HE Spirit of the Lord that animated

Balaam, Azariah, and Isaiah,

His prophets, wise in counseling their kings,

and Jephthah, Othniel, and Gideon,

with Samson, Saul, and David, Our Lord’s soldiers,

descended on Oliver like a dove,

descendit sicut columba super ipsum,

or rather, like a prudent hawk or merlin,

in many a fight he fought for Our Lord’s cause,

for England and His Church and Parlament.

Young Oliver was born in Huntingdon,

the great-great-grand-nephew of Thomas Cromwell,

erst called apud the Lords as Baron Cromwell,

later created (briefly) Earl of Essex.

His father’s father was Sir Henry Cromwell,

who built a house at Hinchingbrooke atop

a priory of Benedictine nuns.

Sir Henry was the shire knight for Hunts,

four sons of whom were MPs as well,

including Robert, the Protector’s father.

 

Robert was a bailiff of the town,

a burgess, and a justice of the peace.

His sister Joan wed Francis Barrington,

Sir Francis Barrington MP, and bore him

Sir Thomas Barrington MP and Robert

Barrington MP, among nine children.

Elizabeth, another sister, married

William Hampden MP of Great Hampden –

their elder son was John Hampden MP,

the patriot, and one of the Five Members.

Yet another sister, Frances, married

Richard Whalley, a shire knight for Notts,

of whose sons one was Colonel Edward Whalley,

who later sat for Notts, as had his father.

Thus Oliver was to the Commons born.

His mother was Elizabeth Steward, daughter

of Sir William Steward, kin to Scottish kings.

 

APTIZED at St. John the Baptist Church,

Oliver studied rhetoric and grammar

under Master Thomas Beard, the author

of the much-frequented Theater of God’s Judgments,

and later, just as O.C. left for Cambridge,

a tome contra the devilish “Romish Religion,”

dedicated to Sir Oliver Cromwell.

Oliver was enrolled a fellow-commoner

at Sidney Sussex, tutor Master Howlett

(on whom the youth bestowed a silver cup),

under the mastership of Dr. Ward.

He studied logic, ethics, and controversies,

eke reading Godwin, Cicero, and Justin,

Terence, Ovid, and the Greek New Testament.

Unhappily, he had to quit the college

and hurry back to Huntingdon when Robert

died leaving wife and son and several daughters.

(Oliver’s sister Margaret had just married

a future MP, Valentine Walton.)

 

He had no living brothers. Soon he added

his pretty wife Elizabeth to the household,

daughter of Sir James Bourchier, descended

from the first Earl of Essex, fifth creation,

who fought at the Second Battle of St. Albans

and midst the whipping snows of Towton Heath.

Sir James was a prosperous London skinner,

connected with the Barringtons and Rich-Warwick.

They spoke their vows at St. Giles Cripplegate

and quickly settled in at Huntingdon,

where Oliver was soon elected burgess,

and like his father a bailiff and JP.

Soon they had the first of their nine children,

Robert, followed by Oliver, Bridget, Richard,

Henry, Bettie, James, Mary, and Frances.

The burgesses elected him MP

together with James Montague, third son

of Henry Montague, then Earl of Manchester.

The Montagues had purchased Hinchingbrooke;

young James had privateered with Rich-Warwick.

 

OUNG Oliver in Westminster thus witnessed

the argument twixt Charles and Parlament

regarding funds for war, tunnage and poundage,

the Petition of Right for English liberties,

ungodly innovations in religion,

Bishop Mainwaring’s ungodly sermons

exalting kings as gods who walk the earth,

and Villiers-Buckingham, whose murder meant

the House no longer needed to impeach him.

Oliver was present when his colleagues,

Valentine and Eliot and Holles,

Charles having bid the Speaker to adjourn,

forcibly held Sir John Finch in his chair,

Holles crying, “Zounds! Sit till we rise!”

the Speaker weeping, whilst the MPs read,

and the House passed, their several Protestations,

before Black Rod and Charles’s gentleman-pensioners

could burst the locked door of St. Stephen’s chapel.

Our Oliver, the novice, saw it all.

 

Charles angrily dissolved the Parlament.

The Privy Council summoned nine MPs:

all nine were fined and sent to London prisons,

the Marshalsea, the Tower, and the Gatehouse,

Valentine and Strode for eleven years,

Long for four, the others two or so.

Eliot died in the Tower. Coryton

had previously resided in that fortress,

having refused the infamous forced loan.

 

HEN Huntingdon was granted a new charter, 

setting a mayor and aldermen above 

the burgesses, of which O.C. was one, 

O.C. exchanged high words with the new-made mayor,

for which the Privy Council summoned him

(like Dev-Ex) and demanded a submission.

Oliver moved his family to St. Ives, 

there renting land from Mr. Henry Lawrence,

an Emmanuel man, and later an MP.

Some say O.C. raised sheep, some kine for milking.

Both he and Hampden paid the distraint of knighthood,

one of Charles’s schemes for raising money 

(which Dev-Ex fought before the Privy Council)

without convening a new Parlament −

which he declined to do for eleven years –

degrading kingship into tyranny.

 

Oliver had a scheme: he’d been named heir

by his mother’s brother, viz., Sir Thomas Steward,

to gain control of whose estate he sought

a writ of de lunatico inquirendo.

(Their half-sister, Agnes Steward, married

Robert Shakespeare, William Shakespeare’s uncle,

if the disputed history be true.

Let’s add that Mr. Hampden, O.C.’s cousin,

wed Lettice Knollys, numbered with Dev-Ex’ cousins,

named for the elder Lettice, Dev-Ex’ grandmother,

Countess of Essex, first, and then of Leicester.

Thus Dev-Ex was a distant Cromwell kinsmen.)

The scheme failed, but mercifully the Lord

spared O.C. from disinherison,

and spared his name from well-deserved discredit.

 

IS uncle died, and O.C. moved to Ely,

a man of office and of property,

who’d reinforced his foothold in the gentry.

His sister Jane espoused Mr. John Desborough,

a lawyer and a farmer and a future

colonel, major general, and MP.

Elizabeth, the daughter of Henry Cromwell

MP, Robert’s elder (or younger) brother,

a cousin and close friend of Oliver’s,

married the lawyer Oliver St. John (Queensman),

whose first wife was Sir Thomas Barrington’s niece.

St. John handled Hampden’s ship-money case.

He was a future MP, Solicitor General,

and Chief Justice of the Common Pleas.

To Elizabeth, O.C. gave testimony

of his salvation by our loving Lord:

“Oh, I loved the darkness, hated light.

I hated godliness, yet God had mercy” –

like Paul, a self-impeaching chief of sinners.

 

Throughout these years, outrages multiplied.

William Prynne, the scourge of English manners,

who’d called on Parlament to interdict

popish and Arminian books and scholars,

was sentenced to imprisonment for life,

fined a great sum, expelled from Lincoln’s Inn,

deprived of his degree from Oriel,

and in the pillory, first at Westminster

and then at Cheapside, reaved of his two ears

for his attack on plays and actresses,

conceived as touching on the royal couple.

The book was ordered burned, that none might see it.

His News from Ipswich, aimed at Bishop Wren, 

won him a second five thousand pound fine, 

abscission of his ears (of what remained), 

and the letters “S.L.” burned into his cheeks.

Star-Chamber laid like punishments (save branding) 

on Dr. Bastwick (briefly an Emmanuel man) 

and Henry Burton, M.A. from St. John’s, 

all three condemned, unjustly, pro confesso.

 

RRAYED in his prophetical red coat

drenched with gold lace, and having paid his penny,

O.C. was made a freeman of the borough

preparatory to being chosen burgess,

put forward by the godly folk of Cambridge,

Ibbott, Lowry, Timbs, and Cousin Welbore,

to swell the Houses’ godly opposition.

The senior Member was Mr. Thomas Meautys,

a secretary to the Privy Council,

therefore reliably of the royal party.

He’d been a clerk to the Court of Star Chamber,

and secretary to Sir Francis Bacon,

who first had put him forward as MP,

and whom he stoutly spoke for in the Commons.

This time (his fifth) Sir John Finch, high steward

of Cambridge and Chief Justice, Common Pleas,

proposed him, and the councillors complied.

That year Charles named Sir John (whom we just saw

pinned to his chair) Lord Keeper of the Seal

and Baron Finch of Fordwich (famed for trout).

O.C. and Meautys scarcely took their seats

before (again) Charles angrily dissolved

the Parlament for obstinately refusing

him money for his war against the Scots

before considering the kingdom’s ills. 

John Hampden and Sir Henry Vane the elder,

respectively, may well have misreported,

respectively, Charles’ rigor, and the Commons’,

to their respective comrades in the fight,

and so inflamed men’s passions on all sides.

When the Scots invaded, Twelve Peers (including

Dev-Ex, Russell-Bedford, Greville-Brooke,

Rich-Warwick, Mon-Man, and Fiennes-Saye) petitioned

Charles to summon another Parlament. 

Wentworth-Strafford urged the same. Charles did so.

O.C. was reelected, Meautys not –

such were the councillors’ feelings towards the court.

One of their own they picked – John Lowry, chandler,

whose shop the bishop’s servants had knocked down.

Now comes Oliver Cromwell into his own.

The leaders of the godly opposition

found him an able, diligent lieutenant.

He read out Dr. Leighton’s sad petition,

weeping, and poor Lilburne’s, who’d been flogged

and jailed for publishing Prynne’s News from Ipswich.

They put him on committees to consider

these and Bastwick’s plea, with many others,

and much committees managing religion −

to wit, maintaining preachers, charging Wren

and Piers, eradicating idol-worship,

deterring Charles from making five new bishops,

disarming papists, and excluding bishops

from Parlament and from the Privy Council.

All told he served on forty-odd committees,

including fiscal and military affairs. 

He drafted the Root and Branch Bill with Strode

and what became the Triennial Bill with Harley,

the last at first for yearly Parlaments.

The Houses tried and tainted Wentworth-Strafford,

whose death on Tower Hill Charles long deplored;

massed Londoners and sailors barred all rescue.

The R attempts to march the army south

and infiltrate and occupy the Tower

and overthrow the Scottish government

were brought to light and won swift punishment.

The Irish papists threw off English rule,

inspirited by the Scots’ revolt from Charles,

and slaughtered English settlers by the thousands.

The Lords and Commons passed the Grand Remonstrance.

Charles drafted treason charges, superseded

Dev-Ex’ guard of Parlament with his own

to check the crowds that braved the frost and snow,

and came with armed guards to seize the Five Members.

Twelve bishops were arrested, pending hearings.

Charles abandoned London with his family.

The Houses passed the Adventurers Act, whereby

a thousand folk invested in a scheme

to quell the Irish in exchange for land.

Among the investors were the Warners, Thomsons,

Pennoyer, Andrews, Clement, Wilding, Moyer,

and likely Crispe, Rich-Warwick, Greville-Brooke.

O.C. advanced three hundred pounds, the Rainsboroughs

two hundred, and commanded ships and men.

Habituated to this ceaseless whirlwind

within, without the walls of Parlament,

Oliver grasped that only the Most High God

could know and guide the hearts and hands of thousands.

As thousands surged in pride and faith and fear,

O.C. could only stand at His right hand,

a man under authority, His servant,

waiting to come and go at His command.

He raised two companies of foot in Cambridge,

per Parlament’s Militia Ordinance,

and combed the university to stop

the colleges from sending plate to Charles.

The Commons thanked him for his industry

in interdicting twenty-thousand poundsworth,

though Master Oley, president of Clare,

with John Barwick, a fellow of St. John’s,

and others, foiled the MP’s vigilance,

and slipping down dark byways past his guards,

brought tankards, pots, and bowls to Nottingham,

where Charles was mustering his malignant host.

O.C. arrested Beale of St. John’s,

Martin of Queen’s, and Sterne of Jesus College –

all three were given lodgings in the Tower. 

His men and men sent up from London found

munitions, plate, and money at Wren’s palace.

Next he raised a horse troop of his own –

the godly party’s notable MP

had little difficulty finding men

to fight for Parlament and Jesus Christ.

Cuthbert Baildon was enrolled lieutenant,

John Waterhouse as cornet, and John Desborough,

husband of sister Jane, as quartermaster.

Assigned to Dev-Ex’ regiment of horse,

the troop arrived post proelium at Edgehill,

but joined Dev-Ex’ victorious march to London.

Colonel O.C. MP was then commissioned

to form a regiment. He raised new troops

commanded by his brothers, Whalley, Desborough,

by Oliver Jr. and V. Walton Jr.,

Berry commanding the original band.

As armed and mounted constables they countered

malignancy wherever it burst forth,

arresting R officials and R churchmen,

sustained by gifts and what they raised from Rs −

free gifts from people loyal to the Houses,

and what they confiscated from malignants.

Then godliness resembled robbery,

as Parlament waged war from house to house,

and O.C. cried incessantly for funds

to feed and clothe and pay and arm his men.

Lowestoft was their first offensive target. 

With Norwich men, they took the town by stealth,

seized pistols (fifty cases) and arrested

eighteen malignants, namely Sir John Pettus

(a distant cousin, whose grandmother Knyvett

had married Oliver’s great-uncle Warren).

O.C. disarmed malignants at King’s Lynn,

examined thirteen Rs (L’Estrange included),

and seized a bark laden with arms from Dunkirk.

Oliver fought the Lincolnshire campaign

to guard the Eastern Counties from invasion

and open up north-south communications –

a painful progress, fraught with sad reverses.

The Rs had manned a string of garrisons

at Peterborough, Stamford, Grantham, Gainsborough –

they threatened, too, from Newark, where Charles Cavendish

commanded, and from Ashby-de-la-Zouche,

whence Harry Hastings, Queensman, levied havoc,

and Belvoir Castle, Viscount Campden’s stronghold –

the last of these excelled in robberies. 

Behind them loomed the mighty popish host

of Cavendish-Newcastle, then still an earl,

a cousin of the furious young general.

The Rs (among them cousin Captain Cromwell,

James or Henry, under Colonel Styles)

assumed control of Crowland, later grabbing

as hostages four men in nearby Spalding,

Harrington, Slater, Herne, and Robert Ram.

After occupying Peterborough,

O.C. linked arms with Colonel Sir Miles Hobart,

commander of the Norfolk regiments,

and Colonel Sir Anthony Irby MP,

who led a force of Lincolnshire dragoons.

Together they laid siege to captive Crowland,

the local forces having failed to take it.

The Rs placed their hostages in harm’s way,

atop the walls or staked on the wet ground.

The second day, the weather quenched the leaguer,

but on the third, the Ps let loose with cannon.

The morrow dawn, they entered unopposed.

Some Rs escaped by water. Some were captured.

Unwittingly had Captain Harrington

fired upon his poor abducted father.

Forces under Grey of Groby, Hotham,

Willoughby, Cromwell, Gell, and Hutchinson

failed to join at Stamford to assail

Newark, where Henderson had routed Ballard.

Instead, O.C., Lord Willoughby, and Hotham

met at Sleaford and advanced towards Grantham,

but Cavendish launched a night attack at Belton

and inundated Willoughby’s troopers’ quarters,

killing seventy men and taking forty.

Next day the Holy Spirit blessed O.C.

Two miles down the Newark road he met

Cavendish, with twenty troops against his twelve.

After fire exchanged, he charged the Rs,

who turned and fled, and the outnumbered Ps

“had the execution of them two or three miles”

(so O.C. wrote), took forty-five R prisoners,

recovered captured Ps, and snatched five colors.

O.C. slept that night at the Angel and Royal.

The planned attack on Newark was adjourned.

They also let H.M.’s first convoy pass,

contrary to their Captain General’s orders.

Again the Ps forgathered to take Newark,

or save the Fairfaxes from Cavendish-Newcastle,

Cromwell, Hobart, Hotham, Gell, and Grey,

young Grey ineffectually in command –

but rather than attack, their men devoured

Nottingham and all the country round,

Hotham claiming he “expected liberty”

and threatening Colonel Cromwell with his cannon.

O.C. and Hutchinson reported Hotham,

whom Dev-Ex ordered to be apprehended.

Meldrum was sent down to replace Lord Grey,

but even with an experienced commander,

they failed to halt Queen Mary’s second convoy,

herself and Cavendish, Tyldesley, and her Jermyn,

merely firing on it as it passed,

the P horse tailing it out of sight.

The Hothams, it turned out, were treating with her,

in modum Cholmley, who had brought her Scarborough.

ALGRAVE repulsed a strike at Peterborough,

and chased the would-be conquerors to Stamford,

converging there with Hobart and O.C.

The Rs sought refuge in the splendid palace,

chimneyed, steepled, turreted, built by Cecil,

Lord Burghley, on an “E” plan for “Elizabeth,”

now occupied by David Cecil’s widow,

Countess of Exeter, and their young son.

The Rs swore they would fight to the last man,

so Cromwell let loose with his dozen cannon,

which played from 2 a.m. till graying dawn.

When the P foot stepped up to mount the assault,

the Rs surrendered and were taken prisoner,

O.C. insisting they be granted quarter.

Among the prisoners was Captain Welby,

the naughtiest of the Crowland malefactors.

Lord Willoughby took Gainsborough and shipped

the R commander, Pierrepont-Kingston, down

the Trent, where he perished under R fire.

The Rs assembled to retake the town,

Cavendish’s Newark troops and men from Lincs,

wherefore the Houses sent O.C. and Meldrum

to succor Willoughby and raise the siege,

O.C. en route soliciting men and money. 

They met with Willoughby’s dragoons and horse

and Rossiter’s (the Earl of Lincoln’s) horse

at North Scarle and marched by night towards Gainsborough.

Just south of town they boarded the malignants,

some thirty troops of horsemen and dragoons

against the Houses’ twenty-four. The Rs

drove the P dragoons back on their van

(the Lincs horse regiments), but the van charged,

stumbling up the steep, and the main mass followed,

Meldrum’s and Colonel Thornhaugh’s Nottingham men,

and after a bloody clash in the rattling smoke,

routed the Rs and chased them several miles –

save the troops young Cavendish held in reserve,

which rushed and thrashed the Lincs men who remained.

Now hear how the Holy Ghost inspired Oliver:

he too held troops in reserve, and he and Whalley

took Cavendish in his rear and drove his riders

down the slope and into the marsh towards Trent,

where Berry slew the vigorous young general

with a keen thrust just under his short ribs.

Cols. Beeton, Heron, and Markham also perished.

That very day, after supplying Gainsborough,

the Ps dispatched a force of horse and foot

to scatter troops of horse posted nearby,

which they did, and mounting to a hilltop,

saw spread at their feet the whole popish host,

advancing towards them. Oliver went out

and brought them home, withdrawing, forming, charging,

repeatedly, in terror, smoke, and thunder,

with no losses. O.C. gave God the honor –

ac Major Whalley, as a gallant Christian.

The Commons chose O.C. to govern Ely,

where Bishop Wren adhuc had governed him.

He’d make the town strongest town in England,

a godly place, a place for God to dwell in.

For deputy he borrowed Captain Ireton

from Thornhaugh’s regiment. Who brought his troop.

The Ps abandoned Gainsborough, then Lincoln,

giving way to Cavendish-Newcastle’s might.

Sir Francis fled to Boston, Oliver

to Stamford, Huntingdon, and Peterborough,

begging at every door for men and money,

his naked troopers owed thousands of pounds.

That was the low ebb of the fight for Lincs. 

Then Mon-Man took King’s Lynn by a dexterous siege,

and Willoughby and O.C. marched up to Hull

and helped Sir Thomas Fairfax save his horse

from starving in the malignants’ tightening leaguer.

He floated twenty troops across the Humber

and led them southwards to the Parts of Holland,

an added power to guard the Eastern Counties –

yet O.C. wept to find no funds at Boston. 

Combined, their host destroyed the Rs at Winceby,

thanks to Sir Thomas’ skillful flank attack. 

That very day, his father sallied forth,

stormed and re-stormed Cavendish-Newcastle’s works,

and prompted him to lift the siege of Hull. 

He retired to York. Mon-Man retook Lincoln.

O.C. pursued the war in Parlament,

supporting Mon-Man to command in Lincs.

Mon-Man and O.C., not Willoughby,

were named to the Committee of Both Kingdoms –

declared delinquent, Willoughby was sequestered.

After Meldrum’s failure to take Newark,

the Ps lost all of Lincolnshire again,

but soon recovered it and joined the Scots

besieging York under Cavendish-Newcastle.

The rest is known. The Spirit’s wreath of fire

never departed more from O.C.’s brow,

not at Marston Moor or Islip Bridge,

or Bletchington House or Bampton, Naseby, Langport,

Devizes, Winchester, or Basing House,

or Langford House or Bovey Tracey (Devon),

nor on the benches of St. Stephen’s chapel –

only at Second Newbury did it fail him,

when, mysteriously, both he and Dev-Ex,

in different ways were rendered ineffectual,

as if in payment for their future victory.