The Dictatorship Of Cromwell

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 189, 12 August 1939, Page 10 (Supplement)

The Dictatorship Of Cromwell

The monograph on "Oliver Cromwell" in Duckworths' Great Lives" series is the work of Miss C. V. Wedgwood, who has two major works of historical scholarship to her credit "The Thirty Years' War" and a biography of Strafford. She has, of course, read widely in preparing the book, but, as one would expect, relies « good deal on Cardiner, the historical specialist. If his sympathies were with the Parliament, lie is nevertheless, scrupulously fair in his estimates of Charles and the Royalists, and makes clear the religious conceptions that so largely dominated the revolution. And this may be said of Miss Wedgwood, too. She points out that, though Cromwell was an nlisolute ruler, he was far from being, like Charles, wholly autocratic. Nor can he be compared to the dictators of to-day. They are, as she says, the products of economic, social, and physical conditions inconceivable In the 17th century. And, with all his complexity of character, and with all his consequent inconsistencies, lie was more tolerant than Charles.

Few to-day will deny that Charles' death was hardly justified by the circumstances, but, as she makes clear, Cromwell was convinced that it was a political necessity, and the King's blood never troubled his conscience. And he was not an Independent of the Leveller type, like Lilburne. The position was that Charles insisted on being an absolute King, but, even more, that his word could never l>e depended on. To some extent Cromwell, she believes, was carried along by the force of circumstances. Lord Roseber/, in a speech he delivered on him in 1890, went near the root of the matter when he described him as a practical mystic—the most fornfidable and terrible of all combinations. Miss Wedgwood is undoubtedly right in characterising his first Irish campaign as a blot on his career. On his statesmanship she does not say very much. His reign was too short for any one to pronounce aright his gifts as a statesman; lie was essentially a soldier. Many readers, however, will be interested to be reminded that it was he who brought about free trade'between England and Scotland. Stories have, time and again, been • told with the object of showing that he was a psalm-singing hypocrite. These stories she is justified in dismissing a* improbable. The book is one of the best in the series.