[1] Cromwell was always a lonely man, and had so few real friends that Walter Scott may have expressed his true feeling when he makes him say in his novel of “Woodstock”:  “I would I had any creature, were it but a dog, that followed me because it loved me, not for what it could make of me.”

461.  The Times needed Such a Man.

There are emergencies when an ounce of decision is worth a pound of deliberation.  When the ship is foundering or on fire, or when the crew have mutinied, it will not avail to sit in the cabin and discuss how it happened.  Something must be done, and that promptly.  Cromwell was the man for such a juncture.  He saw clearly that if the country was to be kept together, it must be by decided measures, which no precedent, law, or constitution justified, but which stood justified none the less by exigencies of the crisis, by his own conscious rectitude of purpose, and by the result.

If there is any truth in Napoleon’s maxim, that “The tools belong to him that can use them,” then Cromwell had a God-given right to rule; for, first, he had the ability; and, next, though he used his power in his campaign in Ireland (S453) with merciless severity, yet the great purpose of his life was to establish order and justice on what seemed to him the only practical basis.

462.  Summary.

Cromwell’s original object appears to have been to organize a government representing the will of the nation more completely than it had ever been represented before.  He strongly favored the restoration of the House of Lords, he endeavored to reform the laws, and he sought to secure religious toleration for the great body of Protestants.  One who knew Cromwell intimately said, “A larger soul, I think, hath seldom dwelt in a house of clay, than his was.”

Circumstances, however, were often against him; he had many enemies, and in order to secure peace he was obliged to resort to the exercise of absolute power.  Yet the difference in this respect between Cromwell and Charles I was immense:  the latter was despotic on his own account, the former for the advantage of those he governed.

RICHARD CROMWELL—­September 3, 1658-April 22, 1659

463.  Richard Cromwell’s Incompetency.

Richard Cromwell, Oliver’s eldest son, now succeeded to the Protectorate (S455).  He was an amiable individual, as negative in character as his father had been positive.  With the extreme Puritans (S457), known as the “godly party,” he had no sympathy whatever.  “Here,” said he to one of them, pointing to a friend of his who stood by, “is a man who can neither preach nor pray, yet I would trust him before you all.”  Such frankness was not likely to make the new ruler popular with the army, made up of men who never lacked a Scripture text to justify either a murder or a massacre.  Moreover, the times were perilous, and called for a decided hand at the helm.  After a brief reign of less than eight months the military leaders requested Richard to resign, and soon afterwards recalled the “Rump Parliament” (S447).