"Listen to me, and I'll tell you news that's right / Christmas was killed in Naseby fight!"
("The World is Turned Upside Down", English Folk Ballad, 17th Century AD).
I: BEHOLD THE CONQUERING HERO
For a council of victors, the English Parliament was quite lethargic.
Even after their last triumph over King Charles I, they hesitated to decide what shall be done next. The King, after all, despite all their claims to be the "Representatives of the People of England", was for a thousand years the fountainhead of all legal government in England. They may have fought him, they may have opposed him, but even they were still Charles' Parliament, called to existence by Charles' authority to fund his ventures and expenses.
The War established that the Parliament may oppose the King's actions where they exceed or contradict his authority as a servant and protector of the Law.
Three more mental steps must be achieved before Charles could be stripped of authority and lose his power to negotiate his restoration to power:
To establish a difference between the royal person and the Crown, between Charles, a fallible and liable man, and the Crown. That the disembodied kingly authority empowers legal government with or without the consent of Charles, disabled from discharging his duties by his imprisonment for his crimes.
That the person of the king is not necessary for such legal power to emanate from the People of England and the Law.
That, therefore, England could be and in fact has been always, a Commonwealth which may have an officer called "a king" whose office is hereditary, but such office is not required.
These mental steps not only were already taken by an important part of the People, but they were already overpassed. Speakers were already going around a significant section of the English population, making the case that Parliament was not neccesary either for the power to govern the nation lawfully and within right. That the social institutions of the Gentry, the Magistracy and the Church (who dominated Parliament) were unneeded and might be actually damaging and unjust.
This section was the Army. Parliament's army. The army that had just emerge victorious from a great civil war.
Oliver Cromwell, who rose from a colonel of a single regiment to being the chief lieutenant to Sir Thomas Fairfax, the overall commander of the New Model Army, is often condemned today for his many personal failings and public crimes, not the least of which is the persecution and slaughter of the Irish in their own homeland.
This condemnation is justified and cannot be avoided. Cromwell was a tyrant, as ruthless and heedless of Common, Natural or Divine Law as any other who have walked the Earth.
The way in which he acquired his power is of the utmost interest to us. He rose in rank due to his competence as a trainer, organizer and commander of troops. But his final ascent to absolute power is due to his political ability to bridge the ideological chasm that opened between Parliament and the Army.
II: DISSENTION IN THE RANKS
It is important to note that the "Levelers", as the members of these movement within the Army came to be known, were not, despite common misconception, proto-socialists.
Their demands were concerned with the genuine grievance of the soldiers whose salaries were not paid and at its most extensive called for the elimination of corruption in the high levels of government and the regular, biennial election of Parliament by all men who were not dependent for their livelihood on others (that is, household servants and farmhands). In this sense, the Levelers were more conservative in their political program than the United States had ever been since the abolition of the tax requirement for the franchise.
In this attitude they were opposed not only to Parliament (which they wanted to reform, not abolish) but also to the "Diggers", a truly proto-socialist agrarian sect, with which they are often confused. Their leaders were, prior to their military service, the typically sober, prosperous, respectable and conservative representatives of the middle classes of southern England. This was hardly the set wishing abolish private property and create a classless society. When their leader Lilburne was arrested in 1645, his release was secured by the petition of the business community of London, which had great respect for his integrity.
Nevertheless, they were a danger to the Long Parliament, whose authority laid precariously on their election and summons in 1640 by the very King they were now persecuting. Parliament needed a device to quash the movement and Cromwell obliged.
In the beginning Cromwell resorted mostly to intellectual debate within the ranks of the Army, of which he was, at this point, just one of the most ranking high officers.
The escape of Charles I from his imprisonment and the short-lived Second English Civil War (which ended, as ignobly as it had begun, within the single year of 1648) had interrupted those political discussions and catapulted Cromwell into the position of a commander in chief of his own army and the focus of the Parliamentarian military effort.
It was in this role that Cromwell started voicing his opinions and critiques of Parliament. Adopting some of the Levelers' arguments while rejecting others, he drew himself up as the upholder of the Law, to which Parliament is but an instrument. This Law, he argued, is God's Law, but not the Law of private conduct or that which governs the relations between neighbors, but that of history - that God choses the right instruments for the government of nations so they may be led to righteousness. Cromwell was now in command of the Army and therefore, naturally, saw the army as God's newly chosen instrument, rather than the King or Parliament.
Be the biblical basis for such claims what they may, this was a bold argument which Parliament was powerless to defy. As the Army marched back to London with the re-imprisoned king in train, it realized its claims by the event known as "Pride's Purge"- in which troops had descended on Parliament, forcefully removing all those which were not favorable to the Army's high command, known as "the Grandees" leaving behind the "Rump Parliament" - a timid and obedient servant to this group's and his wishes, which had tried the king late in the very same year and executed him in January of the next year.
III: STRIFE, SLAUGHTER AND TYRANNY
England was, and still is, a land which is inhospitable to one-man-rule, but can be reduced to rule by an oligarchy of allied interests with relative ease, which still has to contend with the entrenched interests left outside and eventually to lose power to them.
Additionally, the Army had no interest, yet, of ruling the country directly in the manner of a military district
For that reason, Pride's Purge was just that, a purge of the MPs unfavorable to the Grandees' position, but the rest of them were left in place to administer the affairs of the realm. After the death of Charles, the government of the Commonwealth was officially placed in the hands of a new Council of State, of which Cromwell was but one member.
But in the same year, a rebellion in Ireland broke out. There would be nothing unusual about it, except that this was a royalist rebellion, in which Anglo-(and Scot)-Irish Protestant royalists, as well as exiles from England proper, combined with the usual suspects, the Catholic Confederates, in an attempt to establish royal government in Ireland, from which war can be waged in the name of Charles II against Parliament.
While the star of Fairfax had dimmed due to his refusal to participate in the King's death sentence, Cromwell could not yet ascend to the position of absolute power. He still had to contend with various opponents in the Council and Parliament (which was suspicious and resentful of this advocate of the Army's supremacy) and he notably failed in various political ventures.
Nevertheless, it was decided that Cromwell was the man to command the Irish front. After all, he was one of the best soldiers in England and it would remove him from politics for awhile. Besides, Ireland was known as a land that destroys the fortunes of those sent to subdue it. The memory of the Earl of Stafford, who was rewarded for his capable administration of the island with recall, impeachment and death upon the gallows merely 9 years prior, was still fresh in the members memory, who were themselves responsible for this act.
What Parliament neglected to consider was that Stafford was sent away from a political arena whose focal points were the Court and Parliament, both held in London. But now the focal point of politics was the Army, and the Rump Parliament had just sent Cromwell to Ireland at the head of it. In other words, it was not Cromwell who was to be cut off from the politics of the truly powerful organ of the State, but he was to be insulated with it and thus able to shape it to his liking.
Of the myriad and sundry crimes that Cromwell had committed against the Irish people, there is much to say. For our discussion it is sufficient that Cromwell had finally got his taste of the absolute administration of a country, that he found it to his liking and that the death toll was estimated by contemporaries as close to 40% of the population and Catholic land-ownership went from 60% of Ireland's land are to 20%.
Two years before the Irish campaign could be truly sealed with the Settlement Act of 1652, ("To Hell or to Connaught"), Cromwell was, recalled to command the reduction of Scotland, the latest Celtic country who had the misfortune to declare for Charles II. This was achieved in two battles, after which Cromwell's used forts to insulate the subdued Lowlands from the roiling Highlands.
With the crowns of two great nations in his pocket and a four-time victorious army at his beck and call, he came back to England to advise Parliament on the final settlement of the government of the Three Kingdoms. In his opinion, the only way to govern the British Isles was by creating a new, single government from the ground up. At minimum, it would require a new election for a Parliament which would be able to command the respect of at least England. That is at least the position that Cromwell had advanced. This would require, he argued, the dissolution of Parliament and letting a council of 40 members to serve in the interim.
But the Rump, who was relieved of the presence of the Army for 2 years, had forgotten their masters and deluded themselves they can extend their role. They rightly understood that such a council would be as reluctant to step down as thenselves. To their sorrow, the decision was never truly theirs. In 1653 a force of no more than 40 soldiers dissolved Parliament and made Oliver Cromwell the military dictator. An obedient assembly known as the "Saint's Parliament" by Cromwell's supporters and "Barebone's Parliament" by anyone else (named so after one of the most loathsome and ridiculous members) appointed him the title of "Lord Protector" - a king in all but name.
IV: THE RULE OF THE SAINTS
25th December. Christmas-day, no sermon anywhere, no church being permitted to be open, so observed it at home. The next day, we went to Lewisham, where an honest divine preached.
(Diary of John Evelyn, Esq.)
This is not the proper place to describe the varying fortunes and misfortunes, glories and disgraces of Oliver Cromwell's tenure in absolute power. The policy focus that is of great import to our topic is Cromwell's religious and moral policy.
While largely Cromwell's policy was of latitudinarianism towards most Protestant sects (and the toleration of Judaism), as the head of the government of England and Scotland he saw himself responsible for the religious and moral instruction of the English people through the organ of the newly reorganized Church of England.
Already in 1652, as the above quote indicates, the Rump had banned the celebration of Christmas and declared December the 25th a regular business day.
However, during the Restoration, a flurry of pamphlets were published (or re-published from old editions initially composed under the Protectorate) to defend not as much Christmas' good standing as a Christian festival, but the practice of feasting, dancing and engaging in other worldly amusements. The reason for it was that while the Restoration government had returned the celebration of Christmas to its proper place, Puritans remained convinced of their sinfulness.
One humorous tract, "The Tryal and Examination of Old Father Christmas Together with his Clearing by the JURY, At the Assizes held at the Town of Difference, in the County Of Discontent", in which Father Christmas, who is engraved on the frontispiece suspiciously similar to an aged Charles I, defends himself from such accusers as "Starve-mouse, Keep-all, Love-none and Eat-alone" with the help of "Peter Poor, Simon Servant and Nicholas Neighborhood". These representatives of the common, the poor, the lowly, those whose hopes were pinned once upon the Levelers, argue:
Simon Servant:
My Lord, I live at the Town of Bond, in the County of little Rest; my Master is called Mr. Hard-heart, a great enemy to this old father at the Bar; but for my own part, I will speak upon my oath, that I had suffered more than an Egyptian bondage, had it not been for him. I had had a Sabbethless pursuit of my Masters labour, had it not been for him; the very beasts that groan under the burden are beholden to him for ease, for when the Ox and the Asses neck seemed married to the yoke, he diversed them; the very Jews had their Jubilees, times of rest; therefore, good my Lord, if you give us noting, keep not our brick and straw from us.
Peter Poor:
My Lord, I dwell at the town of Want, in the County of Needs, poor in name and poor in estate; and had it not been for old Christmas, had had been poorer, if poorer I could have been: had it not been for him, my best friend God-free Giving, has lost his live; all that have spoken against him, are all Gadarens, and of the Linage of Nabul (Mrs. Prudence only excepted) if you take away this merry old Gentleman from us, you take away all our joy and comfort that we have on earth.
Nicholas Neighbour:
May it please you my Lord, I dwell at the Town of Amity, in the County of Unity, my Father was the good Samaritan, and my Mother was called Dorcas, and all that I can say for this Old Man is, that he is a very kind and loving man, inoffensive to all, a hater of strife, a lover of harmless mirth, our whole Town and County are much beholding to him when he comes, for he uses all means to bring us together, and to renew friendship; he is a great Peace-maker, if there have been any difference betwixt party and party, he will endeavour to end it in an amicable way: he always uses to tell me (next God) I must love my name-sake, to glorifie the first, and tenderly affect the second: in fine, my Lord, he is as like Goodness as Charity can make him. 'Moreover my Lord, he is our Land-mark, and it is forbidden in Magna Charta to remove the Land-mark.
In short, the objections to Christmas prove to be contrary to all the social and moral tenants of Christianity and can be supported only by those who believe in the primacy of Power in all human affairs, such as Mr. True-son , one of the witnesses for the prosecution:
... for I defie Churches, and will allow no Councils, but a Council of war, they were but men, who according to their temporary advantages by the power of their Churches raised these Festivals up, and we are men, who for our conveniences, by the strength of our Stables will pull them down, Sic volo, sic jubeo“ (-“this I want, this I decree “)
It would be superflous to bring forth all the arguments made in this and other tracts against the seizures of food (such as roasted geese and turkeys) prepared for the Christmas feast, the closing of churches and the ban on special sermons to signify the holiday. The importance is in that the Puritans, along with other dissenter sects who started their ascendancy by popular support are shown to have ran in their tenure in power so far afield from the religious, moral and social norms of the majority of Englishmen of all classes. They are lambasted as prudish, hypocrites, hysteric, tyrants, cruel, callous, violent and tight-fisted.
V: THE MORALS OF THE MERRY MONARCH
King Charles II was an adulterer, a gambler, a murderer, a liar, an embezzler, an alcoholic and, in all due likelihood, a cheater in cards.
While his father was known as a devout family man whose greatest sins were political and mental, he had no opportunity to finish the education of his son, who had sent to France once the tides of war had turned against the royal cause. As a refugee in the most corrupt courts of the continent, ever desperate for money and support, it is no wonder that young Charles' character have been marred with all the fashionable vices of that age.
Nevertheless, the Restoration was not only brought about successfully (in a turn of events that is so unlikely, it had inspired the plot for on of the under-appreciated entries in Dumas' Three Musketeers series) but it was received by the People of England with great enthusiasm and, while his enthusiasm waxed and waned throughout his reign, Charles was never despised in the way Cromwell or his father were.
Much was made of Charles' affability and generosity. But those traits, while extremely useful to the king and which took him out of many difficult situations were not the reason for his sustained popularity and his ability to restore the place of the Monarchy in British life. Others try to portray Charles as a master manipulator and a political schemer who managed to twist and turn the entire political system to his advantage. While Charles was not a mean politician, he had lost many of his battles with his opponents in Parliament and had left to his brother James a realm which the latter could not settle easily into his rule and walk back to Rome.
The success of Charles' reign (and success indeed it was for a dynasty that was banished in 1648 to survive on the throne for 54 years and than be succeeded by their own closest Protestant relatives rather than seeing the monarchy abolished again) is to be found in his attitude to religion and morality.
It seems strange that we would credit the moral attitudes of such an immoral person as Charles II to his success. Charles immorality is often cited by Whig historians as a god fit for his subjects, who, tired of Puritanical moralizing, had cast off the yoke of ethics. That is an inaccurate and an unhelpful approach.
While all the things which the Puritan Protectorate had banned, from cursing through gambling to High-Church Anglican services were now allowed and even celebrated in public (Charles made no attempt to hide his infidelities), I find it hard to believe that Englishmen were Puritan saints under the Protectorate and turned into irreligious revelers the moment Charles' foot stood on English soil. Rather, the clear picture that rises from the documents composed in this era and the migration patterns New England is that the Puritans and other Dissenters were a large minority in England, that due to their support for the Parliamentarian cause came to dominate the New Model Army and therefore, the Commonwealth and Protectorate regimes. When finally they lost power, it was due to their policies running in the face of the majority of Englishmen, who, whether leaning towards the Low or the High Church, still upheld their old traditions and notions of morality and religion.
If Charles governed the Church as a High Church Anglican, it was because this was the form of religion acceptable to most of his subjects (he could have just as well pretended to be a Low Church Anglican as a High Church Anglican). If he made no effort to hide his love affairs, it was since most Englishmen did not object to them (Carolean and Jacobean comedy, which was a very common form of popular entertainment, would shock many succeeding generations).
The main religious principle that the Restoration emphasized was that of the unity and continuity of the Anglican Church as well as the need for good neighborhoods bewtween Anglicans of differing opinions. The ire of the Author of the Tryal and Examination is reserved for Dissention, that is to say, those either too far removed from the moderate opinion or so contemptuous of it that they cannot live in peace within the bounds of the established Church and seek to forge their own path. Such Dissention, argues the Author, is the result not of Christian virtues but if vices, of pride, greed and lack of charity.
VI: SOME CONCLUSIONS: THE ORANGES-GIRL AND THE ARCHBISHOP
"Pray, good people, be civil- I am the Protestant whore!"
The above quote is attributed to Nell Gwynn, Mistress of Charles II. According to a popular tale, when accosted in the midst of the Ottis Anti-Catholic panic in 1681 by a crowd mistaking her for Charles other mistress, "pretty witty Nell" calmed them down by assuring them she was a good Protestant. The crowd cheered her and escorted her home in safety.
An actress by profession, she was but an oranges-girl when Charles met her, selling fruit to the richest parts of the theater-going crowd of London. Charles affair with her and his constant concern for her welfare (among his last words was the sentence "Pray do not let poor Nell starve") did not scandalize the People at large. On the contrary.
What is the attitude the London mob exhibited? Clearly not that of piety and zeal for God's honor (even in the mind of a Protestant, God would not approve of Protestant royal mistresses more than of Catholic ones). Rather, they showed that that which they were concerned with was the independence of their National Church from Rome just as they were concerned for its unity. Out of the viciousness of their own heart, they translated this legitimate concern into vicious and violent acts against innocent Catholics who had never threatened either. It is not wrong to wish One’s religious institutions to be independent and unified. It is wrong to have this as One’s only religious principle.
The fall of Archbishop William Laud started over the trial and punishment of William Prynn, the prickly author of Histriomastix , an anti-Thater, anti-Christmas tract, in 1634, which led to Laud's own trial in 1644 and execution by the Long Parliament in 1645, 3 years before his Lord and Master, Charles I.
Laud was, by his own description, a "Thorough" High Churchman, wishing to restore as much ritual and ceremony to the Anglican Church and to fortify the authority of the King as its supreme governor.
We have seen before that the English never let go of their fondness of Christmas. Why then was Laud's energetic defense of the festival and it's accompanying amusements so unpopular?
The reason is simple:
The Archbishop who defended the beloved feast by means which the public saw as immoral (Prynn was branded by hot irons with the letters SL, for Seditious Libeler on his face and had his ears clipped) he had committed the same political error as the Dictator who thought to abolish it: both, in their decrees, denounced morality as it was held by the People and thus have shown that they occupy a different moral universe than the People, completly divorced from them.