Of course certain of Cromwell’s actions did contribute to his economic troubles. The point has rightly been made by one authority (who is also one of his advocates) that Cromwell was “no financier”, while his critics have concentrated with justice on the chill relations which he allowed to exist between himself, certain merchants, and the City of London. It was a dangerous climate in an age without banks in the modern sense (although banks of a sort existed), when it was exactly with such bodies that loans had to be negotiated when necessary: the fact that they were being refused in the last twelve months of Cromwell’s life greatly added to his already mounting financial difficulties. At the same time it is profitless to point in the abstract to any possible solution to the critical Protectoral finances which does not take into account the ruling philosophy of the times. As has been seen, this was an age when the role which Cromwell caused England to play in world affairs was popular rather than the reverse with the majority of the nation. Furthermore the expensive magnificence with which he acted abroad also helped to underpin his own position by isolating King Charles II, just as the costly array of troops quartered in England, Ireland and Scotland curtailed the Royalist menace.
The actual details of Cromwell’s financial policy are still debated experts disagree, as did his contemporaries, on whether or not he inherited a sound economic situation from the Long Parliament.* ( * See Maurice Ashley, Financial and Commercial Policy under the Protectorate for a defence of Cromwell; H. J. Habbakuk, Public Finance and the Sale of Confiscated Property during the Interregnum, describing on the contrary the innate financial insecurity of Cromwell s regime primarily because people would not lend to it, takes as his starting-point the fact that the Long Parliament was not solvent at its dissolution.) But it is incontrovertible that he assumed office at a most critical moment, economically speaking, when the full effects of the Dutch War were just beginning to be felt, whatever the previous solvency. At the same time the effect of the frequent land sales, as a result of the Royalist confiscations, on the economy of the country, was equally unsettling because it tended to lock up capital unduly. The Civil Wars had themselves left financial chaos, where new expedients jostled with old-established taxes. Even so, the cost of keeping armies in both Scotland and Ireland and the additional general cost of the Union with Scotland were not met by the assessments designated to cover them.Furthermore,English trade was subject to additional depressions and fluctuations not necessarily of the Government’s making. Yet all these looming phantoms surrounded a man, one of whose foremost hopes as Protector in 1654 was actually to reduce the unpopular monthly assessments, in accordance with popular desire.
These assessments, much disliked since their first initiation by Fairfax’s army in 1645, had spread into a nationwide organization handled by the new country committees. Land-ownership was the basis of the charges with personalty also included, and the money, originally all paid to the Army treasurers at the Guildhall. Land property continued to be the basis on which the assessment was made throughout, despite an effort on the part of Whalley to establish a monetary levy of sixpence in the pound. However as the number of soldiers declined, the Treasury commissioners took to indicating where else the assessment might be used. But from the end of the Civil War onwards, the huge sum of .Ł120,000 a month was demanded: it was hardly surprising that there were vociferous complaints both from the people and in the 1654 Parliament. As a result, Cromwell took it upon himself to reduce it in two steps down to Ł60,000. This was certainly in accordance with the general wishes and his own beliefs, but financially speaking only thrust the Protector back onto other sources.
Of these, some, like the use of the customs, were ancient and therefore generally tolerated; others, like the excise, were new with the wars and consequently much disliked. Excise, first suggested by Pym in 1643 and used subsequently by both sides in the Civil War, had the unpleasant tang of an unlooked-for novelty in the popular mind. It consisted of a tax paid by manufacturers on goods made at home, and by foreign manufacturers on goods at the ports, in the same manner as customs. Both ale and beer were subject to it, although bread was traditionally thought to be exempt as the staple diet; it had the obvious effect of causing price rises, and on occasions there were excise riots. In the end it was discovered to be most profitably handled by being farmed out to private individuals. By selling the excise revenue of one class of goods for a fixed sum forward in advance, the Government had the advantage of much-needed cash. If the individual concerned could garner more than he paid – and obviously the object of the exercise from his point of view was so to do – he kept the difference. The receipts do show that large profits must have been made by the farmers: nevertheless the fact that the Government still preferred to sell shows that the problem was not simple. The Government itself could rake in much less on its own account. The individual paid the Government more, but also took a large profit. As it was, a man like the ubiquitous Martin Noell gradually acquired whole groups of goods, and also bought other enterprises for cash. Noell acquired the salt contract for amounts varying between twenty and thirty thousand pounds a year, the contract for draperies, silks and linen at fifty-six thousand pounds a year, and finally in 1657 a multiple contract for five years covering many different goods. Over the Post Office, which had been founded in the age of Charles I for twopence per letter per eighty miles, with post horses hired out additionally, he acted as Thurloe’s agent in the collection of monies. Thurloe needed control of the system for the murky concerns of his intelligence.11
Despite this, figures quoted by Dr Ashley show that there was a constant and vast gap between revenue and expenditure throughout the Protectorate, with the revenue always beneath the two million mark, and the expenditure always in excess of it. As a result the gap itself was nearly always over a million pounds; in 1657 it had risen to one and a half million pounds, and in 1658, the year of Cromwell’s death, was one million five hundred thousand. These figures explain not only why sources of immediate cash like the farming out of the customs and excise were attractive, but also how recourse had to be made to other forms of concealed borrowing – debentures for soldiers’ wages for example, and “public faith” bonds. Even so, other loans were necessary, personal ones perhaps from Noell or his fellow merchant Vyner, and hopefully loans from the City. It has been plausibly suggested that some of Cromwell’s warmth for men like these – and for that matter the Jews – may have rooted in his financial troubles and the icy reactions of the City.12
It was true that the Humble Petition and Advice had proffered Cromwell a revenue of one million three hundred thousand pounds over the business of the kingship in 1657. But there were problems in this: first in itself this was not sufficient and it later had to be raised another six hundrd thousand pounds. Secondly, it was hard to know where the actual money, not the postulated figures, was to come from, as Cromwell himself ruefully admitted to his Parliament of 1658: although “we have been as good husbands thereof as we could… some supplies designed by you for public service, that of the buildings, hath not come in as expected”.13 In this last period of his life, Cromwell needed a further five hundred thousand pounds for the Spanish War, an assessment to last three months only; he also as has been seen turned to an expedient already tried out by James i and Charles i, a tax on new London buildings. All those houses built in London since 1620 were to pay a year’s rent, and those actually built since September 1657 were to pay a fine of Ł120 a month from then on. But here again not so much money was raised as had been expected.
Gathering financial troubles not only put Cromwell from time to time in check to a Parliament of sorts, an ordeal one must believe that he might by now have preferred to avoid altogether, but also touched on other aspects of his idealized policy. For example the position of the English Catholics was one which touched delicately on Anglo-French relations. In the middle of the decade Oliver had allowed a liberal de facto situation to become established, but Bordeaux was naturally under explicit i
nstructions from Mazarin to press for some kind of de jure toleration. Now Parliament demanded the return of the harsh old recusancy laws to pay for the Spanish War: in theory Catholics were either to take an oath of abjuration or forfeit two-thirds of their estates. Despite Oliver’s objections, such a bill was passed in June and he had perforce to accept it (although the bill was probably never enforced). He was left still soothing Bordeaux with promises that the implementation of the laws would continue to be soft rather than hard, promises which Bordeaux, at any rate, thought that he intended to keep.
The heart of the matter of course lay in the frightening expense of the Army and Navy, expenditure for the Army alone estimated by Dr Ashley as totalling over seven million pounds during the period of the Protectorate. It was certainly not in Court expenditure, as some Royalists and Republicans suggested. Cromwell, no patron of the arts as had been King Charles I, was also no waster of the nation’s monies in this respect. The actual expenses of Army and Navy and civil ordnance probably came to within two to three million a year. Under the circumstances it is easy to understand the despairing conversation with the Protector on the subject of his finances reported by Bordeaux to France: Oliver was professing poverty, and his inability to help France further than already committed on their joint military projects. To the Ambassador he admitted general helplessness over his finances: for although his revenue was considerable, his expenses “by land and by sea” had absorbed a great part of it. We may believe that these professions were sincere, as did Bordeaux himself.14
The theorists were not wanting in trying to provide solutions, not only concerning the nation’s finances, but also with regard to the allied subject of trade. Hartlib and his friends, for example, were enthusiastic believers in the value of increased productivity in a predominantly agricultural country: four and a half millions of England’s five-million-odd population were said to be sustained by the land. Productivity could be enhanced by the compulsory plantation of fruit trees, or such worthy measures as increased bee-keeping: but it was a premise of such views that waste land must be fatal to the common good. Hence the enclosures, so much resented by the common people, and such complicated extensions of the enclosure system as the draining of the Fens, which the Levellers had criticized so furiously earlier, came within the schemes of Hartlib and his circle, as being godly works, and in his Legacy of Husbandry of 1655, Hartlib spoke approvingly of Fen drainage.15 Cromwell’s own change of attitude to the whole subject of the Fens, was a perfect illustration of the influence such theories were having upon Puritans at the time.
Back in the faraway 1630s he had seen the Fen issue as a simple one of the sufferings of the common people. By June 1653, Sir William Killigrew was reporting of his reaction to the draining of the South Holland Fen that Cromwell (then Lord General) considered it a good work in principle, only that the drainers had done too well for themselves and “that the poor were not enough provided for.” The last stage came when Cromwell permitted orders to be made against those who had assembled together in a riotous manner to protest against the drainage. Whatever the worthiness of their cause, the men of the Fens were disturbers of the peace, and they had now become a law and order problem. Edmund Drury of Swaffham, for example, suspected leader of the protesters, was said to have threatened to take on two or three thousand soldiers “for they were as well armed as they”. As a poem on the subject expressed it:
I sing Floods muzzled and the Ocean tamed
Luxurious Rivers governed and reclaimed …
New hands shall learn to work, forget to steal
New legs shall go to Church, new knees shall kneel.
The battle of the Fens was over. The reply had come back to the protesters from the centre, in the words of the Parliamentary committee on the subject: “It is and ought to be the care of the supreme power to provide for the good of the whole.”16
One area where Puritan theory of bygone days might have clashed with established practice was that of the various chartered companies set up for trade abroad. No topics had received more vigorous lashings from the Puritan opposition before the war than the domestic monopolies. Did not such companies as the Merchant Adventurers, the Muscovy Company, the East India Company and so forth, constitute in themselves monopolies? In general however the companies enjoyed the Protector’s support. He showed himself helpful to the Muscovy Company, and intervened for the Merchant Adventurers at Hamburg, where Richard Bradshaw incidentally was both the Government’s representative as Resident and Deputy of the company. It is true that he showed himself at least aware of the difficulty. One letter from the Protector to the Council of February 1655, written in his own hand, referred to the petition of George Sanderson to have letters patent to export coal exclusively from Newcastle to France. The Council should consider whether this “be not a monopoly, and so prejudicial to the liberties of the people, or whether it may not lawfully be granted, to the advancement of the public revenues upon the reasons and grounds annexed.” The Merchant Adventurers endured in fact considerable criticism for their exclusive right to export undressed cloths to the Continent, particularly from the cloth manufacturers. Finally in January 1657 the Parliamentary committee on trade voted against the continuance of the practice, despite one previous favourable vote, and in the teeth, too, of the opposition of one of their members, Sir Christopher Packe, who as master of the company used his double position to charge into the debate “like a horse”.17 Nevertheless it seems that finally the company got their privileges back. In general, it was left to the Levellers and the Quakers to pursue the obvious case to be made against the companies by the opponents of monopolies.
On the subject of trade generally, the establishment of a Council of Trade in 1650 had represented at least a valiant attempt to deal with the problems of an age where no one quite understood how commercial trends, subject to so many incalculable outside influences, could be best harnessed; while at the same time other outside events, such as wars, loss of shipping and bad harvests further complicated the issue. The Protectoral trade committee which followed was at least an effort in the direction of central control, although only one report of the committee actually became the basis of an Act of Parliament for the exportation of “several commodities of the Breed, Growth & Manufacture of this Commonwealth”.18 But various of its reports suggested the need to prohibit the export of wool abroad, and to allow goods such as beef, pork, bacon and cheese to be exported with only slight duties, or on another occasion the abolition of the export of rawhide and leather altogether – even if there were few tangible results. Even these tentative attempts at State control were in keeping with the advanced theories of the time, as those of Thomas Violet, author of a thoughtful piece of economic thinking, in which he advocated much greater vigilance of the Government over trade, similar to that of the Dutch Government, which he believed to be ideal.
The coal industry had already been the subject of propositions for State control in the reign of King Charles I, by means of royal ownership. A new version of this plan was submitted to Oliver Protector in 1655.19 Since the price of coal represented an anguished subject for the inhabitants of the South – Londoners in particular had suffered from three hundred per cent price rises during the Dutch War-this notion of State ownership, known as the Battalion Plan, was at least discussed in vague terms. Under Charles’s government interest in mines, with municipalities to replace retailers as traders, had been suggested. Under Cromwell, it was proposed only that shipments at sea should be controlled by the Government. A group of agents were to be appointed to buy coal at fixed prices in summer and winter, paying an annual rent of Ł50 or Ł60,000 a year to the State; however since this well-intentioned scheme would in fact have allowed the agents to fix an extremely high price to the public with impunity, it was perhaps just as well it fell through.
In one sphere at least Cromwell’s own religious predilections did fit neatly into economic theories of the time. His own belief in the need to allow the immigrat
ion of Protestant strangers was fully echoed by a man like Violet, who as a free-trader expressed the view that a good Dutch merchant within the English community was as valuable as a good Dutch cow. It was easy for Oliver to accept the notion that the wealth of the country would be enhanced by allowing such men to settle, when his religious instincts were already so prominently engaged in inviting forlorn Protestants to settle. Way back in his days as Lord General, Jean Despaigne, a distinguished Huguenot divine who had fled to England after the death of Henry IV, had been one of those who enjoyed his protection. In 1652 Despaigne dedicated a tract to “Messire Olivier Cromwell, General des Armees de la Republique d’Angleterre”; it was with Cromwell’s help that Despaigne secured new quarters for his church in Somerset House. When thanks were officially given for this benevolence by Despaigne, Cromwell responded with a most gracious speech at the ceremony, which made a profound impression on his hearers at the time: “Words we shall never forget,” wrote Despaigne. They may also be fairly held to sum up Cromwell’s emotional attitude to the subject. “I love strangers,” he declared; “but principally those who are of our religion.”20
Thus London and Norwich colonies of Protestant immigrants got permission to trade freely under his Protectoral rule despite inevitable local opposition. Over two hundred and fifty foreigners were granted letters of naturalization under the Protectorate, a record number, far in excess of that allowed under James I or Charles. And Oliver himself continued to show much cordial patronage to strangers, from Theophilus de Garencieres, domestic physician to the French Ambassador who became a member of the English college of physicians at his insistence, to Peter Vasson who became Bachelor of Physic at Oxford as a result of the same kindly intervention: the Chancellor of the University (Cromwell) declared himself as having received a good report concerning Vasson, his sufferings for religion, his success (through the blessing of God) in his practice and “the unblameableness of his conversation”. To an address by the minister of the French church in London shortly after he became Protector, he responded with equal warmth: “he desired our prayers for him” wrote an eye-witness, in his work for God’s people.21 Many of the most acute problems of the Protector would have been ameliorated by the existence of a bank, such as the Dutch enjoyed at Amsterdam; it was a perquisite which English merchants much envied them, because they themselves suffered from a very high rate of interest over their loans which, as they pointed out, crippled their trade. The notion of a State bank was actually suggested as early as 1648, in the shape of two banks, one to be a “bank of trade” and in 1650 there were proposals for a bank of exchange. Generally, it began to be felt that a bank must benefit the community. In England’s Safety of 1652 Henry Robinson urged the accumulation of gold and silver inside England in large amounts, while essentials like food and raw materials should never be exported, and luxuries never imported. It was this pamphlet that Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper recommended to the Protector soon after his accession, that Robinson’s proposals should have “speedy consideration”. Another pamphlet by S. Lambe was on the subject of the manifold advantages of a bank, including an increase in the national capital and a reduction in the rate of interest for the merchants, views which he subsequently expressed in a petition to Parliament, although once again nothing definite came of it. As it was, Lambe’s views were left for a later age to put into practice, and reap the fruit.22