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disorganized by victory as often as by defeat, and illustrated on numerous fields the now discredited maxim that cavalry cannot charge twice in one day. Cromwell shares with Frederick the Great the credit of founding the modern cavalry spirit. As a horsemaster he was far superior to Murat. His marches in the eastern campaign of 1643 show a daily average at one time of 28 m. as against the 21 of Murat's cavalry in the celebrated pursuit after Jena. And this result he achieved with men of less than two years' service, men, too, more heavily equipped and worse mounted than the veterans of the Grande Armée. It has been said that his battles were decided by shock action; the real emphasis should be laid upon the word "decided." The swift, unhesitating charge was more than unusual in the wars of the time, and was possible only because of the peculiar earnestness of the men who fought the English war. The professional soldiers of the Continent could rarely be brought to force a decision; but the English, contending for a cause, were imbued with the spirit of the modern "nation in arms "; and having taken up arms wished to decide the quarrel by arms. This feeling was not less conspicuous in the far-ranging rides, or raids, of the Cromwellian cavalry. At one time, as in the case of Blechingdon, they would perform strange exploits worthy of the most daring hussars; at another their speed and tenacity paralyses armies. Not even Sheridan's horsemen in 1864-65 did their work more effectively than did the English squadrons in the Preston campaign. Cromwell appreciated this feeling at its exact worth, and his pre-eminence in the Civil War was due to this highest gift of a general, the power of feeling the pulse of his army. Resolution, vigour and clear sight marked his conduct as a commander-in-chief. He aimed at nothing less than the annihilation of the enemy's forces, which Clausewitz was the first to define, a hundred and fifty years later, as the true objective of military operations. Not merely as exemplifying the tactical envelopment, but also as embodying the central idea of grand strategy, was Worcester the prototype of Sédan. The contrast between a campaign of Cromwell's and one of Turenne's is far more than remarkable, and the observation of a military critic who maintains that Cromwell's art of war was two centuries in advance of its time, finds universal acceptance. | At a time when throughout the rest of Europe armies were manœuvring against one another with no more than a formal result, the English and Scots were fighting decisive battles; and Cromwell's battles were more decisive than those of any other leader. Until his fiery energy made itself felt, hardly any army on either side actually suffered rout; but at Marston Moor and Naseby the troops of the defeated party were completely dissolved, while at Worcester the royalist army was annihilated. Dunbar attested his constancy and gave proof that Cromwell was a master of the tactics of all arms. Preston was an example like Austerlitz of the two stages of a battle as defined by Napoleon, the first flottante, the second foudroyante.

Cromwell's strategic manœuvres, if less adroit than those of Turenne or Montecucculi, were, in accordance with his own genius and the temper of his army, directed always to forcing a decisive battle. That he was also capable of strategy of the other type was clear from his conduct of the Irish War. But his chief work was of a different kind and done on a different scale. The greatest feat of Turenne was the rescue of one province in 1674-1675; Cromwell, in 1648 and again in 1651, had two-thirds of England and half of Scotland for his theatre of war. Turenne levelled down his methods to suit the ends which he had in view. The task of Cromwell was far greater. Any comparison between the generalship of these two great commanders would therefore be misleading, for want of a common basis. It is when he is contrasted with other commanders, not of the age of Louis XIV., but of the Civil War, that Cromwell's greatness is most conspicuous. Whilst others busied themselves with the application of the accepted rules of the Dutch, the German, and other formal schools of tactical thought, Cromwell almost alone saw clearly into the heart of the questions at issue, and evolved the strategy, the tactics, and the training suited to the work to which he had set his hand.

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constructive policy. Whether if Cromwell had sur- manship.

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vived he would have succeeded in gradually establishing legal government is a question which can never be answered. His administration as it stands in history is undoubtedly open to the charge that after abolishing the absolutism of the ancient monarchy he substituted for it, not law and liberty, but a military tyranny far more despotic than the most arbitrary administration of Charles I. The statement of Vane and Ludlow, when they refused to acknowledge Cromwell's government, that it was "in substance a re-establishment of that which we all engaged against," was true. The levy of ship money and customs by Charles sinks into insignificance beside Cromwell's wholesale taxation by ordinances; the inquisitional methods of the major-generals and the unjust and exceptional taxation of royalists outdid the scandals of the extra-legal courts of the Stuarts; the shipment of British subjects by Cromwell as slaves to Barbados has no parallel in the Stuart administration; while the prying into morals, the encouragement of informers, the attempt to make the people religious by force, were the counterpart of the Laudian system, and Cromwell's drastic treatment of the Irish exceeded anything dreamed of by Strafford. He discovered that parliamentary government after all was not the easy and plain task that Pym and Vane had imagined, and Cromwell had in the end no better justification of his rule than that which Strafford had suggested to Charles I.,—“ parliament refusing (to give support and co-operation in carrying on the government) you are acquitted before God and man." The fault was no doubt partly Cromwell's own. He had neither the patience nor the tact for managing loquacious parliamentary pedants. But the chief responsibility was not his but theirs. John Morley (Oliver Cromwell, p. 297) has truly observed of the execution of Charles I., that it was an act of war, and was just as defensible or just as assailable, and on the same grounds, as the war itself." The parliamentary party took leave of legality when they took up arms against the sovereign, and it was therefore idle to dream of a formally legal sanction for any of their subsequent revolutionary proceedings. An entirely fresh start had to be made. A new foundation had to be laid on which a new system of legality might be reared. It was for this that Cromwell strove. If the Rump or the Little Parliament had in a business-like spirit assumed and discharged the functions of a constituent assembly, such a foundation might have been provided. It was only when five years had passed since the death of the king without any "settlement of the nation " being arrived at, that Cromwell at last accepted a constitution drafted by his military officers, and attempted to impose it on the parliament. And it was not until the parliament refused to acknowledge the Instrument as the required starting point for the new legality, that Cromwell in the last resort took arbitrary power into his hands as the only method remaining for carrying on the government. For much as he hated arbitrariness, he hated anarchy still more. While therefore Cromwell's administration became in practice little different from that of Strafford, the aims and ideals of the two statesmen had nothing in common. It is therefore profoundly true, as observed by S. R. Gardiner (Cromwell, p. 315), that "what makes Cromwell's biography so interesting in his perpetual effort to walk in the paths of legality-an effort always frustrated by the necessities of the situation. The man-it is ever so with the noblest-was greater than his work." The nature of Cromwell's statesmanship is to be seen rather in his struggles against the retrograde influences and opinions of his time, in the many political reforms anticipated though not originated or established by himself, and in his religious, perhaps fanatical, enthusiasm, than in the outward character of his administration, which, however, in spite of its despotism shows itself in its inner spirit of justice, patriotism and self-sacrifice, so immeasurably superior to that of the Stuarts.

Personal character.

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Cromwell's personal character has been inevitably the subject | in 1821. By the female line, through his children Henry, of unceasing controversy. According to Clarendon he was Bridget and Frances, the Protector has had numerous a brave bad man," with "all the wickedness against descendants, and is the ancestor of many well-known families.1 which damnation is pronounced and for which hell fire BIBLIOGRAPHY. A detailed bibliography, with the chief authorities is prepared." Yet he cannot deny that " he had some for particular periods, will be found in the article in the Dict. of Nat. virtues which have caused the memory of some men in all ages Biography, by C. H. Firth (1888). The following works may be to be celebrated "; and admits that "he was not a man of mentioned: S. R. Gardiner's Hist. of England (1883-1884) and of blood," and that he possessed "a wonderful understanding Cromwell (1901), and History of the Commonwealth and Protectorate the Great Civil War (1886), Cromwell's Place in History (1897), Oliver in the natures and humour of men," and "a great spirit, an (1894-1903); Cromwell, by C. H. Firth (1900); Oliver Cromwell, by admirable circumspection and sagacity and a most magnanimous J. Morley (1904); The Last Years of the Protectorate, 1656-1658, resolution." According to contemporary republicans he was 2 vols., by C. H. Firth (1909); Oliver Cromwell, by Fred. Harrison (1903); Letters and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell, by T. Carlyle, ed. by a mere selfish adventurer, sacrificing the national cause to S. C. Lomas, with an introd. by C. H. Firth (the best edition, rejecting the idol of his own ambition." Richard Baxter thought him a the spurious Squire papers, 1904); Oliver Cromwell, by F. Hoenig good man who fell before a great temptation. The writers of (1887); Oliver Cromwell, the Protector, by R. F. D. Palgrave (1890); the next century generally condemned him as a mixture of Oliver Cromwell... and the Royalist Insurrection of March knave, fanatic and hypocrite, and in 1839 John Forster endorsed Roosevelt (1900); Oliver Cromwell, by R. Pauli (tr. 1888); Cromwell, 1655, by the same author (1903); Oliver Cromwell, by Theodore Landor's verdict that Cromwell lived a hypocrite and died a a Speech delivered at the Cromwell Tercentenary Celebration 1899, by traitor. These crude ideas of Cromwell's character were extin- Lord Rosebery (1900); The Two Protectors, by Sir Richard Tangye guished by Macaulay's irresistible logic, by the publication of (valuable for its illustrations, 1899); Life of Sir Henry Vane, by Cromwell's letters by Carlyle in 1845, which showed Cromwell der Auffassung und Tätigkeit W. W. Ireland (1905); Die Politik des Protectors Oliver Cromwell in des Staatssekretärs John Thurloe, clearly to be "not a man of falsehoods, but a man of truth"; by Freiherr v. Bischofshausen (1899); Cromwell as a Soldier, by T. S. and by Gardiner, whom, however, it is somewhat difficult to Baldock (1899); Cromwell's Army, by C. H. Firth (1902); The Diplofollow when he represents Cromwell as a typical Englishman.' matic Relations between Cromwell and Charles X. of Sweden, by G. Jones (1897); The Interregnum, by F. A. Inderwick (dealing with the legal In particular that conception which regarded "ambition " aspect of Cromwell's rule, 1891); Administration of the Royal Navy, as the guiding motive in his career has been dispelled by a more by M. Oppenheim (1896); History of the English Church during the intimate and accurate knowledge of his life; this shows him to Civil Wars, by W. Shaw (1900); The Protestant Interest in Cromwell's have been very little the creator of his own career, which was Foreign Relations, by J. N. Bowman (1900); Cromwell's Jewish largely the result of circumstances outside his control, the Intelligencies (1891), Crypto-Jews under the Commonwealth (1894), Menasseh Ben Israel's Mission to Oliver Cromwell (1901), by L. Wolf. influence of past events and of the actions of others, the pressure (P. C. Y.; C. F. A.; R. J. M.) of the national will, the natural superiority of his own genius. CROMWELL, RICHARD (1626-1712), lord protector of "A man never mounts so high," Cromwell said to the French ambassador in 1647, as when he does not know where he is England, eldest surviving son of Oliver Cromwell and of Elizabeth going." These issues and events," he said in 1656, "have not Bourchier, was born on the 4th of October 1626. He served been forecast, but were providences in things." His "hypocrisy" in the parliamentary army, and in 1647 was admitted a member consists principally in the Biblical language he employed, of Lincoln's Inn. In 1649 he married Dorothy, daughter of which with Cromwell, as with many of his contemporaries, Richard Mayor, or Major, of Hursley in Hampshire. was the most natural way of expressing his feelings, and in the represented Hampshire in the parliament of 1654, and Cambridge ascription of every incident to the direct intervention of God's University in that of 1656, and in November 1655 was appointed providence, which was really Cromwell's sincere belief and one of the council of trade. But he was not brought forward conviction. In later times Cromwell's character and adminis- by his father or prepared in any way for his future greatness, tration have been the subject of almost too indiscriminate and lived in the country occupied with field sports, till after the eulogy, which has found tangible shape in the statue erected institution of the second protectorate in 1657 and the recognition On the 18th of July he to his memory at Westminster in 1899. Here Cromwell's effigy of Oliver's right to name his successor. stands in the midst of the sanctuaries of the law, the church, succeeded his father as chancellor of the university of Oxford, and the parliament, the three foundations of the state which he on the 31st of December he was made a member of the council subverted, and in sight of Whitehall where he destroyed the of state, and about the same time obtained a regiment and a monarchy in blood. Yet Cromwell's monument is not altogether seat in Cromwell's House of Lords. He was received generally misplaced in such surroundings, for in him are found the true as his father's successor, and was nominated by him as such on principles of piety, of justice, of liberty and of governance. his death-bed. He was proclaimed on the 3rd of September 1658, John Maidston, Cromwell's steward, gives the "character and at first his accession was acclaimed with general favour both of his person." "His body was compact and strong, his stature at home and abroad. Dissensions, however, soon broke out under six foot (I believe about two inches), his head so shaped between the military faction and the civilians. Richard's as you might see it a storehouse and a shop both of a vast treasury elevation, not being "general of the army as his father was," of natural parts." "His temper exceeding fiery, as I have known, was distasteful to the officers, who desired the appointment of but the flame of it, . . . kept down for the most part, was soon a commander-in-chief from among themselves, a request refused allayed with those moral endowments he had. He was naturally by Richard. The officers in the council, moreover, showed compassionate towards objects in distress even to an effeminate jealousy of the civil members, and to settle these difficulties measure; though God had made him a heart wherein was left and to provide money a parliament was summoned on the 27th little room for fear, . . . yet did he exceed in tenderness towards of January 1659, which declared Richard protector, and incurred sufferers. A larger soul I think hath seldom dwelt in a house of the hostility of the army by criticizing severely the arbitrary clay than his was. I believe if his story were impartially trans-military government of Oliver's last two years, and by impeaching mitted and the unprejudiced world well possessed with it, she would add him to her nine worthies." By his wife Elizabeth Bourchier, Cromwell had four sons, Robert (who died in 1639), Oliver (who died in 1644 while serving in his father's regiment), Richard, who succeeded him as Protector, and Henry. He also had four daughters. Of these Bridget was the wife successively of Ireton and Fleetwood, Elizabeth married John Claypole, Mary was wife of Thomas Belasyse, Lord Fauconberg; and Frances was the wife of Sir Robert Rich, and secondly of Sir John Russell. The last male descendant of the Protector was his great-great-grandson, Oliver Cromwell of Cheshunt, who died

one of the major-generals. A council of the army accordingly established itself in opposition to the parliament, and demanded on the 6th of April a justification and confirmation of former proceedings, to which the parliament replied by forbidding. meetings of the army council without the permission of the protector, and insisting that all officers should take an oath not to disturb the proceedings in parliament. The army now broke into open rebellion and assembled at St James's. Richard was completely in their power; he identified himself with their cause, and the same night dissolved the parliament. The Long 1 Frederic Harrison, Cromwell, p. 34.

hand, it is stated that his cousin, Robert Cromwell, vicar of Battersea under the cardinal, gave Thomas the stewardship of the archiepiscopal estate of York House. At any rate he was advising Wolsey on legal points in 1520, and from that date he occurs frequently not only as mentor to the cardinal, but to noblemen and others when in difficulties, especially of a financial character; he made large sums as a money-lender.

Parliament (which re-assembled on the 7th of May) and the | his introduction to Wolsey to the Dorset family. On the other heads of the army came to an agreement to effect his dismissal; and in the subsequent events Richard appears to have played a purely passive part, refusing to make any attempt to keep his power or to forward a restoration of the monarchy. On the 25th of May his submission was communicated to the House. He retired into private life, heavily burdened with debts incurred during his tenure of office and narrowly escaping arrest even before he quitted Whitehall. In the summer of 1660 he left England for France, where he lived in seclusion under the name of John Clarke, subsequently removing elsewhere, either (for the accounts differ) to Spain, to Italy, or to Geneva. He was long regarded by the government as a dangerous person, and in 1671 a strict search was made for him but without avail. He returned to England about 1680 and lived at Cheshunt, in the house of Sergeant Pengelly, where he died on the 12th of July 1712, being buried in Hursley church in Hampshire. Richard Cromwell was treated with general contempt by his contemporaries, and invidiously compared with his great father. According to Mrs Hutchinson he was gentle and virtuous but a peasant in his nature and became not greatness." He was nevertheless a man of respectable abilities, of an irreproachable private character, and a good speaker.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY.-See the article in the Dict. of Nat. Biography, and authorities there cited; Noble's Memoirs of the Protectoral House of Cromwell (1787); Memoirs of the Protector and of his Sons, by O. Cromwell (1820): The Two Protectors, by Sir R. Tangye (1899): Kebleland and a Short Life of Richard Cromwell, by W. T. Warren (1900); Letters and Speeches of O. Cromwell, by T. Carlyle (1904); Eng. Hist. Review, xiii. 93 (letters) and xviii. 79; Cal. of State Papers, Domestic, Lansdowne MSS. in British Museum. (P. C. Y.) CROMWELL, THOMAS, EARL OF ESSEX (1485?-1540), born probably not later than 1485 and possibly a year or two earlier, was the only son of Walter Cromwell, alias Smyth, a brewer, smith and fuller of Putney. His grandfather, John Cromwell, seems to have belonged to the Nottinghamshire family, of whom the most distinguished member was Ralph, Lord Cromwell (1394?-1456), lord treasurer; and he migrated from Norwell, Co. Notts, to Wimbledon some time before 1461. John's son, Walter, seems to have acquired the alias Smyth from being apprenticed to his uncle, William Smyth, "armourer," of Wimbledon. He was of a turbulent, vicious disposition, perpetually being fined in the manor-court for drunkenness, for evading the assize of beer, and for turning more than his proper number of beasts on to Putney Common. Once he was punished for a sanguinary assault, and his connexion with Wimbledon ceased in 1514 when he "falsely and fraudulently erased the evidences and terrures of the lord." Till that time he had flourished like the bay-tree.

Under these circumstances the absence of Thomas Cromwell's name from the Wimbledon manor rolls is almost a presumption of respectability. Perhaps it would be safer to attribute it to Cromwell's absence from the manor. He is said to have quarrelled with his father-no great crime considering the father's character and fled to Italy, where he served as a soldier in the French army at the battle of the Garigliano (Dec. 1503). He escaped from the battle-field to Florence, where he was befriended by the banker Frescobaldi, a debt which he appears to have repaid with superabundant interest later on. He is next heard of at Antwerp as a trader, and about 1510 he was induced to accompany a Bostonian to Rome in quest of some papal indulgences for a Boston gild; Cromwell secured the boon by the timely present of some choice sweetmeats to Julius II. In 1512 there is some slight evidence that he was at Middelburg, and also in London, engaged in business as a merchant and solicitor. His marriage must have taken place about the same time, judging from the age of his son Gregory. His wife was Elizabeth Wykes, daughter of a well-to-do shearman of Putney, whose business Cromwell carried on in combination with his own.

For about eight years after 1512 we hear nothing of Cromwell. A letter to him from Cicely, marchioness of Dorset, in which he is seen in confidential business relations with her ladyship, is probably earlier than 1520, and it is possible that Cromwell owed

In 1523 Cromwell emerges into public life as a member of parliament. The official returns for this election are lost and it is not known for what constituency he sat, but we have a humorous letter from Cromwell describing its proceedings, and a remarkable speech which he wrote and perhaps delivered, opposing the reckless war with France and indicating a sounder policy which was pursued after Wolsey's fall. If, he said, war was to be waged, it would be better to secure Boulogne than advance on Paris; if the king went in person and were killed without leaving a male heir, he hinted there would be civil war; it would be wiser to attempt a union with Scotland, and in any case the proposed subsidy would be a fatal drain on the resources of the realm. Neither Henry nor Wolsey was so foolish as to resent this criticism, and Cromwell lost nothing by it. He was made a collector of the subsidy he had opposed-a doubtful favour perhaps and in 1524 was admitted at Gray's Inn; but he now became the most confidential servant of the cardinal. In 1525 he was Wolsey's agent in the dissolution of the smaller monasteries which were designed to provide the endowments for Wolsey's foundations at Oxford and Ipswich, a task which gave Cromwell a taste and a facility for similar enterprises on a greater scale later on. For these foundations Cromwell drew up the necessary deeds, and he was receiver-general of cardinal's college, constantly supervising the workmen there and at Ipswich. His ruthless vigour and his accessibility to bribes earned him such unpopularity that there were rumours of his projected assassination or imprisonment. All this constituted a further bond of sympathy between him and his master, and Cromwell grew in Wolsey's favour until his fall. His wife had died in 1527 or 1528, and in July 1529 he made his will, in which one of the chief beneficiaries was his nephew, Richard Williams, alias Cromwell, the great-grandfather of the protector.

Wolsey's disgrace reduced Cromwell to such despair that Cavendish once found him in tears and at his prayers "which had been a strange sight in him afore." Many of the cardinal's servants had been taken over by the king, but Cromwell had made himself particularly obnoxious. However, he rode to court from Esher to "make or mar," as he himself expressed it, and offered his services to Norfolk. Possibly he had already paved the way by the pensions and grants which he induced Wolsey to make through him, out of the lands and revenues of his bishoprics and abbeys, to nobles and courtiers who were hard pressed to keep up the lavish style of Henry's court. Cromwell could be most useful to the government in parliament, and the government, represented by Norfolk, undertook to use its influence in procuring him a seat, on the natural understanding that Cromwell should do his best to further government business in the House of Commons. This was on the 2nd of November 1529; the elections had been made, and parliament was to meet on the morrow. A seat was, however, found or made for Cromwell at Taunton. He signalized himself by a powerful speech in opposition to the bill of attainder against Wolsey which had already passed the Lords. The bill was thrown out, possibly with Henry's connivance, though no theory has yet explained its curious history so completely as the statement of Cavendish and other contemporaries, that its rejection was due to the arguments of Cromwell. Doubtless he championed his fallen chief not so much for virtue's sake as for the impression it would make on others. He did not feel called upon to accompany Wolsey on his exile from the court.

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wrote ten years later in 1539, recommended him to read a new Italian book on politics, which Pole says he afterwards discovered was Machiavelli's Prince. But this discovery was not made for some years: the Prince was not published until 1532, three years after the conversation; there is evidence that Cromwell was not acquainted with it until 1537 or 1539, and there is nothing in the Prince bearing on the precise point under discussion by Pole and Cromwell. On the other hand, the point is discussed in Castiglione's Il Cortegiano which had just been published in 1528, and of which Cromwell promised to lend Bonner a copy in 1530. The Cortegiano is the antithesis of the Prince; and there is little doubt that Pole's account is the offspring of an imagination heated by his own perusal of the Prince in 1538, and by Cromwell's ruin of the Pole family at the same time; until then he had failed to see in Cromwell the Machiavellian "emissary of Satan."

Equally fanciful is Pole's ascription of the whole responsibility for the Reformation to Cromwell's suggestion. It was impossible for Pole to realize the substantial causes of that perfectly natural development, and it was his cue to represent Henry as having acted at the diabolic suggestion of Satan's emissary. In reality the whole programme, the destruction of the liberties and confiscation of the wealth of the church by parliamentary agency, had been indicated before Cromwell had spoken to Henry. The use of Praemunire had been applied to Wolsey; laymen had supplanted ecclesiastics in the chief offices of state; the plan of getting a divorce without papal intervention had been the original idea, which Wolsey had induced the king to abandon, and it had been revived by Cranmer's suggestion about the universities. The root idea of the supreme authority of the king had been asserted in Tyndale's Obedience of a Christian Man published in 1528, which Anne Boleyn herself had brought to Henry's notice: " this," he said, " is a book for me and all kings to read," and Campeggio had felt compelled to warn him against these notions, of which Pole imagines that he had never heard until they were put into his head by Cromwell late in 1530. In the same way Cromwell's influence over the government from 1529-1533 has been grossly exaggerated. It was not till 1531 that he was admitted to the privy council nor till 1534 that he was made secretary, though he had been made master of the Jewel-House, clerk of the Hanaper and master of the Wards in 1532, and chancellor of the exchequer (then a minor office) | in 1533. It is not till 1533 that his name is as much as mentioned in the correspondence of any foreign ambassador resident in London. This obscurity has been attributed to deliberate suppression: but no secrecy was made about Cranmer's suggestion, and it was not Henry's habit to assume a responsibility which he could devolve upon others. It is said that Cromwell's life would not have been safe, had he been known as the author of this policy; but that is not a consideration which would have appealed to Henry, and he was just as able to protect his minister in 1530 as he was in 1536. Cromwell, in fact, was not the author of that policy, but he was the most efficient instrument in its execution.

He was Henry's parliamentary agent, but even in this capacity his power has been overrated, and he is supposed to have invented those parliamentary complaints against the clergy, which were transmuted into the legislation of 1532. But the complaints were old enough; many of them had been heard in parliament nearly twenty years before, and there is ample evidence to show that the petition against the clergy represents the " infinite clamours " of the Commons against the Church, which the House itself resolved should be "put in writing and delivered to the king." The actual drafting of the statute, as of all the Reformation Acts between 1532 and 1539, was largely Cromwell's work; and the success with which parliament was managed during this period was also due to him. It was not an easy task, for the House of Commons more than once rejected government measures, and members were heard to threaten Henry VIII. with the fate of Richard III.; they even complained of Cromwell's reporting their proceedings to the king. That was his business rather than conveying imaginary royal orders to the House. "They be

contented," he wrote in one of these reports, "that deed and writing shall be treason," but words were only to be misprision: they refused to include an heir's rebellion or disobedience in the bill "as rebellion is already treason, and disobedience is no cause of forfeiture of inheritance." There was, of course, room for manipulation, which Cromwell extended to parliamentary elections; but parliamentary opinion was a force of which he had to take account, and not a negligible quantity.

From the date of his appointment as secretary in 1534, Cromwell's biography belongs to the history of England, but it is necessary to define his personal attitude to the revolution in which he was the king's most conspicuous agent. He was included by Foxe in his Book of Martyrs to the Protestant faith: more recent historians regard him as a sacrilegious ruffian. Now, there were two cardinal principles in the Protestantism of the 16th century-the supremacy of the temporal sovereign over the church in matters of government, and the supremacy of the Scriptures over the Church in matters of faith. There is no room for doubt as to the sincerity of Cromwell's belief in the first of these two articles: he paid at his own expense for an English translation of Marsiglio of Padua's Defensor Pacis, the classic medieval advocate of that doctrine; he had a scheme for governing England by means of administrative councils nominated by the king to the detriment of parliament; and he urged upon Henry the adoption of the maxim of the Roman civil law-quod principi placuit legis habet vigorem. He wanted, in his own words, one body politic" and no rival to the king's authority; and he set the divine right of kings against the divine right of the papacy. There is more doubt about the sincerity of Cromwell's attachment to the second article; it is true that he set up a Bible in every parish church, and regarded them as invaluable; and the correspondents who unbosom themselves to him are all of a Protestant way of thinking. But Protestantism was the greatest support of absolute monarchy. Hence its value in Cromwell's eyes. Of religious conviction there is in him little trace, and still less of the religious temperament. He was a polished representative of the callous, secular middle class of that most irreligious age. Sentiment found no place, and feeling little, in his composition; he used the axe with as little passion as the surgeon does the knife, and he operated on some of the best and noblest in the land. He saw that it was wiser to proscribe a few great opponents than to fall on humbler prey; but he set law above justice, and law to him was simply the will of the state.

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In 1534 Cromwell was appointed master of the Rolls, and in 1535 chancellor of Cambridge University and visitor-general of the monasteries. The policy of the Dissolution has been theoretically denounced, but practically approved in every civilized state, Catholic as well as Protestant. Every one has found it necessary, sooner or later, to curtail or to destroy its monastic foundations; only those which delayed the task longest have generally lagged farthest behind in national progress. The need for reform was admitted by a committee of cardinals appointed by Paul III. in 1535, and it had been begun by Wolsey. Cromwell was not affected by the iniquities of the monks except as arguments for the confiscation of their property. He had boasted that he would make Henry VIII. the richest prince in Christendom; and the monasteries, with their direct dependence on the pope and their cosmopolitan organization, were obstacles to that absolute authority of the national state which was Cromwell's ideal. He had learnt how to visit monasteries under Wolsey, and the visitation of 1535 was carried out with ruthless efficiency. During the storm which followed, Henry took the management of affairs into his own hands, but Cromwell was rewarded in July 1536 by being knighted, created lord privy seal, Baron Cromwell, and vicar-general and viceregent of the king in “ Spirituals."

In this last offensive capacity he sent a lay deputy to preside in Convocation, taking precedence of the bishops and archbishops, and issued his famous Injunctions of 1536 and 1538; a Bible was to be provided in every church; the Paternoster, Creed and Ten Commandments were to be recited by the incumbent in

English; he was to preach at least once a quarter, and to start | of his master and the state. Where those interests were

a register of births, marriages and deaths. During these years the outlook abroad grew threatening because of the alliance, under papal guarantee, between Charles V. and Francis I.; and Cromwell sought to counterbalance it by a political and theological union between England and the Lutheran princes of Germany. The theological part of the scheme broke down in 1538 when Henry categorically refused to concede the three reforms demanded by the Lutheran envoys. This was ominous, and the parliament of 1539, into which Cromwell tried to introduce a number of personal adherents, proved thoroughly reactionary. The temporal peers were unanimous in favour of the Six Articles, the bishops were divided, and the Commons for the most part agreed with the Lords. Cromwell, however, succeeded in suspending the execution of the act, and was allowed to proceed with his one independent essay in foreign policy. The friendship between Francis and Charles was apparently getting closer; Pole was exhorting them to a crusade against a king who was worse than the Turk; and anxious eyes searched the Channel in 1539 for signs of the coming Armada. Under these circumstances Henry acquiesced in Cromwell's negotiations for a marriage with Anne of Cleves. Anne, of course, was not a Lutheran, and the state religion in Cleves was at least as Catholic as Henry's own. But her sister was married to the elector of Saxony, and her brother had claims on Guelders, which Charles V. refused to recognize. Guelders was to the emperor's dominions in the Netherlands what Scotland was to England, and had often been used by France in the same way, and an alliance between England, Guelders, Cleves and the Schmalkaldic League would, Cromwell thought, make Charles's position in the Netherlands almost untenable. Anne herself was the weak point in the argument; Henry conceived an invincible repugnance to her from the first; he was restrained from an immediate breach with his new allies only by fear of Francis and Charles. In the spring of 1540 he was reassured on that score; no attack on him from that quarter was impending; there was a rift between the two Catholic sovereigns, and there was no real need for Anne and her German friends.

concerned he had no heart and no conscience and no religious faith; no man was more completely blighted by the 16th century worship of the state.

The authorities for the early life of Cromwell are the Wimbledon manor rolls, used by Mr John Phillips of Putney in The Antiquary (1880), vol. ii., and the Antiquarian Mag. (1882), vol. ii.; Pole's Apologia, i. 126; Bandello's Novella, xxxiv.; Chapuys' letter to Granvelle, 21 Nov. 1535; and Foxe's Acts and Mon. From 1522 see Letters and Papers of Henry VIII., vols. iii. - xvi.; Cavendish's Life of Wolsey; Hall's Chron.; Wriothesley's Chron. These and practically all other available sources have been utilized in R. B. Merriman's Life and Letters of Thomas Cromwell (2 vols., 1902). For Cromwell and Machiavelli see Paul van Dyke's Renascence Portraits (1906), App. (A. F. P.)

CRONJE, PIET ARNOLDUS (c. 1840- ), Boer general, was born about 1840 in the Transvaal and in 1881 took part in the first Boer War in the rank of commandant. He commanded in the siege of the British garrison at Potchefstroom, though he was unable to force their surrender until after the conclusion of the general armistice. The Boer leader was at this time accused of withholding knowledge of this armistice from the garrison (see POTCHEFSTROOM). He held various official positions in the years 1881-1899, and commanded the Boer force which compelled the surrender of the Jameson raiders at Doornkop (Jan. 2, 1896). In the war of 1899 Cronje was general commanding in the western theatre of war, and began the siege of Kimberley. He opposed the advance of the British division under Lord Methuen, and fought, though without success, three general actions at Belmont, Graspan and Modder River. At Magersfontein, early in December 1899, he completely repulsed a general attack made upon his position, and thereby checked for two months the northward advance of the British column. In the campaign of February 1900, Cronje opposed Lord Roberts's army on the Magersfontein battleground, but he was unable to prevent the relief of Kimberley; retreating westward, he was surrounded near Paardeberg, and, after a most obstinate resistance, was forced to surrender with the remnant of his army (Feb. 27, 1900). As a prisoner of war Cronje was sent to St Helena, where he remained until released after the conclusion of peace (see TRANSVAAL: History).

From that moment Cromwell's fate was sealed; the Lords loathed him as an upstart even more than they had loathed Wolsey; he had no church to support him; Norfolk and Gardiner detested him from pique as well as on principle, and he had no friend in the council save Cranmer. As lay viceregent he had given umbrage to nearly every churchman, and he had put all his eggs in the one basket of royal favour, which had now failed him. Cromwell did not succumb without an effort, and a desperate struggle ensued in the council. In April the French | ambassador wrote that he was tottering to his fall; a few days later he was created earl of Essex and lord great chamberlain, and two of his satellites were made secretaries to the king; he then despatched one bishop to the Tower, and threatened to send five others to join him. At last Henry struck as suddenly and remorselessly as a beast of prey; on the 10th of June Norfolk accused him of treason; the whole council joined in the attack, and Cromwell was sent to the Tower. A vast number of crimes was laid to his charge, but not submitted for trial. An act of attainder was passed against him without a dissentient voice, and after contributing his mite towards the divorce of Anne, he was beheaded on Tower Hill on the 28th of July, repudiating all heresy and declaring that he died in the Catholic" repulsion from radiation," and he expressed his discovery in faith.

In estimating Cromwell's character it must be remembered that his father was a blackguard, and that he himself spent the formative years of his life in a vile school of morals. A ruffian he doubtless was, as he says, in his youth, and he was the last man to need the tuition of Machiavelli. Nevertheless he civilized himself to a certain extent; he was not a drunkard nor a forger like his father; from personal immorality he seems to have been singularly free; he was a kind master, and a stanch friend; and he possessed all the outward graces of the Renaissance period. He was not vindictive, and his atrocious acts were done in no private quarrel, but in what he conceived to be the interests

CROOKES, SIR WILLIAM (1832- ), English chemist and physicist, was born in London on the 17th of June 1832, and studied chemistry at the Royal College of Chemistry under A. W. von Hofmann, whose assistant he became in 1851. Three years later he was appointed an assistant in the meteorological department of the Radcliffe observatory, Oxford, and in 1855 he obtained a chemical post at Chester. In 1861, while conducting a spectroscopic examination of the residue left in the manufacture of sulphuric acid, he observed a bright green line which had not been noticed previously, and by following up the indication thus given he succeeded in isolating a new element, thallium, a specimen of which was shown in public for the first time at the exhibition of 1862. During the next eight years he carried out a minute investigation of this metal and its properties. While determining its atomic weight, he thought it desirable, for the sake of accuracy, to weigh it in a vacuum, and even in these circumstances he found that the balance behaved in an anomalous manner, the metal appearing to be heavier when cold than when hot. This phenomenon he explained as a

the statement that in a vessel exhausted of air a body tends to move away from another body hotter than itself. Utilizing this principle he constructed the radiometer (q.v.), which he was at first disposed to regard as a machine that directly transformed light into motion, but which was afterwards perceived to depend on thermal action. Thence he was led to his famous researches on the phenomena produced by the discharge of electricity through highly exhausted tubes (sometimes known as Crookes' tubes" in consequence), and to the development of his theory of "radiant matter" or matter in a "fourth state," which led up to the modern electronic theory. In 1883 he began an inquiry into the nature and constitution of the rare earths. By repeated

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