A Sword for Christ

 As the reader of my Facebook page will know, I recently finished Jonathan Cobb’s book on the Republican era and Great Britain and Ireland. It took me a little longer than I expected – it is a bit of a thicker tome than I anticipated.

Cobb, J., A Sword for Christ, Birlinn, Edinburgh, 2021.

I think it counts as a brave and useful effort, but as the republican era is, I think, downright confusing, particularly at its end, I am only a little wiser. Another thing that strikes me as odd is that even though the title bigs up, as it were, the religious aspect of the republic, it does not come across quite so strongly in the text.

Still, as there is not really an awful lot that is accessible about the republic, I think the book is worthwhile. It starts, rather oddly, perhaps, with the battle of Naseby, which is given an OK description but probably would not pass muster against some of the more recent interpretations of the battle, particularly the activities of Ireton’s wing. I mean, I think Ireton got injured by a pike, which suggests he was not facing Rupert’s horse, at least directly, at the time.

Starting there, of course, Cobb has to backtrack a little to the Self-Denying Ordinance and the setting up of the New Model Army. From there he has to backtrack a little further to explain why the New Model was needed at all. It is all, shall we say, a little confusing even in forward narrative. But it is key, and so has to be there.

The story then proceeds fairly straightforwardly through the Putney debates and negotiations with Charles I, the Second Civil War and the Levellers, the invasions of Ireland and Scotland and finally the Worcester campaign. So long as the republic kept fighting and winning, it seems, no one worried too much as to how it was being governed. And there is the rub: if the republic started to lose, then God would no longer be with her, and the whole existence of the Godly republic and the Elect ruling her would be under question.

In most of what I have read, including Cobb’s book, recent historiography points to the Western Design, which was supposed to capture Hispaniola and landed up with Jamaica, as the point at which the confidence of the Godly started to desert them. After all, if Dunbar was the high point of God being with them, then surely a war against the Popish Spanish ungodly rabble should have been successful, whatever the odds.

The lack of confidence engendered was, in my view at least, enhanced by Cromwell and his obscure views and manner of expression throughout his time as leader, either de facto or de jure. The story of his various attempts at finding some sort of legitimate government while keeping the Godly victors in power read as something between a farce and a tragedy. As with many unpopular governments, Cromwell and his Council of State did not seem to grasp that they were, in fact, unpopular, no matter how much they believed that God was with them.

The Republic needed significant armed forces to occupy Ireland, and Scotland, and fight the Dutch (Cromwell was against this, and ended the war as soon as he could after becoming Protector) and the Spanish. This meant heavy taxation of a country already impoverished by a decade of war and the army in serious arrears. Cromwell just about held it together, although the rule of the Major-Generals was rather a disaster – they even failed to return compliant members to the Protectorate Parliament. But when he died the contradictions and confusions of the republic showed and it all fell apart.

Cobb is surprisingly positive about Richard Cromwell. With a better wind, he might have made a fist of being Protector. But the legacy of high taxation, uncooperative Parliaments, and an army used to getting its own way put paid to any real chances of progress and he sensibly quit before someone led a coup. Not that the someones did much better, of course. Eventually, only Monk seems to have had much idea as to what to do, and he succeeded largely because his (Scottish garrison troops) were paid, while those in England were not, so Lambert’s army deserted in Northumberland.

One of the themes in the book I noticed is the influence of Fairfax, even in retirement. He crops up several times, not least, of course, in gathering the Yorkshire militia in 1659 to threaten Lambert’s rear. He had the advantage of never really falling out with anyone and became more sympathetic to the Royalist cause over the years. Still, since avoiding the King’s trial he did keep a low profile.

I think there are one or two errors, or at least statements which probably cannot be backed up. The one that sticks in my mind is the claim that the soldiers who put their weapons down and then picked them up again on Blackheath in 1660 were the same scarred veterans as those at Naseby. I think Ian Gentles argues that the army in 1659 was a very different beast than that of 1645 and with all the purging, casualties, and desertions, let alone honourable retirements among the rank and file, it seems to me unlikely that there were many veterans of the First Civil War among them. Senior officers, of course, were rather different – Monk started off as a Royalist and was captured at Nantwich after all. But the rank and file – I’m not so sure.

Quibbles aside, it is a good general introduction to an often overlooked, very confusing, and interesting era in British and Irish history. It is a bit of a shame that Cobb seems to have missed some of the more recent scholarship, but on the other hand, the endnotes do indicate engagement with a range of contemporary documents and he does give activity in Scotland its due, as befits a book written by someone who lives in East Lothian and is published in Edinburgh.