woodbridge, 2009), pp. 49–51.   8  See, for instance, P. Gaunt, ‘ “The Single Person’s Confidants and Dependents”? Oliver Cromwell and his Councillors’, HJ, 32:3 (1989), 537–60; B. Worden, ‘Oliver Cromwell and the Council’, in The Cromwellian Protectorate, ed. P. Little (Woodbridge, 2007), pp. 82–104; P. Little and D.L. Smith, Parliaments and Politics during the Cromwellian Protectorate (Cambridge, 2007).   9  Firth’s two-volume history of the final years of the Protectorate concludes with Oliver’s death, omitting Richard’s Protectorate completely: C.H. Firth, The Last Years of the Protectorate, 1656–1658 (2 vols, London, 1909), II, 305–7. Notable exceptions are G. Davies, The Restoration of Charles II, 1658–1660 (Oxford, 1955); A.H. Woolrych, ‘Historical Introduction (1659–1660)’, in The Complete Prose Works of John Milton, Volume VII: 1659–1660, ed. R.W. Ayers (New Haven, 1980), pp. 1–228; R. Hutton, The Restoration: A Political and Religious History of England and Wales, 1658–1667 (Oxford, 1985), pp. 3–123.   6 

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the recent turn in Interregnum studies to the visual culture of the period, with a number of historians, most notably Kevin Sharpe and Roy Sherwood, stressing that the Cromwellian regime was a monarchy in all but name.10 Unable to escape its monarchical past, the Protectorate was compelled to embrace it, seemingly underlining the fact that only a monarchy could bring the settlement and stability longed for after the turmoil of the Civil Wars. Moreover, the Other House tends to be overlooked because it is usually seen as an adjunct to the offer of kingship in 1657. It was part of a constitutional package of which Cromwellian monarchy was the most important proposition. Had Cromwell accepted the kingship, so the argument goes, the Other House would have slipped seamlessly into the position of the defunct House of Lords. As such, the Other House was not a constitutional innovation, it was just another symptom of the backsliding political tendencies of the 1650s. By providing the first detailed study of the Cromwellian Other House this book not only offers new perspectives on the Protectorate and Interregnum period, but also seeks to reconnect the history of the 1650s with that of the decade that preceded it. A central theme of this study is to rethink the meaning of constitutional ‘revolution’ during the mid-seventeenth century. In the historiography of the Civil War and its aftermath there is a tendency to see 1649 as the high water mark of the English Revolution. Despite the dramatic events of the trial and execution of King Charles I, and the subsequent creation of the kingless Commonwealth regime, the decade that followed is usually described as one of backsliding and growing conservatism, culminating in the Restoration of Charles II. Yet, it is perhaps better to see the climactic events of early 1649 as an aberration, obscuring a profound shift in constitutional thinking that spanned the 1640s and 1650s. Rather than taking the desire for Republican, kingless, government as the touchstone of radicalism, this book suggests that less attention should be paid to outward forms of government and more notice taken of the ideas that underpinned those forms. Essentially, there is cause to rethink the nature of conservatism in the period. Appeals to the past were not necessarily reactionary. Greater sensitivity is needed to the ways in which England’s past, both distant and recent, was manipulated or rewritten to solve new constitutional problems. When politicians or commentators professed a preference for the known ways of the ancient constitution it is important to ask what exactly they meant – specifically, what did they believe they were returning to? Closer attention should be paid to the substance of their proposed government, rather than the apparent familiarity of its outward form. As such, the first chapter of this book focuses upon the development of parliamentarian constitutional thought in the 1640s and the ways in which R. Sherwood, Oliver Cromwell: King In All But Name, 1653–1658 (Stroud, 1997); K. Sharpe, Image Wars: Promoting Kings and Commonwealths in England, 1603–1660 (New Haven, 2010), pp. 463–537. 10 

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INTRODUCTION

ideas evolved in order to justify actions and exactions. Not only does this chapter provide important context for why the House of Lords was abolished in 1649, leading to bicameral parliaments being dispensed with momentarily, but it also illuminates the ideas and assumptions that subsequently motivated many to seek the creation of a new second chamber in 1657. If those who backed the Humble Petition and Advice in 1657 really envisaged the Other House to be a House of Lords, we must ascertain what they understood a House of Lords to be. As this chapter demonstrates, by the late 1640s this definition was by no means clear. Chapter 2 then turns to the 1650s and the genesis of the parliamentary constitution of 1657, with specific attention on the development of the scheme for the Other House. By shifting focus from the offer of the Crown to the origins of the proposal for a second chamber, it is possible to get a new perspective on the parliamentary constitution of 1657 and the aims of those who shepherded it through the Commons. This chapter also explores Oliver Cromwell’s role in the creation of the parliamentary constitution and his aims for the settlement of the nation. It demonstrates that Cromwell actively promoted the Other House scheme because it provided much-needed solutions to a number of constitutional conundrums that had plagued him since the late 1640s. Chapter 3 builds upon these findings by providing a detailed analysis of those men chosen by Cromwell to sit in the Other House. Besides demonstrating the ways in which the membership of the chamber differed from that of the House of Lords, this chapter challenges historiographical assumptions about the Other House’s political and religious complexion. The membership of the chamber, as nominated by Cromwell, reveals a great deal about the sort of settlement that the Protector was striving to secure in the 1650s. Yet, while Chapter 3 illuminates Cromwell’s vision for the Other House in theory, it is equally important to consider the practice. As such, the second half of the book, comprising of the final three chapters, focuses upon the parliamentary sessions of 1658 and 1659 to examine both the Other House in action and the debates surrounding the chamber in the Commons. The fact that there have been so few studies of the activities of the Other House during its brief sitting is partly owing to a lack of evidence. There are no parliamentary diaries or equivalents to the House of Lords’ minute books, providing draft notes of the proceedings in the chamber and its committees. The ‘finished’ version of the Other House’s journal is lost, save for a fragment among the archives of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge covering the period from 28 to 30 January 1658.11 Thankfully, however, there survives a little-known draft journal, now among the Tangye Collection at the Museum

Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, MS 109. This manuscript, which was evidently torn from the journal and subsequently folded, is notable because it contains the ‘official’ parliamentary record of Oliver Cromwell’s speech to parliament on 25 Jan. 1658. 11 

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of London.12 Although this manuscript lacks details that would have been contained in the finished version, with notes made by the clerk to ‘insert’ relevant material such as speeches or commissions, it still provides vital information for all seventy-five sittings of the chamber across the parliamentary sessions of 1658 and 1659, including day-to-day attendance, the appointment of committees, the heads of business under discussion and any resolutions taken by the House. As the final three chapters of this book demonstrate, when taken together with contemporary newsbooks, correspondence and diaries, this draft journal allows one to piece together a great deal about the business of the Other House and its relationship with the Commons. Scholars have paid far more attention to the Commons’ debates over the Other House in the sessions of 1658 and 1659. Here evidence is abundant, thanks in no small part to the parliamentary diary of the MP Thomas Burton, albeit the printed edition of this source is not without its problems.13 These debates have been scrutinized for evidence that the Protectorate Parliaments were riven by faction. The tactics of the ‘Commonwealthsmen’, or Republican MPs, in these sessions and their pointed criticism of the Other House have been analyzed in some detail.14 Yet, as Chapters 4, 5 and 6 suggest, there is cause to reexamine these debates. First, with so little evidence surviving for the debates in 1657 that led to the creation of the Humble Petition and Advice, the discussions in the 1658 and 1659 sessions provide crucial reflections from former supporters of the parliamentary constitution about their reasons for creating the second chamber. Second, there is a need to reevaluate the tactics of the Protectorate’s supporters during these debates. The fact that they tended to style the Other House as a House of Lords and present it as such through ceremony and print seems further evidence of the backsliding tendencies of the Protectoral regime. Yet, as these chapters indicate, it could actually mean the exact opposite: styling the Other House as a House of Lords was not necessarily a step towards bringing back the ancient constitution but a means to prevent it. Thirdly, while the vociferous Commonwealthsmen have received much scholarly attention, the aims of the ‘Presbyterians’ have been Museum of London, Tangye MS 11a, fols 1–62r. This manuscript has been transcribed and printed in HMC Lords, pp. 503–67. 13  J. Fitzgibbons, ‘Reconstructing the Debates of the Protectorate Parliaments: The Pitfalls of J.T. Rutt’s Edition of “Thomas Burton’s” Diary’, Parliamentary History, 35:3 (2016), 221–41. In this book, whenever Rutt’s edition fails to produce accurately Burton’s report of a speech or conflates it with a report by the other parliamentary diarist Guybon Goddard, I have cited the original manuscripts. I have also made use, where possible, of the neglected diary of John Gell for the third Protectorate Parliament. 14  I. Roots, ‘The Tactics of the Commonwealthsmen in Richard Cromwell’s Parliament’, in Puritans and Revolutionaries, Essays in Seventeenth-Century History presented to Christopher Hill, ed. D. Pennington and K. Thomas (Oxford, 1978), pp. 283–309; idem, ‘The Debate on “The Other House” in Richard Cromwell’s Parliament’, in For Veronica Wedgwood These: Studies in Seventeenth-Century History, ed. P. Tudor-Craig and R. Ollard (Glasgow, 1986), pp. 188–203. 12 

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INTRODUCTION

largely overlooked or oversimplified. These chapters suggest that some of the most important debate in these parliamentary sessions was not between the Court and the Republicans but between the Presbyterians. Their discussions concerned not only the nature of the Other House but also the very essence of the parliamentarian cause. The final chapter of this book offers a new perspective on the collapse of Richard Cromwell’s Protectorate. Contrary to the suggestions of some historians who have stressed that the kingless constitution was incoherent and inherently flawed, this chapter contends that the Protectorate collapsed at a moment when the constitutional settlement was on the brink of success.15 Rather than being an insurmountable sticking point, the majority in the Commons eventually recognized the Other House and even began to transact business with it. It was military force, not constitutional wrangling, that brought the Protectorate to a premature end. In fact, it was the fraught relationship between the army and the Other House that hastened this outcome. Contrary to the claims of contemporary critics, the Other House was not dominated by the military interest. The chapter also surveys some of the constitutional schemes for an alternative second chamber advanced by both the army and a number of Republicans after the Protectorate’s collapse, and explores their similarities with the Other House scheme. The book then concludes by briefly considering the circumstances of the return of the House of Lords in 1660 and the legacies of the Other House after the Restoration.

See, for instance, R.C.H. Catterall, ‘The Failure of the Humble Petition and Advice’, American Historical Review, 9:1 (1903), 36–65; J. Peacey, ‘The Protector Humbled: Richard Cromwell and the Constitution’, in The Cromwellian Protectorate, ed. P. Little (Woodbridge, 2007), pp. 32–52. 15 

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1

Parliamentarian Thought and the Abolition of the House of Lords, 1642–49

Thomas Hobbes, reflecting on the history of the 1640s and 1650s, found it a ‘strange thing the whole house of Lords should not perceive that the ruine of the Kings Power, and the weakning of it, was the ruin or weakning of themselves’. By fighting the king, the Lords condemned themselves to oblivion; they could hardly ‘think it likely, that the people ever meant to take Soveraignty from the King, to give it them’.1 In reality, there was no reason for those peers who sided with parliament in 1642 to foresee the destruction of their chamber. Although the Act abolishing the House of Lords, passed by the Rump of the House of Commons on 19 March 1649, claimed that they had ‘too long experience’ of the inconveniencies that the Lords posed, it was really the experience of the 1640s, and particularly the events of the winter of 1648–49, that led them to this conclusion.2 From the outbreak of the war, parliamentarian arguments advanced to make plain the king’s contractual and subordinate position vis-à-vis parliament, rendered the position of the House of Lords increasingly anomalous. The story of parliamentarian political thought can be told as one of unintended consequences. By justifying the war effort, parliamentarian writers with no interest in subverting England’s ancient constitution of king, Lords and Commons, promoted ideas that were ultimately invoked by a minority of parliament’s supporters to dismantle that framework. Parliamentarian thought developed only tentatively during the early 1640s, responding to constitutional questions as they arose, or as opponents posed them. Ideas were not the stimulus for actions, but were found to justify them. Once articulated, defended and clarified, however, those ideas became systematized and concretized into a holistic parliamentarian position that was difficult for its adherents to forget or refute. Most obviously, the idea of parliamentary supremacy became integral to those defending the taking of arms against the king, meaning it could hardly be reneged on at a later stage – to do so would undermine the parliamentarian cause itself. Moreover, T. Hobbes, Behemoth Or The Long Parliament, ed. P. Seaward (Oxford, 2010), pp. 197–8.   2  Gardiner, Documents, p. 387.   1 

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ideas, once invoked to justify actions, acted as a guide – or limit – to the range of acceptable future actions open to the parliamentarians.3 This chapter focuses on the development of parliamentarian thought in the 1640s and how it impinged, directly and implicitly, upon the role and powers of the House of Lords. First, it demonstrates that initial defences for actions against the king gave rise to a set of ideas and propositions with implications for the upper chamber. Once parliament immersed itself in the business of running a war effort, friction between the Houses led the Commons to stake a claim to act unilaterally by invoking ideas very similar to those used to justify the war itself. While such flashpoints were rare, and contained quickly, they left precedents that the Commons could invoke if circumstances changed. These ideas were not voiced only within the walls of Westminster, however, but were appropriated by others, including ‘Leveller’ writers, for more radical purposes. This led some parliamentarian polemicists to set limits on the constitutional lessons to be drawn from their theories, not least by stressing that theory must wait on history. As the final portion of this chapter shows, changing attitudes among the New Model Army ultimately proved fatal for the Lords. Claims of popular sovereignty advanced by the purged House of Commons to expedite the king’s trial determined the constitutional settlement that followed. As MPs tried to reconcile the position of the Lords with the assertion of the Commons’ legislative supremacy they struggled to justify a role for the chamber moving forwards: as the Act for its abolition stressed, the House of Lords was found to be ‘useless’.4 The Parliamentarians and the House of Lords The constitutional dispute that led to Civil War in 1642 hinged upon the legitimate exercise of executive powers claimed by the king. The parliamentarian case is neatly presented in Henry Parker’s Observations upon some of his Majesties Late Answers and Expresses, published in early July 1642. For Parker, all power was ‘originally inherent in the people’; power was ‘but secondary and derivative in Princes’.5 Employing a well-worn maxim of resistance theorists, he stressed that the king was ‘singulis major’ but ‘universis minor’.6 The ‘Paramount Law’ for all governments was ‘Salus Populi’: the ‘safetie of the people’. Kings were created by the people ‘to preserve the Commonaltie, the Commonaltie was not created for his service’.7 They held Q. Skinner, Liberty before Liberalism (Cambridge, 1997), pp. 105–6. Gardiner, Documents, p. 387.   5  H. Parker, Observations upon some of his Majesties later Answers and Expresses (London, 1642), pp. 1–2.   6  Ibid., p. 2.   7  Ibid., pp. 2–3, 8, 17.   3    4 

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their office by ‘Trust’; their position was ‘not absolute’ but was ‘conditionate and fiduciary’.8 But this posed an obvious question: who decided when the king was out of line? Either the ‘Kings power and trust’ must be ‘guided by the discretion of Parliament’; or else the Parliament must be ‘overruled by the Kings meer discretion’.9 For Parker, it was obvious that power could ‘no where rest more safely then in Parliament’.10 If the ‘State’ was to trust those powers to ‘one man, or few’ then there ‘may be danger in it’; but the Parliament was ‘neither one nor few, it is indeed the State itself’.11 Parliaments, like kings, derived their authority from the people; they both had ‘the same efficient cause’. Yet, parliaments were ‘higher’ because ‘the whole Kingdome is not so properly the Author as the essence it selfe of Parliaments’.12 If the kingdom was ‘in distress’ parliament was obliged to ‘judge of that distresse, and relieve it’, not least ‘by vertue of representation, as the whole body of the State’.13 Claims that parliament was the king’s great council, or highest court, bolstered the assertion that the two Houses, even without the king, had the supreme legislative power. As Parker saw it, the ‘interpretation of Law’ implied the ‘same supremacy of power requisite, as in the making of it’. If they granted the king was ‘supream interpreter’ it was ‘all one, as if we granted him to be supream maker of Law’.14 What began as a debate over the exercise of the executive powers became a wrangle over the location of political sovereignty. As Parker put it, the true ‘nature’ of parliamentary power was ‘publike consent’: ‘consent as well as counsell’ was ‘requisite and due in Parliament’.15 The laws created by Parliament were the ultimate form of counsel, which the king simply could not refuse. Comprising the ‘many eyes of so many choyce Gentlemen out of all parts’, parliament’s advice would be ‘more faithfull, impartiall, and religious, then any other’.16 Kings, acting upon their own will, were more likely to ‘erre and have sinister ends, then such generall conventions of the Nobility, Gentry, and Commmonalty’.17 These points was re-emphasized by William Prynne in his Soveraigne Power of Parliaments, published by parliamentary authority in 1643. Although ‘the Kings Royall assent’ was ‘generally requisite’ to pass laws, Prynne explained, the ‘originall, prime, Legislative power of making Lawes to binde the Subjects and their Posterity’ rested ‘in the Kingdome, and Parliament, which r­ epresents   8    9  10  11  12  13  14  15  16  17 

Ibid., pp. 4, 35. Ibid., pp. 35–6. Ibid., p. 45. Ibid., p. 34. Ibid., pp. 5, 15. Ibid., p. 45 Ibid., pp. 43–4. Ibid., p. 13. Ibid., pp. 10–11. Ibid., p. 21. 10

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it’.18 Because the ‘whole Kingdome (represented in and by both Houses, not the King)’ knew ‘much better what is good and bad for themselves, than the King alone’ it was ‘just and reasonable’ that they, not the king, should be the ‘principall Lawmakers’.19 As one parliamentarian remonstrance of May 1642 put it, the ‘Votes of the Lords and Commons’ were the ‘reason of the King and of the Kingdome’.20 Clearly, when these parliamentarian polemicists described parliament as the ‘representative’ of the kingdom they had in mind a bicameral parliament. They contrasted the single person of the king with the whole body of the kingdom embodied by both houses. As one parliamentarian remonstrance of November 1642 put it, the ‘two Estates comprizing the Persons of all the Peeres, and the representative Body of all the Commons’ were the ‘Collective Body of all the Kingdom’.21 Yet this parliamentarian stress upon bicameral supremacy was not without inconsistencies. It did not sit well with another claim, common among parliamentarian theorists, that England’s ancient constitution was essentially a ‘mixed’ government: the ideal blend of monarchy, aristocracy and democracy represented by the three estates of the King, Lords and Commons.22 Even Parker saw the government of England as ‘geometrically proportionable’, ensuring that ‘no one’ part had ‘extreame predominance’. At the crux of the balance was the House of Lords, sitting at ‘such faire and comely distances between the King and people’ to stop either one from encroaching upon the other.23 Yet the Lords’ (literally) pivotal role was undercut by Parker’s subsequent admission that the three components were not really independent of one another. Both Houses of Parliament, he explained, had ‘no power but derivative’; but where the Commons depended ‘upon the people’, the Lords were ‘more depending upon the King’.24 From this perspective, rather than holding the balance of the constitution, the position of the Lords seemed decidedly anomalous. This became most obvious on occasions during the 1640s when the Lords dragged its feet over reform measures deemed necessary by the Commons. An early example was the Commons’ demand to bar all clergy from temporal office, including the exclusion of the bishops from the House of Lords. Twice W. Prynne, The Treachery and Disloyalty of Papists to their Soveraignes, in Doctrine and Practise Together with The first part of the Soveraigne Power of Parliaments and Kingdomes … The Second Edition Enlarged (London, 1643), pp. 46–7. 19  Ibid., p. 48. 20  A Remonstrance of the Declaration Of the Lords and Commons, now assembled in Parliament, 26 of May, 1642 (London, 1642), p. 17. 21  A Remonstrance of the Lords and Commons Assembled in Parliament, Or, The Reply of both Houses, to a printed Book, under His Majesties name, called His Majesties Answer to a printed Book (London, 1642), pp. 21–2. 22  Weston, English Constitutional Theory and the House of Lords, p. 1. 23  Parker, Observations, pp. 23–4. 24  Ibid., pp. 23–4. 18 

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in 1641 bills were prepared for that purpose – on both occasions they met with resistance in the Lords.25 The Commons’ majority saw the presence of the Lords in the upper chamber as a source of frustration for their reforming agenda: as their Grand Remonstrance of November 1641 complained, the bishops and popishly affected peers had ‘hindered the proceeding of divers good Bills’ for reforming ‘corruptions both in Church and State’.26 Exasperated, some MPs considered circumventing the Lords altogether. On 3 December 1641, the Commons instructed a committee, empowered to confer with the Lords about their continued refusal to assent to those Bills, to tell the Lords that the Commons alone were ‘the Representative Body of the whole Kingdom’ while ‘their Lordships’ were but ‘particular Persons’ and sat ‘in a particular Capacity’. In this instance, the representative nature of the Commons was invoked to assert its superiority over both the king and the Lords. If the majority in the Lords would not ‘consent to the Passing of those Acts, and others necessary to the Preservation and Safety of the Kingdom’ the Commons suggested they would act alone, or with the support of only a minority of the Lords.27 Yet the Commons did not press the point. Instead, they redoubled their efforts to make the upper chamber conformable. Even after the Lords assented to the Bill for excluding bishops on 5 February 1642, however, the membership of that chamber continued to concern the supporters of the ­nascent ­parliamentarian cause. This is particularly evident in the Nineteen Propositions sent to Charles I in June 1642. Primarily, the propositions tackled the perceived problem of the king relying upon the advice of a clique of evil counsellors. John Adamson has pointed to the document’s ‘baronial’ dimension – the nobles sought to reclaim their role as the natural counsellors of the king. In particular, the Privy Council would be reconstituted into a ‘baronial council’, dominated by magnates and great officers of state.28 But we should also consider the role assigned to that other bulwark of the noble interest: the House of Lords. After all, the Nineteen Propositions stressed that the weightiest matters that ‘concern the Publike’ must be transacted by the ‘high Court of Parliament … your Majestie’s great and supreme Council’ and ‘not elsewhere’.29 Fundamentally, the Nineteen Propositions made the executive powers totally dependent upon parliament: appointments to all chief offices, including privy councillors, must be approved by ‘both Houses’ of Parliament.30 The propositions also demanded that Charles pass a bill ‘for restraining Peers made hereafter from Sitting or Voting in Parliament’ unless ‘admitted … CJ, II, 131, 293; LJ, IV, 256, 269, 407–9. Gardiner, Documents, pp. 227–8 (points 170 and 181). 27  CJ, II, 330. 28  J.S.A. Adamson, ‘The Baronial Context of the English Civil War’, TRHS, 40 (1990), 96–7. 29  Gardiner, Documents, pp. 250–1. 30  Ibid., p. 251. 25  26 

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with the consent of both Houses of Parliament’.31 Although designed to stop the king diluting the influence of the parliamentarian lords by flooding the upper chamber with new peers, this expedient had profound constitutional implications. Not only did it shatter the symbiotic relationship between the king’s conferral of hereditary titles and the right to sit in parliament, it also altered the relationship between the two Houses of Parliament. By giving the Commons statutory authority to approve future members of the Lords, the independence of the two Houses, and the Lords’ capacity to act as a balance between Commons and king, was undermined. It underlined that, despite the rhetoric of a balanced constitution, the House of Lords was not really seen as a neutral or independent body. For the Parliamentarians control over its membership had to be wrested from the king to ensure that the balance was tipped in their favour. The point was emphasized in the king’s famous response to the propositions. Charles, or rather his ghostwriters, lamented how ‘all Peers hereafter made’ were to be ‘approved of (that is, chosen)’ by the two Houses. It meant those he had once called ‘Our Nobility’ would become ‘your Nobility’ instead.32 At the heart of Charles’ answer was a warning against the encroachment of any one of the three pillars of the constitution upon the others. The government of England by king, lords and commons blended the best of the ‘three kindes of Government’: monarchy, aristocracy and democracy. But this was only true if ‘the Balance hangs even between the three Estates, and they run joyntly on in their proper Chanell’.33 Charles stressed that the House of Lords was integral to maintaining this balance: it was ‘an excellent Screen and Bank between the Prince and People, to assist each against any Incroachments of the other’.34 No ‘one estate’ must ‘transact what is proper for two, nor two what is proper for three’.35 For Charles to accept the terms of the Nineteen Propositions would mean a ‘totall Subversion’ of ‘that excellent Constitution of this Kingdom’.36 Charles ominously predicted that the Lords would soon follow the fate of the king until ‘all power’ was ‘vested in the House of Commons’.37 The demand that both Houses should supervise the membership of the Lords persisted throughout the 1640s. On 29 June 1644, for instance, parliament passed an ordinance disabling any peer who joined the Royalist cause from sitting at Westminster, unless their ‘readmittance’ was approved ‘by both Houses of Parliament’.38 The propositions for peace presented to the Ibid., p. 254. His Majesties Answer to the XIX Propositions of Both Houses of Parliament (London, 1642), pp. 9–10. 33  Ibid., pp. 17–18. 34  Ibid., p. 19. 35  Ibid., p. 12. 36  Ibid., pp. 10, 20. 37  Ibid., p. 21. 38  Firth and Rait, I, 458–9. 31  32 

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king at Uxbridge in early 1645, at Newcastle in 1646 and the Army’s Heads of the Proposals of August 1647, all contained the demand that ‘all Peers’ made by Charles since 21 May 1642 and those ‘who shall be hereafter made’, should ‘not sit or vote’ without ‘consent of both Houses of Parliament’.39 The proposal was also one of the ‘Four Bills’ presented to Charles in December 1647 after his escape to the Isle of Wight, albeit its terms were modified so that ‘no person that shall hereafter be made a Peer, or his heirs’ could ‘sit or vote in the Parliament’ without ‘consent of both Houses’.40 Charles finally assented to the proposal during the Newport negotiations in 1648.41 Yet, as he explained in a letter to his son in early November, his feelings were unaltered since 1642: he granted this concession reluctantly, not only ‘as it limited us that were the fountain of honour’ but also because it ‘submitted the Peerage and sitting of the Lords in Parliament to the House of Commons, and so might in time change the whole frame and constitution of that House’.42 The proposal allowed the Commons and the parliamentarian peers to create a House of Lords in their own image. Not only would the Royalists be kept out, but also only those who they approved would be let in. A glimpse of what the future composition of the chamber might have looked like was revealed in December 1645 when the Commons drafted proposals urging Charles to confer peerages upon many of parliament’s supporters – including Denzil Holles, Sir Henry Vane senior, Sir William Waller, Sir Thomas Fairfax and Oliver Cromwell.43 These proposals aside, however, the relationship between the two Houses was also shifting in practical terms during this period. Specifically, there were occasions during the 1640s when, as threatened in late 1641, the Commons, exasperated by obstructions in the Lords and conscious of their duty to the public, acted unilaterally. A salient example was the Lords’ refusal to assent to the Commons’ vote of 15 May 1643 for creating a new great seal to replace that taken by Lord Keeper Littleton.44 Having failed to convince the Lords in conferences of the necessity of a new seal, the Commons pressed on regardless, appointing a committee on 5 July 1643 to ‘take care of the speedy

Gardiner, Documents, pp. 283, 297, 320. This proposal was also passed as an ordinance by parliament on 30 Oct. 1646: Firth and Rait, I, 884–5. 40  Gardiner, Documents, pp. 340–1, emphasis added. 41  LJ, X, 548 (17 Oct. 1648). 42  R. Scrope and T. Monkhouse (eds), State Papers collected by Edward, Earl of Clarendon, commencing from the year 1621 (3 vols, Oxford, 1767–86), II, 439–40. 43  CJ, IV, 359–62 (1 Dec. 1645). Holles was to be made a viscount; Cromwell, Fairfax, Vane and Waller were to receive baronies. Fairfax’s father Ferdinando, who already held a Scottish barony, was to be given an English earldom. The Commons also proposed the elevation in rank of a number of parliamentarian peers: Essex, Northumberland, Pembroke and Warwick were to be made dukes; Manchester and Salisbury were to become marquises; Robartes, Saye, Wharton and Willoughby were to be made earls. 44  CJ, III, 86 (15 May 1643). 39 

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and effectual Execution’ of their order.45 On 19 July the engraver Thomas Simon was employed by the Commons to make the new seal, which was eventually delivered to the House on 28 September.46 Only on 12 October, with the seal already made, did the Lords finally assent to the Commons’ vote for its creation.47 The most telling clash between the two Houses, however, came in May 1646 over the Commons’ proposals for dealing with the defeated king, then in possession of the Scots. Sir John Evelyn reportedly raised the ire of the Lords by telling them that ‘if your Lordships shall not think fit to agree’ with the Commons, ‘they shall never fail to do their Part … it being a thing wherein the Parliament and Kingdom is so much concerned’. The incensed Lords took Evelyn’s ‘Sense’ to be that ‘in case their Lordships do not agree with the House of Commons, that they will do it without them’.48 Although the Commons claimed the Lords were mistaken, they added that, even if Evelyn had meant it, it was ‘not contrary to the Course and Proceedings of Parliament’. In fact, as the great seal episode attested, ‘the like’ course had ‘been used several times this Parliament, without any Exceptions taken thereunto by their Lordships’. They hoped that the Lords did not think ‘in no Case whatsoever’ the Commons ‘might not do their Duty, for the Good and Safety of the Kingdom, in such a Way as they may, if they cannot do it in such a Way as they would’.49 Yet, the story of the 1640s was not one of inexorable conflict between the two Houses with a progressive Commons pitted against a conservative Lords. For the most part, the relationship between the two Houses was harmonious; divisions were more apparent within the Houses than between them. It would be easy, for instance, to portray the debates around the Self-Denying Ordinance as an example of conflict between the two Houses of Parliament. Although the ordinance, passed by the Commons on 19 December 1644, would have removed members of both Houses from military and civil office, it could be argued that the burden fell heaviest on the peerage. As the Lords explained in a conference, to deprive the peers of military command would divest them of ‘that Honour which in all Ages hath been given unto them... in being employed to Military Commands’.50 Yet, as Adamson has suggested, the manoeuvrings that led to the Self-Denying Ordinance, the creation of the New Model Army and the displacement of lordly commanders like the CJ, III, 155 (5 July 1643). For details of the conferences, see CJ, III, 130; W. Prynne, The Opening of the Great Seale of England (London, 1643), pp. 31–2. 46  CJ, III, 174, 257. 47  The ordinance for empowering the new seal passed the Commons on 30 Oct. and again faced delays in the Lords before they assented on 10 Nov. LJ, VI, 254, 300–2; CJ, III, 295–6, 305–7. 48  CJ, IV, 548 (16 May 1646). 49  CJ, IV, 550–1 (19 May 1646). 50  LJ, VII, 129 (7 Jan. 1645). 45 

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earls of Essex and Manchester, need not be read as the Commons striving for the political eclipse of the Lords. Rather, it was something of a ‘coup’ by a group of peers within the House of Lords acting in unison with a faction within the Commons.51 Close political and personal connections, sealed by bonds of kinship and friendship, between members of the two Houses helped to contain tensions. Ultimately, the Commons were determined to work with the Lords. In March 1645, to soothe tensions between the Houses, the Commons issued a declaration condemning ‘unworthy endeavours to asperse the integrity of their proceedings, as aiming at the overthrow of the Peerage and undermining the rights and privileges of the House of Lords’. The Commons held ‘themselves obliged, by the fundamental Laws of the Land, their several Protestations and Covenant, to preserve the Peerage, with the Rights and Privileges belonging to the House of Peers, equally as their own’.52 The Solemn League and Covenant, and its promise ‘to preserve the rights and privileges of the Parliaments’ of England and Scotland, bound the consciences of those who took it to work for the preservation of the framework of the ancient constitution.53 As the Commons’ declaration of April 1646 announced, they had no intention of ‘altering the fundamental Constitution and Government of this Kingdom, by King, Lords, and Commons’.54 In another declaration, directed to the States General of the United Provinces in August 1645, the two Houses went to extraordinary lengths to point out the ‘mistakings’ of reports by the Dutch ambassadors concerning acrimony between the Commons and Lords.55 They found troubling a report in January 1645 that the ‘upper House’ was to be ‘melted into the Lower’ and ‘reduced into one Body’ thereby bringing ‘all the power under the Commons’.56 In their declaration to the States General, the Commons rejected the report outright: they would not alter the ‘Fundamentals of Parliament, by taking away the House of Peeres’; there was ‘never any debate in the House of Commons concerning any such matter, nor was the same ever intended or desired by the said House’.57 Despite this professed commitment to the ‘Fundamentals of Parliament’, however, there were clearly moments in the 1640s when the unwillingness of the Lords to act led the Commons to make claims strikingly similar to Adamson, ‘Baronial Context’, pp. 115–16; Adamson, ‘Men-of-Business and the House of Lords’, pp. 21–50. 52  CJ, IV, 88 (24 Mar. 1645). 53  Gardiner, Documents, p. 269. 54  CJ, IV, 514. 55  A Declaration of the Parliament of England Written to the House and Mighty Lords, the Lords States Generall of the United Provinces... Concerning their Last Embassie Extraordinary into England (London, 1645), p. 3. 56  Ibid., p. 14. 57  Ibid., p. 15. 51 

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those deployed by both Houses against the king. The political instinct of the majority in the Commons was to work with the Lords as far as was possible. Yet, clearly the arguments were there for the Commons to justify acting by themselves if they felt it was their ‘duty’ to do so. True, such actions were justifiable only in ‘extra-ordinary’ circumstances, but as the Commons told the Lords in 1646 there had already been many recent examples: their claims were not consigned to theory but had been given practical application. In the extraordinary circumstances of the Civil Wars and their aftermath it seems that exceptions could quickly become the rule. The ‘Levellers’ and Their Critics Prior to the turbulent events of the winter of 1648–49, however, the most vigorous challenge to the House of Lords came not from the Commons, but from that group known derisively as the ‘Levellers’. Their criticism of the Lords grew out of John Lilburne’s long-running dispute over the military conduct of his former commander, the earl of Manchester. On 11 June 1646, Lilburne was summoned before the Lords to answer for his ‘scandalous’ pamphlet entitled The Just Mans Justification, which took swipes at Manchester, then routinely acting as speaker of the House.58 Lilburne refused to answer any questions, but instead delivered a ‘Protestation’ denying the Lords’ competence to judge a commoner. Citing Magna Carta, Lilburne stressed that his ‘proper and legall triers and Judges’ were ‘the Commons of England assembled in Parliament’; the Lords were ‘merely made by prerogative’ and ‘never intrusted or impowered by the Commons of England, the originall and fountaine of Power’.59 Unimpressed, the Lords committed Lilburne to Newgate prison. Just days into his incarceration, Lilburne penned The Freeman’s Freedom, which described his treatment at the hands of the Lords, restated his plea for trial by the Commons and renewed his attacks on Manchester, concluding that the earl’s ‘Head hath stood, it seems, too long upon his Shoulders’.60 Unsurprisingly, this scandalous publication again brought Lilburne before the Lords on 23 June and 11 July. Obstinately, Lilburne refused to kneel at the bar of the House and put his fingers in his ears as the charge against him was read – for this contempt, he was fined £2,000 and sentenced to a seven-year imprisonment in the Tower.61 Lilburne’s case galvanized Leveller demands for the abolition of the House of Lords. Their key arguments were enumerated in A Remonstrance of Many LJ, VIII, 368; J. Lilburne, The Just Mans Justification; or a Letter by way of Plea in Barre (London?, 1646). 59  J. Lilburne, The Free-mans Freedome Vindicated (London, 1646), pp. 5–6; LJ, VIII, 370. 60  Lilburne, Free-mans Freedome, p. 8. 61  HJ, VIII, 388, 429­–30 432–33; Gregg, Free-Born John, pp. 141–2. 58 

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Thousand Citizens, and other Free-born People of England, written by Richard Overton and published shortly after Lilburne’s imprisonment. Addressing the Commons directly, the Remonstrance stressed that ‘Yee only are chosen by Us the People; and therefore in you onely is the Power of binding the whole Nation, by making, altering, or abolishing of Lawes’. It claimed that the Commons had ‘prejudiced’ the people by acting ‘as if ye could not make a Law’ without the assent of King and Lords. In reality, the Lords’ assent was ‘meerly formall’ as it had ‘no root in the choice of the People, from whom the Power that is just must be derived’. The Remonstrance demanded to know why the Commons maintained the charade – they should ‘reduce this case … to a certaintie, and not … waste time’ or ‘be lyable to so many Obstructions as yee have been’.62 Indeed, the Remonstrance recommended that the Lords be abolished and its members instead ‘stand to be chosen for Knights and Burgesses by the People’. The Lords so elected would be on an equal footing with the rest of the Commons: ‘they would be distinguished by their vertues, and love to the Common-wealth, whereas now they Act and Vote in our affaires but as intruders … thrust upon us by Kings, to make good their Interests’. It also demanded an end to lordly priviledges: there was ‘no reason’ why the Lords ‘should in any measure be lesse lyable to the Law then the Gentry are’.63 Lilburne too was adamant that all must be equal before the law, especially in ‘paying their debts, &c’, albeit he was not averse to the Lords retaining their ‘titles of honour to their posteritie for ever’ or ‘enjoying their large estates’, which should not be taken from them ‘but by their own free consent’.64 The Levellers denied any novelty in their suggestions; they were only holding the parliamentarians to their own arguments and actions. As Lilburne noted in a tract of early 1648, provocatively entitled A Whip for the present House of Lords, both ‘reason’ and ‘the Parliaments own Declarations’ demonstrated ‘that though the present House of Lords, (de facto) exercise a law making and a law judging power, yet (de jure) they have no right to either’.65 Similarly, the Remonstrance of Many Thousand alluded to those occasions in the 1640s when the Commons acted unilaterally: the Commons had ‘so much sense of your owne Power’ that ‘when either King or Lords assent not’ they simply gave their ‘assent’ to ‘what yee thinke good by an Order of your owne House’.66 The Levellers had something of the quality of Frankenstein’s monster. The fact their arguments drew upon those of the parliamentarians was surely R. Overton, A Remonstrance of Many Thousand Citizens, and other Free-born People of England, To their owne House of Commons (London, 1646), pp. 3, 6–7. 63  Ibid., p. 7. 64  J. Lilburne, A Whip for the present House of Lords, Or The Levellers Levelled (London?, 1648), p. 8. 65  Ibid., p. 1. 66  Overton, Remonstrance, p. 6. 62 

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troubling for any who professed to have gone to war to preserve the framework of England’s ancient constitution. It is no coincidence that William Prynne, one of the most vociferous opponents of the Levellers, also happened to be one of the foremost proponents of those parliamentarian ideas upon which they claimed to draw succour. Prynne’s two tracts of 1648, entitled The Levellers Levelled and A Plea for the Lords, attempted to set the record straight.67 He denied that the ‘Commons House alone’ was the ‘Supreme Power of England’ with ‘power of binding the whole Nation, by making, altering, or abolishing Lawes’.68 They might as well argue that ‘the Leggs and trunke of a man are a perfect man without head, necke, armes and shoulders’ as the ‘House of Commons are or ought to be an entire Parliament; the sole Legislative Power’.69 As Prynne railed, those ‘Fire-brands of Sedition’ were looking to ‘extirpate Monarchy and Magistracy, Nobility and Gentry’, not least through their demands to ‘levell the Lords to the Commoners, by bringing them downe into the Commons-House to sit and vote together with them as one’.70 Prynne based his case upon what he claimed were the hard facts of the historical record; he looked to ‘Scripture, Histories, Antiquities and ParliamentRolls’ to refute the ‘illiterate seditious Pamphlets’ of ‘Ignoramus Lilburne, Overton, Walwin’.71 The Levellers’ claims that ‘in times past’ kings had ‘kept their Parliaments, when & before there were any Bishops or temporall Lords’ were a matter of ‘groundlesse assertion, contradicted by our Antiquaries and Historians’.72 It was a ‘grosse mistake’ to say the Lords were ‘Sonnes of Conquest introduced by the Conquerour’; they had ‘sate anciently in all our Parliaments, and Generall Counsells’ for ‘many hundred yeares before the Conquest’.73 There was ‘no one president’ that could be found ‘in History or Record of any one Parliament held in this Island’ that did not include ‘Lords and Peeres’.74 But if the records demonstrated that the Lords were a staple feature of parliaments, this was hardly true of the Commons. As Prynne noted, there was ‘little or no mention at all of any Knights of Shires, Citizens, or Burgesses in any of our Parliaments and Councels, before the Conquest, or in the Conquerors time, and his next Successors’.75 Prynne also questioned the W. Prynne, The Levellers Levelled to the very Ground (London, 1648); idem, A Plea for the Lords: Or, A short, yet full and necessary Vindication of the Judiciary and Legislative Powers of the House of Peers (London, 1648). Thomason dates the first tract 21 Feb. 1648 and the second 2 Mar. 1648. 68  Prynne, Plea for the Lords, pp. 2–3. 69  Ibid., p. 16. 70  Prynne, Levellers Levelled, p. 1. 71  Prynne, Plea for Lords, sig. A2r–A3v: introductory letter to the Lords. 72  Prynne, Levellers Levelled, p. 21. 73  Prynne, Plea for the Lords, p. 5. 74  Ibid., pp. 3, 7–8. 75  Ibid., pp. 3–4. 67 

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commonplace assumption that the two Houses had anciently sat together only to be divided into separate Houses at a later date. He could find ‘no one Author or record of credit’ that ‘proves directly, that the Lords and Commons did ever sit, vote, or act together as one intire house’. The matter of ‘when, by whom, and upon what occasion’ the Houses came to be divided was ‘altogether uncertain’. Sir Edward Coke placed it during the early years of Edward III’s reign, but Prynne believed the ‘Records of these Parliaments’ did ‘not necessarily warrant his conjecture therein’.76 Of course, Prynne realized this omission was as damaging for the parliamentarian cause as it was for the Levellers, not least because it gave credence to those Royalists who questioned the antiquity of the people’s representatives sitting in parliament. He admitted that it was possible, ‘as some affirm’, that ‘many of our ancient Parliaments were held without Commons’ at all – a position that would ‘much invalid the Commons authority’.77 But Prynne would not draw definite conclusions from the silence in the records. Instead, he suggested that the division of the two Houses was probably ‘farre more ancient’ than realized. The fact ‘our historians writing of our ancientest Parliaments’ made no mention of ‘Elders of the people, Senators, Knights or Commons to represent the people’ need not mean that the Commons were absent, as perhaps they were sitting somewhere else instead; it seemed ‘more then probable’ to Prynne ‘that they sat and voted not together but distinctly’.78 Yet proving the continued presence of the Lords in parliament was one thing, justifying that presence was another. As such, Prynne stressed the utility of having a second chamber, especially its judicial functions. He ridiculed the fact that Lilburne previously made no complaints about the Lords’ judicature when he appealed to them ‘for reversall of the sentence against him in Starchamber’.79 He also denied that Magna Carta supported Lilburne’s claims; its provision for trial by one’s peers ‘extends onely to exclude villaines and those who are not Freeholders from being Judges of Freemen and Freeholders’. It did not exclude Lords ‘who are Freemen in the highest degree’ from being judges of Commoners ‘who are Freemen’. As such, the Lords were ‘certainly Peers to Commoners, though Commoners be not Peers to them’.80 The practice of the Lords dealing with cases involving commoners was also well established by the fact that writs of error to reverse erroneous judgements Prynne, Levellers Levelled, p. 3. Ibid., pp. 3–4. The ‘some’ here clearly included Robert Filmer and his Freeholders Grand Inquest published in Jan. 1648. 78  Prynne, Levellers Levelled, pp. 3–4. Interestingly, after the abolition of the Lords, Prynne apparently changed his opinion on this point in order to confound the Rump’s claims to sole legislative authority. See W. Prynne, The First Part of an Historical Collection of the Ancient Parliaments of England, From the yeer of our Lord 673, till the end of King John’s Reign, Anno 1216 (London, 1649), p. 31. 79  Prynne, Plea for the Lords, p. 16. 80  Ibid., pp. 62–3. 76  77 

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came ‘only before the Lords in the Upper House’.81 If the Lords were sole judges in writs of error concerning commoners ‘notwithstanding the statute of Magna Charta’, Prynne could not see why the Lords may not ‘lawfully proceed against them in all other civill or criminall causes’.82 The Lords were also far more suited to the task than the Commons: their ‘education, learning and experience’ made the Lords ‘better able, and more fit to be Judges’ than ‘ordinary Citizens and Burgesses’.83 The Lords were assisted by ‘the Judges of England, the Kings learned Councell, and other ablest to advise them’ while the Commons have ‘no such assistants’.84 For Prynne, the Lords had an ‘indubitable right of Judicature … not only of Peers themselves, but likewise of Commoners, in all extraordinary cases of Treason, Felony, Trespasse, and other Misedemeanors triable only in Parliament’, all of which was ‘constantly acknowledged, practised, and submitted to, without dispute’.85 The Lords were the ‘sole Judges’ in Parliament; the Commons were nothing more than ‘informers and prosecutors’ similar to a ‘Grand Inquest’.86 Prynne also defended the necessity of having the legislative function shared between two chambers. To claim, as the Levellers did, that single-chamber parliaments would better expedite business was ‘an absurd and ignorant fancie of over-hasty spirits, who would act all things in a hurry without good deliberation’. It was better to have ‘mature debate’ over legislation to reflect on ‘all the circumstances and probable consequences of it’.87 The role of the Lords was to use ‘their second debates and conferences with the Judges’ to ‘amend and rectifie divers errours, imperfections, and mistakes in the overhasty Votes’ of the Commons.88 Prynne scorned suggestions that the Lords had no right to sit or vote because they were ‘not made by the people, from whom all power, peace and office that is just … ought to arise’.89 As already noted, parliamentarian apologists had previously stressed the supremacy of both Houses of Parliament on the grounds that they represented the entire kingdom, without pondering too deeply the grounds of that representation. The Leveller authors, by contrast, stressed that all power derived from the people; for a government to be legitimate the people must first agree to put themselves under that government. As such, the Commons, as the representative of the people, were the sole supreme power. Eschewing the language of kingdom, the Levellers saw the ‘nation’ or ‘commonwealth’ as synonymous with ‘the people’. The Lords 81  82  83  84  85  86  87  88  89 

Ibid., p. 33. Ibid., p. 33. Ibid., p. 30. Ibid., p. 31. Ibid., p. 45. Ibid., p. 32. Prynne, Levellers Levelled, pp. 12–13. Ibid., p. 15. Prynne, Plea for the Lords, pp. 2–3. 21

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could not share in that supreme power because they failed to meet the basic criterion – they did not represent the people. Prynne bristled at such claims. If the right of ‘sitting, judging, and making Lawes’ in Parliament was ‘founded upon the immediate free election of all those that are to be Governed’, it surely meant that the votes of the Commons could not ‘bind any Ministers, Women, Children, Infants, Servants’ and others who ‘cannot well or properly be represented but by persons of their owne sex, degrees, trades and callings’.90 Indeed, Prynne believed the fact that the peers were not chosen by the people did not invalidate their claim to sit in parliament, quite the opposite in fact. The truth was that the Lords ‘represent no persons but themselves onely’. The ‘Knights, Citizens, and Burgesses … being persons of meaner estate and quality’ were ‘present in Parliament onely in the right of others who elect them’. The Lords, by contrast, ‘whose estates anciently were far more worth then many whole Burroughes put together’ sat ‘in their owne right’. There was ‘no shadow of reason why the people should elect them, since they doe not represent them’.91 Parliament, Prynne stressed, must represent landed interest – the fact that the Lords had an interest far greater than that of the Commons meant that they must be present to represent both themselves and the nobility as an estate. Without them Prynne could hardly see how parliament could be representative of the kingdom. Prynne found specious the argument that MPs should have ‘a greater voyce’ than the ‘greatest Earl in parliament’ because they ‘represent’ the counties, cities and burroughs that elected them ‘and the Earl but himself’. By the same logic, those knights who served for the ‘greatest Counties’ should have a ‘greater voyce and power in the Commons’ than those who serve for ‘lesser, and the smallest’ because they ‘represent … more Freeholders, Citizens and Burgesses’.92 Prynne did not think that the fact that the Lords represented themselves made them any less tender for the common good. They voted not ‘onely for himself, but for all the Nobility and whole State and Kingdom whereof he is a member, as well and as much as any Commoner’.93 Moreover, their self-interest went hand in hand with the public interest. Their ‘greater Estates, Families & Fortunes’ meant they had ‘more to keep and lose then other ordinary Commoners’; their ‘engagements to maintaine the Lawes, Liberties and Properties of the Subject’ were consequently ‘greater then ­inferiour mens’.94 Once again, Prynne invoked the past to bolster the case for the Lords sitting ‘by right of their Nobility and Peerage’. He stressed the symbiotic Ibid., pp. 1–2. Prynne, ibid., pp. 26–7. 92  Prynne, Levellers Levelled, p. 23. Of course, the Levellers were aware of this problem: this is why the Agreement of the People demanded that constituencies be ‘more indifferently proportioned according to the number of the inhabitants’, Gardiner, Documents, p. 333. 93  Prynne, Levellers Levelled, p. 23. 94  Prynne, Plea for the Lords, pp. 25–6. 90 

91 

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relationship between noble wealth, wisdom and service to the public good. Their ‘education, birth, experience and imployment in State-affaires’ meant they were the ‘wisest and best experienced Common-wealths men, best able to advise and Councell the King’. It was ‘their own inherent wisdome, excellency and worth’ that was the ‘Originall cause of advancing and ennobling them at first’.95 Their ‘great interests, Estates, allies and retainers’ meant they were ‘best able to withstand, and redresse all publike grievances, and encroachments of the King upon their owne and the peoples Liberties’.96 In ‘ancient times’ they had ‘been alwayes most ready and active to spend not only their estates, but blood and lives’ to preserve ‘those Liberties and Freedomes we now enjoy and contend for’. In the reigns of John, Henry III, Edward II and Richard II, the ‘Lords & Barons were the … chief Opposers of these Kings Usurpations and Encroachments of the people’.97 Yet, Prynne’s historical analysis seemed out of touch with the realities of 1640s England. True, as Prynne pointed out, there were more recent examples of the peers defending the people’s liberties. After all, a junto of puritanical lords had been the ‘chiefe instruments of calling this present Parliament’. Peers such as Essex and Lord Brooke had also ‘first appeared in the Wars against the King and his party’ in 1642 ‘to the great encouragement of others’. As such Prynne found it the ‘extremity of folly, ingratitude and injustice’ to now deny them that privilege of sitting that ‘their Ancestors had purchased at so deare a rate’.98 Here was a powerful argument for defending the rights of the parliamentarian peerage at least. Yet, it raised the awkward question of why a majority of English peers sided with the king in 1642, not to mention those who defected or absented themselves since. If Prynne claimed the Lords should sit on the basis that they were champions of the public good it seems many of them were found wanting. Indeed, there was a real danger that the House of Lords could slide into extinction for want of faithful peers. As Prynne recognized, the ‘expulsions, and impeachments of most’ of the membership ‘by degrees’ over the past decade had meant that there was ‘scarce enough left to make up an house’.99 The remedy to this problem, however, was unclear. The parliamentarians were unwilling to readmit those Lords who defected to the Royalists. Moreover, despite the proposal that the king could not create new Lords without the assent of both Houses, he remained the fountain of honour. It was doubtful that the king and the majority in both houses would find a plethora of candidates for peerages upon whom they would all agree. Ibid., pp. 18–19. Ibid., p. 22. 97  Ibid., p. 23. 98  Ibid., pp. 18, 24–5; Levellers Levelled, pp. 2, 9–10. 99  Prynne, Levellers Levelled, p. 14. Prynne was here commenting in particular on the impeachment and expulsion of the peers who had sat during the Presbyterian coup of summer 1647. 95  96 

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There was also a more fundamental question of whether the peers had the same ‘interest’ as in times past. As Prynne noted, their estates ‘anciently’ were greater than the Commons – but it was not clear that this remained the case, particularly in the wake of a Civil War that had ransacked noble estates and drained their revenues.100 Ultimately, Prynne’s defence of the Lords, grounded upon the historical record, seemed ill matched to the political and social realities of 1640s England. For Prynne, it did not matter that the current peers were only a shadow of the magnates of old; it was the fact that they were the descendants of those great men, and carried out faithful service to the parliamentarian cause, that meant they fully deserved their seats. It is hardly surprising that Lilburne found Prynne’s defence wanting. Although Prynne ‘pretends to be a Champion for the House of Lords’, Lilburne sneered, he had ‘not so much parts, abilities, courage and mettell in him’ to ‘meddle’ with the ‘maine things in controversie betwixt the Lords’ and those ‘he stiles … Levellers’.101 Rather than confront the theories of the Levellers, Prynne resorted to the past. His overriding argument was that the Lords sat in parliament, and should continue to do so, because they had always done so; custom and precedent should not be taken lightly. As the title page of A Plea for the Lords stressed, quoting Proverbs 22.28, they must ‘Remove not the ancient land-mark which thy fathers have set’.102 So long as the majority in the Commons were committed to this view, that the constitutional trinity of king, Lords and Commons must be retained, the demands of the Levellers were unlikely to have much purchase. The Army and the House of Lords Ultimately, the greatest threat to the House of Lords came not from the Commons or the Levellers, but from the New Model Army. By late 1647 there was growing resentment among the soldiery towards the army leadership – not least those ‘grandees’, Cromwell and his son-in-law Henry Ireton, who seemed more willing to settle with Charles I than to remedy the pressing material and political grievances that first animated the army’s politicization earlier that year. The full force of this discontent was unleashed in mid-­ October in The Case of the Armie Truly stated, written on behalf of ‘Agents’ from five horse regiments.103 For the most part, the Case was military in tone. It urged that the Commons be purged of those hostile to the army and that provisions should be made for the dissolution of the current parliament and Prynne, Plea for the Lords, pp. 26–7. Lilburn, Whip for the present House of Lords, p. 8. 102  Prynne, Plea for the Lords, titlepage. 103  The Case of the Armie Truly stated, together with the mischiefes and dangers that are immi­ nent, and some sutable remedies, Humbly proposed by the Agents of five Regiments (London, 1647). 100  101 

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for biennial elections on a reformed franchise – all of which tallied with previous army demands (albeit the demand that ‘all the freeborn at the age of 21 years and upwards’ should be electors was broader than previously suggested).104 Other aspects of the Case hint at ‘Leveller’ influence, including statements that ‘all power is originally and essentially in the whole body of the people’; that ‘their free choice or consent by their Representors is the only originall and foundation of all just government’; that ‘the peoples representors or Commons assembled in Parliament be forthwith clearly declared as their power to make lawes, or repeale lawes’.105 Nothing was said about how all this impinged upon the legislative power of the House of Lords – in fact, the Case failed to mention the Lords at all. The Case prompted the infamous debates of the Army’s General Council at Putney from 28 October. Cromwell and Ireton were determined to use the Council to answer those slurs against them and to bring unity back to the army. Also present, however, were the civilian ‘Levellers’ John Wildman and Maximilian Petty, who presented for the Council’s consideration An Agreement of the People. This document went far beyond the constitutional demands of the Case, by suggesting a new social compact, subscribed by all the people.106 For Cromwell, the whole concept of the Agreement would breed ‘confusion’, for what was to stop ‘another companie of men’ coming together and to ‘putt out a paper as plausible perhaps as this’.107 Equally divisive was the debate over the franchise on 29 October, which included Thomas Rainsborough’s famous interjection that ‘every man that is to live under a Governement ought first by his owne consent to putt himself under that Government’.108 In response, Ireton stressed that representation must be tied to property – that ‘no person hath a … share in the disposing or determining of the affaires of the Kingdome … that hath nott a permanent fixed interest in this Kingdome’. It was those ‘persons’ who were ‘properly the Represented of this Kingedome’ and who ‘consequentlie are to make uppe the Representors’.109 Following the drama of the franchise debate, however, significant headway was made at Putney about the terms for a future settlement. On 30 October, a committee – including Cromwell and Ireton along with agitators William Allen and Edward Sexby – drew up a set of proposals that reconciled the terms of the Agreement and Case of the Armie with the army’s previous demands for settlement. The committee agreed that the Long Parliament must dissolve Ibid., p. 15. Ibid., p. 15. Passages such as this make possible the authorship of John Wildman. However, a more plausible author is Edward Sexby: see J. Morrill and P. Baker, ‘The case of the armie truly re-stated’, in The Putney Debates of 1647: The Army, the Levellers, and the English State, ed. M. Mendle (Cambridge, 2001), pp. 103–24. 106  Gardiner, Documents, pp. 333–5. 107  Clarke Papers, I, 236–7. 108  Ibid., I, 301. 109  Ibid., I, 301–2. 104  105 

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by 1 September 1648, that future parliaments would be biennial and fixed in length. Constituencies were to be reapportioned ‘according to some rule of equality or proportion’ to ‘render the House of Commons as neere as may bee an equall Representative of the whole body of the people that are to Elect’. The franchise would not extend to all ‘freeborn’ over 21 as suggested in the Case, but it would incorporate all those who had served the parliamentarian cause up to and including the Battle of Naseby.110 The committee apparently also considered an even more far-reaching proposal: that the king and Lords should have no negative voice but a suspensive veto only. As Colonel Robert Tichborne recalled, the committee resolved that ‘all the power of making lawes should bee in those that the people should chuse’. The king and Lords should still have those laws ‘presented to them’ so ‘that if they would doe the Commons that right as to confirme those lawes they should doe itt’. If, however, they ‘should not thinke fitt to signe them, itt should begett a review of that by the House of Commons’. If, after that review, the Commons declared that the law was ‘for the safetie of the people’ it would be considered ‘a standing and binding law’ even though the king or Lords did not give their assent.111 On 1 November many in the Council were ready to pursue this scheme. William Allen announced that the ‘worke … before them was to take away the Negative voice of the Kinge and Lords’.112 Yet, the army grandees urged caution. Tellingly, Cromwell admitted that ‘wee all apprehend danger from the person of the Kinge, and from the Lords’, and that it was not ‘our businesse or intention to sett uppe, the one or the other … with a visible danger and destruction to the people and publique interest’. But he warned that they must not get ‘carried away’ and ‘make those thinges to bee our rule which wee cannott soe clearlie know to bee the minde of God’.113 Instead, a different proposal was tendered, that ‘noe law or ordinance’ should ‘bind the Commons of England’ without the ‘particular concurrence and consent of the House of Commons’.114 According to Ireton, who seems to have been the architect of this proposal, it gave the ‘negative voice to the people’ so that ‘noe lawes can bee made without their consent’ and ‘takes away the negative voice of the Lords and of the Kinge too, as to what concernes the people’.115 Yet, the proposal also stated that the Lords and king were ‘nott bound’ by laws made by the Commons that touched ‘their owne persons or estates as the Commons are, unlesse they consent to it’; their ‘indiIbid., I, 363–7. Ibid., I, 396. Intriguingly, there is no record of this resolution among Clarke’s notes of the points ‘Agreed’ by the committee on 30 Oct. (ibid., I, 363–7). It seems, as Ireton notes at the beginning of his speech (ibid., I, 396–7), that the committee were ‘thinking’ of such a proposal but did not resolve upon it. 112  Ibid., I, 367. 113  Ibid., I, 379–80. 114  Ibid., I, 390–1, 396–7, 407–8. 115  Ibid., I, 391. 110  111 

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viduall persons’ were not bound ‘by any law that they doe nott consent to’.116 This distinction between the collective public interest of the Commons and private interests of the Lords was also stressed in proposals concerning judicial matters. Peers could be tried by the Commons for any indiscretions committed in a public capacity: as Ireton explained, if they ‘meddle in any other officers, as Officers of Justice or Ministers of State’ they were ‘subject to the Judgement of the House of Commons’. If, however, they ‘onely stand as single men’ then they were to be ‘only judged by their peeres’.117 Unsurprisingly, the proposal attracted criticism. Wildman, in particular, believed it did ‘establish the Kinge’s and Lords’ interest surer than before’, while the ‘power of the House of Commons is much lessen’d’.118 He deplored the notion that ‘noe law shall bee made without the consent of the Commons’; for Wildman this implicitly meant that there were ‘some other law makers besides the Representative of the Commons’.119 Wildman found dubious the whole notion of allowing the king and Lords a negative in private matters; he was certain they ‘shall say, though itt does not concerne mee in my private yett it does in my politique’ and invoke their negative anyway. Above all, Wildman found the proposal unsatisfactory because the ‘whole offer runs that nothing shall bee declar’d against the usurpation in the Kinge formerly, nor in the Lords formerly’. It implied that the army were taking certain rights away from king and Lords when, so Wildman claimed, those rights had never legitimately belonged to them in the first place.120 In response, Ireton echoed Prynne by telling Wildman to face historical facts. He challenged him to find any ‘law in being in this Kingdome which hath nott Lords to itt, and King to itt … “Bee it ordain’d by the Kinge, Lords, and Commons” … it alwayes have gone soe’; there was ‘noe memory of any kinde of proceeding to the contrarie’.121 Ireton stressed that the ‘judiciall power was in the Lords principally’ as seen by the fact that the ‘Judges of Common Law … sitt as assistants’ there. Equally, ‘the Legislative power’ was ‘principally in the Commons, and the Lords’ concurrences in practice to be desired’. As such the ‘two powers of the Legislative power and the judiciall have bin exercised betweene both Lords and Commons, and none of them to exercise the one or the other without mutuall consent.’122 Ireton challenged those present to ‘produce some kinde of evidence of history uppon record by law’ to show that he was wrong.123 Ibid., I, 391–2. Ibid., I, 392, 394. 118  Ibid., I, 394, 398. 119  Ibid., I, 398, emphasis added. 120  Ibid., I, 398­–9; see also pp. 386, 387. 121  Ibid., I, 399–400. 122  Ibid., I, 400. 123  Ibid., I, 400–1. See also the exchange between Cowling and Ireton in ibid., I, 401–2 where Ireton raises the problem, also acknowledged by Prynne, of the silence in the historical record concerning the Commons in parliament prior to fourteenth century. 116  117 

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Ireton believed the army must work with the constitutional framework they had and could not begin afresh. He disliked the way the advocates of the Agreement insisted ‘uppon thinges of common safetie as supposing noe constitution att all’.124 Ireton did not oppose the notion of the supremacy of the people’s representatives but he believed that supremacy could be reconciled with the existing constitutional framework rather than be made an excuse to subvert it.125 As such, he pointed to the ‘originall sence and intent’ of the coronation oath, wherein the monarch ‘promises that hee will by his authority confirme those lawes that the people shall chuse’; as far as Ireton was concerned this was ‘the Agreement that the people of England made with their Kinges’.126 Ultimately, this contract meant that neither the king, nor the Lords, could veto those laws that the people, in the Commons, created for the public good.127 For Ireton, the principle of popular sovereignty was not antithetical to the tripartite structure of the ancient constitution but was its very essence. Rather than refound the government upon a new social contract, as the supporters of the Agreement seemed to suggest, Ireton – like Cromwell – believed that popular sovereignty could be secured within the existing constitutional framework.128 Ultimately, Ireton’s desire to retain a role for the Lords did not mean he denied the supremacy of the Commons; rather, it reflected his tenderness for private property. Ireton wanted the army to have regard for ‘safetie to our persons, safetie to our estates, safetie to our libertie’.129 The proposal before them amounted only ‘to this: that the Commons have power to make lawes for all the Commons of England, that onely the person of the Kinge and persons of the Lords with their estates as persons are freed from them’; as far as Ireton was concerned those unsatisfied with this would never be happy until they had ‘a power over other men’s liberties’.130 Ultimately, while Ireton believed the proposal did ‘take away all power’ from the Lords and the king, he stressed that they must not leave them open to ‘destruction’; they must be able to ‘preserve’ their ‘owne person or estate free from the Commons’.131 It made for a peculiar constitutional framework in which the Commons represented the people and determined the public good while the Lords and king could remove themselves from those laws that impinged upon their private interests. Implicitly, Ireton accepted that the Lords and king could not be trusted to determine what was for the public good; their role in parliament was merely to defend themselves. Ibid., I, 401. See, for instance, ibid., I, 388–9 for Ireton’s unequivocal endorsement of the sovereignty of the Commons. 126  Ibid., I, 388–90. 127  Ibid., I, 398. In reply to Ireton, Wildman pointed out that the coronation oath says nothing of the Lords. 128  Ibid., I, 405. 129  Ibid., I, 403. 130  Ibid., I, 403, emphasis added. 131  Ibid., I, 405. 124  125 

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Charles I’s escape from army custody and the outbreak of a Second Civil War in 1648 put paid to the proposals drafted at Putney. In November 1648 Ireton famously penned the Army’s Remonstrance, which set out a new vision for settlement in light of Charles’ recent actions. Besides calling unambiguously for the king’s trial, it called on parliament to reach a settlement without seeking the royal assent. As in 1647, the army wanted parliament to hasten its dissolution, with regular fixed-term parliaments, elected on an annual or biennial basis, to follow. These parliaments should have an ‘equall distribution of Elections … to render the House of Commons as near as may be, an equall Representative of the whole People electing’.132 The Remonstrance also wanted it declared that ‘as to the whole interest of the People’ their ‘Representatives have, and shall have the supream power and trust, as to the making of Laws, Constitutions, and Offices, for the ordering, preservation, and Government of the whole’.133 Throughout the document, the House of Lords was conspicuous by its absence; there was no revival of those proposals devised at Putney for allowing the peers a negative over matters that affected their private interests. Indeed, Ireton had seemingly undergone a major shift in constitutional thinking since Putney. Whereas in 1647 he derided the Leveller Agreement of the People, the Remonstrance positively advocated such a scheme. Matters of ‘generall settlement’ were to be ‘declared and provided by this Parliament, or by the authority of the Commons therein, and to be further established by a generall Contract, or Agreement of the People, with their subscriptions thereunto’.134 While there could be deliberate ambiguity in the allusion to parliament or the ‘Commons therein’, perhaps hinting at the door being left ajar for the Lords, other parts of the Remonstrance suggest that ‘parliament’, ‘representative’ and ‘Commons’ were really synonyms for one another.135 Indeed, the revised Agreement of the People, which eventually emerged after the ‘Whitehall debates’, made no mention of two Houses, providing only for a ‘Representative of the whole nation’ comprised of 400 elected members.136 Perhaps the clearest example of Ireton’s change in thinking is the way the Remonstrance dealt with the office of king. At Putney, Ireton stressed that the coronation oath was the agreement of the people that underpinned the ancient constitution and made plain the origin of kingly powers. By contrast, the Remonstrance recommended that ‘no King be hereafter admitted’ except by ‘election of, and as upon trust from the People’ by their ‘Representatives’, and ‘not without first disclaiming and disavowing all pretence to a negative 132 

A Remonstrance of His Excellency Thomas Lord Fairfax, Lord Generall of the Parliaments Forces And of the Generall Councell of Officers Held at St Albans the 16. of November, 1648 (London, 1648), pp. 65–6. 133  Ibid., p. 66. 134  Ibid., p. 67. 135  See the earlier passage on p. 67 concerning kings, who would not have a negative voice ‘against the determinations of the said Representatives, or Commons in Parliament’. 136  Gardiner, Documents, pp. 359–60. 29

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voice’. This was to be done ‘in some certain form, more clear then heretofore in the Coronation Oath’.137 Clearly Ireton had lost faith in the old forms and arrangements. While the Remonstrance raised the possibility – though not the certainty – of the continuation of government with a king, it would be refounded by an agreement of the people and settled in a manner much clearer than previously. The Abolition of the House of Lords Ultimately, the constitutional schemes of the Remonstrance and the Second (Officers’) Agreement of the People were mostly abandoned in 1649. The Agreement was presented to the Commons on 20 January but does not appear to have figured in the discussions for constitutional settlement that followed the regicide.138 Rather, the actions of those pursuing the king’s trial, both in the army and among the radical Independent MPs in the Commons, seemed to suggest their determination, as far as possible, to work within the existing constitutional framework rather than start afresh. Rather than dissolve the Commons, the army – in consultation with the Independent MPs – decided to purge it of those disposed to continue negotiating with Charles I.139 This expedient, designed to expedite the business of securing justice against the king, confounded the hopes of Levellers like Lilburne, whose preference was to dissolve the present parliament immediately, settle the government by subscription to the Agreement and then elect a new representative on that basis.140 It also seems those pursuing the king’s trial were initially determined to work with the House of Lords rather than against it. Unlike the Commons, the Lords was unmolested at Pride’s Purge, albeit a number of peers stopped attending thereafter. As they prepared for the king’s trial, the Rump of the Commons looked to get the Lords’ assent to legislation. On 2 January 1649, they sent for the Lords’ concurrence a vote ‘declaring it High Treason for the King for the Time being, to levy War against the Parliament and Kingdom’ and an Ordinance ‘for erecting an High Court of Justice, for Tryal of the King’.141 Interestingly, the Commons even included the names of six peers among the proposed trial commissioners.142 Yet, if this was intended as an olive branch to the peers or supposed to attest to the moderate aims of those Remonstrance... 16 of November 1648, p. 67. CJ, VI, 122. 139  Ludlow, I, 205–7. 140  J. Lilburne, The Legal Fundamental Liberties Of the People of England, 2nd edn (London, 1649), pp. 56–7. 141  CJ, VI, 108. 142  Perfect Occurrences, 105 (29 Dec. 1648–5 Jan. 1649), p. 784; S. Kelsey,‘The Ordinance for the Trial of Charles I’, Historical Research, 76 (2003), 315, 324. The six were: the earls of Denbigh, Kent, Mulgrave, Nottingham and Pembroke; Lord Grey of Warke. 137  138 

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who put the king on trial, the Lords failed to see the significance. They rejected both the vote and the ordinance that same day without a single lord dissenting. They then adjourned for a week without sending any message to inform the Commons of their decision.143 Whether or not they really expected the Lords to cooperate, the Commons’ subsequent actions left no room for compromise. On 3 January, finding the Lords had adjourned until 9 January, the Commons ordered all parliamentary committees to continue going about their business ‘notwithstanding the Lords do not join them’. Ominously, they also resolved that the next day should be spent on ‘those Affairs that tend to the Safety and Settlement of the Kingdom’.144 What followed, on 4 January, was a series of momentous resolutions that made plain the location of sovereign power. They declared that ‘the People are, under God, the Original of all just Power’; that the ‘Commons … in Parliament … being chosen by, and representing the People, have the Supreme Power in this Nation’; and that ‘whatsoever is enacted, or declared for Law, by the Commons’ had ‘Force of Law’ even if ‘the Consent and Concurrence of King, or House of Peers, be not had thereunto’.145 Two days later, the Commons passed, by themselves, what they tellingly described as an ‘Act’ for erecting the High Court of Justice.146 As had been the case at other moments in the 1640s, expediency led those sitting in the Commons in the winter of 1648–49 to act unilaterally. Yet in justifying that action the Rump and its apologists made explicit what had hitherto been said only tentatively. The novelty rested not in their assertion of the popular origins of power, which was integral to parliamentarian defences throughout the 1640s, but the concomitant claim that the Commons alone was the supreme authority in the nation. Once this point was acted upon in January 1649 it could not easily be backpedalled without undermining the whole basis upon which the king’s trial had been justified. In the weeks that followed, the Commons had to confront what the resolutions of 4 January actually meant for the House of Lords and the relationship between the two Houses moving forward. Indeed, the arrival of messengers from the Lords on 9 January prompted the Commons to debate whether ‘having voted the supreame power in themselves’ they should now ‘owne the lords so farre, as to entertaine their meassage’.147 According to one Royalist report, some were already demanding that ‘the house of Peeres might be wholy supprest’ or that the Lords ‘might be brought to sitt with them’.148 Ultimately, it was agreed by 31 votes to 18

143  144  145  146  147  148 

HJ, X, 641–2 (2 Jan. 1649). CJ, VI, 109–110. CJ, VI, 110–111. CJ, VI, 113 (6 Jan.); Gardiner, Documents, pp. 357–8. CJ, VI, 114–15; Bodl., Clarendon MS 34, fol. 72r. Lawrans to Hyde, 12 Jan. 1648[9]: Bodl., Clarendon MS 34, fol. 73v. 31

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to call in the messengers from the Lords.149 Yet, this apparently conciliatory gesture must be qualified by the fact that later that same day the Commons agreed upon the form of a new great seal, which replaced the royal image with that of the House of Commons alone, without the Lords, to depict the supreme authority in the land.150 Even though they did not abolish the Lords immediately, the majority in the Commons stood by the resolutions of 4 January and denied them a legislative power. This was particularly evident in their deliberations over an ‘Act’ passed by the Commons alone on 16 January for adjourning the Hilary law term.151 In response, two days later, the Lords provocatively sent ‘down an Ordinance’ to the Commons ‘for their concurrence’, which ‘was the same in effect, for adjournement of the terme which the Commons past before’.152 According to Whitelocke, the Commons’ response was clear: ‘having before voted, That they were the Supreme power … they would not owne the Lords as formerely, by agreeing to this Ordinance’.153 A question was propounded whether the Lords’ ‘Concurrence’ should be ‘desired’ to the ‘Three Votes of 4 January instant’, a move that would have made nonsense of the claims embodied in those resolutions, but the question to put the question was rejected.154 The debate over the future of the Lords intensified immediately after the regicide. According to Whitelocke, the impetus was the arrival on 1 February of another message from the Lords, this time requesting ‘a Committee to be named of both houses to consider of a way to settle the Nation’. The Commons refused to admit the messenger and failed even to note his presence in their Journal.155 Instead, they decided to settle the government by themselves. According to one newsbook, they began to discuss the issue of the kingship but soon agreed that they should first ‘consider of the Lords House’ and ‘Whether it shall be continued’ before moving onto the ‘manner of Government’.156 This is borne out by their Journal: on 1 February the House resolved to set aside the following day for the business of ‘settling the general Government of the Kingdom’, followed by a specific order on 2 February that ‘in the first place’ they should ‘take into Consideration and Debate the House of Lords’.157 CJ, VI. 115; Bodl., Clarendon MS 34, fol. 73v. CJ, VI, 115. 151  CJ, VI, 119; BL, Add. MS 37344, fols 245v–246r; Whitelocke Diary, p. 228. 152  BL, Add. MS 37344, fol. 246r; CJ, VI, 121. 153  BL, Add. MS 37344, fol. 246r. 154  CJ, VI, 121. 155  BL, Add. MS 37344, fols 254v–255r; CJ, VI, 127–9; LJ, X, 649–50 (1, 2, 5 Feb. 1649); Sydney Papers, pp. 61–3.Whitelocke notes that the Lords sent another message on 5 Feb., which was also ignored: BL, Add. MS 37344, fols 255v–256r. 156  The Moderate: Impartially Communicating Martial Affaires to the Kingdom of England, 30 (30 Jan.–6 Feb. 1649), fol. hh1v. 157  CJ, VI, 128–9. 149  150 

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It seems that many in the Commons, while accepting the resolutions of 4 January, remained reluctant to abolish the upper chamber. While it was impossible to have a ‘House of Lords, statu quo prius’ they debated whether it ‘should be constituted onely a Consultary Court’.158 According to Whitelocke, the ‘long & smart’ debate on 5 February, which lasted ‘till 6 a clocke att night’, concerned ‘whither the House of Lords should be continued a Court of Judicature, or a Court consultary only’. 159 There was also an unsuccessful motion to appoint a committee to ‘consider what power or constitution their Lordships should have’.160 Whitelocke admits that he contributed to the day’s debates by informing the Commons ‘out of records & histories the constitution and rights’ of the Lords, but is tight-lipped about whether or not he intervened to vindicate the Lords’ rights or to stress their subordination to the people’s representatives.161 Some MPs clearly saw merits in retaining the House of Lords, but ultimately they disagreed about how that could be achieved, not least because of the difficulty of reconciling it to the resolutions of 4 January. Initially, it seems that some favoured simply divesting the Lords of their legislative function but allowing them to remain a ‘Court of Judicature’. Yet, there were problems with such a scheme. As parliamentarian theorists like Parker had claimed, parliament, as the highest court, had a power to judge or interpret the law that was, in effect, equivalent to the power to create law: the two functions went hand in hand. To allow the Lords to retain its position at the apex of the legal system could undercut the Commons’ claims to the supreme legislative authority. The alternative seems to have been to retain the Lords as an advisory or ‘Consultary’ body with no intrinsic powers of its own. Debates over this scheme came to a head on 6 February when the question was propounded whether the Commons should ‘take the Advice of the House of Lords, in the Exercise of the Legislative Power, in pursuance of the Votes of this House, the Fourth of January last’.162 Although no further details are provided, the motion hints at an arrangement similar to that discussed by the army committee at Putney on 30 October 1647: a sort of suspensive veto whereby the Lords would give their advice on legislation, which the Commons could adopt or reject at their discretion. Unlike the earlier vote on 18 January, when the Commons asked whether the Lords’ ‘concurrence’ should be sought, they now only asked The Moderate, 30 (30 Jan.–6 Feb. 1649), fol. hh1v. BL, Add. MS 37344, fols 255v–256r; Whitelocke Diary, p. 230. Although Whitelocke was present, his account draws heavily upon that printed in The Moderate, 30 (30 Jan.–6 Feb. 1649), fol. hh2v. 160  The Moderate, 30 (30 Jan.–6 Feb. 1649), fol. hh2v; BL, Add. MS 37344, fols 255v– 256r; Whitelocke Diary, p. 230. 161  Whitelocke Diary, p. 230; BL, Add. MS 37344, fols 255v–256r. Infuriatingly, or conveniently, Whitelocke claimed he was unable to provide details because his notes had been borrowed and subsequently lost. 162  CJ, VI, 132, emphasis added. 158 

159 

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whether they should seek their ‘advice’.163 Yet the question was defeated by 44 votes to 29: ‘carryed in the Negative by many voyces’ as Whitelocke put it.164 So passed the final attempt to retain a constitutional role for the Lords. Later that day the Commons, without division, resolved ‘That the House of Peers in Parliament is useless and dangerous, and ought to be abolished’.165 Interestingly, the fate of kingship seems to have generated far less debate than that of the Lords. The debate on the Lords began on 1 February and concluded with the resolution to abolish five days later. The subsequent debate over kingship, by contrast, appears to have lasted barely a day in aggregate. It began on 6 February, yet a significant portion of that day’s business had already been dedicated to the Lords.166 On 7 February the House sat late into the evening, but kingship was just one of an impressive range of issues dealt with that day including, among other things, orders for erecting a council of state and settling arrangements for the trial of a number of Royalist peers.167 When the House got around to debating ‘the Business of Kingship’ it rejected a motion to turn itself into a ‘Grand Committee’, which would have allowed freer debate. Whereas the debates over the Lords provoked two divisions, the debate over the kingly office saw none at all. Ultimately, it was resolved, without division, that ‘the Office of a King in this Nation, and to have the Power thereof in any Single Person, is unnecessary, burdensome, and dangerous to the Liberty, Safety, and publick interest of the People of this Nation; and therefore ought to be abolished’.168 It seems that, of the two decisions taken in the first week of February, it was the abolition of the Lords, not kingship, that proved most contentious among MPs. Unsurprisingly, the Rump’s Declaration of 17 March 1649, justifying the recent changes in government, provides few hints that the decision to abolish the Lords was a difficult one. Rather, it stressed that the issue of representation made the chamber’s downfall a formality: the Lords would no longer ‘exercise a Negative voice over the people, whom they did not at all represent’; they would not have a judicial power over the ‘Persons and Estates of all the Commons, whereof they are not competent Judges’.169 Ultimately, their ‘power and greatness did chiefly depend upon the power and absoluteness of a King, whereunto they had lately expressed a sufficient inclination’. Seeing that ‘neither the Government of [the] Republique, nor the common safety could bear the Delays and Negatives of a House of Lords’, the Commons deemed it ‘necessary, wholly to Abolish and take the same away’.170 CJ, VI, 121, 132; The Moderate, 31 (6–13 Feb. 1649), p. 298. BL, Add. MS 37344, fols 256r­–v; CJ, VI, 132. 165  CJ, VI, 132. 166  BL, Add. MS 37344, fols 256r–v; CJ, VI, 132. 167  CJ, VI, 133. 168  CJ, VI, 133. 169  A Declaration of the Parliament of England Expressing the Ground of their late Proceedings And of Setling of the present Government In the way of A Free State (London, 1649), p. 20. 170  Ibid., p. 20. 163  164 

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The Act abolishing the House of Lords, formally passed on 19 March, allowed those lords who had ‘demeaned themselves with Honor, Courage and Fidelity to the Commonwealth’ to ‘have their Free Vote in Parliament’ provided that they were elected to the House of Commons.171 The ancient privileges of the peers, however, were obliterated. Although they were allowed to keep their titles and lands, the Act stressed that henceforth no peer was to ‘have or make use of any priviledge of Parliament, either in relation to his Person, Quality or Estate’.172 The peers were as liable to the laws of the land as any other person – a fact that Lords Chandos and Arundel of Wardour were made all too aware in 1653 when both were sentenced to be ‘burnt in the hand’ for killing another man in a duel.173 Undoubtedly, political expediency led to the House of Lords’ abolition. Without the extraordinary circumstances surrounding the king’s trial it is unlikely that MPs would have voted for its dissolution. Many favoured retaining the chamber in an attenuated form, shorn of any negative voice, but struggled to devise a satisfactory role for it in light of the Commons’ resolutions in early 1649. The apparent reluctance with which the chamber was abolished, suggests some sympathy for the old peers – especially those who had stuck rigidly to the cause throughout the 1640s. Some also felt that the judicial role of the upper chamber remained important and that it would be useful to have a body to advise the Commons, if not veto them, in their decisions. Despite the fact that the logic of parliamentarian ideas, enumerated in the Commons’ resolutions of 4 January, provided an irresistible argument for the superfluity of the upper chamber, reverence for both the peers and the past remained ingrained and the decision was clearly taken with a tinge of regret. And yet, while rumours abounded during the 1650s about a return to kingship, at no point prior to the presentation of the Humble Remonstrance to the second Protectorate Parliament in 1657 was there a hint of a revival of the House of Lords or a second chamber. From 1649 through to 1657 the parliament of England (and from 1654, England, Scotland and Ireland) was a unicameral assembly. Attempts to rewrite the Instrument of Government by the Presbyterian majority of MPs in the first Protectorate Parliament of 1654–55 yielded no proposal for an upper chamber. In 1657, however, Cromwell was presented with a parliamentary constitution that not only offered him the Crown but proposed the return to bicameral parliaments. The next chapter examines the genesis of the parliamentary constitution and its proposal for an Other House. It will assess how and why the second chamber in parliament went from being ‘useless’ in 1649 to a constitutional expedient that was considered absolutely necessary in 1657.

171  172  173 

Firth and Rait, II, 24; A Declaration... Free State, pp. 20–1. Firth and Rait, II, 24; The Moderate, 31 (6–13 Feb. 1649), pp. 297–8. Sydney Papers, pp. 142–3. 35

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2

Oliver Cromwell, the Other House and the Humble Petition and Advice

The parliamentary constitution of 1657 is well known for its offer of kingship; it is usually taken to mark the best opportunity of the 1650s to secure a lasting settlement by returning to the ‘known’ ways of the ancient constitution. While the issue of why Cromwell refused the Crown is a staple of historiographical debate, a number of recent studies have focused on why he was offered the Crown in the first place.1 The bifurcation of Cromwell’s supporters into ‘military’ and ‘civilian’ groups and the emergence of a ‘kingship’ party during the second Protectorate Parliament are attributed to a growing weariness with the arbitrary nature of the regime. The Humble Petition and Advice offered the chance to escape the army’s malign influence and reach a settlement acceptable to the nation at large. This focus on factional manoeuvring has meant that the man at the centre of the debate is often overlooked. The caricature of a Machiavellian Cromwell scheming for the Crown is largely absent from recent studies thanks to a growing appreciation of the providential dimension of political thinking in the 1650s.2 Yet, there are few detailed examinations of what Cromwell actually wanted from settlement.3 This chapter contends that to understand Cromwell’s aspirations one must look beyond the kingship issue and concentrate instead upon the scheme to restore bicameral parliaments. As the first part of this chapter demonstrates, the proposed second chamber offered remedies to problems that had plagued Cromwell since the late 1640s. Indeed, there is reason to believe that Cromwell not only supported the return of bicameral parliaments but was also instrumental in bringing the scheme to fruition. The second half of this chapter offers a new perspective C. Egloff, ‘Settlement and Kingship: The Army, The Gentry, and the Offer of the Crown to Oliver Cromwell’ (Unpublished Ph.D thesis, Yale University, 1990); P. Little, Lord Broghill and the Cromwellian Union with Ireland and Scotland (Woodbridge, 2004); C. Holmes, Why Was Charles I Executed? (London, 2006), chapter 7.   2  B. Worden, ‘Oliver Cromwell and the Sin of Achan’, in History, Society and the Churches: Essays in Honour of Owen Chadwick, ed. D. Beales and G. Best (Cambridge, 1985), pp. 123–45.   3  A notable exception is D.L. Smith, ‘Oliver Cromwell and the Protectorate Parliaments’, in The Cromwellian Protectorate, ed. P. Little (Woodbridge, 2007), pp. 14–31.   1 

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on the evolution of the parliamentary constitution of 1657 and those groups that supported and opposed it. It appears that those who backed the offer of kingship were less united over the proposal to revive a second chamber; few, if any, sought a straightforward restoration of the defunct House of Lords. Equally, those who opposed the proffered kingship were not against the idea of a nominated second chamber. On 27 February 1657, just four days after the Humble Remonstrance was presented to parliament, a deputation of around one hundred army officers reportedly went to Whitehall to entreat Cromwell not to ‘harken to the title (King)’.4 Cromwell responded to the officers with a ‘long harangue’.5 Yet, his anger was not at their suggestion that he should refuse the Crown. For his part, Cromwell professed no interest in the kingship, claiming that he could have ‘bin King longe since if hee had delighted to weare a feather in his hatt’.6 Rather, he berated the officers for fixating upon the kingly title and failing to appreciate the other things that the Humble Remonstrance had to offer. It was painfully obvious to Cromwell that the Instrument was an ‘imperfect thing which will neither preserve our religious or civil rights’; it was ‘tyme to come to a Settlement, & lay aside Arbitrary Proceedings, soe unacceptable to the nation’.7 For Cromwell, the real significance of the proposed parliamentary constitution rested not in its offer of kingship but in the provision for an ‘Other House’. As he saw it, the second chamber offered two major benefits: an effective legislative balance upon the Commons and the restraint of parliament’s judicial powers. As the next sections of this chapter demonstrate, these were issues that had frustrated Cromwell since the late 1640s and were particularly pronounced by the mid-1650s. A ‘Free’ Parliament? Securing the godly interest under parliamentary government was the insoluble problem at the heart of Cromwell’s fraught relationship with parliament. As David Smith puts it, Cromwell hoped ‘to reconcile the interests of the English nation as a whole with those of a godly minority (including himself) who embraced a radical religious agenda’. He believed that ‘through An account of this meeting is reproduced in Burton, I, 382–5, which derives from a copy of an anonymous letter, dated 7 Mar. 1657, at BL, Add. MS 6125, fols 61v–63v. The manuscript is quoted here because of inaccuracies in Rutt’s transcription. Other accounts of the meeting are provided in Gaunt, Lansdowne, pp. 215–16; Clarke Papers, III, 92–3; Thurloe, VI, 93; Wariston Diary, III, 68.   5  Wariston Diary, III, 68.   6  Clarke Papers, III, 92; BL, Add. MS 6125, fol. 62r. Cromwell was alluding to the fact that the Instrument of Government had itself contained a clause to make him king but he refused it.   7  Gaunt, Lansdowne, p. 215; BL, Add. MS 6125, fol. 62v.   4 

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Parliament the nation and the godly people could become coterminous’.8 Even though Cromwell frequently forced or dissolved parliament to protect the godly interest, his instinct remained to rule with parliaments. As Hugh Trevor-Roper and others have remarked, the seemingly unabashed optimism with which Cromwell greeted each new assembly has something of a t­ ragi-comical quality.9 Despite Cromwell’s resolve to govern with parliaments, however, the experiences of the 1640s and 1650s clearly altered his opinion about how parliamentary rule could be secured. In the late 1640s he seemingly shared that hope, expressed by the army’s Representation of June 1647, that ‘the authority of this kingdom in the Parliaments rightly constituted, free, equally and successively chosen, according to its original intention, may ever stand and have its course’.10 The army did not want ‘absolute arbitrary power fixed or settled for continuance in any persons whatsoever’, even in those ‘of our own opinions or principles’. They hoped that by keeping parliaments short and regular no ‘one particular party, faction, or interest’ would dominate perpetually. Regular elections would mean that if the people made ‘an ill choice’ one election, they could ‘mend it’ the next. Moreover, the power of the House of Commons, being the ‘supreme power of the commonwealth’, was ‘so arbitrary, and in a manner unlimited’ that it was ‘unfit and dangerous’ to leave it ‘fixed in the persons of the same men during life or their own pleasure’.11 This model of fixed-length, regular parliaments, with constituencies distributed in a more ‘equal’ manner, was a staple feature of all proposed settlements and constitutions over the following decade. In 1647 Cromwell was also of the attitude that the army must avoid using force against parliament. As an MP, he preferred to work with allies in both Houses to achieve the army’s demands. At a meeting of the General Council at Reading in mid-July 1647 he rebuked those who called for the army to march on London to force the parliament into compliance. Cromwell was keen to ‘avoide that great objection that will lie against us, that wee have gott thinges of the Parliament by force’; whatever they gained ‘in a free way’ was ‘better then twice so much in a forc’t’.12 Of course, Cromwell’s subsequent actions make these utterances seem grossly hypocritical. But it should be noted that even when he backed the army’s actions in December 1648 – albeit remaining conspicuously absent from London until the purge was completed – Cromwell did not believe such an intervention was anything other than extraordinary.13 Cromwell and his Little and Smith, Parliaments and Politics, p. 127. H.R. Trevor-Roper, ‘Oliver Cromwell and His Parliaments’, in Oliver Cromwell: A Profile, ed. I. Roots (London, 1973), pp. 91–2. 10  A.S.P. Woodhouse (ed.), Puritanism and Liberty (London, 1938), pp. 405–6. 11  Ibid., pp. 405–6. 12  Clarke Papers, I, 185, 192–3, 202. 13  Ludlow, I, 211.   8    9 

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allies in the army remained committed to government by parliament. The army’s Remonstrance of November 1648, besides demanding the king’s trial, set out a scheme for parliamentary government in the future: in ‘all matters of supreme trust or concernment to the safety and welfare of the whole’ the people should ‘have a common and supreme Councell or Parliament’, consisting of ‘Deputies or Representers freely chosen by them, with as much equality as may be, and those Elections to be successive and renewed’.14 The Rump hardly fitted the bill. It was with some irony that those sitting in the Commons in early 1649 passed those resolutions on 4 January stressing that the House of Commons, as representative of the people, was the sole ‘Supreme Power’ in the nation.15 Of course, arguments about representation had always sat awkwardly in parliamentarian defences. The empty spaces on the benches at Westminster from 1642, vacated by those who joined the Royalist cause, meant many constituencies were unrepresented, at least until recruiter elections were held from mid-1645. In early 1649, however, as the radical Independent MPs appealed to popular sovereignty to justify their proceedings against the king the discrepancy between theory and reality was never more glaring. The obvious way to overcome this gap was to hold elections for a new representative. Indeed, the Rump’s Act abolishing the kingly office of March 1649, announced that it was time for the nation to ‘return to its just and ancient Right of being governed by its own Representatives … from time to time chosen … by the people’. As such, the Rump resolved to ‘put a period’ to its sitting and ‘dissolve … so soon as may possibly stand with the safety of the people’. To that end, the Rump must first ‘carefully provide for the certain chusing, meeting and sitting of the next and future Representatives, with such other circumstances of freedom in choice and equality in distribution of Members to be elected … as shall conduce to the lasting freedom and good of this Commonwealth’.16 The crucial question was who should comprise the electorate for the next parliament. While the Rump talked of giving the people ‘freedom’ of choice, this was a relative term. Even when the army voiced its support for ‘freedom of elections’ in the late 1640s they assumed that Royalists would be incapable of electing or elected to parliament, at least for a while.17 The circumstances of the early 1650s, coming in the wake of seismic constitutional change, prolonged warfare and high taxes, further dented confidence in the suitability of free elections. Writing from Ireland in November 1651, Colonel Remonstrance... 16 of November 1648, pp. 14–15, 65–6. CJ, VI, 110­–11. 16  Firth and Rait, II, 18–20. 17  The Heads of the Proposals of 1647 barred Royalists from sitting for the first two biennial parliaments; the officer’s Agreement of the People of the following year barred Royalists from voting in elections for seven years and from being elected for fourteen years: Gardiner, Documents, pp. 319, 364. 14  15 

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John Jones pondered whether the people ‘sencible of their present burthens, and not of the reasons, and necessity of them’ were ever likely to elect ‘those persons that laid the burthens, or their adherents’. Surely, the ‘Interest’ that would ‘carry the universall vote’ would be those who opposed the army and promised ‘ease of burthens’. In such circumstances it was better waiting ‘until burthens may be taken off, and the people enjoy some Rest, and opulency under the new chaunge’ before risking elections.18 The problem for the army, however, was that the Rump was getting nowhere fast. Its abysmal record on social, legal and religious reform only increased the army’s resolve that it was high time for the parliament to dissolve itself. As such, in their petition of August 1652, the officers demanded ‘speedy Consideration’ of ‘such Qualifications for future and successive Parliaments’ so that only ‘such as are pious and faithfull to the Commonwealth’ were elected as MPs.19 What they did not want was another parliament like the Rump, yet this is precisely what Cromwell and the army feared was about to happen in April 1653. It seems that the infamous Bill for a New Representative on which the parliament was working at its dissolution included provisions likely to result in an assembly packed full of members of the same indolent attitude.20 The qualifications on the electorate and electors in the enigmatic Bill were deemed totally inadequate by the army. As Cromwell later complained, it would have totally failed to disqualify ‘the Presbyterian party’.21 Yet one wonders whether any qualifications would have satisfied Cromwell and the army. While it was relatively easy to exclude known Royalists from elections it was difficult to enforce qualifications based upon fidelity. As the journalist John Hall explained in his defence of the dissolution, even the stipulation in the Rump’s Bill that electors must be those who ‘had constantly been true to the Commonwealth’ was inadequate because persons could prove ‘malignant and malicious enough, though such as never offended the State, but in their Ale’.22 It was impossible to ‘discover a man’s heart’.23 In reality, it seems Cromwell opposed the Rump’s Bill not because of its qualifications but because it provided for elections at all. He feared that if the ‘concourse of people’ were allowed to vote then ‘the power would be put J. Jones to W. Stane, 19 Nov. 1651: Joseph Meyer (ed.), Inedited Letters of Cromwell, Colonel Jones, Bradshaw and other Regicides, The Historical Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, 1 (1860–2), pp. 16–17. 19  To the Supreame Authoritie the Parliament of the Common-Wealth of England. The Humble Petition of the Officers of the Army (London, 1652). 20  For the debate over the contents of the Bill, see B. Worden, The Rump Parliament (Cambridge, 1974), pp. 345–63; A. Woolrych, Commonwealth to Protectorate (London, 1982), pp. 68–102. 21  Carlyle, II, 285–6. 22  J. Hall, A Letter Written to a Gentleman in the Country touching the Dissolution of the late Parliament (London, 1653), pp. 10–11. 23  Ibid., pp. 11–12. 18 

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into the hands of men that had very little affection to this cause’.24 A more effective way was needed to ensure only the faithful wielded power. The preferred solution of Cromwell and the officers was a select council. As their declaration following the Rump’s dissolution explained, they pressed parliament to devolve ‘the government of the Commonwealth … for a time’ upon a body of ‘known persons, men fearing God, and of approved integrity’. The army deemed this the ‘most hopeful way’ to ‘encourage and countenance all God’s people, reform the law, and administer justice impartially’. They would give the people time to ‘forget Monarchy’ and ‘understanding their true interest in the election of successive Parliaments, may have the government settled upon a true basis, without hazard to this glorious cause’.25 According to Whitelocke, who was among the MPs who met Cromwell to discuss these plans, this council of about ‘40 persons’ would be ‘impowred for the managing the affayres of the Commonwealth till a new Parlement should meet’.26 In the weeks after the Rump’s dissolution this scheme continued to be discussed in army circles. By 30 April one newsletter reported that the ‘management of the Government’ would be ‘by a Sanedrim or 70 of the best men that can bee thought of through England’. The assembly would sit for ‘2 yeares’ and then ‘choose other 70 to succeede them’ and ‘soe on’ until ‘they shall judge this nation capable of their former government by Parliaments’.27 Interestingly, it seems that the assembly was given a representative lilt. According to army newsletters, they nominated persons ‘in the severall counties to sitt as a Counsell’; they also chose several ‘Scotchmen’ in order ‘to represent their nation’.28 By 28 May the same army newswriter described them ‘chooseing the persons to sit in the next Representative’.29 Yet Cromwell never styled the nominated assembly a parliament. The summons to the members stressed that the officers chose ‘persons fearing God, and of approved fidelity and integrity’, such as were known to ‘love … God and the interest of His cause’.30 Their primary task was to carry out the work of reformation shunned by the Rump. They would govern only till such a time as ‘the people be capable of electing their owne representative’.31 Ultimately, the assembly proved an utter failure: ‘a story of my own weakness and folly’, as Cromwell later lamented.32 Its membership was divided between a conservative majority and a concerted minority of radicals committed to religious, social and legal reforms that Cromwell and his allies Carlyle, II, 286. Gardiner, Documents, p. 402; Carlyle, III, 286–7. 26  Whitelocke Diary, p. 285. 27  Clarke Papers, III, 4, 6. 28  Ibid., III, 4, 5. 29  Ibid., III, 8, emphasis added. 30  Gardiner, Documents, p. 405. The qualifications had echoes of Jethro’s advice to Moses in Exodus 18.21 to choose ‘such as fear God, men of truth, hating covetousness’. 31  Clarke Papers, III, 8; Woolrych, Commonwealth to Protectorate, p. 150. 32  Carlyle, III, 98. 24  25 

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found unpalatable. The final straw was a debate over a scheme to provide for a national clergy, including a system of testing and ejecting ministers and the continuation of tithes. Although these proposals appealed to Cromwell and other moderates, the first proposal was narrowly rejected by the assembly on 10 December, throwing the whole scheme into doubt.33 The real significance of the Nominated Assembly was that it showed Cromwell who his friends were. The leading conservative members of that assembly, including Philip Jones, Henry Lawrence, Edward Montagu, Sir Gilbert Pickering, William Sydenham and Sir Charles Wolseley, subsequently proved to be Cromwell’s most ardent allies. It was these men who organized the coup on the morning of 12 December 1653 by which the assembly resigned its powers to Cromwell.34 They also played a prominent role in Cromwell’s inauguration as lord protector on 16 December and probably helped to perfect the Instrument of Government, before its publication in January 1654.35 The Instrument marked a fresh attempt to secure godly reform within a framework of parliamentary government. Most significant were its provisions for a Council. This body, comprising of no more than twenty-one members, was tasked with assisting the lord protector in the administration of the government. In the intervals between parliaments the Protector had to seek its advice when disposing the militia, appointing chief officers of state and making peace or war.36 The Council also held powers independent of the Protector, including the vital task of nominating the next Protector upon Cromwell’s death.37 Although the origins of the Instrument are murky, Cromwell could have had few complaints about the founding members of the Council named in the constitution.38 Eleven of the fourteen councillors had already been chosen by Cromwell and the officers to sit in the Nominated Assembly.39 The other three were leading officers, including the architect of the Instrument John Lambert, Cromwell’s son-in-law Charles Fleetwood and his brother-inlaw John Desborough.40 As the journalist Marchamont Nedham explained, Woolrych, Commonwealth to Protectorate, pp. 335–42. Ibid., pp. 343–6. 35  For the genesis of the Instrument, see P. Gaunt, ‘Drafting the Instrument of Government, 1653–54: A Reappraisal’, Parliamentary History, 8 (1989), 28­–42. 36  Gardiner, Documents, pp. 406, 416 [Articles 2, 4, 5, 34]. 37  Ibid., p. 415. 38  Worden, ‘Oliver Cromwell and the Council’, p. 85. 39  The eleven were: Anthony Ashley Cooper, Philip Jones, Henry Lawrence, Viscount Lisle, Richard Major, Edward Montagu, Sir Gilbert Pickering, Francis Rous, Walter Strickland, William Sydenham, Sir Charles Wolseley. A further two councilors, Desborough and Lambert, were co-opted members of the Nominated Assembly. 40  Philip Skippon was added to those councillors named in the Instrument on 20 Dec. Under article 26 of the Instrument, Cromwell added a further three councillors before the meeting of the first Protectorate Parliament: Humphrey Mackworth, Nathaniel Fiennes and the earl of Mulgrave. 33  34 

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these councillors were ‘taken in’ because they were ‘known to be persons of Integrity, and firm for the present Settlement’.41 Given the important role assigned to the Council under the Instrument, it is hardly surprising that it was packed with men broadly sympathetic to Cromwell’s vision for settlement. It was yet another means to advance his dream of reconciling a programme of godly reform with a government that, in the long term at least, would be grounded upon the people. Crucial in this respect was the Instrument’s controversial thirtieth article that allowed Cromwell and the Council, before the meeting of the first Protectorate Parliament, ‘to make laws and ordinances for the peace and welfare of these nations’. These ordinances were to be ‘binding and in force’ until ‘order shall be taken in Parliament concerning the same’.42 Cromwell and the Council made full use of these powers to pursue many of those reforms that the Rump and Nominated Assembly failed to achieve – including ordinances for reforming Chancery, for relieving creditors, and for establishing bodies of ‘Triers’ and ‘Ejectors’ to oversee clergy appointments.43 The Instrument did not reject parliamentary government; it merely suspended it temporarily, allowing the Protector and Council to bring stability and accelerate the business of reform. Under the terms of the constitution the first Protectorate Parliament would meet in September 1654 with triennial parliaments to follow thereafter.44 Detailed qualifications were set upon the electorate: Royalists were excluded from electing, or serving in, the next four Parliaments, while Irish rebels and Catholics were banned for life.45 More importantly, article 17n, echoing the criteria for choosing the Nominated Assembly, stated that those elected ‘shall be such … as are persons of known integrity, fearing God, and of good conversation, and being of the age of twenty-one years’.46 Of course, this qualification by itself was insufficient: its efficacy rested upon entrusting the right people to implement it. As such, it fell to the Council, for the first three parliaments summoned under the Protectorate, to ‘peruse’ the election returns to ensure those ‘elected and returned be such as is agreeable to the qualifications’.47 This was no simple task. Weeding out known malcontents was difficult enough; keeping out those dissatisfied without ever openly showing it was virtually impossible. This explains why the Council only used their powers sparingly before the meeting of the first Protectorate Parliament. M. Nedham, A True State of the Case of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland, and Ireland (London, 1654), pp. 45–6. 42  Gardiner, Documents, p. 414. 43  See P. Gaunt, ‘ “To Create a Little World out of Chaos”: The Protectoral Ordinances of 1653–1654 Reconsidered’, in The Cromwellian Protectorate, ed. P. Little (Woodbridge, 2007), pp. 105–26. 44  Gardiner, Documents, p. 406. 45  Ibid., pp. 410–11. 46  Ibid., p. 411. 47  Ibid., p. 412. 41 

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Fewer than a dozen members were barred from taking their seats.48 Yet, many of those admitted, particularly the ex-Rumpers and Presbyterians, were quick to question the regime’s legitimacy. Cromwell took matters into his own hands, forcing MPs to sign a ‘Recognition’ of the government in ‘one person and a Parliament’. Even after around eighty MPs refused to sign and absented themselves, however, the parliament remained unco-operative.49 Not only did it fail to ratify those reforming ordinances passed by Cromwell and the Council but it also spent the remainder of the session devising a constitutional Bill that claimed for parliament many of those powers that the Instrument entrusted to the Protector and Council.50 On 22 January 1655 Cromwell dissolved parliament after it had sat for just five lunar months – the bare minimum term allowed by the Instrument. The whole experience evidently dented Cromwell’s confidence in parliamentary government. When the financial demands of the ongoing war with Spain led Cromwell’s advisors – both in the Council and among the officers – to press for an extraordinary parliament to meet in September 1656, he was unconvinced. As he reportedly told the army officers in February 1657, it was ‘against my judgement’ but he could ‘have no quietness till [it] was done’.51 Those who urged him to summon the parliament were apparently ‘confident’ in their ‘Strength, & Interest to get men chosen’ to their ‘Heartes desire’.52 Yet their abject failure to manage the elections was demonstrated by the fact that the Council were compelled to use their powers to exclude around one hundred of those elected before the parliament assembled.53 As Cromwell complained to the army officers, they and the Council ‘garbled’ the parliament and ‘kept out and put in whom you pleased’.54 The majority of those excluded were not radicals or Royalists, but moderate Presbyterians, many of whom had opposed the Instrument in the previous parliament.55 When asked by the Commons to explain the grounds for excluding so many of their members, Nathaniel Fiennes, speaking on See P. Gaunt, ‘Cromwell’s Purge? Exclusions and the First Protectorate Parliament’, Parliamentary History, 6 (1987), 1–22; Little and Smith, Parliaments and Politics, pp. 81–3. 49  P. Gaunt, ‘Oliver Cromwell and his Protectorate Parliaments: Co-operation, Conflict and Control’, in “Into Another Mould”: Aspects of the Interregnum, ed. I. Roots, 2nd edn (Exeter, 1998), p. 88. 50  Gardiner, Documents, pp. 427–47. 51  Gaunt, Lansdowne, pp. 215–16. 52  BL, Add. MS 6125, fol. 62v. 53  C. Egloff, ‘The Search for a Cromwellian Settlement: Exclusion from the Second Protectorate Parliament’, Parliamentary History, 17 (1998), 178–97, 301–21; Little and Smith, Parliaments and Politics, pp. 87–91; Worden, ‘Cromwell and the Council’, pp. 100–3. 54  Gaunt, Lansdowne, p. 216. 55  Egloff, ‘The Search for a Cromwellian Settlement’, pp. 178–97, 301–2; idem, ‘Settlement and Kingship’, pp. 90–162; Little and Smith, Parliaments and Politics, p. 90. 48 

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the Council’s behalf, explained that they had not ‘refused to approve any who have appeared to them to be persons of integrity to the government, fearing God and of good conversation’. This subtle alteration in the phrasing of article 17 of the Instrument – to exclude men not of ‘known integrity to the government’ – is revealing.56 Fearing a renewal of the constitutional wrangling that crippled the first Protectorate Parliament, the Council and army excluded likely opponents of the government. Their actions backfired spectacularly. In particular, the determination of the military grandees to exclude those known to be critical of the army’s influence, provoked a backlash which led to the parliamentary defeat of the major-generals experiment and accelerated agitation for a new constitution designed to ensure their political eclipse.57 Yet it was not just the ‘civilian’ Cromwellians who began to distance themselves from the regime’s previous arbitrary actions. As Cromwell told the officers in February 1657, the exclusions also confirmed his resolution that the Instrument was not fit for purpose: he believed it was time to ‘lay aside Arbitrary Proceedings, soe unacceptable to the nation’.58 The proposed parliamentary settlement of 1657 curbed the Council’s influence over parliament’s membership. The Humble Remonstrance presented on 23 February reduced its role to that of a joint-partner, with a committee appointed by the outgoing House of Commons, to ‘examine whether the persons so elected and returned be either disabled or not qualified … to sit or serve in Parliament’. Those excluded would then have their case determined by the incoming parliament.59 After debating the Remonstrance, however, the parliament decided that the Council’s role in the exclusion process should be removed altogether. Instead, the Humble Petition and Advice proposed that ‘forty-one commissioners’ would be ‘appointed by Act of Parliament’ to ‘examine and try’ whether those elected were ‘capable to sit’. If the commissioners found any unqualified, they should ‘suspend them from sitting’ until the Commons reviewed their case.60 While Cromwell welcomed the termination of the Council’s powers to exclude MPs, he disliked the proposal in the Humble Petition. It rekindled those suspicions harboured against the Rump: the committee of forty-one, chosen by the outgoing representative, could ensure that its successor was packed with the same personnel, or men of the same spirit. Cromwell worried that the ‘commissioners are uncertain Persons’; although he hoped they would ‘be always good men’, yet ‘if they should be bad, then perhaps they CJ, VII, 426; Egloff ‘The Search for a Cromwellian Settlement’, pp. 181–2; idem, ‘Settlement and Kingship’, pp. 18–22. 57  Egloff, ‘Settlement and Kingship’, pp. 64–5, 161–2. 58  BL, Add. MS 6125, fol. 62v. 59  The Remonstrance is reproduced as an appendix to Little and Smith, Parliaments and Politics, pp. 306–12, see p. 309. 60  Gardiner, Documents, p. 451. 56 

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will keep out good men’. Rather, Cromwell recommended scrapping the commissioners and leaving the examination of members entirely in the hands of the incoming parliament.61 This did not mean that Cromwell had suddenly decided that the time was ripe to permit the rule of the people’s ‘freely’ elected representatives, however. Rather, he sought an alternative means to keep the representative in check without the unsavoury tactic of directly manipulating its membership. His preferred solution, it seems, was the establishment of an Other House and the return to bicameral parliaments. As Cromwell explained to the officers on 27 February 1657, it had become obvious that the constant routine of military-inspired purges and dissolutions of parliament was no basis for a lasting settlement. Instead of excluding MPs, they would put a legislative balance over them – capable of blocking legislation that impinged upon the aims or interests of the godly. For Cromwell, it offered the only viable means for both allowing the people to elect their own representatives and ensuring that those chosen did not prejudice the godly cause. Chiding the officers for being ‘offended at a house of lords’, Cromwell retorted that without ‘some such thing as a balance’ they would be forced to continue to ‘grow upon the civill liberties by secluding such as are elected’ so that ‘next time for ought I know you may exclud 400’ MPs.62 The Case of James Nayler That Cromwell saw an Other House as essential, however, was not simply because he tired of interfering with the people’s representatives. The opening months of the second Protectorate Parliament alerted him to the fact that unicameral parliaments were dangerous enough in themselves, even with their membership heavily manipulated. Particularly disturbing was parliament’s treatment of James Nayler, a Quaker arrested for riding into Bristol in a manner that mimicked Christ’s entry into Jerusalem. On 31 October the parliament, having received information of Nayler’s ‘Blasphemies’, appointed a committee to examine him and other witnesses to discover ‘the Truth thereof’.63 This committee made its report on 5 December, concluding that Nayler had ‘assumed the gesture, words, names, and attributes of our Saviour Christ’.64 Yet while most MPs abhorred Nayler’s misdemeanours, they could not agree on how, or on what authority, he should be punished. It was even doubtful if the unicameral parliament could judge Nayler’s case. Prior to 1649, the House of Lords stood at the apex of the judicial system; it dealt with appeals from inferior courts and judged certain cases upon its own 61  62  63  64 

Carlyle, III, 107–8, 492. Gaunt, Lansdowne, p. 216. CJ, VII, 447–8. Burton, I, 24. 46

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authority. By contrast, the Commons acted only in matters concerning the privileges of their own House and in the initiation of impeachment proceedings. With the abolition of the Lords, however, the location of their powers was uncertain and the Instrument offered no clarification. While the supreme legislative authority resided in the Protector and a unicameral parliament, there was no explanation of where supreme judicial authority would lie. Nayler’s case forced MPs to confront this question head on. Lord Chief Justice Glynne was ‘at a stand’ about how to proceed. He pointed out how in cases of impeachment the Commons ‘were only to prepare a charge, and appoint a Committee to prepare evidence’; this was then ‘transferred’ to the Lords for judgment. Yet, as Glynne saw it, the judicial powers of the Lords had devolved upon the unicameral parliaments of the Protectorate: ‘whatsoever authority was in the House of Lords and Commons’, he explained, ‘is united in this Parliament’. As such, he recommended they take on the roles of both Houses: they should use the committee’s report to ‘draw out articles’ of a charge against Nayler and then call him to the bar and either hear his confession or else examine witnesses to determine his guilt.65 Those MPs zealous for Nayler’s punishment were dismayed at the prospect of having to ‘travel into all the evidence’ again by summoning him to the bar.66 Yet, many courtiers and councillors stressed that the Commons must tread carefully. Lambert warned that the Commons were ‘jurors, judges, and all, in this case’, and must be ‘careful in your manner of proceeding’.67 Whitelocke feared that the House would set a dangerous precedent by proceeding without first hearing Nayler. He did not doubt that ‘this wicked fellow’ deserves punishment, but he feared the ‘consequence as to [the] future, in the manner of proceedings which may hereafter concern any man’s life or fortune’. The House must ‘proceed solemnly, by calling the party hither, and witnesses, if need be’.68 Those urging caution prevailed, and Nayler was brought before the House on 6 December.69 Refusing to kneel or remove his hat, he did not deny the substance of the committee’s report.70 Those already convinced of Nayler’s guilt saw and heard enough.71Yet even though the Commons resolved that they were fully satisfied with the committee’s ‘Report of the Matter of Fact’ they were immediately plunged into a debate about the exact nature of Nayler’s crime and how to punish it.72 While many MPs argued that Nayler was guilty of ‘blasphemy’ or ‘horrid blasphemy’, some courtiers expressed misgivings over labelling the sum of 65  66  67  68  69  70  71  72 

Ibid., I, 30. Ibid., I, 29–30, 40–1. Ibid., I, 33. Ibid., I, 32. Ibid., I, 38, 39, 45–8. Ibid., I, 46–8. Ibid., I, 48. CJ, VII, 465. 47

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his crimes under such generic terms. As William Sydenham explained, there were ‘several things’ in the report against Nayler – ‘some against God immediately, some against the civil peace, and some against manners and honesty’. The House must be careful not to ‘confound all these crimes under such an improper title as, in the gross, to call it blasphemy’: the ‘precedent’ would be ‘dangerous to posterity’.73 Philip Jones urged the House to ‘instance’ what parts of the report ‘makes it blasphemy’, such as ‘his assuming the attributes of Christ’, otherwise there was a danger that ‘after-ages’ would ‘take another thing for blasphemy in the Report, than you judge him upon’.74 Despite these warnings, however, the Commons resolved on 8 December that, ‘upon the whole matter in Fact’ of the committee’s report, Nayler was ‘guilty of horrid Blasphemy’.75 Yet the Commons still needed a law by which to judge and punish that crime. As Desborough explained, the House ‘must not proceed without rules’.76 While some claimed that the 1650 Blasphemy Act was applicable in this case, most agreed that there was no law in force by which to try Nayler.77 After all, had a law existed then Nayler would have been tried by an inferior court, and the case would never have come before the Commons.78 Many blamed the religious provisions of the Instrument for this unhappy situation. Article 37 gave protection to all who ‘profess faith in God by Jesus Christ’ even if they differed from ‘doctrine, worship or discipline publicly held forth’.79 Yet, as Adam Baynes pointed out, even Nayler could claim protection under that clause; ‘the Instrument of Government says, all shall be protected that profess faith in Jesus Christ, which, I suppose, this man does’.80 More pertinently, article 38 voided all ‘laws, statutes and ordinances’ that were ‘contrary of the aforesaid liberty’.81 The lack of a positive law led some to claim Nayler’s crimes were ‘malum in se … against the law of God, of nature, and nations too’.82 William Goffe was sure that it was ‘written upon every man’s heart that a blasphemer should die’.83 Some turned to scripture, particularly Leviticus 24 where God instructed Moses that those who ‘blasphemed the name of the Lord, and cursed’ should be stoned to death.84 Major-General Boteler, for one, believed that ‘law made against blasphemy in Leviticus’ remained ‘binding to us at this 73  74  75  76  77  78  79  80  81  82  83  84 

Burton, I, 68–9. Ibid., I, 75. CJ, VII, 465. Burton, I, 54–5. Ibid., I, 29. Ibid., I, 38. Gardiner, Documents, p. 416. Burton, I, 59. Gardiner, Documents, p. 416; Burton, I, 48–50, 63, 108–10. Burton, I, 38. Ibid., I, 108–10. Leviticus 24.10–16; Burton, I, 86. 48

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day’.85 Others questioned the suitability of the biblical passage. As Thurloe pointed out, the blasphemy described in Leviticus was ‘a cursing, a speaking evil of God’, which was different to the case before them: Nayler allowed himself to be adorned as Christ, but did not deny or curse God.86 Another solution was to create a law against Nayler’s crimes ex post facto. Bulstrode Whitelocke advised that they should proceed by an ‘Act of Parliament’ – that is, by a Bill of Attainder, ‘with a blank for the punishment’. By these means Parliament could deal with extraordinary crimes. He reminded his audience that the ‘like case was the Bishop of Rochester’s cook’ in 1531. The cook in question, Richard Roose, had attempted to murder his master by putting poison in his broth. As Whitelocke explained, such was the extraordinary nature of the crime that ‘by Act of Parliament’ a ‘new punishment’ was appointed for Roose: he was ‘to be boiled in a hot lead’.87 This way of proceeding appealed to those Presbyterian MPs impatient for Nayler’s death: they pointed approvingly to the cases of the earl of Strafford and Archbishop Laud when parliament, faced with the prospect of a prolonged and fruitless trial, drew up a Bill of Attainder instead.88 Sir Richard Onslow believed that parliaments ‘in all matters of this extraordinary nature’ had used their legislative power to give ‘titles to offences, and new punishments adequate’; he saw no reason why they should ‘boggle at this’ now.89 In response, some councillor-MPs issued grave warnings about proceeding upon the legislative power. As William Sydenham complained, to ‘take away a man’s life by a subsequent law’ was ‘of dangerous consequence’.90 Wolseley would have the Commons ‘do justice in a just way’; as he saw it they must not ‘by the legislative power, do what we please’ and ‘call that an offence which is not’.91 A number of the protectoral lawyers also grew conspicuously cautious. Whitelocke, who previously advocated a Bill of Attainder, admitted that it was dangerous to punish ‘an offence by death, which was not punishable before’. The ‘comprehensive’ nature of the term ‘horrid blasphemy’ meant there was a danger that while ‘one parliament may count one thing horrid blasphemy, another parliament another thing’.92 Similarly, Glynne warned that because this was ‘without precedent’, he was ‘altogether unsatisfied in passing sentence of death against him’. He believed the Commons could exact a ‘lesser punishment’ upon Nayler ‘by a judicial way’, but was uncertain whether the judicial power was ‘solely in the Parliament, or in them and his 85  86  87  88  89  90  91  92 

Burton, I, 113–15. Ibid., I, 110–12. Ibid., I, 57–8. Ibid., I, 43–4, 68–9. Ibid., I, 69. Ibid., I, 86. See also comments by Strickland, ibid., I, 87–8. Ibid., I, 89–90. Ibid., I, 128–31. 49

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Highness, as affairs now stand’. What had been clear to Glynne earlier in the debates had now become murky.93 There was a more obvious problem facing those hoping to proceed by a Bill, however. As Baynes pointed out, if they proceeded ‘upon the legislative’ power, then ‘my Lord Protector must have a negative’. Given that the Commons’ punishment of Nayler could be construed as an attack on liberty of conscience, as defined in the Instrument, Baynes was convinced that Cromwell’s ‘opinion may stick and demur as to the offence’ thereby blocking Parliament’s proceedings indefinitely.94 Ultimately, the majority of MPs agreed that proceeding upon the legislative authority was ill-advised. On 16 December the question to put the question for Nayler’s death by a Bill of Attainder was rejected by fourteen votes.95 Instead, motions were made to inflict a ‘lesser punishment’ by proceeding upon their judicial authority. As Sir William Strickland put it, the Commons were ‘a judicial Court’, and if they were to ‘lose this privilege’ and ‘own it not now’, they would ‘have much ado to resume, to regain it’.96 Without recourse to any law, therefore, the Commons passed a series of resolutions detailing Nayler’s ‘lesser’ punishment: he was to be placed in the pillory and whipped through the streets of London and Bristol; have his tongue bored and be branded upon his forehead; and, finally, he was to be committed to prison and hard labour until parliament saw fit to release him.97 Yet these resolutions left doubtful the grounds of the Commons’ proceedings. Speaker Widdrington wondered how he should deal with Nayler when he came to receive judgment. ‘What shall I say to him?’, he queried, ‘Shall I ask him any question? or, if he speak, what shall I answer? Shall I barely pronounce the sentence, and make no preamble to it?’98 The confusion was compounded by the fact that it was unclear from the Commons’ resolutions whether they had passed an order or a judgment. The distinction was important: as Glynne noted it was ‘usual practice’ for a man committed by order of parliament to be ‘discharged by habeas corpus, when the Parliament is dissolved’. Unless they made clear that they had passed judgment ‘as a court of judicature’ Nayler could escape punishment.99 Consequently, the Commons resolved on 17 December that ‘these words be added to the former vote, “and the Parliament hath adjudged it accordingly”’.100 Given the improvised manner of their proceedings it is unsurprising that the Commons resolved to pass their sentence without first hearing the   93    94    95    96    97    98    99  100 

Ibid., I, 90–1. Ibid., I, 59. The vote was 96 to 82: CJ, VII, 468. Burton, I, 157. CJ, VII, 468–9.  Burton, I, 161. Ibid., I, 161–2. Ibid., I, 162; CJ, VII, 469. 50

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d­ efendant.101 As Glynne argued, what if ‘the devil within him should say by what authority do you pass this judgment? What can you say then?’102 According to Burton, Nayler ‘offered two or three times to speak’ and ‘desired to know what his crimes were’, but Widdrington merely ‘proceeded to pronounce the sentence’.103 The aftershocks of these proceedings reverberated around Whitehall and Westminster in the following days, culminating in a letter from the Protector, presented to the Commons on 26 December. Although Cromwell made plain that he did ‘detest and abhor’ Nayler’s ‘opinions and practices’, he demanded to know the ‘grounds and reasons’ for the Commons’ actions. He worried ‘how far’ their proceedings against Nayler, taken ‘wholly without Us’, would ‘extend in the consequence of it’.104 A number of lawyer-MPs took Cromwell’s letter as further opportunity to pontificate on the jurisdictional limits of the Commons. Lord Commissioner John Lisle was ‘clear that this House has a judicial power’ in certain areas, but was equally ‘clear that, in some cases’ it did not, especially if ‘there is no law in being’. In Lisle’s opinion the Commons ‘must not confound the legislative and judicial power together’.105 Glynne too reasserted his opinion that it was unacceptable, even in cases of ‘slight punishment’ for parliament to proceed unless ‘we have a known law for it’; it would ‘be of a very dangerous consequence to Englishmen to be ruled by a court of will’.106 Some councillor-MPs even claimed that the Protector had a share in parliament’s judicial authority. Lambert informed the Commons that ‘as you are constituted, your power is joined with his in the jurisdiction’, and that Parliament and Protector should go ‘hand in hand in your judgments’.107 In a similar vein, Wolseley claimed that ‘this House cannot put any thing but an affirmative upon a law or a judgment. The negative lies in his Highness.’108 By subtle means these councillors tried to right the deficiencies of the constitution by claiming that the judicature – like the legislature – was shared. Others viewed the Protector’s letter as a flagrant challenge to parliamentary liberty. Francis Rous, unlike his fellow councillors, did not believe that it was the Protector’s place to interfere with parliament’s judicial powers. He urged MPs to ‘return this short answer to his Highness’s letter: “We had power so to do.”’109 Even more provocatively, others suggested that they should respond with their own set of queries concerning the arbitrary actions CJ, VII, 469. Burton, I, 163. 103  Ibid., I, 166–7. 104  Carlyle, III, 20. 105  Burton, I, 271. 106  Ibid., I, 277–9. 107  Ibid., I, 255–6. 108  Ibid., I, 257; also speeches by Fleetwood, Pickering and Desborough, ibid., I, 253–4, 270–1. 109  Ibid., I, 253. 101  102 

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of the executive powers in recent years. Thomas Bampfield wondered ‘if it should be asked, by what law the recognition was placed upon this door last Parliament, by what law were decimations or the late monthly tax laid’?110 With temperatures running high, some MPs urged restraint. ‘The Instrument of Government is but new,’ warned George Downing, ‘and our jurisdiction is but new too.’ As such, it was ‘dangerous either for him to question our power, or for us to question his’. Yet, Downing’s suggestion that Protector and Parliament should merely ‘wink at one another’ was hardly a sound means to prevent future confrontations.111 The fundamental problem was encapsulated by Lambert Godfrey on 26 December: ‘Here is your power asserted on one hand; the supreme magistrate, on the other hand, desiring an account of your judgment. Where shall there be tertius Arbiter?’ The answer was nowhere; for Godfrey, there was ‘no judge upon earth’ that could act in that mediatory role.112 In the short term all sides let the matter drop. On 30 December the House resolved to adjourn their debate, but it was never resumed. Burton believed the business would ‘never be mentioned again’, and ‘if it be, I dread the consequence’.113 Yet it was not forgotten. A massive chasm was exposed in the foundations of the government. Some, like Lambert and a junto of councillors, tried to salvage the Instrument, retrospectively claiming a role for the Protector within the judicial sphere. It was not enough. As the debates of late December had proven, even if the Commons and Protector balanced one another there was no mechanism for redress in the event of deadlock: there was no ‘tertius Arbiter’. It was for this reason that Cromwell welcomed the creation of the Other House under the Humble Remonstrance. As he told the officers in February 1657, it was clear ‘by the proceedings of this Parliament’ that they were in ‘neede of a Check’. He warned that ‘the Case of James Naylor, might happen to be your owne Case’: that the Commons ‘by their Judiciall power’ could claim a right to ‘fall upon Life, & member’, but the Instrument did not ‘inable me to controll it’.114 It was time to embrace a new constitutional arrangement that did not leave ideal of liberty of conscience exposed to the whims of an unchecked House of Commons. The Genesis of the Humble Remonstrance Scholars usually treat the Other House as an adjunct to the offer of the Crown. The proffered kingship defined the second chamber – when Cromwell became 110  111  112  113  114 

Ibid., I, 273–4. Ibid., I, 254. Ibid., I, 249. Ibid., I, 294–6. BL, Add. MS 6125, fols 62v–63r; Gaunt, Lansdowne, p. 216. 52

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king the Other House would assume the position of the House of Lords. This reading is too simplistic. The status of the proposed second chamber meant different things to different groups at Westminster. Even those who wanted a return to ‘known’ ways of the ancient constitution were not necessarily in agreement about what those ways were or what the precise relationship between the three components of the constitution should be. The identities of the original authors of the proposed constitution of 1657 are shrouded in mystery. Although Sir Christopher Packe presented the Humble Remonstrance to parliament on 23 February 1657, he reportedly ‘had never read’ it.115 According to Whitelocke’s memoirs, however, the main movers behind the new constitution were Lord Broghill ‘and others of his friends’.116 Indeed, contemporary reports confirm that the ‘kingship’ party, as it was styled, was co-ordinated by Broghill along with a number of councillors, including Nathaniel Fiennes, Sir Charles Wolseley, Philip Jones, Edward Montagu, Henry Lawrence and secretary Thurloe.117 The support of these men for the parliamentary constitution is usually taken to be a symptom of the bifurcation of Cromwell’s supporters into ‘civilian’ and ‘military’ camps. Yet the timing of this split is unclear. Carol Egloff has gone so far as to claim that the mass exclusion of MPs prior to the sitting of the second Protectorate Parliament was ‘a crucial factor in convincing men like Broghill, Wolseley, and Philip Jones, as well as unaligned and Presbyterian gentry... that only a monarchy could curb the power of the military and make such arbitrary acts impossible in the future’.118 Yet the correlation between the formation of a distinct civilian Cromwellian party and the agitation for a parliamentary constitution was not immediately obvious. It is doubtful that the civilians went into the 1656 parliament determined to replace the Instrument. In the opening weeks of the parliament there was no evidence of a split between Cromwell’s supporters. After all, it was the ‘civilian’ Fiennes who reported to the House the Council’s reasons for excluding the MPs. When the House voted on whether the excluded members should ‘make their Application to the Council for an Approbation’, thereby upholding the Council’s power to supervise the election process, it was the remarkable double act of the military grandee John Lambert and Broghill who were tellers for the Yeas.119 Egloff suggests that Broghill’s ‘support of the exclusion indicates that as of this date he did not yet envision a change in the constitution’. Yet, Egloff also maintains that ‘it is no exaggeration to say that the Gaunt, Lansdowne, p. 205: Morgan to H. Cromwell, 24 Feb. 1657; see also Burton, III, 160. 116  Whitelocke Diary, pp. 463–4. 117  C. Egloff, ‘Robert Beake: A Letter Concerning the Humble Petition and Advice, 28 March 1657’, Historical Research, 68 (1995), 237; Gaunt, Lansdowne, pp. 205–6, 235–6. 118  Egloff, ‘Settlement and Kingship’, pp. 47–9. 119  CJ, VII, 426. 115 

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direct impetus to Broghill’s organization of the Kingship group was provided by the exclusion’. Though Broghill and others can be found ‘voting with the military Cromwellians to support the Instrument’ early in the parliament, it ‘could not have been a coincidence that less than a month later, a member of Broghill’s Irish group made the first proposal in the House to amend the method of Protectoral succession’.120 Indeed, Firth has meticulously demonstrated how those who promoted the offer of the Crown, including Broghill and his allies among the Irish MPs such as William Jephson and John Bridges, initially supported a series of unsuccessful motions in late 1656 to make the Protectorate hereditary.121 Yet there are grounds to question whether this scheme was really the beginning of a concerted scheme for Cromwellian kingship. Coming hot on the heels of a new Treason Act and legislation disannulling the ‘pretended title’ of the Stuarts, the proposal was simply another measure to secure the regime after a series of assassination attempts against Cromwell.122 While it was indubitably a critique of the unsatisfactory provisions of the Instrument, by which the Council nominated a successor only after Cromwell’s death, it was arguably designed to entrench the Protectorate regime – to modify the Instrument in order to make it stronger – rather than replace it with a monarchy.123 Moreover, while many civilian Cromwellians opposed the Militia Bill and the continuation of the decimation tax, the division was not clear-cut. When Desborough sought leave to introduce the Bill on 25 December 1656 he was rebuffed by many future prominent supporters of kingship, including Jephson, Lenthall and Whitelocke. Yet, Burton’s account of that day’s debates suggests that the two commissioners of the great seal, Fiennes and John Lisle – both prominent advocates of kingship in 1657 – argued in defence of the Militia Bill. Fiennes reportedly claimed that there were many ‘reasons why this tax should be laid’; he hoped the Bill would ‘be brought in without debating it in a Grand Committee before hand’.124 As such, the civilian Cromwellians did not really emerge as a coherent group until the period between the defeat of the Militia Bill and the presentation of the Humble Remonstrance. Prior to January 1657, there was a nascent civilian interest, centred upon Broghill and the Irish MPs, who pushed for a hereditary Protectorate. To these can also be added a number of lawyers who had already been outspoken against the Instrument, such as Whitelocke and Widdrington. Yet, there were others, like Fiennes and Lisle, who only Egloff, ‘Settlement and Kingship’, pp. 63–5. C.H. Firth, ‘Cromwell and the Crown’, EHR, 17 (1902), 429–42. 122  Firth and Rait, II, 1036–8, 1038–42. 123  See J. Fitzgibbons, ‘Hereditary Succession and the Cromwellian Protectorate: The Offer of the Crown Reconsidered’, EHR, 128 (2013), 1095–1128. 124  Burton, I, 241, 242. Fiennes and Lisle also acted as tellers for the Yeas to put the question to bring in the Militia Bill, see CJ, VI, 475.

120  121 

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gravitated towards the civilian interest relatively late. Rather than being the predetermined plan of a concerted civilian Cromwellian group, it seems that agitation for kingship actually galvanized the civilian interest. In fact, the earliest reported demands for kingship during the parliament were not made by the civilian Cromwellians. On 19 January 1657 it was the Presbyterian MP John Ashe who led calls for Cromwell to ‘take upon him the government according to the ancient constitution’, thereby settling the nation upon ‘an old and sure foundation’.125 While a number of military Cromwellians criticized this motion, none of the leading civilians defended it.126 Rather, it was left to Nathaniel Bacon, a Presbyterian MP on the peripheries of the court, to pour cold water on the motion and shift debate back on to the Militia Bill: there were ‘now great matters before you’, he stressed, ‘I desire you would take them in order.’127 It seems that Ashe’s motion caught the civilian Cromwellians unprepared; they needed time to consult and to recalibrate their plans accordingly. This probably explains why, according to Burton, the debate on 19 January over the kingship soon ‘fell asleep … by consent’.128 Far from being the originators of the plan to make Cromwell king, it seems that the civilians seized upon sympathy among the Presbyterian majority for such a scheme. With their earlier proposals for a hereditary protectorate faltering, they harnessed the calls of the parliamentary majority for Cromwellian kingship. As Egloff puts it, ‘Cromwellian monarchy was a movement waiting for a leader.’129 In that leadership role the civilian Cromwellians had to ensure not only that the proposed constitutional scheme satisfied the parliamentary majority, but that it also met with the approval of the man upon whom its fate ultimately hinged. Surprisingly few scholars have considered Cromwell’s role in the creation of the Humble Remonstrance. Most take seriously the assurances of Thurloe in his letter to George Monck that Cromwell ‘knew nothinge of the particulars untill they were brought into the house’.130 Yet this was not the first time that Cromwell was apparently oblivious to events going on around him – as Blair Worden neatly puts it, ‘Cromwell was practised at not knowing.’131 Perhaps we should pay more attention to the claims of the Protector’s critics, such as Ludlow, who believed that the new constitution was ‘Cromwell’s design’ and was carried on by his ‘creatures’.132 Burton, I, 362–3. Ibid., I, 363, speeches by Strickland, Desborough and Robinson. The only hint of ‘civilian’ support is that Broghill’s colleague in the Scottish administration, George Downing, backed Ashe’s motion, ibid., 363–4. 127  Ibid., I, 366. 128  Ibid., I, 365. 129  Egloff, ‘Settlement and Kingship’, pp. 318–19. 130  Clarke Papers, III, 89–90. 131  B. Worden, ‘Oliver Cromwell and the Protectorate’, TRHS, 20 (2010), 58. 132  Ludlow, II, 20–2. 125  126 

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There are indications that Cromwell knew something was afoot. The fact that the parliament was still sitting suggests a degree of connivance on his part. As the second Protectorate Parliament was an extraordinary parliament, under the terms of the Instrument it had to sit for a minimum of three months before the Protector could dissolve it.133 By mid-December 1656, with parliamentary debate stalling over the issue of Nayler, MPs feared the blow would come sooner rather than later.134 But, despite Cromwell’s concerns about the handing of Nayler’s case, the parliament continued sitting. Even after the House voted supplies of £400,000 on 30 January 1657 Cromwell did not bring the parliament to a speedy end.135 What was he waiting for? Behind-the-scenes discussions were doubtless taking place between Cromwell and advocates of the new constitution. The most evocative evidence is provided by Whitelocke’s memoirs. According to Whitelocke, Cromwell ‘often’ entertained the leading civilians at Whitehall during this period, including ‘Lord Broghill, Pierrepont, Whitelocke, Sir Charles Oulseley & Thurloe’. At these private meetings, sometimes lasting ‘3 or 4 hours’, Cromwell put ‘aside his greatnes’ and made ‘verses with them’, and ‘commonly called for tobacco pipes’ before turning to serious matters and advising with them on ‘his serious and great buisnes’.136 Unfortunately, Whitelocke, writing after the Restoration, is vague on when precisely these meetings took place.137 There are further indications in contemporary correspondence, however, of private discussions about the constitution in the weeks before 23 February. According to one report of 3 February from the Irish MP Vincent Gookin, ‘[William] Pierpoint and [Oliver] Snt John’ had ‘been often, but secretly, at Whitehall … to advise’ about ‘a reducing of the government to kingship’.138 Writing in late January, Henry Cromwell also alluded to secretive discussions at Whitehall, thanking Broghill for being ‘so plaine with his Highness in that matter of greatest concernement’; Henry agreed with Broghill that ‘now is the time of doing somewhat to purpose … the sober people beeing withall generally big with hopes of seeing that good day of settlement’.139 Yet, these hints of private consultations aside, perhaps the most suggestive evidence for Cromwell’s involvement in the creation of the Humble Remonstrance is found in the document itself. It seems that the precise Gardiner, Documents, pp. 406, 412 [articles 7, 8 & 23]. Burton, I, 92. 135  CJ, VII, 483–4. Admittedly, the business of raising these funds still needed to be agreed, see ibid., VII, 484, 486–8, 490–1, 493, 494, 515. 136  Whitelocke Diary, p. 464. 137  The account in his ‘Diary’ is in an entry for 2 May 1657, but it adds that Cromwell ‘often advised’ about the constitution and ‘severall times’ sent for Broghill and others, ibid., p. 464. 138  Thurloe, VI, 37–8; internal evidence suggests this letter was destined for Henry Cromwell. 139  Gaunt, Lansdowne, pp. 194–5: Draft of a letter by H. Cromwell to Broghill, Jan. 1657. 133  134 

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terms of the proposed constitution were in flux right up to the moment of its presentation. Particularly revealing are the comments recorded in the diary of Sir Archibald Johnston of Wariston, then a frequent attendee at the Cromwellian court. On 14 February Wariston received reports that the ‘busines of the gouvernment’ would be taken up by parliament on Wednesday 18 February; two days later he had heard ‘for certain’ that the ‘great busines of the hereditary government’ would come in on Wednesday.140 Yet nothing emerged that day. Instead Wariston noted in his entry for 18 February a cryptic report from Philip Nye that the ‘Parliament was about the House of Lords’ and that ‘a King would com in by the nixt successor and in another familye’.141 On the following day the French Ambassador reported that a copy of the ‘Act’ concerning the ‘Royalty’ was seen in the hands of Richard Cromwell.142 Friday 20 February was set aside as a day of thanksgiving for Cromwell’s recent delivery from an assassination plot, and a sumptuous feast was provided at Whitehall to which Cromwell invited members of the House.143 Francesco Giavarina, the Venetian Ambassador, reported that ‘many think’ Cromwell ‘will be presented with the crown’ at the banquet, not least because ‘the succession was brought up again some days ago and they speak as if it was decided’.144 Yet, the constitutional scheme did not emerge on 20 February either. Rather, on the day after the banquet, Wariston was informed by James Guthrie that the ‘Bill anent the Gouvernment’ would come in on Monday 23 February, but without ‘the clause anent the House of Lords, or making the goverment hereditarye’.145 Out of these rumours a number of points emerge. First, that the Remonstrance, which at this stage was styled by both Wariston and the French Ambassador as an ‘Act’ or ‘Bill’, was supposed to be presented on 18 February and that a draft copy was already in the possession of Richard Cromwell. At the last minute, however, it seems that its presentation was deferred and there was discussion among MPs about the mode of succession and provision for what Wariston describes as a ‘House of Lords’. On 20 February, the day of thanksgiving, the new government was finally expected to emerge but, once more, it did not materialize. Rather, the day after the banquet, Wariston heard there was some uncertainty about the clauses for a second chamber and for hereditary succession. Ultimately, the report that Wariston received from Guthrie on 21 February turned out to be half true. The proposed constitution presented by Packe on 23 February did not provide for hereditary government. Rather, King Oliver would ‘appoint and declare’ the person who immediately after his 140  141  142  143  144  145 

Wariston Diary, III, 61. Ibid., III, 62–3. Quoted in Firth, Last Years, I, 129n. CJ, VII, 493. CSPV, 1657–59, pp. 20–1. Wariston Diary, III, 64. 57

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death would succeed him.146 Yet, the Remonstrance did make provision for a second parliamentary chamber, albeit styled ‘the Other House’ rather than ‘the House of Lords’.147 In this context it is worth examining Cromwell’s speech at the dissolution of the second Protectorate Parliament on 4 February 1658. Berating the Commons for failing to own the Humble Petition and Advice, he praised the new constitution because it set up neither ‘hereditary lords nor hereditary … kings’.148 But it was not just the mode of succession that Cromwell found attractive about the constitution. Of crucial importance, he stressed, was the creation of a second parliamentary chamber. ‘I did tell you, at a Conference concerning it’, he complained, ‘that I would not undertake it [i.e. the settlement], unless there might be some other Persons between me and the House of Commons … to prevent tumultuary and popular spirits: and it was granted I should name another House’.149 Yet we are left wondering when precisely this ‘Conference’ took place. Carlyle assumed Cromwell must have been referring to ‘one of the Kingship Conferences’, in April 1657, ‘of which there is no Report’.150 But this is unlikely – after all, the Other House was part of the proposed constitution from its emergence on 23 February. There was no reason for Cromwell to demand a second chamber when it was already in the constitution. Rather it seems likely that Cromwell’s ultimatum occurred before the proposed constitution was presented, at a time when the status of the new chamber was not assured – most likely in the days immediately preceding 23 February.151 Perhaps the banquet on 20 February was the ‘Conference’ to which Cromwell alluded. According to the newsbook reports, ‘after Dinner’ Cromwell invited MPs back to his private residence, ‘the Cockpit’, and ‘there entertained them with rare Musick, both of Instruments and Voyces, till the evening’.152 If Whitelocke’s description of Cromwell’s modus operandi is accurate it is possible that the frolics were punctuated by more serious discussion. It was not unknown for Cromwell to say one thing and mean another. When he spoke of his council, he often meant the army officers; when he spoke of a parliamentary ‘conference’, he could have meant something less formal.153 More importantly, Cromwell’s speech of 4 February 1658 raises two intriguing possibilities. First, that the provision for a second parliamentary chamber was not part of the constitutional scheme before Cromwell Little and Smith, Parliaments and Politics, p. 308. Ibid., p. 309. 148  Carlyle, III, 506, 190. 149  Ibid., III, 189; another version of this speech (ibid., III, 505), does not mention a ‘conference’ but has Cromwell claiming that ‘one thing that I made a condition’ was that there should be an Other House. 150  Ibid., III, 189 n. 3. 151  My thanks to Blair Worden for discussion upon this point. 152  Mercurius Politicus, 350 (19–26 Feb. 1657), p. 7615. 153  Worden, ‘Oliver Cromwell and the Council’, pp. 100–2. 146  147 

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demanded it – and that it was subsequently rewritten to include the clause for an ‘Other House’. Alternatively, a second chamber was always part of the proposed constitution but the initial plan was to restore an attenuated House of Lords, not to create an ‘Other House’. Cromwell, however, objected to the return of an assembly grounded upon hereditary succession – just as he consistently objected to hereditary succession for the single person – and instead demanded a chamber of non-hereditary members chosen by himself. As he revealed on 4 February 1658, it was ‘granted’ that he should name ‘another’ house; and he praised the new constitution precisely because it did not create ‘hereditary’ kings or lords. This reading of events could also explain why Wariston heard on 21 February that the ‘the clause anent the House of Lords’ would be dropped: it was replaced at the last minute by a clause creating an ‘Other House’ instead.154 Either way, the highly revealing slip in Cromwell’s speech of 4 February 1658 suggests that he knew rather more about the parliamentary constitution prior to its presentation than Thurloe later claimed. It seems likely that the provision for a non-hereditary second chamber, as well as the sudden decision to drop hereditary succession, were both at his prompting.155 The Constitutional Foundations of the Other House The provisions for the Other House in the Humble Remonstrance were extremely vague. Article 2 provided for future parliaments ‘consisting of two Houses’ while article 5 stated: That your highness will consent that none may be called to sit and vote in the Other House, but such as are not disabled, but qualified as aforesaid, and that they exceed not seventy in number nor be under the number of forty, and that as any of them do die, or be legally removed, no new one be admitted to sit or vote in their rooms, but by consent of the House itself.156

No further information was given; there was no clarification of the functions of the chamber or the procedure for nominating its membership, beyond the reference to approving replacement members. The minimal nature of these This could be reinforced by the cryptic and undated manuscript, ‘the heads of a bill in order to the settling of a kingly Government’: BL, Stowe 185, fol. 116. In the form of a list, it provides the clauses of a ‘bill’ for kingly government, a possible allusion to that earlier Bill or Act described by Wariston and the French Ambassador. Item 1 is ‘a kinge’ and item 2 ‘a House of Lords’. The possibility that this is a summary of the constitutional proposals prior to 23 Feb. is strengthened by the fact that the thirteenth and final item is ‘That hee shall choose his successors’. Given that this became the first item in the Humble Remonstrance, it could indicate that it was tacked on to the proposed ‘bill’ at a late stage before being redrafted into the Remonstrance. 155  See Fitzgibbons, ‘Hereditary Succession’, pp. 1115–19. 156  Little and Smith, Parliaments and Politics, pp. 308–9. 154 

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provisions could further suggest that the Other House was a late addition to the Remonstrance and that, initially at least, it provided simply for a restitution of the House of Lords. This is also hinted by the lengthy preamble to the Remonstrance, which lauds ‘the ancient constitution of this nation, consisting of a king and two Houses of Parliament’ as ‘most agreeable’ to the ‘temper and inclination of the people’.157 Certainly, the military Cromwellians initially saw the proposal for an Other House as a thinly veiled attempt to restore the House of Lords.158 Intriguingly, the civilian Cromwellians fully expected that the proposal for the Other House would meet resistance. Writing to Henry Cromwell on 24 February, Sir John Reynolds doubted the chances of getting approval for the second chamber. The ‘business’ was ‘so raw at present’, he explained, that ‘it will ensure onely gentle handling’, adding that the ‘other house, or ballance goes heavily on’.159 Thurloe, reporting to Henry on 3 March 1657, noted that parliament was due ‘to debate, whether another house shal be erected, as a third estate’, but feared it ‘will prove a very hard and doubtfull question’.160 Yet, the civilian Cromwellians’ concerns were probably due to more than just the expected military backlash. Perhaps they feared opposition from the Presbyterian majority in the House as well. After all, the proposal for the Other House was not couched as a simple restoration of the House of Lords; any wanting a straightforward return to the known ways of the ancient constitution would be disappointed. It is more likely, however, that many did not want a return to bicameral parliaments on any terms. After all, when Presbyterian MPs took to rewriting the Instrument of Government during the first Protectorate Parliament, there was no hint of erecting a second parliamentary chamber. Their aim during that parliament, and arguably during the second parliament too, was to create a government grounded upon the people’s representatives in parliament. Resurrecting an unelected chamber to check the people’s representatives was not the likeliest means to achieve that end. Unfortunately, the fact no parliamentary diary survives for March 1657 means we cannot be sure of the contours of the debate over the Other House and the process by which the brief clauses of the Remonstrance were transformed into the more detailed provisions of the Humble Petition and Advice.161 Yet, as Patrick Little has noted, the Humble Petition and Advice was more ‘parliamentary’ than the ‘monarchical’ Remonstrance, in that it gave parliament a greater supervisory role in matters of government.162 Significantly, the reference to the ‘ancient constitution’ in the preamble of the Remonstrance Ibid., pp. 306–8. Gaunt, Lansdowne, p. 201. 159  Ibid., pp. 206–7. 160  Thurloe, VI, 93. 161  Burton’s manuscript ends on 20 Jan. 1657 and does not resume until mid-April: Burton, I, 367. 162  Little, Broghill, pp. 148–9. 157  158 

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was dropped, further suggesting that the majority in the Commons, not just the military Cromwellians, were looking to avoid a simple restitution of that unwritten and ill-defined arrangement that had existed prior to 1642.163 The sense is that the Presbyterian majority, as in 1654–55, wanted to bring greater definition to the constitution and, in the process, assert clearly the power of the people’s representatives in parliament. As such, the civilian Cromwellians faced a difficult balancing act. On the one hand they had Cromwell, who was adamant that it was the sine qua non of any new settlement; on the other hand they faced a Presbyterian majority who viewed with suspicion anything that impeded the power of the people’s representatives in the Commons. It is for this reason, and not simply out of fear of a military Cromwellian backlash over kingship, that Thurloe and his fellow civilian Cromwellians knew they had their work cut out to turn the proposed constitution into a reality. It is no surprise that when the Commons turned to consider the part of the second article of the Remonstrance establishing bicameral parliaments progress was initially slow. As one army newsletter reported, ‘Wednesday [4 March] … the Parliament considered of the part of the bill for nominating 70 persons to bee another 3d estate in the nature of a House of Peeres, but came to no result’.164 Surprisingly, however, this delay was short-lived as, the next day the Commons resolved, without a division, that ‘your Highness will, for the future, be pleased to call Parliaments, consisting of Two Houses’.165 Later that day, Thurloe triumphantly reported to Monck that ‘yesterday and this day’ the House debated ‘whether his Highnesse should … for the future... call Parliament consisting of 2 Houses, and at last it was resolved very unanimously that hee should’.166 The apparent unanimity with which the Commons agreed to the provision for a second chamber is revealing. Firth attaches it to the ‘diminished vigour’ of the military Cromwellians owing to the rebuke they received from Cromwell on 27 February.167 Perhaps, after Cromwell’s reproof, they recognized the benefits of having a fixed body as a check upon the Commons. Yet, the vote on 5 March only confirmed that there would be a second chamber – it remained to be seen what its powers would be and, crucially, who would sit there. In his letter to Monck on 5 March, Thurloe claimed that the Other House would ‘bee a great security and bullwarke to the honest interest’, and will ‘not bee soe uncertaine as the House of Commons which depends upon the election of the people’.168 Yet this raised the question of who represented the ‘honest interest’ in the nation. 163  164  165  166  167  168 

Gardiner, Documents, pp. 447–8. Clarke Papers, III, 94–5: Newsletter from ‘G.M.’, 7 Mar. 1657. CJ, VII, 498. Clarke Papers, III, 93–4. C.H. Firth, ‘Cromwell and the Crown’, EHR, 18 (1903), 59–60. Clarke Papers, III, 93–4. 61

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Such was the eagerness to define further the Other House that, despite an earlier resolution to debate each article of the Humble Remonstrance in order, it seems discussion on 5 March immediately skipped forward to article 5, dealing with the powers and composition of the chamber.169 According to Thurloe, the Other House was to ‘bee called by writt in the nature of the Lords’ House’, but it was emphatically ‘not to consist of the old Lords’. Instead, in a formula echoing the Nominated Assembly and the qualifications of the Instrument, the members would be such ‘as have never been against the Parliament … men feareing God and of good conversation, and such as his Highnes shall bee fully satisfyed in, both as to their interest, affection, and integrity to the good old cause’. The members of the Other House would also ‘bee for life’ and not hereditary; and ‘as any dye, his place is to bee filled up with the consent of that House it selfe’. The implementation of the qualifications upon the membership would be left entirely to Cromwell’s discretion: they should be men that he was ‘fully satisfyed in’.170 Strangely, however, beyond their resolution that future parliaments would consist of two Houses the Commons’ Journal entry for 5 March suggests no further resolutions were taken on the Other House that day – there is no trace of those clauses concerning its membership that Thurloe reported to Monck.171 Rather, his report seems to have been premature, perhaps betraying what he and the civilian Cromwellians hoped for, rather than what was actually agreed upon. Instead, the Commons put the provisions for the Other House on hold and proceeded in the manner originally intended, resolving on 6 March that only ‘when the Fifth Article comes into Debate’ in its proper place would they consider the ‘Qualifications of the Persons to be of the other House’, and ‘by whom and how the Persons of that House shall be chosen’.172 Again, the lack of a parliamentary diary means the reasons behind this change of direction are uncertain – but it seems probable that the Presbyterian majority were not wholly convinced by the proposals advanced by the civilian Cromwellians and did not want to be rushed into them. Ultimately, the Commons got on to the fifth article on 11 March. By this point Thurloe was again making gloomy forecasts, informing Henry Cromwell on 10 March that soon ‘wee shall come to the manner of choosinge the other house’ and that ‘the debates will be very longe, I feare’.173 Initially, however, things passed smoothly. The opening clause of article 5 was ­confirmed – ‘that none be called to sit and vote in the other House, but such as are not disabled, but qualified’ according to those same qualifications CJ, VII, 496. Clarke Papers, III, 93–4. 171  Interestingly, Mabbott repeated Thurloe’s mistake of reporting that the Commons had already ‘past’ resolutions on 5 Mar. for the number and manner of nominating m ­ embers of the Other House, ibid., III, 94–5. 172  CJ, VII, 499. 173  Thurloe, VI, 107. 169  170 

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placed on members of the Commons.174 It was also agreed that the Other House should ‘exceed not Seventy in Number, nor be under the Number of Forty’. A debate followed over the number of members needed to make a quorum in the Other House, the initial figure touted being thirty-one. Given that this was just nine less than the minimum number of members, it is unsurprising that the proposal was rejected and a more realistic figure of twenty-one was agreed upon.175 A clause was also added denying members of the Other House the right to vote by proxy.176 This meant they could not emulate the practice of the Lords whereby an absent member could cast his vote through one then sitting. All members of the Other House would have to be personally present at Westminster to vote. With the qualifications and number of members agreed, however, the Commons still had to determine who should nominate the Other House. Although the Remonstrance was opaque on the matter, it seems the civilian Cromwellians believed the choice was Cromwell’s alone. Thurloe, writing to Monck on 24 February, was sure that ‘my lord protector by that paper is to name’ the Other House ‘for the first tyme’.177 It seems the Presbyterian majority did not agree, however. Although the House passed a resolution on 11 March confirming that the ‘Lord Protector be pleased to nominated the Persons to sit in the other House’, this power was not left unfettered. Rather, they resolved that ‘the Persons, so nominated by the Lord Protector, shall be approved of by this House’.178 The arrangement echoed the peace terms offered to Charles I during the 1640s, whereby all newly created peers were to be approved by parliament before taking their seats in the Lords.179 As with Charles I in the 1640s, the fact that those nominated by the single person had to be approved speaks volumes about the suspicions that the majority of MPs harboured about Cromwell’s ability to nominate the ‘right’ men. It also suggests that if the majority of MPs did indeed envisage the Other House as a House of Lords it was one shaped by the experiences and ideas of the parliamentarians in the 1640s. From Cromwell’s perspective, and very likely the perspective of his supporters, this clause stymied the chances of the Other House serving as an effective balance. The situation was not unlike that which Charles I bemoaned in his answer to parliament’s nineteen propositions in 1642 when he stressed that the power of approving the peers was greater than that of nominating: far from being called ‘Our Nobility’, they should rather be styled ‘Your Nobility’.180 One senses that the same thoughts ran through 174  175  176  177  178  179  180 

CJ, VII, 501; Gardiner, Documents, p. 452. CJ, VII, 501–2. CJ, VII, 502. Clarke Papers, III, 89–90. CJ, VII, 502. See discussion in Chapter 1. His Majesties Answer to the XIX Propositions, pp. 9–10. 63

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the minds of Cromwell and his allies in 1657. Whereas the vague terms of the Remonstrance gave Cromwell free rein to create a second chamber to his liking, the revisions to the proposed constitution in March 1657 meant it was more likely to become an echo of the House of Commons. As in the first Protectorate Parliament, it seems the majority of MPs were determined to maintain the supremacy of the Commons. They wanted to approve the membership of the Other House to defuse its potential to encumber the people’s representatives. In a letter to his brother on 7 March, Richard Cromwell noted the irony of how ‘the howse hath made themselves the commons by voting another howse’.181 After eight years of being styled the Parliament, the elected chamber would revert to being the House of Commons. Yet they were unwilling to surrender power in practice – a­ pproving the membership of the Other House ensured that the Commons remained supreme in essence. As Speaker Widdrington explained when presenting the Humble Petition and Advice to Cromwell on 31 March, the provision for an Other House was a ‘self-denying request’ from the Commons. Given that they were ready to ‘admit others into the bosom of so great a trust as that of [the] legislative (a very jealous point)’, they thought it not ‘unreasonable’ that they ‘have the approbation of those persons thus intromitted, that they may know whom they trust’.182 Intriguingly, the majority of MPs were less inclined to interfere in the choice of subsequent members of the Other House. According to article 5 of the Remonstrance, when members died ‘or be legally removed, no new one be admitted to sit or vote in their rooms, but by consent’ of the Other House.183 When debate resumed on 12 March some MPs moved an amendment so that subsequent members would need the consent of ‘both Houses’. Yet, the question for putting the question was defeated and the clause in the Remonstrance was upheld.184 It seems the majority in the Commons believed supervision of the founding members was sufficient. After all, with the original members of the Other House approving subsequent appointments it was unlikely the temperament of the chamber would change. As Thurloe put it, ‘if that House bee made good at first it is likely to continue soe for ever’.185 The sum of these arrangements would have troubled Cromwell. What the Commons offered was not the balance he hoped for. Cromwell complained to the hundred officers how ‘the interest of the godly people of the 3 nations could nott bee secure as the Government is now establish’t’ because of the free licence it gave to the persecuting spirit of the Commons.186 Yet, if the Commons adjudged the membership of the Other House, it was inevitable 181  182  183  184  185  186 

Gaunt, Lansdowne, pp. 220–1. Burton, I, 404. Little and Smith, Parliaments and Politics, p. 309. CJ, VII, 502. Clarke Papers, III, 93. Ibid., III, 92–3. 64

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that the so-called balance would reflect their attitudes too. In all likelihood, the temper of the Other House created under these rules would be at a variance with the ‘godly interest’ defined by Cromwell. Other revisions to the provisions for an Other House were probably more pleasing to Cromwell, however, particularly those concerning its judicial powers. Cromwell’s key justification for the Other House to the hundred officers was to avoid a repeat of Nayler’s case. Yet the means by which the Other House would achieve this was not immediately clear. The Humble Remonstrance failed to define the judicial functions of the Other House at all, again hinting that the Remonstrance initially provided for the restoration of the House of Lords and was amended at short notice. Only when the Commons debated, and redrafted, the clauses of the Remonstrance was this omission remedied. On 12 March, having worked through the rules for nominating the members of the new chamber, the Commons appointed a committee ‘to consider of the judicial Proceedings of the other House’.187 This forty-eight-man committee included many lawyer-MPs who had already proffered their legal opinions in Nayler’s case – including Bacon, Glynne, Lenthall, Lisle and Whitelocke.188 When the committee made its report on 17 March, it was clear it had taken the powers once belonging to the House of Lords as a starting point. Yet there were subtle modifications, particularly concerning the Other House’s authority in ‘civil cases’. That the committee sought to clarify this area of the second chamber’s powers is unsurprising. During the early seventeenth century, it represented an expanding, and nebulous, component of the House of Lords’ business. They received a growing number of petitions for justice during the 1620s and 1640s.189 This was symptomatic of the fact that the legal system was costly, cumbersome, complex and overburdened. The House of Lords seemed to offer an answer to problems of delay and congestion in the law courts; as the highest court in the land it also provided the attraction of bringing ‘finality’ to legal proceedings. While appeals from the Common Law courts followed the restrictive ‘writ of error’ procedure, there was also a proliferation of appeals against decrees in prerogative and equity courts.190 Increasingly the House also dealt with cases of the ‘first instance’, forwarded directly to them for mediation. Such was the expanding nature of this business that the Lords established a standing committee for petitions in 1621.191 By the 1640s, petitions for justice swamped the House, receiving well over four hundred in the first six months of the Long Parliament alone.192 CJ, VII, 502. CJ, VII, 506. 189  Hart, Justice Upon Petition, chapters 1–2. 190  Ibid., pp. 110–23. 191  Foster, House of Lords, pp. 101–11 for the origins and functions of the committee for petitions. 192  Ibid., pp. 64–9. 187  188 

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To expedite this business, the Lords allowed their committee for petitions to make certain decisions by itself – including referring cases back to trial at law, ordering a stay of proceedings in inferior courts, or even passing judgment.193 Following the abolition of the Lords attempts were made to relocate its appellate jurisdiction. In March 1650 the Rump passed an Act for the ‘Redress of Delay and Mischiefs arising by Writs of Error’. This legislation aimed to streamline proceedings by ordering that ‘no Execution’ of judgment was to be ‘stayed’ on the grounds of writ of error; no judgment was to be overturned ‘for want of any matter of form, or other defect whatsoever, except onely for want of matter of Substance’.194 Although the act lapsed in May 1653, it was revived by the Nominated Assembly in November 1653 and confirmed by the second Protectorate Parliament in June 1657.195 Crucially, the legislation did not specify where writs of error would be determined. A clue is provided in the Nayler debates, when John Lisle informed the Commons that ‘writs of error lie here from the Upper Bench and Exchequer Chamber’ just as they had done formerly in the House of Lords.196 Yet, there is scant evidence that this became common practice.197 Alternative means were also sought to deal with appeals from equity courts. In August 1654 Cromwell and the Council promulgated an ordinance for regulating the Court of Chancery. Under its provisions appeals were to be made by petition to the lords commissioners of the great seal. The aggrieved party had first to perform ‘all points’ in the original decree against which they were appealing, and deposit the sum of fifty pounds to cover costs if their appeal was unsuccessful. The case would then be reheard by a special appellate court comprising of the lords commissioners and two judges from each of the three Common Law courts. After reviewing the case, the judges could ‘make void, alter or confirm the Order or Decree’. Crucially, their decision was to ‘be final in the said cause’, meaning the new court offered the finality previously obtained through appeal to the Lords.198 More far-reaching were proposals published in late 1656 by the legal writer William Sheppard for root-and-branch reform of the nation’s legal system.199 Entitled Englands Balme and dedicated to Cromwell and the Council, this Foster, House of Lords, pp. 101–11. Firth and Rait, II, 357–8. 195  Ibid., II, 773–4, 1131–42. 196  Burton, I, 271. 197  The only reference to a writ of error being brought into the Commons during the Protectorate is in June 1657, concerning a judgment given in the Petty Bag: CJ, VII, 561, 708. 198  Firth and Rait, II, 949–67. These terms were similar to the ‘bill of review’ procedure traditionally used in Chancery, the shortcomings of which animated many petitions for justice to the Lords. See Hart, Justice Upon Petition, pp. 110–23. 199  W. Sheppard, Englands Balme Or Proposals By way of Grievance & Remedy; Humbly presented to His Highness And the Parliament: Towards the Regulation of the Law, And better Administration of Justice (London, 1656). 193  194 

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work was a prompt to the second Protectorate Parliament. Among Sheppard’s suggestions were provisions for a supreme court to determine all appeals from inferior courts.200 These ‘Judges of Appeal’ would comprise of ‘all the Judges of the four Courts at Westminster’; their jurisdiction was in ‘all the Causes that shall be in any one of the same Courts, or General Sessions’ with the proviso that ‘the Judges of the same Court whence the Appeal comes’ were ‘not to sit’.201 Sheppard’s supreme court sat at the apex of a hierarchy of new-modelled courts, including the establishment of county courts of judicature manned by JPs. Any cause that continued to ‘hang twelve Moneths’ in any ‘Court at Westminster, or Provincial Court’ could be appealed to the ‘Judges of Appeal at Westminster’.202 They could also be appealed to in cases of difficulty from the inferior courts.203 Yet, although the judges of appeal were at the pinnacle of the system, they were not beyond supervision. Indeed, if any appeal was not decided ‘in six Moneths’ it would then lie with the lord protector, who ‘may call any cause into the Court of Requests before himself, And what judges he shall please to call to him’ in order to determine the matter.204 Like the Chancery Ordinance, Sheppard’s proposed supreme court included disincentives for the appealing party, designed to dissuade fruitless and time-consuming litigation merely to stall judgment. No defendant was permitted to remove a cause out of any court if it was for debt ‘till he hath first deposited in Court the debt demanded’. Moreover, in all appeals ‘where it shall be Judged against him that did Appeal or remove, he shall forfeit as much to the Lord Protector, as he doth pay in Costs to the other Party’. If a pauper were to ‘appeal without cause’ he was to be ‘sent to the Work-house’.205 Ultimately, the majority of proposals in Englands Balme were never ­adopted.206 Yet, the failure of Sheppard’s scheme for a supreme court may not have been the result of parliamentary inertia. Rather, the resurrection of bicameral parliaments precluded the need to adopt this proposal. Instead of inventing a new way of dealing with appeals in civil cases, the Commons returned to the system they knew best. The rules governing the judicial powers of the Other House in ‘civil causes’, incorporated into article 5 of the Humble Petition and Advice, revived many functions that the Lords had appropriated during the first half of the century. The Other House was to proceed in ‘Civil Causes’ in a number of This supreme court echoed the appellate court of the Chancery Ordinance of 1654. Nancy Matthews has even suggested that Sheppard was the likely author of the ordinance: N.L. Matthews, William Sheppard, Cromwell’s Law Reformer (Cambridge, 1984), pp. 103–43. 201  Sheppard, Englands Balme, pp. 81–2. 202  Ibid., p. 82 203  Ibid., pp. 47–8. 204  Ibid., pp. 64, 82. 205  Ibid., pp. 83–5. 206  See Matthews, William Sheppard, chapter 3. 200 

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stated areas including ‘Writs of Error’, ‘Cases adjourned from inferior Courts into the Parliament, for Difficulty’, ‘Cases of Petitions against Proceedings in Courts of Equity’ and in ‘Cases of Privileges of their own House’.207 James Hart has claimed that the Other House was ‘left with essentially the same jurisdiction in civil causes which the House of Lords had exercised since the 1620s’.208 Yet there was one vital omission: no specific power was given to hear petitions concerning causes in the first instance. Hart’s assertion that this was an oversight and that there was ‘nothing particularly contentious about that aspect of the Lords’ civil jurisdiction’ is unconvincing.209 In the 1620s and 1640s cases brought by petition in the first instance flourished because the legal system was overburdened. This was hardly an aspect of the Lords’ jurisdiction that MPs wanted to entrench. What was needed was reform of the legal system to ensure the lower courts functioned more effectively, not the continuation of practices that compensated for the failures of that system. As the conclusion of the Humble Remonstrance stated, it was hoped that once the constitution was settled there would follow ‘such things as shall be further necessary for the good of these kingdoms’, including ‘the regulating of courts of justice, and abridging both the delays and charges of lawsuits’.210 That the Commons chose not to restore fully the extensive judicial powers once exercised by the Lords is further demonstrated by another proscription added to the Humble Petition upon the committee’s advice: That no final determinations or judgments be by any members of that House, in any cause there depending either civil, criminal or mixed, as Commissioners or Delegates, to be nominated by that House, but all such final determinations and judgments to be by the House itself, any law or usage to the contrary notwithstanding.211

Clearly, this left no scope for that former practice of the Lords’ committee for petitions coming to resolutions upon their own authority without first reporting to the House. Such time-saving measures, to cope with a high volume of appeals, were no longer permitted. Further clauses added to article 5 of the Humble Petition and Advice dealt with the Other House’s jurisdiction in ‘criminal causes’. This side of the Lords’ judicial power had also flourished during the first half of the seventeenth century – particularly through the revival of impeachment proceedings in the 1620s and 1640s. According to Selden, there were four ways in which the Lords could give judgment ‘against Delinquents as well for Capital crimes as misdemeanors’. Besides the Commons initiating proceedings ‘either by their Complaints, or their Impeachments’, an accusation could be brought either 207  208  209  210  211 

CJ, VII, 506; Gardiner, Documents, p. 452. Hart, Justice Upon Petition, p. 176. Ibid., pp. 176–7. Little and Smith, Parliaments and Politics, p. 312. Gardiner, Documents, p. 452. 68

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by the king (‘ex parte Dom. Regis’), upon the ‘complaint of private persons’ or by the ‘appeal of some of the Lords in Parliament’. While the latter course had been abolished in Henry IV’s reign, examples of proceedings initiated by accusations of the Commons, king and private persons were all made during the first half of the seventeenth century.212 The rules governing the Other House’s powers in criminal causes significantly restricted previous practices. The initial suggestion, reported by Whitelocke on 17 March, was that they should ‘not proceed, in any Criminal Causes whatsoever, against any Person criminally’ except ‘upon an Impeachment of the Commons assembled in Parliament, or by their consent’. Evidently, this was deemed too vague, and the final part of the clause was altered to read ‘and by their consent’, precluding the possibility of criminal proceedings being initiated by any means other than by the Commons.213 Furthermore, the Commons resolved that the Other House must ‘not proceed in any Cause, either Civil or Criminal, but according to the known Laws of the Land, and the due Course and Custom of Parliament’.214 As such, the Other House could not repeat the Commons’ method of proceeding against Nayler: they could not pass judgment without a law to proceed upon. Taken as a whole the rules governing the judicial authority of the Other House were no simple restitution of what went before. They curbed the powers previously claimed by the House of Lords and remedied issues raised by Nayler’s case. In drafting these rules, the Commons admitted that lessons had been learnt since December 1656. As Speaker Widdrington explained when presenting the Humble Petition to Cromwell, the ‘judicial power’ of the Other House, was ‘limited and circumscribed’, and it was ‘necessary to be so’ for it was ‘so natural for all men to be lovers and promoters of the latitude of their own jurisdictions’.215 With judicial proceedings balanced between the two Houses, and the powers of the new chamber suitably bounded, parliament was unlikely to repeat the mistakes of Nayler’s case. The debates over the Other House in March 1657 brought definition to the chamber. Some grey areas remained: most conspicuously, the Other House’s legislative powers, which were passed over in silence. Yet, on the whole, parliament gave shape to the amorphous body described in the Remonstrance. This had ramifications for the proposed settlement as a whole. In the Remonstrance, the provisions for the second chamber were so meagre that it was intelligible only in the context of the kingship and the praise for the ‘ancient constitution’. With the greater definition afforded by the Humble Petition and Advice, however, it was easier to comprehend the Other House without reference to J. Selden, Of the Judicature in parliaments (London, 1681), pp. 8–11; Foster, House of Lords, pp. 162–79. 213  CJ, VII, 506. 214  CJ, VII, 506. 215  Burton, I, 405. 212 

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the kingly title. This was also a result of the order in which the Commons debated the Remonstrance. Leaving discussion of kingship until the very end, they determined the rest of the constitution before knowing what the title of the single person would be. For this reason, when deciding upon the manner of nominating the Other House on 11 March, the Commons resolved that the ‘Lord Protector’, not the king, ‘be pleased to nominate the Persons to sit’ there. 216 By defining the Other House without first resolving upon the kingly title, it arguably became easier to detach it from that title in the future. Some MPs feared as much. Robert Beake noted in late March suspicions that Cromwell might refuse the kingship but ‘declare an acceptance of the rest’ including the provision for an Other House.217 These suspicions were not unfounded. After all, Cromwell had hinted at this possibility to the hundred officers in late February by contrasting the insignificance of the kingly title with the benefits of other aspects of the proposed constitution. The scheme apparently caught on among the military Cromwellians. On 7 April William Jephson reported how Charles Fleetwood did ‘professe himselfe to mee to bee a greate enemye to arbitrary government’, and that he was now ‘perswaded’ that they should ‘quit the title and accept the rest’.218 On 21 April, Thurloe noted that ‘my lord-deputy [Fleetwood] and generall Desbrowe oppose themselves with all earnestnes against the title, but thinke the other thinges in the Petition and Advice are very honest’.219 To avoid this outcome, on 26 March the majority of MPs resolved that unless Cromwell ‘Consent to all the Matters and Things in this humble Petition and Advice’ then ‘nothing in the same’ would be ‘deemed of Force’.220 In effect, the constitutional package on offer was all or nothing – its terms were non-negotiable. Cromwell was left thoroughly frustrated by these conditions. In his initial response to the Humble Petition on 3 April he lamented the parliament’s resolution “for the whole Paper or none of it”; it meant that despite the ‘good things so well provided for’ in the document, he had to reject it because of that one ‘ingredient’ of the kingship.221 When the Commons refused to take his answer as final, Cromwell requested a conference with MPs to ‘vent my fears … and scruples’.222 A committee of ninety-nine MPs duly met with Cromwell on several occasions during April 1657, with many leading civilian Cromwellians taking the opportunity to explain to him why the kingly title was the integument of the proposed constitution.223 Cromwell, however, was unmoved: he saw ‘nothing CJ, VII, 502. Egloff, ‘Robert Beake: A Letter Concerning the Humble Petition’, pp. 233–9. 218  Gaunt, Lansdowne, pp. 246–7, wrongly dated 6 Apr. 219  Thurloe, VI, 219–20: Thurloe to H. Cromwell, 21 Apr. 1657. 220  CJ, VII, 513. 221  Carlyle, III, 31–3. 222  Ibid., III, 37–8. 223  See Monarchy Asserted, To be the best, most Ancient and legall form of Government, in a conference had at Whitehall, with Oliver late Lord Protector (London, 1660). 216  217 

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of necessity’ in their arguments.224 While he claimed he would ‘rather have any Name from this Parliament than any Name without it’, his conscience would not allow him to accept a title ‘blasted’ by God.225 As such, these conferences achieved little; both sides restated their positions without convincing one another. To break the deadlock Cromwell changed tack on 20 April by looking ‘a little’ upon the ‘other parts’ of the Humble Petition ‘unconnected with this of the Kingship’, and claiming that there were ‘very many particulars’ worth considering.226 The following day he presented a paper that enumerated those particulars, including, among other things, the utility of the committee of forty-one for examining the Commons’ membership; the inadequacy of the proposed annual revenue; and the lack of provision for the reformation of law and manners.227 Cromwell also raised a query about the Other House, specifically the nomination of replacement members. As already noted, the clause in the Humble Petition stated that after the founder members died or were ‘legally removed’, no ‘new ones’ would be ‘admitted … but by the consent of the House itself’.228 Yet, as Cromwell explained, it was unclear who should nominate these members. ‘Though it seems to refer to the same rule’ as that of the founder members, it did ‘not so clearly intimate this; that the nomination shall be, where it was, in the Chief Officer’. Evidently, Cromwell wanted to confirm his control over the nomination process and remove any ambiguity.229 Having run through his list of quibbles with the Humble Petition, Cromwell concluded his speech by claiming that once parliament took ‘consideration of these things’ he would ‘be very ready … to discharge myself of what, in the whole and upon the whole, may be reasonably … expected from me, as God shall set me free to answer you in’.230 MPs seized upon this cryptic remark. William Jephson, brushing aside Cromwell’s paper of objections as matters of ‘lesser moment, wherein … it will not bee hard to give satisfaction’, claimed that he had given the committee ‘reason to percyve’ that if ‘satisfaction were given in the particulars’ then the ‘thinges in the petition beeing soe desirable, and settlement a thing of soe absolute necessitye … he should hardlye know how to deny it with all its appurtenances’.231 Arguably, this was precisely the reaction Cromwell wanted. The advocates of kingship, excited by the implied promise of a resolution on the title, were all too willing to compromise with Cromwell over those proposals of ‘lesser moment’. Yet, these demands were not as immaterial as they seemed. True, many of them were only slight alterations to clauses of the Humble Petition, 224  225  226  227  228  229  230  231 

Carlyle, III, 57, 64. Ibid., III, 56–7, 70–1. Ibid., III, 75–84. Ibid., III, 102–23. Gardiner, Documents, p. 452. Carlyle, III, 109, 491–3. Ibid., III, 123. Gaunt, Lansdowne, p. 262; see also Thurloe, VI, 219–20. 71

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but they were alterations all the same. If the Parliament admitted changes to lesser parts of the constitution, then it was possible they could be brought to reconsider more significant parts too. Spurred on by Cromwell’s promise of a speedy resolution, the Commons accepted his amendments with little objection. Few heeded Nathaniel Bacon’s warning that they were putting ‘things into a loose way’, and left ‘the chief magistrate to choose, and leave what part of the Petition he likes’.232 When the Commons turned their attention to Cromwell’s query about the nomination of the Other House on 24 April, Thurloe soothed concerns about the Protector’s intentions, claiming that the process of nomination was clear enough by ‘comparing the beginning and the latter end’ of the fifth article. Rather than put the issue to a ‘vote’, Thurloe believed the House need ‘only declare, that it is your intention, that as to this doubt, the nomination shall be in the chief magistrate’.233 Yet, despite Thurloe stressing the inconsequential nature of the amendment, some Presbyterian MPs were uneasy about allowing the single person the power of nominating replacement members to the Other House. Lambert Godfrey complained that ‘this will be the way to set up another House quite contrary to the interest of the House of Commons’. The Commons intended the Other House to be ‘a balance, a medium between the House and the single person’. With Cromwell nominating, however, ‘of necessity, they must adhere to the interest of the single person, and so cease to be that balance and medium they were intended for’.234 Godfrey’s misgivings confirm that some Presbyterians feared that the Other House could become a weapon for the single person against the people’s representative. Yet the majority seemed to be satisfied that the Commons’ approbation was sufficient to prevent this. As such, they resolved upon the amendment, ‘That the Nomination of the Persons to supply the Place of such Members of the other House, as shall die, or be removed, shall be by the Chief Magistrate’.235 Immediately after this resolution, Major-General Goffe raised a further query, demanding to know who ‘shall approve of these persons’ nominated by Cromwell, ‘which was doubtful in the article’. The provisions of article 5 simply stated that ‘no new ones be admitted to sit and vote in their rooms, but by consent of the House itself’. Whether ‘the House’ meant the Other House or the Commons was not explicit. Yet the majority of MPs did not have time for such matters. As Burton notes, ‘nothing was done’ to answer Goffe’s question, and instead the House pushed on in anticipation of Cromwell’s ‘final’ answer on the kingship.236

232  233  234  235  236 

Burton, II, 21; see also speeches by Broghill and Whitelocke, ibid., II, 17–18. Ibid., II, 20–2. Ibid., II, 22. CJ, VII, 523. Burton, II, 22–3. 72

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Ultimately, the kingship party were sorely disappointed by Cromwell’s final response on 8 May. Once more, he stressed that the Humble Petition contained ‘very excellent parts’, but he could not ‘undertake this Government with that Title of King’.237 Although Thurloe informed Henry Cromwell on 12 May that it was ‘hard to guesse what wil be done next’, he saw what the likely outcome would be. ‘The souldiers partie, who have opposed this advise as to the title’, he explained, ‘doe pretend, that they are very well pleased with all the rest, and will desire noe alteration therein, but the title from kinge to protector.’ Yet, ‘the countrye gentlemen’ were ‘very averse from this; and soe longe as they keepe together, it will scarce be effected’. The problem was, in the wake of Cromwell’s refusal, it was ‘very probable many of them will be gone, and then this or what else shall be thought fitt may be done’.238 As MPs drifted away from Westminster, the military Cromwellians found themselves with a slender majority. After debating the Protector’s answer for several days, the parliament resolved on 19 May: ‘That “Lord Protector” shall be the Title to be inserted in the humble Petition and Advice; and that it be referred to a Committee, to consider how that Title may be bounded, limited, and circumstantiated.’239 When that committee made its report on 22 May its recommendations were minimal: That your Highness will be pleased, by and under the Name and Style of Lord Protector … to hold and exercise the Office of Chief Magistrate of these Nations; and to govern, according to this Petition and Advice, in all Things therein contained; and in all other Things, according to the Laws of these Nations, and not otherwise.240

In effect, as Ludlow put it, they resolved to ‘present their Humble Petition and Advice to him again, with the sole alteration of the word King into that of Protector’.241 By a margin of just three votes, the House accepted the committee’s report and the kingship clause was dropped.242 After Cromwell assented to the revised Humble Petition on 25 May the depleted Commons set about producing an Additional and Explanatory Petition and Advice, which formalized those amendments voted prior to 8 May.243 On 23 June, the Commons appointed a committee to make preparations for ‘the Solemnization’ of Cromwell’s inauguration as lord protector under the new constitution, and to offer to the House ‘what they think fit’ touching ‘other Matters as they shall think necessary, in pursuance of the humble Petition and Advice’.244 This rather broad remit led the committee to present a series 237  238  239  240  241  242  243  244 

Carlyle, III, 126–9. Thurloe, VI, 281. CJ, VII, 535. CJ, VII, 537. Ludlow, II, 28. CJ, VII, 537: passed by 53 votes to 50. CJ, VII, 539–40; Gardiner, Constitutional Documents, pp. 459–64. CJ, VII, 570. 73

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of papers on 24 June for tying up a number of constitutional loose ends, including one that directly concerned the appointment and composition of the Other House.245 The first recommendation in the committee’s paper was that Cromwell should ‘before the next Meeting of this Parliament … cause several Summons, in due Form of Law’ to be issued to ‘such Persons as your Highness shall think fit, being qualified according to the humble Petition and Advice’. Those summoned were to be ‘commanded to … personally appear, at a certain Place and Time, to be appointed by your Highness, to give their Advice and Assistance, and to do such Things, concerning the great and weighty Affairs of the Commonwealth, as to the Other House of Parliament doth appertain, by the said humble Petition and Advice’.246 Given that the parliamentary session was due to adjourn just days later, it made practical sense to clarify the procedure for summoning the members of the Other House so it could meet when parliament next resumed. Yet, it left uncertain when or how the Commons would approve the membership of the Other House. As Burton noted, it allowed Cromwell ‘to summon the members by writ, whereas the Petition and Advice says, they shall be first approved by this House’.247 The Protector would already have made his choices and sent out his writs of summons before the Commons could reassemble and approve the membership. The second point in the committee’s report went further still. It stated that those ‘Persons so summoned and assembled together’ were ‘hereby declared to be, the Other House of Parliament’ and that they ‘shall and may, from such Time of their Meeting proceed to do and perform all such Matters and Things, as the Other House … ought to do and perform’, and ‘have and exercise all such Privileges, Powers, and Authorities, as the other House of Parliament ought’. To make the meaning of this clause more explicit the civilian Cromwellian Philip Jones moved that the ‘words “without further Approbation”, be inserted after the Words “shall and may”’.248 A number of Presbyterian MPs reportedly criticized the suggestion that the Commons should effectively surrender their power to approve Cromwell’s nominations. Joachim Matthews and Thomas Bampfield were adamant that what was offered was ‘expressly against the Petition and Advice’, adding that it was ‘such a trust as is not to be transferred. It is a considerable part of the privilege of the Commons. Have we not gone too far already?’249 By allowing the Protector an unfettered choice, Matthews warned that the Commons would be ‘parting with our power further’, allowing him an over-dominant role in the constitution. When debating those revisions to the Remonstrance, 245  246  247  248  249 

CJ, VII, 571–4. CJ, VII, 572. Burton, II, 297–8. CJ, VII, 572–3; Burton, II, 298. Burton, II, 298. 74

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which led to the creation of the Humble Petition, the Presbyterian MPs had worked hard to ensure the Protector would not create an Other House that was prejudicial to the interests of the people’s representatives in the Commons. Now, Matthews warned, they were going about to ‘put a yoke and bridle upon ourselves, and have no cognizance of it’.250 Another Presbyterian MP, Colonel Robert Shapcott, warned that not enforcing the clause for approving the Other House would leave the constitutional foundations of the second chamber uncertain. In particular, he asked the Commons to consider the consequences if Cromwell summoned some of the old peers to sit in the new chamber. Without approbation from the Commons, Shapcott argued, those members could claim that they ‘come in, upon the account of [birth]right’, which they had ‘not forfeited’.251 This did not mean that Shapcott wanted a restoration of the old House of Lords – quite the opposite. In Shapcott’s mind the rules of the Humble Petition must be upheld to the letter in order to make absolutely clear the foundations upon which the new House and its membership stood. Shapcott’s warning agitated some MPs, not least the military Cromwellian William Sydenham. He feared that if the ‘old Lords’ were ‘admitted upon the account of birth-right or privileges’, as Shapcott suggested, then it could be the thin end of the wedge which led to ‘a returning to another line’: the restoration of Stuart monarchy. In these circumstances he thought it best for the membership of the Other House to be approved.252 Major Lewis Audley, by contrast, stressed that he ‘was against the House of Lords’ but was also against having ‘the power of approbation in this House’. Rather, in the event that Cromwell choose ‘some of the old Lords’ Audley suggested that they should be made to ‘sign some such Recognition’ confirming that they ‘approve of the death of the late King’ and ‘Of taking away the House of Lords’. Clearly, Audley hoped that, given these terms, the old Lords would simply stay away.253 It was left to John Desborough to calm the debate. He explained to Sydenham that he was ‘much mistaken’ about Shapcott’s meaning: he did ‘not speak of any birth-right that members had, to be of the other House; but he said that some might so challenge’.254 Yet, Desborough thought the contingency a remote one. Rather, he thought it would be much more dangerous to subject the Other House to the approval of the Commons. He knew from ‘experience’ how choosing committees ‘by a balloting’ did often ‘divide the House into parties, that they were never united again’. He feared much the same if they were asked to approve the members of the Other House. If Cromwell ‘should send you a list of names’, he explained, and ‘some 250  251  252  253  254 

Ibid., II, 300. Ibid., II, 298. Ibid., II, 299. Ibid., II, 299, 300. Ibid., II, 299, emphasis added. 75

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think that they ought to be named that are left out’, then it would likely ‘stir up obstructions in the approbation of others’. Ultimately, Desborough concluded that they ‘need not fear’ leaving the matter to Cromwell alone, ‘seeing we have put him upon qualifications’.255 Intriguingly, it was not just the military grandees who urged the Commons to dispense with their approbation of the Other House, however. They were also joined by a number of civilian Cromwellians.256 Fiennes believed that ‘you may attain your end without putting your approbation here’, warning that to ‘put this approbation upon them may seem to lessen that power that you intend them in the constitution’.257 That the civilians also wanted Cromwell to have a free choice of the membership of the Other House seems to confirm their subtly different constitutional aims to their erstwhile Presbyterian allies. After all, the Humble Remonstrance that they devised included no provision for approbation by the Commons; this was included only after the document was revised by parliament. It seems that the civilians, like the military Cromwellians, favoured a chamber capable of checking the Commons and weighted in favour of the single person. Unlike the kingship, the question of the Other House and its membership united the civilian and military Cromwellians. The committee of thirty-one MPs that advised dropping the Commons’ approbation was itself composed of a mixture of military and civilian Cromwellians: Desborough, Cooper and Berry rubbed shoulders with Montagu, Thurloe and Wolseley. Interestingly, more than half of those appointed to that committee became members of the Other House in December 1657. Perhaps Alban Cox was not far wrong in his suspicion that the members of that committee ‘themselves hope to be named’ as members of the Other House ‘and fear disapprobation here’.258 When finally put to the vote whether the Other House should meet ‘without further Approbation’, it passed by ninety votes to forty-one.259 Given the closeness of some of the votes in mid-May concerning the alteration of the title of the supreme magistrate, the relatively large margin involved in this vote attests not only to the declining attendance of the Presbyterians but again suggests that the ‘civilian’ Cromwellians closed ranks with their ‘military’ counterparts. The willingness of both the civilian and military Cromwellians to place the nomination of the Other House solely in the Protector reflected their shared confidence that he would make the ‘correct’ choice. It does not mean that the two groups had suddenly become reconciled in their views about the best means to achieve settlement. Rather, each group hoped that Cromwell would nominate an Other House that would secure their interests 255  256  257  258  259 

Ibid., II, 299–300 Ibid., II, 298, 300–1. Ibid., II, 301. CJ, VII, 570; Burton, II, 299. CJ, VII, 573. 76

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and their vision for settlement. In effect, the character of the membership of the Other House would define the sort of regime the Protectorate of the Humble Petition and Advice was likely to become. Once the members were nominated, the future direction of the settlement, civilian or military, would be clearer.

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The Membership of the Other House

… it was granted I should name another House, and I named it of men that should meet you wheresoever you goe, and shake hands with you, and tell you it is not titles, nor Lords, nor party they value, but a Christian and an English interest; men of their own ranke and quality, who would not only be a ballance unto you, but to themselves while you love England and Religion.1

These words, reportedly delivered by Cromwell at the dissolution of the second Protectorate Parliament on 4 February 1658, seem to offer a crucial insight into his motives when nominating the Other House. This chapter explores in detail those men nominated by Cromwell to sit in the new parliamentary chamber to see whether they bear out his claims. The first section examines the nomination process: if Cromwell’s later assertions are to be verified it is first important to assess whether the membership really was of his own choosing. The core of the chapter then focuses upon those nominated to better understand the complexion of the Other House. It suggests that, on a number of levels, Cromwell’s choices ensured that the Other House would be a ‘balance … to themselves’. The Nomination Process Cromwell’s choice of members was the matter of prolonged speculation. A fortnight after his second investiture on 26 June, there were already indications that he was sounding out candidates.2 Given that parliament had adjourned until 20 January 1658, however, Cromwell was apparently in no rush to make his choices. Not until late autumn did rumours of impending nominations intensify.3 Edward Montagu reported to Henry Cromwell on 5 December that ‘the list of the other house is every day expected’, but he knew ‘nothinge of the persons designed for it’.4 Time was running out. As Thurloe   1    2    3    4 

Clarke Papers, III, 137. Wariston Diary, III, 92–3. Bodl., Carte MS 73, fol. 150; Bodl., Tanner MS 52, fol. 214; Thurloe, VI, 630–1. Gaunt, Lansdowne, pp. 355–6. 78

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informed Henry on 1 December, ‘there are but 7 or 8 dayes left for the finall resolution, there being a necessitye, that the writs issue 40 dayes before the parliament meets’. Yet, Thurloe believed there was ‘not yet any one man fully resolved upon’.5 By 9 December one newsletter even reported that ‘the members of the other House (its said) will not be named’.6 As the wait continued, the civilian Cromwellians grew nervous. On 10 November Thurloe complained to Henry Cromwell that ‘a mistake here will be like that of warre and mariage; it admits noe repentance’.7 A week later, Henry wrote to Montagu stressing that he could ‘not see how any maske can vayle his Highness very intentions, & inclinations in the choice of these men, by whose affections, and disposetions, wee may guesse very much of our future settlement’.8 In his response on 1 December Thurloe indicated that the ‘difficulty proves great betweene those, who are fitt and not willinge to serve, and those who are willinge, and expect it, and are not fitt’.9 A week later, Thurloe’s mood was gloomier still; he did ‘begin to guesse who they are like to be; and I am content your excellencye should receive them by any other hand’.10 There was a growing feeling – emanating chiefly from Thurloe – that the civilian Cromwellians would be left disappointed. The military Cromwellians were equally tense. In mid-June 1657 Charles Fleetwood informed Wariston that the Protector ‘intended to nominat the House of Peers’, adding that he feared the godly would be ‘swallowed up in the spirit of the nation if God prevent it not’.11 Writing to his brother-inlaw Henry Cromwell on 24 November, Fleetwood continued to lament the ‘difficulty’ of finding ‘fit persons to answer that worke’; he prayed to God they would ‘have the mercy of a right choice’.12 Similarly, Colonel Thomas Cooper, reporting to Thurloe from Ireland in mid-December, hoped God would ‘direct the heart of his highness’ in the ‘great business of forming the other house’; the business was vital for ‘secureinge and providinge for a godly interest in these nations’.13 Although, in theory, the choice of the membership was Cromwell’s alone, in practice he seems to have consulted others. The most obvious source of advice was the Council. On 24 November 1657 Mabbott reported that ‘yesterday and today the Councell have spent much time in considering of the members of the other House, but there names are not yet knowne’.14 Intriguingly, the Council’s minute book does not record any meeting on   5    6    7    8    9  10  11  12  13  14 

Thurloe, VI, 647–8; see also ibid., VI, 665. Clarke Papers, III, 129. Thurloe, VI, 609. Bodl., Carte MS 73, fol. 150. Thurloe, VI, 647–8. Ibid., VI, 665. Wariston Diary, III, 79–80. Thurloe, VI, 630–1. Ibid., VI, 673. Clarke Papers, III, 127; see also CSPV, 1657–1659, p. 139. 79

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23 November and, though it met the following day, there is no indication that the Other House was a topic of discussion.15 This does not necessarily mean that Mabbott’s report is false. As Worden suggests, contemporary reports of Cromwellian Council proceedings unrecorded by official records are too frequent to be an anomaly. It seems sensitive discussion was often omitted from the ordinary minute books and probably committed to a, now lost, private book. It could also reflect Cromwell’s predilection for informal, unminuted meetings with a number of confidants, not all of whom were councillors.16 Indeed, it seems that Cromwell consulted privately with a range of allies. In a ‘diary’ entry for mid-October 1657, around the time speculation about Cromwell’s nominations intensified, Whitelocke claims that he, Broghill, Wolseley and Thurloe ‘often’ met with Cromwell in ‘a private roome’ to discourse for hours together about ‘his greatest buisnesses’.17 In late November 1657 Henry Cromwell was glad to hear that ‘his highness consults with mr. [William] Pierrepoint in that weighty affaire of the other house’.18 Perhaps most revealing of the way Cromwell operated, however, is Wariston’s report of a conference with the Protector on 15 July 1657. Intended as a meeting to discuss his reappointment as Lord Clerk Register in Scotland, Wariston notes that Cromwell went on to seek his opinion of a number of his fellow Scotsmen.19 He ‘spak of [the earls of] Cassillis and Sutherland and of the Over [sic] House and of [Lord] Brodye, and hinted a little anent myself without ingaging himself’.20 This meeting, like those with Whitelocke and Pierrepont, seems typical of the way Cromwell operated. Through intimate and informal meetings, he sounded people out, listening to what they had to say without revealing his own opinions. Cromwell was evidently not short of possible candidates to fill the Other House, whatever the complaints of the civilian and military Cromwellians about their quality. Writing to Montagu on 1 December, Thurloe revealed that Cromwell had ‘out of his great list extracted 80’ names. No doubt, Cromwell had been compiling this ‘great list’ for some time, probably as far back as June 1657, adding and erasing names after each meeting or consultation. Yet, even after producing a short-list of eighty, he had ten more CSPD, 1657–1658, pp. 180–2. Worden, ‘Oliver Cromwell and the Council’, pp. 92–3. 17  Whitelocke Diary, p. 477: 18 Oct. 1657. There are problems with this account, however, not least the fact that Broghill was absent in Ireland throughout the autumn of 1657: Thurloe, VI, 468–9, 563–4. Henry Cromwell lamented Broghill’s absence, believing if he ‘had been there time enough, your lordship might have been carpenter of a better house; but it doeth seem the other house hath mett with other craftsmen’: ibid., VI, 745: H. Cromwell to Broghill, 13 Jan. 1658. 18  Ibid.,VI, 632. Pierrepont had also apparently visited Cromwell earlier in the year to discuss the kingship too: ibid., VI, 37. 19  Wariston Diary, III, 77–8, 90. 20  Ibid., III, 92–3. 15  16 

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candidates than the maximum number of seats in the Other House. As such, the list had to ‘goe through the furnace againe, & w[hi]ch will prove gold & w[hi]ch drosee’, Thurloe believed ‘a little tyme will show’.21 As the forty-day deadline for issuing writs approached it seems that Cromwell was still agonising over his choices. On 8 December, with only two days left before the ‘writs must be sealed’, Thurloe reported that the ‘list of the other house’ was still ‘not yet finished’.22 On 9 December, however, the first writ of summons was finally sealed and directed to Cromwell’s eldest son Richard. This writ was the prototype for all that followed: it was subsequently enrolled in the Petty Bag, and the clerks were ordered to ‘lett the like writts be directed’ to the Protector’s other nominees.23 The precise form of the writ had been a matter of debate. Under the Additional and Explanatory Petition and Advice, Cromwell was to ‘cause several summons in due form of law, to be issued forth’ to those he chose to ‘sit and serve as members in the other House’. The summons were to command their recipients ‘personally to appear at a certain place and time... to give their advice and assistance, and to do such things concerning the great and weighty affairs of the Commonwealth, as to the other House of Parliament doth appertain by the said humble Petition and Advice’.24 On 26 June 1657, the day of their adjournment, the Commons ordered the Commissioners of the Great Seal to advise with the judges to ‘prepare and frame a Writ, for summoning the Members of the Other House’.25 According to one newsletter, these consultations took place in early November. Yet, the majority of the judges, still smarting at Cromwell’s refusal of the Crown, proved unco-operative. Their reportedly terse advice was that ‘until his Highness did accept of the title of King noe legall writs could be made, nor house of Peeres constituted’.26 Unperturbed, the Commissioners of the Great Seal pressed ahead, devising a writ that was a virtual translation of the Latin writ of summons to the House of Lords. As Whitelocke noted upon receiving his writ, ‘the forme … was the same with those which were sent to summon the Peers in Parlement’.27 Given in the name of ‘Oliver Lord Protector’, it was directed ‘to our trusty and welbeloved sonne Lord Richard Cromwell’. By this writ, Cromwell did ‘Command and firmely enjoyne’ the recipient, ‘all excuses being sett aside’, to ‘be personally present at Westminster’ on 20 January 1658. There they were to ‘treate, conferr and give your advise with Us and with the great men and Nobles in and concerneing the affaires aforesaid’. They were to do this ‘as you 21  22  23  24  25  26  27 

Bodl., Carte MS 73, fols 166–7. Thurloe, VI, 665. TNA, C218/1/34. Gardiner, Documents, p. 463. CJ, VII, 576–7. Clarke Papers, III, 127. Whitelocke Diary, p. 481. 81

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Love our honour and saftie and defence of the Commonwealth’ and should ‘in noe wise omitt’.28 What was particularly striking about this writ, apart from its use of the monarchical nosism, was its failure to refer to the Humble Petition and Advice or the ‘Other House’. True, the writ adhered to the stipulations of the Additional Petition by commanding those summoned to ‘appear at a certain place and time’ to ‘give their advice and assistance’ and ‘to do such things concerning the great and weighty affairs of the Commonwealth’. Yet, it did not state that its recipient was limited to do those things ‘as to the other House of Parliament doth appertain by the said humble Petition and Advice’.29 The writ was couched ‘in due form of law’, but it was the law of the ancient constitution rather than the Humble Petition. The judges questioned the legality of the writs because Cromwell was not king; the pragmatic response was to proceed as if he was. Like the form of writs, the fact that Richard took precedence among those summoned can be explained by punctilious adherence to past precedents, rather than evidence of Cromwell’s machinations to make his son his successor. It was usual for the male children of the incumbent ruler to take precedence over the other lords summoned. Rather than marking out Richard as next in line for the Protectoral throne, the fact that the first writ of summons was sent to him merely reflects the attempts of the authorities to appropriate for the new non-hereditary political system templates and precedents drawn from England’s monarchical past. Not until 10 December did the names of those who would join Richard in the Other House emerge. Writing that day to the ambassador in France, William Lockhart, Thurloe revealed that Cromwell had finally ‘agreed upon a list of the names of the other house of parliament’ and enclosed ‘a coppy’. Intriguingly, however, the list he sent to Lockhart proved to be incomplete. Fifty-eight men were listed, all but one of whom actually received a writ of summons.30 The anomaly was the inclusion of Colonel John Clerk, Thurloe’s brother-in-law, which probably reflected wishful thinking on the Secretary’s part or a half-promise from the Protector that ultimately went unfulfilled.31 Either way, Thurloe’s faulty information reminds us that he was not totally in the loop about affairs and further demonstrates that, until the last minute, Cromwell was still perfecting the list of members. In fact, if Philip Jones’ report to Montagu late on 10 December is accurate, it was not until that evening that Cromwell ‘with much difficulty finished the list for the other house’. Although Jones provided no further details, he TNA, C218/1/34; BL, Sloane MS 3246; Gardiner, Documents, p. 464. See also Worc. Col. Oxf., Clarke MS 29, fol. 139v for a copy of Monck’s writ of summons. 29  Gardiner, Documents, p. 463. 30  Thurloe, VI, 668; Bodl., Clarendon MS 56, fols 325, 327. 31  A Narrative of the late Parliament (so called), Their Election and Appearing, The seclusion of a great part of them, the sitting of the rest... (London, 1658), p. 12. 28 

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assured Montagu that Thurloe would send ‘a coppy of it’.32 Thurloe must have been busy as he also sent a copy of the list that evening to the commander in Scotland George Monck.33 For the most part this list was the same as that sent to Lockhart earlier that day and ran in the same order. The key amendments were the addition of Sir Gilbert Pickering and Thomas Cooper, and the insertion of Sir George Fleetwood in the space previously occupied by John Clerk.34 This list of sixty members was soon circulating in print, with a full-page list ‘of those Honorable Persons … summoned to sit in the Other House’ appearing within the week in both of the official newsbooks.35 What is immediately striking about the list that emerged on 10 December is that Cromwell kept ten places in the Other House vacant. It was not, as some feared, a symptom of the Protector being short of options. As Thurloe informed Monck, the ‘number for the present is butt 60, his Highnesse having left power to himself to issue out a writt for 10 more’.36 It was a shrewd political move, allowing Cromwell to keep his options open should his initial choices prove unsatisfactory. Given that seats in the Other House were for life it was prudent to keep some places available for the future.37 In fact, two spaces were filled before the second Protectorate Parliament resumed its sitting. According to Ludlow, Master of the Rolls William Lenthall was ‘disturbed’ to find he was not among the first sixty members named, not least because he was ‘obliged to sit as assistant in the Other House’ instead.38 On 9 December, the first writ of assistance had been sealed and directed to Lenthall.39 Traditionally this writ was used to summon government lawyers and judges, including the Master of the Rolls, to act as legal advisers and assistants to the House of Lords but, crucially, did not confer membership of that chamber.40 Yet, Lenthall had grounds to feel Bodl., Carte MS 73, fol. 174. Monck acknowledged receipt of this list a week later, see Thurloe, VI, 686. This was, almost certainly, the list of 60 members, subscribed ‘J.T.’, which Monck’s secretary copied and filed among his papers. Although mentioned in Clarke Papers, III, 129 the list is not transcribed and can be found at Worc. Col. Oxf., Clarke MS 29, fols 135–6. Firth erroneously claimed this list was ‘identical’ to that sent to Lockhart. 34  Thurloe, VI, 668; Worc. Col. Oxf., Clarke MS 29, fols 135–6. It is likely that the lists sent to Lockhart and Monck both derived from a rough list compiled by Thurloe, amended during the day as news of Cromwell’s final choices emerged. 35  The Publick Intelligencer, 112 (7–14 Dec. 1657), p. 160; Mercurius Politicus, 394 (10–17 Dec. 1657), p. 165; This list was also printed as a Catalogue of the Names of those Honourable Persons, who are now Members of this present House of Lords (London, 1658). 36  Worc. Col. Oxf., Clarke MS 29, fol. 136r. 37  A tactic Cromwell possibly employed with appointments to the Council too: B. Worden, God’s Instruments: Political Conduct in the England of Oliver Cromwell (Oxford, 2012), p. 209. 38  Ludlow, II, 31–2. 39  See TNA, C218/1/34 for Lenthall’s writ of assistance. 40  E.R. Adair and F.M. Greir-Evans, ‘Writs of Assistance, 1558–1700’, EHR, 36 (1921), 364. 32  33 

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aggrieved by his summons as a mere assistant to the Other House – not least because, contrary to tradition, the two Lord Chief Justices had both received writs of summons and were therefore full members of the new chamber. Lenthall made a persuasive case, or created enough fuss, to get his own way. According to Ludlow, with Lenthall’s ‘grievous complaint coming to the ears of Cromwel’ he sent him a summons and ‘elevated the poor man’ to the Other House as a full member.41 Another late addition was Richard Hampden. According to one tract, ‘this young Gentleman’ was ‘the last of sixty two’ and was ‘added singly by the Protector after the choice of sixty together’.42 The jibe about Hampden’s youth was understandable – aged 26, he was among the youngest members summoned. What Hampden lacked in experience, however, he made up for in pedigree. The eldest surviving son of John Hampden, he was also a distant relation of the lord protector.43 Sitting as MP for his native Buckinghamshire in 1656, he voted for kingship in March 1657.44 Why Cromwell sent Hampden a writ of summons after the first sixty had been issued is less obvious than in the case of the remonstrating Lenthall, however. One critic speculated that it was ‘very likely that Colonel Ingoldsby, or some other Friend at Court’ procured him the place ‘to settle and secure him to the Interest of the new Court’.45 Certainly, Ingoldsby’s agency is plausible; not only were the Hampdens and Ingoldsbys neighbours, they were also related.46 Moreover, according to Sir Francis Russell, writing to Henry Cromwell in May 1657, Hampden was one of a number of MPs with ‘strong dreames of being lords’ and was ‘very angerey’ when Cromwell refused the kingship because it seemed his hopes had been shattered.47 With Hampden’s writ sealed and delivered, the process of choosing the Other House was complete. The debate over what those choices meant, however, was just beginning. As Henry Cromwell noted in mid-November, once the names were out in the open no ‘maske’ could ‘vayle his Highness very intentions’; they would be able to ‘guesse very much of our future settlement’.48 It is to those choices, and what they reveal about Cromwell’s aspirations for settlement, that this chapter now turns.

Ludlow, II, 31–2; The result was an anomaly in the records of the Petty Bag, with Lenthall appearing both as the chief assistant to the Other House and as one who received a writ of summons: TNA, C218/1/34. 42  A Second Narrative of the Late Parliament (so called) (London, 1658), p. 20. There are several editions of this work; all references to this work in this chapter are to STC Wing W1556. 43  Ibid., p. 20. Hampden’s grandmother was Cromwell’s aunt. 44  A Narrative of the late Parliament, p. 22. 45  A Second Narrative, p. 20. 46  Ingoldsby’s maternal grandfather was Sir Oliver Cromwell, John Hampden’s uncle. 47  Gaunt, Lansdowne, p. 273. 48  Bodl., Carte MS 73, fol. 150: H. Cromwell to Montagu, 18 Nov. 1657. 41 

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The ‘Old’ Lords One group widely expected to sit in the Other House were the members of the old House of Lords – or rather those lords who had been faithful to Parliament. In his letter of 8 April 1657 to Lord Wharton, a not uninterested spectator, Burton predicted that ‘all the old lords that have not forfeited by delinquency will be restored’.49 Yet, as already suggested in the previous chapter, one must be wary of assuming that the advocates of the parliamentary constitution desired a straightforward restoration of the House of Lords. The Humble Petition made the members of the Other House life peers only; once a member died their replacement would be nominated by the Protector and approved by the Other House – thereby precluding a hereditary right to sit.50 Moreover, before the last-minute amendments in June 1657, the Humble Petition stressed that all founding members of the Other House would have to be approved by the Commons before taking their seats – there was nothing to suggest that the old peers were beyond scrutiny or that they should sit merely upon their ancient right. It seems the advocates of the parliamentary constitution only ever envisaged allowing a section of the old peerage to sit in the Other House: only those who had ‘not forfeited’ or, put another way, those who they considered had been faithful to the parliament. To understand whether or not Cromwell’s choices matched these aspirations it is necessary first to consider just how large this pool of old peers was; how many peers was Cromwell expected to summon? In many ways the answer is not clear at all; discerning the identity of the faithful peers was very much contingent upon the political stance one had taken in the late 1640s and beyond. It is clear that more peers sided with the Royalists during the Civil War than remained with the Parliament. Richard Cust has estimated that of the English peers active in politics in 1642, 49 sided with the king, with just 22 active on behalf of parliament.51 Others simply stayed away from politics or tried not to commit to one side or the other – such as the earls of Leicester, Salisbury and Suffolk.52 The majority of those who remained at Westminster in 1642 favoured a quick end to hostilities through a negotiated peace.53 A string of parliamentary defeats, and the Commons’ rejection of agitation in the Lords for fresh peace proposals in August 1643, caused yet more peers to defect to the King. Although a number of them skulked back to London after receiving a rather lukewarm reception at Oxford, they were not readmitted into the Lords.54 Rather, an ordinance was passed disabling 49  50  51  52  53  54 

Bodl., Carte MS 228, fol. 84. Gardiner, Documents, p. 452. R. Cust, Charles I and the Aristocracy (Cambridge, 2013), pp. 300–2. Ibid., pp. 295–302 and appendix 2. Firth, House of Lords, pp. 132–3. Ibid., pp. 132–5. 85

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any peer who joined the Royalist cause from subsequently resuming their seat at Westminster unless ‘approved of, and consented unto by both Houses of Parliament’.55 As such, by the end of the first Civil War there were relatively few ‘faithful’ parliamentarian peers. A printed list from the summer of 1646, suggestively titled The great Champions of England, calculated that the number of peers who ‘stood right to this Parliament’ was just twenty-nine.56 The Lords’ Journal suggests that the numbers attending the chamber was smaller still. In 1644, average daily attendance was in the mid-teens; the growing prospect of peace caused this to rise to twenty-two by the middle of 1646, but it dropped off again by the end of the year.57 With such a small membership, fresh attempts were made to fill the vacant seats. On 10 February 1647 an Ordinance was presented to readmit those lords who had returned from Oxford, but the ordinance was narrowly rejected.58 The bifurcation of both Houses into ‘Presbyterian’ and ‘Independent’ factions, divided by their attitudes towards the army and projected settlement, winnowed the Lords further. The failure of the Presbyterian coup in the summer of 1647 and the restoration of the Independent members by the army resulted in the impeachment of seven Presbyterian peers, effectively giving control of the chamber to a group of around a dozen peers headed by the earl of Northumberland and Viscount Saye.59 Although the Presbyterian peers resumed their seats in the summer of 1648 as preparations were made for peace negotiations with the king, attendance levels in the Lords remained relatively low. In the twelve months prior to Pride’s Purge attendance in the chamber rarely exceeded twenty, with the daily average being just eleven.60 After Pride’s Purge attendance collapsed altogether. Although twenty peers sat at some point between 6 December 1648 and the abolition of the House on 6 February 1649, more than half of these attended on three days or fewer. By far the highest turnout was on 2 January when twelve peers attended to reject the Commons’ legislation for putting the king on trial.61 Yet, the average daily attendance in the House of Lords in the two months before its abolition was just five – with only four attending more than half of Firth and Rait, I, 458–9. The great Champions of England: Being a perfect List of the Lords and Commons that have stood right to the Parliament... (London, 1646). According to one estimate, there were 136 peers alive in 1649, of which only 42 were Parliamentarians or ‘neutrals’: Swatland, House of Lords in the Reign of Charles II, p. 9. 57  Firth, House of Lords, p. 153. 58  LJ, VIII, 718; Sydney Papers, pp. 9–12. 59  See Adamson, ‘The English Nobility and the Projected Settlement of 1647’, pp. 567–602. 60  Part of the reason for continued low attendance was that some of the peers – including Northumberland, Middlesex, Pembroke, Salisbury and Saye – were serving as commissioners at Newport: LJ, X, 486. 61  LJ, X, 641–2. 55  56 

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the sittings.62 Royalist commentators ridiculed those who continued sitting, claiming they did ‘little’ but ‘telling of Tales by the Fire’s side’.63 Rumours circulated that this junto of peers was in cahoots with the army leadership. The journalist Marchamont Nedham, then in his Royalist guise, circulated a rumour that the earls of Denbigh, Pembroke and Salisbury, along with Lord North, had visited the army’s headquarters in late December 1648. Pembroke, mercilessly lampooned in the Royalist press for his plain speech, reportedly led the deputation, telling the officers that they were ‘willing to renounce all Titles and Priviledges’; they ‘well knew, God made no Earldoms nor Honours, but all men alike, and that it could not be well till they were so again’. Denbigh apparently went a step further and offered his ‘hand to ward the stirrup’ to allow Fairfax to mount his horse. For such an ‘unworthy prostituting his honor’ Nedham believed that Denbigh deserved being ‘cashiered for ever, out of the nobility’.64 This story, fanciful though it was, played to conservative fears that the revolutionary actions pursued by the army against the king in the winter of 1648–49 would herald the destruction of the peerage too.65 These suspicions seemed to be vindicated on 6 February 1649 when the Rump resolved to abolish the House of Lords. Yet, the Act made efforts to conciliate some of the peerage. It stressed that those lords who had ‘demeaned themselves with honour, courage, and fidelity to the Commonwealth’ should not be ‘excluded from the public councils of the nation’. Any lord who wanted a ‘free vote in Parliament’ in the future would have to be elected ‘as other persons’ to the House of Commons. Those who were not subsequently elected could no longer claim ‘any privilege of Parliament, either in relation to his person, quality, or estate’.66 Few peers took up the offer to serve the Commonwealth regime. The earls of Denbigh, Mulgrave, Pembroke and Salisbury, along with Lord Grey of Warke – all of whom were among the more frequent attendees in the Lords during its final weeks – were nominated by the Rump in mid-February 1649 to sit in the newly created Council of State.67 Yet even these peers were reluctant to serve. Grey refused outright; the other four showed more willing but blanched at the ‘engagement’ required of all councillors before taking their seats.68 As Whitelocke explained, the councillors were asked to approve of ‘all that was done concerning the king & kingship & for taking away the house of Lords’.69 Denbigh, for one, could not ‘with Honour, ­subscribe’, The earls of Denbigh, Kent, Mulgrave and Pembroke. Mercurius Pragmaticus, 39 (19–26 Dec. 1648), sig. Eee2r. 64  Ibid., 39 (19–26 Dec. 1648), sig. Eee2r–v; Bodl., Clarendon MS 34, fol. 12v. 65  For more on the veracity of this source, see M. Kishlansky, ‘Mission Impossible: Charles I, Oliver Cromwell and the Regicide’, EHR, 125 (2010), 864–9. 66  Gardiner, Documents, pp. 387–8. 67  CJ, VI, 140–1. 68  CJ, VI, 146–7. 69  BL, MS Add. 37344, fols 263v–264r. 62  63 

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it ‘being contrary to what he then acted as a Peer in the House of Lords’.70 When the engagement was subsequently altered so that councillors had only to ‘adhere to this present Parliament’ and the government as it was settled ‘without King or House of Lords’, Denbigh, Pembroke and Salisbury duly subscribed, with only Mulgrave still unwilling to serve.71 Three peers also successfully pursued the option of being elected as MPs. Unsurprisingly, the first peer to do so was the earl of Pembroke, the most assiduous attendee in the Lords in the weeks prior to its abolition, who was admitted into the Commons in April 1649 after being chosen MP for Berkshire.72 The following month Lord Howard of Escrick took his seat as MP for Carlisle, and in September 1649 the earl of Salisbury was elected MP for King’s Lynn.73 Yet, the majority of peers kept their distance from involvement in the Commonwealth regime. Clearly, there were many ways to define the ‘faithful’ parliamentarian peerage by 1657. Yet, no matter which criteria one used they were a relatively small group – certainly not large enough to fill all seventy places in the Other House. Even if one takes a broad definition, there were no more than twenty-five peers still living in 1657 who had previously sat in the House of Lords during the 1640s and adhered to the parliamentarian cause up to the moment of Pride’s Purge.74 If one discounts those peers impeached for sitting during the Presbyterian coup in the summer of 1647, who were unlikely to appeal to Cromwell and the army, the field of parliamentarian peers was closer to twenty.75 Alternatively, if the faithful peers were taken to be those willing to maintain an active political role beyond Pride’s Purge, or beyond the abolition of the House of Lords, the potential candidates would have been no more than half a dozen.76 Of course, with the Commons removed from the nomination process it was left to Cromwell’s discretion to decide which of the old peers, if any, merited a place in the Other House. From an early stage reports suggested that he was likely to summon only a handful. In August 1657, Mabbott predicted that ‘there is to bee of the other House 12 of the old nobility of England’.77 The actual number was smaller still, with just seven English lords receiving CJ, VI, 146. Gardiner, Documents, p. 384; Firth, House of Lords, pp. 223–4. 72  CJ, VI, 187. 73  CJ, VI, 201, 297. 74  The earls of Kent, Middlesex and Pembroke all died between the abolition of the Lords and the nomination of the Other House. 75  Those impeached peers still living in 1657 were: the earls of Lincoln and Suffolk; Lords Berkeley, Hunsdon and Maynard. Lord Willoughby of Parham was also still alive in 1657, but unlike the others he broke with the parliamentarians in 1648 and declared his allegiance to the king. 76  Those still alive in 1657 were the earls of Denbigh, Mulgrave, Nottingham and Salisbury; Lords Grey of Warke and Howard of Escrick. 77  Clarke Papers, III, 115: 11 Aug. 1657. 70  71 

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writs of summons. Only five of these – the earls of Manchester, Mulgrave and Warwick, Viscount Saye and Lord Wharton – had actually sat in the House of Lords before. The other two, Lords Eure and Fauconberg, inherited their titles only after the chamber was abolished.78 Also summoned was the eldest son of the earl of Leicester, Philip Sidney, who held the courtesy title of ‘Viscount Lisle’ following his father’s elevation to the earldom in 1626 but did not sit in the Lords. That Cromwell summoned only this small group of old peers is revealing. It was not simply because his options were limited – as already noted the pool of old lords was much larger. A closer examination of those chosen, and those left out, gives a better sense of who Cromwell saw as the ‘faithful’ old lords, as well as his vision for settlement as a whole. Cromwell’s relationship with the nobility was complex and shifting. It is clear that, through a range of political, religious and kinship networks he was associated with members of the peerage. Yet, the extent to which his meteoric rise during the 1640s was owing to his connections with the godly circle of peers who led opposition to the Personal Rule is debatable. While John Morrill speculated that Cromwell’s election to the Long and Short Parliaments as MP for Cambridge was the result of his ties to the earl of Warwick, Andrew Barclay has shown that his election could just as plausibly be the product of Cromwell’s connections to the godly opponents of Laudian rule in Cambridge’s town corporation.79 The working relationship at Westminster between MPs and the Lords has also been the subject of recent debate. John Adamson, in particular, has advanced the thesis that members of the House of Lords often orchestrated parliamentarian politics in the 1640s: MPs like Cromwell were the ‘men of business’ for the Lords.80 Yet, this thesis surely breaks down the deeper one goes into the 1640s, not least in the period after the emergence of the New Model Army as a major political player – and reaches breaking point with the abolition of the upper chamber in 1649.81 If the Civil Wars were the product of a noble revolt their aftermath saw a revolt against the political role of the nobility. It is unclear how far Cromwell backed the occlusion of the nobility from political power. As with many other aspects of Cromwell’s political career, his relationship with the parliamentarian peers appears inconsistent or contradictory. This is partly a product of the evidence: so much of what we know derives from the testimony of Cromwell’s enemies. Depending on what axe G.E.C., Peerage, V, 182–3, 264–5. J. Morrill, ‘The Making of Oliver Cromwell’, in idem (ed.), Oliver Cromwell and the English Revolution (London, 1990), pp. 43–5; A. Barclay, Electing Cromwell: The Making of a Politician (London, 2011), chapter 8. 80  Adamson, ‘Parliamentary Management’, pp. 21–50. 81  Kishlansky, ‘Saye What?’, pp. 917–37. 78  79 

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they had to grind, they portrayed him either as a toadying adherent to the lordly interest or a bitter opponent of nobility. The strongest evidence that Cromwell was no friend to the nobility derives from his bitter quarrel with his military commander the earl of Manchester in late 1644. Manchester himself claimed that Cromwell’s ‘expressions were sometimes against the Nobilitie; that he hoped to live to see never a Nobleman in England, and he loved such better then others because they did not love lords’.82Another deponent claimed that when Cromwell heard news that ‘some lords of the King’s side [were] slaine’, he enthusiastically ‘replyed that God fought against them, for God would have noe lording over his peopell’.83 Perhaps there was some substance to these claims. One is reminded of Cromwell’s famous letter to the commissioners in Suffolk in September 1643, with its memorable claim to ‘rather have a plain russet-coated captain that knows what he fights for, and loves what he knows, than that which you call a gentleman and is nothing else’.84 It was easy enough for Manchester and his allies to portray such sentiments as ingrained hatred for social superiors. In reality, Cromwell’s overriding attitude was surely that men of principle, the ‘godly pretious men’ as Manchester’s allies derided them, should prosecute the war effort.85 It was Manchester’s military incompetence that made him the target of Cromwell’s ire, not his social rank. Indeed, in his speech at the opening of the first Protectorate Parliament in September 1654 Cromwell made plain his distaste for ‘Leveller’ principles and praised the ‘ranks and orders of men, whereby England hath been known for hundreds of years’.86 That Cromwell bore no personal animosity towards the nobility is further demonstrated by his close friendship throughout the 1640s with those ‘Independent’ peers who shared his aims for the war and its outcome, most notably Viscount Saye and Sele and Lord Wharton. In 1647, as the army took the initiative in negotiating a settlement with Charles I, a number of ‘Leveller’ writers accused Cromwell of kowtowing to the peers. John Wildman, for one, could hardly believe that this was the same ‘Cromwell who professed to Manchester’s face, that England would never flourish, until he was only Mr Mountagu, nor the public affairs be managed successfully, whilst a house of Peers are extant’.87 Lilburne recalled how at one meeting at Lord Wharton’s house, Cromwell went so far as to profess that ‘the Lords had as true a Right to their Legislative and Jurisidictive power, as he had to the Coat ‘A Letter from the Earl of Manchester to the House of Lords’, in S.R. Gardiner (ed.), Camden Miscellany VIII, Camden Society, NS, 31 (1883), pp. 1–3. 83  ‘Statement by an Opponent of Cromwell’, in J. Bruce and D. Masson (eds), The Quarrel between the Earl of Manchester and Oliver Cromwell, Camden Society, NS, 12 (1875), pp. 71–7. 84  Carlyle, I, 154. 85  ‘Statement by an Opponent’, p. 72. 86  Carlyle, II, 342. 87  J. Wildman, Putney Projects. Or the Old Serpent In a new Forme (London, 1647), p. 42. 82 

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on his back’.88 This alleged affinity between Cromwell and the Independent peers was not proof positive that the army grandees were being manipulated by the members of the House of Lords. The aim of the Levellers was no doubt to undermine Cromwell and the grandees in the eyes of their subordinates. Insinuations about ‘Lieut. Gen. Cromwell, and his Lordly interest’ played to those fears, which the Levellers worked hard to nurture, that the officers were brokering a peace settlement for themselves and their lordly allies while leaving the common soldier out in the cold.89 Again, there is probably a modicum of truth in these accusations. Cromwell clearly strived to placate those peers who supported the army and was reluctant to see the House of Lords abolished. At Putney in 1647, both Cromwell and Ireton parried demands to divest the House of Lords of its negative voice completely.90 Although Cromwell accepted the Commons’ right to act unilaterally in January 1649, he apparently did not believe it should necessarily spell the end for the Lords. According to one report, he was ‘very violent’ against suggestions that the ‘house of Peers might be wholly suppressed’, and claimed the Commons were ‘mad’ to ‘incense all the Peers of the whole kingdom against them, at such a time where they had more need to study a near union with them’.91 While the events of 1648–49 left the position of the Lords untenable, it seems his preference was for retaining a second chamber in an attenuated form, if only out of respect for his allies there. As such, it is hardly surprising that when Cromwell nominated the Other House both Saye and Wharton were at the forefront of his mind. Throughout the 1650s he tried to bring Wharton, in particular, back into the political fold. Writing to Wharton from Ireland on 1 January 1650, Cromwell lamented how his ‘friend should withdraw his shoulder from the Lord’s work’ out of ‘false mistaken reasonings’.92 Shortly before the Battle of Worcester, he again warned Wharton not to ‘stumble at the dispensations of God’ and reason himself ‘out of His service’: they must ‘break through old disputes’.93 It seems these overtures bore fruit in June 1652 when Cromwell entered negotiations about a possible marriage between his son Henry and Wharton’s daughter. Yet, Wharton was evidently unenthusiastic about the match: Cromwell acknowledged that ‘your Lordship … have your share of ­difficulties to conflict with; which may make the business uneasy’.94 W. Prynne, A Plea for the Lords And House of Peers: Or A full, necessary, seasonable, enlarged Vindication of the just, antient hereditary Right of the Lords, Peers, and Barons of this Realm to sit, vote, judge in all the Parliaments of England (London, 1658), p. 46. 89  J. Lilburne, Two Letters Writ by Lieut. Col. John Lilburne, Prerogative prisoner in the Tower of London, to Col Henry Marten, a Member of the House of Commons (London, 1647), pp. 4–5. 90  Clarke Papers, I, 378–83, 391–2, 396–7. 91  Bodl., Clarendon MS 34, fols 73–4. 92  Carlyle, I, 521–3; see also ibid., II, 119. 93  Ibid., II, 219. 94  Ibid., III, 286. 88 

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Although the ­proposed m ­ arriage never came to fruition, Cromwell continued to reach out to Wharton.95 In December 1653, as the new regime took shape, Wharton’s associates urged him to ‘come up to London with as much speede as possible’ because they believed he was being considered as a member of the new protectoral council.96 In this context, Cromwell’s decision to summon Wharton and Saye to the Other House was simply the latest in a series of olive branches extended to his former political allies. Conversely, Cromwell overlooked a number of parliamentarian peers despite their willingness to remain active in politics following the events of 1649. He did not summon any of those peers who served on the Commonwealth’s Council of State or had been elected as MPs to the Rump. In some cases the reason for their omission is easier to guess than others.97 Lord Howard of Escrick, for instance, was tainted during the Commonwealth for his corrupt activities, resulting in his expulsion from both the Commons and Council, a ten thousand-pound fine and a spell in the Tower.98 Other peers who served the Commonwealth regime were viewed with suspicion. For instance, William Cecil, second earl of Salisbury, continued to seek public office during the Protectorate and was elected as MP for Hertfordshire to the first Protectorate Parliament in 1654. Yet, the protectoral authorities appear to have found Salisbury suspect. Although elected to the second Protectorate Parliament in 1656, he was one of the MPs excluded by the Council.99 Although he was later readmitted to the parliament and even went on to vote for Cromwellian kingship in early 1657, he did not receive a summons to the Other House.100 Another surprising omission was Basil Fielding, second earl of Denbigh. Denbigh was closely associated with the Independent group of peers and, as the fanciful news of him stooping to help Fairfax mount his horse attests, was widely believed to be a friend of the army grandees. Indeed, it is largely on this assumption that historians have suggested that Denbigh was behind a ‘mission’ in late 1648, supported by Cromwell, to save Charles I’s life – albeit, the evidence for this is flimsy at best.101 Despite initial reservations, Denbigh served on the first two Councils of State under the Commonwealth. Although he went into political retirement after the fall of the Rump, he was active in local government in his native Warwickshire during the Protectorate. It also seems Denbigh remained in contact with his former allies, including some G.F. Trevallyn Jones, Saw-Pit Wharton (Sydney, 1967), chapter 14. Bodl., Carte MS 103, fol. 198.   97  The most prominent peer associated with the Rump, the fourth earl of Pembroke, died in Jan. 1650.   98  CJ, VI, 590–2 (20, 24, 25 June 1651); Worden, Rump, p. 243; V. Slater, ‘first Baron Howard of Escrick (d. 1675)’, ODNB.   99  CJ, VII, 425 100  A Narrative of the late Parliament, p. 22. 101  See Kishlansky, ‘Mission Impossible’, pp. 844–74; C. Holmes ‘The Trial and Execution of Charles I’, HJ, 53:2 (2010), 295–7.   95    96 

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tantalizing meetings with Saye and Wharton in 1657.102 Yet, as with those other peers who served the Rump, Denbigh was overlooked by Cromwell. In fact, of the peers who continued sitting regularly beyond Pride’s Purge only Edmund Sheffield, second earl of Mulgrave, was summoned to the Other House. Mulgrave played no role in the Commonwealth regime; he did not seek election to the Rump and refused the revised oath in 1649 to serve on the Council. By 1657, however, he was one of the Cromwellian establishment, having been made a member of the protectoral Council on 19 June 1654.103 It is possible that Mulgrave drew closer to the Protectorate to further his own interests. For security reasons, in 1651 the Commonwealth’s Council ordered that Mulgrave’s ancestral home, Mulgrave Castle, should be slighted.104 Mulgrave spent years trying to get compensation, with the Protectoral Council eventually ordering that a sum of £1,000 should be paid.105 Shortly after this compensation was agreed, Mulgrave accepted a seat on the Council, perhaps as a quid pro quo for satisfaction of his grievances.106 It has even been suggested that Mulgrave was invited on the Council as part of a design on Cromwell’s behalf to promote men of high social standing to the government.107 Yet, Mulgrave was not exactly one of the doyens of the parliamentary cause; he was a relatively inexperienced lord, having only entered the House of Lords in October 1646 following the death of his grandfather, the first earl. Whatever the circumstances of Mulgrave’s entry to the Council, however, by 1657 he was a Protectoral insider: his summons to the Other House was as much a product of his membership of the Council than owing to his lordly title. If Cromwell was unwilling to summon those peers who served the Rump, he also overlooked former allies rumoured to have turned suspect in their opinions. Most conspicuous was the omission of the other pillar of the Saye– Northumberland group, Algernon Percy, tenth earl of Northumberland. Like Saye and Wharton, Northumberland broke with the army in the wake of the Second Civil War and served, along with Saye, as a treaty commissioner at Newport. During the 1650s rumours circulated that Northumberland was disaffected towards the Protectorate. In the wake of the Royalist risings of spring 1655 one of Thurloe’s informants reported that ‘the earl of Northumberland had given order to his stuard … to cause all his lordship’s friends and tenants to declare and rise for the king upon all occations’.108 A. Hughes, Politics, Society and Civil War in Warwickshire, 1620–1660 (Cambridge, 1987), pp. 297, 301. 103  CSPD, 1654, p. 214. 104  CSPD, 1651, pp. 72, 74, 75 (6, 7, 8 Mar. 1651). 105  CSPD, 1651, p. 496; CSPD 1653–4, pp. 164, 384; CSPD 1654, pp. 65, 196. The money had still not been paid in Mar. 1655: CSPD 1655, p. 62. 106  CSPD, 1654, p. 230; Worden, God’s Instruments, pp. 201–2. 107  Worden, God’s Instruments, pp. 201–2. 108  Thurloe, I, 749–50. The information in this letter is doubtful, however, as the informant also claimed that four of those subsequently summoned to the Other House (earls of 102 

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It is also possible Cromwell decided not to summon Northumberland because he knew he would not accept. According to one Royalist commentator in early 1659, Richard Cromwell tried to cajole Northumberland into sitting in the Other House when the third Protectorate Parliament assembled. Yet, Northumberland’s response was that he was very willing ‘to serve him with life & fortune’, but that until the ‘government was such as his Predecessors have served under’ he ‘could not in honour’ accept a summons to the Other House.109 Perhaps Oliver made similar overtures to Northumberland and other parliamentarian peers in late 1657 and met with similar responses. If Cromwell’s reasons for overlooking certain peers are murky, however, his motives for summoning others is easier to discern. The selection of the earl of Warwick and Lord Fauconberg made perfect sense given that both had recently become tied to the Cromwell family through marriage. Robert Rich, second earl of Warwick, like Saye and Wharton, was an estranged political ally from the 1640s. Yet, unlike Saye and Wharton, Warwick assumed a much more public profile during the reconstituted Protectorate of the Humble Petition and Advice. Reporting on Cromwell’s investiture in June 1657, it was worthy of note in the official newsbooks that it was ‘the Earl of Warwick, who bare the Sword before his Highness’ and assisted Speaker Widdrington in investing the Protector with the accoutrements of office.110 Warwick’s sudden emergence after years of retirement was no doubt owing to marriage negotiations between his grandson and heir Robert Rich, and Cromwell’s daughter Frances. Since early 1656, Cromwell and Warwick had been discussing terms, with the Protector feigning concern over the financial settlement as a cover for misgivings over the prospective bridegroom, having heard ‘reports of his being a visious man, given to play, and such lik[e] things’. Warwick was determined to make the marriage work, however, telling Cromwell ‘to name what it was he demanded more, and to his utmost he would satisfy him’.111 The dynamics of the negotiations seem quite different from those involving Wharton in 1652. The impression is not of Cromwell seeking to ingratiate himself with the old nobility, but of Warwick trying to tie his family to the ruling dynasty. On 11 November 1657, the marriage went ahead at Whitehall.112 With the Rich and Cromwell families joined through matrimony, it is understandable that Warwick was elevated to the Other House just a fortnight later; the real surprise was that the Protector’s new son-in-law was not given a seat too. Warwick and Manchester, Sir Richard Onslow and Sir Gilbert Gerard) were implicated in the plots. 109  Bodl., Clarendon MS 60, fols 209–210v; Mordaunt to Hyde, 8 Mar. 1658[9]. 110  Mercurius Politicus, 369 (25 Jun–2 July 1657), pp. 7882–4. 111  Thurloe, V, 146: Mary Cromwell to H. Cromwell, 23 June 1656. See also Gaunt, Lansdowne, pp. 221, 288. 112  Mercurius Politicus, 389 (4–12 Nov. 1657), p. 96. 94

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Indeed, Robert Rich was unique among Cromwell’s four sons-in-law in not receiving a summons. Thomas Belasyse, second Baron Fauconberg married Mary Cromwell at Hampton Court on 19 November 1657.113 Like Rich, Fauconberg came under the Protector’s scrutiny before the marriage went ahead, not least because he came from a family with a strong Royalist background.114 In Thurloe’s opinion, writing to Henry Cromwell in November 1657, Fauconberg was ‘a person of very good abilityes, and seemes very sober’, while his estate was sizeable at ‘5000l. per annum’.115 According to the Venetian Resident, it was Fauconberg’s sobriety that most recommended itself to Cromwell, who considered him ‘a solid man … and not given to vanities’.116 It seems likely these qualities also secured Fauconberg a seat in the Other House. His youth – aged 29 in 1657 – also meant that Fauconberg represented a new generation, descended from Royalists but never in arms himself; Cromwell clearly sought to win over such men to his interest.117 Cromwell’s nomination of George sixth Baron Eure is also relatively easy to explain. Succeeding to the barony, but not the estates, of his second cousin in June 1652, Eure was described by one satirical tract as ‘a Gentleman of Yorkshire, not very bulky or imperious for a Lord’.118 Although Eure’s first cousin once removed, William fourth Baron Eure, was a Royalist, George would mark himself out as a supporter of the various Interregnum regimes. Not only was he chosen to be one of the Nominated Assembly, but he was also elected to the first and second Protectorate Parliaments.119 Like Mulgrave and Fauconberg, Eure seems to have been nominated to the Other House less because of his standing among the old peerage – of which he was a minor and recent addition – but because he was a strong adherent to the Cromwellian cause. Of the seven old peers summoned, the most perplexing choice is Edward Montagu second earl of Manchester. Besides his personal enmity towards Cromwell stretching back to their dispute in 1644, Manchester played no active part in politics after the regicide and refused to take the oath of loyalty Ibid., 391 (19–26 Nov. 1657), p. 117. Intriguingly, in the list of members of the 1659 Parliament, he is styled ‘Viscount Faulconberg’, see TNA, C218/1/35; Mus. of Lon., Tangye MS 11a, fols 18r­–59r. This discrepancy may have arose because the viscountcy, conferred upon Belasyse’s grandfather by Charles I in 1643, was invalidated by the Rump’s Act of Feb. 1652: Firth and Rait, I, 564–5, 884–5. As such, Thomas apparently assumed his grandfather’s earlier title of Baron Fauconberg (conferred 1627). Why he was later styled Viscount is unclear, but it is possible either Oliver or Richard subsequently conferred the title, or the rules of the 1652 Act were relaxed in his case. 114  CSPV 1657–1659, p. 134. Both his father and grandfather had been Royalists. 115  Thurloe, VI, 599–600, 628. 116  CSPV 1657–1659, pp. 138–9. 117  Wolseley, Howard and Monck also had Royalist backgrounds and were nominated to the Other House. 118  A Second Narrative, p. 20. 119  Ibid., p. 20. 113 

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to the Commonwealth regime.120 There are intriguing hints that, by 1657, relations between the two men were thawing, however. According to Sir Francis Russell, on 20 June 1657, the ‘earle of Manchester, a great stranger at Whitehall’ met Cromwell to discuss the proposed marriage between Frances Cromwell and his nephew Robert Rich.121 Cromwell’s reasons for summoning Manchester, however, could have been more than a matter of reconciliation. From the time of losing his commission in the Parliamentarian army, Manchester had regularly assumed the position of Speaker of the House of Lords. His appointment would have provided continuity with the past as well as a man with a degree of experience in the workings and procedure of the former upper chamber. It seems that Cromwell summoned the old peers to sit in the Other House because they were men of known loyalty and, in some cases, relatives of the Protector. He chose carefully, selecting those men whose principles he knew best. Cromwell did not bring in the old lords for the sake of adding social weight to the new chamber. As the marriage arrangements for his daughters demonstrated, Cromwell was not awestruck by names, but placed emphasis on the character of the potential candidates. Instead, Cromwell was building a new peerage, incorporating a few loyal allies and past supporters, but mostly detached from the nobility of the past. His choices reflected his hostility to the hereditary principle as a basis for government. In his speech at the dissolution of the first Protectorate Parliament, Cromwell praised the Instrument because ‘it puts us off that hereditary way’, professing that he would rather ‘have men chosen, for their love of God, and to Truth and Justice’.122 Throughout the 1650s Cromwell retained that belief, evident in his selection of officers during the 1640s, that a man’s skills and principles, and not birth alone, were the best qualifications for office. As already noted, awareness of his dislike for hereditary government probably shaped the parliamentary constitution of 1657, not least the rules governing the protectoral succession. It also probably contributed to the rules governing the Other House: as Cromwell later remarked, he found the Humble Petition pleasing precisely because ‘there are not constituted Hereditary Lords, nor Hereditary Kings’.123 Cromwell was not opposed to conferring titles of honour, however. During the course of his Protectorate he conferred no fewer than 37 knighthoods and 12 baronetcies.124 Most revealing was Cromwell’s creation of two hereditary baronies. The form of the letters patent, like the writs of summons, was largely I. Gentles, ‘Montagu, Edward, second earl of Manchester (1602–1671)’, ODNB. Gaunt, Lansdowne, p. 288. 122  Carlyle, II, 422–3. 123  Carlyle, III, 190, 506; Clarke Papers, III, 136. 124  The Perfect Politician Or, A Full View Of the Life and Action... of O. Cromwell (London, 1660), pp. 357–9; M. Noble, Memoirs of the Protectoral-House of Cromwell (2 vols, London, 1787), I, 439–46; W.A. Shaw, The Knights of England (2 vols, London, 1906), II, 223–4; G.E.C., Baronetage, III, 3–9. 120  121 

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a translation of that used by his regal predecessors. In a monarchical flourish, the writ emphasized how ‘among other the Prerogatives which adorne the Imperiall Crowne of these Nations none is of greater excellency … then to be the fountaine of honor’. These honours were granted to the recipient and the ‘heirs males of his body’ to ‘hold and enjoy the same and the like priviledges, prehemineties, dignities and Immunities whatsoever with other Barons of England’.125 First to receive the Protector’s patent was Charles Howard, created Baron Gilsland and Viscount Howard of Morpeth on 20 July 1657.126 Coming shortly after Cromwell’s second inauguration, it is possible that it was a sort of coronation honour.127 Howard’s background was suspect; as one critic mocked, ‘his Relations’ were ‘most Papists and Cavaliers’, and Howard himself was raised a Roman Catholic and suspected of delinquency in his youth.128 Yet, he had proven to be a solid adherent to the Protector. He had fought for Parliament at Worcester in 1651; was nominated to Barebone’s Parliament in 1653; created a Colonel of horse and a councillor of state for Scotland in 1655; and sat in both the first and second Protectorate Parliaments for Cumberland. Like Fauconberg, Howard represented a new generation of Cromwellians untainted by the conflicts of the 1640s. His elevation to a lordly title was not unforeseen: as early as January 1657, Burton heard rumours that ‘Major-General Howard was to be made Baron of Naworth’, adding ‘there is something in it, for they say Major General Howard’s patent is ingrossed’.129 Five months after being created Viscount Morpeth, Howard was summoned to the Other House. On the face of it, this was unsurprising. It was established practice by the seventeenth century for the monarch’s patent to confer both a hereditary honour and the right of parliamentary peerage upon the recipient. Since the middle of Henry VIII’s reign there had been a specific clause in the letters patent positively asserting the right of the recipient and their heirs to sit in parliament.130 This privilege was famously upheld in 1626 following Charles I’s refusal to issue a writ of summons to the earl of Bristol.131 As one tract observed, ‘the Lords and Peeres, are to have their Writts of Summons, Ex debito Justitiae, which was not denyed the Earl of Bristoll upon his petition’.132 It would be misleading, however, to assume that Cromwell’s writ of summons to Howard shortly after he conferred a viscountcy upon him reflected A facsimile of one of the patents is provided in Noble, Memoirs, II, 162–3. Perfect Politician, p. 356; Noble, Memoirs, I, 439; A Second Narrative, p. 10. 127  Sherwood, King In All But Name, p. 106. 128  Second Narrative, p. 10. 129  Burton, I, 321. 130  Prynne, Plea for the Lords (1658), pp. 49, 150; H. Elsyng, The Ancient Method and Manner of Holding Parliaments (London, 1660), p. 26. 131  LJ, III, 536–7, 544. Foster, House of Lords, pp. 13–18. 132  The Ancient Land-Mark Skreen or Bank Betwixt The Prince or Supreame Magistrate, and the People of England (London, 1659), p. 9. 125  126 

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the lord protector upholding traditional practices. First, the form of letters patent used by Cromwell was subtly different in that it omitted the crucial clause providing a seat for the recipient and their heirs male to successive parliaments. Second, if it had been the intention of Cromwell to renew the old practice of summoning those with honours conferred by letters patent, then he would surely have conferred similar honours upon all the members nominated to the Other House. There was speculation that this would be the case. On 11 August 1657, Mabbott reported that ‘His Highnes’ Councell here are to bee created Barons’, presumably in anticipation of their elevation to the new chamber.133 By early December, the Venetian resident reported that if those nominated to the Other House ‘do not possess the qualifications which render them worthy of such a honour, the Protector will endow them with these out of the absolute authority he wields’.134 On 10 December, Philip Jones wrote to Edward Montagu to inform him that ‘His Highnes when I was present gave mr. secretary commands to prepare a patent for a Barony for your Lordship’. Although ‘nothing hath yet been Dunne’ in the matter ‘because … you should have pleasure your selfe to direct your title’, Jones believed it was ‘now past your refusall’.135 Ultimately, however, despite Jones’ assurances, Montagu received no patent of nobility to go with his writ of summons to the Other House. In fact, the only other person to receive a hereditary barony from Cromwell was Edmund Dunch, created Baron Burnell of East Wittenham on 26 April 1658.136 This honour was doubtless a reflection of Dunch’s close ties to the Protector. Besides being Cromwell’s cousin, he sat in both the first and second Protectorate Parliaments as MP for Berkshire.137 Dunch was clearly a conservative figure: although a member of the Rump, he sat infrequently and was later identified as one of those ‘kinglings’ who voted for Cromwellian monarchy.138 Crucially, however, Dunch’s barony did not make him a member of the Other House. True, his patent was issued only after Cromwell had nominated the founding members of the Other House but, significantly, he received no summons to the Other House when it reassembled in 1659. Cromwell broke the once unimpeachable link between hereditary titles and parliamentary peerage. Indeed, few of those who received titles of any kind from the Protector went on to have seats in the Other House. Of the twelve baronets created by Cromwell, for instance, none were chosen as members of the Other House and only a handful of Cromwellian knights 133  134  135  136  137  138 

Clarke Papers, III, 115. CSPV, 1657–1659, p. 140. Bodl., Carte MS 73, fol. 174. Noble, Memoirs, II, 162–3; Perfect Politician, p. 357. G.E.C., Peerage, III, 436–7. Worden, Rump Parliament, p. 389; Narrative of the late Parliament, pp. 17, 22. 98

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were summoned.139 Holding a title was not a prerequisite for sitting in the Other House. Indeed, it was entirely possible for a ‘lord’ summoned to the Other House to be ennobled after they had sat in the chamber. If Whitelocke is to be believed, in August 1658, eight months after he had been summoned to the Other House, Cromwell signed a bill for a ‘Patent to make Whitelocke a Viscount’. Yet, Whitelocke claims he refused the offer because he ‘did not thinke it convenient for him’.140 Besides underlining Cromwell’s dislike for hereditary office, this dislocation of noble titles and membership of the second chamber was necessary to safeguard the Humble Petition and Advice. Given that membership of the Other House was not hereditary, there would be a paradox in making possession of a hereditary title a necessary condition of membership of that chamber. Moreover, it would have added ballast to the argument for the restoration of the old lords en masse. It would have given validity to the principle upheld in the earl of Bristol’s case, that no peer, once ennobled, could be refused a summons to the chamber. Some of those summoned to the Other House were left confused, and a little chagrined, by the fact they did not receive a hereditary barony. Montagu, whose hopes of a barony were raised by Jones, wanted answers.141 Jones’ reply on 22 December was that, even without letters patent, his writ of summons to the Other House ‘makes you a Baron as the learned lawyers say’. Citing ‘mr Selden … in his Titles of honour’, Jones pointed out that while ‘the most Ancient’ baronies ‘before the Conquest and since till King Johns tyme’ were ‘by Tenure’, there was a period ‘from about the later end of King John to the midest of Rich[ard] the 2d, which is about 150 yeares’ when there was ‘noe other way of creating Barons’ but by writ of summons.142 By contrast, the practice of creating baronies by letters patent began only in ‘Rich[ard] the 2nd tyme’ when ‘one Beauchamps steward of the household in the kings time had first patent for a Barony’.143 The fact that the writ of summons to the Other House was ‘the very same’ as the traditional writ also strengthened his case. As such, ‘the old lords as are called’ to the Other House were sent ‘the same summons verbatim to this parliament that they had to former’.144 Of course, Jones’ claims raised the pertinent question of whether those titles created by writ of summons to the Other House would be hereditary or not. Jones thought not. Although the ‘writt creats the dignity … our Petition G.E.C, Baronetage, III, 3–9; Noble, Memoirs, I, 439–46. Seven Cromwellian knights were summoned to the Other House: Packe, Pride, Barkstead, George Fleetwood, Lockhart, Tichborne and Hewson. 140  Whitelocke Diary, p. 495. 141  Bodl., Carte MS 73, fols 174, 186. 142  Bodl., Carte MS 73, fol. 174; Selden, Titles of Honor, 2nd edn (London, 1631), pp. 690–7, 715–20, 744–9. 143  Bodl., Carte MS 73, fol. 174; Selden, Titles of Honor, pp. 744, 747–9. 144  Bodl., Carte MS 73, fol. 174. 139 

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and Advice make it but for life’.145 It seems others thought differently. If Ludlow is to be believed, Lenthall enthusiastically claimed that those who took their places in the House ‘shall themselves and their heirs be for ever peers of England’.146 Certainly, once the members of the Other House took their seats they were routinely styled as ‘lords’ – but it seems the title was merely for the lifetime of the member, as Jones suggested, rather than hereditary, as Lenthall hoped. In response, the Protectorate’s critics disputed whether Cromwell’s writ was sufficient to summon members to sit in the Other House, let alone confer nobility. In early 1658, William Prynne produced a new and expanded edition of his 1648 tract A Plea for the Lords, which criticized those ‘lackLatin Lords or Lawyers’ who believed any ‘knight or esquire’ could be created a baron by virture of a bare writ of summons.147 The issuing of a ‘writ of summons to any Knight or Esquire … without any special clause of creating him a Baron or Lord in the Writ’ did not ‘ennoble himself, nor his heirs, nor make them Lords and Barons’.148 For the writ of summons to confer a barony or earldom it must style the recipient by that barony or earldom specifically. As Prynne explained, no ‘Lord or Baron is or can be legally created’ without ‘some particular place, Town City, or the like, whereof he is stilled Earl, Lord, or Baron’. To summon a member simply by their name alone, without any title, meant the recipient could claim ‘no such particular stile or title of dignity’. They would be a lord ‘sine titulo, which were absurd’.149 Throughout his work, Prynne stressed that ‘all the Dukes, Marquesses, Earls, Viscounts, Barons, Lords of England have an undoubted, just Right, Priviledge to sit, vote in all Parliaments of England’.150 By summoning a handful of old lords alongside a majority of men who did not have hereditary honours Cromwell clearly obliterated that privilege. Yet, if this decisive break between hereditary rank and parliamentary peerage was innovative, the attempt to supplant the old peers with new men was hardly novel. Defending the Other House to the Commons the following February, Robert Beake pointed to that ‘crazy time … at the end of the Barons’ wars’ when the king ‘found all the Barons direct traitors’ and sent summons to ‘gentlemen and knights’ to fill the places ‘just as now’; they ‘must make new ones when you cannot have the old ones’.151 Cromwell’s writ of summons was in the old form but he summoned few of the old peers. Rather than restoring the old House of Lords, Cromwell nominated a body of men very different in complexion to its predecessor. As he explained on 4 February 1658, it was ‘not titles, nor Lords’ 145  146  147  148  149  150  151 

Bodl., Carte MS 73, fol. 174. Ludlow, II, 312. Prynne, Plea for the Lords (1658), pp. 14, 147–8. Ibid., pp. 14, 17–18, 147–50. Ibid., pp. 14–15, 147–54, 157. Ibid., sig. a†2r. Burton, II, 416. 100

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that they valued.152 It is to these new Cromwellian ‘lords’, and the Protector’s motives in nominating them, that the remainder of this chapter will turn. The ‘New’ Lords With so few old lords summoned to the Other House it was to be expected that critics maligned the Other House for being packed full of ‘ignoble Lords of the new Stamp’.153 The majority of these ‘new’ lords had close ties, both personally and politically, to Cromwell. As the same hostile author put it, they were the Protector’s ‘Sons and Kindred, Flattering Courtiers, corrupt Lawyers, degenerated Sword men, and a sort of luke-warm indifferent Country Knights, Gentlemen and Citizens, most of them self-interested Salary-men’.154 To substantiate this point, the author provided a series of scathing biographies of these men, highlighting their suitableness ‘to be called Lords’. For instance, John Jones, who had ‘lately married the Protectors Sister’ could ‘for Relations sake … be counted fit … to be called Lord Jones’.155 These criticisms were not without substance. No fewer than seventeen, over a quarter of those summoned, had ties of kinship to the Protector.156 Some were close relatives, including Oliver’s sons, Richard and Henry; his sons-in-law, John Cleypole, Lord Fauconberg and Charles Fleetwood; and his brothers-in-law John Desborough and John Jones. There were also three of Cromwell’s cousins: Edward Whalley, Richard Ingoldsby and Richard Hampden. Others, such as Sir Francis Russell and the earl of Warwick were tied to the Cromwell family through the marriage of their offspring to the Protector’s children. Finally, there was a clutch of members related to the Protector through marriage to more distant relations. These included William Lockhart, who married the Protector’s widowed niece in 1654; Sir Gilbert Gerard, Sir John Hobart and William Goffe, who all married the Protector’s cousins; and Oliver St John who first married Cromwell’s first cousin once removed Joanna Barrington and, following her death, went on to marry Cromwell’s second cousin once removed Elizabeth Cromwell. Yet, while the presence of these relations in the Other House was an obvious target, the charge of nepotism needs qualification. Undoubtedly, their relationship to Cromwell helped, but most of them had a combination of experience, social standing and office that made them prime candidates anyway. It also seems only natural that in nominating a body of members on whose integrity and soundness the future of the regime rested, that Cromwell chose men he knew were faithful to him. Moreover, the fact that at least one 152  153  154  155  156 

Clarke Papers, III, 137; Carlyle, III, 189, 505. A Second Narrative, p. 23. Ibid., pp. 23–4 ; Ludlow, II, 31–2. A Second Narrative, p. 17. See appendix: ‘Relation to OC’. 101

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of his close relatives, his new son-in-law Robert Rich, received no writ of summons shows that Cromwell was unwilling to choose inexperienced men just because they happened to be members of his family. Similarly, Cromwell preferred men of judgement and experience to men of social standing. Of course, this raised obvious criticisms from the regime’s enemies about the lowborn members of the Other House, particularly those who had risen to prominence in military service during the 1640s and 1650s. The complaints were not dissimilar to those levelled against the ‘new men’ of the Tudor age over a century earlier. According to the author of the Second Narrative, John Desborough was a ‘Yeoman of about sixty or seventy pounds per annum at the beginning of the Wars’ but had since ‘grown considerable’; Thomas Pride was ‘an honest Brewer in London’ now ‘grown very bulky and considerable’; John Hewson had started out as ‘an honest Shoomaker or Cobler in London’. Others singled out for their lowly backgrounds included John Barkstead, ‘sometime a Goldsmith’; Edward Whalley ‘formerly a Woollen Draper’; William Goffe an apprentice to ‘a Salter in London’; James Berry ‘a Clerk or Overseer’ in an ‘Iron Works’; and Thomas Cooper ‘sometime a Shop-keeper or Salter in Southwark’.157 Like the recurrent accusation that Oliver Cromwell was once a brewer, not all of these claims about the low birth of the membership of the Other House were wholly accurate, however.158 Edward Whalley, for instance, was the second son of a Nottinghamshire landowner, albeit he did serve as an apprentice and subsequently became a freeman of the Merchant Taylors’ Company.159 In fact, it seems there were relatively few members of the Other House who were below the level of lower gentry status prior to the Civil Wars, possibly no more than eight out of the sixty-two members chosen.160 So, while the social standing of the Other House was lower than a traditional House of Lords, it was not the harbinger of social revolution that its critics claimed. Almost half of those summoned held some form of title: there were four earls, three viscounts, four barons, seven baronets and twelve knights.161 In fact, the majority of those summoned, at least 80 per cent, can be categorized as lesser gentry or higher; as Whitelocke noted, there were ‘divers Noblemen, Knights & gentlemen of auntient families & good estates’.162 Ludlow notes how the Other House comprised of ‘some of the gentry, who had considerable estates derived to them from their ancestors’, including ‘Mr. [William] Pierpoint, Mr. Alexander Popham, Sir Richard A Second Narrative, pp. 3, 11–14; CSPD, 1657–1658, p. 232. L.L. Knoppers, ‘ “Sing old Noll the Brewer”: Royalist Satire and Social Inversion, 1648–64’, Seventeenth Century, 15 (2000), 32–52. 159  C. Durston, ‘Whalley, Edward (d. 1674/5)’, ODNB. 160  See appendix: ‘Social status’. 161  See appendix: ‘Title(s)’. 162  Whitelocke Diary, p. 481; see appendix: ‘Social status’. 157  158 

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Onslow, Sir Thomas Honywood, Mr. Edmund Thomas, Sir Gilbert Gerard and others’.163 For the author of the vitriolic Second Narrative, these ‘luke-warm indifferent Country Knights’ were a poor substitute for the old lords.164 Yet by the 1650s the distinction, economically at least, was not clear-cut. Defenders of the old lords, like Prynne, stressed that the nobles derived their political clout from being ‘persons of greater Estates, Families, & Fortunes then others’.165 Yet the nobility had, quite literally, seen their fortunes decline during the Civil Wars. The most obvious losers were those Royalist lords who had their estates confiscated or were heavily fined. Yet, both the Royalist and Parliamentarian peers had also made substantial financial contributions to sustain the war effort in the first place and suffered destruction to their properties and loss of revenues. Their plight is evoked in a petition presented to the Lords by Viscount Saye in December 1645. Saye reminded the House of the ‘Thousand Pounds’ that he ‘did lend’ to the parliament at the ‘Beginning of these Troubles’, and complained about how Royalist forces had seized control of those areas where his ‘Lands lieth’ meaning he ‘received nothing from the Estate’. In total his loses were estimated at £10,000, not including damage to his ‘principle House’ at Broughton in Oxfordshire, which had been ransacked by Royalist soldiers. To make ends meet, Saye sold ‘all his Plate’ and borrowed money ‘so long as he could’.166 Doubtless, Saye embellished his account to further his cause, but it seems to bear out those claims, voiced by Harrington and his disciples, that the peers did not have the same economic standing that they once had.167 Conversely, the lowborn members of the Other House were not as impecunious as their critics suggested. Indeed, it was the fact that these men were climbing the social ladder by amassing great fortunes that made them so abhorrent. Many of those summoned to the Other House had purchased or been gifted lands confiscated from parliament’s enemies. One of the more notorious examples was Sir Arthur Haselrig whose purchase of Crown and Bishops’ lands in Northumberland and Durham earnt him the nickname of the ‘Bishop of Durham’.168 Also targeted by the regime’s critics was Philip Jones, who ‘made Hay whilst the Sun shin’d, and hath improved his Interest and Revenue in Land to 3000l per annum’ and was ‘very much suspected, having gotten so great an Estate in so short a time’.169 Likewise, Lord Ludlow, II, 30–1. A Second Narrative, pp. 18–19. 165  Prynne, Pleas for the Lords (1648), pp. 25–6. 166  LJ, VIII, 39. 167  See Chapters 5 and 6. 168  Burton, II, 423–4; A. Annesley, England’s Confusion: Or A True and Impartial Relation of the late Traverses of State in England (London, 1659), p. 10. 169  A Second Narrative, p. 7; B. Morgan, Articles of Impeachment... against Col. Phillip Jones (London, 1659). 163  164 

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Commissioner John Lisle had ‘improved his interest … and bought State Lands good [and] cheap’.170 Thirty-one members, exactly half of those summoned, held some form of office in the civil administration of Britain. They included fifteen of the sixteen active members of the Council, Thurloe being the sole councillor left to manage affairs in the Commons. There were also a number of court lawyers, including the two Lord Commissioners of the Great Seal, Nathaniel Fiennes and John Lisle, Lord Chief Justices Glynne and St John and Master of the Rolls Lenthall. Court officials also gained seats, including Lord Chamberlain Sir Gilbert Pickering, Comptroller of the Household Philip Jones and Master of the Horse John Cleypole. Also summoned were financial administrators of varying degrees, ranging from Lord Commissioners of the Treasury Whitelocke, Montagu and Sydenham to the pluralist Sir William Roberts, who was an auditor of the receipt, obstructions commissioner and wine licence agent.171 Of course, for Cromwell, these men were chosen because they were effective administrators; their capabilities, and fidelity to the government, were well known to him. For the Protectorate’s critics, however, they were ‘horse-leeches’ having ‘sucked and drawn into themselves the expected fruit of all the blood and Treasure expended in the late War’.172 Many of them commanded large salaries. The councillors were each entitled to a salary of £1,000 per annum. Nathaniel Fiennes, holding the offices of Privy Councillor, Commissioner of the Great Seal and Keeper of the Privy Seal was estimated to be worth ‘3000l per annum’; Charles Fleetwood, until the expiration of his commission as lord deputy of Ireland in 1657, was reportedly earning a yearly salary from his numerous employments of ‘6620l 13s. 4d’.173 Plainly, the majority of those chosen to sit in the Other House had a vested interest in the continuation of Cromwellian rule. Many owed their estates to the confiscation of royal, church and Royalist lands and were therefore unlikely to welcome a restoration of the Stuart interest or the return of episcopacy. Half of the membership held office under the Protectorate, and the salaries and perquisites that went with them. As one critic complained, they were likely to ‘endeavour all they can to uphold that Interest they are hyred to serve, and whereby their own Incomes and Salaries may be continued’.174 Most of those chosen also had parliamentary experience. Only three of the sixty-two summoned had never sat in an English Parliament before.175 Over half of the members had sat at Westminster before 1649; besides the A Second Narrative, p. 7. G.E. Aylmer, The State’s Servants: The Civil Service of the English Republic, 1649–1660 (London, 1973), pp. 251–2; Narrative of the late Parliament, p. 16. 172  Narrative of the late Parliament, p. 19. 173  Ibid., pp. 9–18. 174  Ibid., p. 19; CSPV, 1657–1659, p. 149. 175  Cassillis, Fauconberg and Wariston. Three others sat only in Barebone’s Parliament: Monck, Tichborne and Tomlinson. 170  171 

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Table 1: Date of Birth of Members of the Other House by decade Date of birth

Before 1590

1590– 1599

1600– 1609

1610– 1619

1620– 1629

1630 +

Total

Members

5

8

16

15

10

3

57

Table 2: Age of Members of the Other House in December 1657 Age in Dec. 1657

20s

30s

40s

50s

60+

Members % (out of 57)

6 10.5

10 17.5

16 28.1

15 26.3

10 17.5

five old English nobles who had sat in the Lords prior to its abolition, a further twenty-seven of those nominated to the Other House had been MPs in the Long Parliament. Nineteen of the members were also ex-Rumpers, while twenty of them were nominated to Barebone’s Parliament. More significantly, forty-seven members were elected to at least one of the first two Protectorate Parliaments, fifteen of them becoming MPs for the first time.176 Thus, the majority of those summoned to the Other House had knowledge of parliamentary proceedings, albeit just under half of them had only ever sat in the unicameral Parliaments of the Interregnum.177 In this sense, Cromwell was not exaggerating when he told the Commons that the Other House were ‘men of their own ranke and quality’.178 Given that many of those summoned to the Other House were office holders during the Protectorate, it is unsurprising that the characteristics of this group match those found by Gerald Aylmer in his study of the Interregnum civil service.179 Besides being of a relatively lower social class than their pre-war predecessors, they were also relatively young. The date of birth of fifty-seven of the sixty-two lords of the Other House is either known or can be inferred.180 As the tables demonstrate, at least thirty-one of those summoned were born in the first two decades of the seventeenth century and were in their 40s or 50s by the time they received their summons, with an average age of 48.181 This suggests that most members of the Other House had been active during the Civil War years, being anywhere from their late 20s to early 40s at See appendix: ‘Previous Parliaments’. See appendix: ‘Previous Parliaments’. 178  Clarke Papers, III, 137. 179  Aylmer, The State’s Servants, passim. 180  For instance, no date of birth is known for Thomas Pride. But, given that he was apprenticed in 1622 and gained his freedom in 1629, it is reasonable to assume he was born towards the end of the period 1600–09. 181  The mean has been calculated from the fifty-three members for whom an exact year of birth is known. 176  177 

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the outbreak of hostilities. The majority of members were also younger than Cromwell, who was 58 at the time of choosing the Other House. The oldest man summoned was the 77-year-old Francis Rous. At the other extreme, three were born after 1630 and as many as six were in their 20s at the time of their summons.182 This data should be qualified by the fact that five lords have no known date of birth – including Barkstead, Berry, Cooper and Hewson. Yet, given the military background of these four, all of whom fought in the Civil Wars, it is likely that they were closer to the average rather than the extremities.183 Ultimately, however, it is unlikely Cromwell paid much attention to age, or social background, when nominating the Other House. Men were chosen not because they held the characteristics of a particular social group or represented a certain generation, they were symptoms of Cromwell’s choices but not his guiding principles. As the next sections demonstrate, far more important for Cromwell were that those summoned held the right political and religious opinions. ‘Civilian’ and ‘Military’ Cromwellians Aside from the low birth of its membership, another criticism frequently levelled against the Other House was that it was a ‘council of officers’.184 Yet, this characterization, emanating largely from Republican polemicists, should be handled with care. There is nothing to suggest that, when choosing members, Cromwell intended the new chamber to be a bulwark for the military interest. While a sizeable minority of those chosen held military office, they were by no means the dominant force. Only fourteen of the sixty-two summoned were active army officers, commanding between them a total of nineteen regiments.185 Three other members also become army officers very shortly after receiving their summons.186 Yet, even with these factored in, there were only seventeen serving officers, commanding a total of twenty-two regiments, summoned to the Other House. Distorting matters was the fact that some of those summoned held military titles but no regimental commands, such as William Sydenham, Philip Jones and John Jones who were all styled ‘colonels’.187 Philip Skippon was also often styled ‘major-general’, but ill health meant his military duties in The youngest member was probably Edmond Thomas, who could have been as young as 24. 183  The other member whose date of birth is uncertain is the enigmatic Lord Eure. 184  Burton, IV, 35. 185  See appendix: ‘Serving Officers’. 186  These were Richard Cromwell, Fauconberg and Lockhart. See C.H. Firth and G. Davies, The Regimental History of Cromwell’s Army (2 vols, Oxford, 1940), I, 259, 286; II, 694–5. 187  Governors of the Isle of White, Cardiff and Anglesey respectively. 182 

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London during the major-generals experiment were transferred to Lieutenant of the Tower John Barkstead.188 Unsurprisingly, the government’s Republican critics, striving to inflate the military presence in the Other House, styled members with their military titles irrespective of whether or not that title was honorary.189 Indeed, there was no shortage of men in the Other House with military experience; almost two-thirds of those summoned had served in the armed forces at some point during the 1640s and 1650s. Politically, however, it is insufficient to count the number of officers in order to determine the ‘military’ Cromwellian presence in the Other House. In fact, if this group is defined as those who took a hostile stance to Cromwellian kingship in 1657, fewer than half of the serving officers summoned to the Other House were military Cromwellians in their political outlook. The core of this group were Charles Fleetwood, Desborough, Barkstead, Berry, Cooper, Hewson and Pride.190 Two more officers, Whalley and his son-in-law Goffe, were initially reported to be hostile to the kingship, but were subsequently identified as ‘moderate opposers, almost indifferent’, and seem to have fallen in with the civilians instead.191 In fact, somewhat paradoxically, the majority of active army officers summoned to the Other House were ‘civilian’ in their politics. They included the nominal leader of the kingship group, Lord Broghill, who was accounted an active general officer in his capacity of Lieutenant General of the Ordinance in Ireland.192 There was also Howard, Ingoldsby, and Lockhart who all voted for kingship.193 Moreover, there were others – including Henry and Richard Cromwell, Monck and Fauconberg – who, while not present at the kingship debates, were allies of the civilian Cromwellians. If Whalley and Goffe are also added to this group, then ten of the seventeen serving army officers summoned to the Other House held ‘civilian’ sympathies. Conversely, many of those summoned to the Other House were military Cromwellians but held no military office. For instance William Sydenham and the brothers Walter and Sir William Strickland opposed the offer of the Crown in 1657.194 Others are harder to categorize, like Sir Gilbert Pickering who was lampooned as a man who ‘changed with all changes’, and was ‘so A total of nine ‘major generals’ or their deputies were summoned to the Other House: Barkstead, Berry, Desborough, Charles Fleetwood, George Fleetwood, Goffe, Howard, Skippon, Whalley. 189  Second Narrative, pp. 6–7, 17. 190  Gaunt, Lansdowne, pp. 205-6; Clarke Papers, III, 91–2; Thurloe, VI, 93, 219–20; Desborough, Cooper and Hewson all acted as tellers in debates against the civilians, see CJ, VII, 510–11, 520. 191  Gaunt, Lansdowne, pp. 214, 236. 192  Firth and Davies, Regimental History, II, 588. 193  Narrative of the late Parliament, pp. 22–3; Gaunt, Lansdowne, pp. 213–14; CSPV 1657–1659, pp. 35–6. 194  Gaunt, Lansdowne, pp. 205–6. All three acted as tellers for the military Cromwellians during the kingship debates: CJ, VII, 496, 500, 511, 530, 535, 571–8. 188 

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fi­ nical, spruce, and like an old Courtier’ that he was made ‘Lord Chamberlain of the Protectors Houshold or Court’.195 Yet, although he wavered between the groups, not least in the opening months of Richard’s Protectorate, Pickering generally gravitated towards the military Cromwellians. In the opening days of the kingship debates he was identified as one of the Council who were ‘against it’.196 Moreover, the Protector was reportedly aware that any words ‘spoken before Sir Gilbert’ would soon reach the army grandees, as he ‘tells all to L[ord] D[eputy]’ Fleetwood.197 Philip Skippon’s political stance is also unclear. According to Anthony Morgan, Skippon was ‘highly for’ the new parliamentary constitution when it first emerged.198 There is nothing in the parliamentary records, however, to back this claim, and other commentators placed him among the ‘Favourers and Abettors of the Army’.199 He was not identified as one of those who voted for Cromwellian kingship, albeit a serious bout of illness meant he kept a low profile throughout early 1657.200 Even more enigmatic was Viscount Lisle. Like Pickering, Lisle was criticized for ‘changing with every Change, and keeping still … on that side which hath proved Trump’.201 The fact that Lisle did not sit in the second Protectorate Parliament makes classification of his political beliefs in 1657 difficult. His prominent role in the regal second inauguration of the lord protector on 26 June 1657 is testament to his adherence to Cromwell’s interest, but given that military Cromwellians like Charles Fleetwood also participated it should not be read as proof that Lisle had joined the civilians.202 Outside this core group of army grandees and privy councillors, there were others summoned who shared common ground with the military Cromwellian interest. Sir Archibald Johnston of Wariston aligned himself closely with Fleetwood and the military Cromwellians during the second Protectorate Parliament to ensure that Scottish Protestor views were heard at Westminster and Whitehall.203 Similarly, William Steele and Sir Matthew Tomlinson were allies of the former lord deputy and worked with him to frustrate Henry Cromwell’s attempts to enforce ‘civilian’ conciliatory policies in Ireland.204 Lord Eure can also probably be counted a ‘military’ Cromwellian given that he acted as teller for the yeas in a crucial vote on 2 March 1657 which, had A Second Narrative, p. 4. Gaunt, Lansdowne, pp. 205–6. 197  Letter from Gookin, 3 Feb. 1657: Thurloe, VI, 37. 198  Gaunt, Lansdowne, pp. 205–6. 199  R. Baker, A Chronicle of the Kings of England, rev. E. Phillips (London, 1665), p. 659; See also Thurloe, VII, 495–6, which fails to identify Skippon as one of the ‘protectoral’ party on the Council. 200  Narrative of the late Parliament, pp. 22–3; Gaunt, Lansdowne, p. 227 and n. 127. 201  A Second Narrative, pp. 3–4. 202  Mercurius Politicus, 369 (25 June–2 July 1657), pp. 7881–4. 203  Wariston Diary, III, 76–88, 90. 204  See pp. 119–20. 195  196 

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it been successful, would have hindered the passage of the proposed parliamentary constitution.205 Also summoned were a group of three regicides – Sir George Fleetwood, Sir Robert Tichborne and John Jones – who had all been members of the armed forces and whose radical credentials meant they were more likely to side with the military Cromwellians than with the civilians.206 So, at the absolute limit, Cromwell summoned no more than twenty men to the Other House who can be described as military Cromwellians.207 By contrast, at least eighteen of those who voted to insert the royal title into the first article of the Humble Petition and Advice on 25 March 1657 were summoned.208 The size of the civilian Cromwellian presence in the Other House was much larger still, however. Not only did it include those ten ‘civilian’ army officers listed above, but also the privy councillors Nathaniel Fiennes, Philip Jones, Edward Montagu, Sir Charles Wolseley and the Lord President Henry Lawrence.209 The elderly Francis Rous and the earl of Mulgrave are also probable civilians, albeit their absence from the kingship debates makes definitive classification difficult. There were also a number of court lawyers such as Glynne, Lenthall, Lisle and Whitelocke who had tried to convince Cromwell to accept the kingship in April 1657.210 Other notable civilian Cromwellians summoned include the man who first presented the Humble Remonstrance, Sir Christopher Packe, Cromwell’s son-in-law John Cleypole and Sir William Roberts.211 Also well represented were the ‘Presbyterian’ majority whose co-operation with the civilians had been crucial for bringing to fruition the parliamentary constitution. The Surrey gentleman Sir Richard Onslow was reportedly the ‘head of the country party’ for Cromwellian kingship.212 Also in the vanguard was Sir John Hobart of Norfolk who acted as teller alongside other civilian Cromwellians on a number of occasions, including the vote for adhering to the Humble Petition on 4 April after Cromwell’s initial refusal, and was justly labelled ‘a great stickler among the late Kinglings’ by the author of the Second Narrative.213 Hobart’s brother-in-law Richard Hampden should also be added to this group along with Nathaniel Fiennes’ younger brother John who, according to the same mocking author, would ‘follow his brother … and will say No with the rest, when any thing opposes the interest of the new Court’.214 CJ, VII, 493. The vote was to postpone not simply the first clause of the Humble Remonstrance (i.e. that dealing with the kingship) but the whole article. 206  Nine regicides were summoned to the Other House in total: Barkstead, George Fleetwood, Goffe, Hewson, Ingoldsby, John Jones, Pride, Tichborne and Whalley. 207  See appendix: ‘Politics’. 208  See appendix: ‘Politics’. 209  Gaunt, Lansdowne, pp. 205–6. 210  Monarchy Asserted, passim. 211  Narrative of the late Parliament, pp. 22–3. 212  Gaunt, Lansdowne, pp. 205–6. 213  CJ, VII, 511, 520, 535; A Second Narrative, p. 19. 214  A Second Narrative, pp. 19, 20. 205 

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Other country gentlemen likely to support the civilian outlook included Sir Thomas Honywood, described by the Second Narrative as ‘rather soft in his spirit’ and ‘of so hopeful principles for the New Court interest’.215 There was also Henry Cromwell’s father-in-law Sir Francis Russell, whose enthusiasm for the offer of the Crown is abundantly clear from his correspondence with his son-in-law.216 When all these members are taken together, it is clear that those with a civilian, or anti-military, political outlook were greater in number than the military Cromwellians. There were as many as thirty men, almost half of those summoned to the Other House, who can confidently be labelled as civilian in their political leanings.217 For some, such as Alexander Popham and the earls of Manchester, Warwick and Cassillis, their lack of political engagement during 1650s makes meaningful categorization difficult. Others were active but provide little trace of their opinions, such as Edmond Thomas. According to the Second Narrative, Thomas was ‘a Friend of Philip Joneses, and allayed to Walter Strickland’ through marriage and ‘brought in’ to the Other House ‘upon their account’.218 This reveals little about Thomas’ political leanings given that Jones and Strickland were from opposite ends of the political spectrum. The fact that Thomas acted as teller in a division over the wording of the Humble Remonstrance on 17 March 1657 with Strickland’s elder brother, Sir William, could be evidence of his politics; but, given that the division concerned an amendment to make more restrictive a clause concerning religion, it proves only that Thomas held similar tastes in religion rather than a common political view.219 By far the most bewildering of Cromwell’s choices was Sir Arthur Haselrig. Haselrig was a man of considerable wealth and landed interest in northern England, and had been a leading light of the parliamentarian cause from its earliest days – he was one of the five MPs that Charles I had famously tried to arrest in January 1642. Yet, he was also an irascible enemy of the Cromwellian regime in any guise. He had been a vociferous critic of the Instrument during the first Protectorate Parliament and was excluded by the Council from the second parliament. Perhaps Haselrig’s summons reflected Cromwell’s political vision of having a balanced and varied chamber. More likely, however, is that it provided an opportunity to remove permanently a fierce opponent from the Commons.220 No doubt, the expectation was that he would refuse altogether, thereby secluding himself from Parliament. The remaining six members of the Other House were all old political allies of the lord protector from the 1640s who had since gone into retirement. As 215  216  217  218  219  220 

Ibid., p. 19. Gaunt, Lansdowne, pp. 201–2, 264, 272–3. See appendix: ‘Politics’. A Second Narrative, p. 17. CJ, VII, 506. A Second Narrative, p. 21; Ludlow, II, 30–1. 110

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already mentioned, they included Viscount Saye and Sele and Lord Wharton. Although some suspected that Saye’s sons Nathaniel and John Fiennes, who actively supported Cromwellian kingship, were being steered by their father ‘old Subtlety’, it seems that Saye – like Wharton – played no active role during the Protectorate.221 Equally shady were the political leanings of a clutch of former ‘middle group’ MPs, including Oliver St John, William Pierrepont, Sir Gilbert Gerard and John Crew. Although St. John and Pierrepont were not MPs in 1657, one correspondent noted that they had both ‘been often, but secretly, at Whitehall … to advise’ about ‘a reducing of the government to kingship’.222 Unfortunately, and perhaps tellingly, the public actions of these men did not match their alleged private influence. The best that can be said is that they were ‘conservative’ in outlook and unlikely to support the military Cromwellians. Ultimately, contrary to contemporary criticisms, the Other House nominated by Cromwell did not bolster the military interest. While there was a large minority of military Cromwellians, it was the civilian Cromwellians and other conservative-minded men who had the majority. The numbers were such, however, that neither side could be negligent in attending the House; with voting by proxy banned, attendance levels would be crucial in determining who controlled the new chamber. A ‘Christian’ Interest? As Cromwell told the hundred officers in February 1657, he hoped the creation of a second chamber would provide a check on what he saw as the persecuting spirit of the Commons. Yet, if the Other House was to achieve this end, it was crucial that men of the right religious outlook were chosen to sit there. As such, it is unsurprising that, on 4 February 1658, Cromwell professed that he chose members of the Other House who valued a ‘Christian … interest’.223 It is first worth considering what Cromwell understood that interest to be. At its core was the preservation of ‘liberty of conscience’.224 What this liberty meant in practice was summed up in Cromwell’s plea to the second Protectorate Parliament that whatever ‘men will profess, – be they those under Baptism, be they those of the Independent judgment simply, and of the Presbyterian judgment, – in the name of God, encourage them, countenance them’. While Cromwell hoped to see the day when there would be no such thing as ‘sects’, he accepted that the best he could hope for in the short term was to ‘keep things equal’ by allowing freedom of worship for all those who 221  222  223  224 

A Second Narrative, p. 19. Thurloe, VI, 37–8. Clarke Papers, III, 137 Carlyle, II, 382–3. 111

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professed faith in God through Jesus Christ; this was ‘the Form that gives the being to true religion’.225 In his closing speech to the first Protectorate Parliament Cromwell made clear the limits of this liberty. It should not be made an excuse for the disturbance of others; it did not extend to ‘profane persons, blasphemers, such as preach sedition; the contentious railers, evil-speakers, who seek by evil words to corrupt good manners; persons of loose conversation’. He could not abide those who ‘pretend conscience’ yet act ‘disorderly and not according but contrary to the Gospel’; such persons deserved ‘punishment from the civil magistrate … their sins being open’.226 Cromwell also believed there should be a preaching ministry to serve the parishes, regulated centrally and locally, and which, for want of a viable alternative, would continue to be maintained by tithes.227 To this end, Cromwell and the Council used their legislative authority under the Instrument to pass ordinances in 1654 establishing a central commission of ‘triers’ to assess applicants to church livings and local bodies of ‘ejectors’ to remove ministers deemed inadequate. Unsurprisingly, the body of triers included men from a blend of Independent, Presbyterian and Baptist outlooks, thereby entrenching Cromwell’s overarching aim of treating the different groups of Protestants even-handedly.228 Identifying the religious beliefs of the members of the Other House is not easy. Scholars have already noted the difficulties of discerning the religious complexion of the Protectorate Parliaments.229 Sarah Jones, in an unpublished doctoral thesis, suggests that the religious opinions of around 70 per cent of MPs who sat in the Commons during the Protectorate are ‘unknown’.230 In comparison to the Protectoral House of Commons, however, it seems rather more is known about the religious leanings of those chosen to sit in the Other House. Of the forty-seven members summoned who sat in the Protectorate Parliaments, twenty-three are assigned religious identities by Jones. Interestingly, only ten of these are identified as Presbyterians; the rest fall into the categories of Independents, Baptists or Congregationalists.231 Of course, all of these labels must be handled with ‘extreme caution’.232 Even when evidence of religious beliefs survives it is difficult to categorize

Ibid., II, 535–7. Ibid., II, 417–18. 227  Ibid., II, 538. 228  Ibid., II, 353–4, 539; Firth and Rait, II, 855–8. 229  Little and Smith, Parliaments and Politics, p. 198. 230  S. Jones, ‘Composition and Activity of the Protectorate Parliaments’ (Unpublished DPhil Thesis, University of Exeter, 1988), p. 74. 231  See ibid., pp. 179–407. Underdown’s study of the Long Parliament also suggests a diverse religious outlook among members of the Other House who had sat in that parliament (9 Presbyterians; 8 Independents; 4 Sectaries and 3 Presbyterian-Independents): see D. Underdown, Pride’s Purge: Politics in the Puritan Revolution (Oxford, 1971), pp. 361–90. 232  Jones, ‘Composition’, p. 73. 225  226 

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them with certainty.233 ‘Presbyterian’, in particular, is a notoriously slippery category, often a shorthand for political conservatism as much as a desire for a Presbyterian church settlement. However, a number of those summoned to the Other House can plausibly be labelled Presbyterians, including country gentlemen like Onslow, Hobart, Popham and Sir William Strickland. Likewise, others can reasonably be placed in the category of ‘Independents’ or ‘Congregationalists’. For instance, Charles Fleetwood, Charles Howard, Bulstrode Whitelocke and Sir Robert Tichborne were all associated with George Cokayne’s Independent congregation at St Pancras, Soper Lane.234 Yet, without definitive evidence for the religious outlook of each and every member, the safest conclusion to draw is that the chamber was religiously diverse and not dominated by Presbyterians. It represented the broad range of religious outlooks that Cromwell hoped to reconcile under the umbrella of liberty of conscience. In fact, the Other House bore striking resemblance to the Nominated Assembly of 1653. The upper limit of seventy imposed on the membership of the Other House was the same as that originally intended for the Nominated Assembly, and may have been chosen to mimic the Jewish Sanhedrin.235 Given that Cromwell was involved in the selection of both chambers, it is also hardly surprising that the personnel overlapped. Twenty of those summoned to the Other House, almost a third of the membership, were former members of the Nominated Assembly.236 Moreover, all twenty were members of the moderate group in that assembly.237 Like Cromwell, they favoured a church settlement predicated upon an educated preaching ministry, whose quality was controlled by the state and maintained by tithes.238 It is also instructive that two-thirds of those summoned to the Other House were named in the ordinance of 1654 to serve as members of the local bodies of ‘ejectors’.239 These were clearly men on whose religious principles Cromwell believed he could rely. They were prepared to uphold the principle of ‘liberty of conscience’ but equally wary of the implications of unbridled toleration or unchecked religious freedom. Also revealing are the opinions expressed by future members of the Other House during the Nayler debates in 1656. Given that Cromwell claimed Nayler’s case provided the impetus for a second chamber, we would perhaps expect him to choose those who called for leniency towards Nayler. A key example being Cromwell: J.C. Davis ‘Cromwell’s Religion’, in J.S. Morrill (ed.), Oliver Cromwell and the English Revolution (Harlow, 1990), pp. 181–208. 234  T. Liu, ‘Cokayn [Cokayne], George (bap. 1620, d. 1691)’, ODNB; Woolrych, Commonwealth to Protectorate, p. 201. 235  Clarke Papers, III, 4. 236  See appendix: ‘Previous Parliaments’. 237  Woolrych, Commonwealth to Protectorate, pp. 194–209, 410–33. 238  Ibid., pp. 333–51. 239  See appendix: ‘Ejectors’. Three members (Goffe, Rous and Tichborne) were also named as ‘triers’, Firth and Rait, II, 855–8. 233 

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Certainly, many future members of the Other House are reported to have expressed concerns that Nayler’s punishment could impinge upon liberty of conscience for others. They stressed that a distinction must be made between allowing oneself to be worshipped as Christ and claiming that the spirit of Christ dwelled within every person.240 William Sydenham warned against punishing Nayler for the Quaker belief that ‘Christ dwells personally in every believer’ as it would set a precedent that would mean they would have to ‘proceed against all of that sect’. Indeed, for Sydenham, this opinion did ‘border so near a glorious truth’ – that ‘the spirit is personally in us’ – that he could not condemn it as blasphemy.241 Similarly, Henry Lawrence believed Nayler was an ‘erring person’ but hoped MPs would not condemn him for claiming that God dwelled in ‘every creature’; if parliament ‘hang every man that says, “Christ is in you the hope of glory”’, then Lawrence believed they would ‘hang a good many’.242 Yet, there were also a number of MPs, subsequently summoned to the Other House, who demanded Nayler’s savage punishment. Chief among them were Sir William Strickland, Philip Skippon and Edward Whalley.243 This need not mean that they were fundamentally opposed to the notion of liberty of conscience, however. Words said in the heat of the moment do not necessarily match their viewpoint once tensions cooled. It must also be remembered that the Nayler debates were about much more than religion – a range of local, political, constitutional and social issues were also at stake. As such, the opinions of MP during the course of the debate were not fixed or consistent. As the nuances of the debate over Nayler’s crimes, and the implications of his punishment, became apparent a number of MPs shifted ground or altered their views. This was particularly apparent on 18 December 1656 when the Commons turned their attention to dealing with Quakerism as a whole. Unsurprisingly, many of those who previously urged caution when dealing with Nayler also warned against pursuing a general Act against the Quakers. Sydenham would not ‘bring in a law against the Quakers by a general word’ for it is a ‘word that signifies nothing... It is like the word Lollards or Puritans, under the notion whereof, many godly persons are now under the altar.’244 Walter Strickland warned the members that they ‘may all, in after ages, be called Quakers’.245 More remarkable, is that many of those who had been eager for Nayler’s punishment also urged caution when it came to dealing with the Quakers. A prime example is Philip Skippon. Early in the Nayler debates Skippon Burton, I, 96–8: speech by Thomas Cooper. Ibid., I, 69, 86 242  Ibid., I, 62–3, 90. Other future members of the Other House voiced similar concerns: Desborough (ibid., I, 71–2), Jones (ibid., I, 75), Cleypole (ibid., I, 77), Howard (ibid., I, 77–8), Cooper (ibid., I, 96–8), Hewson (ibid., I, 108). 243  Ibid., I, 48–50, 51, 54, 75, 101–2. 244  Ibid., I, 172. 245  Ibid., I, 173. 240  241 

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launched a blistering attack on the religious provisions of the Instrument, claiming that ‘Quakers, Ranters, Levellers, Socinians, and all sorts, bolster themselves’ under its provisions.246 Yet, Skippon went on to oppose the idea of a general law against the Quakers on 18 December, stressing that he was ‘for tender consciences, as much as any man’ and would not ‘have any honest man surprized by a general law’. He claimed that it was ‘one thing to hold an opinion, another thing to hold forth an opinion’. It was the fact that Nayler caused public disturbance by openly promoting his views that he abhorred; it was this aspect of the Quakers’ activities that needed policing, not their beliefs.247 Similarly, Edward Whalley, despite believing Nayler deserved death, claimed it was ‘a hard thing’ to make a law against the whole sect. Ultimately, some of them ‘do acknowledge scripture, magistracy, and ministry; others not’.248 So, while Whalley and Skippon joined the Presbyterian majority in demanding summary justice against Nayler, both urged a cautious approach when dealing with the Quakers that set them apart from those demanding greater uniformity in religion. As such, it was quite possible for some members to argue for Nayler’s savage punishment but still hold a belief in liberty of conscience. Indeed, this probably reflected the sentiments of Cromwell himself. Plainly, he abhorred Nayler’s crimes and did nothing to stop the punishment from being meted out: not until after the first stage of Nayler’s punishment was inflicted did he send his letter demanding to know the grounds upon which the Commons had acted.249 What concerned Cromwell most was the precedent it set; the potential for the Commons to persecute at will and subvert the notion of liberty of conscience. As he warned the officers in February 1657, ‘the Case of James Naylor, might happen to be your owne Case’.250 Importantly, the political outlooks of those summoned to the Other House did not overlap neatly with their religious beliefs. For instance, Lawrence and Sydenham both urged moderation during the Nayler debates but were subsequently diametrically opposed over the offer of kingship: Lawrence was a civilian, Sydenham a military Cromwellian. Similarly, during debates in the Commons over religious settlement the split between civilian and military Cromwellians was less apparent, with a number of civilians distancing themselves from their erstwhile political allies among the Presbyterian majority. On 28 April 1657, for example, the Commons debated whether the ordinance establishing the commissioners for ejecting ministers should be given parliamentary ratification. Two future members of the Other House, Hobart and Lenthall, sided with the Presbyterian MPs in opposing the ordinance

246  247  248  249  250 

Ibid., I, 24–5, 34, 48–50, 63. Ibid., I, 170. Ibid., I, 54, 101–2, 170. CJ, VII, 470, 475; Burton, I, 168. BL, Add. MS 6125, fol. 63r. 115

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and demanded that it should be ratified for six months only.251 When the Commons voted on the ordinance, however, the tellers on both sides were men who had voted for kingship; those for the Yeas were the leading civilians Edward Montagu and Philip Jones; those for the Noes were the Presbyterian MPs Sir John Trevor and Sir William Cochrane.252 After the ordinance was rejected it was left to the military Cromwellian John Desborough and the civilian Jones to defend the ejectors, ultimately securing a vote in favour of continuing the commissioners for three years.253 Even more revealing was the debate surrounding a proposed Bill for catechizing, which was read for the third time on 20 May 1657. A number of civilians, including Philip Jones, Lawrence and Packe, acted as tellers for those wanting to tone down its provisions, making it less coercive towards the gathered churches.254 When it was debated on 9 June whether the Bill should be sent for the Protector’s assent, a blend of military and civilian Cromwellians urged against it. Desborough pleaded that the Bill should be ‘left behind’ as there was ‘something in it which will discontent many godly persons, and make them mourn’.255 Goffe, who was immediately seconded by Philip Jones, warned that the Bill did ‘grieve the souls of a great many godly ministers’, and was ‘willing to beg it on my knees as any man, you would not now carry it up’.256 Yet, their calls fell on deaf ears as the majority resolved to send the Bill for the Protector’s assent that afternoon.257 Cromwell’s assent was unforthcoming, however.258 He vetoed the Bill because it compromised the fundamental of liberty of conscience. Like Nayler’s case, the whole episode reminded Cromwell of the need for an effective legislative check upon the intolerant spirit prevalent in the Commons. In their fervent attempts to tone down the Bill for catechizing and their last-ditch efforts to prevent it being presented to the Protector, a number of men demonstrated their suitability to serve in the Other House. Although Cromwell summoned a few who sided with the Presbyterians, such as Onslow, Hobart and William Strickland, they were the minority; their summons reflected Cromwell’s vision of religious unity through diversity. The majority summoned to the Other House, however, were men that Cromwell knew could be relied upon to defend his vision of religious settlement. The net result was that the Other House was a paradoxical blend that, in many ways, reflected the personality of Cromwell himself: conservative in politics but liberal in religion. Burton, II, 58. CJ, VII, 524. 253  Burton, II, 59–60; CJ, VII, 524. 254  CJ, VII, 535–7. 255  Burton, II, 202. 256  Burton, II, 203. 257  CJ, VII, 551.The question passed 82 to 71. Another member of the Other House, Edmond Thomas, told for the Yeas, confirming his ‘Presbyterian’ religious leanings (see p. 110). 258  Burton, II, 205. 251  252 

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Table 3: Geographical origins of Members of the Other House by Region Region

Origins (% of total membership)

The North (Cumberland, Durham, Lancashire, Northumberland,   Westmorland, Yorkshire) The Midlands (Buckinghamshire, Derbyshire, Leicestershire,  Northamptonshire, Nottinghamshire, Oxfordshire, Rutland, Staffordshire, Warwickshire) The East (Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Essex, Hertfordshire,   Huntingdonshire, Lincolnshire, Norfolk, Suffolk) The South and South-East (Berkshire, Hampshire, Kent, Middlesex,   Surrey, Sussex) The South-West (Cornwall, Devon, Dorset, Gloucestershire, Somerset,  Wiltshire) Wales and the West (Cheshire, Herefordshire, Monmouthshire,  Shropshire,Worcestershire)    Of which are Wales only London (including Westminster, Southwark) Ireland & Scotland Unknown

  8 (13%) 18 (29%) 10 (16%)   7 (11%)   6 (10%)   5 (8%)   4 (6.5%)   2 (3%)   4 (6.5%)   2 (3%)

A ‘British’ Interest? Cromwell also claimed in his speech on 4 February 1658 that those summoned to the Other House represented an ‘English interest’.259 Although, for Cromwell, ‘Englishness’ was a concept synonymous with godliness, rather than a purely descriptive term denoting the nation’s inhabitants, it is worth considering briefly whether the Other House was geographically representative. As the table demonstrates, the geographical ‘origins’– meaning the primary place of residency of their family at the time of birth – of those summoned was diverse. Unsurprisingly, the Midlands and the old Parliamentary heartland of the East were well represented – with almost half of the membership originating from these two regions.260 Less predictable, is that 20 per cent of the membership came from the typically Royalist ‘dark corners’ of the land, including four Welsh members and no fewer than seven Yorkshiremen.261 Clarke Papers, III, 137. Because statistics for each county creates numbers too small for meaningful comparison, the counties are grouped into regions instead. The obvious disadvantage is that it conceals that three counties (Derbyshire, Lancashire and Rutland) had no representation. 261  John Jones and Glynne from North Wales; Philip Jones and Edmond Thomas from South Wales. The Yorkshire members were Mulgrave, Fauconberg, Eure and Wharton, the brothers Sir William and Walter Strickland, and Tomlinson. 259  260 

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Equally striking is that only two members originated from London.262 Yet this does not do justice to the close connections that many had with the capital. This included those who settled in London before the Civil War to serve their apprenticeship and pursue a trade, such as Thomas Cooper and John Hewson. Others became members of the City’s corporation, including Sir Christopher Packe and Sir Robert Tichborne, both of whom served as Lord Mayor of London during the Protectorate. Some members were tied to London by military service, including John Barkstead who was Lieutenant of the Tower and Philip Skippon who had commanded the City’s trained bands. Others, including the old peers, had residences in London and many more lodged there for prolonged periods while serving parliament during the 1640s and 1650s. It could also be argued that the Other House represented a ‘British’ interest. In August 1657, Mabbott, speculating on the upcoming nominations to the Other House, claimed there would be ‘6 to serve for Ireland, and 6 for Scotland’.263 Such a quota mirrored the composition of the House of Commons under the Instrument of Government, whereby thirty members for each of Scotland and Ireland were to sit alongside the four hundred English MPs. The proportions of British members in both Houses would have been comparable, with members representing Ireland and Scotland accounting for 13 per cent of the total membership of the Commons and 17 per cent of the Other House (assuming all seventy places were filled). Ultimately, only one native Irishman (Lord Broghill) and three Scots (the earl of Cassillis, Wariston and Lockhart) were summoned. Instead, as was the case in the Commons, those ‘representing’ Scotland and Ireland were mostly Englishmen holding civil or military office there. With these members factored in, the numbers were almost what Mabbott had predicted: there were five ‘representatives’ for Ireland and seven for Scotland – albeit two members represented both.264 That these men were recognized as members for Scotland and Ireland is demonstrated by the fact that in printed lists of the membership of the Other House their names appeared separately, rather than in order of precedence among the ‘English’ members.265 The novelty of summoning Scottish and Irish members to the second chamber was criticized during the 1658 parliamentary session; Colonel Morley demanded to know ‘whenever there was a precedent for calling a House of Lords of England, Scotland and Ireland’.266 For Cromwell, however, nominating members for Scotland and Ireland reflected his desire to consolidate the hard-won union Barkstead and Tichborne. Viscount Lisle and Whitelocke were born in London, but their family origins mean they have been counted for Kent and Berkshire respectively. 263  Clarke Papers, III, 115. 264  See appendix, column: ‘Ireland/Scotland’. 265  Mercurius Politicus, 394 (10–17 Dec. 1657), p. 165. 266  Burton, II, 457. 262 

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of the British Isles. Cromwell’s experience of campaigning across Britain gave him an invaluable insight into the challenges of ruling a harmonized British state during the 1650s.267 It is therefore hardly surprising that he summoned an Other House with a membership that could speak not only for England but for the British Isles as a whole. A closer study of those summoned for Ireland and Scotland reveals that Cromwell tried to ensure political balance among the ‘British’ membership too. As lord deputy of Ireland and second surviving son of the lord protector, Henry Cromwell was an obvious choice. He was both a moderate in religion and politics, promoting policies in Ireland very different from the favouritism shown towards the sectaries by his predecessor and brother-in-law Charles Fleetwood. Henry welcomed the constitutional changes implemented under the Humble Petition and the opportunity to ground the government on a civilian footing.268 Also summoned for Ireland was Henry’s political ally and leading civilian Cromwellian Roger Boyle, Lord Broghill. An Irish peer from one of the wealthiest families in Munster, Broghill also had influence in Scotland in his capacity as President of the Council there from 1655. Yet, alongside these two ‘civilian’ Irish members Cromwell also summoned to the Other House two other members of the Irish Council, Lord Chancellor William Steele and Sir Matthew Tomlinson, who were advocates of the ‘military’ interest. As Henry Cromwell complained, these men were a constant frustration to him on the Irish Council. When, following the lapse of his brother-in-law’s commission, Henry was finally made lord deputy in November 1657, he attempted to heal the rifts on the Irish Council by conferring a knighthood upon Tomlinson, whom he described as ‘one no ways famous for his formall affection to me’.269 Steele, Henry later complained, dealt with him like a ‘guardian to a minor’ and ‘failed in nothing, but making me his jack-pudding’.270 It seems that just as the divisions in English politics were reflected in the membership of the Other House, so the opposing groups in Irish governance were given voices in the chamber. Besides the Irish councillors and native Irish, others were summoned to the Other House with experience of Irish affairs. These included Thomas Cooper who, besides being a member of the Scottish council and commander of an army regiment in Scotland, was also governor of Carrickfergus in County Antrim, colonel of an Irish foot regiment and was elected MP for Down, Antrim and Armagh in 1656. A number of other members experienced service in Ireland during the 1640s or 1650s but had since retired to England, including Hewson, John Jones and Viscount Lisle. Finally, there was the former lord deputy Charles Fleetwood who, despite leaving Ireland P. Gaunt, ‘A Cromwellian Landscape?’, in Cromwell’s Legacy, ed. J.A. Mills (Manchester, 2012), p. 86. 268  Thurloe, VI, 93–4, 182–3, 222–3; Gaunt, Lansdowne, pp. 194–5, 244–5. 269  Thurloe, VI, 632, 634–5. 270  Ibid., VII, 198–9. 267 

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in September 1655, made his presence felt through the English Council’s committee for Irish affairs.271 The Scottish members of the Other House also overlapped significantly with the civil and military governors of that nation. Besides Broghill and Cooper, three other members of the Scottish Council were summoned – Howard, Lockhart and Monck. Unlike the Irish members, the experience these men had of Scottish affairs was, in some cases, limited. Although Broghill was appointed Lord President of the Scottish Council in March 1655, he did not arrive there until September of that year. Following his election as MP for Edinburgh in 1656 he abandoned Scotland for Westminster, remaining an absentee councillor for the rest of the Protectorate.272 Howard and Cooper too were distracted by their attendance at Westminster while the native Scot William Lockhart was absent by virtue of his service on the continent. As such, the only member of the Council to play a prolonged role in Scotland throughout the later Protectorate was the commander in chief of the army there, George Monck. Besides Cromwell’s nephew Lockhart, the other two native Scots summoned were leading members of the covenanting movement, Sir Archibald Johnston of Wariston and John Kennedy, earl of Cassillis. Wariston was a fierce opponent of Scotland’s involvement in the Second Civil War. Initially ambivalent about lending Scottish support to Charles II in the wake of the regicide, Wariston soon abandoned the royal cause; he defended the Remonstrance of the Western Association which denounced the Scottish defeat at Dunbar as punishment for dealing with an insincere King, and was a ‘Protestor’ against the decision in December 1650 to admit Royalists and Engagers into the Scottish army.273 Cassillis also deplored the Engagement and was one of the leaders of the ‘Whiggamore raid’ of 1648, which gave control of the committee of estates to the duke of Hamilton’s opponents. Although he attended the coronation of Charles II at Scone in January 1651, he reportedly chose not to wear his robes. Following the defeat of the Royalists at Worcester, Cassillis went into retirement and appears to have been relatively unknown in England, as evidenced by the fact his first name was consistently misprinted as David in lists of the Other House.274 The appointment of Cassillis and Wariston would have been dispiriting for Broghill and his fellow civilian councillors in Scotland who struggled to reconcile the moderate wings of both the Protester and Resolutioner movements. Broghill believed Wariston and his fellow hardline Protestors were dangerous extremists – ‘Fifth-Monarchy-Presbyterians’ as he termed For more on the Irish and Scottish councils and their relationship to the English Council, see P. Little, ‘The Irish and Scottish Councils and the Dislocation of the Protectoral Union’, in Little (ed.), Cromwellian Protectorate, pp. 127–43. 272  For Broghill’s time in Scotland, see Little, Lord Broghill, pp. 91–123. 273  John Coffey, ‘Johnston, Sir Archibald, Lord Wariston (bap. 1611, d. 1663)’, ODNB. 274  Stuart Handley, ‘Kennedy, John, sixth earl of Cassillis (1601x7–1668)’, ODNB. 271 

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them.275 As with the Irish membership, however, Cromwell seems to have been keen to ensure a degree of balance in the Other House between the competing interests in Scotland. Conclusions Overall, Cromwell’s characterization of the Other House on 4 February 1658 is borne out by closer study of those he summoned to the chamber in December 1657. He chose men on the basis of merit rather than social standing; the majority were well known to him through kinship and shared military and political experience. They were men upon whom Cromwell knew he could rely, not least because they depended upon the regime’s survival for their prosperity. They were also geographically diverse – coming from all corners of the Commonwealth. The Other House was arguably more ‘representative’ of the British Isles than the House of Lords had ever been. Given the importance of the Other House as a legislative balance, however, it was the opinions of the membership that counted most for Cromwell. Politically, he ensured that they were as much of a ‘balance to themselves’ as they were to the Commons. A sizeable minority of military Cromwellians were joined by a majority of politically conservative men. A similar mixture was apparent in the religious complexion of the Other House, with a majority sharing the Protector’s vision for religious settlement and commitment to the idea of liberty of conscience. As such, Cromwell’s choice of members reflected his priorities for settlement as a whole: his ongoing desire to secure the needs of the godly nation while seeking a political settlement that would bring ‘healing and settling’ to the nation at large. Yet, in his endeavour to ‘make up a collection of men of all interests’, as Ludlow put it, Cromwell pleased nobody but himself.276 As Wariston warned in March 1657, Cromwell’s ‘polytik’ stance was likely to render the Other House ‘a medlee, a hotch-potch, a pleasing of both sydes’.277 His choices left uncertain the likely direction of the settlement, with neither the civilians nor the military Cromwellians given a definitive advantage. It is for this reason that Thurloe and others grew gloomy as the list of names began to emerge in December 1657. It was only when the members took their seats for the first time on 20 January 1658, however, that it would be clear what sort of chamber the Other House was really likely to be. As the next chapter demonstrates, a number of absentees among the membership drastically altered the complexion of the chamber. With many of those summoned either unable or unwilling to attend, the Other House that met in 1658 did not quite reflect the set of careful balances that Cromwell envisaged. 275  276  277 

Thurloe, IV, 557. Ludlow, II, 30–1. Wariston Diary, III, 73. 121

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4

The Other House and the Second Session of the Second Protectorate Parliament

On the morning of 20 January 1658 the members of the Other House gathered at Westminster for the opening of the second session of the second Protectorate Parliament. After taking their oaths in the Painted Chamber they filed into the former House of Lords and were seated ‘by a herald at armes after the wonted manner there’.1 The faces of those occupying the benches were new, but the chamber looked much as before. The Council had ordered the Master of the Wardrobe to furnish it with all the familiar items, complete with ‘Wool Packes’.2 The only material difference was that the arms emblazoned on the great ‘cloth of estate’ of ‘wrought gold’ hanging over the throne at the focal point of the chamber bore the Cromwellian, rather than the Stuart, coat of arms.3 Ambassadors and newswriters recognized that the ceremonials mirrored closely a royal opening of parliament.4 Following Cromwell’s arrival at the Other House, ‘formerly call’d the Lord’s House’, Black Rod was sent to summon the Commons to attend the Protector.5 After ‘a little time’, the members of the Commons, led by their Speaker attended by the mace, entered what the newsbooks described as ‘the House of Lords’ and crowded at the bar.6 The members of the Other House stood and removed their hats as the Protector rose to make an uncharacteristically short speech, which opened by pointedly addressing ‘My Lords, and Gentlemen of the House of Commons’.7 Claiming to be unwell, Cromwell, in further echo of royal practices, turned to Lord Commissioner of the Great Seal, and Speaker of the Other House, Nathaniel Fiennes, who was ‘richly clad with crimson robes trimmed with gold’, to detail the government’s agenda.8 Letter from Thomas Fox, 23 Jan. 1658: BL, Stowe MS 185, fol. 123; HMC Lords, pp. 505–6; Mercurius Politicus, 399 (14–21 Jan. 1658), p. 256.   2  TNA, SP25/78, fol. 401.   3  BL, Stowe MS 185, fol. 123; Clarke Papers, III, 132.   4  CSPV, 1657–1659, pp. 157–8; Mercurius Politicus, 399 (14–21 Jan. 1658), p. 256.   5  Clarke Papers, III, 132; HMC Lords, pp. 506–7.   6  Mercurius Politicus, 399 (14–21 Jan. 1658), p. 256.   7  Carlyle, III, 150; Clarke Papers, III, 132.   8  BL, Stowe MS 185, fol. 123; Carlyle, III, 157–8; Mercurius Politicus, 399 (14–21 Jan. 1658), p. 256.   1 

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Fiennes stressed the importance of upholding the new constitutional arrangement ‘we now stand upon’; by their oaths they were ‘all sworn to it’. He derided those Republicans and Royalists who sought ‘either Utopias of I know not what kind … or daydreams of the return of I know not what Golden age with the old Line’.9 Instead, Fiennes urged compromise. Given the ‘great variety of humours and judgments’ among the people of the nation, he thought it ‘no wonder’ that ‘every one cannot have what he thinks best in his judgement’; they ought to be ‘content … with what he may think next best … which probably may be best of all’.10 In this vein, Fiennes offered a staunch defence of the Other House. Stressing the necessity of a second chamber, he noted that some ‘will admit of no other way, but to set the very same old Plants in the very self same old Bank’, while others ‘run so far to the extream on the other side’ that they would have ‘no Bank at all, but will have their Fence set upon a Level’.11 In Fiennes’ opinion, it was better to seek a ‘middle way’: ‘not to meddle with the old, dry and dead Bank’ as he disparagingly styled the old House of Lords, nor ‘to set them upon the plain ground’. Instead, they should have ‘a Bank raised up as before, but of a fresh and live mould, and to make use of all plants both old and new that will take to the fresh ground and thrive in it’.12 For Fiennes, the Other House chosen by Cromwell combined the best of ‘old’ and ‘new’ in the hope that the mixture would forge something greater than the sum of its parts. The parliament should accept this arrangement quickly and move on; they must ‘take heed of the subtle devices of such, who designing to destroy it’ contrived to ‘distract our settlement in the Infancy thereof’ before it had ‘taken deep root’.13 The ‘Chief Magistrate and the two Houses of Parliament’ must ‘esteem each other as bone of their bone, and flesh of their flesh’.14 For Fiennes, the new constitutional arrangement was ‘a real and well-measured advantage to it self’.15 It provided greater security because ‘if any thing inconvenient should chance to slip out at one door’ it had to ‘pass two more before it come abroad to the detriment of the People’. All Acts must pass ‘the Examination of that Great Body’ the House of Commons, ‘which sees with the eye of the Three Nations, and is acquainted with the condition, and sensible of the necessities of every individual part thereof’. Acts must then ‘pass a second scrutiny’ in the Other House, where they would be ‘polished and refined by such as during life shall make it their business … being also N. Fiennes, The Speech of the Right Honourable the Lord Fiennes, Commissioner of the Great Seal...Wednesday the 20th of January 1657 (London, 1658), pp. 10–11. 10  Ibid., pp. 20–1. 11  Ibid., pp. 16–17. The agricultural metaphor was reminiscent of Charles I’s answer to the nineteen propositions and its praise for the House of Lords as ‘an excellent Screen and Bank’: His Majesties Answer to the XIX Propositions, p. 19. 12  Fiennes, Speech of the Right Honourable, pp. 16–18. 13  Ibid., pp. 16­–18. 14  Ibid., p. 18. 15  Ibid., pp. 18–19.   9 

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assisted by all the Reverend Judges of the Land, and other learned persons of that Robe’. Finally, those Acts ‘must pass into the judgment and assent of the Chief Magistrate, who is placed on high as upon a Watch Tower’. Besides their role in the legislative process, ‘each House’ also had a ‘special care of what is most proper for it’: the Commons, being the ‘Representative’ of the people ‘provideth and strengtheth the sinews of war’ through voting taxation, while the Other House was to preserve the Commonwealth ‘through due administration of Justice’.16 Only at the conclusion of his speech did Fiennes divulge the government’s agenda for the parliament by pressing ‘their assistance in supply of moneys for carrying on the Christian warr already begun’.17 The bulk of his speech had been dedicated to pre-empting quarrels over the constitution. Yet, ultimately, his warnings failed to convince the majority of MPs. Few were prepared to accept the constitution as they found it or esteem the Other House as ‘flesh of their flesh’. The abject failure of Fiennes’ pleas meant that by 1 February his speech was already being derided by one critic as ‘the Prologue of the new Tragi-Comedy’ that was the second session of the second Protectorate Parliament.18 The Composition of Both Houses in January 1658 Although nominally a continuation of the second Protectorate Parliament, the assembly that met in January 1658 was very different in complexion from that adjourned the previous June. Not only was it now a bicameral parliament, but the composition of the Commons had itself altered substantially. Under the new constitution, MPs could only be excluded by ‘judgment and consent’ of the Commons itself.19 This meant all those barred from sitting in the first session by conciliar fiat were now free to enter the chamber unmolested. Some of the excluded, such as John Hobart, resolved to stay away and ‘leave that Tyrant & his packt convention to stand upon his sandy foundation of open force’, but most took their seats with predictable results.20 As one critic mocked, it was against ‘the rules of common reason’ that those who had been ‘so wronged, abused, and exasperated … in being kept out of the House’ would now ‘be so easie and tame, as presently, without any more ado … to lick their new Golden Calf, and nurse up that Babylonish, Antichristian Brat, that they had no hand in, but were against the begetting of’.21 Ibid., pp. 19–20. Clarke Papers, III, 133; Fiennes, Speech of the Right Honourable, p. 25. 18  C.H. Firth, ‘Letters Concerning the Dissolution of Cromwell’s Last Parliament’, EHR, 7 (1892), 105: draft letter by Hobart, 1 Feb. 1658. 19  Gardiner, Documents, p. 449. 20  Bodl., Tanner MS 51, fols 27–8. 21  A Second Narrative, p. 9. 16  17 

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Cromwell’s supporters strived to counter the effects of the influx of excluded MPs. In early December 1657, Thurloe wrote to Henry Cromwell urging him not to ‘suffer our friends of Ireland, who are of the house of commons, to absent themselves’, not least because ‘all the excluded members which were kept out’ were ‘resolvinge to come in’.22 Ironically, the problem was made all the greater by the creation of the Other House. A total of ­forty-two MPs elected to the 1656 parliament, just under 10 per cent of the total membership of the Commons, were elevated to the Other House.23 Thurloe worried over the ‘great number of our friends, which will be taken out of the commons-house’.24 There were few men of calibre left to steer debate for the government, a situation compounded by Thurloe’s absence owing to illness throughout the session.25 Rather than offering a means for the Protector to control parliament, the creation of the Other House ensured the upcoming parliamentary session was far less compliant than its predecessor. The government’s supporters also had reasons to be concerned about the composition of the Other House. In this case it was not the presence of opponents that was the problem but the number of absentees. The attendance lists provided in the draft journal of the Other House show that forty-two of the sixty-two men summoned by Cromwell sat in the chamber at some point during the short-lived session. Perhaps the most notorious of the twenty absentees was Sir Arthur Haselrig. On 25 January 1658, Haselrig audaciously entered the Commons’ chamber to take his seat there. As the Second Narrative mocked, Haselrig ‘missed his way, and instead of going into the Other House among the simple Negative men … went into the ParliamentHouse’ instead.26 According to Burton, Haselrig paced around the chamber, taking Master of the Requests Francis Bacon ‘by the hand’ and demanded him to ‘Give me my oath’, adding sardonically that he would promise to ‘be faithful to my Lord Protector’s person’ and would ‘murder no man’.27 Clearly if, as the Republicans suspected, Haselrig’s summons to the Other House was a ploy to kick him upstairs it backfired miserably.28 His theatrical entrance to the Commons galvanized the vociferous group of excluded MPs who led opposition to the Other House in the Commons. As Burton informed Lord Wharton, there were ‘very strange spiritts come in amongst us, & there are dayly more flocking in’; the ringleader was undoubtedly ‘the great Sir Arthur’.29 Others summoned to the Other House stayed away from Westminster altogether. Undoubtedly, the most conspicuous group of absentees were the old 22  23  24  25  26  27  28  29 

Thurloe, VI, 647–8. See also ibid., VI, 670, 680, 683, 730. See appendix: ‘Previous Parliaments’. Thurloe, VI, 647–8. Vaughan, II, 94–5, 98–9, 307–8, 434–5; Thurloe, VI, 734, 743, 752–3, 769. A Second Narrative, p. 21. Burton, II, 346. A Second Narrative, p. 21. Burton to Wharton, 27 Jan. 1658: Bodl., Carte MS 239, fol. 461. 125

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English peers. Three days into the new session, one correspondent noted how ‘most’ of those chosen by Cromwell had taken their seats ‘save the Lords Say, Wharton, Warwicke, Mulgrave, and some others’.30 Another reporter found it noteworthy that of the members of the Other House sitting there were ‘noe peeres, save the Lord Falconbridge and Lord Ewer’.31 Their absence was not unforeseen. Two weeks before the session began, Marchamont Nedham was already reporting a rumour that ‘the lord Warwick, Manchester, Wharton and others, are not inclined to sitt’.32 The Protectorate’s critics explained their absence as a matter of social snobbery. The Second Narrative claimed that the old peers’ would not ‘sit with these new Up-start Lords’.33 According to Ludlow, Warwick could not ‘be perswaded’ to sit alongside lowborn soldiers of fortune like Hewson and Pride.34 In fact, it seems that the old peers feared that, by taking their seats, they would not only degrade themselves but the nobility as a whole. As noted in the previous chapter, Cromwell nominated the Other House without respect for hereditary rank. Writing to Henry Cromwell on the eve of the new parliamentary session, Fleetwood was sure that ‘some of the other howse … have not a minde to sitt with us’; the reason was ‘upon the account of the hereditary peerage, which is direct contrary to the petition and advise’.35 The concerns of the old peers are vividly set out in a letter between Viscount Saye and Lord Wharton dated 29 December 1657. It seems that Wharton, upon receiving his summons, was undecided about what to do and wrote to his old ally Saye for advice. Saye’s response was a thorough condemnation of the Other House and a vigorous defence of the old House of Lords. For Saye, only the old peers offered sufficient balance within the constitution: ‘the Peeres of England, and theyr power and priviledges in the House of Lords’ had ‘bin as the beame keepinge both scales, Kinge and people, in an even posture, without incroachments one uppon another’.36 Saye could see exactly what Cromwell was doing: by selecting a few of the old peers to sit in the new chamber he was effectively inviting them both to ‘disowne theyr owne rights and the rights of all the Nobylyty of England’ and lend legitimacy to the political eclipse of the old peers by a new body of non-hereditary lords. For Saye, the Other House was ‘a stalkinge horse and vizard to carry on the designe of overthrowinge the House of Peeres’; he warned Wharton that it would be ‘most dishonourable and most unworthy, for any antient Peere of England’ to sit there and become a ‘felo de see both to the Nobility of Clarke Papers, III, 132. Ibid., III, 133: newsletter, 24 Jan. 1658. 32  Thurloe, VI, 734. 33  A Second Narrative, p. 22. 34  Ludlow, II, 32. 35  Thurloe, VI, 752. 36  C.H. Firth, ‘A Letter from Lord Saye and Sele to Lord Wharton, 29 Dec. 1657’, EHR, 10 (1895), 106. 30  31 

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Englande’ and its ‘just and rightly constituted Government’.37 Cromwell had summoned ‘some 5 or six Lords’ to ‘give some countenance to the designe’; it was really a scheme for ‘layinge asyde the Peeres of England whoe by byrth are to sitt’. For this reason, Saye would not act on his summons, but resolved to ‘lay it by me and sitt still’.38 Whether the other four peers who stayed away shared Saye’s misgivings is a moot point. Although those members of the Other House who did attend resolved to ‘call’ the House to allow all absentees to tender their excuses, none of the old peers responded.39 Perhaps Wharton was persuaded to abstain by Saye, while Manchester may have harboured similar doubts, reinforced by lingering animosity towards Cromwell. More remarkable, however, were the absences of the earls of Warwick and Mulgrave, both of whom had been publicly associated with the Protectorate. Perhaps Warwick’s attendance on the deathbed of his grandson, who died on 16 February, and his own declining health, leading to his own death on 19 April, provide a plausible explanation for his absence. Mulgrave’s non-attendance, however, is less easy to explain. The Council’s order books show that he was at Whitehall on 19 January, the day before the Other House assembled, and reappeared when the Council next met five days after parliament was dissolved.40 Admittedly, Mulgrave was frequently ill throughout this period and died just six months later, but the fact he tendered no excuse for his absence and soon re-emerged once the parliament ended strongly suggests that he shared the same fears as Saye and the other old peers. Whatever the reasons, the absence of the old lords affected the way the Other House was perceived by many during the 1658 session. It seems that those who supported the new constitution in 1657 assumed that the faithful parliamentarian peers would play an integral part in the new chamber.41 As already noted, the last thing that the Presbyterians wanted was a second chamber completely dependent upon the Protector. The best way to prevent this, apart from having approbation of the membership in the Commons, was to ensure the Other House contained men with a degree of independence from the single person. After the Commons subsequently waived the right to scrutinize Cromwell’s nominees, the attendance of the old peers in the Other House arguably assumed an even greater importance. As one newsletter sent to Lord Wharton explained, perhaps with a hint of flattery towards its recipient, the majority in the Commons were reluctant to ‘owne’ the Other House, ‘especially seing the Earles of Warwicke, Mulgrave & Manchester, the Lord Wharton & Lord Say did not appeare there’.42 37  38  39  40  41  42 

Ibid., p. 107. Ibid., p. 107. HMC Lords, pp. 516, 522. TNA, SP25/78, fols 409, 421. See previous chapter. Bodl., Carte MS 103, fols 205­–6. 127

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Also absent were Cromwell’s old ‘middle group’ allies from the 1640s including Oliver St John, John Crew, Sir Gilbert Gerard and William Pierrepont.43 St John, in particular, remained an enigmatic figure. When the house was called on 2 February, he claimed to be absent ‘by reason of the busines of the Terme’.44 This was unconvincing given that his fellow Lord Chief Justice, John Glynne, was an avid attendee throughout the parliamentary session. Indeed, according to one commentator, St John’s reluctance to sit was demonstrated on 4 February 1658 when he was ‘catched napping’ and given a direct order by Cromwell to come to the house to attend the dissolution ceremony. Although St John ‘went up’ to the Other House he ‘would not take his place’ on the benches with the lords, but sat ‘amongst the Judges on the Woolpacks’ instead.45 Yet, not all absentees opposed the Other House or contracted what one Republican critic described as the ‘State-illness’.46 Some could not attend because they were employed elsewhere. Henry Cromwell, much to his annoyance, was absent ‘by reason of his Charge in Ireland’.47 Those at Whitehall were keenly aware that his absence along with the other Irish councillors summoned, Steele and Tomlinson, would have crippled the Irish government. As such, despite writing to Thurloe requesting leave to return to England to attend the Other House, Henry was instructed to ignore his ‘writt of Sommons’.48 Similarly, George Monck was absent ‘by reason of his charge in Scotland’.49 Indeed, Cromwell’s plan to summon Scottish and Irish administrators seemed to overlook the fact that they were simply too busy to attend the Other House. It had a major impact on the ‘British’ contingent in the chamber. Of the ten members summoned who could be described as Scottish or Irish members only three – Broghill, Cooper and Howard – appeared during the 1658 session. Moreover, of the four nominated members who were not native English, only Broghill attended. Lockhart was serving as ‘Ambassador in France’; Cassillis, like the old English lords, tendered no excuse; Wariston claimed he could not attend ‘being sick’ – albeit in his case the malady was probably genuine as he went on to sit in the Other House in 1659.50 Cumulatively, these absentees compromised Cromwell’s plans for a balanced Other House. In real terms, the chamber remained weighted towards the civilians and political conservatives. Of the forty-two members who A Second Narrative, p. 22. HMC Lords, p. 522. 45  Firth, ‘Letters Concerning the Dissolution’, p. 107: Berners to Hobart, 11 Feb. 1658. 46  A Second Narrative, p. 22. 47  HMC Lords, p. 522. 48  Gaunt, Lansdowne, p. 359. Steele also remained in Ireland; Tomlinson intended to go to Westminster in late Jan. but was ‘detained by sickness’: Thurloe, VI, 762; HMC Lords, p. 522. 49  HMC Lords, p. 522; Thurloe, VI, 741: Monck to Thurloe, 9 Jan. 1658. 50  HMC Lords, p. 522. 43  44 

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appeared during the 1658 session, no more than sixteen, fewer than 40 per cent, were military Cromwellians.51 For the regime’s critics, however, the absence of the old Lords only strengthened the perception that the Other House was an assembly packed full of social upstarts, dominated by soldiers and salary men. As was often the case in early modern Britain, perceptions and misrepresentations stoked the fires of political debate. Writing to Fauconberg on the day of the parliament’s opening, Henry Cromwell admitted that his thoughts were with events at Westminster. ‘This being the other house’s birth-day’, he hoped ‘its first vitall struglings may not make it lye cross to the womb that conceived it.’52 Yet, the return of the excluded to the Commons coupled with disappointment at the identity of the members attending the Other House meant the relationship between the two Houses was always likely to be abortive. The Message from the Other House Cromwell and the government’s supporters wanted the Commons to accept the Other House, and begin working with it, as swiftly as possible. To this end, from the opening of the parliament there was a conspicuous effort to portray the Other House as the natural heir to its defunct predecessor: in ceremony, image and name the Other House was styled as a ‘House of Lords’.53 The government’s tactics were clear enough when Black Rod arrived with his message from the Protector, informing the Commons that ‘his Highness is in the Lords’ House and desires to speak with you’. According to Burton, Speaker Widdrington tried to smooth over the offending phrase and ‘reported it “the other House”, but was called to correct his mistake’.54 On the surface, the fact that the Other House was presented as a House of Lords seems to undermine claims made earlier in this book, particularly the suggestion that the Other House was never intended by Cromwell or his supporters to be a straightforward restoration of one of the pillars of the tripartite ancient constitution. Yet, there is a danger of reading the way the Other House was styled too literally or simplistically. Rather than being evidence of constitutional backsliding, giving the Other House the style of the House of Lords could, paradoxically, have been a means to prevent the return of the old chamber. During the kingship debates, one of the reasons Broghill urged Cromwell to accept the kingly title was that it would block up the way for others, including Charles Stuart, to claim the title. There was ‘but a divorce’ between the ‘pretending King’ and the ‘Imperiall Crown of these Nations’, Broghill explained; the danger was that ‘persons divorc’t may marry 51  52  53  54 

See appendix. Thurloe, VI, 752–3. Mercurius Politicus, 399 (14–21 Jan. 1658), p. 256. Burton, II, 322; CJ, VII, 579. 129

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again’ but ‘if the person be married to another’ then ‘it cuts off all hope’.55 A similar train of thought was probably at play in 1658 – styling the new chamber the House of Lords offered a means to supplant the old chamber and its membership permanently. As Fiennes made clear in his opening speech to the parliament, the Other House did not set the ‘same old Plants’ in the ‘same old Bank’; it was something new, albeit styled in the fashion of the old. It was precisely for this reason that Viscount Saye, and probably others of the old lords summoned, would not sit in the Other House – it was a ‘vizard to carry on the designe of overthrowinge the House of Peeres’.56 Equally, styling the Other House as a House of Lords helped Cromwell and his supporters to ensure the new chamber was a more effective check upon the Commons than the terms of the parliamentary constitution of 1657 allowed. By the Humble Petition and Advice the Other House was beholden both to the constitution and to its creators – the Protector and the Commons. As already noted, it seems the Presbyterian majority of MPs were lukewarm on having a second chamber on the terms proposed in the Humble Remonstrance.57 Rather, when debating and revising the constitutional document they were determined that any second chamber must be created upon their terms – in no way should it impinge upon the sovereignty of the people’s representatives in parliament. To this end they claimed the power to approve all those nominated to the Other House by the Protector, albeit this rule was jettisoned in the last-minute alterations to the constitution in June 1657. By claiming that the Other House was a House of Lords, however, the Protectoral authorities were suggesting that the origins and powers of the chamber did not derive simply from the Humble Petition and Advice. As the Venetian Ambassador Giavarina noted, the Humble Petition had ‘specified that another chamber should be nominated’ but without calling that chamber ‘“Upper” or “Lords”’; most of those who passed the constitutional document in 1657 believed the power of the old House of Lords was ‘taken away’ – they saw the Other House ‘as a companion not as a master’. Cromwell, however, sought to ‘set up the chamber as it was in the time of kings, with all the power, authority and prerogatives enjoyed by its predecessors’.58 Not always the most astute political analyst, in this case Giavarina seems to be correct about the Protector’s strategy if not his motives. By rebranding the Other House as the House of Lords, Cromwell and his supporters were not plotting to renew the offer of kingship by stages but hoped to sidestep the question of the constitutional foundation of the new chamber and its relationship to the Commons. Taking the guise of the House of Lords, the Other House could claim foundations and powers independent from the Commons, strengthening its claim to act as a check upon the people’s representatives. 55  56  57  58 

Monarchy Asserted, p. 28. Firth, ‘Letter from Lord Saye’, p. 107. See discussion on pp. 60–3. CSPV, 1657–1659, p. 164: Giavarina to Doge and Senate, 5/15 Feb. 1658. 130

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Yet, if Cromwell and his allies believed that the majority in the Commons would simply accept the new chamber as a ‘House of Lords’, they miscalculated. The protracted debate over the Other House during the 1658 parliamentary session was not merely the result of the admittance of the excluded MPs. There was also a notable loss of appetite for the new constitution among many who backed it in the previous session. Rumours that the second session would see a renewal of agitation for a Cromwellian coronation proved wide of the mark.59 Moreover, it seems that many of those who had previously voted for an Other House refused to accept the chamber on the terms being proposed by Cromwell and his supporters. Matters came to a head on 22 January when the Other House resolved to send a message to the Commons, thereby forcing MPs to engage with the new chamber. The pretext seemed innocuous enough: the Other House desired the Commons to join them in a ‘humble address’ to the Protector for a ‘Day of Solemne Fasting and humiliation throughout the three Nations’. The importance of this message, as the first business transacted between the two Houses, was reflected in the choice of messengers – rather than appoint Masters of Chancery, traditionally entrusted with delivering the more mundane communications between the chambers, they nominated two of their Judge assistants: Hugh Wyndham and Roger Hill.60 The message was not well received in the Commons, not least because the messengers insisted on styling the Other House a House of Lords. According to Burton, sergeant-at-arms Edward Dendy reported that ‘there were two judges at the door, with a message from the Lords’.61 Immediately, a number of Republican MPs jumped to their feet and moved ‘not to receive any such message from them, as Lords’.62 Crucially, however, they were joined by Presbyterian MPs as well. Alderman William Gibbes, excluded in 1656 for his conservative leanings, claimed to be ‘in love with the old foundations of Parliaments’, including the House of Lords, but could not agree ‘to bring it in this way’.63 Trying to calm the situation, Major-General Hezekiah Haynes moved that the Commons should hear the messengers first to make sure they claimed to be ‘from the Lords’, adding ‘it may be the message will be from the other House’.64 After an hour’s wait, the judges were finally called into the chamber, with Wyndham putting to rest any doubts about the Other House’s intentions by stressing that he was ‘commanded by the Lords’ to deliver their message.65 In Burton’s account, conspicuously few MPs, beside the trio of major-­ generals Haynes, Kelsey and Boteler, defended the Other House’s For rumours, see CSPV 1657–1659, pp. 140, 149, 155–6; CSPD, 1657–1658, pp. 255, 258–9; Thurloe, VI, 687–8, 734. 60  HMC Lords, p. 511. 61  Burton, II, 339; A Second Narrative, pp. 6–7. 62  Burton, II, 339. 63  Ibid., II, 339–40. 64  Ibid., II, 340. 65  HMC Lords, pp. 512–13; CJ, VII, 581; Burton, II, 340. 59 

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­ essage.66 Rather, the excluded MPs dominated the debate and criticized m the new chamber’s attempt to claim the status of a House of Lords. Edmund Harvey, for one, could not ‘allow a message from such an authority as a House of Lords’. There were several ‘rubs’ against that title, not least the ‘Engagement’ oath of the Commonwealth and, more pertinently, the 1649 Act ‘to abolish them’. Harvey claimed that he would ‘freely concur, if it were a message from the other House’, but not from the House of Lords.67 This distaste went much wider than the previously excluded MPs, however. Thomas Reynell, for instance, warned that the message was a clear ‘trial whether they were a House of Lords’. Reynell could not see how the Commons could ‘give any answer’ as the message came ‘not from the other House’. Taking a swipe at the low birth of the membership of the new chamber, Reynell suggested that the message could just as plausibly come ‘from peers, from barons, from gentlemen’, before adding sardonically, ‘haply not from gentlemen, pardon me if I call them so’.68 He advised that they adjourn the debate immediately as it concerned ‘the very foundation of all, and ought to be well considered’.69 Other MPs urged confrontation. Sir Lislebone Long, for instance, believed that if the Commons did ‘not think fit that they should be called a Lords’ House’ then they must tell the Other House ‘with courage’.70 Yet, it seems that the majority advocated ignoring the message altogether. Joachim Matthews professed that he could not ‘allow any return at all to this message’.71 Adam Baynes warned that to send any message in reply would be ‘implicitly to consent that there is such a power in co-ordination with you’.72 The majority in the Commons seem to have agreed, resolving by 75 votes to 51 that they would not reply immediately but would ‘send an Answer by Messengers of their own’.73 There was clearly no hurry to discuss the matter, however: as Burton reports, no day was appointed to ‘resume this debate’ and the matter ‘was waved’.74 For those impatiently awaiting the reply in the Other House the signs did not look good. As Fauconberg put it with some understatement in a letter to Lockhart on 25 January, the ‘house of commons appeare yet a little pettish’ in light of the ‘message sent them from’ what he tellingly described as ‘the house of lords’.75 Yet it was not simply the opposition of the excluded MPs that frustrated the Other House; it was compounded by the conspicuous 66  67  68  69  70  71  72  73  74  75 

Burton, II, 341–2. Ibid., II, 341–2. Ibid., II, 342­–3. Ibid., II, 343. Ibid., II, 343. Ibid., II, 343. Ibid., II, 342. CJ, VII, 581. Burton, II, 344. Thurloe, VI, 756–7. 132

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silence of those MPs who previously voted for the Humble Petition. With few in the Commons willing to own the Other House as a House of Lords and parliamentary proceedings heading for stalemate, Cromwell was compelled to intervene. Cromwell’s Speech of 25 January 1658 and his Defence of the Other House On the morning of 25 January, Cromwell summoned ‘both Houses of Parliament’ to meet him at the Banqueting House that afternoon ‘where he had something of concernment, relating to the peace of the nations, to communicate’.76 The location was doubtless chosen to soothe the Commons; Whitehall provided a ‘neutral’ setting, unlike his opening speech that had taken place in the Other House. Moreover, unlike his speech of 20 January, Cromwell opened his address to the two Houses with studied ambiguity: rather than call them ‘My Lords, and Gentlemen of the House of Commons’, he now spoke to ‘My Lords and Gentlemen of the two Houses of Parliament’.77 Yet, despite these apparently conciliatory gestures, there are signs that Cromwell was not ready to back down over the Other House and its lordly appellation. Particularly revealing was the summons he sent that day to the Other House, directed to ‘Lord Fyennes … Speaker in Our House of Lords’, which desired that the ‘Howse of Lords’, not the Other House, should attend him.78 According to Burton, Cromwell’s speech was ‘very long, plain, and serious’.79 He stressed how ‘the Well-being, yea, the Being, of these nations is now at stake’; he warned that they must not let domestic matters distract them from the parlous state of the Protestant interest in Europe.80 Hinting at the Commons’ laborious debates over the Other House, Cromwell rebuked those who believed they could ‘discourse of all things at pleasure’.81 He stressed that the Commons must own the constitution as they found it and move on: it ‘were a happy thing if the Nation would be content with rule’, he exclaimed, ‘because misrule is better than no rule; and an ill Government, a bad one, is better than none!’82 He hoped that they would own that ‘Frame’ of government that ‘you are now called together upon, and engaged in … the Two Houses of Parliament and myself’. This ‘Frame’, Cromwell added dramatically, was the only thing preventing ‘this Nation from being made an Aceldama, a field of blood’. He though it ‘your wisdom... and your justice... 76  77  78  79  80  81  82 

Burton, II, 350; CJ, VII, 587. Burton, II, 351–2; Carlyle, III, 162. Mus. of Lon., Tangye MS 11a, fols 8r–v. Burton, II, 351. Carlyle, III, 162–72. Ibid., III, 169, 180. Ibid., III, 174–5. 133

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to uphold this Settlement now fallen-upon’, which he had ‘no cause to think but you are agreed to; and that you like it’.83 Of course, Cromwell’s primary argument, that parliament was bound to the Humble Petition and must own it without question, was tendentious to say the least. Not only was he addressing many previously excluded MPs who played no role in drafting the new constitution, but even for those who had been present in the previous session and voted for the Humble Petition, the constitutional terms that Cromwell was now urging bore little resemblance to what they previously agreed. The majority of MPs had envisaged an Other House that was subservient to the Commons, bound by the rules set down in the written constitution that they made; they had not wanted a body of men chosen by the Protector alone and were unwilling to give such a chamber the title, and powers, of a House of Lords. Contrary to Cromwell’s claims, the majority in the Commons were not ‘agreed to’, nor did they ‘like’, the terms he was foisting upon them. As if to compound Cromwell’s failure to diffuse the situation, even the seemingly innocuous issue of printing his speech generated further tensions. On 28 January, a committee of MPs was appointed to attend Cromwell about printing the speech, yet many of those chosen were men known to be unsympathetic to its contents: twelve of the forty-three named had been excluded from the first session of the parliament including, most notably, Haselrig.84 As these were the men that Cromwell had castigated in his speech for fomenting dissension, there is reason enough to doubt the Commons’ sincerity when instructing the committee to inform the Protector that they would ‘take the Matters imparted to them’ in his speech ‘into serious and speedy Consideration’.85 Cromwell gave the committee a frosty reception. Noticing Haselrig among the contingent, he quipped that ‘had he not seen the Paper’ bearing their credentials and regarded only the ‘Persons of the Committee’ he would ‘not have looked upon the Committee as a Committee of the House of Commons’. Cromwell was irked by the fact that the Commons came to him alone about the printing of the speech. As far as he was concerned, it had been ‘delivered to both the Houses, the House of Lords and the House of Commons’; it was ‘against the Privilege of either House, for him to give an Answer to either House apart’.86 According to Burton, the report of the Protector’s answer on the morning of 29 January was met with ‘altum silentium for a while’.87 Finally, the Presbyterian MP Alexander Thistlethwaite asked the Commons to take notice ‘of his Highness’s reiteration, “I say the House of Lords”’; for Ibid., III, 176–8. CJ, VII, 588–9. The ‘excluded’ MPs chosen were: Ashley-Cooper, Biddulph, Birch, Chute, Darley, Haselrig, Mildmay, Saunders, Scot, St Nicholas, Styles and Weaver. 85  CJ, VII, 588–9; Burton, II, 374–5. 86  See CJ, VII, 589–90; Carlyle, III, 503; Burton, II, 379. 87  Burton, II, 379. 83  84 

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Thistlethwaite it was clear that Cromwell ‘looks upon the other House as joined in the legislature’ and therefore ‘our sitting here is fruitless, unless we come to an understanding between the two Houses’.88 Ultimately, Cromwell’s speech of 25 January was never published.89 Cromwell’s unwillingness to assent to the publication of the speech was due to more than his determination to safeguard the privileges of the Other House, however. Just three days after its delivery, he already recognized that the speech was outdated. His theme had been unity; he urged a pragmatic response to the constitutional arrangement and demanded strength in the face of internal and external enemies. Yet, his words were unheeded; his pleas for urgency were ignored.90 The Presbyterians and the Debate over the Other House Rather than quelling debate over the Other House, Cromwell’s intervention reignited it. On 28 January the Commons resolved to defer all private business for a month and to take up the business of their response to the Other House’s message from a week earlier.91 Burton’s detailed reports of the debates over the message, and whether or not the Commons should transact with the new chamber as a House of Lords, reveal the diversity of opinions held by MPs over the nature of the second chamber and its role within the constitution. With the leading civilian Cromwellians elevated to the Other House, a number of Presbyterian MPs on the fringes of the Court defended the government’s position. When the debate commenced on 29 January it was left to Nicholas Pedley, a commissioner of the wine office, to urge the Commons to transact with the Other House ‘under the title of Lords’. Pedley stressed that the Commons had little choice: after all, the members of the Other House had already been summoned by writs that ‘doth agree with former writs’ for summoning the House of Lords. True, the Humble Petition ‘limited’ the members of the new chamber ‘in some things’, such as the ‘limitation of inheritances to the Lords’, yet Pedley was sure that the members ‘must have the same dignity’; the Other House ‘must be called a Lords’ House.’92 Even if it did not say so explicitly, Pedley claimed that the Humble Petition implied that the Other House was a House of Lords. The argument was reiterated by the Irish MP Walter Waller. If they looked to the debates over the Humble Ibid., II, 380. Manuscript copies of the speech were scarce, see Vaughan, II, 314, 437–8, 438–40, 441–3, 444–5; Bodl., Carte MS 80, fol. 753. The speech was reported in the Commons but never formally entered in the Journal; the only ‘official’ recording of Cromwell’s speech of 25 January was that entered into the ‘finished’ Journal of the Other House. CJ, VII, 588–9; Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, MS 109. 90  CSPV, 1657–1659, pp. 164–5. 91  Burton, II, 376–7; CJ, VII, 589; Mercurius Politicus, 401 (28 Jan.–4 Feb. 1658), p. 276. 92  Burton, II, 381–2. 88  89 

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Petition, Waller claimed, it was clear that ‘you intended a restitution of the second Estate of Parliament’. As such, the Other House must be the House of Lords: Waller ‘never heard of another House with another power’.93 The point was developed by a number of Presbyterian MPs who supported kingship in 1657. For John Trevor the fact that the Humble Petition gave ‘no affirmative power’ but ‘only negative, as no proxies, &c’ did not ‘imply a new foundation, but argues an old constitution’.94 Customs commissioner Griffith Bodurda claimed that the Commons could no longer debate ‘what they shall be, but what they are’. They were a House of Lords ‘not by creation, but by revival’; it was ‘not this House that made them Lords’.95 To suggest that the Other House was created by the Humble Petition alone implied their dependence upon the creators of that constitution – the Commons – thereby rendering them an ineffective constitutional balance. As Bodurda put it, if the Commons ‘created’ the second chamber, then it would make the whole constitutional framework unstable: if ‘this House created them, then the House may uncreate them’. Conversely, by claiming that the Other House was a revival of the defunct House of Lords, the Protectorate’s supporters could justify its position as an independent pillar of the constitution. According to Bodurda, the Humble Petition was ‘a principle’ and could not be ‘disputed’: the Commons were ‘but one estate’, yet there were also another ‘two, without which you cannot alter this principle’.96 In many ways, the arguments deployed by these MPs are a substitute for the lacuna in Burton’s diary during the genesis of the Humble Petition and Advice in March 1657. Many of the speakers revisited their reasons for agreeing to the constitution a year earlier. Robert Beake, another Presbyterian MP very close to the civilian Cromwellians, rebuked those MPs present who seemed now to question the very thing they had voted for just a year earlier. Given that they had ‘desired his Highness to take the royal dignity’, Beake could not see how they did ‘not intend them to be a House of Lords’: they had ‘set up a title of King, to which nothing more relative than a House of Lords’. Beake was sure that when he gave his vote for an Other House in 1657 he did ‘intend’ it to be a House of Lords and he assumed ‘many more’ MPs did too.97 As John Trevor saw it, they would ‘find no rest’ until they came ‘as near as may be, to that old constitution of King, Lords, and Commons’.98 Yet, the majority in the Commons were unwilling to accept that the Humble Petition and Advice was a straightforward restoration of the ancient constitution. Unsurprisingly, the excluded Republican MPs, particularly Ibid., II, 398. See also the speech by another ‘kingling’, Capt. Whitgrave, ibid., II, 395–6 and Drake, ibid., II, 409–10. 94  Ibid., II, 411–13. 95  Ibid., II, 430. See also speech by Maynard, ibid., II, 458–62. 96  Ibid., II, 430. 97  Ibid., II, 414. 98  Ibid., II, 411–13. 93 

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the double-act of Haselrig and Scot, were hostile, claiming that to restore the House of Lords was the thin end of a wedge that concluded with the Restoration of monarchy.99 If the Commons were to set up a House of Lords then they ‘must put on the King’s head again’.100 According to Haselrig, if the Commons allowed the Other House the title of Lords then they would soon find ‘tenderness’ among them ‘to maintain the privileges of that House of Lords’. He hoped the Commons would ‘quake to hear that they are returning to Egypt, to the garlick and onions of … a kingdom’.101 On the face of it, it seems improbable that these Republican sentiments could strike a chord with the conservative majority of MPs. Their attempts to defend the revolution of 1649 were unlikely to find sympathy among those who abhorred the regicide and the regime that followed it. Old enmities died hard: few in the House could forget the tumultuous events of the winter of 1648–49 and the divisions it created. Scot, for instance, could not help but take a swipe at the ‘major part’ in the Long Parliament who grew ‘corrupt’ through their willingness to continue negotiations with Charles I, praising the soldiers for carrying out their purge of the House in order to stop the ‘cause’ from being ‘betrayed’.102 In turn, Scot’s speech drew criticism from those purged in 1648, such as Thomas Gewen, who denied that the ‘greatest part’ that sat in the Long Parliament ‘were corrupt’. By making such claims, Gewen claimed that Scot had shown himself ‘a thorough paced  Republican’.103 Yet, superficially at least, the Republicans and conservative majority did find some common ground over the Other House. For rather different reasons both the Republicans and many Presbyterian MPs criticized attempts to style the Other House as a House of Lords because the new chamber lacked the requisite membership. Even those Republicans with no appetite for a second chamber delighted in pointing out that a house without the lords could hardly be styled a House of Lords. As Scot remarked, ‘if there be a House of Lords, it is more reason to call the old peerage’, yet there was ‘not one of them there, as I am informed … The old nobility, will not, do not, sit there.’ The Other House contained ‘not half a quorum of persons qualified’ to sit in the old House of Lords. Those that sat did ‘fail in the very formalis causa’, in that they lacked ‘estates and interest’. Scot claimed that those who did sit in the Other House were ‘but Commoners, and were yesterday here … they sit as a part of the Commons, in another place’. They had ‘not. … the quality of Lords. They have not interest, not the forty thousandth part of England.’104 While the sincerity with which Scot defended the old peers is to be doubted, it chimed with similar concerns expressed by many Presbyterians   99  100  101  102  103  104 

See speeches by Haselrig, ibid., II, 392–3. Ibid., II, 390. Ibid., II, 403, 423–4. Ibid., II, 385–6. Ibid., II, 392. Ibid., II, 389–90. 137

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that owning the Other House as a House of Lords would be detrimental to the rights of the ancient peerage. Chaloner Chute warned that ‘it concerns your justice to take away the titles and inheritances of the old Lords’.105 Alexander Thistlethwaite warned that one of the ‘rocks’ that they would ‘run upon’ in the debate was ‘the excluding of the old peerage, which have right and are a considerable party; property we ought to be tender in’.106 Herbert Morley did not care how ‘meanly soever the old Lords be spoken of’ by some, but believed that there were ‘some of them of as much piety as any in this or the other House’. Morley was not necessarily against the Other House but would not call it a House of Lords, moving that it were better for the Commons simply to style them as ‘Lords and Gentlemen’ instead.107 In the face of this criticism, the government’s supporters stressed that, with or without the old peers, ‘House of Lords’ was a fitting title. A number of military Cromwellians, in particular, stressed that those sitting in the new chamber had an interest equal to, if not greater, than any peer who previously sat in the House of Lords. Major-General William Boteler claimed to like the Other House all the better because the old Lords did not sit there. It was no longer ‘estates will be the balance’, Boteler argued; the members of the Other House were chosen for their ‘religion, piety, and faithfulness to this Commonwealth’, these qualifications were ‘the best balance’. As such Boteler stressed that the Other House was not ‘the same with a House of Lords’ but ‘quite another thing’; they were ‘under a settlement which does clearly distinguish this from that constitution of a House of Lords’. Yet, somewhat paradoxically, Boteler went on to argue that the Other House should be styled ‘a House of Lords’ and ‘will be so’.108 It seems that Boteler was driving at precisely the outcome that Saye had feared in his letter of December 1657. He did not see the Other House as a restoration of the House of Lords but a means to usurp it and confound the rights of the old peerage. Haynes made the point clear enough when he informed the Commons that he always thought of the ‘Other House’ as a ‘bar to a House of Lords’. He did ‘quarrel not for names’ and was happy to style the Other House as a House of Lords; it was ‘no different’ to Haynes ‘what you call them’, so long as they ‘intend not hereby a renewal of the old peerage’.109 If the military Cromwellians’ reluctance to defend the old peerage was to be expected, more surprising was that some Presbyterian MPs were also prepared to downplay the absence of the old peers from the Other House and even to defend the army’s presence there. Robert Beake, for instance, admitted that the members ‘want estates’, yet he did not think that meant that they lacked ‘interest’. The conspicuous military presence in the Other House was 105  106  107  108  109 

Ibid., II, 421–2. Ibid., II, 428. Ibid., II, 456–7. Ibid., II, 407–9. Ibid., II, 413–14. 138

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no cause for alarm but strengthened its credentials to take the place of the House of Lords: Beake believed he that had ‘a regiment of foot to command in the army’ had ‘as good a balance as any I know’.110 Edmund Fowell claimed that it was wholly appropriate that many of those ‘worthies’ who had served parliament during the wars should have seats in the Other House.111 Griffith Bodurda believed Cromwell had chosen men to the Other House that ‘have interest for that end’. No doubt looking to Haselrig, Bodurda suggested that if any had concerns about the landed interest of the membership of the Other House then he hoped that ‘those worthy gentlemen that have estates and may sit there, would go thither’.112 As Boteler’s seemingly paradoxical speech attests, the government’s supporters were trying to argue simultaneously that the Other House was a House of Lords and that it was not. They did so not only to explain, and justify, the absence of the old peerage but also to deflect the awkward question, raised by the Republicans, of the 1649 Act for abolishing the House of Lords.113 Robert Beake even claimed that the Act did not reject the idea of a House of Lords, it merely abolished the chamber as it then stood. Beake asked the Commons to consider whether the Acts passed in 1649 were ‘against a king, or against the thing; or against Lords, or the thing?’ Just as kingship in a single person was abolished because of the misdemeanours of a single king, not because kingship was bad in itself, so the ‘Act of Parliament against’ the Lords was ‘not against the thing’ itself. Kingship and the House of Lords were abolished in 1649 because of their excesses, yet the Humble Petition and Advice did not aim to restore those: it was, Beake explained, a ‘replevin’ rather than a restoration.114 Or as Edmund Fowell put it, they were ‘lords’ but their ‘extravagancies are lopped off’.115 By suggesting that the Other House was a revival of the House of Lords the government’s supporters implied that the chamber had a footing that predated, and therefore did not derive from, the parliamentary constitution of 1657. Conversely, the government’s opponents claimed that the Other House could only claim authority from the Humble Petition and Advice and those who created it. Thomas Scot found specious the argument that the Other House must be styled a House of Lords because those who created the Humble Petition ‘intended it’. After all, if they had intended it then surely the authors would have ‘said it’.116 The meaning put on the Humble Petition by Cromwell’s supporters was pure ‘sophistry’. The logic of their argument was that ‘you [i.e. the Commons] made them another House; his Highness made them Lords; 110  111  112  113  114  115  116 

Ibid., II, 415–16 Ibid., II, 448–50. Ibid., II, 430–3. Ibid., II, 399. Ibid., II, 416. Ibid., II, 450. Ibid., II, 388. 139

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therefore they are a House of Lords’. This was incorrect for the Commons granted them only limited powers under the Humble Petition, and in effect had ‘settled them only as a high Court of Justice’; by styling them the House of Lords, however, they would ‘make them a co-ordinate power with you’ with ‘the power of your purses, of peace and war, of making laws’.117 As Scot saw it, the people had ‘fought for’ that ‘capacity to make your own laws’; they would not thank the Commons if they helped to ‘bring such a negative upon them’ again.118 The Other House could not claim such a power because it was a creature of the House of Commons: it was ‘a rib out of your side’, they ‘had given it a name’ and should not ‘alter it’.119 These arguments were not just the preserve of the Republicans, however; many moderate MPs excluded in 1656 also worried that to claim the Other House was the House of Lords would undermine the principle of the Commons’ supremacy that had been at the core of the parliamentarian cause. Alderman William Gibbes claimed that there was nothing in the Humble Petition to suggest that the Commons intended ‘such a power as to have a co-ordination with you’; by styling the chamber a House of Lords, however, ‘imports either a co-ordination, or a supremacy above you’.120 Gibbes could not believe that after ‘so much blood and treasure lost’ during the late wars that they would now ‘return to our former grievances’. It was up to the Commons to assert their supremacy: they must discuss how they ‘can make them a House of Peers’, or else the Other House ‘shall have all the old powers’ that the House of Lords had.121 A particularly telling intervention was made by the lawyer Francis Thorpe, who was dismissed as Baron of the Exchequer in 1655 for supposed disaffection towards the Protectorate and subsequently excluded from the 1656 parliamentary session. During his speech, Thorpe laid bare his political principles: he did ‘acknowledge the old constitution, by Lords and Commons, to be the best constitution; I ever though it’. Yet, in 1649 he ‘freely and heartily give my consent to take away the House of Lords; and my only reason was their negative voice’. Thorpe’s opinion was not unlike Beake’s: he did not oppose the idea of a House of Lords but disliked their excesses. Unlike Beake, however, Thorpe did not believe that the Other House, once styled a House of Lords, could be kept within limits. He would not own the Other House as Lords, because ‘all that ever you have limited them in’ by the Humble Petition would be meaningless. Thorpe was particularly critical of the alterations to the constitution in June 1657 that left the choice of members in Cromwell’s hands alone, dropping the requirement for approbation by the Commons. The effect was to ‘whip up 117  118  119  120  121 

Ibid., II, 391. Ibid., II, 390. Ibid., II, 391–2. Ibid., II, 402. Ibid., II, 426–7, emphasis added. See also speech by Doddridge, ibid., II, 457–8. 140

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the heels’ of the Humble Petition so that all the limits placed upon the Other House were nullified – the Other House effectively became a weapon for the single person to use against the Commons. Thorpe worried that they were ‘returning to what we were’ before the conflicts of the 1640s: if so, he wondered ‘what have we got by the war’.122 Ultimately, he thought the provisions of the 1657 constitution were a better guarantee of the fruits of the war because it gave no explicit negative voice to the Other House. The words of the Additional and Explanatory Petition said that they were to ‘advise and consult with you... but not to control’.123 It was left to the Commons to ‘prescribe the rules’ for the Other House; they must ‘circumscribe them’, and then Thorpe would ‘freely give my consent as any’.124 Even better placed to assess the reasons why MPs voted for an Other House was Joachim Matthews, who was initially excluded from the Commons but subsequently took his seat late in 1656.125 Matthews believed there was ‘nothing so clear’ than that the Other House was a ‘new House’. There was ‘not a word of that restitution’ in the Humble Petition, ‘not a word of repealing the Act against the House of Lords’. As Matthews understood it, ‘our ground of another House’ was its ‘judicial power’ – to hear ‘Complaints from Courts of Justice and Equity, which would take up much of your time’.126 Moreover, Matthews doubted that styling the Other House as a House of Lords would serve the turn of the government. Rather, any restored House of Lords must abide by the constitutional limitations placed upon that chamber by the parliamentarians during the 1640s. As Matthews saw it, the ‘ground of the quarrel with the King’ was over his ‘negative voice’. During the 1640s the parliamentarians challenged this by arguing that parliament was a better judge of the public good than the king. As Matthews added, it ‘was then thought the House of Lords could not obstruct that’ either. Like Thorpe, Matthews stressed that the Other House, like the House of Lords, was ‘only formed to consult and advise’ but not to have a negative over the people’s representative.127 Matthews also pointed to those schemes devised in the 1640s to prevent the king from packing the chamber full of new peers. Recalling the terms of the Newport negotiations, he reminded the Commons of the provisions ‘unrepealed’, and agreed to by Charles I himself, whereby ‘the Chief Magistrate shall not send up any member to the other House but by consent’ of both Houses.128 By suggesting that the Other House was a House of Lords but that its membership did not need the approbation of the Ibid., II, 445–8. Ibid., II, 445–8. The actual words were that the members should be summoned ‘to give their advice and assistance’, Gardiner, Documents, p. 463. 124  Burton, II, 445–8. 125  He was apparently sitting by 31 Dec. 1656: ibid., I, 286. 126  Ibid., II, 450–1. 127  Ibid., II, 451–3; see also speech by Anthony Ashley Cooper, ibid., II, 434–5. 128  Ibid., II, 453. Burton records that Matthews says by ‘consent of the other House’, but it seems his meaning is consent of the Commons. 122  123 

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Commons, the government’s supporters were flagrantly disregarding those safeguards that parliament placed on the old upper chamber in the 1640s. Although the excluded MPs, both Republican and Presbyterian, led the criticism of attempts to style the Other House as a House of Lords, their concerns were evidently shared by others in the Commons. Most striking was the fact that even those present in the first session who voted in favour of the new constitution divided over the issue. As Gibbes noted wryly, there was considerable ‘difference’ of opinion ‘even amongst those what were at the debate’ in 1657 over the nature of the Other House. As such, he was at a loss to know how those who had not been privy to those debates were supposed to ‘know the meaning’, not to mention those parliaments ‘that come after us’.129 One former ‘kingling’ to speak out against the government’s definition of the Other House was William Briscoe. While he did not deny that there was ‘another House by your constitution’ Briscoe stressed that it was a ‘House set up by you’. The creation of the Other House was not, as some were suggesting, an ‘Act of Revival’ – it was a ‘new constitution’. As such, Briscoe thought it should have a ‘new name’: after all, its members were ‘new’ as were its ‘qualifications’ and limits – such as the fixed number of members ‘which was not before’. He was clear that the Other House, created by the Commons, could never claim a power over the Commons: ‘the derivative power shall never exceed the primitive power’.130 Indeed, the debates over the Other House in 1658 raise important questions about the aims of the parliamentary majority in the second Protectorate Parliament and the suitability of ‘Presbyterian’ as a catch-all label for that majority. As Carol Egloff notes, the term ‘comprehended a wide range of opinion and behaviour’ from ‘whole-hearted co-operation with the Protectoral system on the one hand to active opposition on the other’.131 Quite often, this amorphous group is defined primarily by its political conservatism. At its core were those political Presbyterians of the late 1640s who abhorred the constitutional revolution of 1648–49 and the kingless Commonwealth regime that followed; they were ‘naturally inclined’ to support a return to the ancient constitution of King, Lords and Commons.132 Unquestionably, the majority of MPs in 1657 supported a return to a familiar-looking frame of government: they backed the offer of kingship to Cromwell and a return to bicameral parliaments. Yet, the apparent unanimity with which the Presbyterian MPs hankered for the pre-1649 constitutional structure masks underlying disagreement about the foundations upon which that structure would be rebuilt. Specifically, it was unclear whether the Humble Petition was intended as a restitution of the old constitution, or a new foundation fashioned in the style of the old. The last-minute alterations to 129  130  131  132 

Ibid., II, 427. See also Scot’s speech, ibid., II, 378. Ibid., II, 410–11. Egloff, ‘The Search for a Cromwellian Settlement’, p. 313. Little and Smith, Parliaments and Politics, pp. 114–16. 142

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the Humble Petition in June 1657 and Cromwell’s subsequent choice of members confused the issue further. During the debates of 1658, the Presbyterians were divided not so much over the issue of whether there should be a second chamber, as on what basis that chamber should stand. On the one hand, a number of Presbyterian MPs who were prominent kinglings in 1657, such as Beake, Bodurda and Trevor, professed that the Other House was always meant to be a revival of the House of Lords. In doing so, they downplayed the absence of the old peers and stressed that those summoned by Cromwell were every bit a match for the ancient peerage. Their reasons for closing ranks with the government’s supporters demand further explanation. Certainly a number of them had close connections to the regime through employment and were understandably keen that it should not fail. They may have taken the pragmatic view that the constitutional arrangement devised in 1657, though not ideal, was the best they could hope for in the circumstances. The fact that the civilian Cromwellians and Presbyterians had a slight majority in the Other House undoubtedly made it easier for them to suggest that the new chamber wielded the House of Lords’ powers, including its negative voice. Above all, they feared that further squabbling over the terms of the constitution would deliver the government into the hands of the military Cromwellians.133 Yet, a number of other Presbyterians in the 1658 session were less compromising. Some of the most vocal critics were those excluded in 1656, such as Chute, Doddridge, Gibbes and Matthews. They joined the Republicans in pointing out that the Humble Petition and Advice, being the work of a forced parliament, was no basis to settle a government to secure the principles of popular sovereignty or parliamentary supremacy. Likewise, they stressed that it was not up to the Protector and his supporters to define the settlement and foist it upon the Commons. The Other House was not a House of Lords simply because Cromwell or his adherents said so. Rather, these Presbyterians – including both those who were excluded and some who were not, like Briscoe and Thistlethwaite – stressed that the Commons alone, as author of the Humble Petition, must be sole judge of what its provisions meant. Among the Presbyterian opponents of the Other House there were clearly a range of reasons for opposing the new chamber. For some, like Chute, Morley and Thistlethwaite, Cromwell’s choice of members was inadequate and a threat to the rights of the old peerage; much better, they thought, to have the old House of Lords than allow this new upstart chamber to usurp their places. Others stressed that the Commons, when drafting the Humble Petition and Advice, never intended a restoration of the House of Lords at all; they envisaged merely a court of judicature or a consultative body. The Other House, they claimed, owed its existence to the Humble Petition and See speech by Bodurda, Burton, II, 430–3. See also speeches by Shapcott and Drake, ibid., II, 402, 410.

133 

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Advice and, by extension, derived its authority from the people represented in the Commons. Those who sat in the Other House did not have the same foundation or interest as the old peers and could not legitimately wield those powers once claimed by the Lords, including a negative voice. To own the Other House as a House of Lords would subvert the very foundations of the Humble Petition and, with it, the supremacy of the Commons within that constitution. The issue was too important to sweep under the table, despite dark prognostics from the government’s supporters of imminent dissolution and arbitrary rule. As Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper warned, no matter what they short-term consequences, they must not ‘lay foundations that we may repent’: they must take care ‘for the future’.134 It is in the context of these divisions among the Presbyterian MPs that we can explain the lack of a renewed offer of kingship in 1658. According to Burton, who arrived late at the Commons on 3 February, the Presbyterian MP Thomas Gewen proposed Cromwellian kingship as a way out of the constitutional quagmire the parliament found itself in. Gewen moved that ‘now we are a free Parliament, we would draw up a Bill to invest his Highness in the title and dignity of King’.135 Yet, the silence that followed was deafening; it seems no one stood up to second the motion. Those Presbyterians who defended the Other House as a House of Lords apparently saw no reason to rake up the kingship. They would not endorse Gewen’s claim that ‘now we are a free parliament’ it was appropriate to discuss a bill for kingship, as this cast doubt upon the provisions of the Humble Petition, which had, by implication, not been made by a free parliament. Conversely, the excluded MPs and others who opposed the suggestion that the Other House was a House of Lords also saw no reason to support Gewen’s motion. After all, to pass a bill making Cromwell king – while reifying the notion that the single person’s title and powers must have parliamentary foundations – would merely strengthen the case of those who claimed the Other House was a House of Lords by implication. Moreover, the whole question of passing a bill for kingship was likely to raise further questions about what foundations the regime actually stood on: would the bill need the assent of the Other House or not? Much has been made of the role of the Republicans in wrecking the debates of the later Protectorate Parliaments. John Hobart, who stayed away from Westminster and monitored events from Norwich, recognized the Republicans at work. He could not believe that the Commons had turned against ‘their brat’, the Other House, so soon and did ‘rather think it a quarrel packt against them’.136 Yet, in many ways, Haselrig and company did not have to work hard. Rather than being the root cause of divisions within the house, the Republicans played on, and accentuated, existing differences of 134  135  136 

Ibid., II, 434–5. Ibid., II, 424. Bodl., Tanner MS 52, fol. 218. 144

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opinion among the Presbyterian majority stretching back to the creation of the Humble Petition itself. With debate going nowhere fast, Bodurda pleaded with the Commons on 3 February to expedite the business immediately, stressing that the moniker of ‘the Other House’ was simply inadequate, it was ‘an individium vagum’. Instead they ‘must give them some name … You must call them a House, of men, of women, or something that have two legs’.137 For the majority of MPs, however, these flippant remarks missed the point. The kingship debates of 1657 made clear enough that most MPs considered titles to be more than just labels; as Ashley Cooper pointed out, the ‘gentlemen of the long robe will tell you there is much in names’.138 At the crux of the Other House debates of 1658, as with the kingship debates of 1657, was not the outward form of government but the substance or meaning that lurked beneath those forms. The Other House and its Business As the Commons continued to ‘putt off’ their answer to the Other House’s message, Bulstrode Whitelocke – a regular attendee in the new chamber – notes how their delays ‘caused distaste in the other House’.139 Their mood was understandable; until both Houses co-operated, no purposeful parliamentary business could be conducted. Left in a state of limbo, critics sneered at how the Other House, ‘totally disowned’ by the Commons and the people, ‘spent their time in little Matters, such as choosing of Committees, and among other things, to consider the Privileges and Jurisdiction of their House … before they knew what their House was, or should be called’.140 Yet, the Other House was not as quiescent as hostile commentators claimed. There is certainly little to suggest that those members who attended the Other House lost interest. Although attendance levels fluctuated throughout the session, reaching a high of forty-two on 21 January and a low of t­ wenty-four on 1 February, the average number of members in attendance was thirty-five, well over the quorum of twenty-one.141 The draft journal of the Other House suggests that those sitting found business to occupy their time, including some of the ‘traditional’ business of the second chamber. On 21 January they appointed committees for both privileges and petitions, as well as a sub-committee ‘to peruse the entryes in the Journalls of this house and see the same be rightly entered’. Tellingly, the committee for petitions Burton, II, 430–3. Ibid., II, 434–5 139  Whitelocke Diary, p. 484. 140  A Second Narrative, p. 7; A Probable Expedient For the present and future Publique Settlement (London, 1658), pp. 2–3. 141  See attendance lists for 20 Jan.–3 Feb. 1658 in HMC Lords, pp. 506–23. Because of the sudden dissolution, no record of attendance was made on 4 Feb. 137  138 

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was given the ‘same powers that formerly Committees for Petitions had’, indicating that, as with the appellation of the chamber, most members had a revival of the House of Lords in their minds.142 The continuity between the Other House and its predecessor was made even more explicit on 23 January when it ordered that the ‘Committee for priviledges Doe at their next meeting peruse the Rolle of Orders of this House which was usually ready at the beginning of every Parliament and prepare these Orders to be brought in and read’.143 In effect, the Other House claimed the standing orders of the House of Lords as their own; ‘this House’ and the House of Lords were one and the same. Doubtless, this close imitation of past procedure was facilitated by the new clerk of the Other House, and former clerk of the Commons, Henry Scobell. His intimate knowledge of the workings of the House of Lords is clearly demonstrated in his book Remembrances of some Members, Orders and Proceedings of the House of Lords.144 Given that this work was published in 1657, shortly before his appointment as clerk to the Other House, it would be tempting to see it as his job application. Indeed, Scobell had good reason to assert his credentials for the post as he faced stiff competition, not least from the former clerk of the House of Lords, John Browne, who apparently petitioned Cromwell in December 1657 ‘to enjoy & exercise my place of Clerke of the Parliaments in the other house as is nowe called’.145 Ultimately, however, it was Scobell – who was very much a Cromwellian insider, having served as clerk to the Protectorate Parliaments and the Council, who got the job. Among the other business that preoccupied the Other House in its early days was its spiritual well being. The names of those ministers appointed ‘to pray in the house every day of sitting’ reflect the religious preferences of the membership described in the previous chapter. Of the six ministers chosen, five were religious independents: William Hooke, Nicholas Lockyer, Hugh Peters, Peter Sterry and John Rowe.146 The only exception was John Howe who was Presbyterian in outlook, albeit his efforts to reconcile the Presbyterians with the Independents meant he shared the irenic outlook of many in the Other House.147 Contrary to the accusations of contemporaries, however, the Other House did more than just appoint committees and ministers. There are several hints in their journal and elsewhere of the chamber immersing itself in a range of public and private business during the brief parliamentary session. The presentation of private petitions to the Other House, in particular, HMC Lords, pp. 509–10. Ibid., p. 513. 144  H. Scobell, Remembrances of some Members, Orders and Proceedings of the House of Lords (London, 1657). 145  Bodl., Carte MS 73, fol. 179: Browne to Montagu, 12 Dec. 1657. 146  HMC Lords, p. 508. 147  D.P. Field, ‘Howe, John (1630–1705)’, ODNB. 142  143 

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suggests that the chamber was not ‘totally disowned’ by the public at large. Although no records survive comparable to petition books of the House of Lords, the journal of the Other House suggests that it received petitions from private individuals. On 21 January ‘the humble Petition of Nicholas Corsellis of London Merchant’ for a bill of naturalization for his Dutch wife Susanna Baldé was read in the House. Naturalization bills had been the preserve of the upper chamber, and Corsellis’ petition shows that at least one member of the public was prepared to acknowledge the new chamber as a House of Lords. It was addressed to the ‘Right Honorable the Lords in Parliament assembled’, adding that ‘Your Lordshipps Petitioner doth humbly pray your Lordshipps favour’ and ‘shall … ever pray for your Lordshipps’. The whole formula was in conspicuous imitation of former addresses to the House of Lords with no mention of the ‘Other House’.148 Whether or not Corsellis truly believed he was addressing a House of Lords is another matter; it merely shows what he assumed to be the most appropriate way to address the new chamber in order to get a favourable response to his petition. The tactic worked as the House ordered that Corsellis ‘have leave to present a Bill … for the Naturalization of his wife’. This was presented on 25 January and read for the second time three days later after which it was committed.149 The Other House also worked on a couple of public acts. On 22 January, for instance, it was ordered that the assistant judges Matthew Hale, Hugh Wyndham and Richard Newdigate ‘prepare a bill for making intailed lands liable to the payment of Debts’. How far the judges progressed is uncertain; no bill emerged before the dissolution, and many of the judges were distracted by the business of the law term for which their assistance was temporarily dispensed with on 25 January ‘unles they shalbe sent for by this house’.150 More progress was made on an ‘Act for the better levying the Penaltyes for profanation of the Lords day’, which was read for the first time on 22 January.151 After its second reading four days later the act was committed to a group of twenty-one members.152 On 29 January a further seven members were added to that committee, which was ordered to meet that afternoon, but thereafter the business fell silent and no report was made before the dissolution on 4 February.153 That the Other House achieved little more than a few items of draft legislation is understandable. With recognition from the Commons unforthcoming there was little point rushing forward with a legislative programme. It is even tempting to see the lacuna in the draft journal towards the end of the session as evidence of waning interest in proceedings. The entries for 148  149  150  151  152  153 

HMC Lords, p. 510. Ibid., pp. 510, 514, 519 (20, 25, 28 Jan.). Ibid., pp. 511, 514 (22, 25 Jan.). Ibid., p. 511 (22 Jan.); Mercurius Politicus, 400 (21–28 Jan. 1658), p. 258. HMC Lords, p. 516. Ibid., p. 520. 147

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both 30 January and 1 February record nothing more than attendance and a note that Speaker Fiennes ‘by direction of the house declared this present Parliament to be Continued’ until the next appointed sitting.154 But it should be remembered that the journals only record the decisions of the House and tend to omit mention of ongoing debates in which no resolution was made. For instance, according to Whitelocke, on 30 January the House did not simply meet and adjourn but took ‘into consideration the state of affayres relating to forrein Princes & States & perticularly to Sweden’. Yet, even as they debated foreign policy, the issue at the forefront of their minds was their message to the Commons; as Whitelocke noted at the end of that day’s entry, the ‘house of Commons again putt off their answer to the Lords’.155 The Other House was acutely aware that if the two Houses failed to communicate then any business conducted would come to naught. As such, on 3 February they again attempted to transact with the Commons. The topic selected for this second message was the ‘great Concourse of Papists and other persons who have been in Armes against the Commonwealth unto this Towne’. Whether the threat from Royalists in the Capital existed or not, it was a potent reminder of the need of the Houses to co-operate to keep out the ‘common enemy’. As such, the Other House resolved that an ‘addresse may be made to his Highness to issue a proclamation for removing them hence’ and ‘upon debate … That a Message be sent to the house of Commons to joyne with this House therein’.156 As with the message of 22 January, the Other House moved swiftly, ordering a committee of just four – Desborough, Lawrence, John Lisle and Onslow – to withdraw ‘to pen the substance of a Message’. Later that day, Desborough reported the draft message to the House, which was ‘read and agreed’. They would ask the Commons to join them in addressing the Protector to issue a proclamation ‘by advise of both howses of Parliament Commaunding all Papists and all other persons who have been in Armes against the Commonwealth by a Certaine Day to Depart out of the Cityes of London and Westminster’. These Royalists and Catholics must withdraw at least twenty miles from London and ‘not to retorne’ for three months. The message was to be sent to the Commons forthwith – Hugh Wyndham once again being selected for the mission, this time alongside fellow judge Richard Newdigate.157 When the judges arrived at the door of the Commons, the debate over the appellation of the Other House was still raging. Speaker Widdrington’s sudden announcement that ‘there were Two of the Judges without, at the Door, with a Message from the Lords’ only fanned the flames.158 Sir Arthur Ibid., pp. 520–1. Whitelocke Diary, p. 484. Interestingly the attendance list for 30 Jan. in the draft journal does not list Whitelocke as being present, HMC Lords, p. 520. 156  HMC Lords, p. 523. 157  Ibid., pp. 523–4. 158  CJ, VII, 591–2; Burton, II, 437, emphasis added. 154  155 

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Haselrig, in particular, was ‘against calling them in’ for it ‘looks like a House of Lords’; sardonically, he claimed that if he ‘had been of the other House, I should not have advised to have sent another message, till you had resolved’ upon the first one.159 Despite these protests, however, the judges were ‘called in accordingly’ and delivered their message.160 The response from the Republican MPs was predictably hostile; Haselrig ‘trembled to hear this message’ because the ‘first thing they offer, is to invade the liberties of the free-born people of England … Their message is to banish men, which may light upon any of us’.161 Others, however, pointed to an anomaly that set this latest address apart from that of 22 January. Although Wyndham and Newdigate, in making verbal report, professed they ‘were commanded by the Lords’ to deliver their message, the written message itself made no reference to the Other House as a ‘House of Lords’. It stated merely that ‘a Message be sent to the House of Commons, that they would join with this House in an Address to his Highness the Lord Protector’.162 As Edward Turner pointed out, this message ‘varied from the other’ as the Other House ‘did not call themselves Lords’.163 Seizing upon this omission, a number of formerly excluded MPs moved that the Commons’ reply should be addressed ‘to the Other House’. Thomas Scot wanted the Commons to ‘return an answer to them as to “the other House”’, adding that ‘they are, at best, but originally from you’.164 Initially, a number of MPs close to the court fought the motion – both John Trevor and Griffith Bodurda ‘moved against the addition’.165 Others, however, including the court lawyer Attorney-General Edmund Prideaux, professed to be in favour of the addition.166 That some of the government’s supporters did so was probably for pragmatic reasons. Although it effectively meant abandoning any hope of styling the Other House as a House of Lords, thereby forfeiting the security and certainty that they believed went with that title, the fact that the Commons would at least communicate with the Other House was a significant step in the relationship between the two houses. As such, when the question was put for adding the words “to the other House”, John Trevor who was to declare for the ‘noes’ waived the question and the house was not divided. Accordingly, the judges were ‘called in again, and had this answer: That this House would send an answer to the other House by messengers of their own’.167 Arguably, this should have marked the end of the debates over the Other 159  160  161  162  163  164  165  166  167 

Burton, II, 437. CJ, VII, 591–2. Burton, II, 438–9. See also speeches by Robinson, ibid., II, 437–8, 439–40. CJ, VII, 591–2, emphasis added. Burton, II, 439. Ibid., II, 440–1. Ibid., II, 441. Ibid., II, 441. Ibid., II, 440–1; CJ, VII, 591–2. 149

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House. The French ambassador Bordeaux certainly believed this to be the case. As he informed Cardinal Mazarin, ‘the upper-house, to try the pulse of the house of commons’ had sent them this latest message. In response, Bordeaux noted, ‘they passed only this vote, that the house of commons would send an answer by a messenger of their own to the other house (not giving them the title of lords); the which answer of theirs did in a manner decide the question’.168 In reality, the answer to the Other House on 3 February solved little. Even as the judges left to deliver their reply, the Commons were still determined to debate the issue of the title further, resolving that ‘the Debate, touching the Appellation of the Other House, be adjourned till To-morrow Morning’.169 Indeed, on the morning of 4 February 1658 the Commons resumed their debates over the Other House with little regard to the answer they had made the previous day. A number of minor court figures continued to make the case for styling the Other House as a House of Lords. Edmund Fowell was adamant that ‘you have built the old House of Lords’ and that those men who sat there were ‘Lords’; as such he moved that they concur with the Other House in their original message from 22 January and style them by the title of Lords.170 Remarkably, the formerly excluded member, now turned Protector’s serjeantat-law, John Maynard agreed with Fowell. He could not ‘tell how to name another house than the House of Commons, but the Lords’ House’. By the Humble Petition, they had ‘not given them one syllable of what they should do, but only what they should not do’. In ‘other things’, Maynard explained, they were to act ‘according to the laws’; as such, ‘what other laws’ could there be than those ‘of the Lords’ House?’ Maynard’s biggest fear was if ‘this break off, we shall go into the wilderness again’. He asked the Commons to think ‘what may follow, if we should break’.171 By now, however, debates at Westminster were overtaken by events outside. Ironically, it seems that just as Maynard concluded his speech warning of Parliament’s imminent dissolution, Speaker Widdrington informed the House that Black Rod was waiting at the door.172 The Dissolution of the Second Protectorate Parliament Although the fruitless debates in the House of Commons were concerning for Cromwell, it was the emergence of a petition among radical sects in the City, particularly the Fifth Monarchists, that ultimately led him to dissolve the second Protectorate Parliament. According to Bordeaux, the sectaries were ‘excited by their ministers, who spake high and openly against the gov168  169  170  171  172 

Thurloe, VI, 778: Bordeaux to Mazarin, 4/14. Feb. 1658. CJ, VII, 591–2; Mercurius Politicus, 401 (28 Jan.–4 Feb. 1658), p. 286. Burton, II, 448–50. Ibid., II, 458–62. Ibid., II, 462. 150

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ernment of his highness’.173 In this climate the petition spread like wildfire. Around fifty printed copies were ‘dispersed in order to Subscription, and in a few dayes … it was signed by many thousands’.174 Not only did the petition castigate Cromwell and his followers for failing to uphold what is styled the ‘good old cause’, but it also demanded a major reworking of the constitution. The fact that the petition was directed to ‘the Parliament of the CommonWealth of England’ was itself a political statement; besides ignoring the fact that the current parliament comprised of all three nations, not just England alone, it rejected the bicameral arrangement of the Humble Petition.175 There was no mention of the ‘two Houses’; the petitioners vowed to uphold the ‘Supream Power and Trust’ of parliaments ‘which the people (the Original of all just power) commit unto them’.176 In the minds of the petitioners, there was no legal authority but the supreme power of the people’s representatives in the House of Commons. More alarmingly for Cromwell, however, was the news that the junior officers were sympathetic towards the petition.177 Besides protesting against non-parliamentary taxation and illegal imprisonment, the petition touched upon grievances more directly related to the military, ‘so’, as Bordeaux claimed, ‘they might insinuate themselves unto the army’.178 In particular, it asserted that no officer or soldier should be ‘turned out of their respective imployments without a legall Triall at a Court Martiall’, and intimated that Cromwell’s recent purges of the officer corps were designed to tame the army.179 It seems both the Protector and army grandees strived to prevent the army from being seduced by the petition. On 1 February, attendance in the Other House reached an all-time low of just twenty-four members. Although this could be due to apathy among the membership because of the Commons’ continued unwillingness to transact business, it seems too much of a coincidence that the majority of those absent were leading army officers, including Fleetwood, Desborough, Ingoldsby, Barkstead, Hewson, Goffe and Cooper.180 Although no record survives of a meeting of army officers that day, it seems likely these men were consulting about the best way to reinforce military discipline. Equally suggestive was Fleetwood’s continued absence from the Other House on 2 February because he was ‘Commaunded to attend his Highness’ at Whitehall.181 Thurloe, VI, 778. A True Copy of A Petition Signed by very many Peaceable and Well-affected People, Inhabiting about the City of London (London, 1657/8), p. 8; Thurloe, VI, 781–2; Firth, ‘Letters Concerning the Dissolution’, p. 107. 175  A True Copy of A Petition, p. 3. 176  Ibid., p. 4. 177  Ludlow, II, 33; Firth, ‘Letters Concerning the Dissolution’, p. 109. 178  Thurloe, VI, 778. 179  A True Copy of A Petition, pp. 4, 6–7; Thurloe, VI, 781–2. 180  HMC Lords, p. 521. 181  Ibid., p. 522. 173  174 

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Whether or not meetings were taking place about the petition, however, Cromwell’s subsequent decision to dissolve the parliament seems to have taken everybody by surprise. According to an informant of John Hobart, the impetus for the dissolution was the news that the petition was to be presented to the Commons on 4 February. Going to see Thurloe, who was still ‘in bed and sick’, Cromwell ‘told him he would go to the House’, at which the secretary, ‘wondered why his Highness resolved so suddenly’.182 Jumping in ‘the nearest coach’ Cromwell went to the ‘Lords’ House (as yet called)’.183 The clerk of the Other House was still writing out the list of attendees in the chamber that morning when he noted that ‘His Highnes’ had ‘come to the House unexpected’.184 Upon arrival at the Other House, Cromwell was met in one of the ‘withdrawing rooms’ by the Speaker Nathaniel Fiennes and Charles Fleetwood who both ‘would have dissuaded him’ from dissolving the Parliament.185 In response, Cromwell reportedly denounced his son-in-law as a ‘milksop’ and vowed ‘by the living God’ that he would ‘dissolve the House’.186 According to the Other House’s draft journal, Cromwell made absolutely clear where he placed the blame for the failure of the session. Being ‘set in his Chaire of State and the Lords in their places’, Cromwell spoke ‘to this House taking notice therein of their faithfulnes to the publique interest and readines to Carry on the Government as it is setled in the Humble Petition and Advise, so as he could charge nothing on them as having been wanting in what might tend to the good of the Commonwealth’. For Cromwell, the Other House were blameless; it was the Commons who, through their dilatoriness, had created the circumstances in which the regime’s enemies could thrive. As such ‘His Highnes Commaunded the Black rodd to goe for the house of Commons’ so that the dissolution proceedings could begin.187 As Black Rod waited patiently outside the Commons’ chamber, the Republicans tried to hold off this harbinger of Parliament’s dissolution, with Haselrig exclaiming ‘what care I for the Black Rod?’188 Try as they might, however, they could not prevent the inevitable, and Willoughby was eventually called in. With no attempt at tact, he informed ‘Mr. Speaker’ plainly that ‘his Highness is in the Lords’ House and desires to speak with you’.189 According to Hobart’s informant, Cromwell’s speech opened with a jibe at the Commons’ continued debates over the appellation of the Other House: ‘Gentlemen, and you Lords or Gentlemen (turning his head to them [i.e. the Other House],) whatsoever you are called – I think you are not ambitious of 182  183  184  185  186  187  188  189 

Firth, ‘Letters Concerning the Dissolution’, pp. 108–9. Ibid., pp. 106–7, 108–9. HMC Lords, p. 524. Firth, ‘Letters Concerning the Dissolution’, pp. 106–7. Ibid., pp. 108–9. Ludlow, II, 33–4. HMC Lords, p. 524; Mercurius Politicus, 402 (4–11 Feb. 1658), pp. 293–4. Burton, II, 462–4. CJ, VII, 592, emphasis added. 152

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titles.’190 Repeatedly Cromwell criticized the Commons for failing to own the Other House and settle upon the terms of ‘their’ Humble Petition and Advice. That which ‘brought me into the capacity I now stand’, Cromwell professed, ‘was the Petition and Advice given me by you’. It was the Commons who ‘in reference to the ancient Constitution’ urged Cromwell ‘to accept the place of Protector’. If they had ‘any intention of Settlement’ they should ‘have settled upon this basis, and have offered your judgment and opinion as to minor improvements’. Cromwell reiterated that the Other House was blameless: he did ‘not speak to those gentlemen or lords or whatever you will call them; I say not this to them, but I say it to you. You advised me to where I am in this place, you, you did.’191 Cromwell’s claims were tendentious. He ignored the fact that many of those he addressed had never assented to the Humble Petition and Advice as it stood; to claim this was ‘their’ settlement was plainly wrong. Even for those who were not excluded from the Commons and had supported the parliamentary constitution in 1657, his claims were misleading. The Commons had not, as Cromwell suggested, urged him to accept the place of Protector ‘according to the ancient constitution’. The Humble Remonstrance, as drafted by his civilian supporters, had offered Cromwell the kingship with reference to the ancient constitution, yet the revised parliamentary constitution omitted all mention of it, with the Presbyterian majority in the Commons preferring to give greater definition to the constitution and its powers. By the time that Cromwell accepted the title of Protector under the Humble Petition many of the supporters of the parliamentary constitution had ceased attending; what ultimately passed the remnant of the Commons in June 1657 was not what was agreed in late March. Moreover, the reasons that different groups within parliament backed the scheme for an Other House in 1657 varied – those who supported the offer of kingship, and even some of those who did not, were not necessarily in agreement about what the second chamber should be and how it should be constituted. The fact that in all iterations of the constitutional scheme, from its presentation in February 1657 through to its final acceptance in June, the second chamber retained the ambiguous title of ‘Other House’ is in stark contrast to the determination with which the majority in the Commons urged Cromwell to take the kingly title. Perhaps some who voted for the second chamber envisaged a straightforward restoration of the House of Lords, but others clearly did not and were unwilling to give it that name. What is clear, however, is that the majority of MPs wanted a second chamber created in the Commons’ own image; the membership should be approved by them and not left entirely to the Protector. The last-minute additions to the Humble Petition suspended this rule and with it undermined what many saw as a fundamental safeguard in the new constitutional arrangement. 190  191 

Firth, ‘Letters Concerning the Dissolution’, pp. 108–9; Ludlow, II, 33–4. Carlyle, III, 187–91, 503–7; Clarke Papers, III, 136–9. 153

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During the course of the dissolution speech Cromwell also made his passionate defence of the Other House, claiming he had nominated a chamber of men ‘who would not only be a ballance unto you, but to themselves’.192 Yet as far as most MPs were concerned, the members of the Other House were the Protector’s men; they were a balance for his, rather than the people’s, interest. This impression was only exacerbated by the fact that the old peers summoned by Cromwell, who could more plausibly be regarded as men ‘independent’ of the Protector, chose to stay away. Cromwell claimed that he had chosen a House that would represent and balance all interests. Yet in trying to please everyone he apparently pleased no one. As one popular ballad of the time put it: Surely his highness was inspired, When he made that house, w[hi]ch noe man desired.193 While the dissolution of the parliament helped Cromwell to crush discontent within the army, it did nothing to remedy the constitutional quagmire. On 20 January, Henry Cromwell had written to his brother-in-law Fauconberg hoping that the Other House’s ‘first vitall struglings may not make it lye cross to the womb that conceived it’. Writing to Fauconberg on 10 February, however, Henry could see it was not the ‘new-begotten house’ that was the cause of the problem, but that the ‘unnatural mother uses means to procure the abortion of her own issue’.194 Typically, the hostile Second Narrative shifted the charge of infanticide to Cromwell’s door. The ‘Two Houses fell, and perished together; their Father, their good Father, knocking his Children on the Head, and killing of them because they … did wrangle one with another.’195 Yet, all sides realized that the government had reached an impasse that seemed to make impossible any working relationship between the two Houses of Parliament in the future. As one hostile pamphleteer noted, ‘if these Creators would not own their mungrell ill-compacted new creature, there is no probability, that any future Knights, Citizens or Burgesses will approve or submit unto it’.196 Some commentators even wondered whether parliament would ever be summoned again.197

192  193  194  195  196  197 

Clarke Papers, III, 137; Carlyle, III, 189, 505. BL, Microfilm 331/6, fol. 1: Fitzjames to Baynham, 26 Jan. 1658. Ibid., VI, 752–3, 789­–­­90. A Second Narrative, p. 8. Probable Expedient, pp. 2–3. CSPV 1657­–1659, p. 166; Thurloe, VI, 778; Vaughan, II, 452–3. 154

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5

Richard Cromwell, the Third Protectorate Parliament and the Other House Debates

Despite the stormy dissolution of the second Protectorate Parliament, rumours of a new parliament soon circulated.1 This was hardly surprising given the regime’s financial problems. As Fleetwood complained to Henry Cromwell just days after the dissolution, the problem ‘of money will be most of what we shall finde to obstruct our worke, our treasurey being so low, and occations so great’.2 Yet, the Council were of two minds about summoning a new parliament so soon after the failure of the previous one. Their indecision is encapsulated in Fleetwood’s letter to Henry Cromwell on 2 March in which he claimed ‘we shall suddenly have a parliament’, only to backtrack in a postscript later that day by lamenting that ‘the way seemes more uncerteine and doubtfull’.3 Contributing to the Council’s delays were renewed disagreements over the future of the settlement. During the 1658 parliamentary session the civilian and military Cromwellians presented a united front against the regime’s critics. After the dissolution, however, the military–civilian split erupted once again. As was the case in late 1656, the unravelling of Royalist conspiracies in the spring of 1658 stimulated divergent strategies for security. For the civilians the answer was parliamentary settlement. Writing in late April to Henry Cromwell, Thurloe thought it ‘very unreasonable, that wee should be alarmed once every year with invasions and insurrections’ and believed that ‘security … must be had in parliament’.4 The military Cromwellians had different ideas. According to Thurloe, they proposed a ‘tax’ upon Royalist ‘estates, or the like’, albeit ‘the major part’ of the Council were ‘wholly averse to use any illegal course’.5 Writing to Lord Broghill on 7 April, Henry was delighted to hear that his father ‘enclines to a parliament’ and that Desborough’s ‘illegal proposalls … for raising money without a parliament, are discouraged’.6   1    2    3    4    5    6 

Clarke Papers, III, 141. Thurloe, VI, 786. Ibid., VI, 839–40. Ibid., VII, 99. Ibid., VII, 38. Ibid., VII, 56. 155

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Throughout the summer of 1658 the decision to summon parliament continued to be deferred. Although the military Cromwellians apparently came to accept the necessity of a parliament, they disagreed with the civilians over how it should be handled. According to Thurloe, by late June a junto of nine – containing both military and civilian Cromwellians – met ‘dayly to consider ‘what is fitt to be done in the next parliament’.7 Their ‘first head’ of discussion was ‘how wee should be secured against the cavalier partye’. A proposal was put forward ‘that a burden may be layed up upon them all promiscuously, for menteyneinge a force to keepe them downe’. Clearly the military Cromwellians were still pushing to renew something akin to the rule of the major-generals. According to Thurloe, this plan would ‘not downe with all the nine, and least of all will it be swallowed by parliament, who will not be perswaded to punish both nocent and innocent without distinction’.8 In response, others of the junto suggested that securing the Protectoral succession was the best means to bring stability. Yet, it is clear from Thurloe’s letter to Henry on 13 July that this also met with resistance. After ‘much consideration’, he explained, the ‘major parte’ of the junto ‘voted, that succession in the government was indifferent wheither it were by election or hereditary’. To compound Thurloe’s dismay, some moved that ‘it was desirable to have it continued elective; that is, that the chiefe magistrate should alwayes name his successor, and that of hereditary avoyded’. Indeed, he feared that ‘the word desireable will be made necessary, if ever it come upon the tryall’.9 In many ways the junto’s deliberations were a rerun of those in parliament in late 1656. On the one hand, the military Cromwellians claimed that the only way to secure the nation was to bolster the military presence across the three nations through an indiscriminate tax upon Royalists. For civilian Cromwellians like Thurloe, by contrast, the best security was in constitutional forms: they would deter future plots by securing the Protectoral succession. Ultimately, the junto’s schemes came to nothing. According to Thurloe, Cromwell was unimpressed by their recommendations: finding he could ‘have noe advise from those he most expected it from’, he decided to ‘take his owne resolutions’.10 A sudden deterioration in Cromwell’s health, however, meant that he never turned his resolutions into action. By 17 August, Thurloe claimed that ‘all our worke and buissines for these 14 dayes hath beene only to bemoane the sadd condition of the publique affaires’; he could give Henry ‘noe account of any further progresse made in our buissines. All that will depend upon his highnes perfect recovery, which wee hope will be now

Ibid., VII, 192. Of the nine, there were four military Cromwellians (Cooper, Desborough, Fleetwood and Pickering) and three civilians (Fiennes, Jones and Thurloe) plus Whalley and his son-in-law Goffe who often sided with the civilians.   8  Ibid., VII, 192.   9  Ibid., VII, 269, emphases added. 10  Ibid., VII, 269.   7 

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within a few dayes.’11 A little over a fortnight later Cromwell was dead, leaving the Protectorate facing arguably its greatest crisis to date. As the junto’s discussions demonstrate, some among the Protector’s supporters had seen this coming: they recognized that the mode of succession in the Humble Petition and Advice threatened the stability of the regime. No formal process was stipulated for how, or when, Cromwell should nominate his successor. As such, the survival of the regime beyond Cromwell’s lifetime hinged upon him making a choice. So long as the succession remained unclear the potential for a destabilizing interregnum period was all too real. Writing to Henry Cromwell on the evening of 30 August, less than four days before Oliver’s death, Thurloe dared to ponder the calamitous outcome ‘if his highnesse should not settle and fix his successor before he dyes’, adding that it was a ‘matter too grievous to be thought of’.12 Yet, despite efforts to get a successor appointed under the Protector’s seal, no formal designation was made before Cromwell’s death on 3 September.13 Understandably, Thurloe and other government insiders did their best to conceal this. Their reports in the days after Cromwell’s death stressed that he had indubitably designated his eldest son as his successor. Yet the fact that these reports varied wildly on such basic details as the timing of the designation, whether it was verbal or in writing, or who was present when it was made, suggests that Thurloe and others were rewriting events to fabricate a clear and unambiguous succession process.14 Oliver’s death and Richard’s succession momentarily healed the divisions between the civilian and military Cromwellians. If, as seems likely, Richard’s succession was contrived by the Council, which met immediately upon Oliver’s death, it could be argued that their choice was itself born out of a rapprochement between the two sides. Richard was clearly the best compromise candidate. He was a known quantity, having been a frequent attendee in Council since his appointment in late 1657. For the civilians he was ‘one of them’ – an affable country squire who lacked his father’s military background. For the military, his lack of experience was equally attractive – he could leave the running of business to the grandees, including his uncle Desborough and brother-in-law Fleetwood. Perhaps just as importantly, Richard’s succession was easy to sell to the public. There was surely no better way to conceal the novel and botched reality of the Protectoral succession than to give it the appearance of something familiar and understood. The government’s printed output portrayed the succession in terms reminiscent of royal, dynastic succession by p­ rimogeniture. Ibid., VII, 320–1. Ibid., VII, 363–4. 13  Ludlow, II, 44; Burton, III, 275. 14  For a more detailed examination of the Cromwellian succession crisis, see J Fitzgibbons, ‘ “Not in any doubtfull dispute’? Reassessing the Nomination of Richard Cromwell’, Historical Research, 83 (2010), 281–300. 11  12 

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The proclamation of Richard’s succession, drawn up by the Council in the hours after Oliver’s death, implored ‘the Lord, by whom Princes Rule’ to bless Richard with long life, ending with the refrain ‘God Save his Highness Richard Lord Protector’.15 In the weeks and months that followed a stream of addresses flowed in from all corners of the Commonwealth to congratulate the new Protector. These addresses – which were routinely printed in the government’s newsbooks – described the succession in dynastic and royal terms.16 The City of Oxford, for instance, praised the fact that Richard was now ‘in his royal fathers Throne’; the ministers of Norfolk enthused that Cromwell had ‘set up his seed after him’, and hoped Richard ‘would so establish his Government, as he might build a house for his name’.17 The formulaic nature of the addresses led one critic to suspect that they were ‘hatched at Court’ and were ‘the off-spring of Thurloe and Nedham’.18 The most striking example of the tactics used to secure Richard’s succession, however, was the lavish funeral procession on 23 November. At its centrepiece was a life-size effigy of Oliver Cromwell garbed in royal robes and crowned. The government’s newsbooks reported every last regal detail: the effigy wore a ‘Royal Robe’; in its right hand was the ‘golden Scepter representing Government’; in its left hand ‘the Globe, representing Principality’; on its head was ‘the Imperial Crown’.19 A woodcut image of the effigy was printed in a contemporary pamphlet, bearing the non-toosubtle title, The Pourtraiture of His Royal Highness, Oliver Late Lord Protector &c. 20 The official newsbooks made no attempt to disguise the mimicry of royal forms; they announced how the ceremonials were ‘after the antient and most becoming Ceremony of the preceding Princes of this Nation upon the like occasion’.21 It seems the monarchical form of the funeral had the approval of the entire Council, including those military Cromwellians who opposed the kingship in 1657. Both Fleetwood and Desborough were present at the Council on 14 September when arrangements were made for the ‘Representacion of his Highness’ with ‘his Robes of Estate’, sceptre, ‘and a Crowne upon his head’.22 Moreover, the military Cromwellians and the army played a conspicuously prominent role in the ceremonials. Most remarkable of all, Fleetwood acted as chief mourner in the procession, walking immediately behind the hearse TNA, PRO31/17/33, p. 4. For a compendium of these addresses, see A True Catalogue, or, an Account of the Several Places... where... Richard Cromwell was Proclaimed Lord Protector (London, 1659). 17  Ibid., pp. 30, 33. 18  Ibid., pp. 1, 5, 53–4, 73, 74–6. 19  The Publick Intelligencer, 148 (18–25 Oct. 1658), pp. 917–19. 20  The Pourtraiture of His Royal Highness, Oliver Late Lord Protector &c. (London, 1659), titlepage. 21  The Publick Intelligencer, 142 (6–13 Sept. 1658), p. 816; ibid., 147 (11–18 Oct. 1658), p. 912. 22  TNA, PRO31/17/33, pp. 41–4. 15  16 

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and its crowned effigy – a strange action if he was vehemently opposed to the royal imagery being used.23 The form of the ceremonials, and the willingness of both the civilian and military Cromwellians to support them, underlines the precariousness of the situation after Oliver’s death. The Council promoted Richard’s accession to the Protectorate in as traditional a way as possible to deflect questions about the real basis of Richard’s authority. They deftly elided the issue of whether or not Oliver had nominated Richard according to the stipulations of the Humble Petition by effectively ignoring the parliamentary constitution altogether. In many ways, their tactic was not unlike that employed towards the Other House in the previous parliament. By styling the Other House as a House of Lords the government’s supporters attempted to stave off difficult questions about the constitutional basis of the new second chamber and its standing vis-à-vis the Commons. Rather than deriving its powers from the parliamentary constitution of 1657, they claimed its foundations were much more ancient: it was not a new chamber but a revival of the old one. Indeed, the funeral gave fresh impetus to the tactic of promoting the lordly status of the Other House. The Council appreciated that no small part of the spectacle of royal funerals was the high social status of those participating. A Council memorandum enumerates the sort of people usually expected to participate in royal obsequies. For instance, the standard and banner bearers, who led each section of the procession, included two knights, a baronet, a baron, a nobleman’s son, three viscounts and four earls; a further six earls were supposed to assist the pall, while the chief mourner was to have ‘Two Earles to Support him. And His Trayne borne by five Peeres’.24 According to a draft of Cromwell’s funeral order, however, the Council ended up filling these positions with members of the Other House.25 For instance, the banner of England was borne by ‘Lords’ Tomlinson and Hewson; the banner of Scotland by ‘Lords’ Berry and Cooper; the ‘Great Banner’ was borne by ‘John Lord Fyennes, Fran[cis] Lord Russell, and George Lord Fleetwood’; the chief mourner, Charles Fleetwood, was supported by Viscounts Lisle and Fauconberg.26 BL, Lansdowne MS 95, fol. 45r. TNA, SP18/183 fols 190r–v. 25  BL, Lansdowne MS 95, fols 31–45. The authorship of this manuscript is obscure; the name at the top of the first page of ‘Dethick’ could mean the author is the Protectoral Rouge Croix pursuivant, Henry Dethick. This document was evidently drawn up before the funeral rather than being a record of actual proceedings. For example, Haselrig’s name among the members of the ‘Peers’ is unlikely given his hostility to taking his place in Jan. 1658. Monck is also listed, even though he was unable to attend the funeral because of his service in Scotland. As such, this is probably a list of those who potentially could have been present, ensuring that the Heralds knew where to place everyone. 26  BL, Lansdowne MS 95, fols 42r, 43v, 44v, 45r. Fauconberg is styled a Viscount in this document. 23  24 

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That the members of the Other House occupied these roles could simply reflect the fact that there were not enough members of the old peerage willing to participate. Yet, in the context of the parliamentary session earlier that year, it suggests a continuing effort to stress that the new chamber was, to all intents and purposes, the same as that of the House of Lords. They were supposed to look the part – according to a Council order on 3 November, ‘all the Members of the Lords Howse’ attending the funeral were to ‘have Gownes according to their Quallityes respectively’.27 The newsbook reportage of the funeral also elided any distinction between the old nobility and the Cromwellian lords, simply commenting upon the presence of the ‘members of the Lords Howse’ and those ‘Lords and noble persons’ who assisted the chief mourner.28 Yet, as hard as the Council worked in the months after Cromwell’s death to give the impression of strength and stability, those problems that had crippled the regime since February 1658 had not disappeared. As such, it was widely expected considerations would again turn to a parliament once the funeral ceremonials were completed.29 On 30 November, a week after the funeral, Thurloe duly reported to Henry Cromwell that a parliament would be summoned to assemble on 27 January 1659.30 The Composition of the Third Protectorate Parliament Before turning to the debates of that parliament, however, it is worth considering its composition. The delay in summoning the parliament was partly owing to constitutional questions over how it should be summoned and who should sit there. Article 4 of the Humble Petition and Advice stated that ‘the number of persons to be elected and chosen to sit and serve’ in the Commons in future parliaments, as well as ‘the distribution of the persons so chosen within the counties, cities and boroughs’, was to be ‘agreed upon and declared’ by the second Protectorate Parliament.31 Yet Cromwell dissolved that parliament in 1658 before any of these matters were even discussed. In response, the government lawyers suggested that they must fall back on clause 6 of the Humble Petition, which stated that ‘in all other particulars which concern the calling and holding of Parliaments, your Highness will be pleased that the laws and statutes of the land be observed and kept’.32 As Mabbott reported on 2 March 1658, ‘the Members of the next Parliament are TNA, PRO31/17/33, p. 151. The Publick Intelligencer, 152 (22–29 Nov. 1658), pp. 22–3. 29  Thurloe, VII, 510. 30  Ibid., VII, 541: 30 Nov. The formal decision to summon the parliament was not recorded in the Council’s order book until 3 Dec: TNA, PRO31/17/33, p. 243. 31  Gardiner, Documents, p. 452. 32  Ibid., p. 452. 27  28 

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to be called according to the antient lawes of the nation’.33 The remodelled electoral map of the Instrument of Government was abandoned for the old constituencies, last used when electing the Long Parliament. This solution was not without complications – not least because it ended the practice established by the Instrument of summoning Scottish and Irish MPs. As Rushworth reported in late May 1658, the ‘Irish and Scotts are out, till by an act they be again restored’.34 Ultimately, writs summoning thirty MPs each from Scotland and Ireland were issued regardless, but not without much debate in the Council about the precise grounds upon which they were issued.35 Some commentators also believed that recourse to the ‘ancient’ way of summoning parliaments could affect the second chamber. As early as 12 February 1658 one correspondent informed Richard Bradshaw, then on his ill-fated embassy to Russia, that there would soon be another ‘Parliament called... of real Lords and Commons’; five days later the same reporter added that the ‘ancient burroughs and cities’ would have their ‘ancient number’ and ‘the Peers of the nation that have not forfeited their rights’ would also sit.36 The accession of Richard Cromwell also raised the prospect of alterations to the Other House’s membership. Writing to the new Protector in mid-September 1658, George Monck stressed the necessity of a new parliament, but believed it required ‘much consideration’. In particular, Monck recommended that Richard summon to what he dubbed ‘the house of lords’ the ‘most prudent of the old lords, that have bin faithfull, and some of the leading gentry in the severall counties’.37 Interestingly, shortly after Monck wrote his letter, the French ambassador Bordeaux reported that Richard ‘professes to desire nothing but the happiness of the nation and the friendship of the nobility’.38 There were even rumours in March 1659 that Richard sounded out the earl of Northumberland about sitting in the Other House.39 Yet, ultimately, Richard made no changes to the Other House. Jason Peacey has suggested that this was due to limits placed upon the Protector by the Humble Petition: ‘Richard evidently felt constrained to call the same peers’, and because of the ‘longevity of individual lords … he was also unlikely to be able to nominate new men’.40 Yet, while Richard was compelled to Clarke Papers, III, 142. Ibid., III, 151. 35  For more on this, see C. Holmes, ‘John Lisle, Lord Commissioner of the Great Seal and the Last Months of the Cromwellian Protectorate’, EHR, 122 (2007), 918–36. 36  The Sixth Report of the Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts, Appendix (London, 1877), p. 442. 37  Thurloe, VII, 387. Intriguingly, Monck recommended that Richard summon William Pierrepont, Richard Hampden, Alexander Popham, Sir John Hobart, Sir Edward Baynton, Sir George Booth and Francis Rolle. The first four were already members of the Other House, but only Hobart and Hampden took their seats. 38  Guizot, Richard Cromwell, I, 236. 39  Mordaunt to Hyde, 8 Mar. 1659: Bodl., Clarendon MS 60, fols 209–10. 40  Peacey, ‘Protector Humbled’, p. 34. 33  34 

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summon the same members, there was plenty of capacity for him to add new men. Not only had Oliver left eight spaces free when nominating the house, but also the deaths of Thomas Pride, Francis Rous and the earls of Mulgrave and Warwick, together with the elevation of Richard to the lord protectorate, meant there were thirteen vacant places by January 1659.41 True, the constitution stipulated that replacements must be approved by the Other House, but given that the Additional Petition gave Oliver Cromwell carte blance to nominate the founding members ‘without further approbation’, the extent to which Richard’s choices would receive a check was unclear.42 More likely is that Richard was holding out in the hope of enticing some of the old nobles, like Northumberland, to sit in the Other House but was ultimately unsuccessful. Of the fifty-seven potential members of Richard Cromwell’s Other House, forty-two sat at some point during the third Protectorate Parliament, including Pickering, Tomlinson and Wariston who all took their seats for the first time. This left fifteen ‘lords’ who failed to appear.43 Some continued to abstain for political reasons – such as Haselrig, who again defiantly sat in the Commons, and the small knot of ‘old’ peers, including Saye, Wharton and Manchester. Others were still engaged elsewhere, including Henry Cromwell and William Steele in Ireland, Monck in Scotland and Lockhart in Flanders. The remaining absentees are less easy to explain. Unlike the 1658 session, the Other House decided against appointing a day for ‘calling’ the House, thereby precluding the opportunity for absentee members to tender their excuses.44 When parliament assembled in January 1659, however, it was the membership of the Commons, not the Other House, that caused the Protectoral authorities most concern. With seats allocated in England and Wales according to pre-1653 constituencies, but retaining the Protectoral innovation of thirty members each for Scotland and Ireland, there were close to five hundred and sixty places available. The sheer size of the Commons, coupled with the fact that there was no longer the safety net of councillor exclusions, left the government with little ability to influence the composition of the House. Thurloe, writing a week before the parliament’s opening, confessed that there was ‘soe great a mixture in the house of commons, that noe man knowes which way the major part will enclyne’.45 Contemporaries attempted to classify the membership of the Commons, usually dividing it into three crudely defined ‘groups’ or ‘factions’. As the Royalist agent Sir Henry Moore put it, ‘there are three severall factions in ye house, his Highness party, ye Commonwealths men, and a moderate Warwick died on 19 Apr. 1658, Mulgrave on 24 Aug., Pride on 23 Oct. and Rous on 7 Jan. 1659. 42  Gardiner, Documents, p. 463. 43  See appendix. 44  HMC Lords, pp. 521–2, 554. 45  Thurloe, VII, 594. 41 

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party which balances all’. 46 Taking these reports as their lead, historians have also tended to apply a tripartite framework on Richard Cromwell’s House of Commons.47 While this chapter does not subscribe to the revisionist approach of denying factionalism or stressing ‘consensus’, it suggests that labels like ‘Court’, ‘Commonwealthsmen’ or ‘Presbyterian’ need to be handled with care; behind each is a more nuanced reality.48 By far the largest group was the ‘moderate majority’, comprising chiefly of conservative gentleman, many of whom were relatively young and inexperienced politicians: approximately half of those elected to the third Protectorate Parliament had never sat at Westminster before.49 It became the object of the other groups to win over this impressionable majority, but they were unpredictable and never wholly consistent voters. As one Royalist agent put it, ‘the best and wisest of each faction entertayne fortune by the day, and know not what tomorrow will produce, so evenly are they balanced by neutrall country gentlemen’.50 Next in size was the ‘Court party’ or ‘Protector’s party’. As in 1658, it seems that, early in the session at least, the civilian and military Cromwellians pulled together to defend the Protectorate of the Humble Petition and Advice. Although Thurloe guided debate occasionally, the government’s position was usually put forward by a number of ‘court’ lawyers, including Attorney General Sir Edmund Prideaux, Solicitor General Sir William Ellis, Attorney of the Duchy Nicholas Lechmere and Protector’s Serjeant-at-law, John Maynard.51 Bolstering the ‘Court’ party, however, were men best described as ‘new’ Presbyterians. These MPs professed to be satisfied with the Protectoral settlement embodied in the Humble Petition and Advice. Unsurprisingly, they included many MPs who voted for kingship in 1657 and led the defence of the Other House in the 1658 session – such as John Trevor, Griffith Bodurda, Robert Beake and Francis Drake. Yet, they also included others who were excluded from parliament in 1656, like John Birch, Samuel Gott, Lambert Godfrey and John Bulkeley, but had now turned supporters of the regime. Moore to Hyde, 18 Mar. 1659: Bodl., Clarendon MS 60, fols 228–9. See also Thurloe, VII, 615; Gaunt, Lansdowne, pp. 453–5; Guizot, Richard Cromwell, I, 316. 47  G.B. Nourse, ‘Richard Cromwell’s House of Commons’, Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library, 60 (1977), 95–113; Little and Smith, Parliaments and Politics, pp. 104–5, 124–5. 48  Gaunt, ‘Oliver Cromwell and his Protectorate Parliaments’, pp. 88–90; D. Hirst, ‘Concord and Discord in Richard Cromwell’s House of Commons’, EHR, 103 (1988), 343–49; Peacey, ‘Protector Humbled’, pp. 39–42. 49  Burton, III, 39, 49–50, 76, 271–2; Ludlow, II, 56; G. Davies, ‘The Election of Richard Cromwell’s Parliament, 1658–9’, EHR, 63 (1948), 498–9; Nourse, ‘Richard Cromwell’s House of Commons’, p. 98. 50  Broderick to Hyde, 18 Mar. 1659: Bodl., Clarendon MS 60, fols 224–5. 51  Bodl., Clarendon MS 60, fols 87, 112–13; Thurloe, VII, 615–16; S. Bethel, A true and impartial Narrative of the most material Debates and passages in the late Parliament (London, 1659), p. 7. 46 

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Why exactly these men backed the Protectorate deserves further c­onsideration. Perhaps it reflected support for the conservative twist, political and religious, taken by the regime under Richard. This could ­ explain why those who previously shunned parliament during the Protectorate, like John Swinfen, John Hewley, Richard Knightley and George Starkey, now felt able to seek election. It could also have been a matter of the lesser of two evils. According to the Scottish minister James Sharp, ‘most’ of the ‘Presbyterians, amongst whom Swinfen, Birch, Knickley, Godfrey, Bamfield, Growe are chief’ did ‘sway to the Protector’s party’ in order to ‘avoid the hazard of casting matters into the hands of the Republican party, or being brought under the Cavalier power’.52 Weary of political upheaval and growing relatively comfortable under the Protectorate, they believed the fruits of the 1640s could be preserved under the incumbent constitutional arrangement rather than hazarding it all on yet another regime change. Therefore the ‘Court party’, as contemporaries described it, was much larger in 1659 than in previous Protectorate Parliaments. At its core were the usual mix of government officials, court lawyers and a bloc of Scottish and Irish MPs.53 Yet, they were now joined by a much larger group of Presbyterians than in 1658 who upheld Richard’s Protectorate as the preferred basis for settlement.54 Increasingly, it was these new Presbyterians who guided debate for ‘the Court’ in the House. At the other end of the spectrum were the ‘Commonwealthsmen’. As in 1658, this group, though much smaller than the Court, was often more vociferous.55 According to one Royalist agent, ‘the commonwealths-men are industrious, popular, plausible, eloquent in the language of the tymes, cunning in ye rules of the house, and thereby ready to intrapp or discountenance all oposers less dextrous then themselves’.56 But the label suggests an ideological cohesion that, in reality, this group did not have. As Woolrych notes, the ‘Republican party’ was ‘more anti-Cromwellian than a unified party’; it was opposition to the Protectorate regime that held them together.57 When it came to what they would replace the Protectorate with, they differed markedly. Rumpers like Haselrig and Thomas Scot wanted a return to unicameral parliaments; ‘Harringtonians’ like Henry Neville, Thomas Chaloner and Adam Baynes preferred a bicameral model akin to that in the Commonwealth of Oceana; for others, such as Sir Henry Vane, neither of these models was appropriate. Sharp to Douglas, 1 Mar. 1659: Stephen, II, 153–6. CSPV, 1657–59, p. 290; Bethel, A true and impartial Narrative, p. 9. 54  Little and Smith, Parliaments and Politics, pp. 119–20. 55  Clarke Papers, III, 173; Guizot, Richard Cromwell, I, 287; BL, Add. MS 22919, fols 78–9; Stephen, II, 153–6. 56  Broderick to Hyde, 18 Mar. 1659: Bodl., MS Clarendon MS 60, fols 224–5. 57  Woolrych, ‘Introduction’, p. 16. 52  53 

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Moreover, the ‘Commonwealthsmen’ of contemporary parlance often encompassed more than just the Republican opponents of the regime. During the course of the parliament, Royalist agents informed Hyde that some ­crypto-Royalist MPs assumed the position of ‘counterfeit commonwealthsmen’.58 Being in a minority, the crypto-Royalists joined the Republicans as a matter of expediency.59 The only thing they shared with the Republicans was a desire to see the Protectorate fail. As one Royalist agent put it, though the Republicans ‘hate the Cavaliers ten tymes more then his highness’ yet they ‘dissemble a compliance as farre with them as a munkey with the puppeys paw to rake the chestnuts out of the hott embers’.60 Of course, the crypto-Royalists were elusive, making difficult any calculation of their exact numbers. Some names can be gleaned from an uncharacteristically indiscreet letter from one Royalist agent to Hyde, which reported that ‘Faulkland is by many degrees the most eminent in zeal and forwardness; then John Howe, Sir Horatio Townesend, Edward Hungerford and others of great estates’.61 Other MPs with alleged Royalist backgrounds, including Robert Villiers and Thomas Streete, were investigated by the Commons, as were those suspected of being plotters, such as Edward Blaker, Henry Chowne, John Hele, Sir Peter Killigrew, Herbert Perrott and John Tregonwell.62 The crypto-Royalists also drew strength from a number of Presbyterians on the peripheries of the moderate majority in the Commons, but at the other end of the spectrum to the new Presbyterians.63 Best described as the ‘old’ Presbyterians, these MPs supported the Parliamentarian cause only to grow disillusioned by Pride’s Purge and the regicide. Unlike the new Presbyterians, they were unsatisfied with the Protectorate, as settled under the kingless Humble Petition, and wanted a settlement grounded firmly upon the parliamentarian principles of the 1640s; they believed ‘a well regulated monarchy is best’.64 They were only a shade away from the crypto-Royalists, and some might even be counted among that group could evidence be found of communication with the exiled Court. The Irish MP Arthur Annesley and Sir George Booth, in particular, occupy a grey area between the old Presbyterians and the crypto-Royalists.65 Many others went on to be ardent Royalists at the Restoration.66 Many of these old Presbyterians had previously been removed from Parliament for their political beliefs; either at Pride’s Purge, like Sir Bodl., Clarendon MS 60, fols 209–10, 224–5. Bodl., Clarendon MS 60, fols 59, 119–20. 60  Nicholas Papers, IV, 83–6: Greene to Nicholas, 31 Mar. 1659. 61  Broderick to Hyde, 25 Mar. 1659: Bodl., Clarendon MS 60, fol. 248. 62  See Peacey, ‘Protector Humbled’, p. 38, n. 41; Burton, III, 233–4, 241–52, 253–6, 425–35; CJ, VII, 602–3. 63  Egloff, ‘Settlement and Kingship’, pp. 95–6, 127–31. 64  Burton, III, 181, speech by Gewen. 65  Gaunt, Lansdowne, pp. 469–72, 472–4. 66  Nourse, ‘Richard Cromwell’s House of Commons’, pp. 104–6. 58  59 

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Walter Earle, Hugh Boscawen and John Stephens67; or the purge by the Protectoral Council in 1656, such as Edward Turner, Richard Browne and William Morice; or on both occasions like Sir John Northcote, Thomas Gewen and Henry Hungerford. Egloff has suggested that those excluded in 1656 were not always politically distinct from those who slipped the net. Yet, it is revealing that of the hundred or so MPs excluded, forty-seven of them were elected in 1659 and the majority were either Republicans or old Presbyterians.68 For others, like the lawyer Thomas Terrill, this was the first time they sat in Parliament. Thus while these ‘old’ Presbyterians were not all old Parliamentarians, they shared the belief that the Humble Petition should be abandoned for a constitutional settlement along the lines of the peace terms being negotiated in late 1648. Judging the exact size of this group is also difficult. Certainly, they were a much larger group than the crypto-Royalists, leading many Royalist commentators to believe that an alliance with them would be beneficial.69 One agent was of the opinion that the crypto-Royalists along with ‘such neuters as usually concur’ could muster ‘from 100 to 140’ votes.70 When the right issue arose, the crypto-Royalists, old Presbyterians and moderate majority pulled together, creating a substantial force. Moreover, just as the new Presbyterians took the reins of the ‘Court Party’ during the parliament, it was the old Presbyterians, not the Republicans, who generally guided the opposition groups. Intriguingly, however, despite their size and influence during the 1659 parliament, historians have largely ignored the old Presbyterians. For Little and Smith, it was ‘the Presbyterians’ who ‘led the defence of the Protectorate against the republican commonwealthsmen’.71 The fact that many political Presbyterians opposed the constitutional settlement, and sometimes joined forces with the Commonwealthsmen, has been overlooked.72 As a result, the historiography usually upholds the contemporary notion of ‘three parties’ – with the ‘Commonwealthsmen’ cast as the Protectorate’s chief opponents. This is inadequate because it gives undue attention to those at the extremities of the political scale. Instead it would be better to abandon altogether the Stephens was admitted to the Rump in the autumn of 1651, but was inactive: Worden, Rump Parliament, p. 72. 68  C. Egloff, ‘The Search for a Cromwellian Settlement’, p. 302. For a detailed list of the excluded members, see ‘Appendix 1’ in Little and Smith, Parliaments and Politics, pp. 302–5. Of the forty-seven, only five were new Presbyterians in 1659 (Birch, Bulkeley, Godfrey, Gott and Maynard). 69  Bodl., Clarendon MS 60, fols 85­–6, 97, 152–3, 242–3. 70  Broderick to Hyde, 18 Mar. 1659: Bodl., Clarendon MS 60, fols 224–5. 71  Little and Smith, Parliaments and Politics, pp. 118–20, emphasis added. 72  A notable exception is Peacey, ‘Protector Humbled’, pp. 38, 44, 46–7. Mahlberg goes to the opposite extreme by identifying ‘the Presbyterians’ merely as opponents of the regime. See G. Mahlberg, Henry Neville and English Republican Culture in the Seventeenth Century: Dreaming of Another Game (Manchester, 2009), pp. 54–5, 150–8. 67 

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notion of ‘Court’ versus ‘Commonwealthsmen’. The key debate was between the new and old Presbyterians; the courtiers and Republicans were often pushed to the peripheries while the Presbyterians argued among themselves. The Origins of the Other House Debates With such a large and diverse membership, the government’s supporters feared that the upcoming parliament would be unmanageable. Thurloe worried over the machinations of the ‘commonwealthsmen’, who he suspected would ‘dispute the parts of the petition and advice’, starting with what he described as the ‘house of lords’ and whether it ‘ought to be approved by the house of comons’.73 But he also knew that the Other House would likely meet with opposition from more than just the Republicans. Writing to Henry Cromwell on 4 January, Thurloe claimed that ‘the other house will be the great question’, not just because of the Republicans, but because it ‘stickes in the throats of many of our friends’ as well. The debates in 1658 revealed that even those who had supported the Humble Petition could not agree on the nature or powers of the Other House. A fresh debate over the status of the Other House would reopen these wounds. Thurloe’s greatest fear was ‘disunion among friends’. As such, he hoped the Commons could be convinced to give their general approbation to the 1657 constitutional settlement as a whole, thereby eliding the ‘great question’ of the Other House. ‘If the foundation be once admitted,’ he argued, ‘it’s to be hoped there will be an agreement about the superstructure.’74 In many ways the tactics of the government’s supporters replicated those in 1658. Once again, the ceremonials, and the way they were reported, were calibrated to emphasize the status of the Other House as a House of Lords. According to the official newsbooks, Richard arrived at Westminster on 27 January 1659 and ‘passed up to the House of Lords’.75 Meanwhile, in the ‘lobby between the house of Lords and the Painted Chamber’ a number of the ‘Lords’ gathered to administer the oath to ‘all and singular other the Members of the House of Lords’.76 The Protector and both Houses then went to Westminster Abbey to hear a sermon upon the Cromwellian favourite of ‘Psalm lxxxv’, with its call for ‘healing, inciting to unity, and to mix mercy and truth, righteousness and peace together’.77 Thereafter the Protector ‘returned to the House of Lords’ and, after a ‘little Retirement’, entered the chamber and ‘standing on the Ascent, rais’d on purpose in Royall manner, Thurloe, VII, 550: Thurloe to H. Cromwell, Dec. 1658. Ibid., VII, 588–9. 75  Mercurius Politicus, 522 (27 Jan.–3 Feb. 1659), pp. 197–9. 76  HMC Lords, pp. 524–6. The original commission is at The Society of Antiquaries, London, MS 590. 77  Burton, III, 1–2; Clarke Papers, III, 176. 73  74 

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under the Cloth of Estate, sent the Usher of the Black Rod’ to summon the Commons.78 Richard’s speech was brief and to the point.79 He stressed that ‘a Parliament was never Summoned upon a more important occasion’. Besides taking care of the ‘Protestant cause abroad’, he implored parliament to look after ‘the People of God in these Nations’ and the ‘necessary work of Reformation’.80 His foremost wish for ‘My Lords, and you Gentlemen of the House of Commons’ was that ‘you will in all your Debates maintain and conserve Love and Unity among yourselves’; he hoped it would be a ‘happy Parliament’.81 Yet it was clear from the outset that not all MPs would be receptive to Richard’s pleas. As Burton notes, ‘there were about 150 Members’ who remained in the Commons ‘while his Highness was speaking in the other House’.82 Unwilling to give tacit recognition to the Other House by hearing the Protector’s speech at the bar of that chamber, these MPs stayed away. With dissent already brewing, on 1 February Thurloe initiated the scheme to get the Commons to accept the incumbent constitutional arrangement by presenting a Bill for recognizing Richard Cromwell as lord protector. Thurloe was conspicuously silent on the Humble Petition, or the mechanism by which Richard was made Protector. He stressed that the succession was ‘no other thing than the hand of God, so putting down the late King’s family, He raises the power out of the dust’, adding crucially that ‘it is his prerogative royal’.83 He emphasized the need to bind the nation through this Bill: they should ‘let the nation know we are all of a mind in the Government; all agreed in the foundation’.84 As planned, Thurloe wanted parliament to accept ‘the foundation’ and thereby secure the ‘superstructure’ that stood upon it. The Bill opened by stating that ‘wee the two houses of parliament … thinke it o[u]r duty … to make this acknoweledgement & Recognicion following’, implicitly admitting the Other House to have co-ordinate legislative power with the Commons.85 As the recognition was by both Houses, it would need the Other House’s approval once it passed the Commons. The net result Mercurius Politicus, 522 (27 Jan.–3 Feb. 1659), pp. 197–9; HMC Lords, pp. 524–6. Part of the reason for Richard’s concision was procedural; as in the 1658 session, many of the Protector’s points were subsequently enumerated in a speech by the Speaker of the Other House. See N. Fiennes, The Speech of the Right Honourable Nathaniel Lord Fiennes, One of the Lord Keepers of the Great Seale of England... 27th of January, 1658... (London, 1659). 80  The Speech of His Highness the Lord Protector, Made To both Houses of Parliament at their first meeting, on Thursday the 27th of January 1658 (London, 1659), pp. 5–8. 81  Ibid., p. 9. 82  Burton, III, 2. 83  Ibid., III, 25–6. 84  Ibid., III, 26; see also BL, Add. MS 5138, pp. 112–13. 85  Bodl., Rawlinson A MS 63, fols 67–8; TNA, SP18/201, fol. 1; BL, Add. MS 5138, pp. 123–4. 78  79 

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would not only be to confirm Richard Cromwell’s title, but to recognize the Other House as well. The government’s opponents saw through the intention behind the Bill. They criticized the fact that the means by which Richard became Protector were obscure; they suggested that the Bill would ‘make’ him Protector rather than ‘recognise’ him as such. According to Sir Henry Vane, ‘this Bill huddles up, in wholesale, what you have fought for, and is hasted on, lest you should see it’.86 By passing this Bill, Thomas Sadler claimed, they would ‘beg the question’ and ‘give up all that can be given, House of Lords, and power to dissolve you by law; all that ever is in the Petition and Advice’.87 Unsurprisingly, the government’s supporters, including some new Presbyterians, stressed the necessity of passing the Bill swiftly. Sir John Lenthall, son of the Master of the Rolls, believed they could not ‘be so disingenuous as not to admit the Other House to be part of the Constitution’. Lenthall admitted that the Humble Petition was imperfect, but he ‘had rather have a cottage here, than a glorious palace in the air’.88 Another of the new Presbyterians, George Starkey, innocently claimed that he could ‘find nothing in this Bill, of the Lords’ House’ and would ‘cheerfully … conclude this business, which will be of great consideration to the quiet and settlement of the nation’.89 Unfortunately for the courtiers, however, not all of the new Presbyterians played along. John Bulkeley professed he was ‘engaged … to promote a House of Lords’ and that ‘it were the greatest dishonour that ever were to kick them out’. This did not mean that Bulkeley opposed ‘a single person and another House’, but he wanted the issue of ‘the other House laid aside’ momentarily ‘and take the recognition singly’.90 As Thurloe feared, it was not just the Republicans, but also some of the government’s ‘friends’, who were unwilling to accept the second chamber without question. After days of debate, on 14 February the Commons finally resolved ‘that it be Part of this Bill, to recognize and declare his Highness Richard Lord Protector to be the Lord Protector and Chief Magistrate’. But they also added, without division, that before they pass the Bill they would ‘first declare such additional Clauses... as may bound the Power of the Chief-Magistrate; and fully secure the Rights and Privileges of Parliament, and the Liberties and Rights of the People’.91 These resolutions were not merely, or even mostly, the work of the Republican opponents of the Protectorate; they reflected misgivings felt by a majority in the Commons. While most MPs were prepared to recognize Richard, they shared the Republican’s unease over the Humble

86  87  88  89  90  91 

Burton, III, 178. Ibid., III, 280–1. Ibid., III, 122. Ibid., III, 115. Ibid., III, 107. See also speech by Godfrey, ibid., III, 143–4. CJ, VII, 603. 169

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Petition as a sound basis for government. Thurloe fumed at this outcome.92 Rather than secure the incumbent constitutional arrangement, the Bill of recognition generated debate that threatened to undermine the Protectorate completely. True, Richard had been recognized as successor, but it was only on a probationary basis while Parliament decided what sort of government he would be fitted to. Understandably, the Republicans wanted to get stuck into the bounds of the lord protector, including the vexed issue of his negative voice. Sir Henry Vane thought it was fit that they ‘take things in order as they lie before you’ and they should ‘first begin with bounding the power of the Chief Magistrate’; particularly, ‘how far you will have him have the militia and the negative voice’.93 Conversely, the new Presbyterians wanted to debate the Other House. John Birch would not bind the chief magistrate ‘until it be agreed whether there be another House or not’.94 Repeatedly, they claimed that until the Other House was debated they could not decide upon the bounds of the Protector.95 As Thomas Bampfield explained, ‘If you put the question that the Chief Magistrate shall have a negative on laws made by Parliament, then you still bring in debate what is meant by Parliament’.96 Until they decided what a parliament was they could hardly determine the Protector’s relationship to it. The Republicans warned that these motions to debate the Other House were a snare. ‘Pass this’, warned Vane, and ‘the Other House … will confirm the single person in all things that concern him, and so your own liberties are left at loose.’97 Yet, their warnings were ineffective. When, the question was put on 18 February ‘to determine the negative voice in the Chief Magistrate … before the constitution of Parliament as to the two Houses be resolved on’, the Yeas lost by 86 votes to 217.98 Further progress followed on 19 February when, without division, the Commons resolved that it be part of the Bill to ‘declare the Parliament to consist of two Houses’.99 Given the fruitless debates over recognizing the Other House in 1658, this was a clear step forward. That the resolution passed so smoothly, however, is hardly surprising; to vote against it would mean advocating a Parliament consisting of one house only and those former Rumpers who believed in unicameral Parliaments were very much a minority.100 The Republicans knew it was an issue they could not Bethel, A true and impartial Narrative, p. 7. Burton, III, 316. See also ibid., III, 327–32, speeches by St Nicholas, Haselrig and Reynolds.   94  Ibid., III, 320.   95  Ibid., III, 321, 328–9, 333, 337, 339–40: speeches by Starkey, Swinfen, Trevor, Hewley, Manley, Bodurda and Raleigh.   96  Ibid., III, 341–2.   97  Ibid., III, 344.   98  CJ, VII, 605.   99  Ibid., VII, 605. 100  Clarke Papers, III, 176.   92    93 

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win, not least because they disagreed among themselves over it. It is therefore unsurprising that the French Ambassador reported that the Commons resolved that parliaments ‘be composed in future of two Houses … without the Republicans opposing’.101 As the new Presbyterians pointed out, few disputed that there should be a second chamber. According to Robert Beake, bicameral parliaments had ‘for seven hundred years’ been ‘so twisted with the constitution’ that ‘five hundred for one upon the poll, would be for a House of Lords’.102 This does not mean Beake believed they should restore the House of Lords, rather he saw the Other House as a worthy substitute. Likewise, the master of requests Nathaniel Bacon stressed that the English parliament had been ‘by two Houses … for many hundred years’ and that the ‘people of England have a right to the single person and two Houses of Parliament’. Yet, as far as he was concerned the Other House was perfectly adequate: the Humble Petition was ‘not so much a new Constitution, as a reviving of the old with taking off the exorbitances’. Yet, as Bacon added, the question before them was not ‘what it shall be’ but merely ‘whether the Constitution shall be in two Houses or no.’103 The 19 February declaration was vague enough to satisfy a range of opinions, from the crypto-Royalists who wanted the old House of Lords through to those who defended the Other House. As Bulkeley put it, it ‘gives a man latitude enough to give his vote, whether he will have it upon one footing or another’.104 Attitudes towards the Old Peers It was this question of what ‘footing’ the chamber should stand upon that was the crux of the debate. Having agreed that parliament consisted of two Houses the Commons had to define the second chamber. When debate resumed on 22 February a number of MPs stressed the impracticability of discussing the bounds of the second chamber before they knew ‘which of the Houses you will have’; they had to determine whether they were discussing the ‘Other House’, ‘another House’ or a ‘House of Lords’.105 At this point, some crypto-Royalists and old Presbyterians suggested that the surest way to decide this issue was to resolve upon the membership. Sir George Booth thought it right ‘to consider of the persons before you consider of the powers’.106 Specifically, they wanted to resolve upon the status

101  102  103  104  105  106 

Guizot, Richard Cromwell, I, 311: 21 Feb. 1659. Burton, III, 362–3. Ibid., III, 356–7. Ibid., III, 358. Ibid., III, 413: speeches by Cartwright and Young. Ibid., III, 417; see also ibid., III, 415: speech by Northcote. 171

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of the old peers, particularly those who had ‘not forfeited’.107 These motions proved popular. Bordeaux reported that ‘the majority of the Parliament are disposed to reinstate the old Lords, with the exception of those who have borne arms for the King’.108 Crucially, a number of new Presbyterians were among this ‘majority’, including John Swinfen who professed himself ‘for the old Peerage’ and that it was ‘necessary to have a previous question, whether the Peers be excluded’.109 Perceiving the sense of the House, Speaker Chaloner Chute propounded that the question for debate should be ‘whether the ancient Peers that have not forfeited, have a right to sit in the other House’.110 The courtiers were clearly uncomfortable with the way the debate was going; according to Burton they were ‘at a loss, and prayed to adjourn’.111 Yet, while a majority of MPs professed support for the old peers, it is too simplistic to assume that those who did so were conservative in constitutional outlook or wanted a straightforward return to the ancient constitution. In fact, the debate over the old peers reveals a range of attitudes towards the defunct House of Lords and its membership, as well as differing assumptions about the origins and powers of the second chamber and its status vis-à-vis the House of Commons. While old and new Presbyterians and crypto-­Royalists all suggested that the old peers deserved a place in the second chamber, they did so for different reasons. Many of the arguments used by the old Presbyterians could have come straight from the pages of Prynne’s Plea for the Lords, which was republished in a new and expanded edition shortly after the dissolution of the second Protectorate Parliament.112 Primarily, they focused on the quality of the old peers and what they saw as their legal rights. MPs recited a litany of occasions where the old peers had defended the people’s liberties. The old lords had always been for the interests of the people, Thomas Edgar argued; ‘they were the procurers of Magna Charta, by the Barons’ wars’.113 The lawyer Thomas Terrill recalled the events of 1640, ‘when Parliaments were grown contemptible’. In these circumstances the twelve peers ‘took courage’ and ‘went with a paper in one hand, and their lives in the other, to solicit the King to call Parliament’.114 MPs also stressed the ancient, legal right of the peers to sit in the second chamber. Edgar was adamant that they must ‘maintain the honour and birthright of that House’, for ‘it is a very dangerous thing to alter laws and 107  108  109  110  111  112  113  114 

BL, Add. MS 5138, p. 214: speech by Stephens. Guizot, Richard Cromwell, I, 311. Burton, III, 419–20; see also ibid., III, 420, 421: speeches by Godfrey and Gott. Ibid., III, 420. Ibid., III, 424. W. Prynne, A Plea for the Lords, And House of Peers (London, 1658). Burton, III, 349–50; BL, Add. MS 5138, pp. 188–9; Schilling, pp. 91–2. Burton, III, 515; BL, Add. MS 5138, p. 248; Schilling, p. 130. 172

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customs’.115 Terrill was sure that ‘among Romans, Saxons, Danes, &c. the great men of the nation, the barons and nobles have been consulted with in all councils and assemblies, especially in Parliament’.116 Others pointed to more recent legal precedents, such as Cary Raleigh, who claimed the ‘House of peers had a right of sitting by inheritance’, which was ‘instanced in the Earle of Bristolls case’ of 1626.117 By contrast, the courtiers and many new Presbyterians, while professing sympathy for the old peers, denied them a hereditary right to sit. Rather, they upheld the principle, inherent in the provisions of the Humble Petition and Advice, that membership of the second chamber should not be hereditary. Attorney General Prideaux wanted to ‘make it the ground of your debate, that they shall not be hereditary’. As far as he was concerned the ‘old Lords had … an hereditary honour’ but not a ‘hereditary right, as to session in Parliament … without being called by writ’.118 Similarly, Nathaniel Bacon reportedly claimed that the ‘old Lords never sate there Hereditaily … but as they were called by writt’. They ‘were sometimes called and sometimes left out... no Lord could say he had a Right to sitt there’.119 Others, like Nicholas Pedley, admitted that the old peers had claimed a hereditary right to sit in the second chamber but added that, in reality, these titles were rarely ancient or continuous. ‘Can any lineally claim, since Henry III?’, asked Pedley; he was sure ‘they cannot’. Just as these titles were ‘interrupted’ in the past, so they could be interrupted in the present too. It was ‘no new doctrine’, Pedley explained, ‘that the rights of particular persons may suffer for the public interest’.120 Some new Presbyterians criticized the very notion of hereditary right to public office. Bacon warned that hereditary succession was a bad idea because there was no guarantee of the capabilities or principles of the next generation: it was never intended that ‘Fooles, madmen and Children’ should be summoned to ‘advise’ as they ‘were not Qualified for it’.121 John Hewley, reflecting on the judicial functions of the Other House, believed that such an ‘office cannot in reason be granted to a man and his heirs’ for ‘it requires skill and science’.122 Others pointed out that if the old peers had a hereditary right to sit then the sons of Royalists could hardly be barred from the second chamber. ‘What hath the son of Lord Goring or Lord Capel done, to forfeit Burton, III, 349–50; Schilling, pp. 91–2. Burton, III, 513–14; BL, Add. MS 5138, pp. 247–8; Schilling, p. 130. 117  BL, Add. MS 5138, p. 219. 118  Burton, III, 413. 119  This report is taken from Goddard’s diary (BL, Add. MS 5138, p. 217); the version of the speech provided in Rutt’s edition (Burton, III, 409) is an amalgam of those found in Burton and Goddard. See also the report in Schilling, p. 101. 120  Burton, III, 553; BL, Add. MS 5138, pp. 259–60. 121  BL, Add. MS 5138, p. 217. 122  Burton, III, 558–9; Schilling, pp. 140–1. See also speech by Bennet: Burton, III, 359–61. 115  116 

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their right?’, Henry Hatsell pondered; if they admitted a hereditary ‘right’ there would be ‘no keeping them out’.123 In denouncing the hereditary principle, the courtiers and new Presbyterians found unlikely support from the Republicans. A number of contemporaries noted how the Republicans were unusually quiet in the debates over the old peers.124 This was understandable as it was an issue on which they could find little common ground with the other opponents of the Protectorate. Rather, the Republicans shared those same concerns as the Protectorate’s supporters about the hereditary right of the lords. Sir Thomas Wroth even claimed to be ‘against hereditary lordship’ for the same ‘reason why his Highness’, Oliver Cromwell, refused hereditary government: ‘he knew not what he that came after him should be a wise man or a fool’.125 When questioning the right of the old peers to sit, the government’s supporters also echoed those Republicans versed in the ideas of James Harrington. In his Oceana of 1656, Harrington claimed that a government’s superstructure was determined by ‘the proportion or balance of dominion or property in land’ in the foundation. If ‘one man be sole landlord of a territory’ and thereby ‘overbalance the people’, then ‘his empire is an absolute monarchy; if ‘the few or a nobility … be landlords, or overbalance the people’, then ‘the empire is mixed monarchy’; but ‘if the whole people be landlords, or hold the lands so divided among them, that no one man, or number of men … overbalance them’, then ‘the empire … is a  ­commonwealth’. 126 The publication of Harrington’s Art of Law-Giving in mid-February 1659 made these ideas accessible to a wider audience, with the opaque model of Oceana translated into an unambiguously English context.127 Harrington demonstrated how his constitutional model was every way agreeable to circumstances in England. Whereas ‘the lands in the hold of the Nobility and Clergy of England, till Hen. 7. cannot be esteemed to have over-balanced those in the hold of the people less than four to one’; now, argued Harrington, ‘the Clergy being destroyed, the Lands in the hold of the people over-balance those in the hold of the Nobility, at least nine in ten’. As such, it was clear that ‘actually and positively England is a Commonwealth’.128 The implications for the old Lords were obvious; they no longer had a sufficient balance of property to claim power over the people. As Harrington put it, Burton, III, 421–2. See also Wheeler’s speech: Burton, III, 411; Schilling, p. 102. Thurloe, VII, 626; Guizot, Richard Cromwell, I, 312–17; Bethel, A true and impartial Narrative, pp. 9–10. 125  Burton, III, 413–14; BL, Add. MS 5138, p. 219. 126  J.G.A. Pocock (ed.), Harrington: The Commonwealth of Oceana and A System of Politics (Cambridge, 1992), pp. 11–13. 127  J. Scott, Commonwealth Principles: Republican Writing of the English Revolution (Cambridge, 2004), pp. 294–6. 128  J. Harrington, The Art of Law-Giving: In III Books... To which is added an Appendix concerning An House of Peers (London, 1659), pp. 11–12, 142–3. 123  124 

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‘an House of Peers having the over-balance, signifies something … and not having the over-balance signifies nothing’.129 A number of Republican MPs used similar arguments to justify the occlusion of the peers and the abolition of the old House of Lords. Henry Neville warned that ‘a House of Peers’ was not ‘of that use now as formerly’, for ‘the Lords much outweighed before, and now the Commons and the people outweigh’.130 Adam Baynes asserted that ‘the Lords represented, at least in old time, two thirds of the rest’, therefore it was ‘all Justice and reason they should have a Co-ordination in the Government’. Yet they no longer held ‘such proprietys as may ballance this House in any considerable measure’.131 Such arguments had obvious appeal for the Protectorate’s supporters. Rather than squabble over the hereditary rights of the old peers, Harringtonian theory provided a justification for shunning the ancient peerage that hinged on the very foundations of political power. For instance, Major-General Thomas Kelsey insisted that if they ‘Divide the Lands of the Nation into Twelve parts’ then the peers had ‘scarce one part, when [before] they had Two Thirds’. In Kelsey’s opinion, ‘many Gentlemen that sitt in this House that have as good Estates as any of those Lords’.132 The crypto-Royalists and old Presbyterians found this criticism difficult to answer. Arthur Annesley complained how it was objected ‘that the peers sate at first upon account of … their great proprietys and Estates’ but had ‘not so still’.133 Yet, Annesley claimed he ‘could name 5 or 6 of the Ancient peers that are not disabled from sitting’ with ‘estates and interest equivalent to all that sit there now’.134 Others, like Sir John Northcote, reminded the Commons that one reason for the peers’ recent decline in wealth was because they had risked both their lives and fortunes for the parliamentarian cause. Conversely, those who sat in the Other House ‘ventured their lives, but little fortunes’; if anything, they had ‘gayned estates’ as a result of the wars.135 Ultimately, however, the debate over the status of the old lords was about more than the rights of the peerage and whether they sat because of inheritance and property. Rather, at its core, was a more fundamental question about the foundations of the constitution. In essence, it was a debate about whether or not the constitutional revolution of 1649 and all that followed, including the Humble Petition and Advice, was legal or not. They had to decide whether the old peers should sit because the Commons chose to admit them to the second chamber, or because they had an undoubted right that should never have been abolished in the first place. 129  130  131  132  133  134  135 

Ibid., pp. 136–8. Burton, III, 330–1; BL, Add. MS 5138, pp. 182–3; Schilling, p. 84. BL, Add. MS 5138, pp. 185–6; Schilling, pp. 85–6. BL, Add. MS 5138, pp. 215–16; Schilling, pp. 100–1. BL, Add. MS 5138, p. 273. BL, Add. MS 15863, fols 55r–56v; Schilling, p. 156. Schilling, p. 147. 175

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For the crypto-Royalists and old Presbyterians, the abolition of the House of Lords was unlawful and the old peers still had the same right to sit as they had before 1649. Citing the 1641 act against dissolution, Francis Goodrick explained that there ‘was a clause that the House of Peers should not be prorogued, Adjourned, or dissolved without their consent’.136 He also pointed to the 1641 Triennial Act, ‘by which twelve peers ought to meet to summon Parliament’, a sure sign that the Lords were an integral part of the parliamentary system. 137 After both these Acts were brought in to the chamber and read, John Stephens professed to be perplexed over how the House of Lords ‘came to forfeit’; those laws were, ‘without doubt, not repealed’.138 In effect, the crypto-Royalists and old Presbyterians challenged the legal basis of the constitutional revolution of early 1649. According to Terrill, the Act abolishing the Lords was invalid: it was ‘inconsistent for one house to say the other was useless’.139 If this was allowed then ‘a Grand Jury may as well sett aside the Judges, the Commons of London may as well set aside the Lord Mayor, and the Judges of Westminster Hall sett aside this House; as this House could sett aside the Lords’.140 As such, Terrill moved ‘to restore the old Lords to their Ancient right … for two Houses being in our Eye we are obliged to sett up that which hath most right’.141 Likewise the old Presbyterian Sir Walter Earle believed that the Commons were ‘bound to maintain’ the rights of the old peers. Excluded at Pride’s Purge, Earle had serious doubts about the constitutional revolution of 1649 that swept away the House of Lords: he questioned ‘the validity of that vote that called them useless’.142 Consequently, the crypto-Royalists and old Presbyterians also claimed that the Other House established under the Humble Petition and Advice had no legal standing. Like the abolition of the Lords, the constitutional document was ‘not done in a full and free Parliament’.143 Moreover, according to Terrill, even if the Humble Petition had any basis in law, those clauses for summoning the Other Houses were rendered void by Oliver Cromwell’s death. He claimed that ‘the second article’ of the Humble Petition ‘touching the two Houses’ was ‘a personall power during the Protector’s life only’.144 It only stated that ‘your Highness’, not ‘your Highness and your successors’, would ‘for the future be pleased to call Parliaments consisting of two Houses’.145 As such, the Other House was but a ‘Probationer during [the] Life’ of Oliver BL, Add. MS 5138, p. 190. Burton, III, 352; BL, Add. MS 5138, p. 190; Schilling, p. 93. 138  Burton, III, 357­–8; Schilling, p. 94. 139  BL, Add. MS 15863, fol. 32v. 140  BL, Add. MS 5138, pp. 250–1; BL, Add. MS 15863, fol. 32v; Schilling, p. 131. 141  BL, Add. MS 5138, pp. 250–1; Schilling, p. 131. 142  Burton, III, 420–1. 143  Ibid., III, 180–1. See also ibid., III, 101, 118–19, 204–5; Annesley, England’s Confusion, p. 5. 144  BL, Add. MS 5138, p. 170. 145  Gardiner, Documents, p. 449. 136  137 

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Cromwell and was ‘dead and buryed with the Protector’.146 Such criticisms hardly seem like MPs were ‘exposing the weakness and incoherence of the constitution … in order to place the protectorate on a more secure footing’.147 Rather, they would have rendered the constitutional underpinnings of the Protectorate completely void and necessitated reverting to the constitutional arrangement before 1649. Indeed, the elephant in the room throughout the debate was kingship – if the Commons had no right to remove the House of Lords, did they lack the authority to abolish kingship as well? This subtext is evident in how the parliamentary diarists recorded Thomas Gewen’s speech on 22 February. John Gell’s report has Gewen stating that the old peers ‘had [a] right, it’s undoubted’, and this ‘right cannot dye though interrupted’.148 By contrast, Thomas Burton, who entered the chamber while ‘Mr. Gewen [was] speaking’ summarized his speech more succinctly: ‘his aim was at King, Lords, and Commons’.149 As far as Burton was concerned, those who spoke for the rights of the peers aimed to restore what they took to be the ancient constitution. A number of courtiers even wondered whether ‘Charles Stewart be at the bottom of this Debate’ for the old Lords.150 As Thomas Kelsey argued, if the laws that took away the Lords were void then ‘there is no foundation for any thing that had been done since. All hath been a mere usurpation of the House of Commons.’ It would mean ‘the Petition and Advice is no law’, and it would ‘naturally follow that Charles Stuart is as rightful king at this day as the Lords are rightful Lords’.151 Unquestionably there were crypto-Royalist MPs in the Commons for whom the restoration of the old House of Lords was envisaged as a stepping stone towards a Stuart Restoration. Yet, this does not necessarily mean that the old Presbyterians were of the same opinion. In fact, a closer examination of their speeches suggests that they had different ideas about what the restoration of the old peers should entail. They wanted to bring back the old peers on their terms, or rather on terms underpinned by the ideas and experiences of the parliamentarian cause of the 1640s. The political thought of the old Presbyterians was that of the parliamentarians in the mid to late 1640s – at a time when parliamentary supremacy was still conceived in bicameral terms. While they subscribed to the idea of popular sovereignty and recognized that the House of Commons was the representative of the people, they also felt that the House of Lords could still be accommodated in some form. BL, Add. 5138, pp. 171–2, 189. Peacey, ‘Protector Humbled’, p. 40. 148  Schilling, p. 98. 149  Burton, III, 403. 150  BL, Add. MS 5138, p. 251: speech by Prideaux, 28 Feb. 151  Burton, III, 406–8; BL, Add. MS 5138, p. 215. See also speech by Hatsell, BL, Add. MS 5138, p. 217. 146  147 

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The old Presbyterian position is neatly encapsulated in the speech made by John Stephens on 22 February. Stephens attacked head-on the accusation that ‘those that are for the Old Lords, are for the Old Line’. In fact, Stephens was clear that the Lords should not be restored on the same basis as formerly. Responding to the Harringtonian arguments, he admitted that the Lords no longer had the same interest as formerly, adding that ‘now the Commons have obtained a larger Interest in the Land … they should have a Greater in the Government’.152 Stephens did not even believe that all of the old peers should be admitted: he suggested that the Commons ‘restore such Lords as have not forfeited and add some more of New’. He was also clear that the ‘number of Persons and the persons themselves’ should be ‘by Approbation of this House’. This was not a radical suggestion, Stephens claimed: it was no more than ‘the King was moved they might be’ in various parliamentarian proposals during the 1640s.153 He also did not think that the second chamber should have the same legislative powers as before: a ‘negative voice in them Generally I think not fitt’. Rather, all ‘private Acts’ should pass ‘without them’; if they disagreed to any ‘publique Acts’, and the difference ‘cannot be reconciled by Conferrence’, then ‘pro hac vice’ Stephens would have the two Houses ‘sitt and vote together’.154 What Stephens wanted was the restoration of the House of Lords on terms that reflected the ideas and proposals advanced by the parliamentarians during the 1640s. They would be denied an absolute negative voice over the Commons and their membership would be scrutinized by the people’s representatives. It is remarkable that ideas once considered radical when employed by Leveller authors in the late 1640s, such as Lords and Commons sitting together to vote, now seemingly had traction among the old Presbyterians. It further suggests that by paying too much attention to the headline accusations of the courtiers – that those who argued for the old peers wanted a Stuart Restoration – the radical nature of the demands of those supposedly ‘conservative’ MPs can be overlooked. For the courtiers and many of the new Presbyterians, however, it was the very suggestion that they must ‘restore’ the old peers that they found objectionable. The crucial point was that if the old lords were restored to any ‘right’ to sit in the second chamber, however limited, it would leave ambiguous their relationship to the Humble Petition and Advice. It revived that problem raised by Robert Shapcott in June 1657, when MPs debated the decision to drop the clause concerning the Commons’ approbation of the membership of the Other House. Shapcott then questioned whether it would allow any lords summoned to claim they ‘come in, upon the account of right’, which they had ‘not forfeited’.155 His fear was that, without the explicit 152  153  154  155 

BL, Add. MS 5138, pp. 214–15. BL, Add. MS 5138, pp. 214–15. BL, Add. MS 5138, pp. 214–15; Schilling, p. 99. Burton, II, 298. 178

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approbation of the Commons, it would be unclear whether those old peers owed their seats in the chamber to the Humble Petition or to ancient right. Similarly, during the third Protectorate Parliament the court lawyers criticized the suggestion that the peers had a hereditary right to sit in the second chamber because it would render the basis of the constitution inconsistent. As far as Prideaux was concerned it was important that the constitution be ‘Homogenary’: given that the lord protector and Commons were ‘elected’, it was also necessary that ‘your lords be soe, & not hereditary’.156 Nathaniel Bacon wondered if the old peers ‘come in by right of peerage, are they peers to his Highness?’ Bacon thought not. He noted how ‘some of them have had writs’ to the Other House ‘but declyne’ to sit; Bacon feared that ‘they will not own a right from this protector’, and they would not ‘hold their baronages by this title’.157 Instead, many new Presbyterians emphasized the, by now, familiar argument that the Humble Petition was not a new constitution but a restitution. The old House of Lords did not need restoring because, through the creation of the Other House, it had already been restored. As Edmund Fowell stated bluntly on 28 February, ‘the Protector is King of England, to all intents and purposes whatsoever’.158 Moreover, the Other House was ‘the old house’, they had ‘only changed the names. Though new members, they are the old house.’ In the Humble Petition ‘Noe power’ was given ‘to the other house but Negative’; ‘in all things else’, Fowell was confident that the Other House ‘go according to the antient usages’.159 The point was emphasized further on 1 March by Protector’s Serjeant-at-law John Maynard who, picking up where he left off at the dissolution of the last parliament, stressed that the Humble Petition was not ‘a Grant’ or new constitution but a ‘qualifyed Restitution’.160 Like Fowell, Maynard claimed that the Other House was simply the old House of Lords under a different name. This assertion helped to salve the new Presbyterians’ consciences over one of the key arguments used to justify the rights of the the old Lords: the Solemn League and Covenant of 1643. Under its terms the parliamentarians had sworn to ‘preserve the rights and privileges’ of parliament, as well as ‘defend the King’s Majesty’s person and authority’.161 For Republicans like Vane the terms of this oath lapsed with the constitutional revolution of 1649.162 Yet, Presbyterians of all hues felt that it was still binding. Old Presbyterian John Stephens declared that he was ‘always against taking away the House of Peers … upon account of the Covenant’.163 Similarly, new Presbyterian Robert 156  157  158  159  160  161  162  163 

BL, Add. MS 5138, p. 272; Schilling, pp. 154–5; BL, Add. MS 15863, fols 55v–r. BL, Add. MS 15863, fol. 35v. See also BL, Add. MS 5138, p. 254; Schilling, p. 135. BL, Add. MS 5138, p. 253; BL, Add. MS 15863, fol. 35r. BL, Add. MS 15863, fol. 35r. BL, Add. MS 5138, p. 267; Schilling, p. 145. Gardiner, Documents, p. 269. Stephen, II, 153–6. BL, Add. MS 5138, p. 191; Schilling, p. 94. 179

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Beake admitted that ‘we have sworn by the covenant to maintain the two Houses; and the Parliament might as well take away meum and tuum as a House of Lords’.164 Yet while the old and new Presbyterians agreed about the need to uphold the Covenant, they diverged over how that commitment was to be fulfilled. For the new Presbyterians, the Other House was, to all intents and purposes, the House of Lords that they swore to maintain. For the old Presbyterians, the Other House was an interloper in the place of the rightful House of Peers. What really divided the old and new Presbyterians was whether or not they could countenance everything done since Pride’s Purge. The old Presbyterians questioned whether a purged House of Commons could carry out constitutional reform – both in 1649 and in 1657. Sir John Northcote stressed that ‘no law was rightly made, but by King, Lords, and Commons’, and was ‘sure this law [the Humble Petition] was not made so’.165 Rather than restoring the constitutional arrangement discarded in 1649 the Humble Petition, created by a forced House of Commons, confirmed its usurpation; the Humble Petition did not restore the old House of Lords but created an entirely new second chamber. The new Presbyterian and courtiers, by contrast, defended the Humble Petition and believed that the old peers must be admitted on that basis. As Lechmere explained, to claim that the House of Lords was never properly abolished would lead to ‘invalidity’ for both the Humble Petition and ‘many good Acts in the end of the Long Parliament’; it ‘brings us to what and where we were’.166 Prideaux stressed that restoring the old lords upon their supposed ancient right would mean that ‘from 42 to 48 … from that to 53 and from thence hither are all void’.167 Provided that ‘law which concerns the Lords House be yet in force’, Prideaux was sure that ‘which concerns Charles Stewart is not yet void’. Yet, if they cancelled the one on the grounds that the Commons had no authority to do so he could not see how they could maintain the other. As far as Prideaux was concerned the parliament had no option but to uphold those laws from 1649 or fatally undermine the principle that the people in parliament could alter their constitutions as they saw fit for the public good. As Prideaux stressed, they need ‘not now think what was the Ancient Right, but what is best for the good and Safety of the Nation’.168 Unlike the old Presbyterians, the new Presbyterians believed the Commons could remove the ancient right of the old peers if they saw fit. For instance, Sir Lislebone Long in his speech of 22 February admitted that the Lords, in the past, sat hereditarily but added that it was for the Commons to decide 164  165  166  167  168 

Burton, III, 363. Ibid., III, 575. BL, Add. MS 5138, p. 190. BL, Add. MS 5138, p. 251; see also BL, Add. 15863, fol. 33r; Schilling, p. 132. BL, Add. MS 5138, p. 251. 180

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whether ‘it be for the good of the people that it should be so’.169 Long believed that ‘If anything be amisse in the constitution, it may be amended’.170 The question of whether or not the peers anciently had a hereditary right was superfluous – ancient custom was no argument to support a practice found damaging to the people. As Long saw it, the Lords ‘anciently claimed very large powers, and not all for the good of the people’; they had ‘judged of the lives of the Commoners and of property’. The Commons must make it their question ‘that a member sitting there shall not give his heir an hereditary right to sit’.171 What the courtiers and new Presbyterians advocated was subtly different to the old Presbyterians. Whereas the old Presbyterians claimed the Humble Petition was defunct and wanted the old House of Lords restored in its own right, albeit in line with the ideas of 1640s parliamentarianism, the Protectorate’s supporters upheld the Humble Petition and claimed that the old Lords must sit on that basis. As Goddard summarized in his report of Fowell’s speech on 28 February, their aim was to ‘add the old Lords to the new House’.172 The Issue of ‘Transacting’ Indeed, by the end of February it was clear that the courtiers and new Presbyterians wanted to move on from the issue of the old lords and secure the recognition of the incumbent Other House. On 28 February, the new Presbyterians Bulkeley and Birch suggested that the best way to proceed was to ‘declare that the members to sit hereafter in the other House shall be approved of by both Houses’.173 Of course, this meant accepting the existing Other House and those who sat there; as Vane complained, it was ‘a granting by the lump all that are in possession … and only gives us power to consider of members hereafter to be added’.174 In a similar vein, on 1 March John Swinfen moved that ‘the best and nearest an issue, will be to put whether this House now sitting, will transact with the other House now sitting, as a House of Parliament’.175 According to Goddard, ‘the Question thus propounded was Imediately Seconded & Thirded by some little ones of the same party, and was soon apprehended as a thing that had been Studiously contrived and forged at Court’. By the end of the day’s debates, Goddard claims ‘that party became to be called by the name of Transactors’.176 169  170  171  172  173  174  175  176 

BL, Add. MS 5138, p. 220. Schilling, p. 105. Burton, III, 416–7; Schilling, pp. 104–5. BL, Add. MS 5138, pp. 253–4 Burton, III, 544. 547. Ibid., III, 545–6. Ibid., III, 563–4. BL, Add. MS 5138, p. 263. 181

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The Republicans opposed Swinfen’s motion. Neville warned that to ‘transact with them begs the question... you will swallow the Petition and Advice at once’.177 Haselrig warned that the more appropriate question was ‘whether those Peers … that now sit in the Other House, have any foundation to sit by the Petition and Advice’.178 Their opposition was futile, however. When a vote was taken to put the question that ‘it be the matter of the debate to-morrow morning, that this House will transact with the persons now sitting in the Other House, as a House of Parliament’, the Noes were defeated by 177 to 113.179 The crypto-Royalists and old Presbyterians were also alarmed by Swinfen’s motion. If the new Cromwellian peers were confirmed in their seats it would preclude any hope of restoring the old lords on the basis of their ancient right. On 2 March Annesley reminded the Commons of ‘the beginning of this Debate when the current opinion was, if not to restore yet not to prejudice the Old Peers’.180 As such, he urged that their question should be whether ‘this House will Transact with the persons called by Writt and now sitting in the other House’, with the addition ‘not intending hereby to exclude such of the Ancient Peers who have been faithfull to the Commonwealth from their Priviledges of being summoned and sitting members of that House’.181 Yet Annesley’s motion made little impact because the Court party saw it coming. Even before Annesley spoke, some of the lawyers suggested allowing some of the old lords to take their seats. Prideaux was ‘very willing that those of the old Lords that have been faithful be taken in’.182 Lechmere’s only objection to Swinfen’s motion was that ‘those honourable persons that have been courageous and persons of fidelity are not restored’.183 These lawyers were well aware that their new Presbyterian allies were uneasy about positively excluding the old lords. Even Swinfen admitted that ‘the only fault’ with his motion was that ‘fit persons, that ought rightfully to sit, and have been faithful to you, are left out’.184 According to the Irish MP Jerome Sankey, the addition for the old lords was ‘urged by such Presbyterians as … thought … they were bound not to prejudice the peers upon the accompt of the covenant’. Chief among them were the new Presbyterians Bulkeley, Grove, Swinfen, Bampfield and Godfrey.185 As such, the courtiers fell in with the new Presbyterians. According to Sankey, Thurloe was indiscreet enough to admit that ‘he liked not the Burton, III, 564; BL. Add. MS 5138, p. 263. Burton, III, 569. 179  CJ, VII, 609. 180  BL, Add. MS 5138, p. 272. 181  BL, Add. MS 5138, p. 274. Burton recorded Annesley’s addition as not excluding those peers who had been ‘faithfull to the Parliament’, BL, Add. MS 15863, fol. 56v. 182  Burton, III, 591. 183  Ibid., III, 587. 184  Ibid., III, 563–4. 185  Gaunt, Lansdowne, p. 473: Sankey to H. Cromwell, 8 Mar. 1659. 177  178 

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addition’ for the old lords, ‘but could not tell how to helpe it, unless to bringe in confusion by the loss of the question’; his opinion was shared by ‘sargeant Maynard, Mr. solicitor [Ellis], Mr atturney generall [Prideaux] etc’.186 It also ensured the support of the moderate majority. As Thomas Gorges informed Henry Cromwell on 8 March, the Court ‘findinge the yonge gentlemen very zealous to preserve the rights of the anteant lords, added a salvo to the rights of the aunteant peers that have contenued faythfull’.187 In reality, the addition to Swinfen’s motion offered a lot but gave away little. As Samuel Gott explained, ‘the salvo’ for the old lords ‘will be enough to discharge us’ because ‘after that we have saved their rights’.188 In effect, the addition meant they would not take away the lords’ rights but they would not positively promote them either. John Birch, was ‘for that addition, that they shall not be excluded, when duly summoned’.189 When exactly that would be was left unsaid, but it was clearly only after the Other House was recognized that the old lords would be admitted. They would effectively sit as members of the Other House rather than peers of the House of Lords; their foundation would be the Humble Petition. To hasten the passage of the addition, arguments of necessity were advanced stressing the need to transact sooner rather than later. Although Gott claimed to be ‘as little pleased with these Lords as any man’ yet the Commons were ‘but one leg, and cannot go, but hop up and down without them’. It was better to transact with the Other House than to reject them altogether; as Gott put it, he had ‘seen a man walk very well with a wooden leg’.190 Thurloe reminded MPs of the disastrous consequences for the government of not transacting. ‘If this pass in the negative’, he argued, they ‘must lay aside his Highness … You will be just where you were in 48. You declare all that in the lump.’191 Of course, this was precisely what the old Presbyterians and crypto-Royalists hoped for. It was at this juncture that the Republicans, crypto-Royalists and old Presbyterians came together in debate. On 8 March Sankey reported that many were now ‘assertinge the right of the old peers’ because they feared the addition ‘would wholy exclude them’. These included Booth, Hungerford, Annesley, Turner, Terrill, and Morice among others, who in this debate ‘fell [in] with the commonwealth party’.192 Anthony Morgan believed that the ‘commonwealth party’ would be joined by ‘such as … are violent for the old peerage under which cloke some carry Charles Steward’.193 Certainly, 186  187  188  189  190  191  192  193 

Ibid., p. 473. Ibid., p. 468. Burton, IV, 58, see also speech by Lechmere, ibid., III, 587. Ibid., IV, 60, emphasis added. Ibid., IV, 57. Ibid., IV, 70. Gaunt, Lansdowne, p. 472. Ibid., p. 469: Morgan to H. Cromwell, 8 Mar. 1659. 183

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Royalist agents claimed that working with the Republicans offered their best hope ‘to interrupt Cromwell in his course’.194 This alliance proved exasperating for the Courtiers. Writing on 25 March one agent revealed to Hyde that ‘the Cavaliers joyne so apparently’ with the Republicans, that ‘Sergeant Maynard … protested in the lobby with such indignation that he thought Charles Stuart had more freinds in the House then the Protector’. Hyde’s informant thought it ‘strange … how those two factions, different in minds, and manners, principalls and ends, shuld unite thus firmely’.195 Yet, as John Mordaunt confessed to Hyde, they did not ‘agree perfectly in anything but opposition’.196 With the vote for transacting imminent, the debate was no longer what they would replace the Protectorate with but whether they should recognize the constitutional arrangement as it stood. As such, the old Presbyterians, crypto-Royalists and Republicans collaborated to prevent the Protectorate from entrenching itself and frustrating any chance of an alternative settlement – whether commonwealth or monarchy. Primarily, their arguments resolved around three connected issues: the inadequacy of the new Cromwellian peers, the need to ‘approve’ the existing members of the Other House and the betrayal of the old lords. The recurring criticism of the Other House employed by all of the government’s opponents concerned the character of its membership, particularly its military contingent. According to Adam Baynes, the Other House ‘have twenty-two or twenty-three regiments, divers garrisons, and the Tower of London’. As such ‘it matters not what laws you make, or they consent to’, for ‘if they have a mind to break in upon a paper law, they have a force to do it’.197 Thomas Scot complained how the constitution was settled in ‘a House of Commons, a council of officers, and a single person’.198 Sir John Northcote was appalled that ‘some of them that offered force to Parliaments, and disturbed us, are sitting there’, and warned that ‘what they have done they may do’ again.199 In response, the courtiers and new Presbyterians offered some remarkable defences of the military presence. John Birch was adamant that ‘the army should be there’.200 Francis Drake answered the objection that there were ‘many soldiers in’ by quipping that they would be ‘the better guards’.201 Yet, such arguments could not overcome the latent anti-militarism of the majority of the House. This distaste for the military element was linked to the wider issue of political independence. The majority of those sitting in the Other House were ‘salary men’; ‘they are all officers, counsellors, judges, and chancellors’, 194  195  196  197  198  199  200  201 

Nicholas Papers, IV, 74–6: Massey to Nicholas, 5/15 Mar. 1659. Bodl., Clarendon MS 60, fol. 248. Mordaunt to Hyde, 8 Mar. 1659: Bodl., Clarendon MS 60, fols 209–10. Burton, IV, 31; Schilling, p. 170. Burton, IV, 35; Schilling, p. 171. Burton, IV, 33; Schilling, pp. 170–1. Burton, IV, 61. BL, Add. MS 5138, p. 281; Schilling, p. 167. 184

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as Herbert Morley put it.202 Neville pointed out the paradox in giving ‘them salaries to be your balance’.203 They ‘depend upon the single person, and they are paid by the Publique Revenue’, meaning the Commons would have ‘two negatives upon you whenever you think to diminish this Revenue’.204 Haselrig mocked how many sitting in the Other House had offered the Humble Petition to Oliver Cromwell in the first place. As such, ‘those persons that now sit, indeed did choose themselves. They chose the single person, and he chose them.’205 William Morice agreed that the Other House gave the Protector ‘two negatives’ upon the Commons – ‘they will be but his echo’.206 The Republicans even praised the old lords to discredit the new. On 5 March, Henry Neville remembered the days when ‘the Lords House payd this’ and there were ‘so many blew Coats … that satt in this House as we could see no other Colours there’; that is, ‘Nere Twenty Parliament men would waite upon one Lord, to know how they should Demeane themselves in the House of Commons.’ Yet, times had changed: ‘the Commons are at present much more Considerable’ and ‘we pay the Lords now’.207 As such, Neville professed to like the old lords better than the new ones; they had ‘no dependency’ and were ‘much more fit and indifferent’.208 Commenting on Neville’s speech, Gaby Mahlberg has suggested that he was sincere in his preference for the old Lords ‘but he would change their status and function and turn them into something resembling a Harringtonian senate’.209 Yet, Mahlberg reads too much into a debate that is deliberately misleading. At the beginning of his speech, according to Burton, Neville went so far as to state that he was ‘for another House’, before adding ‘but not this, nor that, but another’.210 Or, as Goddard reports the speech, Neville was ‘in truth, against both these Houses’.211 As Mahlberg suggests, Neville ‘came to accept the old Lords only as the lesser evil in comparison to the Cromwellian other House’; he would have preferred neither.212 Instead, Neville merely aligned himself with the old Presbyterians and crypto-Royalists by suggesting that the old lords ‘though rich commoners now’ were preferable to those timeservers sitting in the Other House.213 True, earlier in the session, when there was the possibility of a new constitution or revision of the Humble Petition, Neville Burton, III, 588; Schilling, p. 153. Burton, IV, 25. 204  BL, Add. MS 5138, p. 280. See also speeches by Chaloner, Hungerford and Booth: Burton, IV, 48, 64, 65. 205  Burton, IV, 77; Schilling, p. 183. 206  Burton, IV, 59; Schilling, p. 181. 207  BL, Add. MS 5138, pp. 279–80; Schilling, p. 166 208  Burton, IV, 23–5; Schilling, p. 166. 209  Mahlberg, Henry Neville, p. 155. 210  Burton, IV, 23. 211  BL, Add. MS 5138, p. 279. 212  Mahlberg, Henry Neville, pp. 152–3. 213  Burton, IV, 25; Schilling, p. 166. 202  203 

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deviated from his fellow Republicans – castigating the Rump on 8 February as an ‘oligarchy, detested by all men that love a Commonwealth’, and suggesting that those ‘that are for a Commonwealth, are for a single person, senate, and popular assembly’.214 By early March, however, Neville, like all other opponents of the Protectorate, was desperately trying to prevent the recognition of the Other House; constitution-building was no longer the issue at stake. There was nothing unique about Neville’s arguments at this point. Haselrig, who was no Harringtonian, ‘had rather, with all my soul, those noble Lords were in’; ‘such men as depend upon themselves’ and ‘not the court’.215 Like Neville, Scot admitted he was ‘neither for old nor new’ lords, but he questioned the utility of ‘such a Peerage... that must borrow 12d. to buy a blue ribband to distinguish their honour’. The old lords, on balance, were preferable because they did ‘not serve according to the institution and interest’ of the single person.216 By stressing the qualities of the old peers these Republicans aligned themselves with those who preferred a restoration of the House of Lords outright. It was merely a tactic to convince more moderate MPs to oppose Swinfen’s motion. The opponents of the Other House also converged on the issue of ‘approving’ its membership. Haselrig claimed to be ‘for another House, if you, as the Commons of England, may bound them and approve them’.217 Unlike the motions by Birch and Bulkeley on 28 February, however, these opponents looked to ‘approve’ the existing members of the Other House, not just those who entered subsequently. Stephens thought it not fit to admit all the membership of the Other House ‘in a lump’, and went so far at to produce a ‘list in print’ of the Other House, reportedly moving that ‘we approve of those now sitting, beginning at the bottom of the list and going up to the top’.218 Some MPs claimed that by urging the Commons’ approbation of the existing members they were merely upholding the rules of the Humble Petition. As Colonel Alban Cox pointed out, it was originally agreed ‘that the Protector should nominate and we approve’, but that ‘approbation slipt out I know not how’.219 For other MPs the approbation of the second chamber was essential not only because it was part of the Humble Petition, but also because it was an integral part of the parliamentarian peace terms of the 1640s. Colonel Joachim Matthews believed ‘the approbation of those in the other House ought to be in this House’, which was ‘not only clear by the Petition and Advice’ but also by the content of the Four Bills ‘sent to the King [on] the Isle of Wight’ in 1647.220 Others noted that it had been part of the negotiations 214  215  216  217  218  219  220 

Burton, III, 134. Ibid., IV, 78, 81–2; Schilling, pp. 184–5. Burton, IV, 34–7; Schilling, p. 172. Burton, IV, 13–14. Ibid., IV, 20–1; BL, Add. MS 5138, p. 278. BL, Add. MS 5138, p. 220. Burton, IV, 15; Schilling, p. 163. See also speech by Godfrey: Burton, III, 541. 186

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with Charles I at Newport in 1648 that the Commons should approve all creations of peers.221 Once again, these speeches are a reminder that even those who talked of restoring the House of Lords in 1659, particularly the old Presbyterians, wanted its restoration on terms that reflected the ideas and experiences of 1640s parliamentarianism. Whether the approbation of the membership was justified by the Humble Petition or the proposals of the 1640s, however, the courtiers feared that the net result would be the same. That is, by giving the Commons licence to pick through the names of the Other House, they would fall into debilitating debate as the Protectorate’s opponents strove to remove all those they deemed objectionable. John Hewley asked the Commons to consider what would happen ‘if you should approve none of them, then you must transact with the walls’.222 It was for that reason that the civilian and military Cromwellians alike had agreed to rescind the Commons’ approbation in the first place. More importantly, the crypto-Royalists, old Presbyterians and Republicans all complained that the addition was a sham because it forced the old lords to sit under the terms of the Humble Petition, thereby precluding their ancient right. Stephens was ‘against that addition offered’ because rather than ‘not excluding the rights of the old Peerage’ it ‘will exclude them in fact’.223 Haselrig emphasized the point when he claimed to ‘exceedingly honour’ the old Lords, particularly the earl of Manchester, Viscount Saye and Lord Wharton.224 These names were chosen carefully: all had been summoned to the Other House and all had refused. Clearly, if those lords already invited to sit by the terms of the Humble Petition were unwilling, it was unlikely that the addition to the transacting question would make much difference. Others pointed out that, in practical terms, the addition was disingenuous. Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper reminded the House that by the Humble Petition the total membership of the Other House ‘be but seventy’, but if there were ‘sixty already’ there, he wondered ‘how can that clause of yours be put in execution?’225 According to Baynes, once the Commons ‘admit that House to be a House of Parliament’ then ‘there is no room for the old Peers’, adding, erroneously, that ‘their number is up within four or five’.226 That the Republicans united with the old Presbyterians and crypto-­ Royalists in stressing the betrayal of the old lords is not surprising. All three groups hoped to prevent the ‘moderate majority’ from being ‘deceived’ into voting with the Court. Haselrig was desirous that they would ‘not mingle

221  222  223  224  225  226 

See Burton, II, 21–2; ibid., III, 366; BL, Add. MS 5138, p. 214. Burton, IV, 14. Ibid., IV, 21. Ibid., IV, 78. Ibid., IV, 83–4; Schilling, p. 186. Burton, IV, 30–2; Schilling, pp. 169–70. 187

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questions with subtilty, to deceive one another now; to make it a gilded pill’.227 Ashley Cooper warned that ‘it is but a shoeing-horn to tell us the right of the old Lords is preserved by this’; it was a ‘way to destroy their rights which you take to preserve them’.228 Thurloe was unmoved by this criticism. He mocked how ‘those that complain of the disingenuity of the question brought it in themselves’. No doubt looking at Annesley, Thurloe claimed that ‘if you have been misled into it’ they should ‘blame the gentleman that moved it’.229 But Thurloe’s criticism was unfair; the Court had manipulated Annesley’s original motion so it was impossible for the old Presbyterians or crypto-Royalists to swallow. In response, on 8 March Annesley moved that the question be put more clearly so not ‘to trepan, or shoeing-horn, anybody’. He wanted the question ‘to restore the old Peers to their rights’ put separately, ‘that it may be known what you intend for them’. 230 Gewen agreed that they should ‘put the question to restore them, without delusion’.231 As such, the Speaker ‘offered an independent question, for saving the rights of the old Peers’.232 At this point, however, John Trevor ‘interrupted and moved the addition be first put … for saving the rights of the ancient peers’. Overconfident that the Court was losing the initiative, Henry Hungerford and Herbert Morley moved that ‘seeing they were so fond of the question’, they should ‘put it’; adding ‘everybody is able to see the fallacy of it’. 233 Following a ‘great debate’ it was resolved by 203 votes to 184 that the question for the addition be put. When it came to the main question, Annesley, accompanied by the earl of Pembroke’s kinsman, John Herbert, were tellers for the Noes. The vote was tight, with the Yeas prevailing by 195 to 188. Therefore, by a margin of just seven votes, it was resolved that the words ‘it is not hereby intended to exclude such Peers as have been faithful to the Parliament from their privilege of being duly summoned to be members of that House’ be added to the question for transacting.234 The resolution of 8 March was not, as one scholar claims, ‘a significant vote of confidence in the old Lords’, nor did it help the rehabilitation of the old lords from the ‘political wilderness’.235 Rather, it confirmed the Other House as specified in the Humble Petition and ensured that the rights of the old peers were subordinated to the new constitutional arrangement. Yet, it was also a Burton, IV, 81. Ibid., IV, 50–2; Schilling, pp. 178–9. 229  Burton, IV, 68–9. 230  Ibid., IV, 77. 231  Ibid., IV, 82–3. 232  Ibid., IV, 83–6: speeches by Boscawen, Baynes, Lambert, Earle and Hewley. 233  Ibid., IV, 86. 234  CJ, VII, 611–12. 235  N. Waddy, ‘Restoration by Stages: The Debate over the House of Lords during the Reign of Richard Cromwell, 1658–59’, Parliaments, Estates & Representation, 24 (2004), 186. 227  228 

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vote that the Court came perilously close to losing. Overly optimistic Royalist agents had even predicted a defeat for the government’s supporters.236 With the vote won, however, it seemed only a matter of time before the Commons passed the question for transacting with the Other House. To prevent this outcome, the government’s opponents questioned the legality of the members for Scotland and Ireland. With the vote on the addition so close, and the Scottish and Irish MPs considered solid voters for the Court, it was a last-ditch attempt to derail the recognition of the Other House. Prideaux protested that ‘no new debate to be admitted’ before the ‘main question’ on transacting was put – he could see ‘what this savours of’.237 Two weeks of intermittent debate followed on whether first the Scottish, and then the Irish, MPs should be allowed to sit.238 Both questions passed comfortably in the end, not least because the opponents were divided among themselves on the issue of union; the Scottish MPs gaining a majority of 91 on 21 March and the Irish MPs a narrower margin of 50 two days later.239 The game was all but up. When debate on the Other House resumed on 28 March, attempts were made to revive the issue of ‘bounding and approving’ the existing membership. Yet, many of the crypto-Royalists had already given up hope of restricting the Other House. In Booth’s opinion they could ‘make what additions you will’, but ‘at the very moment of your transacting, you put your bounding out of doors’.240 Although a number of Republicans and old Presbyterians continued to push for an addition for ‘approving’ the members of the Other House, their strength was clearly dwindling: the vote on the addition was defeated by 183 votes to 146.241 Sensing the inevitable, the government’s opponents tried to bolster their numbers. Baynes complained that many of the members ‘who had attended the debate … were in the Speaker’s chamber’. The Serjeant-at-arms was sent out to command their attendance, but Baynes claimed that ‘the door was bolted, and many members could not come in’, although Burton adds ‘he was mistaken’.242 A vote to adjourn for an hour was defeated 169 to 89.243 The opponents then scored a minor success by amending the question so that they would transact with the Other House ‘during this present Parliament’; but they crucially failed to add the words ‘and no longer’.244 Despite these delaying tactics, the main question was finally propounded that afternoon: Mordaunt to Hyde, 8 Mar. 1659: Bodl., Clarendon MS 60, fols 209–10. Burton, IV, 87. 238  Ibid., IV, 90–139, 143–7, 163–220, 225–34, 237–43. 239  Ibid., IV, 219, 243; CJ, VII, 616, 618–19. 240  Burton, IV, 280–1; DRO, MS D258/10/9/2, fol. 7v. 241  See speeches by Boscawen, Hobart, Goodrick, Northcote and Temple: Burton, IV, 282–4; DRO, MS D258/10/9/2, fol. 8v; CJ, VII, 621. 242  Burton, IV, 285. 243  CJ, VII, 621. 244  Burton, IV, 288–92. 236  237 

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That this House will transact with the Persons now sitting in the Other House, as an House of Parliament, during this present Parliament; and that it is not hereby intended to exclude such Peers, as have been faithful to the Parliament, from their Privilege of being duly summoned to be Members of that House.

The pairing of Booth and Haselrig as tellers for the Noes epitomized the uneasy alliance striving against the Other House. Yet the government’s supporters still carried the day by 198 votes to 125.245 Writing directly to Charles II, Mordaunt confessed that ‘upon the vote for transacting the generall opinion was, whatsoever Cromwell’s party pretended they would succeed in’; as a result ‘dejection and consternation seizd us’ all.246 Debating the Other House in Print Following their defeat in the Commons, it seems the government’s opponents took the debate over the Other House into print instead. Some tracts repeated those arguments voiced in the Commons in defence of the old Lords, such as The Ancient Land-Mark Skreen or Bank, which appeared in mid-March.247 Covering much the same ground as Prynne’s Plea for the Lords, it appealed to custom and history to prove the peers’ right to sit. This right was ‘by the longest Prescription, or use of any Lawes or good Customes’; it was ‘from long before the Conquest, without any interruption untill the yeare 1648’.248 All the ‘Records and Journalls of Parliament’ did ‘plentifully shew that they had an Inheritable right to sit in those Assemblies’.249 The tract also pointed to the 1641 Act against the dissolution of the Long Parliament, which declared that ‘the house of Peeres should not at any time dureing that Parliament be adiourned unless it be by themselves’, anything done ‘contrary to the said Act should be utterly void and of none effect’.250 It invoked the Solemn League and Covenant, which upheld ‘the Rights and Liberties of the Nobility’ and even pointed out that article 3 of the Humble Petition advised that ‘the antient and undoubted liberties & priviledges of Parliament … be preserved and mainteyned’.251 Refusing the rights of the old lords would ‘render them thereby to be as no part of the People, but as meer Tituladoes, Shaddows, or aiery Notions’; it was an ‘unparalell’d violation of the Petition of Right, our … Magna Charta, and the Common Justice of the World’.252 CJ, VII, 621. Mordaunt to Charles Stuart, 6 Apr. 1659: Bodl., Clarendon MS 60, fols 292–3. 247  The Ancient Land-Mark Skreen or Bank Betwixt The Prince or Supreame Magistrate, and the People of England (London, 1659), dated 12 Mar. by Thomason. 248  Ibid., pp. 1–3. 249  Ibid., pp. 8–9. 250  Ibid., pp. 11–12. 251  Ibid., pp. 13–14. 252  Ibid., pp. 14–15. 245  246 

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While the Ancient Land-Mark only swiped at the Other House by implication, other tracts targeted the new chamber directly. One notorious example was the anonymous Seasonable Speech, Made By a worthy Member of Parliament in the House of Commons Concerning the Other House. Bearing the date ‘March 1659’, but not appearing until early April, this fictitious speech combined many of the arguments used in the Commons against the Other House.253 The work was couched as a plea to the old Presbyterians and the moderate majority, inviting parliamentarians of all stripes to consider the consequences of owning the Other House for those principles that had been the basis of their war effort. After ‘all that sound and noise we have made in the World, of the Peoples Legislative Power, and of the Supremacy and Omnipotency of their Representatives’, the author thought it perverse to set over the Commons ‘a few retainers of Tyranny’, not ‘of the Peoples choice’ but ‘nominated and designed by the Lord Protector’.254 They were basically resurrecting, albeit in subtly different guise, the same arbitrary government they had gone to war against in 1642. Consequently, the Civil War had been a pointless exercise: they ‘might … in Fourty two, have been, what we thus contend to be in Fifty nine’. The author could not believe they would ‘relapse into the disease we were formerly possessed with, and of our own accords take up our old yoke’.255 As in the Commons’ debates, the membership of the Other House were derided. The majority were ‘Lordships of seventeen pound Land a year of inheritance … Farmer Lordships, Dray-men Lordships, Cobler Lordships, without one foot of Land.’256 The members of the old House of Lords, by contrast, had ‘Faculties and Endowments … necessary for the discharging of such a Calling’, such as ‘are not usually acquired in shops and ware-houses; nor found by following the Plough.’257 Alluding to the military element in the Other House, the author found perverse that those who had ‘many times trampled on the Authority of the House of Commons’ now hoped ‘by the House of Commons to be made a House of Lords’.258 This pamphlet ran into several editions and was of particular interest to the Royalist agents. Percy Church informed Secretary Nicholas in late April that there ‘is an excellent printed speech of fower sheets lately come forth and pretended to have bine spoken in ye Howse of Commons’.259 Sending a copy to Secretary Nicholas on 8 April, another agent noted how the ‘inclosed speech was throwen aboute the Parliament doores, into their coches, and about the greate hall’. Given that it was ‘soe noysd aboute the towne and soe 253 

A Seasonable Speech, Made By a worthy Member of Parliament in the House of Commons Concerning the Other House (London, 1659). 254  Ibid., pp. 2–3. 255  Ibid., p. 1. 256  Ibid., pp. 4–5. 257  Ibid., p. 6. 258  Ibid., p. 7. 259  Nicholas Papers, IV, 112–13. 191

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laughed att by the Commons’, the ‘Lords of the other Howse caused itt to [be] reade in theire howse’.260 Indeed, Wariston complained to Monck about ‘a vile paper called a Seasonable Speach, spread to make Members of our House odious’.261 Another tract also designed to make the membership of the Other House repellent was A Second Narrative of the Late Parliament (so called).262 Originally printed in late 1658, shortly after Oliver’s death, the bulk of the pamphlet provides a series of poison-pen portraits of the members of the new chamber, sarcastically highlighting ‘their Merits and Deserts’ to sit by stressing their low birth and recounting wild rumours about their wicked lifestyles or alleged villainies.263 The fact that the only member of the Other House singled out for praise was Haselrig (‘a true Patriot of his Countries Liberties’) suggests that the author was most likely a Republican.264 In late April 1659, however, the Second Narrative was reprinted with the addition of a ‘third narrative’ very different in tone from the original text.265 Giving a brief outline of the Civil Wars and their aftermath, it scorned that ‘Free State’ created in 1649, ‘during which time, great and horrid injustice and abuses were committed’. It also traced out what it saw as the Machiavellian machinations of Cromwell and strides towards arbitrary rule.266 Like the Seasonable Speech, the narrative concludes by pondering whether after all the ‘various Changes’ of the past decade it was better to go back to where they had been. It even suggested that if they were to ‘have a single person, and that Succession be hereditary’ whether it would ‘not make more for the Stuarts Family to claim against any Family whatsoever?’ Similarly, if they were to have a second chamber was it not better to just have the old House of Lords?267 This ‘third narrative’ was not explicitly Royalist – it did not directly call for a Stuart Restoration but insinuated it. Given its attack on the ‘Ecclesiastical tyranny’ of the bishops it was more likely the work of an old Presbyterian.268 Ibid., IV, 100–2: Miles to Nicholas, 8/18 Apr. 1659; A copy was also sent to Hyde by Dr Moore, see Bodl., Clarendon MS 60, fol. 310. 261  Clarke Papers, III, 188–9: 14 Apr. 1659. 262  A Second Narrative of the Late Parliament (so called) (London, 1658) [Wing: W1556]. 263  Ibid., pp. 1–23. 264  Ibid., p. 21. 265  A Second Narrative of the Late Parliament... To which is added a Third Narrative; Being a Short View of the Quarrel between the King and Parliament (London, 1659). [Wing: W1557]. Thomason dates his copy 29 Apr. 1659. This pamphlet was also printed as The Character of the late Upstart House of Lords: Together with some Reflexions on the Carriage and Government of His late Highness (London, 1659). 266  A Second Narrative of the Late Parliament... To which is added a Third Narrative, pp. 49–52. 267  These passages probably explain why the authorship of the Second Narrative has been attributed to the Royalist Sir George Wharton. See Little and Smith, Parliaments and Politics, pp. 152–3. 268  A Second Narrative of the Late Parliament... To which is added a Third Narrative, pp. 49–51. 260 

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The real significance of the republication of the Second Narrative in April 1659, however, is that it further demonstrates that when it came to ­criticizing the Other House, the Protectorate’s opponents, whether Republican, old Presbyterian or Royalist, found much common ground. Clearly, the most effective, or ubiquitous, of attacks on the Other House focused on its ­membership – both Republicans and Royalists mocked what they saw as the lowborn membership of the new second chamber. Where they diverged, was over what they would replace that second chamber with. Appalled that their work had been hijacked, the Republicans responded with a new edition of the Second Narrative, which ‘Corrected’ the ‘Third Narrative lately Printed and Annexed to this Second Narrative … without the knowledge of the true Author’.269 While it imitated the rogue version in condemning Cromwellian rule, it offered a different reading of events from 1649–53: the king’s death was ‘well deserved’, the Free State was lavished with praise.270 More importantly, this Republican edition ended with a different set of solutions to the ills of the previous decade. Besides warning that they must not ‘open a door to usher in again the Stuarts Family’, it scorned the notion of a second chamber in any form. The old House of Lords, like the Other House, was ‘never chosen by the people, but brought in by the Bastard of William the Sixth Duke of Normandy, to support his tyranny over the people’ and was rightly ‘cast out with Charles’. As far as the author was concerned ‘a single person, and a House of Lords’ in any guise was ‘unnecessary to the well government of the Nation’.271 Ultimately, the fact that criticisms of the Other House were taken into print reflected the failure of the government’s opponents to win the debate in parliament. Yet the Court had itself only scored a partial victory. During the course of the debates, particularly over the old lords, the courtiers were taken in directions by the new Presbyterians that they would have rather avoided. A conspicuous casualty of the resolution of 28 March was the appellation of ‘House of Lords’. While the tactic of the Protectorate’s supporters since 1658 had been to equate the new chamber with a House of Lords, it seems that the majority in the Commons preferred the style of ‘Other House’ as stipulated in the Humble Petition. By upholding that title the majority stressed that the origins and powers of the second chamber derived from the Humble Petition and, ultimately, from the Commons themselves. It reflected the fact that the new Presbyterians were firm believers in the supremacy of the Commons; they stressed that constitutional forms could only be created and amended by the people’s representatives in parliament. Ultimately they were reluctant 269 

A Second Narrative of the Late Parliament... To which is added a third Narrative, from another hand, Corrected; being a short view of the Quarrell between the King and Parliament (London, 1659), [Wing: W1556A] see titlepage and p. 47. 270  Ibid., p. 48. 271  Ibid., see titlepage and p. 50. 193

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to give to the Other House the same status and powers that the courtiers envisaged for the chamber. Yet, despite these frustrations for the courtiers, the resolution of 28 March meant that the Commons finally recognized the Other House, clearing the way for the two Houses to begin working with one another. The final chapter examines the activities of the Other House during the third Protectorate Parliament and its working relationship with the Commons in the final weeks of the session. It also focuses on the activities of the army during this period and explores the role played by the Other House in the ultimate downfall of the Protectorate.

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The Other House, the Army and the Search for a Settlement

It was widely assumed by contemporaries that the Other House was a bastion for the military interest. Writing to Cardinal Mazarin on 24 February 1659, the French Ambassador Bordeaux reported how the army officers were pleased with ‘the new House of Lords’ because it was ‘composed of the principal officers’, allowing them ‘to secure the balance of authority in themselves’.1 As demonstrated in the previous chapter many of the Republican and crypto-Royalist tirades against the Other House concerned its military character. Consequently, this characterization permeates much of the historiography. Firth, in particular, suggested that the ‘maintenance of the other House was essential’ to the army officers ‘as a guarantee of their own influence’. Although he noted that the officers ‘were not the majority’ in the Other House, Firth deferred to the contemporary view that ‘they were at all events the preponderating influence there’.2 Doubtless, in the early modern period contemporary perceptions were often more important for driving events than political realities. After all, it was Charles I’s perceived duplicity and misgovernment, whatever the realities of his rule, that galvanized opposition to his reign. Similarly, the perceived military dominance of the Other House focused opposition to the new chamber and the Cromwellian regime as a whole. Yet, as already demonstrated in Chapter 3, the membership of the Other House summoned by Oliver Cromwell, was more balanced than previously realized. If anything, it was the civilian Cromwellians and conservatives who had the majority. This remained the case when the Other House assembled in 1659. In fact, the number of members in active service had fallen since 1658. Although Edward Montagu was made commander of a horse regiment in September 1658, the death of Thomas Pride and the elevation of Richard to the lord protectorate meant that there were now only sixteen active army officers, commanding twenty-two regiments between them, with seats in the Other

Guizot, Richard Cromwell, I, 317. Firth, Last Years, II, 23–4; Firth, House of Lords, pp. 248–9, 252. See also Hirst, ‘Concord and Discord’, pp. 350–1.

  1 

  2 

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House.3 In this respect, Baynes’ criticism in the Commons on 5 March, that the Other House ‘have twenty-two or twenty-three regiments, divers garrisons, and the Tower of London’ was valid.4 But, given that Henry Cromwell, Monck and Lockhart were engaged in military service elsewhere, the actual number of officers who sat in 1659 was just thirteen, commanding a total of sixteen regiments. Moreover, it should be remembered that not all of these officers were ‘military’ Cromwellians. In fact, seven out of these thirteen officers were ‘civilian’ in their political outlook.5 This left just six active army officers – Fleetwood, Desborough, Barkstead, Berry, Cooper and Hewson – who can be described as ‘military’ Cromwellians. It was probably these men that the Royalist agent John Barwick had in mind when he informed Hyde on 16 February that ‘the Temper of some leading men in the other House begins allready to shew it self to be such’ as Richard ‘could wish he were fairly ridd of them’.6 It was these six ‘WallingfordHouse’ g­ randees who, two months later, led the military coup that brought the ­ dissolution of the third Protectorate Parliament. Yet, the military Cromwellian presence in the Other House was much larger than these six officers. Of the twenty military Cromwellian members identified in Chapter 3, all but the recently deceased Pride and William Steele took their seats in 1659.7 Even with these members factored in, however, the ‘military’ interest in the Other House commanded, at best, just over 40 per cent of the total votes in the chamber.8 Indeed, to explain the ultimate collapse of the third Protectorate Parliament it is important to recognize that, contrary to the jeers of the government’s critics, the Other House was never a ‘council of officers’.9 The composition of the Other House compounded the waning power of the military Cromwellians following Richard’s succession. In effect, there were two forces pushing the army towards its coup of late April 1659. On the one hand, the anti-military tirades in the Commons, including those accusations levelled against the army’s perceived dominance in the Other House, stoked animosities that led to calls among the junior officers to dissolve Parliament. On the other, the army grandees were increasingly frustrated by their inability to manage Parliament through the Other House. Faced with hostile criticism, but with no effective means to control it, the grandees fell back to their ultimate locus of power – the army.

  3    4    5    6    7    8    9 

See appendix. Burton, IV, 31. Broghill, Fauconberg, Goffe, Howard, Ingoldsby, Montagu and Whalley. Bodl., Clarendon MS 60, fols 129–30. See appendix. 18 out of 42 or 43 per cent. Burton, IV, 35. 196

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The Other House and its Business, January–March 1659 The significance of this imbalance in the membership of the Other House was not immediately obvious, however. In the opening weeks of the parliament, contemporaries noted the redundancy of the Other House as it awaited the Commons to recognize its existence. On 15 February, Robert Beake reported that ‘the other house doe little, nor doe wee take notice of them’.10 According to Ludlow, the Other House merely spent its time consuming ‘great store of fire to keep them warm at the publick charge’.11 In reality, as in 1658, the Other House was not inactive. On 28 January it set about the routine business of appointing standing committees for privileges and petitions, as well as a ‘Sub Com[mit]tee to peruse the Journall of this House’ to ensure entries were made correctly.12 The House also appointed its preachers, again choosing a group of men who were predominantly Independent in their religious outlook.13 Three days later, on 31 January, the Other House considered its first item of legislation when a ‘Bill was tendred for recognizing his Highnes the Lord Protector’.14 Intriguingly, this Bill differed from that presented by Thurloe to the Commons on the following day. Not only was the Other House’s Bill significantly longer, including a section ‘disclayming the Title of Charles Stuart’, but it resonated with a monarchical language largely absent from that presented to the Commons. Like the government’s printed output in the weeks after Oliver’s death, the Bill likened Richard’s succession to a hereditary, monarchical process. Its opening lines failed to mention anything about the manner by which Richard was nominated, merely noting how ‘yo[u]r Highness imediately after the death of yo[u]r renowned ffather Oliver late Lord Protector … became his lawfull Successor to succeed in the Governm[en]t of the said Nations’. It emphasized the ‘great joy of the people’ as proof enough that Richard’s succession was legitimate. Their ‘general consent’ was demonstrated by the ‘many particular Declarations, and addresses from the Armyes & Navyes, and the respective Countyes Cityes & Borroughs of the three Nations’.15 Compared to the stuttering progress of the Commons, the Other House dealt with their Bill of recognition with alacrity. First read on 31 January, it was committed after a second reading the following day. Lenthall reported Gaunt, Lansdowne, pp. 459–60. Ludlow, II, 60–1. 12  This committee had to be reappointed a month later, see HMC Lords, pp. 527, 541 (28 Jan, 25 Feb.). 13  HMC Lords, p. 526. The Independents were William Hooke, Nicholas Lockyer, Hugh Peters, Peter Sterry and Jeremiah White. Once again, John Howe was the only minister chosen with Presbyterian leanings. 14  HMC Lords, pp. 528–9; Mus. of Lon., Tangye MS 11a, fols 20v–21r; a version of this bill survives at Bodl., Rawlinson A MS 63, fol. 67. This document is partly transcribed in Thurloe, VII, 603–4. 15  Bodl., Rawlinson A MS 63, fol. 67. 10  11 

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from the committee on 3 February, and amendments to the Bill were twice read. It appears that these additions were designed to tighten the definition of the Protector’s powers; specifically, that Richard govern ‘according to the humble peticon and advice so farre as concernes matters of Religion’.16 That the Other House was keen to restrain the Protector’s powers is instructive, seemingly anticipating the debates on the matter in the Commons. Yet it seems unlikely that discussion was as heated as in the lower chamber a week later. Indeed, the only recorded opposition was from Wariston who, before the question was put for the amendments, entered his official ‘dissent and protestation’ because, as a staunch Presbyterian Scot, he was opposed to restricting Richard to the religious settlement enshrined in the Humble Petition ‘especially in Scotland’.17 Nevertheless, the amendments were accepted and the Bill, in its amended state, was ordered to be engrossed.18 The Bill was then read for a third time on 5 February and ‘uppon the Question passed’.19 Therefore, two days before the Commons began the second reading of its Bill of recognition, the Other House had already passed their own. Yet, the Bill vanished soon after and was never sent to the Commons. Indeed, one is left wondering why the Other House bothered at all. That two distinct draft Bills, both serving ostensibly the same purpose, were presented to both Houses within a day of one another is perplexing. Perhaps the members of the Other House originally planned to use the Bill to force the issue of transacting between the two Houses or to hurry the Commons along with their own Bill, but thought better of it. It is also possible the Other House produced their own Bill as a safety net should the Commons’ Bill fail. Expecting a recalcitrant House of Commons, it was probably felt prudent to get formal recognition of Richard in at least one House of Parliament. Ultimately, however, it seems that the Other House’s efforts were wasted. The Commons moved at its own pace and, as Beake noted, took no ‘notice’ of the Other House.20 So, despite the energetic start, the Other House found itself waiting. Charles Fleetwood, writing to Henry Cromwell on 8 February, admitted that ‘we are very silent in our howse’; not least because of the ‘little probability that we shall be owned’ by the Commons.21 As the Irish MP Arthur Annesley noted in mid-March, ‘the other house are a little impatient at our delayes’.22 One Royalist agent best summed it up when he reported that ‘those they call the lords meet and adjourn’, while ‘all mens eyes are upon the commons’.23 16  17  18  19  20  21  22  23 

HMC Lords, pp. 531–2; Clarke Papers, III, 179; Gaunt, Lansdowne, pp. 434–4. HMC Lords, pp. 531–2. Ibid., pp. 531–2. Ibid., pp. 531–3. Gaunt, Lansdowne, pp. 459–60. Thurloe, VII, 609. Gaunt, Lansdowne, pp. 474–5: Annesley to H. Cromwell, 15 Mar. 1659. Barwick to Hyde, 16 Feb. 1659: Bodl., Clarendon MS 60, fols 129–30. 198

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Consequently, much of the business initiated by the Other House in the opening weeks of the session languished in committees. On 31 January a committee was established to ‘peruse the Acts and lawes allready made against Cursing, swearing, Breach of the Sabeth and Drunkennesse and to see wherein the same are defective and have need to be supplied’.24 On 1 February the House’s assistant, Serjeant-at-Law Erasmus Earle, was ordered to prepare a bill ‘for Confirmacon of the publique sales which have been made by the Comonwealth of the lands of the late King, &c. Bishopps, Deanes and Chapters and Delinquents’.25 A week later, a committee was established ‘to Consider of the law for restrayning the use of the booke of Common prayer’.26 This was followed on 15 February with yet another committee on moral reformation, which was ‘to peruse the lawes which have been made against Stage playes, Interludes and meetings of the like nature’.27 By mid-March, however, not one of these committees had reported to the Other House.28 On 14 March it was ordered that ‘the severall Committees to whom there have been any matters referred’ should ‘make report to the house as speedily as may be’.29 Yet, despite the prompting, business continued to be sluggish. On 17 March Earle was also given a hurry-up to prepare the Bill for the ‘Confirmation of Sales’ of lands. Although this was brought in and read for the first time on 22 March, the second reading was twice deferred and finally took place a week later when the Bill was sent to yet another committee.30 It seems this committee also did very little and had to be ‘revived’ on 14 April and ordered to meet.31 Against this backdrop of inaction, attendance in the Other House fell significantly during late February and March. The largest turnout for the entire parliamentary session was on the opening day, 27 January, when thirty-six members attended the chamber. Average attendance in the first week of February was thirty-two; thereafter it struggled to make it over thirty – the average for the whole of March being twenty-five. On occasions the numbers in the chamber were perilously close to the quorum and even dipped below twenty-one on 2 March.32 The members of the Other House seem to have monitored deliberations in the Commons closely. When the Commons discussed the old peerage in March there was reportedly some concerns among the Other House: the resolution on 8 March not to exclude the old faithful peers was, according to HMC Lords, pp. 529, 532–3. Ibid., p. 530. 26  Ibid., p. 534 (8 Feb.). 27  Ibid., p. 537; Stephen, II, 154. 28  The committees against prophane swearing and stage plays apparently failed to make even a preliminary report before the end of the session. 29  HMC Lords, p. 547. 30  Ibid., pp. 549, 552, 553, 554. 31  Ibid., pp. 560–1. 32  Ibid., p. 543. Only twenty were recorded as present that day. 24  25 

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one Royalist agent, ‘not satisfactorie to ye other howse’.33 Doubtless concerns about the Commons’ activities prompted Desborough to present a draft Bill to the Other House on 14 March.34 Although it has not survived, the journal describes it as a Bill for ‘limiting the number, Rights and priviledges of the persons sitting in that House’.35 According to an army newsletter, the Bill was ‘for declaring of those that are summoned, and such as hereafter shall bee summoned by his Highnesse and approved by the Houses’, not exceeding an unspecified number, ‘to bee the other House of Parliament, formerly called the House of Lords’. They were ‘to have all the priviledges belonging therunto, and not limitted by the Petition and Advice, butt withall, that none of their heires, nor the heires of any others, shall claime right to sitt in that House, unlesse they bee first summoned and approved as aforesaid’.36 On the face of it, the Bill complemented the resolution of the Commons. It would facilitate the entry into the Other House of new members. Given that, under the Humble Petition, the maximum membership of the House was seventy, it would have been necessary to raise this number to accommodate the old peers, hence the blank in the draft bill. In reality, however, it seems the terms offered by Desborough were deliberately designed to be unattractive for the old peers, explicitly denying any hereditary right to sit. Contrary to the courtiers’ previous tactics, Desborough was also determined that the chamber should be called the Other House, not the House of Lords. One Royalist report claims that he even moved that the ‘stile of Lords’ should not be given to the members of the Other House, hoping that a ‘humbler title will give them a firmer basis’.37 Bordeaux also noted how ‘an act has been proposed in the new House to suppress the title of Lord in regard to the new as well as the old nobility’.38 It is probably in reference to this clause that one Royalist agent informed Hyde on 18 March that ‘the other house … have unlorded themselfs by vote, butt still to remaine true members of theire new upstart house’.39 Yet, it seems that Desborough’s Bill did not receive an easy passage in the Other House. Presented on 14 March, it was read for the second time on the following day and committed.40 Thereafter, it never resurfaced. Its disappearance seems to be more than a case of dawdling in committee. On 17 March, Bordeaux was already reporting that the proposal for suppressing the lordly title was ‘not supported’. Four days later, he heard that ‘the House of Lords has … rejected the Act which exterminated all the Lords, both 33  34  35  36  37  38  39  40 

Nicholas Papers, IV, 99–100: Percy Church to Nicholas, 8/18 Apr. 1659. Guizot, Richard Cromwell, I, 345; Bodl., Clarendon MS 60, fols 224r–225v. HMC Lords, p. 547. Clarke Papers, III, 185: 17 Mar. 1659. Bodl., Clarendon MS 60, fols 224r–225v. Guizot, Richard Cromwell, I, 345. Moore to Hyde, 18 Mar. 1659: Bodl., Clarendon MS 60, fols 226r–227r. HMC Lords, pp. 547–8. 200

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new and old’.41 Although no formal rejection of the Bill was recorded, Lord Fauconberg informed Henry Cromwell on 22 March that the bill ‘tho’ twice read, proceeds no farther’.42 It appears the majority in the Other House agreed to let the matter drop. Besides revealing the lack of control exercised by the army grandees in the Other House, the failure of Desborough’s Bill could be due to the fact that many saw it as superfluous. As demonstrated in the previous chapter, the Commons’ addition for saving the rights of the old peers promised much but delivered little – it was doubtful that the old lords would sit upon the terms offered anyway. Primarily, however, Desborough’s bill was dropped to speed up the transacting process between the two Houses. Writing to Henry Cromwell on 22 March, Annesley was pleased that the Other House were ‘preparing the way’ for the Commons vote on transacting ‘having allready laid aside in compliance with the house of commons a bill … against their being hereditary peeres’.43 It seems the Other House accepted that it must defer to the Commons momentarily to have any hope of being recognized. Yet, it was hardly an auspicious start for a chamber hoping to balance the Commons. As Bordeaux mocked, unlike the ‘House of Lords, as in former times, serving as an example to the people’s House, the new Lords now conform their conduct very regularly to that of the Commons’.44 Once the Commons passed its resolution to transact with the Other House on 28 March, it seemed only a matter of time before the two Houses began working as a parliament. Fauconberg, writing to Henry Cromwell the day after this resolution, noted how ‘honest men begin to renew their hopes of settlement’.45 Yet, despite this optimism, there were murmurings both within and outside of Parliament; a growing feeling of discontent among the army officers threatened to shatter this newfound tranquillity at Westminster. Army Discontent and the Revival of the General Council of Officers Although the army had been largely silent since the previous autumn, the lack of progress at Westminster rekindled their agitation; bogged down with constitutional issues, the Commons continued to ignore the soldiers’ pressing grievances, including their arrears of pay.46 Worse still, they launched a barrage of anti-military salvoes. Besides their criticism of the Other House for its military contingent, there were a number of investigations into arbitrary Guizot, Richard Cromwell, I, 345. Thurloe, VII, 637. 43  Gaunt, Lansdowne, p. 476. 44  Guizot, Richard Cromwell, I, 345. 45  Gaunt, Lansdowne, p. 486. 46  For a detailed study of the relationship between Richard and the army during this period, see G. Davies, ‘The Army and the Downfall of Richard Cromwell’, The Huntingdon Library Bulletin, 7 (1935), 131–67. 41  42 

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imprisonments authorized by the previous Protector that affronted many in the Other House, particularly the ex-major-generals. On 23 February, for instance, Lieutenant of the Tower John Barkstead was summoned before a Commons’ committee to explain the causes of the ‘commitment and detainer’ of the Fifth Monarchist John Portman. Burton notes how the chairman of the committee, Thomas Terrill, ‘would not call him Lord Barkstead’ because ‘it was not fit for a Lord of the other House to be a gaoler’.47 The committee was unmoved by Barkstead’s plea that he was merely following Cromwell’s orders; they deemed his actions ‘a high breach of the liberties of the subject’ and that Portman’s imprisonment was ‘unjust and illegal’.48 Writing to Thurloe following his encounter, Barkstead wished ‘this occasion had been prevented’; now that the floodgates were opened, he was ‘confident I shall be brought againe upon the stage by severall prisoners in my custody’.49 In response, the Other House appointed a committee on 3 March to make provision ‘for the indempnifying of such persons … as have acted anything by order of his Highnes or the Councell for ye safety and peace of the Nations’ and to ‘prepare an act for the purpose if they see it necessary’. Among those named to the committee were former Major-Generals Desborough, Berry, Goffe and Cooper.50 On 14 March, the Other House urged the committee to meet the following morning and ‘bring in the bill w[i]th all speed’.51 Their haste was probably no coincidence; the Bill was first reported by Desborough on 16 March – the same day that Robert Overton, another imprisoned by the Protector’s command, appeared at the bar of the Commons.52 Read for the second time a week later, the Bill was committed, consigning it to the same state of limbo as the rest of the Other House’s draft legislation.53 What made the Commons’ anti-military actions more alarming for the grandees was their growing uncertainty about the Protector’s loyalties. It seems Richard was predisposed to take the side of the moderate ‘civilian’ army officers over their ‘military’ counterparts. For instance, following a heated exchange between the radical Colonel Richard Ashfield and Edward Whalley, Richard apparently warned Ashfield to ‘give satisfaction to Whaly … or else … be referred to a court marshall’.54 Around the same time Richard also reportedly berated a cornet in Richard Ingoldsby’s regiment for accusing his Major of being a supporter of ‘Drunkards, Liars, Swearers, and Haters of Goodness’. Ordering the cornet to Whitehall, Richard asked whether he complained ‘against your Major because he is for me?’ Richard scorned the ‘preaching and praying men’ as ‘they are the men that go about to undermine 47  48  49  50  51  52  53  54 

Burton, III, 448­–9; Thurloe, VII, 626. Burton, III, 448–9. Thurloe, VII, 622–3: Barkstead to Thurloe, 24 Feb. 1659. HMC Lords, pp. 543–4. Ibid., p. 547. Ibid., pp. 548–9; CJ, VII, 614. Ibid., pp. 552–3 (23 Mar.). Gaunt, Lansdowne, p. 470: Morgan to H. Cromwell, 8 Mar. 1659. 202

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me’. Finally, ‘clapping his hand upon Col. Ingoldsby’s shoulder’, Richard implored him to ‘go thy way Dick Ingoldsby, Thou canst neither preach nor pray, but I will believe thee before I will believe 20 of them’.55 Whatever the truth of this story, the army grandees clearly drew closer to their junior officers around this period and distanced themselves from the Protector.56 Symbolizing this split was the creation of a new gathered church under John Owen in mid-March – among the congregation were Fleetwood, Desborough, Lambert, Sydenham, Berry and Goffe. It was a move which, according to Annesley, was ‘not … very well liked at Whitehall’.57 It seems the grandees had lost confidence in Richard’s support should the Commons make more purposeful strides in their anti-military programme. What made their fear all the greater, however, was the composition of the Other House. The military Cromwellians were not the majority in that chamber and realized that they could not depend on its support to protect their interests. It was the very fact that the Other House was emphatically not a council of officers that led the grandees to revive the meetings of the General Council of Officers to apply external pressure instead.58 When the Council of Officers met on 2 April, Fleetwood lost no opportunity to express the ‘great sence hee had of the want of pay for the souldiers of the armies, and desired the officers to consider it’.59 A committee of officers was appointed, including the radical Ashfield, ‘to drawe a draught of a representation, and a petition of all the officers to bee delivered to his Highnes’.60 This Humble Representation and Petition of the General Council of Officers mimicked the army manifestoes of 1647, pointing to the perennial problems of arrears of pay and concerns for indemnity.61 It complained how their ‘condition hath been represented’ to the Parliament, but ‘no effectual remedy hath been applied’.62 Instead, ‘encouragement’ was given ‘for the prosecution of several Well affected persons … for matters by them transacted as Souldiers, by command from their Superiours, in order to the safety and security of the Nations’.63 Most menacingly, the petition complained of ‘the implacable Adversaries’ of the Cause who ‘begin to appear every where visible amongst us’. To remedy this, the officers swore to assist Richard and the Parliament ‘in the plucking the wicked out of their places wheresoever they may be discovered, either amongst our selves, or any other places of trust’.64 Second Narrative, pp. 30–1; Ludlow, II, 63. Bodl., Clarendon MS 60, fols 224r–225v. 57  Gaunt, Lansdowne, pp. 474­–5: Annesley to H. Cromwell, 15 Mar. 1659. 58  Clarke Papers, V, 282: newsletter from R. Lilburne, 29 Mar. 1659. 59  Ibid., III, 187–8. 60  Ibid., III, 188. 61  Ibid., III, 188; Gaunt, Lansdowne, pp. 499–500. 62  The Humble Representation and Petition of the General Council of the Officers of the Armies of England, Scotland, and Ireland (London, 1659), pp. 5, 6–7. 63  Ibid., p. 4. 64  Ibid., pp. 3, 6. 55  56 

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According to the printed version of the Humble Representation, the document was presented by Fleetwood and the other signatories on 6 April and ‘graciously accepted’ by Richard.65 According to one Royalist correspondent, however, it was presented ‘much against Cromwell’s will who told Fleetwood it should be suppressed’.66 In their petition, the officers demanded that Richard should ‘Represent these things which we have herein laid before Your Highness, to the Parliament’.67 To ensure Richard did not try to suppress it, the petition was apparently already circulating in print before he forwarded it to both Houses of Parliament on 8 April.68 It remained to be seen what reception the petition would receive in both Houses. John Barwick was convinced that the Commons’ vote to transact with the Other House ‘imboldened the army to that petition’ given that they could now ‘make their party good in one of the houses, and not fearing to be voted down by either of them apart, now that both must concurr in things of that nature’.69 In reality, the Humble Representation was not handled with any discernible alacrity in the Other House. Although read on 8 April, debate on the petition ‘so farre as Concernes this House’ was deferred until Monday 11 April.70 Respecting the Commons’ claim to decide upon financial matters the House steered clear of the issue of the army’s arrears, instead focusing upon those demands in the petition for security. As such, a committee was established on 11 April to ‘consider of some necessary provision to be made for securing the Nation against the Common enemy’. It was a further week before the committee reported a draft act ‘enjoining Papists and other persons who have borne Armes under the late king … to depart out of the Cityes of London and Westminster’.71 Yet, while the Other House made limited progress on the Representation, the response of the Commons was downright provocative. Burton notes in his diary for 8 April that some MPs even questioned ‘whether the petition should be read’ at all given that its contents were ‘known to all’ because it was ‘in print’.72 The next day, Thurloe urged the House to ‘take some care about the arrears of the army’ not least the ‘money due upon the excise’ of which, he claimed, ‘nearly 200,000l. is due’ but ‘not above 10,000l came in’.73 A report from the ‘Committee for inspecting the Accounts and Revenue of the Commonwealth’ was read detailing the revenue required from the assessment and excise to fund the army in England for three months. Yet, the report merely exposed the massive gulf in the exchequer left by the farmers of 65  66  67  68  69  70  71  72  73 

Ibid., p. 8; See also Mercurius Politicus, 561 (31 Mar.–7 Apr. 1659), p. 352. Mordaunt to Hyde, 10–14 Apr. 1659: Bodl., Clarendon MS 60, fol. 322r. Humble Representation and Petition, pp. 6–7. Annesley, England’s Confusion, p. 7. Thurloe, VII, 646–7: Barwick to Hyde, 9 Apr. 1659. HMC Lords, pp. 557–9. Ibid., pp. 562–3, 565–6. The bill was read for the second time on 19 Apr. and committed. Burton, IV, 379. Ibid., IV, 383. 204

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the excise for beer and ale; further debate on the Representation was shelved as the Commons devoted the following three days to interrogating excise farmers.74 It is hardly surprising that expedients for bolstering the government’s finances were prioritized over the army’s arrears. On the morning of 7 April, the Commons received a shock when its committee for inspecting accounts reported an expected public debt of £2.5 million by the year’s end.75 A number of proposals for financial retrenchment were put forward that only heightened, rather than soothed, tensions with the army. During the debates on 9 April, for instance, John Birch was especially critical of the fact most army officers held civil office as well: it was their ‘salaries [that] eat out all your revenue’, he warned. To remedy the situation, he moved for a new ‘Self-denying Ordinance’.76 If these criticisms of the officers’ salaries were tactless, the Commons’ subsequent decision to bring impeachment proceedings against MajorGeneral William Boteler was bold to the point of recklessness. The charges against Boteler were particularly worrying for the grandees as they focused specifically on acts he had committed as a Major-General.77 Although, like Barkstead, Boteler claimed to have acted according to Oliver Cromwell’s writ, the committee voted his actions ‘unjust and illegal’.78 When the committee made its report on 12 April a number of MPs demanded that Boteler be stripped of all civil and military office.79 Colonel White wanted the matter taken even further, believing that ‘the offence of Lord Strafford’ was ‘not so high’.80 Understandably, the army officers were alarmed by these proceedings: as Bordeaux reported, they were ‘not at all satisfied at finding that the Parliament does not defer to its demands but punishes past misconduct with such severity’.81 In echoes of Nayler’s case, a number of courtiers tried to dissuade the Commons from acting too hastily. Thurloe claimed that it was ‘without precedent, that, upon a report from a committee, such judgment should be given in this House’. Instead, he pointed out that ‘when a charge came here against any man, an impeachment was drawn up, and sent to the other House, and was there proceeded upon, as formally as if at the Upper Bench, or other Court’.82 Remarkably, Thurloe’s motion found support from the Republicans. Vane urged that ‘this vote of yours must be carried to the Other House before it can take effect. There he must be heard. Your judgment [alone] is not 74  75  76  77  78  79  80  81  82 

CJ, VII, 632–9 (9, 11, 12, 13 Apr.); Burton, IV, 395–402, 412, 416–20. CJ, VII, 627–31. Burton, IV, 383–4. Thurloe, VII, 653; CJ, VII, 636–7. Gaunt, Lansdowne, p. 489. Burton, IV, 403–4. Ibid., IV, 404–5. Guizot, Richard Cromwell, I, 362. Burton, IV, 407, 410. 205

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conclusive.’83 Scot professed that he would ‘rather be hanged by the other House’ than impeached by the Commons alone.84 Eventually, a committee was appointed to draw up the impeachment and ‘to consider of a course how to proceed, judicially’.85 That both the courtiers and Republicans wanted Boteler’s case referred to the Other House by way of impeachment is intriguing. The courtiers doubtless hoped to contain the anti-military fury that gripped the Commons and, with Nayler’s case in mind, ensure that the Commons did not act arbitrarily. It does not mean that the majority in the Other House were military Cromwellians or were eager to defend the major-generals experiment, however. Rather, they appreciated that prosecuting Boteler could have wider implications for all of the Protectorate’s supporters. It was not in the interests of any in the Other House – military or civilian – to punish Boteler for pursuing the Protector’s writ. The Republicans’ eagerness to refer the issue to the Other House, and unwillingness to pursue Boteler, however, is less easy to explain. Perhaps they believed that by deliberating over the impeachment proceedings they would expose further divisions among MPs about the precise relationship between the Commons and the Other House. More likely, however, is that it was confirmation of those rumours that the Wallingford House officers and Republicans were beginning to gravitate towards one another. Transactions between the Commons and the Other House As in the past, the officers responded to the Commons’ assaults by seeking God. According to Mabbott, ‘the whole day’ of 13 April ‘was spent by the army in prayer and preaching at the Lord Fleetwood’s howse’.86 Of course, it was not just the military Cromwellians who went to Wallingford House – Richard’s civilian supporters among the officers, including Whalley, Goffe, Howard and Ingoldsby, also attended, no doubt doing so to keep an eye on the Protector’s interests. With the notable exceptions of Broghill and Fauconberg, all of the officers then in London with seats in the Other House chose to attend the prayer meeting rather than go to Westminster.87 Their absence took a significant toll on the Other House. Whereas attendance levels had been rising steadily since early April, reaching a high of thirty-two on 12 April, the absence of the officers meant that only eighteen members attended on 13 April. Finding themselves three short of a quorum, the Other Ibid., IV, 408. Ibid., IV, 409–10. 85  Ibid., IV, 412; CJ, VII, 636–7. 86  Clarke Papers, III, 189. 87  Berry, Goffe, Cooper, Desborough, Whalley, Ingoldsby, Hewson, Fleetwood, Howard and Barkstead were all absent from the Other House that day. 83  84 

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House postponed the day’s intended business, the Bill for banishing Cavaliers from London, and adjourned until the following morning.88 The whole episode illustrates the influence of the army officers in the Other House. Although they were not the majority in the chamber, their absence could stop it functioning momentarily. More importantly, from the perspective of the civilian Cromwellians it was also an ill omen – another sign that the grandees were willing to abandon parliament for the sake of preserving both their own and the army’s interests. What made the army’s timing especially inopportune, however, was that it came at a time when, after months of waiting, the Commons was finally ready to begin working with the Other House. On 5 April, the Commons resolved that they would ‘desire the concurrence of the Other House’ in a declaration for a fast day to be observed in all parts of the Commonwealth on 18 May 1659. Friction occurred almost immediately when it was suggested that ‘this Declaration be carried up to the other House’ – as Burton noted, ‘some said, underhand, “rather carry it down”’.89 The issue at stake was which House, if any, should have precedence. MPs knew all too well that the manner of transacting, and the ceremonials surrounding it, spoke volumes about the relative standing of the two Houses. As such, their debates reveal further detail about how the various groups of MPs viewed the new chamber and its relationship to the Commons. Debate on 6 April revolved around the ceremony of the ‘cap’ and whether members should be covered or uncovered in the presence of one another. Traditionally, when the Commons delivered a message to the Lords, both the messengers and the members of the Lords were ‘uncovered’. After the message was delivered at the bar of the House, the messengers withdrew to await an answer. Upon their return into the chamber they again entered ‘uncovered’, but the Lords sat with their hats on. The question was whether the Commons, when delivering their message to the Other House should follow the like ceremony or not. In particular, should their messengers show deference to the Other House when re-entering the chamber by remaining uncovered? Unsurprisingly, the Republican MPs claimed that the Commons should show the Other House no deference. They stressed that it owed its existence to the Commons and that ceremonials between the Houses must reflect this fact. For Scot ‘Ceremony is sometimes the essence’; to give the Other House the same respects as the old House of Lords would imply that they had the same superiority over the Commons that the old Lords claimed. They must ‘not restore those that are but two years old to have all the privileges of the old Lords’. As far as Scot was concerned, the Other House was ‘rather inferior than superior’ to the Commons who created them; they were ‘but a rib from

HMC Lords, pp. 559–60 (12, 13 Apr. 1659). The bill was finally reported to the House on 18 Apr., ibid., p. 562. 89  Burton, IV, 348. 88 

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your side’.90 Interestingly, the Republicans also found support from some old Presbyterian MPs on this point. William Morice, for instance, warned the Commons not to be ‘as a mistress, who formerly gave commands to her servant’ but ‘by espousal makes him her master’. The Commons must not forget that they were ‘the root’ of the Other House’s power.91 ‘If the old Peers were there’, John Stephens claimed, he would ‘not be against that ceremony; but if you intend to own these as the old Peers, I cannot consent.’92 By contrast, a number of new Presbyterian MPs were keen to stress that while the Other House should not be treated as superior to the Commons, it ought not to be dealt with as an inferior either. John Trevor, for instance, stressed that the Other House had ‘a co-ordinate power with us’; as such he argued that ‘in point of ceremony’ any ‘inequality may be waved’, they should be ‘all upon one footing, as to ceremony’.93 Griffith Bodurda urged that transacting must be ‘upon equal terms’.94 John Hewley was ‘absolutely for a co-ordinate power’ with both sides treated as ‘equal’, reminding the House of the legal maxim ‘Par, in parem, non habet potestatem’. He wanted the two Houses ‘co-ordinate in all things’; in ceremonies they should ‘use the same posture that they do’.95 Once again, it seems that the new Presbyterians differed from the courtiers over the status of the Other House. While they did not share the view of those Republicans and old Presbyterians who claimed that the Other House was inferior to the Commons, they were equally unwilling to back the notion that the new chamber was in a position in any way superior to the Commons. Rather, they stressed that modifications should be made to the former ceremonials between the two Houses of Parliament to make clear that the new chamber was not a House of Lords but was strictly the equal to the Commons. For instance, John Swinfen saw no problem with the fact that ‘when the message is carried up, all are bare on both sides’, but recommended that when the Commons’ messenger ‘goes in again’ and ‘they be covered’, then the messenger should ‘be covered’ too ‘and those that go with him’.96 Although Swinfen’s motion was opposed by the court lawyers it seems that the majority in the House agreed, resolving that ‘in all messages unto, and conferences with, the other House, the like respect, and no other, be observed by the members of this House, that is observed by the persons sitting in the other House’.97 A committee was also appointed on 6 April to tackle the related issue of who should send messages to and from the Other House. The committee’s 90  91  92  93  94  95  96  97 

Ibid., IV, 351–2. Ibid., IV, 355. Ibid., IV, 354. Ibid., IV, 349, 351. Ibid., IV, 358. Ibid., IV, 356 Ibid., IV, 356–7. CJ, VII, 626–7. 208

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recommendations, reported by the old Presbyterian Sir Walter Earle on 8 April, were: ‘that such messages as shall be sent from this House to the other House, shall be carried by members of this House’, and, more contentiously, that ‘such messages as shall be sent from the other House to his House, shall not be received, unless brought by members of their own number’.98 By 136 votes to 102 the Commons agreed to the first part of the report concerning messages from their House to the Other House. 99 The second part of the report, however, generated a great deal of debate because it touched upon the foundations of the second chamber and its relationship to the Commons. Once again, the new Presbyterians stressed that the two Houses must be treated as equals if they were to function as a co-ordinate legislative body. Yet, while they saw the issue of the cap as superfluous and easily dispensed with, they thought it unreasonable for the Commons to dictate to the Other House who they should employ as their messengers. Hewley stressed that the Commons ‘had only to do with messages from this House, but nothing with messages from the other House’ – they could not ‘make laws for them’.100 John Birch warned that if they ‘impose laws upon the other House’ they would, in effect, ‘destroy the thing you set up’.101 If the Commons dictated rules to the Other House then they could hardly be said to be co-ordinate in power; as Gell summed it up in his diary ‘its not equall if you order them to send messengers, you assume the legislative againe’.102 Yet, despite these protests, the majority of MPs agreed that members of the Other House should deliver their own messages and not rely on assistants. By 127 votes to 114 they resolved that messages sent from the Other House would not be received by the Commons, ‘unless brought by Members of their own Number’.103 For Burton, it was a significant moment and much against expectations – ‘query the consequence’, he noted, for ‘it was the first question that ever the Republicans got’.104 The outcome of these debates certainly ended any lingering hope the courtiers had of getting the Other House recognized as a House of Lords. As one Royalist informed Secretary Nicholas on 8 April, ‘the Commoners have resolved to meete the members of the other howse, as theire peeres, not theire superiors’.105 Through their resolutions over the form of ceremonials the majority in the Commons made absolutely clear their belief that the Other House was not a restitution of the old House of Lords but was, in effect, a new chamber founded upon the parliamentary constitution of 1657. Moreover, Burton, IV, 370–1; DRO, MS D258/10/9/2, fol. 31r. CJ, VII, 631–2. 100  Burton, IV, 371–2. 101  Ibid., IV, 375. 102  DRO D258/10/9/2, fol. 31v. Gell does not record who makes this speech; it is possible he was summarizing the sense of the speeches of Birch and Godfrey: Burton, IV, 375–6. 103  CJ, VII, 631–2. 104  Burton, IV, 378. 105  Nicholas Papers, IV, 100–2: Miles to Nicholas, 8/18 Apr. 1659.   98    99 

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by dictating rules to the Other House concerning its use of messengers the Commons majority implied that the legislative supremacy resided with them. As frustrating as the debate over the manner of transacting was for the government’s supporters, however, it was far from disastrous. After all, the Commons had finally cleared the way for communications between the two Houses. On 14 April the Commons made their final preparations to send Thomas Grove to the Other House with their declaration for the fast day. The issue was again raised about whether their messenger should wait for an answer from the Other House or return immediately. Griffith Bodurda did not think it was ‘rational that he should come away without an answer’. There were only two cases when a messenger did not stay for an answer, Bodurda noted dryly: when ‘a herald goes to proclaim war’ or ‘when an apparitor comes to serve a citation’, in which case ‘he claps it upon the door, and runs away for fear of a beating’.106 Ultimately, the Commons agreed with Bodurda and resolved that their messenger should deliver the message and wait for an answer.107 With the final details agreed Grove made the short journey to the Other House. According to Wariston, who was present in the Other House that day, around sixty MPs went with Grove to deliver the message.108 Black Rod informed the Other House of their arrival, ‘whereuppon they were called in’ and made their way to the bar.109 While Grove approached the bar and ascended the ‘high step’, the MPs following behind him made two ‘legs’.110 Speaker Fiennes along with the ‘most part’ of the Other House ‘went downe to the Barr uncovered’.111 As instructed, Grove delivered the message to Fiennes, keeping the form of address as vague as possible, stating that: ‘The Knights, Citizens and Burgesses in this present Parliament assembled have sent upp a Declaration for a Fast wherein they desire the Concurrence of this House’.112 Burton, who was among those MPs accompanying Grove, notes how the ‘Lords were bare all the time’ and that the MPs withdrew by making another ‘two legs’.113 After ‘a little stay’ the MPs were called back in.114 This was the crucial moment in the ceremonials between the two Houses – one senses the MPs were clutching their hats as they walked back in, ready to put Ibid., IV, 426–7. Ibid., IV, 426–7; CJ, VII, 639. 108  Clarke Papers, III, 188–9. 109  HMC Lords, p. 560. 110  Burton, IV, 427–8. 111  Clarke Papers, III, 188–9. 112  HMC Lords, p. 560, emphasis added; Bethel, A true and impartial Narrative, p. 12. 113  Burton, IV, 427. 114  Ibid., IV, 427. According to Burton, the Other House – perhaps catching wind of the Commons’ discussions earlier that day – had not expected the MPs to wait for an answer. They were half way through reading the declaration before they realized the MPs were still waiting outside. Ibid., IV, 427–8. 106  107 

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them on. As it turned out, the Other House avoided a confrontation by leaving their hats off. As Burton notes, ‘all the Lords’ were ‘bare, sitting in their places, except Lord Fiennes, who was covered; but stood up bare, and returned their answer’.115 Yet, if the Other House handled this phase of the ceremonials with tact, Fiennes followed it up with a substantial gaffe. According to Burton, the Lord Keeper opened his answer with ‘“The Lords”’, but ‘then made a pause, as if it had been mistaken’, and continued, ‘“This House will return answer to you by messengers of their own.”’116 Yet, while the ceremonials surrounding this first transaction between the two Houses was, for the most part, tactfully dealt with by the Other House, the contents of the message were much less well received. The proposed declaration for the fast day was infused by the Presbyterian intolerance that was prevalent in the Commons. First proposed on 30 March, the motion had been seized upon by conservative MPs of all stripes, including the new Presbyterians, as a way to extirpate religious extremism. John Bulkeley, for instance, commenting on the spread of Quakerism, was adamant that the House should ‘deprecate these evils as famine and pestilence’; he hoped the declaration for the fast would have ‘no censure’ as if ‘this motion proceeds from a spirit of persecution or rigid presbytery, as it is called’.117 The declaration presented to the House on 2 April, drafted by a committee headed by Grove, left no doubt about its intended target.118 It complained of the nations being ‘Overspread with many blasphemies, and damnable heresies against God … by denying the authority thereof, and crying up the light in the hearts of sinfull men as the rule and guide of all their actions.’ Such errors had ‘opened a wide door for the letting in of the most horrible contempt of the Ordinances and Institutions of Jesus Christ, of the Ministers and Ministry of the glorious Gospell’.119 This lamentable situation was made all the worse by the ‘too much remissnesse and connivance of the civill Magistrates (to whom belongs the care of maintaining Gods publique worship, honour and purity of doctrine aswell as of punishing all sins against the second Table) in permitting the growth of these Abominations, by sufffering persons under the abuse of Liberty of Conscience to disturbe the publick Ordinances’.120 As such, it declared that ‘in all places within England, Scotland and Ireland’ 18 May should be set aside as a day for ‘solemn fasting and humiliation’.121 Ibid., IV, 427. Ibid., IV, 427, emphasis added. See also Clarke Papers, III, 188–9; Gaunt, Lansdowne, pp. 503–4. Burton notes how Grove, when making report to the Commons, ‘left out the passage that they said “the Lords” while we were delivering the message’, Burton, IV, 428. 117  Burton, IV, 300. 118  See CJ, VII, 622. Intriguingly, this draft declaration was published after the dissolution of the parliament as A Declaration of the Lord Protector And both Houses of Parliament For a day of Solemn Fasting... upon the Eighteenth day of May, 1659 (London, 1659). 119  A Declaration ... For a day of Solemn Fasting, pp. 4–5. 120  Ibid., pp. 5–6. 121  Ibid., pp. 6–8.

115  116 

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Unsurprisingly, the declaration was opposed by more radical spirits in the lower House. Vane criticized ‘this imposition upon conscience’ as it was ‘setting up that which you always cried out against’; it was the ‘giving away your cause’.122 Scot moved against the declaration because ‘in it is complicated the whole quarrel, in point of imposition on conscience’.123 Yet, it was not only the Republican MPs who were likely to find this declaration abhorrent. In many ways, the whole debate had echoes of the aftermath of Nayler’s case when the Commons had turned its attention to making a general law against the Quakers. As discussed in Chapter 3, many of those subsequently summoned to the Other House, including some who had previously called for Nayler’s life, disagreed with the Presbyterian majority about creating general laws against the Quakers that could violate the ideal of liberty of conscience. As such, it is unsurprising that some of the Republicans in 1659 questioned whether the declaration for the fast day would pass the Other House. Haselrig was sure that ‘one reason’ for setting up the Other House in the first place was ‘to prevent imposing upon consciences by the Commons’. As such, he found it remarkable that this declaration would be the first business transacted between the two Houses; ‘if’, as seemed likely, the Other House ‘grant it not’ then Haselrig predicted that they would ‘transact no more with them’.124 Haselrig was not far wrong: writing to Monck shortly after Grove presented the declaration to the Other House, Wariston was convinced that it ‘shall cost a great debate’.125 Although the Other House’s journal provides minimal information, some moments of dispute and deliberation can be discerned. The declaration was read for the first time on 14 April and for the second time the day after. Thereafter, the House, clearly anticipating some deliberation, considered adjourning itself into a Grand Committee to allow freer debate.126 On this occasion, however, the motion was dropped with the almost inevitable result that proceedings dragged on slowly as the declaration was again read ‘by parts’. By the end of 15 April, they had got no further than the preamble.127 Getting nowhere fast, the question was propounded whether the House should adjourn until Monday 18 April. The question to put the question produced a tight vote – ‘it being doubtfull which way it was carried, the Lord Viscount Lisle and the Lord Whalley were appointed to take the votes’. But upon ‘numbring … it appeared the greater number of Burton, IV, 329. Rutt wrongly dates the entry of 4 Apr. as 2 Apr. Gell’s diary confirms that Vane’s speech was delivered on 4 Apr: DRO, MS 258/10/9/2, fols 19v–20r. 123  Burton, IV, 342. 124  Ibid., IV, 335–7. 125  Clarke Papers, III, 188–9. 126  Although not mentioned in the journal, that a Grand Committee was anticipated can be gleaned from the excisions made by the scribe: Mus. of Lon., Tangye MS 11a, fols 54r, 55r. 127  HMC Lords, p. 561; A Declaration of the Lord Protector... For a day of solemn Fasting, p. 4. 122 

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Votes were for putting the Question which was accordingly put and resolved in the Affirmative’.128 Debate resumed on 18 April with the section dealing with the Quakers. The entire clause concerning the spread of ‘blasphemies and damnable heresies’ was read, followed by yet another motion, this time successful, to adjourn into a Grand Committee. This apparently did little to expedite matters, however, and ultimately the House agreed that all the clauses touching the Quakers were ‘to be postponed’.129 Instead, they plunged into the equally vexed question of the clause outlining the magistrate’s remit in religious matters. A couple of days earlier, Sharp noted that ‘the generall sense of that House goeth for expunging of that parenthesis trenching upon the magistrats care’.130 Yet it seems they laboured over this issue too. Although the clause was read and debated it reached no satisfactory conclusion and the matter was ‘adjourned till tomorrow morning’.131 The debate was apparently never resumed. The Other House were in an invidious position. While the majority of members did not share the persecuting spirit of the Presbyterian majority in the Commons and opposed many clauses in the declaration, they also recognized the importance of the declaration as the first item of business transacted between the Commons and the Other House. As Haselrig warned, a miscarriage in this business would have repercussions for the working relationship of the Parliament moving forward. Had they responded with significant amendments to the declaration, or rejected its contents outright, it would have raised the issue of the Other House’s legislative authority and provided further ammunition for those who denied the second chamber a co-ordinate authority. Ultimately, however, the debate over the declaration was shelved as events outside Westminster suddenly dominated the agenda of both Houses of Parliament. The Army, the Other House and the Dissolution of the Third Protectorate Parliament On 14 April, the same day the Other House received the Commons’ declaration for the fast day, the General Council of Officers met again at Wallingford House.132 Disgruntled by the lack of progress over their Representation, Desborough apparently put forward a scheme to purge the army of all conservatives by making officers take an ‘engagement’ asserting that the regicide had been lawful.133 According to Ludlow, this ‘proposition found so general HMC Lords, p. 561. Ibid., p. 562. 130  Stephen, II, 173–4: Sharp to Douglas, 16 Apr. 1659. 131  HMC Lords, p. 562. 132  Boyle State Letters, pp. 27–9; Clarke Papers, III, 189–90; Guizot, Richard Cromwell, I, 363. 133  Boyle State Letters, pp. 27–9. 128  129 

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an approbation, that it was impossible for the courtiers to resist the stream’.134 It seems a further meeting was scheduled for 20 April and in the meantime a ‘committee of twelve officers’, headed by Fleetwood, set about the matter of preparing the engagement.135 Before the officers could meet again, however, Richard Cromwell and his supporters in the Commons launched a pre-emptive strike. On the afternoon of 18 April, Richard summoned to Whitehall all those officers who had been at Wallingford House.136 According to Anthony Morgan, who got his information from ‘one present’, Richard told the officers ‘that he had acquainted the parliament with their representation’ and ‘that it was not needfull they should continue their meetings in expectation of an answer’; they should ‘not meet on Wednesday next as they had appointed but should all repaire to their charges’.137 According to Wariston, ‘the Lord Disbrowe and the Protector had very high words about the officers going from London’.138 Morgan reports how Desborough ‘wondered that any honest man should be offended at their meetings to regulate disorders among themselves’, to which Richard merely ‘affirmed his 1st orders and withdrew’.139 While Richard was berating the officers, the Commons – sitting behind locked doors until four that afternoon – passed a series of votes to bring the army under control.140 Not only did they resolve that there should be no further meetings of the General Council without the permission of ‘his Highness the Lord Protector, and both Houses of Parliament’, they also resolved that all army officers must swear not to ‘disturb nor interrupt the free Meetings... of Parliament’.141 There was, however, one vital final stage before these resolutions could be put into effect: they had to be sent to the Other House ‘for their Concurrence’.142 Clearly some expected that the military presence in the Other House would block the resolutions. Royalist agent John Barwick, for instance, was of the belief that ‘the other house is another clogg’ on the Protector and would not pass the votes.143 Yet it seems that MPs were more optimistic. Irish MP Dudley Loftus, for one, did not expect opposition from the Other House, informing Henry Cromwell that ‘we doe not doubt’ of ‘their concurrence to these votes’.144 Ludlow, II, 67. Guizot, Richard Cromwell, I, 363; Gaunt, Lansdowne, pp. 503–4; Clarke Papers, III, 190; Thurloe, VII, 662. 136  Clarke Papers, III, 191–2. 137  Gaunt, Lansdowne, p. 505: Morgan to H. Cromwell, 19 Apr. 1659. 138  Clarke Papers, V, 284–5. 139  Gaunt, Lansdowne, p. 505. 140  Ibid., p. 505; Clarke Papers, III, 191–2. 141  CJ, VII, 641. 142  CJ, VII, 641; Clarke Papers, III, 191–2. 143  Thurloe, VII, 662: Barwick to Hyde, 20 Apr. 1659. 144  Gaunt, Lansdowne, pp. 502–3: Loftus to H. Cromwell, 19 Apr. 1659. 134  135 

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In line with the Commons’ order, John Stephens took the message to the Other House on the morning of 19 April. Burton, who again accompanied the Commons’ messenger, notes how the ceremonials took the same form as those five days earlier, albeit far ‘too many legs were made’ by the Commons as they approached and withdrew from the bar.145 After Stephens and the thirty or more MPs who accompanied him withdrew, the Other House read the votes and then called the deputation back, telling them that they ‘had taken the Message into Consideracon and would retorne an Answer by Messengers of their owne’.146 According to Wariston, the House spent the rest of the day debating whether they should take the Commons’ votes ‘into Consideration or delay it till after the Declaration of the fast was passed’.147 Indeed, according to the journal the question for putting the question of whether ‘the Consideracon of these Votes shalbe taken upp’ produced a very ‘doubtfull’ result and necessitated a counting of votes in the chamber by Viscount Lisle and Lord Broghill.148 Yet, the military Cromwellians in the Other House were not able to stall the debate. As Thomas Clarges reports, the Other House was ‘in a great consternation upon receipt of these resolutions’ and although ‘many moved to lay them aside’, it was ‘carried... by one voice in the contrary’.149 By a narrow margin, the Other House resolved to take up debate on the Commons’ votes the following morning.150 Increased attendance in the Other House from 18 April onwards only added to the military Cromwellians’ woes. In what seems like a concerted effort, those civilian Cromwellians who had sat only intermittently since late February took their seats, including Viscount Fauconberg, John Cleypole and Lord Broghill. That every effort was made by the civilians to bolster their numbers seems evident from the letter sent by Broghill to Whitelocke on 20 April urging him ‘to come to the House’.151 Moreover, that very morning Black Rod was ordered ‘to send notice unto such of the Lords as can be met with that the house doth expect their presence’; the result was a turnout of thirty-five members – the highest since Parliament opened.152 Table 4 summarizes attendance levels in the Other House in the final days of the parliament. As stated in Chapter 3, the categorization of members as ‘civilian’ or ‘military’ is made with a degree of caution as not all members were consistent in their allegiances across the period. Yet, it seems there was a growing civilian presence and a relatively stable, and numerically inferior, Burton, IV, 465. HMC Lords, p. 563; Burton, IV, 465. 147  Clarke Papers, V, 284. 148  HMC Lords, p. 563. 149  Thurloe, VII, 657–8: Clarges to H. Cromwell, 19 Apr. 1659; Clarke Papers, V, 284. 150  HMC Lords, p. 563. 151  Whitelocke Diary, p. 512; although absent on 19 Apr., Whitelocke sat in the Other House on 20 Apr., see HMC Lords, pp. 562–3. 152  HMC Lords, p. 564. 145  146 

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Table 4: Attendance in the Other House, 13–22 April 1659 Date

Civilian

Military

Total

13 April 14 April 15 April 18 April 19 April 20 April am 20 April pm 21 April am 21 April pm 22 April

13 14 14 19 19 20 20 20 17 14

 5 10 12 12 13 15 13 12  5 13

18 24 26 31 32 35 33 32 22 27

group of military Cromwellians in the Other House during this period. The figures also reveal why the civilians were anxious to boost their numbers further. While they consistently had enough members to command a majority, they never had quite enough members to be quorate by themselves. Should the military Cromwellians abandon the Other House en masse, they could still bring business to a standstill. The crippling effect of the army prayer meeting on 13 April was a forewarning of this fact. In the short term, the military Cromwellians tried to overcome the civilian contingent in the Other House. It even appears that the grandees cancelled the meeting of officers on the morning of 20 April so that they could attend the Other House.153 The attendance list for the Other House provided in the draft journal confirms that Fleetwood, Desborough, Tichborne and Hewson all arrived late at the House that morning – all four names being written in after the initial register had been taken.154 Yet, the military Cromwellians were still unable to control proceedings. Once again the resolutions from the Commons were read, ‘and afterward the first of them’ concerning the council of officers was ‘againe read and Debate had thereuppon’. There followed a series of close votes later that morning over whether the House should adjourn and continue their debate at ‘three of the Clock’. According to the journal, when the Question was put ‘the voices being doubtfull, Lord Viscount Lisle and Lord Hampden were appointed to number them’. Their calculations found that the resolution did ‘passe in the affirmative’.155 The military Cromwellians had evidently had enough and began to drift from the Other House. Both Walter Strickland (who had attended all but two sittings since the Parliament opened) and John Clarke Papers, III, 192. Mus. of Lon., Tangye MS 11a, fol. 57r. 155  HMC Lords, p. 564. Like Lisle and Hampden, the tellers in the earlier vote that day over whether or not to adjourn (Tichborne and Onslow) were also from opposite sides of the political divide.

153 

154 

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Barkstead failed to return for the afternoon session; by the following morning Charles Fleetwood was absent as well.156 Doubtless the military Cromwellians’ fears were raised further on 20 April by more anti-military motions in the Commons. Sitting in Grand Committee for most of that morning, their discussion strayed on to ‘the settlement of the militia’.157 According to Slingsby Bethel, ‘the Courtiers … brought on foot the question’ of ‘Where the right of the Militia did reside? with a designe, first, to vote it in the Protector and both Houses of Parliament; And secondly, to vote the Protector General.’158 There are reports that Desborough and Fleetwood went to Richard directly on the evening of 20 April to extract a promise that these motions would be suppressed.159 If true, it was symptomatic of their impotence in the Other House: nervous about the prospects of being able to check such legislation in parliament by themselves they turned to the lord protector for relief. If the grandees did extract assurances from Richard, however, they proved false. Arriving late at the Commons on 21 April, Burton again ‘found the business of the militia in debate’.160 The reaction of the Wallingford House group is reflected by their attendance in the Other House. Although thirty-two members sat that morning, when the House reconvened in the afternoon attendance plummeted to just twenty-two. The majority of those who absconded were the leading members of the Wallingford House group and their allies: Desborough, Sydenham, Tichborne, Tomlinson, Hewson, Berry, Cooper and Walter Strickland.161 Doubtless, they had heard that, contrary to their wishes, the debates over control of the armed forces continued unabated in the Commons. With their resistance in the Other House proving to be nothing more than delaying the inevitable, and with more anti-­ military legislation in the pipeline, the military Cromwellians abandoned the Other House. Those who remained in the Other House could hardly have ignored the gaps on the benches. Interestingly, however, despite having a clear majority in the chamber, the civilian Cromwellians did not take the opportunity to press home their advantage. Rather than continuing the debate on the Commons’ resolutions as planned, John Lisle instead offered ‘a report from the Committee to whom the bill for securing the Nation against the Common enemy was committed’.162 The House spent the remainder of the afternoon reading amendments to its Bill for expelling Cavaliers and Papists from London, after which the amended Bill was ordered to ‘be ingrossed’.163 156  157  158  159  160  161  162  163 

HMC Lords, pp. 564–5. CJ, VII, 643; Gaunt, Lansdowne, p. 506. Bethel, A true and impartial Narrative, p. 13. Ludlow, II, 68–9; Clarke Papers, III, 191–2, 212. Burton, IV, 469. HMC Lords, p. 566. For the origins of this Bill, see HMC Lords, pp. 558–60, 562–3, 565–6. HMC Lords, p. 566. 217

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Perhaps the civilians in the Other House, aware of a military storm brewing outside, sought to quell the grandees’ anger by shelving discussion of the Commons’ resolutions. Yet, it is also possible that the Bill for expelling Royalists was passed to ease the way for the votes against the General Council. After all, one of the General Council’s key justifications for its continued sitting was the supposedly imminent Royalist threat. If this could be addressed by banishing the Cavaliers, there would be no plausible reason for the officers to linger in London. Indeed, with the Royalists expelled to the counties it would arguably be imperative that the officers repair to their commands elsewhere. The Commons had much the same idea. On 18 April, after passing the resolutions against the General Council, they set up a committee to deal with the issue of Royalists in the Capital; the following day, a draft of ‘a Declaration’ was reported ‘requiring all such Persons to depart the Cities of London and Westminster, and late Lines of Communication, by the Space of Twenty Miles’.164 In conspicuous imitation of the activities of the Other House, this Declaration did not resurface until the afternoon of 21 April when it was read, amended and engrossed. Significantly, it was further ordered that the ‘consent of the Other House’ was ‘to be desired’.165 That both Houses dealt with the issue of banishing Royalists on the afternoon of 21 April seems too much of a coincidence. True, the Other House proceeded by way of a ‘Bill’, while the Commons passed a ‘declaration’, yet the contents of both were virtually identical. Both were for ‘securing’ the nation from the common enemy and both would have excluded the Cavaliers from London for six months. Facing increased pressure from the growing military threat outside, both Houses pursued measures to make the army back down and unite with Parliament and Protector against the real ‘common enemy’.166 Their efforts were futile. By now the grandees, having abandoned the Other House, were resigned to the dissolution of the third Protectorate Parliament. As Bordeaux later reported, the grandees felt they had been ‘deluded by negotiations, whilst the friends of the Protector were pressing the Parliament to adopt resolutions tending to his establishment and their overthrow’. As such they ‘thought it advisable to provide for their own safety, and to effect by force that which they had been unable to obtain by fair means’.167 The events of the night of 21 April – the attempted arrest of Fleetwood followed by the rendezvous at St James’s and counter-rendezvous at CJ, VII, 641–3 (18, 19 Apr.). Burton, IV, 477; CJ, VII, 643–4. 166  A number of Royalist correspondents complained that the Courtiers fabricated reports of Royalist plotting to quell the army. See Bodl., Clarendon MS 60, fols 308, 324, 346–8, 354–5. 167  Guizot, Richard Cromwell, I, 370. 164  165 

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Whitehall – are well known.168 Ultimately, the grandees forced Richard to consent to a ‘Commission … ready prepared’ giving them ‘power to dissolve the Parliament’.169 According to the Other House’s journal, when the House assembled on the morning of 22 April, Fiennes announced that he had received the Protector’s commission, which was directed to himself, his fellow Lord Keepers Lisle and Whitelocke, Lord President Lawrence, Fleetwood, Desborough and John Jones. The first four names are unsurprising: they were the most prominent government officials in the chamber, including the Speaker and those expected to deputize in his absence. The latter three names were more conspicuous – especially as the commission stated that ‘any three or more’ of those named were empowered to carry out the dissolution.170 In effect, these three military Cromwellians could dissolve parliament, even if the others refused to act. The list of attendees in the Other House on the morning of 22 April is also revealing. With the exception of William Sydenham, all of the military Cromwellians who were absent the previous afternoon returned. At the same time, many of Richard’s closest civilian advisers were missing, including Broghill, Fauconberg, Charles Howard, Philip Jones, John Cleypole and Richard Hampden.171 As such, only on its final morning of sitting did the military Cromwellians truly have control over the Other House. Yet, their success was achieved by relying on their ultimate locus of power – the army. Through intimidation and threats, the army grandees took a brief, but inevitably short-lived, grip of parliamentary proceedings. All that remained was to invite the Commons to the Other House to complete the dissolution ceremonials. In anticipation, the commissioners ‘placed themselves on a forme overthwart the house between the Chaire of State and the Woolsack whereon the Lord keep[er] useth to sit’. There they waited while the ‘Gentlemen Usher was sent for the Commons’.172 Unfortunately, Burton’s diary breaks off on the evening of 21 April, meaning there is no detailed account of what transpired in the Commons on the morning of 22 April. It seems, however, that Black Rod’s arrival was unwelcome. Although he sent word ‘that he was at the door’, he received no reply.173 Ludlow claims that ‘few of the House knew of the resolution taken to put a period to them, or if they did, were unwilling to take notice of it’.174 Perhaps they were upholding their former resolutions concerning messages from the Other House. As Bordeaux notes, ‘the Commons had previously Woolrych, ‘Introduction’, pp. 65–6; Davies, Restoration, pp. 82–3. Annesley, England’s Confusion, pp. 8–9; Guizot, Richard Cromwell, I, 370–1. 170  HMC Lords, p. 567. 171  Ibid., pp. 566–7. Fauconberg, for one, fled London with his ‘wife and family’, CSPV 1659–1661, pp. 10–12. Both Whitelocke and Broghill also left town shortly afterwards: Whitelocke Diary, pp. 512–13 (25, 29 Apr. 1659). 172  HMC Lords, p. 567. 173  Ibid., p. 567; Ludlow, II, 70–1. 174  Ludlow, II, 70–1. 168  169 

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determined to receive no message from the other House unless brought by one of its members’.175 Growing impatient, the Other House took notice ‘that the Gentleman Usher had stayed very long’ without reply and that he should ‘knock at the Doore’ of the Commons and ‘let them know he is required to Desire ­admittance’.176 Yet the Commons were deaf to the knocking and instead resolved that ‘all Strangers be commanded forthwith to depart out of the Lobby’ and ‘that none but such as are Members of the House be suffered to come in’.177 Defiantly, the Commons went on to adjourn their sitting until 25 April.178 Hearing that the ‘House of Commons is risen’, Black Rod returned to the Other House. Unperturbed, Fiennes went ahead with the dissolution anyway. The Protector’s commission was delivered to the clerk of the Other House, Scobell, who ‘retorning to his accustomed place read it publiquely and thereuppon the Commissioners Did dissolve the Parliam[en]t’.179 To cap off this farcical end to the third Protectorate Parliament, Black Rod was then dispatched to ‘brake his black rodde att the doore of the House of Commons in testimonie of their dissolution’.180 Despite the claims of the Protectorate’s critics, the military Cromwellians did not dominate the Other House. Throughout the Protectorate, the army relied on Oliver Cromwell to intervene whenever their interest was threatened. Indeed, Cromwell dissolved both the first and second Protectorate Parliaments because parliamentary business seemed to undermine army unity. Similarly, the exclusions of 1656 were orchestrated, with the guidance of the major-generals, to remove those seen as enemies to their interest. With exclusions by the Council prohibited under the Humble Petition, the army had to rely instead on the Other House to act as a check upon the anti-military machinations of the freely elected Commons. In 1658, the grandees in the Other House had no cause to put these powers to the test; the Protector intervened by dissolving the second Protectorate Parliament once it became clear that the sniping and foot-dragging of the Commons was encouraging unrest in the army. In 1659, however, the matter was different. Not only did a larger conservative majority dominate the Commons, but also the Protector was a man in whom the grandees had little confidence. Threatened by a growing conservative trend at Westminster and Whitehall, the military Cromwellians in the Other House struggled to resist the anti-military motions. Outnumbered and outmanoeuvred, they found 175  176  177  178  179  180 

Guizot, Richard Cromwell, I, 372. HMC Lords, p. 567. CJ, VII, 644. CJ, VII, 644. HMC Lords, p. 567. Clarke Papers, III, 193. 220

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that the only way to stall proceedings in the Other House was to abandon the chamber altogether and retreat to the army instead. Indeed, it could be argued that the third Protectorate Parliament, and with it the Protectorate as a whole, failed not because of weaknesses or inconsistencies in the constitution. If anything, the Humble Petition and Advice stood on the brink of success at the very moment of its destruction. Not only had the Protector and Other House gained recognition from the Commons but, procedural wrangling aside, the two Houses were beginning to work together. With the Commons finally accepting the constitutional arrangement, albeit on their terms, it seemed like the Protectorate was about to emancipate itself from its military roots and settle upon foundations more acceptable to the civilian, conservative majority. Yet, the army could not accept being consigned to political oblivion. As had been the case since 1647, they believed the business of settlement was too important to abandon to civilian-minded politicians. The grandees, like Oliver Cromwell before them, prioritized army unity above adherence to the constitutional niceties. Finding that they were unable to get their way through parliamentary means, the grandees cast both parliament and Protector aside. Second Chambers and the Search for Settlement, 1659 The grandees were apparently undecided about what course to take next. According to Mabbott, writing on the day after the dissolution, the Council of Officers debated ‘what government shall bee setled, whether by the Petition and Advice, the Long Parliament to bee recalled or a new government constituted’.181 The Republicans, through numerous printed appeals to the army to stay true to their ‘Good Old Cause’, put enormous pressure on the grandees to abandon Richard and the Protectorate and recall the Rump. One tract warned how ‘some ingaged Persons are still harping upon the Petition and Advice, as if that were a thing Practicable’.182 It was no good trying to salvage the Protectorate; they must reject ‘one Person and his prostituted Parasites, who have pawn’d their souls to propagate his Power’.183 Yet, while the grandees did not put up much of a fight to retain the Protectorate, they were wary of recalling that parliament that they themselves had expelled in April 1653. According to Ludlow, who was present at meetings between the grandees and the Rumpers in late April 1659, the army sought several concessions before they would agree to the Rump’s restoration. These included a general act of indemnity for all actions committed since the Ibid., III, 193. Some Reasons Humbly Proposed to the Officers of the Army, For the speedy Re-admission of the Long Parliament (London, 1659), pp. 3–4, 7. 183  An Invocation to the Officers of the Army for preventing their own, and the ruine of the good old cause at the very door of destruction (London, 1659), p. 3. 181  182 

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Rump’s dismissal, reformation in law and religion, and provision for Richard Cromwell’s debts. More importantly, however, the grandees did not want the Rump to be restored as a unicameral assembly. Instead they argued that the ‘government of the nation should be by a representative of the people, and by a select senate’.184 According to Ludlow, this last proposal caused great ‘difficulty’. A number of Republicans at the meeting, doubtless including those who opposed a second chamber in any form like Haselrig, maintained ‘a general silence about the matter’ to give the army ‘hopes of … compliance’. Ludlow, however, could not be silent and told the officers that ‘if by a select senate they understood a lasting power, coordinate with the authority of the people’s representative, and not chosen by the people’ then he ‘could not engage to promote the establishment of such a power’.185 It seems, however, that the grandees had in mind precisely the sort of second chamber Ludlow feared. Their plans were clarified in their Humble Petition and Addresse of the Officers of the Army, presented to the Rump just days after its restoration. Recalling the ‘former Declarations of Parliament and the grounds therein inviting us to take up Arms’ as well as the great victories enjoyed by the army, which affirmed ‘that Righteous Cause’, the petition derided ‘the several late changes in Government’ whereby they seemed to have been ‘drawing back to the same things you had contended against’.186 They praised the Rump’s declaration of 7 May to ‘endeavour the Settlement of this Commonwealth upon such a Foundation as may assert, establish, and secure … the Liberties of the People … and that without a single Person, Kingship, or House of Peers’.187 Yet, in order to establish and secure ‘the Peace, welfare and freedom of the People of these Nations’ the army was adamant that the ‘Legislative Power’ must be shared between two Houses. That is, ‘in a Representative of the People, Consisting of a House successively chosen by the People’ and ‘a select Senate, Co-ordinate in power, of able and faithful Persons, eminent for godliness, and such as continue adhering to this Cause’.188 In effect, their proposed select senate would be the sort of chamber the military Cromwellians had always hoped the Other House would be. As one Republican pamphleteer mocked, the army’s senate was ‘as like the other House as an Ape is like a Monkey’.189 The army was not alone in advocating a second chamber of some description in the wake of the Protectorate’s demise, however. Even some Republicans saw merits in having a check on the people’s representatives. Ludlow, II, 74. Ibid., II, 75–6. 186  The Humble Petition and Addresse of the Officers of the Army, To the Parliament of the Common-wealth of England, &c. (London, 1659), pp. 1–2. 187  CJ, VII, 645–6; Humble Petition and Addresse of the Officers, pp. 3, 4. 188  Humble Petition and Addresse of the Officers, pp. 10–11. 189  A Negative Voyce: Or, A Check for your Check: Being A Message (by a Black-Rod) of Non-concurrence, for the Ballancing-House, or Co-ordinate Senate (London, 1659), p. 3. 184  185 

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At the meeting with the army officers in late April, Ludlow admitted that a second chamber could be useful for ‘a short time’ to ensure parliament ‘proceed with more vigour to an equal and just establishment of the Commonwealth’ and to prevent the people ‘from destroying themselves’.190 Indeed, Ludlow claimed a preference for a second chamber of ‘a select number of men in the nature of the Lacedemonian Ephori’ who would essentially have ‘a negative in things, wherein essentials of the government should be concerned, such as the exclusion of a single person, touching liberty of conscience, alteration of the constitution, and other things of the last importance to the state’.191 Sir Henry Vane also advocated a second chamber to combat what he saw as the degenerate spirit of the majority of the people. The ‘great difficulty’ that is ‘yet to receive its solution’, Vane explained, was ‘how the depraved, corrupted and self-interested will of man, in the great Body, which we call the People, being once left to its own free motion, shall be prevailed with to espouse their true publick interest, and closely adhere to it’.192 For Vane, no Nation was ‘truly free that is in bondage to corruption, and alienated from the life of God by wicked works, how much soever it be set at liberty in other respects, to use the power of its own will in providing for its own Government’. Until such a time as every man had the ‘Spirit of God’ in him, Vane advocated the use of such ‘meanes … that are most conducing to guide and regulate the will of the People, unto their making a good choice of the Senate and their own Deputies’.193 None should be ‘admitted to the exercise of the right and privilege of a free Citizen, for a season’ but ‘such as are free born, in respect of their holy and righteous principles, flowing from the birth of the Spirit of God in them’.194 What all these schemes for a second chamber had in common – whether the army’s select senate or Vane’s assembly of saints – was that the character of the membership was integral to its constitutional role. They were expedients to solve that basic problem of preserving a minority interest while allowing the people to choose their own representatives. In this respect they followed in the footsteps of the Cromwellian Other House, but there was a crucial difference: whereas Cromwell attempted to include a broad range of interests among the membership of that chamber, albeit weighted towards the political conservatives and those more tolerant in religious outlook, the proposed second chambers of 1659 were to be much narrower in the interests they represented. It seems Ludlow saw no irony in challenging the army’s plans for a select senate on the ground that it would ‘enslave’ the people to a ‘faction or party’ while simultaneously expressing a preference for a second Ludlow, II, 75–6. Ibid., II, 98–9. 192  H. Vane, A Needful Corrective or Ballance in Popular Government, Expressed in a Letter to James Harrington (London, 1659), p. 6. 193  Ibid., p. 7. 194  Ibid., pp. 7–8. 190  191 

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chamber of worthies who would defend what he took to be the fundamentals of government.195 There was, however, an alternative vision for a second chamber in 1659, promoted by James Harrington and his imitators. For Harrington a Commonwealth was an ‘empire of laws and not of men’.196 Rather than fitting the people to the government, he believed the government must be fitted to the people, or rather the balance of property among the people. As already noted, this aspect of Harringtonian thought was seized upon by many MPs, including the courtiers, in the third Protectorate Parliament to suggest that the old peers no longer had the interest to justify their former constitutional position. For Harrington, the form of government must match the realities of the balance of property – given that the people owned the majority of the lands, it was no longer possible to maintain the House of Lords or monarchy: the government must be settled by way of a Commonwealth. Just as Oceana had emerged in 1656 at a moment when the Protectorate was at a constitutional crossroads, so the events of early 1659 provided Harrington with another occasion to tout his model for a Commonwealth. This time around, however, his scheme was presented in abridged format in numerous printed pamphlets, making clear its applicability to the English context and its superiority over those other courses being considered. As Harrington saw it, there were fundamental problems with the sort of second chamber propounded by the army and others. He abhorred the idea of having a membership chosen upon the grounds of godliness or some such qualification. Whatever the good intentions behind such a chamber, it would inevitably lead to ‘meer Oligarchy’ and the repression of others under the guise of godliness. As far as Harrington was concerned, the ‘surest testimony of Saintship’ was a willingness to ‘admit of such orders in Government, as restrain the power to do wickedly, or of lording it over their brethren’.197 He also criticized the very notion of having a select senate in a position of ‘co-ordinate’ power with the people’s representatives. As the ‘Senate’ was ‘not elected by the People’ but ‘obtruded’ upon them, they would necessarily vote ‘according to the interest of the Few, or of a Party’. By contrast, the representative, being chosen by the people, would resolve according to the interests of the many. The result would be a ‘certain way of creating feud between the Senate and the people’ that would most likely lead to ‘Blood and Civil War’.198 The second chamber advocated by Harrington was fundamentally different because the people would elect it. Under his model, as described in the Art of Law-Giving of February 1659, the nation would be divided equally into Ludlow, II, 75–6. Pocock (ed.), Harrington: The Commonwealth of Oceana, p. 20. 197  J. Harrington, Pour enclouer le Canon (London, 1659), p. 5, printed 2 May 1659. 198  J. Harrington, A Discourse Upon This Saying: The Spirit of the Nation is not yet to be trusted with Liberty; lest it introduce Monarchy, or invade the Liberty of Conscience (London, 1659), pp. 6–7; Thomason dates his copy 17 May 1659.

195  196 

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fifty ‘tribes or precincts’, each of which would elect members to two Houses.199 The male inhabitants of those tribes were distinguished by age and wealth. Those between the ages of 18 and 30 were considered ‘Youth’; those over 30 were ‘Elders’. Anyone with less than 100 pounds per annum in land were members of the ‘Foot’; anyone with more were members of the ‘Horse’. Only the Elders were eligible to sit in the two Houses of Harrington’s model. The larger House, or ‘Representative’ was to consist of 1,050 ‘Burgesses’, comprising of 450 representatives from the Horse and 600 from the Foot. The second chamber, or ‘Senate’ was to comprise of just 300 Knights chosen entirely from the Horse. Members in both Houses would serve a maximum of just three years, with a third of the membership of each house replaced every year.200 Harrington envisaged a ‘free’ parliament, in that no qualification or test would be put upon the membership of either House, other than age and income. The Senate was to be smaller and of a slightly higher social standing than the Representative, which would include a slight majority of those with landed wealth of less than one hundred pounds per annum.201 The different sizes of the two Houses reflected the fact that each would serve distinctive functions. The Senate was to have ‘the whole authority of Debate’; it alone could propose and debate legislation. The Representative, by contrast, had ‘the whole power of result’; its function was merely to resolve or reject legislation sent to it by the Senate.202 As such, it was necessary for the Senate to consist of ‘few and eminent persons’ to facilitate ‘prudent debate’. Yet, it was also essential that the Senate did not have the power to approve those laws – this must go to the Representative that would ‘resolve according unto the interest of the people’.203 Harrington’s provision for dividing the functions of the two chambers tackled the problem of self-interest typical of unicameral parliaments. For Harrington, the regime of the Rump was no Republic: ‘a single Council having both the right of Debate and Result, never was nor can be esteemed a Commonwealth, but ever was and will be known for meer Oligarchy’.204 Harrington, The Art of Law-Giving, Book 3, pp. 19–21; Harrington also referred to the divisions as ‘Shires’ to make them more familiar to his audience, see Harrington, Pour enclouer le Canon, p. 8. 200  Harrington, The Art of Law-Giving, Book 3, pp. 19–21. 201  However, Harrington appears to have dropped the wealth condition in later iterations of his model: see Pour enclouer le Canon (London, 1659), p. 8. The division of the population by age and wealth was also omitted in the Harrington-inspired constitutional model presented to the Rump in The Humble Petition of Divers Well-affected Persons, Delivered The 6th day of July, 1659 To the Supreme Authority, The Parliament of the Common-wealth of England (London, 1659), pp. 8–9. 202  Harrington, The Art of Law-Giving, Book 3, pp. 19–21. 203  J. Harrington, Aphorisms Political (London, 1659), p. 8. 204  Harrington, A Discourse Upon This Saying, p. 2; see also The Armies Dutie; Or, Faithfull Advice to the Souldiers: Given in two Letters written by severall honest men, unto the Lord Fleetwood (London, 1659), pp. 24–5. 199 

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Under Harrington’s scheme members of both Houses sat for three years only, after which they could not seek re-election for three years, thereby curbing their ability to perpetuate themselves or their interests.205 As one petition to the Rump for a Harringtonian system explained, it was essential for the ‘Government of a free People’ to be settled in such a way as the ‘Governours and Governed may have the same Interest in preserving the Government’; there could be no ‘Union of the Interests of a whole Nation’ unless those ‘who shall sometimes Govern, be not also sometimes in the Condition of the Governed’.206 With the membership of both Houses in constant rotation and no member serving more than three years at a time it was unlikely either House could represent an interest other than that of the people. There is no doubting the ingenuity of Harrington’s model. It answered the perennial parliamentarian problem of how to secure a form of government that ensured the people ruled according to the laws they themselves created. According to one tract addressed to the army in May 1659, probably authored by Henry Neville and other disciples of Harrington, this issue of ‘whither the people should make their own laws’ was ‘the single point whereupon you joyned Battel at first with the King’; it all began when the parliament defended their ‘Ordinance for the Militia’ as a law ‘without the Kings consent’.207 It was this defence of parliament’s supremacy, and the concomitant claim of popular sovereignty, that was integral to parliamentarian apologias throughout the 1640s and given forceful expression in the winter of 1648–49. If the army really wanted to maintain that ‘Good Old Cause’ it was so fond of invoking, it must ‘defend the freedome’ of the people by placing over them ‘only government of their own laws, without subjection to the will or mercie of any man’.208 All previous expedients to secure the Commonwealth had failed because grounded upon that ‘grand errour in the foundation’ that the people’s ‘libertie’ can be secured ‘onelie by advancing good men to power over them’.209 Instead, they must trust in a system of orders that allowed the people to govern themselves, without the need to place a standing body of select men over them. For Harrington, a ‘Commonwealth … rightly balanced’ could never fall back into a monarchical or oligarchical form of government, not unless the ‘Senate can perswade people to quit three parts in four of the whole Territory unto a Prince, or to a Nobility’ thereby surrendering their overbalance in lands.210 As far as Harrington was concerned, the ‘talk that the people will be so rash in Elections’ was nothing more than the ‘rashness of the Few, exalting their wisdom above the wisdom of the people’. The well-ordered 205  206  207  208  209  210 

Harrington, Art of Law-Giving, Book 3, p. 19. The Humble Petition of Divers Well-affected Persons, p. 6. The Armies Dutie, p. 13. Ibid., p. 12. Ibid., p. 14. Harrington, A Discourse Upon This Saying, pp. 9–10. 226

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Commonwealth of Harrington’s model did ‘consist in the Senate of the wisdom, and in the popular Assembly of the interest of the Whole Nation’. Those who rejected his model were effectively saying that ‘the exclusion of Monarchy, and the protection of Liberty of Conscience, concern not the wisdom or interest of the Nation’.211 Ultimately, Harrington implored his readers to trust in the laws of his Commonwealth. Those who ‘dare trust men, do not understand men’, he lamented; ‘and they that dare not trust Laws or Orders, do not understand a Commonwealth’.212 As in 1656, Harrington’s problem in 1659 was turning his theory into practice. Few in power, either in the army or among the Republicans, were prepared to abandon the idea that the best means to secure government was to entrust it to men of sound principles. They found the idea of submitting their ‘Cause’ to a system of orders deeply unattractive, dangerous even. Henry Stubbe criticized the naivety of the Harringtonian model. While Stubbe did not doubt that ‘the good of the people is the end of Government’, it left the burning question of ‘who the People are’. For Stubbe, the ‘people’ did not mean those who ‘live in this or that Countrey’ or ‘possesse lands’.213 ‘Neuters’ were ‘not considered as the people’, nor were the ‘Presbyterians’.214 Ultimately, ‘Good orders do not secure a Commonwealth wherein the major or more active part is not spirited for such a form.’215 Even those who promoted a Harringtonian model in a petition to the Rump on 6 July claimed safeguards were necessary ‘for securing the government of this Commonwealth’. They recommended that it be ‘for ever esteemed & judged Treason’ for ‘any member of either Assembly of Parliament … to move or propose … the restitution of Kingly Government, or … of any single Person to be chief Magistrate of England’ or to alter the laws relating to liberty of conscience in religion. To enforce this, ‘twelve persons of the most undoubted fidelity and integrity’ were to be ‘impowred for some certain number of yeers’ to seize and judge any transgressors.216 Beyond passing a resolution that it would not sit beyond May 1660, however, the Rump did little to settle a new government according to those proposals put before it. Instead, as during its first sitting, it did its best to rub up the army the wrong way – ignoring their petitions and promoting a series of designs to bring the military under parliamentary control. An attempted coup on 12 October to revoke the commissions of the leading grandees provoked the army to bring the second sitting of the Rump to a close the following day in much the same fashion as in 1653. Ibid., pp. 9–10. Ibid., p. 12. 213  H. Stubbe, A Letter to An Officer of the Army Concerning a Select Senate mentioned by them in their Proposals to the late Parliament (London, 1659), p. 52. 214  Ibid., p. 53. 215  Ibid., p. 57. 216  The Humble Petition of Divers Well-affected Persons, pp. 10–11. 211  212 

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Although there followed a period of rule by the General Council of Officers, assisted by a Committee of Safety, this was deemed only a stopgap. By 10 December, the Council of Officers, still committed to settling ‘these Nations in the form of a Free State’, resolved to summon another parliament to sit ‘in or before February’ according to such ‘qualifications’ as they agreed upon.217 Three days later, they apparently agreed that the next parliament would be bicameral. If the newsbook reports are to be believed, however, the second chamber was no longer envisaged as a select senate. Instead ‘both the Assemblies of the Parliament’ would be ‘elected by the people of this Commonwealth duly qualified’.218 Yet, the army had not suddenly been converted to a Harringtonian scheme of freely elected bicameral parliaments. Rather, it seems they returned to their old tactic, employed in 1656, of using qualifications and exclusions to manipulate the election results. As Ludlow complained, the Council of Officers were proposing a parliament that would merely ‘permit the men of the sword to possess themselves of the supream authority’.219 To prevent this, Ludlow recommended to the officers a scheme for a body of twenty-one persons called the ‘Conservators of Liberty’ to preserve the essentials of the Good Old Cause and to adjudicate in any differences between the parliament and the army. According to the government newsbooks, the ‘principles and unalterable fundamentals’ that the Council of Officers deemed necessary for the ‘conservation of the Commonwealth’ included ‘that no Kingship shall be exercised in these nations’; that there be ‘no House of Peers’; that the ‘army may be continued and maintained’; and that there be liberty of conscience.220 Once more, however, it was persons rather than laws that became the bulwark for these fundamentals. Ludlow strived gamely to get those he described as ‘honest and distinterested persons’, including Vane, elected as Conservators. Yet, to his dismay, the majority of those chosen were army men, as well as many former members of the Other House sympathetic to the military Cromwellian cause, including Pickering, Walter Strickland, Tichborne and Wariston.221 As far as Ludlow was concerned the ‘Wallingford House party’ were determined to ‘draw the whole power into their hands’; ‘they intended only to carry on a faction, and to govern the nation by the sword’.222 Mercurius Politicus, 598 (8–15 Dec. 1659), p. 946. The proclamation issued by the Council of Officers on 14 Dec. states that the parliament was due to begin sitting on 24 Jan. 1660, see The Publick Intelligencer, 207 (12–19 Dec. 1659), pp. 941–2. 218  Mercurius Politicus, 598 (8–15 Dec. 1659), p. 956. The precise rules for electing this second chamber are unclear; the newsbooks only hint at preparations for electing the Commons. 219  Ludlow, II, 172. 220  Mercurius Politicus, 598 (8–15 Dec. 1659), p. 956. 221  Ludlow, II, 173. 222  Ibid., II, 174. 217 

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Since 1647 the army had intervened in politics both to ensure their g­ rievances were dealt with and to prevent the settlement falling into the hands of those they suspected of backsliding. Ultimately, they never felt able to relinquish their position and to bow to their nominal masters, the people represented in parliament. Time and again, in 1647, 1648, 1653, 1655, 1658 and 1659, the army was, either directly or indirectly, the architect of actions to force, manipulate or bring to a premature end the sitting of the people’s representatives. Their support in 1657 for the Humble Petition and its provision for an Other House was on the assumption that the second chamber would be a bastion for their interest, to check the religious intolerance and anti-military machinations of the Commons. When, in 1659, it transpired that the Other House would not serve their purpose, they forced the Protector to dissolve the parliament and moved on to the next constitutional experiment. After recalling the Rump they petitioned for a select senate to provide the sort of chamber they had always wanted the Other House to be. Yet, the army were not alone in their belief that the most effective way to secure a settlement was to trust in men rather than the mechanical orders or laws of a written constitution. Arguably, since the very beginning of the Civil War there had been a latent assumption among the parliamentarians that the best means to make a government work effectively was to put the right men in the right jobs – whether by controlling appointments to the privy council, approving the membership of the House of Lords or placing qualifications upon electors and those elected to the Commons. The assumption had been that Royalists would be excluded from government and that only those faithful to parliament, at least in the short term, would be capable of rule. The only thing that really changed over the period was the interest or faction that the men entrusted with government should serve, whether Independents or Presbyterians; military or civilian Cromwellians; Republicans or the army. While Harrington and his adherents advocated a radically different c­ onstitutional arrangement, which would have placed power in the hands of the people, with relatively few qualifications, the majority of former parliamentarians remained committed to a settlement that safeguarded the interests of a particular group. As such, Republicans like Vane and Ludlow, as much as the army grandees they criticized, were guilty to the last of seeking to promote a settlement that would have used a second chamber to secure an oligarchy beneath the semblance of popular rule.

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On 25 April 1660, over eleven years since its last sitting, the House of Lords returned. Among those ten parliamentarian peers who took their seats that day were three who had refused to act upon their summons to Cromwell’s Other House: Manchester, Saye and Wharton.1 Yet, it seems that, like those second chambers proposed in 1659, this ‘restored’ House of Lords was envisaged merely as a bulwark for a faction. The Act that brought the Long Parliament to an end and summoned the Convention Parliament to meet defended the ‘House of Peers (consisting of those Lords who did ingage in the Cause of the Parliament, against the Forces raised in the name of the lake King, and so continued untill One Thousand six hundred fourty eight)’.2 Writing to Hyde just days before the parliament assembled, John Mordaunt believed that only those lords who remained faithful to parliament in 1648 would be allowed to sit. He also believed that this ‘Cabal’ would insist upon the terms of the Newport Negotiations of 1648 as the basis for Charles II’s restoration.3 If true, the parliamentarian peers who assembled on 25 April envisaged the restoration of the House of Lords along the same lines as the old Presbyterians in the third Protectorate Parliament. That is, they wanted a House of Lords grounded firmly upon the ideas and proposals of the 1640s, rendering void all peerages bestowed since May 1642 and ensuring that all future peers had the approval of both Houses before sitting and voting in the Lords. As in 1648, they intended not a return to the chamber that sat before 1642, but a chamber dominated by the old parliamentarian peers and supervised by the Commons. Yet if the parliamentarian peers believed they could control the terms of the Restoration they miscalculated. When, after a brief adjournment, the peers resumed their sitting on the afternoon of 25 April they found that the earls of Middlesex, Dorset and Rivers had slipped past Monck’s soldiers and entered the chamber.4 All three had succeeded to their peerages during LJ, XI, 3. Firth and Rait, II, 1472.   3  CCSP, IV, 666: Barwick to Hyde, 19 Apr. 1660; Swatland, House of Lords, pp. 18–19.   4  LJ, XI, 4. Whether or not Monck was complicit in allowing these peers in to the chamber is a matter of speculation: Swatland, House of Lords, pp. 20–1.   1    2 

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the 1650s and, more alarmingly for the parliamentarian peers, the latter two were the sons of Royalists. Of course, it had been one of the claims of the Protectorate’s supporters during the Other House debates that to uphold the hereditary rights of the old peers meant they could hardly bar the children of Royalists from sitting. Certainly the parliamentarian peers were unable, or unwilling, to deny these ‘young’ peers their hereditary right once they appeared. After all, Saye had castigated the Cromwellian Other House in December 1657 for ‘layinge asyde the Peeres of England whoe by byrth are to sitt’.5 It was hardly justifiable for him, or the other parliamentarian peers present, to deny that birthright to their fellow peers. In the days that followed an influx of more young peers wiped out the majority held by the parliamentarian peers in the chamber. By the time the king’s Declaration of Breda was read in the House on 1 May, any hope of imposing the terms of the Restoration settlement upon the basis of the Newport Negotiations seemed to have evaporated.6 The King’s letter to the House, which accompanied the declaration, expressed his delight that the Lords ‘are again acknowledged to have that Authority and Jurisdiction which hath always belonged to you, by your Birth and the fundamental Laws of the Land’. Charles hoped the peers’ own ‘Experience’ of ‘how One Violation succeeds another when the known Relations and Rules of Justice are once transgressed’ would make them ‘as jealous for the Rights of the Crown, and for the Honour of your King, as for yourselves’.7 In response the House duly declared that ‘according to the ancient and fundamental Laws of this Kingdom, the Government is, and ought to be, by King, Lords and Commons’.8 A week later both Houses proclaimed Charles II King of England.9 By mid-May many old Royalist peers had resumed their seats, and from 1 June, at the king’s prompting, those peers created since 1642 were also admitted into the chamber.10 With all the former qualifications and limits placed on the membership from the 1640s lifted there were now over 140 peers eligible to sit in the chamber.11 Finally, in November 1661 the bishops were readmitted – the restoration of the House of Lords was complete. This does not mean that the events of the 1650s were totally forgotten, however. After the Restoration the Other House became part of a bitter contest over the political memory of the Civil War era. Numerous tracts and ballads printed in the 1660s took aim at the Other House and its lowborn membership. Alexander Brome’s Congratulatory Poem, On the Miraculous and Swatland, House of Lords, p. 107. Ibid., p. 22.   7  LJ, XI, 7.   8  LJ, XI, 8.   9  LJ, XI, 18–19. 10  LJ, XI, 50. This was despite an earlier order made on 4 May 1660 barring those created after May 1642 from sitting: LJ, XI, 13. 11  Firth, House of Lords, p. 291.   5    6 

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Glorious Return of... Charles the II condemned those ‘t’other things’ that ‘crept into t’other House’, who were:   Lord Keepers, but of Cowes and Swine, Lord Coblers, and Lord Drawers, not of wine. Fine Cockney-pageant Lords, and Lords Gee-hoo, Lord Butchers, and Lords Butlers, Dray-Lords too.12

Indeed, the Other House became a by-word for everything wrong with the Cromwellian regime. It neatly represented the conservative nightmare of the world turned upside down; it was an exemplar of how rebellion against England’s ancient constitution led inevitably to social inversion and anarchy. Two former ‘lords’, in particular, John Hewson and Thomas Pride, were singled out for abuse, with many tracts playing on the lowly background of the two men. One satirical pamphlet of 1661 even had Pride gleefully declaring that he ‘had rather been made a Tom-turd’, one who empties the toilets, than a lord of the Other House.13 The memory of the Civil Wars continued to be evoked into the later seventeenth century, most notably during the Popish Plot and Exclusion Crisis. Tories and Whigs sought to denigrate one another by attributing to their opponents all the worst facets attributed to the Royalists or Parliamentarians during the 1640s and 1650s. As such, it is hardly surprising that the Other House should be recalled during this period to stress that constitutional change would lead inevitably to social levelling. Material from the 1650s touching upon the Other House was recycled and printed anew, including the Seasonable Speech of 1659, printed in at least two editions that appeared in 1679 and 1680.14 According to the 1680 version, the fictitious speech was ‘now thought Fit to be Reprinted, to prevent the Occasion of having it Respoken’.15 Its attack on those ‘Cobler Lordships, without one foot of land’, and warning that those who took to radical constitutional reform would soon live to regret it, clearly had great appeal for those loyalists seeking to defend the Stuart monarchy.16 A. Brome, A Congratulatory Poem, On The Miraculous, and Glorious Return of that unparallel’d King Charles the II (London, 1660), p. 11. 13  A New Meeting of Ghosts At Tyburn (London, 1661), p. 6; See also The Coblers Last Will and Testament: Or, The Lord Hewson’s Translation (London?, 1660); Oliver Cromwell The Late Great Tirant His Life-Guard (London, 1660), p. 2. 14  For the 1679 edition, see A Continuation of the Compleat catalogue of stitch’d books and single sheets, &c. printed since the first discovery of the Popish Plot (London, 1680), p. 18; the 1680 version was printed as A Time-Serving Speech, Spoken Once in Season By a Worthy Member of Parliament (London, 1680). The tract was also printed in Nov. 1692 as A brief Character of the Protector Oliver Cromwell... Comprehended in a Seasonable Speech... (London, 1692); a version was also printed in July 1716. 15  A Time-Serving Speech, titlepage. 16  Ibid., p. 5. See also, The Last Speech and Dying-Words of Thomas (Lord, alias Colonel) Pride (London, 1680). 12 

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Indeed, the key legacies of the Other House after 1659 were negative. Not only did it entrench distaste for constitutional experimentation by linking it firmly with social inversion, but it ensured that the restored House of Lords was exceptionally jealous of the privileges of both the chamber and its members. Just days into the Convention Parliament, the Lords instructed their committee for privileges to consider ‘the great Violation that hath been lately made upon the Peerage of this Kingdom’.17 As the historian of the restored House of Lords notes, their ‘watchfulness’ for their privileges ‘became an obsession’; barely a session passed ‘without the Lords becoming embroiled in a privilege dispute with the Commons’.18 Ironically, those seeking to bolster the position of the House of Lords were helped in no small part by the many printed tracts from the 1640s and 1650s that traced the history and customs of the upper chamber to justify its position in the constitution and denigrate the Other House.19 The Restoration has indubitably cast a long shadow over the history of the mid-seventeenth century. By shedding fresh light on the constitutional history of the 1650s, however, it is clear that the realities of the Other House did not always match the representations, or misrepresentations, of either its critics or its supporters. For one, the social quality of the Other House, though unquestionably lower than that of the House of Lords, was never as lowborn as claimed. Indeed, besides those old English peers summoned, a number of former members of the Other House would sit in the House of Lords after the Restoration. Crew, Howard, Monck and Montagu all received peerages from Charles II in 1660–61 in recognition of their help in securing his return.20 The Other House was also much more balanced politically than usually assumed. While it is undeniable that those summoned were mostly Cromwellian acolytes, it was his civilian or conservative followers who were in the majority. More importantly this study has challenged the assumption that the 1650s were a period of constitutional backsliding. The Other House was not conceived merely as an adjunct to the offer of kingship nor was it meant to herald a straightforward restoration of the House of Lords. Even if this had been the case, however, it would not, as some scholars have claimed, have brought stability or certainty to the constitutional arrangement. As this book suggests it is necessary to recover the 1650s not only from the obfuscations of the Restoration era but to contextualize the period with reference to the 1640s as well. While early modern England had a political culture that reverenced the past there is a danger that this leads to an assumption that political thought and constitutional ideas in the period were conservative and, quite literally, LJ, XI, 10: 2 May 1660. Swatland, House of Lords, pp. 39–41; 127–41. 19  Ibid., p. 129. 20  The Cromwellian honours were cancelled. Howard, who had been made Viscount Morpeth by Cromwell, was made earl of Carlisle by Charles. 17  18 

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backward-looking. It is important to appreciate just how fluid the definitions of the supposed monoliths of the constitution – King, Lords and Commons – were during this period. Even though the parliamentarians in the 1640s repeatedly professed their desire to defend England’s ancient constitution they were actually in the process of defining, and redefining, what exactly it meant. It was the constitutional ideas and political experiences of the 1640s that many had in mind when they talked of re-establishing a House of Lords or kingship in the 1650s. This is particularly evident with respect to that amorphous group in the parliaments of the 1650s known as the Presbyterians. While much attention has been paid to the vociferous Republican critics of the Protectorate, the aims of the Presbyterians have been overlooked or oversimplified. Intriguingly, at a fundamental level, what they wanted was not too different from the Republicans; namely, they hoped to secure a settlement that was grounded upon the supremacy of the people’s representatives in parliament. Where they differed was over how that ideal could be secured. Moreover, even though the civilian Cromwellians and Presbyterian MPs worked together to bring to fruition the Humble Petition and Advice of 1657 the relationship between these groups was not as harmonious as it seems. Not only were they divided over the question of religious settlement but they also had different ideas about the basis on which the new constitution would stand. This is particularly evident with regard to the Other House. While the civilians’ Humble Remonstrance provided for a second chamber that worked firmly in Cromwell’s interests, the Presbyterians redrafted that constitution to ensure that the new chamber was subject to the Commons’ supervision, making it at best co-ordinate with the Commons, at worst inferior. As with the constitutional Bill of the first Protectorate Parliament, it seems the Presbyterians remained determined to build a constitution grounded upon the idea of the supremacy of the people’s representatives in parliament. In turn, this study of the Other House invites reappraisal of the motivations behind the offer of kingship. It seems probable that, as with the Other House, the civilian Cromwellians and Presbyterians backed Cromwellian kingship for different reasons. While the civilian Cromwellians, like their earlier schemes for making the Protectorate hereditary, probably envisaged kingship as a means to bring security and entrench Cromwell’s title, it is likely that the Presbyterians saw it as a way to bind Cromwell. It was the fact that they, the Commons, offered Cromwell the Crown that was essential. Had he accepted, he would have implicitly admitted that the people, represented in parliament, were sovereign. Their expectation was that Cromwell would become the sort of king that they had hoped Charles I would have become under the terms of the Newport Negotiations: a king by contract, subject to the Commons’ supervision, unable even to choose the membership of the second chamber without their approbation. Much of the subsequent debate over the Other House in the second, and especially the third, Protectorate Parliaments was also dominated by 234

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CONCLUSION

the Presbyterians. On the one hand, with so many courtiers removed to the new chamber, it was left to many ‘new’ Presbyterians to make the case for the Protectorate regime as established under the Humble Petition and Advice. While many of these men had a vested interest in the regime and did not want to see it fail, they also defined the constitution, particularly the Other House, in ways that the courtiers did not always agree with – not least in their support for saving the rights of the old lords. On the other hand, the opposition to the new constitution and the Other House was quite often led not by the Republicans or crypto-Royalists but the ‘old’ Presbyterians. Yet even these men, despite their apparent conservatism, were not as b­ ackward-looking as they seem. During the Other House debates they made clear their preference for a House of Lords modelled along the lines of the Newport Negotiations of 1648; a chamber comprising only of those peers deemed faithful, which denied the single person a free hand to create a peerage in his own image and which may even have denied the second chamber a veto over Acts deemed necessary for the public good by the Commons. Had they succeeded in these aims their ‘restoration’ of the House of Lords would have resulted in a chamber very different to that which returned after 1660. If the Presbyterians did not advocate a straightforward revival of the old House of Lords, neither did the Cromwellians who comprised the court party. It is true that, once created, many of the courtiers went to great lengths to suggest the Other House was the House of Lords; even both Protectors styled it as such. Yet, this did not reflect a desire to return to the old ways of the ancient constitution but was really a means to avoid it. They sought to deflect questions from the regime’s opponents about the constitutional foundations of the Protectorate by suggesting that the origins of the Other House were more ancient and did not derive merely from the Humble Petition and Advice. For the courtiers, both civilian and military, this was a necessary means to avoid the Commons claiming superiority over the new chamber and thereby denying them the legislative veto that was, for them, its raison d’être. As with the smokescreen put up by the government’s supporters in the wake of Oliver’s death and Richard’s succession, they were basically making the regime seem familiar and traditional in order to entrench it and hide its novel reality. While scholars have pointed to the royal appearance of the Protectorate as evidence of constitutional backsliding, this study suggests the need to focus on the constitutional substance to contextualize the outward representations of rule. Closer study of the origins and membership of the Other House also provide new perspectives on Oliver Cromwell’s political thought and aims for settlement. It confirms the findings of recent studies of his fraught relationship with parliament, which point to his seemingly impossible desire for a settlement that reconciled parliamentary rule with the aims of the godly nation, including liberty of conscience. The Other House offered a neat solution to this problem by avoiding the need to meddle with the membership of the Commons through exclusions or purges, instead setting a body of men over 235

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them to check any moves by the representative to damage the godly interest. To this end, it seems that religious outlook was far more important than any other factor in determining Cromwell’s choice of membership to the Other House – he relied upon men who were predominantly of his opinion concerning liberty of conscience and the limits of toleration. It also seems that Cromwell had more of a hand in the genesis of the parliamentary constitution of 1657 than has previously been assumed. Aspects were apparently modified or included to suit his constitutional preferences, not least the decision to drop hereditary succession and to include the Other House. Indeed, Cromwell’s undoubted aversion to hereditary government, reflected not only in the terms of the succession of the single person but also the membership of the Other House, rendered any sort of seamless restoration of the ancient constitution impossible. As those old peers who refused to sit in the Other House knew all too well, this new chamber, by eschewing hereditary right, did not sit on the same basis as the old Lords. The new constitutional arrangement denied the very notion of hereditary right to office and with it the once symbiotic relationship between hereditary honours and parliamentary membership. As such the Other House obliterated totally the old House of Lords by removing the very foundations on which it had once stood. All told, the constitutional arrangement embodied in the Humble Petition and Advice, even in its kingly format, was more contentious than previously realized. While Cromwell’s refusal of kingship left many disheartened, not least those Presbyterians who stressed that he could not refuse the advice of parliament, it did not render the position of the Other House anomalous. Rather, even before Cromwell refused kingship there was some disagreement about what exactly the Other House should be. Yet these differences were not insurmountable. While there was continued debate over the nature and powers of the Other House during the second and third Protectorate Parliaments, it was arguably on the brink of beginning a working relationship with the Commons at the moment of its dissolution in 1659. With time, the Other House might have established itself, albeit it was never put to the test what would have happened should the new chamber try to veto legislation presented to it by the Commons. That it was not allowed time to settle was thanks to the intervention of the army. While the Other House was derided by the Protectorate’s critics for its military membership, in reality the military Cromwellians and army grandees did not have the preponderant presence there. When it came to sheer numbers, they were in the minority and were therefore unable to check the civilians in the chamber who sympathized with the anti-military agenda of the majority in the Commons. Seeing they could not work through parliament, and that Richard Cromwell – unlike his father – was unwilling to intervene to help them, the army turned its force against both Houses and the Protector, bringing to an end not just the third Protectorate Parliament but the Protectorate as well. 236

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CONCLUSION

Ultimately the army, once it entered the political fray in 1647, could never let go; the officers felt unwilling to trust their ‘cause’ to unadulterated parliamentary rule without some mechanism to either tamper with its membership or have a check over it. Even after the fall of the Protectorate they demanded the creation of a select senate to fulfil the same purpose that they had hoped the Other House would serve. It took the internecine squabbling and repeated purges among the officers in 1659 to finally break their cohesion and grip over political affairs.

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Appendix: The Membership of the Other House

Key to Appendix Name The 62 members of the Other House arranged in alphabetical order by surname. Sources: HMC Lords, pp. 503–4; BL, Sloane MS 3246; TNA, C218/1/34. Title(s) Titles held by the members of the Other House at the time of their nomination. Sources: G.E.C., Peerage; ODNB; Perfect Politician; Noble, Memoirs of the Protectoral-House. Social Status Social status of the membership at the outbreak of the Civil Wars. These categories are largely based upon the important studies of parliamentary membership in the 1640s and 1650s by Jones, Underdown and Woolrych. GG = Aristocracy or greater gentry CG = Country gentry LG = Lesser gentry MG = Merchant gentry BG = Below gentry ? = Unknown Sources: Jones, ‘Composition and Activity of the Protectorate Parliaments’; ODNB; Underdown, Pride’s Purge, pp. 361–98; Woolrych, Commonwealth to Protectorate, pp. 403–33. Age The age of each member at the time of their summons to the Other House in 1657. Sources: G.E.C., Peerage; ODNB. 239

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Attendance Indicates whether the members attended the Other House at any point during the second session of the second Protectorate Parliament (1658) and the third Protectorate Parliament (1659). ‘P’ = Present. ‘X’ = Dead or Removed. Sources: HMC Lords, pp. 503–67; Mus. of Lon., Tangye MS 11a, fols 1–61. Politics ‘C’ = Civilian Cromwellian ‘C?’ = Probable Civilian / Conservative ‘M’ = Military Cromwellian ‘M?’ = Probable Military ‘R’ = Republican ‘?’ = Unknown A ‘(k)’ has been added to the names of those identified as voting for kingship in A Narrative of the late Parliament (so called), pp. 22–3. The method of classification is discussed in more detail in Chapter 3. Officers Rank of members who were serving officers in 1657–59 and the number of regiments they commanded. Sources: Firth & Davies, The Regimental History of Cromwell’s Army. Previous Parliaments Those old peers who had sat in the House of Lords prior to its dissolution are listed as members of the Long Parliament. ‘LP’ = MP in Long Parliament ‘RP’ = MP in Rump Parliament ‘BP’ = Member of Barebone’s Parliament ‘1PP’ = MP in First Protectorate Parliament ‘2PP’ = MP in Second Protectorate Parliament. Sources: Underdown, Pride’s Purge, pp. 361–98; Worden, Rump Parliament, pp. 387–94; Woolrych, Commonwealth to Protectorate, pp. 403–33; Little & Smith, Parliaments and Politics; A List of the Names of the Long Parliament... As also of the Three ensuing Parliaments holden at Westminster in the Years, 1653. 1654. 1656. (And of the Late Parliament Dissolved April 22. 1659.) With a Catalogue of the Lords of the Other House (London, 1659).

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APPENDIX: THE MEMBERSHIP OF THE OTHER HOUSE

Council Those who were members of the Protectoral Council are indicated by a ‘YES’. Sources: CSPD; Worden, ‘Cromwell and the Council’. Ireland/Scotland Those members who can be considered a member for Scotland or Ireland (or both). ‘I’ = Ireland ‘S’ = Scotland ‘I&S’ = Ireland & Scotland The method of classification is discussed in more detail in Chapter 3. Ejectors Those members of the Other House named as ‘Ejectors’ in the ordinance of 1654. Source: Firth and Rait, Acts and Ordinances, II, 968–90. Relation to OC Relationship between member and Oliver Cromwell. Sources: G.E.C., Peerage; ODNB; Noble, Memoirs of the Protectoral-House; Second Narrative.

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?

BG

First Viscount Saye and Sele

Sixth Baron Eure

First Baron Broghill

30

GG

Second Baron Fauconberg1

75

50

GG

GG

37? P

BG

Baronet

54

CG

P

P

P

P

P

P

P

P

P

70

GG

P

P

Baronet

34

39

P

P

P

P

P

P

P

P

P

P

P

P

1659

Attendance 1658

CG

CG

Social Age Status

Knight

Title(s)

C (k)

M?

M

C (k)

C (k)

C

C

M

R

C (k)

C

C (k)

C?

M?

M

Politics

Previous Parliaments

Col. of Horse

Col. of Foot

Col. of Foot

Col. of Foot

RP, BP, 1PP, 2PP

LP, RP, 2PP

LP, RP, 1PP, 2PP

BP, 1PP, 2PP

1PP, 2PP

1PP, 2PP

BP, 1PP, 2PP

LP, RP, 1PP, 2PP

2PP

1PP, 2PP

LP, 1PP, 2PP

LP

Col. of 2 Horse LP, RP, 1PP, 2PP & 2 Foot LP, RP, BP, 1PP

Officers

YES

YES

S

S

Y

Y

Y

Y

Y

Y

Y

Y

Y

Brother-in-law

Cousin

Married C’s cousin

Married C’s cousin Cousin

Married C’s cousin

Son-in-law

Council Ireland/ Ejectors Relation to Scotl’d OC

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Sixth earl of Cassillis

KENNEDY,  John LAWRENCE,  Henry LENTHALL,  William LISLE,  John LOCKHART,  William MONCK,  George MONTAGU,  Edward MONTAGU,  Edward ONSLOW,  Richard PACKE,  Christopher PICKERING,  Gilbert PIERREPONT,  William POPHAM,  Alexander PRIDE,  Thomas RICH,  Robert

GG

Second earl of Warwick

53

GG

BG

50

GG

Knight

46

GG

Baronet

P

P

P

P

P

P

1658

70

X

X

P

P

P

P

P

P

P

1659

Attendance

>49? P

58

MG

Knight

56

32

55

GG

GG

GG

49

48

CG

LG

66

LG

36

57

CG

GG

56

GG

Social Age Status

Knight

Second earl of Manchester

Knight

Title(s)

Name

C

M

?

C?

M?

C (k)

C (k)

C (k)

?

C

C (k)

C (k)

C (k)

C

?

Politics

LP, RP, 1PP, 2PP

LP, RP, 1PP, 2PP

LP, BP, 1PP, 2PP

Previous Parliaments

Col. of Foot

LP

2PP

LP, RP, 1PP, 2PP

LP, RP, BP, 1PP, 2PP LP, 1PP

2PP

Col. of Horse LP, BP, 1PP, 2PP (from Sept. ’58) LP, 1PP, 2PP

Col. of 1 Horse BP, 1PP, 2PP & 1 Foot Col. of 1 Horse BP & 1 Foot LP

Officers

YES

YES

YES

S

S

S

Y

Y

Y

Y

Y

Y

Y

Grandson married C’s daughter

Nephew by marriage

Council Ireland/ Ejectors Relation to Scotl’d OC

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ST JOHN,  Oliver SHEFFIELD,  Edmund SIDNEY,  Philip SKIPPON,  Philip STEELE,  William STRICKLAND,  Walter STRICKLAND,  William SYDENHAM,  William THOMAS,  Edmond TICHBORNE,  Robert TOMLINSON,  Matthew WHALLEY,  Edward

Knight

ROBERTS,  William ROUS,  Francis RUSSELL,  Francis

40 61

LG

LG/ MG?

Knight

47

MG

24

?

59

CG

42

47

LG

LG

57?

LG

61

38

GG

GG

46

59

GG

LG

41

77

CG

GG

53

GG

Social Age Status

Knight

Baronet

Second earl of Mulgrave Viscount Lisle

Baronet

Title(s)

Name

P

P

P

P

P

P

P

P

P

P

P

P

P

P

P

P

P

P

P

X

P

X

P

1659

Attendance 1658

C

M

M?

C?

M

M

M

M

M

M?

C

C?

C (k)

C

C (k)

Politics

Col. of Horse

Officers

1PP, 2PP

BP

BP

LP, RP, BP, 1PP, 2PP 1PP, 2PP

LP, RP, BP, 1PP, 2PP LP, RP, 1PP, 2PP

1PP

LP, RP, 1PP, 2PP

LP, RP, BP

LP

LP, RP

LP, RP, BP, 1PP, 2PP LP, RP, 1PP, 2PP

BP, 1PP, 2PP

Previous Parliaments

YES

YES

YES

YES

YES

YES

I

I

Y

Y

Y

Y

Y

Y

Y

Y

Y

Y

Y

Cousin

Daughter married C’s son Married C’s cousin

Council Ireland/ Ejectors Relation to Scotl’d OC

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Fourth Baron Wharton

WHARTON,  Philip WHITELOCKE,  Bulstrode WOLSELEY,  Charles 27

52

CG

GG

44

GG

Social Age Status

P

P

1658

1

P

P

1659

Attendance

  Later styled Viscount Fauconberg, see p. 95, n. 113.

Baronet

Title(s)

Name

C (k)

C (k)

C?

Politics

Officers

BP, 1PP, 2PP

LP, RP, 1PP, 2PP

LP

Previous Parliaments

YES

Y

Y

Council Ireland/ Ejectors Relation to Scotl’d OC

Bibliography

(1) Manuscript and archival collections Bodleian Library, Oxford   Carte MSS 73, 74 (Montagu Papers)   Carte MSS 80, 228, 239 (Wharton Papers)   Carte MS 103 (Miscellaneous newsletters)   Clarendon MSS 34, 52, 54–6, 59–60 (Royalist correspondence)   Rawlinson A MSS 63, 73 (Thurloe Papers)   Tanner MSS 51–2 (Correspondence of John Hobart) British Library, London   Add. MSS 4156–8 (Thurloe State Papers)   Add. MS 5138 (Diary of Guibon Goddard)   Add. MS 6125 (‘Papers Relating to Oliver Cromwell, vol. 2’)   Add. MSS 15859–64 (Diary of Thomas Burton)   Add. MS 21425 (Baynes correspondence)   Add. MS 37344 (Whitelocke’s Annals)   Add. MS 43724 (Henry Cromwell correspondence)   Lansdowne MSS 821–3 (Henry Cromwell correspondence)   Lansdowne MS 95 (Oliver Cromwell’s funeral order)   Microfilm 331/6 (Fitzjames Letter Books – Northumberland Collection)   Sloane MS 3246 (Writ of summons to the Other House)   Stowe MS 185 (Miscellaneous letters) Derbyshire Record Office, Matlock   MS D258/10/9/1 (Photostat of Diary of John Gell)   MS D258/10/9/2 (MS of Diary of John Gell, 23 Mar.–8 Apr. 1659)   MS D3287/60/8 a-c (MS of Diary of John Gell, 8 Feb.–21 Mar. 1659). Museum of London   Tangye MS 11a (Draft Journal of the Other House) The National Archives, Kew   C218/1/34–36 (Parliament pawns, 1658–59)   C219/46-48 (Parliamentary writs and returns, 1658–59).   PRO 31/17/33 (Transcription of Privy Council order book)   SP18 (State Papers, Domestic)   SP25 (Privy Council Papers) 247

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

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Index

Adamson, John (historian)  2, 12, 15–16, 89 Additional and Explanatory Petition and Advice (1657)  73–5, 81, 141 see also Other House, and The Additional and Explanatory Petition and Advice Agreement of the People (1647)  22 n.92, 25, 28, 29 Agreement of the People (1648–9)  29, 30, 39 n.17 Allen, William  25, 26 Ancient Constitution  4, 11, 13, 16, 28, 233–4 and the Other House  6, 53, 82, 129, 135–7, 139–44, 159, 171, 233–4, 235, 236 and the parliamentary constitution of 1657  36, 53, 55, 60, 60–1, 142–3, 153, 171, 176–7, 179, 233–4, 235, 236 Annesley, Sir Arthur  165, 175, 182, 182 n.181, 183, 188, 198, 201, 203 Army  9, 15–16, 39–40, 119, 120, 158–9 and parliamentary elections  38, 39–40, 41, 44, 46 and the City petition of 1658  150–1 and the Committee of Safety (1659) 228 and the dissolution of the Third Protectorate Parliament  218–20, 229, 236 and the downfall of the Protectorate  7, 194, 196, 218–21, 229, 236 and the ‘Good Old Cause’  221, 226, 228, 237

and the military Cromwellians  107, 196 and proposals for reform of the House of Commons  24–6, 29, 38, 39 and proposals for reform of the House of Lords  25–8, 29, 33, 91 and schemes for a second chamber (1659)  7, 222, 223, 228, 228 n.218, 229, 237 grievances of  201, 203, 204–5, 221–2 relationship with parliament  37–9, 44, 202–4, 218–19, 220–1, 227, 229, 236–7 relationship with the old peers  87, 90–1, 92 see also Cromwell, Oliver, and the army; Cromwell, Richard, and the army officers; General Council of Officers; military Cromwellians; Republicans, and the army Arundel, Henry, 3rd Baron Arundel of Wardour 35 Ashe, John  55 Ashfield, Richard  202, 203 Ashley Cooper, Sir Anthony  42 n.39, 134 n.84, 141 n.127, 144, 145, 187, 188 Attainder, Bills of  49–50 Audley, Lewis  75 Aylmer, Gerald (historian)  105 Bacon, Francis  125 Bacon, Nathaniel  55, 65, 72, 171, 173, 179 Baldé, Susanna  147

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INDEX Bampfield, Thomas  52, 74, 164, 170, 182 Banqueting House (Whitehall)  133 Baptists  111, 112 Barclay, Andrew (historian)  89 Barkstead, Sir John  99 n.139, 102, 106, 107, 107 n.188, 109 n.206, 118, 118 n.262, 151, 196, 202, 205, 206 n.87, 216–17, 242 Barrington, Joanna  101 Barwick, John  196, 204, 214 Baynes, Adam  48, 50, 132, 164, 175, 184, 187, 188 n.232, 189, 196 Baynton, Sir Edward  161 n.37 Beake, Robert  70, 100, 136, 138–9, 140, 143, 163, 171, 179–80, 197, 198 Beauchamp, John, 1st Baron Beauchamp 99 Bedfordshire 117 Belasyse, Thomas, 2nd Baron Fauconberg  89, 94, 95, 97, 101, 104 n.175, 106 n.186, 107, 117 n.261, 126, 129, 132, 154, 159, 159 n.26, 201, 206, 215, 219, 219 n.171, 242 confusion surrounding title of  95 n.113 marriage to Mary Cromwell  94, 95 Bennet, Robert  173 n.122 Berkeley, George, 8th Baron Berkeley  88 n.75 Berkshire  88, 98, 117, 118 n.262 Berry, James  76, 102, 106, 107, 107 n.188, 159, 196, 202, 203, 206 n.87, 217, 242 Bethel, Slingsby  217 Biddulph, Theophilus  134 n.84 Birch, John  134 n.84, 163, 164, 166 n.68, 170, 181, 183, 184, 186, 205, 209, 209 n.102 Black Rod, Gentleman Usher of the  122, 129, 150, 152, 168, 210, 215, 219–20 Blaker, Edward  165 Blasphemy Act (1650)  48 Bodurda, Griffith  136, 139, 143, 145, 149, 163, 170 n.95, 208, 210 Booth, Sir George  161 n.37, 165, 171, 183, 185 n.204, 189, 190 Bordeaux, Ambassador, see France, ambassador of 

Boscawen, Hugh  166, 188 n.232, 189 n.241 Boteler, William  48–9, 131, 138, 139, 205–6 Boyle, Roger, 1st Baron Broghill  56 n.137, 80, 80 n.17, 107, 118, 119, 120, 128, 129–30, 155, 196 n.5, 206, 215, 219, 219 n.171, 242 and the parliamentary constitution of 1657  53, 54, 56 Bradshaw, Richard  161 Bridges, John  54 Briscoe, William  142, 143 Bristol  46, 50 Bristol, 1st Earl of, see Digby, John Brodie, Alexander, Lord Brodie  80 Broghill, Lord see Boyle, Roger Brome, Alexander  231 Brooke, Lord, see Greville, Robert Broughton Castle (Oxfordshire)  103 Browne, John  146 Browne, Richard  166 Brydges, George, 5th Baron Chandos  35 Buckinghamshire  84, 117 Bulkeley, John  163, 166 n.68, 169, 171, 181, 182, 186, 211 Burnell, Lord, see Dunch, Edmund Burton, Thomas  85, 125 parliamentary diary of  6, 51, 52, 54, 55, 60 n.161, 74, 97, 125, 129, 131–2, 133, 135, 136, 141 n.128, 144, 168, 172, 173 n.119, 177, 182 n.181, 185, 189, 202, 204, 207, 209, 210 n.114, 210–11, 211 n.116, 215, 217, 219, see also Rutt, John Towill Cambridge 89 Cambridgeshire 117 Capell, Arthur, 1st Baron Capell of Hadham 173 Carey, John, 5th Baron Hunsdon  88 n.75 Carlyle, Thomas (historian)  58 Cartwright, William  171 n.105 Cary, Henry, 4th Viscount Falkland  165 Case of the Armie Truly Stated (1647) 24–5, 25 n.105, 26 Cassillis, Earl of, see Kennedy, John

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INDEX Catholics 97 barred from elections  43 removal from London  148, 204, 217 Cecil, William, 2nd Earl of Salisbury  14 n.43, 85, 86 n.60, 87, 88, 88 n.76, 92 Chaloner, Thomas  164, 185 n.204 Chancery, Court of reform of  43, 66, 67, 67 n.200 Masters of  131 procedures in  66 n.198 Chandos, Lord, see Brydges, George Charles I, King  29, 63, 110 and the Newport Negotiations (1648)  14, 30, 186–7, 234 response to the Nineteen Propositions (1642)  13, 63–4, 123 n.11 trial and execution of  4, 29, 30–1, 39, 75 Charles II, King  2, 3, 4, 120, 129, 177, 183, 184, 190, 192, 197, 231, 233 Restoration of (1660)  3, 4, 230, 231 Cheshire 117 Chowne, Henry  165 Church, Percy  191 Chute, Chaloner  134 n.84, 138, 143, 172, 188 civilian Cromwellians  155, 156, 163 and Cromwell’s nominations to the Other House  76–7, 79, 121 and religion  115–16 and the creation of the Other House  60, 62, 63, 234 and the Presbyterians  55, 60, 61, 62, 63, 76, 109, 115–16, 143, 234, 235 emergence of  36, 45, 53–5 membership of the Other House  107, 109–11, 121, 135, 195–6, 215–16 serving in the army  107, 206–7 support for kingship  55, 107, 234 Clarges, Thomas  215 Clarke, William  26 n.111, 83 n.33 Clerk, John  82, 83 Cleypole, John  101, 104, 109, 114 n.242, 215, 219, 242

Clinton, Theophilus, 4th Earl of Lincoln  88 n.75 Cochrane, Sir William  116 Cokayne, George  113 Coke, Sir Edward  20 Commonwealthsmen see Republicans Congregationalists  112, 112 n.231, 113 Cooper, Thomas  76, 79, 83, 102, 106, 107, 107 n.190, 114 n.240, 114 n.242, 118, 119, 120, 128, 151, 156 n.7, 159, 196, 202, 206 n.87, 217, 242 Cornwall 117 coronation oath  28, 28 n.127, 29–30 Corsellis, Nicholas  147 Council of State Commonwealth (1649–53)  87–8, 92 Engagement taken by members  87–8, 93 peers nominated to serve in  87–8, 92, 93 Protectorate (1653–58)  122, 202 and Nominated Assembly  42, 43 and nomination of Other House 79–80 and Oliver Cromwell’s funeral  158–9, 235 and succession of Richard Cromwell  157–8, 159, 235 committees of 120 creation of 42–3 exclusions from parliament by  43–5, 53–4, 92, 110, 124, 131, 140, 166, 220 executive powers of  42, 45 legislative powers of  43, 112 membership of  42–3, 42 n.40, 83 n.37, 92, 93, 104, 155–6: summoned to the Other House  98, 104, 109 order books of  79–80, 127, 160 n.30 Court of Requests  67 Court party  7 in the Third Protectorate Parliament  163, 166, 167, 173–4, 175, 179, 180, 181, 182–3, 184, 188–90, 193–4, 206, 208, 209, 235, see also new Presbyterians 260

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INDEX Covenanters 120 Cowling, Nicholas  27 n.123 Cox, Alban  76, 186 Cranfield, James, 2nd Earl of Middlesex  86 n.60, 88 n.74 Cranfield, Lionel, 3rd Earl of Middlesex 230–1 Crew, John  111, 128, 233, 242 Cromwell, Elizabeth  101 Cromwell, Frances  94, 96 Cromwell, Henry  56, 56 n.138, 60, 62, 64, 73, 78, 79, 80, 80 n.17, 84, 91–2, 95, 101, 107, 108, 110, 119, 125, 126, 128, 129, 154, 155, 156, 157, 160, 162, 167, 183, 196, 198, 201, 214, 242 Cromwell, Mary  95 Cromwell, Oliver  and hereditary government  58, 59, 96, 99, 174, 236 and religion  liberty of conscience  111–12, 113, 115, 116, 121, 235 providence 36, 71 the ‘godly interest’  37–8, 43, 46, 64–5, 90, 121, 235–6 and support for creation of a second chamber  36, 37, 45–6, 52, 58, 63–4, 65, 70, 78, 111, 115, 116, 235–6 see also Other House, membership of, Cromwell’s reasons for nominating and the army  24, 25, 26, 37, 44, 45, 46, 151, 220 and the Council  42–3, 44 and the House of Lords  26, 46, 90–1 and the nobility  89–96 and the Nominated Assembly (1653) 41–2 and the nomination of a successor  157, 159, 168, 197 and the offer of kingship (1657)  3, 4, 5, 36, 37, 54, 55, 57, 58, 70–2, 73, 84, 129, 144, 234, 236 conferral of titles of honour by  96–8, 233 n.20 death of  156–7, 235 dissolution of parliaments by  40–1, 44, 150–4, 160, 220

elected to the Short and Long Parliament (1640)  89 funeral of  158–60 inauguration as Lord Protector  in 1653  42 in 1657  73, 78, 94, 97, 108 meeting with the hundred officers (1657)  37, 44, 45, 46, 52, 61, 64, 65, 70, 111, 115 meetings with confidants  56, 80, 111 parliamentarian proposal to confer peerage upon  14, 14 n.43 political outlook of  5, 36, 43, 45, 58, 84, 116, 121, 235–6 relationship with parliaments  37–9, 40–1, 44, 46, 116, 133–5, 235–6 reputation for social subversion  90 rise from obscurity of  89, 102 speeches of  5 n.11, 58–9, 78, 96, 100–1, 111, 112, 122, 133–5, 135 n.89, 152–4 see also Other House, nomination of, by Oliver Cromwell Cromwell, Richard  57, 64, 82, 242, 106 n.186, 107 as Lord Protector and the army officers  196, 201 n.46, 202–4, 214, 217, 218–19, 236 and the old peers  94, 161, 162 fall of  7, 218–19, 220–2, 236 speeches of  168, 168 n.79 succession to the Protectorate of  157–8, 168, 169, 195, 197, 235 summons to the Other House  81–2, 101 crypto-Royalists  165, 171, 175–7, 182, 183, 187–8, 189, 195, 235 Cumberland  97, 117 Cust, Richard (historian)  85 Darley, Henry  134 n.84 Denbigh, 2nd Earl of, see Fielding, Basil Dendy, Edward  131 Derbyshire  117, 117 n.260 Desborough, John  42, 42 n.39, 48, 54, 70, 75–6, 101, 102, 107, 107 n.188, 107 n.190, 114 n.242, 116, 148, 151, 155, 156 n.7, 157, 158, 196, 200–1, 202, 203, 206 n.87, 213, 214, 216, 217, 219, 242 261

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INDEX Dethick, Henry  159 n.25 Devereux, Robert, 3rd Earl of Essex  14 n.43, 14–15, 23 Devon 117 Digby, John, 1st Earl of Bristol  97, 99, 173 Doddridge, John  140 n.121, 143 Dorset 117 Dorset, 5th Earl of, see Sackville, Richard Downing, George  52, 55 n.126 Drake, Francis  136 n.93, 143 n.133, 163, 184 Dunbar, Battle of (1650)  120 Dunch, Edmund, 1st Baron Burnell of East Wittenham 98 Durham  103, 117 Dutch Republic  16 Earle, Erasmus  199 Earle, Sir Walter  166, 176, 188 n.232, 209 Edgar, Thomas  172–3 Edinburgh 120 Egloff, Carol (historian)  53–4, 55, 142, 166 Ejectors  43, 112, 113, 115–16 Ellis, Sir William  163, 183 Engagement, The (1648)  120 Engagement (oath)  95–6, 132 Essex 117 Essex, 3rd Earl of, see Devereux, Robert Eure, George, 6th Baron Eure  89, 95, 106 n.183, 108–9, 117 n.261, 126, 242 Eure, William, 4th Baron Eure  95 Evelyn, Sir John  15 Exchequer Chamber, Court of  66 Exclusion Crisis (1679–81)  232 Fairfax, Ferdinando, 2nd Baron Fairfax of Cameron  14 n.43 Fairfax, Sir Thomas, later 3rd Baron Fairfax of Cameron  14, 14 n.43, 87, 92 Falkland, 4th Viscount, see Cary, Henry Fauconberg, Lord see Belasyse, Thomas Fielding, Basil, 2nd Earl of Denbigh  30 n.142, 87 n.62, 87–8, 88 n.76, 92–3

Fiennes, John  109, 111, 159, 242 Fiennes, Nathaniel  42 n.40, 44–5, 53, 54, 54 n.124, 76, 104, 109, 111, 130, 133, 156 n.7, 242 as Speaker of the Other House  122–4, 130, 133, 148, 152, 168 n.79, 210, 211, 219, 220 Fiennes, William, 1st Viscount Saye and Sele  14 n.43, 86, 86 n.60, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 103, 111, 126–7, 130, 138, 162, 187, 230, 231, 242 Fifth Monarchists  150 Filmer, Sir Robert  20 n.77 Firth, Charles Harding (historian)  1–2, 3 n.9, 54, 61, 83 n.33, 195 Fleetwood, Charles  42, 70, 79, 101, 104, 107, 107 n.188, 108, 113, 119–20, 126, 151, 152, 155, 156 n.7, 157, 158–9, 196, 198, 203, 204, 206, 206 n.87, 214, 216, 217, 218, 219, 243 Fleetwood, Sir George  83, 99 n.139, 107 n.188, 109, 109 n.206, 159, 243 Foster, Elizabeth Read (historian)  2 Four Bills, The (1647)  14, 186 Fowell, Edmund  139, 150, 179, 181 France, ambassador of  57, 59 n.154, 150–1, 161, 171, 172, 195, 200, 201, 205, 218, 219–20 Gell, John parliamentary diary of  6 n.13, 177, 209, 209 n.102, 212 n.122 General Council of Officers  203, 213–14, 216, 217, 221, 228, 228 n.217 Humble Representation and Petition of (1659) 203–4 Gerard, Sir Glibert  93 n.108, 101, 103, 111, 128, 243 Gewen, Thomas  137, 144, 165 n.64, 166, 177, 188 Giavarina, Franceso, see Venetian residents  Gibbes, William  131, 140, 142, 143 Gloucestershire 117 Glynne, John  47, 49–50, 50–1, 51, 65, 84, 104, 109, 117 n.261, 128, 243 262

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INDEX Goddard, Guybon parliamentary diary of  6 n.13, 173 n.119, 181, 185 Godfrey, Lambert  52, 72, 163, 164, 166 n.68, 169 n.90, 172 n.109, 182, 186 n.220, 209 n.102 Goffe, William  48, 72, 101, 102, 107, 107 n.188, 109 n.206, 113 n.239, 116, 151, 196 n.5, 202, 203, 206, 206 n.87, 243 Goodrick, Francis  176, 189 n.241 Gookin, Vincent  56 Gordon, John, 14th Earl of Sutherland  80 Gorges, Thomas  183 Goring, George, 1st Baron Goring  173 Gott, Samuel  163, 166 n.68, 172 n.109, 183 Great Seal creation of (1643)  14–15, 15 n.47 creation of (1649)  32 lords commissioners of  66, 81, 104, 122, 219 Greville, Robert, 2nd Baron Brooke  23 Grey, Henry, 10th Earl of Kent  30 n.142, 87 n.62, 88 n.74 Grey, William, 1st Baron Grey of Warke  30 n.142, 87, 88 n.76 Grove, Thomas  164, 182, 210, 211, 211 n.116, 212 Guthrie, James  57 Hale, Matthew  147 Hall, John  40 Hamilton, James, 1st Duke of Hamilton 120 Hampden, John  84 Hampden, Richard  84, 101, 109, 161 n.37, 216, 216 n.155, 219, 243 Hampshire 117 Hampton Court Palace  95 Harrington, James and Oceana (1656)  174, 224 and The Art of Law-Giving (1659)  174–5, 224 and the balance of property  174–5, 224, 226 and the decline of the nobility  103, 174–5, 178

influence of ideas in Third Protectorate Parliament  164, 174, 175, 185–6, 224 proposals for a Senate  224–7, 229 Harringtonians  164, 174, 175, 185–6, 229 schemes presented to the Rump by (1659)  225 n.201, 226, 227 Hart, James (historian)  2–3, 68 Harvey, Edmund  132 Haselrig, Sir Arthur  103, 110, 125, 134, 134 n.84, 137, 139, 148–9, 152, 159 n.25, 162, 164, 170 n.93, 182, 185, 186, 187–8, 190, 192, 212, 213, 222, 243 Hatsell, Henry  173–4, 177 n.151 Haynes, Hezekiah  131, 138 Heads of the Proposals (1647)  14, 39 n.17 Hele, John  165 Henry VII, King  174 Herbert, John  188 Herbert, Philip, 4th Earl of Pembroke  14 n.43, 30 n.142, 86 n.60, 87, 87 n.62, 88, 88 n.74, 92 n.97 Herefordshire 117 Hertfordshire  92, 117 Hewley, John  164, 170 n.95, 173, 187, 188 n.232, 208, 209 Hewson, Sir John  99 n.139, 102, 106, 107, 107 n.190, 109 n.206, 114 n.242, 118, 119, 126, 151, 159, 196, 206 n.87, 216, 217, 232, 243 Hill, Roger  131 Hobart, John  124, 144, 152, 189 n.241 Hobart, Sir John  101, 109 n.206, 113, 115–16, 161 n.37, 243 Hobbes, Thomas  8 Holles, Denzil  14, 14 n.43 Honywood, Sir Thomas  103, 110, 243 Hooke, William  146, 197 n.13 House of Commons see also Parliaments and free parliaments  38, 39, 46 and godly interest  37–8, 42, 235–6 exclusions from  43–6, 53–4, 124 qualifications on electorate  39–40, 39 n.17, 43, 45, 229 qualifications on membership of  39–40, 39 n.17, 41 n.30, 43, 44–5

263

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INDEX House of Lords see also peers abolition of (1649)  1, 5, 8, 9, 31–5, 75, 86, 87, 88, 91, 132, 139, 140, 176, 180, 193 and parliamentary supremacy  4–5, 8–12, 17–18, 21–2, 28, 29, 31–2, 33, 34, 177, 193 and the Levellers  17–24, 178 and the trial of Charles I  30–1, 86 antiquity of  19–20, 24, 27 as a constitutional balance  11, 13, 126 assistants to  21, 27 attendance in  85–7 ceremonials used by  207 clerk of  146 committee for petitions  65 n.191, 65–6, 68, 145–6 election of members to House of Commons  18, 35, 87, 88, 92 exclusion of bishops from  11–12 exclusion of Royalist peers  23, 85–6, 230, 231 n.10 historical studies of  2–3 journal of  86 judicial functions of  17, 20–21, 27, 33, 34, 35, 46–7, 65–6, 67–9 impeachment proceedings  47, 68–9, 205 see also writs of error legislative powers of  14–15, 17, 18, 19, 21–22, 25, 26–8, 31–2, 33–4, 35, 140–1, 178 membership during the Civil Wars  23 modern reform of  1 petition books of  147 plans for parliamentary approval of future members of  11–14, 23, 63, 86, 141, 178, 186–7, 229, 230 privileges of  16, 17, 18, 27, 28, 35, 87, 173, 230, 233 relationship with House of Commons  1, 2, 9, 11–17, 30–2, 89, 185, 233 restoration of (1660)  7, 230–1 Speaker of  96 standing orders of  146 writ of summons to  81, 97, 99, 173

see also Cromwell, Oliver, and the House of Lords House of Lords Act (1999)  1 Howard, Charles, 1st Viscount Morpeth later 1st Earl of Carlisle  95 n.117, 97, 107, 107 n.188, 113, 114 n.242, 120, 128, 196 n.5, 206, 206 n.87, 219, 233, 233 n.20, 243 Howard, Charles, 3rd Earl of Nottingham  30 n.142, 88 n.76 Howard, Edward, 1st Baron Howard of Escrick  88, 88 n.76, 92 Howard, James, 3rd Earl of Suffolk  85, 88 n.75 Howe, John  146, 197 n.13 Howe, John Grobham  165 Humble Petition and Addresse of the Officers of the Army (1659)  222 Humble Petition and Advice (1657)  3, 5, 36, 45–6, 58, 74–7, 81, 82, 94, 99, 109, 119, 123, 126, 133–4, 136, 139, 143, 144, 152, 153, 157, 160, 165, 167, 168, 169–70, 176–7, 178, 180, 182, 183, 185, 186, 187, 190, 200, 220, 221, 229, 235, 236 and Oliver Cromwell’s refusal of the Crown  73, 73 n.242 defences of in second session of Second Protectorate Parliament  123–4, 133–4, 153 development from Humble Remonstrance  60–5, 67–70, 110, 136, 153 non-negotiability of  70–2 Oliver Cromwell gives assent to  73 Oliver Cromwell’s suggested amendments to  71–2 presented to Oliver Cromwell  64, 69, 70 see also Other House, and The Humble Petition and Advice Humble Remonstrance (1657)  35, 37, 45, 52, 54, 59–65, 68, 69–70, 74–5, 76, 109, 110, 129, 153 and the succession of the single person  57–8, 236 authorship of  53, 55

264

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INDEX Kelsey, Thomas  131, 175, 177 Kennedy, John, 6th Earl of Cassillis  80, 104 n.175, 110, 118, 120, 128, 244 Kent  117, 118 n.262 Kent, 10th Earl of, see Grey, Henry Killigrew, Sir Peter  165 kingship abolition of (1649)  4, 32, 34, 139, 177, 180 ideas concerning the nature of  9–10, 11–12, 28, 29–30 see also Cromwell, Oliver, and the offer of kingship (1657) ‘kingship’ party  36, 53, 55, 72, 107, 234 see also civilian Cromwellians; Presbyterians (political), in the first session of the Second Protectorate Parliament (1656–7) Knightley, Richard  164 Kynnersley, Clement, Master of the Wardrobe 122

genesis of  56–7, 58–9, 59 n.154, 236 see also Other House, and The Humble Remonstrance Hungerford, Edward  165, 183, 185 n.204 Hungerford, Henry  166, 188 Hunsdon, Lord, see Carey, John Huntingdonshire 117 Hyde, Sir Edward, later Earl of Clarendon  165, 184, 192 n.260, 196, 200, 230 Independents (political)  30, 39, 86, 229 in House of Lords  86, 90–1, 92 Independents (religious)  111, 112, 112 n.231, 113, 146, 197, 197 n.13 Ingoldsby, Richard  84, 101, 107, 109 n.206, 151, 196 n.5, 202–3, 206, 206 n.87, 243 Instrument of Government (1653)  35, 37 n.6, 42–3, 42 n.35, 42, n.40, 43, 44, 45, 47, 48, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 56, 60, 62, 96, 110, 112, 115, 118, 161 Ireland 39–40 Cromwellian government of  108, 119, 120 n.271, 128 lord deputyship of  104, 119 MPs for  54, 118, 119, 125, 161, 164, 189 Ireton, Henry  24, 25, 26 n.111, 26–8, 29–30, 91 Jephson, William  54, 70, 71 John, King  99 Johnston, Sir Archibald, of Wariston  57, 59, 59 n.154, 79, 80, 104 n.175, 108, 118, 120, 121, 128, 162, 192, 198, 210, 212, 214, 215, 228, 243 Jones, John  39–40, 101, 106, 106 n.187, 109, 109 n.206, 117 n.261, 119, 219, 243 Jones, Philip  42, 42 n.39, 48, 53, 74, 82–3, 98, 99–100, 103, 104, 106, 106 n.187, 109, 110, 114 n.242, 116, 117 n.261, 156 n.7, 219, 243 Jones, Sarah (historian)  112 junto of nine (1658)  156, 156 n.7, 157

Lambert, John  42, 42 n.39, 47, 51, 52, 53, 188 n.232, 203 Lancashire 117 Laud, William  49 Lawrence, Henry  42, 42 n.39, 53, 109, 114, 115, 116, 148, 219, 244 Lechmere, Nicholas  163, 182, 183 n.188 Leicester, 2nd Earl of, see Sidney, Robert Leicestershire 117 Lenthall, Sir John  169 Lenthall, William  54, 65, 83–4, 84 n.41, 100, 104, 109, 115–16, 169, 197–8, 244 Levellers  9, 17–24, 25, 27, 29, 30, 90–1, 115, 178 liberty of conscience  50, 111–12, 113, 114, 115, 121, 211–13, 223, 227, 228, 236 Life Peerages Act (1958)  1 Lilburne, John  17–18, 19, 20, 24, 30, 90 Lincoln, 4th Earl of, see Clinton, Theophilus Lincolnshire 117 Lisle, John  51, 54, 54 n.124, 65, 66, 104, 109, 148, 217, 219, 244 265

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INDEX Lisle, Viscount, see Sidney, Philip Little, Patrick (historian)  3, 60, 166 Littleton, Edward  14 Lockhart, Sir William  82, 83, 83 n.33, 83 n.34, 99 n.139, 101, 106 n.186, 107, 118, 120, 128, 132, 162, 196, 244 Lockyer, Nicholas  146, 197 n.13 Loftus, Dudley  214 London  38, 50, 85, 92, 102, 106–7, 117, 118, 118 n.262, 147, 148, 176, 204, 206, 207, 214, 217, 218, 219 n.171 London, Museum of  5–6 Long, Sir Lislebone  132, 180–1 Lord Protector as fountain of honour  96–8 juridical powers of  49–50, 51, 67 legislative powers of  50, 51, 116, 124, 170 succession of  54, 57, 58–9, 96, 156, 157, 168–9, 236 see also Cromwell, Oliver; Cromwell, Richard Ludlow, Edmund  55, 73, 83–4, 100, 102–3, 121, 126, 197, 213–14, 219, 221–2, 223–4, 228, 229 Mabbott, Gilbert  62 n.171, 79, 88, 98, 118, 160–1, 206, 221 Mackworth, Humphrey  42 n.40 Magna Carta  17, 20–1, 172, 190 Mahlberg, Gaby (historian)  166 n.72, 185–6 Major, Richard  42 n.39 major-generals, rule of the  45, 54, 107, 107 n.188, 156, 202, 205, 206 see also Militia Bill (1656–7) Manchester, 2nd Earl of, see Montagu, Edward Manley, John  170 n.95 Master of the Rolls, see Lenthall, William Matthews, Joachim  74–5, 132, 141, 141 n.125m 141 n.128, 143, 186 Matthews, Nancy (historian)  67 n.200 Maynard, Sir John  150, 163, 166 n.68, 179, 183, 184 Maynard, William, 2nd Baron Maynard  88 n.75

Mazarin, Cardinal Jules Raymond  150, 195 Mercurius Politicus (newsbook), 83 Middlesex 117 Middlesex, 2nd Earl of, see Cranfield, James Middlesex, 3rd Earl of, see Cranfield, Lionel Mildmay, Henry  134 n.84 military Cromwellians  155, 156, 158–9, 163 and religion  115 and the Conservators of Liberty (1659) 228 and the offer of kingship  55, 61, 70, 73, 107 and the Other House attitudes towards  60, 61, 70, 75–7, 79, 138, 222, 229 influence in  200–1, 203, 204, 206–7, 215–17, 219, 220–1, 236 membership of  107–9, 121, 128–9, 195–6, 215–16, 219, 236 definition of  107 emergence of  36, 45, 53 Militia Bill (1656–7)  54, 55 Monck, George  55, 61, 62, 63, 82 n.28, 83, 83 n.33, 83 n.34, 95 n.117, 104 n.175, 107, 120, 128, 161, 161 n.37, 162, 191, 196, 212, 230, 230 n.4, 233, 244 Monmouthshire 117 Montagu, Edward  42, 42 n.39, 53, 76, 78, 79, 80, 82–3, 98, 99, 104, 109, 116, 195, 196 n.5, 233, 244 Montagu, Edward, 2nd Earl of Manchester  14 n.43, 14–15, 17, 89, 90, 93 n.108, 95–6, 110, 126, 127, 162, 187, 230, 244 Moore, Sir Henry  162 Mordaunt, John  184, 190, 230 Morgan, Anthony  108, 183, 214 Morice, William  166, 183, 185, 208 Morley, Herbert  118, 138, 143, 184–5, 188 Morpeth, 1st Viscount, see Howard, Charles Morrill, John (historian)  89 266

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INDEX Mulgrave, 2nd Earl of, see Sheffield, Edmund Munster (Ireland)  119 Nayler, James  case of  46–52, 56, 65, 66, 69, 205, 206, 212 and definition of his crimes  46–8 and laws against blasphemy  48–9 and judicial authority of the Commons  46–7, 49, 50, 51–2, 69 contributions to debate by future members of Other House  113–15, 114 n.242 Oliver Cromwell’s response to  51–2 punishment of  50, 115 Nedham, Marchamont  42–3, 87, 126, 158 Neville, Henry  164, 175, 182, 185–6, 226 new Presbyterians  163–4, 166, 166 n.68, 167, 169, 170, 171, 193–4, 235, see also Presbyterians (political) in the Third Protectorate Parliament (1659) and objections to restoring the old peers  173–4, 178–9, 180–1 and sympathy for the old peers  172, 173, 182, 235 and the Other House  170, 171, 179–80, 181, 193–4, 208, 209, 235 religious outlook of  211 Newcastle Propositions (1646)  14 Newdigate, Richard  147, 148, 149 Newport Negotiations (1648)  14, 30, 86, 86 n.60, 93, 137, 141, 186–7, 230, 234, 235 Nicholas, Sir Edward  191, 209 Nineteen Propositions (1642)  12–13 nobility see also peers creation of baronies by letters patent  97–8, 99–100 creation of baronies by writ of summons 99–100 decline of  2, 24, 103, 126–7, 174–5, 178, 185 political authority of  22–3, 24, 89, 185

see also Cromwell, Oliver, and the nobility Norfolk  109, 117, 158 North, Dudley, 3rd Baron North  87 Northamptonshire 117 Northcote, Sir John  166, 171 n.106, 175, 180, 184, 189 n.241 Northumberland  103, 117 Northumberland, 10th Earl of, see Percy, Algernon Nottingham, 3rd Earl of, see Howard, Charles Nottinghamshire  102, 117 Nye, Philip  57 old Presbyterians  165–7, 230, see also Presbyterians (political) in the Third Protectorate Parliament (1659)  and crypto-Royalists  165, 166, 171, 175, 177, 183 and the old peers  171–3, 175–8, 182, 182 n.181, 187–8, 192, 235 and the Other House  171–2, 179–80, 182, 184­­–8, 191, 208, 235 attitudes towards monarchy  165 Onslow, Sir Richard  49, 93 n.108, 102–3, 109, 113, 116, 148, 216 n.155, 244 Other House  and Bills of naturalization  147 and kingship  4, 5, 36–7, 52–3, 69–70, 76, 82, 136, 144, 153, 233 and hereditary titles of honour  85, 97–100, 126, 173–4, 179, 236 and the constitutional foundations of the Protectorate  75, 130–2, 136, 139–40, 175, 176–7, 180, 183, 193–4, 209, 235, 236 and the House of Lords  5, 6, 52–3, 57, 59, 59–60, 62, 63, 65, 67–8, 75, 81, 83, 85, 96, 99–100, 122, 123, 126–7, 129–31, 133, 135–44, 145–6, 147, 149, 150, 159, 160, 161, 171, 172, 179–80, 193, 200, 207–8, 209, 233, 235, 236 and The Additional and Explanatory Petition and Advice  74–6, 81, 82, 85, 130, 140–1, 141 n.123, 162 267

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INDEX Commons’ debates concerning  6 in first session of Second Protectorate Parliament (1657)  60–5, 67–9, 234 in second session of Second Protectorate Parliament (1658)  131–2, 133–45, 234–5 in Third Protectorate Parliament (1659)  167, 169–90, 199–200, 234–5 historical studies of  3–4, 5, 233 interactions with the House of Commons  131–2, 148–50, 198, 201, 207–11, 214–15, 219–20, 221 journal of  5 n.11, 5–6, 125, 135 n.89, 145, 147–8, 148 n.155, 152, 197, 200, 212, 212 n.126, 215, 216, 219 judicial functions of  65, 67–9, 124, 140, 141, 143, 173 in impeachment proceedings  68–9, 205–6 see also writs of error legacies of  7, 231–3 legislative powers of  69, 123–4, 132, 140, 141, 143, 168, 185, 208, 209, 213, 235, 236 membership of  5, 161 administrative experience of  104, 105, 118, 119, 120, 121, 184–5 age of  84, 95, 105–6 and creation of scheme for Other House  76, 185 and non-hereditary office  59, 62, 85, 99–100, 173–4, 179–81, 200 and Oliver Cromwell’s funeral 159–60 British dimension of  118–21, 128 critiques of  101–4, 106, 118, 126, 132, 137–8, 154, 175, 184–6, 191–3, 202, 231–2 Cromwell’s reasons for nominating  78, 89, 91–6, 101–2, 104, 106, 111, 116, 117, 119, 121, 236 geographical origins of  117–18, 121 Irish members of  117, 118–20, 121, 128, 162

Other House (cont.) and The Humble Petition and Advice 3, 5, 36, 60–5, 67–9, 69–70, 71–2, 74–6, 85, 99–100, 130, 135–6, 139–40, 141, 143–4, 150, 159, 161, 173, 175, 176–7, 179, 180, 182, 186, 193, 198, 200, 209, 235 and The Humble Remonstrance 52, 57–9, 59–60, 61–5, 68, 69, 236 and the Nominated Assembly (1653)  62, 95, 97, 105, 113 and the right of the old peers to sit  62, 75, 85, 100, 126–7, 137–8, 161, 171–90, 199–201 and the supremacy of the House of Commons  63–4, 130, 132, 136, 140–1, 142, 143–4, 191, 193–4, 207–9, 234 as a constitutional ‘balance’  6, 63–4, 69, 72, 74–5. 121, 129, 136, 185, 201, 208, 209, 213, 235 assistants to  83–4, 123–4, 128, 131, 147, 148–9, 150, 199, 209 attendance in  6, 121 during Second Protectorate Parliament (1658)  125–9, 145 n.141, 145–6, 151 during Third Protectorate Parliament (1659)  128, 162, 199, 199 n.32, 206 n.87, 206–7, 215–16, 217, 219 business conducted by  5–6 during Second Protectorate Parliament (1658)  131, 145–50 during Third Protectorate Parliament (1659)  194, 197–201, 202, 204, 206–7, 212–13, 217–18 ceremonials adopted by  122, 129, 207–11, 215, 219–20 clerk of  146, 152, 220 committees appointed by  147, 148, 197, 197 n.12, 199, 199 n.28, 202, 204 for petitions  145–6, 197 for privileges  145, 197

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INDEX military experience of  97, 102, 106, 107 ‘new’ lords  101–6, 126, 154, 160 number of  59, 63, 80–1, 83, 113, 187, 200 ‘old’ lords  62, 75, 85–96, 99, 100–1, 103, 104–5, 125–7, 137, 139, 143, 154, 160, 161, 187, 190, 233 parliamentary experience of  93, 95, 97, 104–5, 113, 125 political outlook of  107–11, 115–16, 119, 120, 121, 128–9, 195–6, 215–6, 236 see also civilian Cromwellians, membership of the Other House; military Cromwellians, and the Other House, membership of printed lists of names of  83, 118, 120, 186 qualifications on  59, 62–3, 138, 142 regicides  109, 109 n.206 relations of Oliver Cromwell  84, 94–5, 96, 101–2, 119, 120, 121 religious outlook of  110, 112–16, 121, 138, 212–13, 236 representative nature of  117–18, 121 Royalist background of  95, 95 n.117, 97 salaries of  104, 184–5 Scottish members of  117, 118, 120–1, 128, 162 serving army officers in  106–7, 118, 119, 120, 126, 139, 184, 195–6 social standing of  101, 102–4, 105, 126, 132, 137–8, 139, 175, 185, 191, 231–2, 233 titles of honour held by  97–100, 102–3, 119, 233 Welsh members of  117, 117 n.261 military character of  106, 129, 184, 191, 195–6, 203, 214, 220–1, 236 ministers appointed to pray before  146, 197 nomination of and Commons’ approbation  63–5, 72, 74–6, 85, 127, 129, 140, 153, 178–9, 184, 186–7, 189

and Richard Cromwell  161–2 by Oliver Cromwell (Dec. 1657)  5, 58, 59, 78–84, 88–9, 162 replacement members of  62, 64, 71–2, 85, 162, 181, 186, 200 role played by Lord Protector in  62, 63, 70, 71, 72, 73–7. 140, 162 oath taken by members of  122, 123, 167 origins of scheme for  5, 58–9, 59–60 petitions to  147 printed attacks on  190–3, 232 see also Second Narrative of the Late Parliament private Bills of  147 privileges of  134, 135, 137, 145, 200 public Bills of  147, 197–8, 199, 200–1, 202, 204, 204 n.71, 207, 207 n.88, 217, 217 n.162 Bill for recognising Richard Cromwell as Lord Protector (1659)  197–8, 197 n.14 quorum in  63, 145, 199, 206–7, 216 religious debates in  212–13 Speaker of  122–4, 168 n.79 styled as a House of Lords  6, 122, 129–32, 133–4, 135–45, 147, 149–50, 152–3, 159, 160, 161, 167–8, 193, 200, 209, 235 votes by proxy in  63, 111 writs of assistance and  83–4 writs of summons to  62, 73–4, 78–9, 81–2, 82 n.28, 97, 98, 99–100, 126–7, 135 Overton, Richard  17–18, 19 Overton, Robert  202 Owen, John  203 Oxford  85, 86, 158 Oxfordshire  103, 117 Packe, Sir Christopher  53, 57, 99 n.139, 109, 116, 118, 244 Parker, Henry  9–10, 11, 33 Parliament Act (1911)  1 Parliament Act (1949)  1 parliamentarian political thought and mixed government  11 and representation  10–12, 17–18 and sovereignty  8–12, 19, 31, 177, 226 269

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INDEX parliamentary diaries see Burton, Thomas; Gell, John; Goddard, Guybon Parliaments see also House of Commons; House of Lords; Other House Convention Parliament (1660)  230, 231 First Protectorate Parliament (1654–5) 43–44 Constitutional Bill of  44, 234 Long Parliament (1640–8)  12, 111, 112 n.231, 128, 226 and Pride’s Purge  30, 38, 86, 88, 137, 165, 180 Act against dissolution of (1641)  176, 190 peace proposals of  13–14 relationship between Commons and Lords in  11–12, 14–16 Triennial Act of (1641)  176 Nominated Assembly (1653)  40–2, 66, 113 membership of  41–2, 41 n.30, 43, 62, 95, 113 see also Other House, and the Nominated Assembly (1653) Rump Parliament (1648–53)  8, 34, 39–41, 186 assertion of Commons’ supremacy by (1649)  31, 32, 35, 39 see also House of Lords, abolition of Rump Parliament (1659–60) 221–2, 227 Second Protectorate Parliament (1656–8) first session (1656–7)  44–5, 46–52, 53–9, 59–77. 78 expected dissolution of 56 proposed Bill for catechizing (1657)  116, 116 n.257 see also Humble Petition and Advice (1657); Humble Remonstrance (1657); Militia Bill, (1656–7); Nayler, James, case of; Other House, Commons’ debates concerning second session (1658)  5 , 122–4, 129–54 admittance of excluded members to  124–5, 131, 134, 134 n.84

composition of Commons  124–5, 235 dissolution of  128, 152–4 opening of 122, 129 see also Other House, Commons’ debates concerning Third Protectorate Parliament (1659)  5, 189, 217, 218 and the army  201–2, 204–6, 214–15, 217 and the Bill for recognising Richard Cromwell as Protector  168–70, 197, 198 and the declaration for a fast day  207, 211 n.118, 211–12 and the declaration for banishing Cavaliers from London  218 composition of Commons in  160–1, 162–7 decision to summon  155–6, 160–1 dissolution of  218–20, 236 opening of 167–8 see also Other House, Commons’ debates concerning Peacey, Jason (historian)  161, 166 n.72 Pedley, Nicholas  135, 173 peers and fidelity to the parliamentarian cause  85–6, 86 n.56, 88, 172, 175, 182, 182 n.181, 183 and Royalism  85–6, 103, 173–4 and the desire for settlement  85 and the New Model Army  87 and the Protectorate  93, 93 n.108, 94, 160, 161 privileges of  75, 126–7, 130, 138, 172–6, 180–1, 182, 183, 187–8, 190, 200, 231, 233 service to the Commonwealth regime by  87–88, 92 sympathy for  35, 171–2, 175, 177–8, 183 Pembroke, 4th Earl of, see Herbert, Philip Percy, Algernon, 10th Earl of Northumberland  14 n.43, 86, 86 n.60, 93–4, 161, 162 Perrott, Herbert  165 Peters, Hugh  146, 197 n.13 Petty, Maximilian  25

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INDEX Petty Bag  81, 84 n.41 Pickering, Sir Gilbert  42, 42 n.39, 83, 104, 107–8, 156 n.7, 162, 228, 244 Pierrepont, William  56, 80, 80 n.17, 102, 111, 128, 161 n.37, 244 Popham, Alexander  102, 110, 113, 161 n.37, 244 Popish Plot (1678–81)  232 Portman, John  202 Presbyterians (political) see also new Presbyterians; old Presbyterians  86, 88, 142, 227, 229 and the Solemn League and Covenant  179–80, 182 attempted coup by (1647)  86 definition of  142, 234 historians’ treatment of  6–7, 142, 234 impeachment of peers  86, 88, 88 n.74 in the First Protectorate Parliament (1654–5)  35, 44, 60, 234 in the first session of the Second Protectorate Parliament (1656–7) and attitudes towards the creation of the Other House  60, 62, 63, 72, 74–6, 127, 129, 142–3, 153, 234 and attitudes towards the proposed constitution  60–1, 142–3, 153, 234 and religious reform  115–16, 116 n.257 and support for the offer of kingship  53, 55, 109, 234 and the case of James Nayler  49, 51–2, 115 exclusion of  44, 53, 131, 140–1, 143, 163 in the second session of the Second Protectorate Parliament (1658) and attitudes towards The Humble Petition and Advice  131, 132–3, 134, 142, 143–4 and critiques of the Other House  131–2, 140–2, 143–4 and defences of the Other House  135–6, 138–9, 143, 235

and support for old peers  131, 138, 143 and the Republicans  131 and the revival of offer of kingship 144 in the Third Protectorate Parliament (1659) problems of defining  163, 166 n.72, 166–7 see also new Presbyterians; old Presbyterians membership of the Other House  109–10, 116, 116 n.257 Presbyterians (religious)  111, 112, 112 n.231, 113, 146, 197 n.13, 198, 211 Pride, Sir Thomas  99 n.139, 102, 105 n.180, 107, 109 n.206, 126, 162, 162 n.41, 195 196, 232, 244 Prideaux, Sir Edmund  149, 163, 173, 177 n.150, 179, 180, 182, 183, 189 Privy Council  12, 229, see also Council of State Protectorate (1653–59) historical debates over collapse of  7, 221, 233–4 historical debates over nature of  3–4, 36, 233–4, 235 monarchical nature of  3–4, 6, 157–9, 167–8, 179, 197, 235 proposals for law reform under  66–7 religious reforms under  112, 115–16 supporters of see civilian Cromwellians; Court party; military Cromwellians; new Presbyterians see also Army, and the downfall of the Protectorate Protestors (Scottish)  108, 120–1 Prynne, William  10–11, 19–24, 27, 27 n.123, 100, 103, 172, 190 Publick Intelligencer, The (newsbook)  83, 158 Putney debates (1647)  25–8, 29, 33, 91 Quakers  114–15, 211, 212, 213, see also Nayler, James Rainsborough, Thomas  25 Raleigh, Carey  170 n.95, 173 271

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INDEX Ranters 115 Reading (Berkshire)  38 Remonstrance of the Army (1648)  29, 30, 39 Representation of the Army (1647)  38 Republicanism debate over the nature of  4 Republicans  6–7, 123, 229, 234, 235 and schemes for a second chamber  7, 164, 222–3, 228 and the army  206, 221–3 and the Other House  106–7, 131, 136–7, 139–40, 144–5, 149, 184–7, 192–3, 195, 207–8 excluded from the Second Protectorate Parliament (1656)  110, 125 in the First Protectorate Parliament (1654–5) 44 in the second session of the Second Protectorate Parliament (1658)  125, 131, 136–7, 144–5, 148–9 and Presbyterians  137, 142, 143 in the Third Protectorate Parliament (1659)  162, 164, 166, 167, 169, 170–1, 174, 181, 183, 184–7, 189, 205–6, 207–8, 209, 212 and crypto-Royalists  165, 183–4, 185 and the old peers  174–5, 185–8 problems of defining  164 Resolutioners (Scottish)  120 Reynell, Thomas  132 Reynolds, Sir John  60 Reynolds, Robert  170 n.93 Rich, Robert, 2nd Earl of Warwick  14 n.43, 89, 93 n.108, 94, 101, 110, 126, 127, 162, 162 n.41, 244 Rich, Robert (Warwick’s grandson)  94–5, 96, 102, 127 Rivers, 3rd Earl, see Savage, Thomas  Robartes, John, 2nd Baron Robartes  14 n.43 Roberts, Sir William  104, 109, 245 Rolle, Francis  161 n.37 Roose, Richard  49 Rous, Francis  42 n.39, 51, 106, 109, 113 n.239, 162, 162 n.41, 245 Rowe, John  146

Royalists see also crypto-Royalists  13, 14, 20, 23, 31, 34, 39, 44, 85, 86, 87, 93, 94, 95, 103, 104, 120, 123, 155, 156, 163, 164, 189, 191–3, 196, 198, 200, 204, 209, 217, 218, 218 n.166, 232 excluded from elections  39, 39 n.17, 40, 43, 229, 230–1 proposals to exclude from London  148, 204, 207, 217–18 Rushworth, John  161 Russell, Sir Francis  84, 96, 101, 110, 159, 245 Rutland  117, 117 n.260 Rutt, John Towell  6 n.13, 37 n.4, 173 n.119, 212 n.122 Sackville, Richard, 5th Earl of Dorset 230–1 Sadler, Thomas  169 St James’s Palace  218 St John, Oliver  56, 84, 101, 104, 111, 128, 245 St Nicholas, Thomas  134 n.84, 170 n.93 Salisbury, 2nd Earl of, see Cecil, William Sankey, Jerome  182–3 Saunders, Thomas  134 n.84 Savage, Thomas, 3rd Earl Rivers  230–1 Saye and Sele, 1st Viscount, see Fiennes, William Scobell, Henry see Other House, clerk of  Scot, Thomas  134 n.84, 137, 139–40, 149, 164, 184, 186, 206, 207–8, 212 Scotland committee of estates in  120 Cromwellian rule in  97, 119, 120, 120 n.271, 128 MPs for  118, 120, 161, 164, 189 see also Protestors; Resolutioners second chambers see also House of Lords; Other House and the rule of a minority  223–4, 226–7, 228 proposals for (in 1659)  221–8 qualifications on membership of  222–3, 224, 227 272

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INDEX Second Narrative of the Late Parliament  101, 102, 103, 109, 110, 124, 125, 126, 128, 145, 154, 192–3 Selden, John  68, 99 Self-Denying Ordinance (1645)  15–16 Sexby, Edward  25, 25 n.105 Shapcott, Robert  75, 143 n.133, 178–9 Sharp, James  164, 213 Sharpe, Kevin (historian)  4 Sheffield, Edmund, 1st Earl of Mulgrave 93 Sheffield, Edmund, 2nd Earl of Mulgrave  30 n.142, 42 n.40, 87, 87 n.62, 88, 88 n.76, 89, 93, 95, 109, 117 n.261, 126, 127, 162, 162 n.41, 245 Sheppard, William  66–7 Sherwood, Roy (historian)  4 Shropshire 117 Sidney, Philip, Viscount Lisle  42 n.39, 89, 108, 118 n.262, 119, 159, 212, 215, 216, 216 n.155, 245 Sidney, Robert, 2nd Earl of Leicester  85, 89 Sidney Sussex College (Cambridge)  5 Simon, Thomas  15 Skippon, Philip  42 n.40, 106–7, 107 n.188, 108, 108 n.199, 114–15, 118, 245 Smith, David (historian)  3, 37–8, 166 Socinians 115 Solemn League and Covenant  16, 179–80, 182, 190 Somerset 117 Spain 44 Staffordshire 117 Starkey, George  164, 169, 170 n.95 Steele, William  108, 119, 128, 128 n.48, 162, 196, 245 Stephens, John  166, 166 n.67, 172 n.107, 172–3, 176, 178, 179, 186, 187, 208, 215 Sterry, Peter  146, 197 n.13 Strafford, 1st Earl of, see Wentworth, Thomas Streete, Thomas  165

Strickland, Walter  42 n.39, 107, 107 n.194, 110, 114, 117 n.261, 216, 217, 228, 245 Stirckland, Sir William  50, 107, 107 n.194, 110, 113, 114, 116, 117 n.261, 245 Stubbe, Henry  227 Styles, Sir Thomas  134 n.84 Suffolk  90, 117 Suffolk, 3rd Earl of, see Howard, James Surrey  109, 117 Sussex 117 Sutherland, 14th Earl of, see Gordon, John Swatland, Andrew (historian)  2 Sweden 148 Swinfen, John  164, 170 n.95, 172, 181, 182, 183, 186, 208 Sydenham, William  42, 42 n.39, 48, 49, 75, 104, 106, 106 n.187, 107, 107 n.194, 114, 115, 203, 217, 219, 245 Tangye Collection (Museum of London), 5–6 Temple, Sir Richard  189 n.241 Terrill, Thomas  166, 172, 173, 176, 183, 202 Thistlethwaite, Alexander  134–5, 138, 143 Thomas, Edmond  103, 106 n.182, 110, 116 n.257, 117 n.261, 245 Thomason, George  19 n.67, 190 n.247, 192 n.265, 224 n.198 Thorpe, Francis  140–1 Thurloe, John  49, 53, 55, 56, 59, 60, 61, 62, 62 n.171, 63, 64, 70, 72, 73, 76, 78–9, 80, 81, 82, 83, 83 n.34, 93, 95, 98, 104, 121, 125, 128, 152, 155, 156, 156 n.7, 157, 158, 160, 162, 163, 167, 168, 170, 182–3, 188, 197, 202, 204, 205 Tichborne, Sir Robert  26, 99 n.139, 104 n.175, 109, 109 n.206, 113, 113 n.239, 118, 118 n.262, 216, 216 n.155, 217, 228, 245 Tomlinson, Sir Matthew  104 n.175, 108, 117 n.261, 119, 128, 128 n.48, 159, 162, 217, 245 Tories 232 273

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INDEX Tower of London  17, 92, 107, 118, 184, 196, 202 Townshend, Sir Horatio  165 Treasury, lords commissioners of the  104 Tregonwell, John  165 Trevor, Sir John  116 Trevor, John  136, 143, 149, 163, 170 n.95, 188, 208 Trevor-Roper, Hugh (historian)  38 Triers  43, 112, 113 n.239 Turner, Edward  149, 166, 183 Underdown, David (historian)  112 n.231 Upper Bench, Court of (also King’s Bench)  66, 205 Uxbridge Treaty (1645)  14 Vane, Sir Henry (junior)  164, 169, 179, 181, 205–6, 212, 212 n.122, 223, 228, 229 Vane, Sir Henry (senior)  14, 14 n.43 Venetian residents  57, 95, 98, 130 Villiers, Robert  165 Wales  117, 162 Waller, Walter  135–6 Waller, Sir William  14, 14 n.43 Wallingford House group  196, 206, 213–14, 217, 228 Walwyn, William  19 Wariston, see Johnston, Archibald Warwick, 2nd Earl of, see Rich, Robert Warwickshire  92, 117 Weaver, John  134 n.84 Wentworth, Thomas, 1st Earl of Strafford  49, 205 Western Association (Scotland)  120 Westminster Abbey  167 Westmorland 117 Whalley, Edward  101, 102, 107, 107 n.188, 109 n.206, 114, 115, 196 n.5, 202, 206, 206 n.87, 212, 245

Wharton, Sir George  192 n.267 Wharton, Philip, 4th Baron Wharton  14 n.43, 85, 89, 90, 91–2, 93, 94, 111, 117 n.261, 125, 126–7, 162, 187, 230, 246 Wheeler, Sir William  174 n.123 Whiggamore Raid (1648)  120 Whigs 232 White, Jeremiah  197 n.13 White, Thomas  205 Whitehall debates (1648)  29 Whitelocke, Bulstrode  32, 32 n.155, 33, 33 n.159, 33 n.161, 34, 41, 47, 49, 53, 54, 56, 58, 65, 69, 80, 81, 87, 99, 102, 104, 109, 113, 118 n.262, 145, 148, 148 n.155, 215, 215 n.151, 219, 219 n.171, 246 Whitgrave, Sir Thomas (Capt.)  136 n.93 Widdrington, Sir Thomas  50–1, 54, 64, 69, 94, 122, 129, 148, 150 Wildman, John  25, 25 n.105, 27, 28 n.127, 90 William I, King  19, 193 Willoughby, Colonel see Black Rod, Gentleman Usher of Willoughby, Francis, 5th Baron Willoughby of Parham  14 n.43, 88 n.75 Wiltshire 117 Wolseley, Sir Charles  42, 42 n.39, 49, 51, 53, 56, 76, 80, 95 n.117, 109, 246 Woolrych, Austin (historian)  164 Worcester, Battle of (1651)  91, 97, 120 Worcestershire 117 Worden, Blair (historian)  55, 80 writs of error  20–1, 65–7, 66 n.197, 68 Wroth, Sir Thomas  174 Wyndham, Hugh  131, 147, 148, 149 Yorkshire  103, 117, 117 n.261 Young, Philip  171 n.105

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STUDIES IN EARLY MODERN CULTURAL, POLITICAL AND SOCIAL HISTORY I Women of Quality Accepting and Contesting Ideals of Femininity in England, 1690–1760 Ingrid H. Tague II Restoration Scotland, 1660–1690 Royalist Politics, Religion and Ideas Clare Jackson III Britain, Hanover and the Protestant Interest, 1688–1756 Andrew C. Thompson IV Hanover and the British Empire, 1700–1837 Nick Harding V The Personal Rule of Charles II, 1681–85 Grant Tapsell VI Royalism, Print and Censorship in Revolutionary England Jason McElligott VII The English Catholic Community, 1688–1745 Politics, Culture and Ideology Gabriel Glickman VIII England and the 1641 Irish Rebellion Joseph Cope IX Culture and Politics at the Court of Charles II, 1660–1685 Matthew Jenkinson X Commune, Country and Commonwealth The People of Cirencester, 1117–1643 David Rollison XI An Enlightenment Statesman in Whig Britain Lord Shelburne in Context, 1737–1805 Edited by Nigel Aston and Clarissa Campbell Orr

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XII London’s News Press and the Thirty Years War Jayne E. E. Boys XIII God, Duty and Community in English Economic Life, 1660–1720 Brodie Waddell XIV Remaking English Society Social Relations and Social Change in Early Modern England Edited by Steve Hindle, Alexandra Shepard and John Walter XV Common Law and Enlightenment in England, 1689–1750 Julia Rudolph XVI The Final Crisis of the Stuart Monarchy The Revolutions of 1688–91 in their British, Atlantic and European Contexts Edited by Stephen Taylor and Tim Harris XVII The Civil Wars after 1660 Public Remembering in Late Stuart England Matthew Neufeld XVIII The Nature of the English Revolution Revisited Edited by Stephen Taylor and Grant Tapsell XIX The King’s Irishmen The Irish in the Exiled Court of Charles II, 1649–1660 Mark R .F. Williams XX Scotland in the Age of Two Revolutions Edited by Sharon Adams and Julian Goodare XXI Alehouses and Good Fellowship in Early Modern England Mark Hailwood XXII Social Relations and Urban Space: Norwich, 1600–1700 Fiona Williamson XXIII British Travellers and the Encounter with Britain, 1450–1700 John Cramsie

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XXIV Domestic Culture in Early Modern England Antony Buxton XXV Accidents and Violent Death in Early Modern London, 1650–1750 Craig Spence XXVI Popular Culture and Political Agency in Early Modern England and Ireland Essays in Honour of John Walter Edited by Michael J. Braddick and Phil Withington XXVII Commerce and Politics in Hume’s History of England Jia Wei XXVIII Bristol from Below: Law, Authority and Protest in a Georgian City Steve Poole and Nicholas Rogers XXIX Disaffection and Everyday Life in Interregnum England Caroline Boswell

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HOUSE OF LORDS

Despite the execution of Charles I and the establishment of a kingless republic, the period of the English Civil Wars and their aftermath is rarely described as one of constitutional revolution.

Jonathan Fitzgibbons demonstrates how the Other House was much more integral to Cromwell’s aims for a lasting post-war settlement than the offer of the Crown. More broadly, this book reconceptualises the political and constitutional history of the 1640s and 1650s by looking beyond outward forms of government and visual culture. It argues that radical shifts in political thought were concealed by apparent continuities in forms of government. Even though the new Cromwellian upper chamber had the familiar appearance of a House of Lords, the very meaning of the House of Lords was contested and transformed by the experience of the Civil Wars and their aftermath.

Cover image: Front cover of the Additional and Explanatory Petition and Advice, 1657. Photo: author.

Studies in Early Modern Cultural, Political and Social History

HOUSE OF LORDS Politics, Parliaments and Constitutional Revolution, 1642-1660

FITZG IBBON S

JONATHAN FITZGIBBONS is Lecturer in Early Modern History at the University of Lincoln.

CROMWELL’S

HOUSE OF LORDS

The notion that the 1650s were politically conservative is exemplified by the tendency of historians to fixate upon the offer of kingship to Oliver Cromwell and his increasingly monarchical appearance. This book rethinks the political history of the 1640s and 1650s by focusing instead upon the upper parliamentary chamber. Besides exploring changing attitudes towards the House of Lords during the Civil Wars, and the circumstances that led to its abolition in 1649, it provides the first thorough study of the Cromwellian ‘Other House’ – a new upper parliamentary chamber of nominated life peers created in 1657.

CROMWELL’S

CROMWELL’S

J O N AT H A N F I T Z G I B B O N S