Cromwell Dies in 1654?

[Beata Beatrix]

The Civil Wars are just utterly fascinating to me and in doing some reading about them I discovered this. If it's been discussed before, apologies.

It seems that in the late September of 1654, Oliver Cromwell was out for a carriage ride, when he decided to have a bit of fun, and he took the reins himself. He lost control of the carriage soon after, and, to make matters worse, his pistol went off as he was being dragged by the horses - Carlyle writes about it here. Obviously, he survived, but this incident raised a number of rather pressing questions about what might happen when Old Ironsides died. The Instrument stated that the Council of State would elect a successor, but Parliament was just as angry as it always was, and I wonder if some people, Parliamentarians especially, might view Cromwell's death as a sign that God favours them or some such. If Cromwell had been killed, I rather suspect the realm would've been in chaos. First things first, the realm needs a leader: Tumbledown Dick is probably far too junior, as is, I think, Fleetwood. John Lambert seems well positioned, but he was always rather a divisive figure. Meanwhile, no doubt Charles II would be gleefully planning a new invasion, with the Sealed Knot probably jumping at the chance to restore the Stuarts.

 

[heraclius]

I've written a book on the Protectorate so have studied the regime's leading personnel in detail, and as of 1653-4 the accepted 'Number Two' of the government - both the Protector's advisory Council and the Army - was John Lambert. A generation younger than OC (OC born 1599, Lambert born 1619), Lambert had been Cromwell's main lieutenant in the most recent crucial GB military campaign, the defeat of Charles II's invasion from Scotland at Worcester in Sept 1651, and was also the main political theorist behind the creation of the Protectorate in Dec 1653 as a sort of constitutional monarchy without using the offensive (to Army, 'godly' militant Puritans, and republicans) name of king. He's usually considered as the architect of the new constitution, the 'Instrument of Government' (to date the UK's only full written constitution) and to have deliberately lured the most extreme republicans and religious fanatics in the Nominated Parliament in summer 1653 into overlaying their hand and showing they were incapable of sensibly governing. Cromwell was prepared to give the latter a chance to govern in 1653 out of indulgent idealism but Lambert was more sensible and ruthless - and benefited as moderates swung behind him to help create the Protectorate. Lambert was seen by Royalists as well as Cromwellians as the practical mastermind of the new regime in 1653-4, and even warned OC unsuccessfully against the folly of sending an army to invade the current 'evil empire' of Spain in the Caribbean , citing a 'hit' on trade with Spain, the epidemics that would hit soldiers in the tropics, and the difficulty of finding let alone capturing Spanish treasure-ships. Those cautious Royalists who thought a revolt too risky even thought of offering huge bribes to Lambert to defect to them and use his army influence to start a mutiny in return for a pardon for all who defected from Charles II - a recognition that the regime was secure until its army broke up , as occurred in 1659-60. But the problem for any Royalist plot was the sheer size and effectivess of the Army, which defeated the next revolt in 1659 after OC died - the Royalists needed foreign troops to help but France was hit by civil war then a war with Spain to 1659.

If OC had died the next Protector was supposed to be elected by the Council of State and confirmed by Parliament (which only sat irregularly); Richard Cromwell was not even a Councillor until 1657 when the Protectorate was declared to be hereditary (which it was not in 1654). Nor had RC any experience of or backing in the army - though had OC's late eldest son Oliver not died of a fever on campaign as an army officer in 1644 he would have stood a chance and he was more militantly religious so more amenable to radical officers. If Lambert, not as aggressively Puritan or anti-Catholic as some top officers and even in favour of an alliance with Catholic Spain, been too 'moderate' or 'ungodly' for a junta of his fellow-generals to tolerate,the likeliest
choices were Cromwell's daughter's husband, the 'Baptist' General Charles Fleetwood (b 1619), or C's brother-in-law General John Desborough (b 1607). But none of them would have been amenable to 'civilianizing' the regime or to accepting financial and legislative control by Parliament, so the deadlock over whether Army or MPs were to lead the regime (which destroyed it once Cromwell died) would still have occurred. The Army would have had to rule by force - and its high taxes would have increased Parliament and local resistance so a Royalist revolt was possible if it broke up into factionalism. The most skilful and dashing general, who could be adpatable, was Lambert - so after 1660 Charles II shut him up in castles on the Channel Islands then on Plymouth Sound for life.

 

[Beata Beatrix]

What sort of a Protectorate might Lambert have established? He'd probably have been able to secure a lasting - maybe even a stable - republic, or, at the very least, he'd have been a bit better than Cromwell II - after all, the army liked Lambert. I'd imagine he'd put down something like a slightly larger Penruddock uprising soon after assuming the Protectorate and he'd almost certainly succeed, even if Cromwell died in the weirdest possible way. I've got no idea, though, what an actual honest-to-God surviving Commonwealth looks like, although I rather think Virginia might go its own way sooner rather than later.

 

[heraclius]

Lambert had showed his military ability and his loyalty to the republican/ religious toleration (for all Protestant sects within a 'big tent' Church of England) causes during the Civil Wars in 1642-53. Such things mattered a lot to both the senior army officers (the men who would approve or veto any new Protector that the part-military, part-civilian Council of State selected) and the men (who could overthrow this by mutiny) in the 1650s; in real life Richard C was neither. The generals decided to depose RC as too pro-civilian and conservative and a risk to their power in 1659 and the men let them do it as they hardly knew RC and heard he was anti-religious toleration; Lambert would have had the backing of both factions, bar a few disgruntled officers who were personal enemies.

To show the sort of man who Lambert was - In real life, as the officers and Parliament confronted each other after RC's sacking Lambert was blocked from leading his men on Westminster to evict Parliament by its few loyal troops. He marched up to them and dared them to shoot him, an old war comrade, and appealed to their solidarity with the republican cause and they put down their muskets and deserted to him (like Napoleon appealing to Marshal Ney's pro-Bourbon troops to defect to him in 1815). Later he was arrested by pro-Parliament General Monck and put in the Tower but shinned down a rope from the walls and fled in disguise to the Midlands to start a (failed) mutiny to stop Charles II returning. He held a rendezvous for mutineers on their great victory site at the Naseby battlefield, but Monck's men turned up in force and arrested him; his horse got stuck in the mud as he tried to gallop off.

As of real life 1659 even the shaky military junta and temporary allied Parliament that replaced Richard C could defeat that year's Royalist rising; public opinion and substantial military support did not shift to allowing Charles II back until early 1660 when the military junta and Parliament had been feuding and staging rival coups for 8-10 months . CII represented an end to the instability and a 'blank sheet' to start anew . Lambert as a stable leader would not have faced this instability and disillusion- at worst he would face MPs resenting high taxes to pay the huge army and/or conservative Presbyterian/ Anglican MPs resenting religious toleration, as Cromwell had. Nor could France or Spain - both signing a peace-treaty to end their war in 1659 but exhausted and preoccupied - be bothered to invade and tip the military balance in CII's favour. This would only have been reversed had Lambert's regime been seen as a threat to a recovering and aggressive Catholic France under Louis XIV later in the 1660s - in which case the English republic would probably have overcome commercial rivalry and lined up with the Protestant Dutch republic as allies.

Lambert would thus have had a 'window of opportunity' into the 1660s - the main problems would have been truculent MPs resisting taxes and/or religious toleration. As with Cromwell, he would not have dared 'demilitarise' and rely solely on Parliament lest it curtail his powers and/or enforce an Anglican State Church; but he could keep power by juggling factions for a long time as an unofficial 'monarch'. The Dutch already had an elected chief executive at the head of a republic, albeit a civilian - 'Grand Pensinary' Jan de Witt. In one of my timelines I have L as Lord Protector to the 1680s, and his Protestant faction then electing William of Orange to succeed him and confront Louis XIV. Charles II stays at Louis' court with his mistresses.