AKG IMAGES, ALAMY
35- The Hispaniola
Expedition December 1654
When Cromwell’s crusade against Catholic
darkness suffered a morale-sapping reverseCromwell won all his important
battles, sometimes against
daunting odds, and saw his
victories as witnesses to God’s
approval of his cause. It was not,
in Cromwell’s eyes, a cause
confined to England or even
Britain. It was a European, or
possibly even a worldwide,
struggle between Protestant
light and Catholic darkness.
Charles I had shocked Puritans
by his friendship with Spain during
the Thirty Years’ War. Then the
Rump had fought an epic naval
war with fellow Protestants, the
Dutch, who were newly liberated
from Spanish sovereignty.When he became protector,
Cromwell ended that conflict and
took on the Spanish empire in the
New World. In December 1654, he
sent an expedition to launch an
unprovoked attack on Hispaniola,
the island nowadays shared
between Haiti and the Dominican
Republic. Ill-planned, ill-led and
ill-disciplined, it was humiliatingly
routed by a handful of Spaniards.
The expedition force did limp
on to take Jamaica, and later, when
the war with Spain reached Europe,
the English won naval victories
and acquired the Channel base
of Dunkirk. But the defeat at
Hispaniola, which any Puritan was
bound to interpret as
a rebuke by God for
the government’s or
the nation’s sinfulness,
was a terrible blow to
Cromwell’s, and his
government’s, morale.
Blair Worden- The
dissolution
of the Long
Parliament
April 1653
When Cromwell ejected MPs
from the Commons – and locked
the doors behind themOliver Cromwell destroyed both sides of the civil war.
In January 1649, he steered through the trial and
execution of the king. On 20 April 1653, he removed
the Long Parliament, which had sat since 1640.
It was no less revolutionary a step. After a vitriolic
speech against its members, he called his
musketeers into the Commons to clear the chamber
and had the doors locked to prevent their return.
To Cromwell, forms of government, whether royal
or parliamentary, were means to ends of godliness
and justice, to be used or cast aside as they served
or failed those purposes. The ‘Rump’ of the
parliament left behind by Pride’s Purge had
antagonised the army. Cromwell looked to it to
implement a programme to achieve religious reform,
which would purge and Puritanise the
clergy and provide for liberty of
conscience and reform of the
legal system. Henceforth he
would seek those goals
through other means.
Eight months after the
coup, he was made lord
protector. Though he
hoped to give his rule
a constitutional
basis, it never
overcame its origin
in armed force or
the memory of
his expulsion of
the parliament
in whose service
the army had
ostensibly fought.
Blair WordenA portrait of Oliver Cromwell
at Dunster Castle. When he
failed to achieve his aims
through the rule of law, he
turned to forceMicheál Ó Siochrú is associate professor of history at Trinity College Dublin. He is the
author of God’s Executioner: Oliver Cromwell and the Conquest of Ireland (Faber, 2009)
John Adamson is a fellow in history at Peterhouse, University of Cambridge. His book The
Noble Revolt: The Overthrow of Charles I was published by Phoenix in 2009
Blair Worden is emeritus fellow of St Edmund Hall, University of Oxford. He is the author
of God’s Instruments: Political Conduct in the England of Oliver Cromwell (OUP, March 2012)“ The defeat at
Hispaniola was a blow
to Cromwell’s, and his
government’s, morale”
Cromwell’s unprovoked attack
on Hispaniola proved to be an
unmitigated disaster