CROMWELL DEFENDED

Dominion, Volume 27, Issue 252, 21 July 1934, Page 19

CROMWELL DEFENDED

“Grotesque Falsehoods Of History”

“The Unknown Cromwell,” by F. H. Hayward (London- Allen and Unwin.) The world’s conception of many great figures of the past has been altered under the searchlight, of history —of the science of history. The heroes of yesterday are shown up as men with feet of clay and fallen gods appear as paragons among men. It is a never-ending process, this process of valuation and revaluation. A recent example is provided in this book in which Dr. Hayward takes up the pen in defence of puritanism in general and Oliver Cromwell in particular. By historians and biographers Cromwell is held to have been the worst-treated figure in England’s history. The author may not have succeeded in unearthing the real Cromwell but he certainly has drawn the curtains aside on a new Cromwell. The character of the man himself and the unique period in the life of the nation which he dominated makes the author’s work one of more than ordinary interest. ' ( Most great Englishmen, Dr. Hayward considers, have been reasonably well dealt h with by partisan writers and journalists, but Xvith Cromwell this has not been the case. “His name at once deprives of sanity and decency, and often of simple veracity, many writers who, on other topics, may be well worth our reading and our trust.” But “bland, unblushing, grotesque falsehood” has been good enough for Cromwell. The author’s method is to expose what he considers the gross inaccuracies in many writers on Grout well, "and then to state his own case. He hopes that the effect of his book upon modern readers will be that they will catch "above the rolling and pols onous clouds of prejudice and falsehood, a glimpse of ’eternal sunshine’ settled on the grey head of one who toiled for England as few have toiled and was rewarded as few have been rewarded.” The “arrant nonsense” about the death of music at the hands of the Puritans was. first exposed in Davey’s history of English Music in 1895, but Dr. HaywArd finds it is a belief still widely held. He asserts that the ouput of music during the Protectorate was prodigious, and, that Cromwell himself was the most passionate lover of music among all the rulers that have swayed the sceptre of England. Oxford, during Cromwell’s period, was a perfect Elysium of music and his government showed itself more enlightened than governments of the twentieth, century by appointing'a Council of Music. Mr. Belloc comes in for some trenchant criticism and an assertion of the New Zealand writer, Mr. Hector Bolitho in the “Daily Express” ,of December 3, 1930, that? Cromwell was “the man. who possibly destroyed more beautiful things than any o(faer in the world” is characterised as a. “monstrous libel.” ' Dr. Hayward calls for a'list of his. offences. Dean Inge on Puritanism in “Christian Ethics and Modern Problems” is quoted:— The Puritan was often a student, a connoisseur of art; an accomplished musician. A good example of a Puritan home is that of the Milton, family. John Milton's father was a> musician/and often regaled his household with madrigals of his own composing. The boy John sat up till midnight studying Greek, Latin, French and. Italian. Dr. Hayward deals in turn with the main events of Cromwell’s life, the execution of Charles, the military victories 'and Drogheda. In all he gives due weight to Cromwell’s limitations and prejudices,- quoting chapter and verse in support of; his contentions. Cromwell is presented as essentially a mystic, more of a Quaker than a Calvinist, a' slow but powerful thinker, a patient waiter on events, but a resolute man of action when his mind was made up. One of the finest-chapters is that on“ The Great Refusal”—-Cromwell’s rejection after much deliberation of the offer of the crown. The,view of the critics who assert that Cromwell lusted for the crown, but was afraid to take it “lest the men who had brought an anointed king to the block might bring an upstart king to the same place,” is assailed, and the conclusion reached that “In all-that concerned personal interests and honours he appears simply as a’sane man, something like Aristotle’s Great-Souled Man who stands between thB extremes of Smallness of Soul and Vanity.”