Selling Cromwell's Wars by Nicole Greenspan

Author:Nicole Greenspan [Greenspan, Nicole]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, General, Europe, Great Britain
ISBN: 9781317322023
Google: Vbo6CgAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2015-10-06T03:38:08+00:00

Marketing War: The Protectorate, Parliament and English Victory

Endorsements of the war thus did not go unchallenged. Much of the debate surrounding the Anglo-Spanish war concerned whether or not it was a godly Protestant war, and whether or not the Protector and his government were capable of leading one. Yet as much as negative publicity could undermine the war effort, almost as damaging was the progress of the war itself. For much of the time the pace seemed languid, and by the time the Second Protectorate Parliament met in September 1656 it had been more than a year since English forces could claim major victory, Jamaica was still a struggling colony and Hispaniola had not been forgotten. Taxation in England, Scotland and Ireland, already high, had to bear the additional burden of financing the Anglo-Spanish war which cost over £1 million annually and military arrears were mounting.134 The Anglo-Spanish war was not an easy one to sell. Though Cromwell’s previous wars against the Scottish and Dutch also were controversial, apologists could point to measurable successes and providential guidance. The Spanish war by contrast carried stains of failure and hardship.

To pursue the war, Cromwell needed parliamentary supply. In his opening speech on 17 September, Cromwell offered a lengthy defence of the war and requested adequate funds to enable its full prosecution. In content, there is considerable overlap with his printed Declaration of October 1655. The 20,000 word speech, however, adopts a tone of urgency which is lacking in the Declaration. A sense of crisis drove the September 1656 speech. Most important was the need to place enough pressure on the new parliament to generate support, and revenue; to outweigh discontent, Charles II’s alliance with Spain in the spring of 1656 may also have added fuel to the fire: a decisive defeat of Spain would rob Charles II of a crucial source of money and men.135 To make the exigent circumstances and dire need for supply unmistakably clear, in its composition and language the speech is staggeringly repetitious. Over and over the representatives are reminded that Spain was the principal enemy of both England and of Protestantism. To take one representative example,

truly, your great enemy is the Spaniard. He is. He is a natural enemy, he is naturally so. He is naturally so, throughout, as I said before, throughout all your enemies, through that enmity that is in him against all that is of God that is in you, or that which may be in you, contrary to that his blindness and darkness, led on by superstition and the implicitness of his faith in submitting to the See of Rome, acts him unto.136

Spain, Cromwell continued, long had endeavoured to eradicate Protestantism and subjugate England, and this agenda rendered any attempted peace with Spain ineffective and even destructive.

For proof, Cromwell proclaimed, one needed only to consult ‘the observations of men who read history’.137 During his marriage to Mary I, Cromwell reminded the assembly, Philip II had sought to reimpose the popish church and to embroil England in Spain’s wars.

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