FLEETWOOD, Charles (c.1618-92), of Stoke Newington, Mdx.

Charles Fleetwood was the third son of Sir Miles Fleetwood†, the receiver of the court of wards under James I and Charles I, who had managed to juggle a decidedly godly stance in the Commons with a firm adherence to George Villiers, 1st duke of Buckingham.51HP Commons 1604-29 Charles received an education suitable to his station, being admitted as a fellow-commoner at the puritanical Emmanuel College, Cambridge, in July 1635, and, after graduation, entering Gray’s Inn in January 1639.52Al. Cant.; G. Inn Admiss. 220. During his studies at the inns of court, Fleetwood apparently fell in with a group of students critical of the Caroline regime, and its influence over him may have increased still further after his father’s death in March 1641. This group included Edmund Ludlowe II*, who recalled that as political crisis became civil war in the summer of 1642 he had a meeting with Fleetwood and Richard Fiennes, where ‘it was resolved by us to assemble as many young gentlemen of the inn of court… to be instructed together in the use of arms, to render ourselves fit and capable of acting in case there should be occasion to make use of us’. When Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex, formed his lifeguard, these young men joined en masse, with the volunteers also including such hotheads as Thomas Harrison I*, Nathaniel Rich* and Matthew Tomlinson*.53Ludlow, Mems. i. 38-9. The lifeguard was evidently treated as a school for officers, and Fleetwood, as a man with court connections, could also prove useful in other ways. According to the 1st earl of Clarendon (Edward Hyde*), it was Fleetwood – still at this stage ‘a trooper in his guards’ - who was sent by Essex to the king’s headquarters in September 1642 to ask for talks before any bloodshed began.54Clarendon, Hist. ii. 340.

Parliamentary soldier, 1642-9

Fleetwood remained a member of the lifeguard during the Edgehill campaign, and he may have been present at that battle and at the stand-off at Turnham Green that followed.55Firth and Davies, Regimental Hist. i. 42-3. Early in 1643 he was made captain in Essex’s own regiment of horse, and that May he was appointed a commissioner for seizing horses and goods from delinquents in Cambridgeshire and Ely, alongside Oliver Cromwell*, which seems to have been the first formal connection between the two men.56Firth and Davies, Regimental Hist. i. 91; A. and O; CJ iii. 60a; LJ vi. 26a. As yet this was a merely nominal appointment, as Fleetwood was too busy fighting elsewhere to take up his fenland commission for at least another year. During the summer of 1643 Fleetwood’s troop received regular pay from Essex.57SP28/7/305; SP28/8/130; SP28/9/2, 102, 203; SP28/11/107. Fleetwood was wounded at the first battle of Newbury in September 1643.58Oxford DNB. By the end of October his men were billeted at Hendon, to the north of London, and they stayed there until early March 1644.59SP28/10/93, 168, 358, 371; SP28/13/7; SP28/14/58-9; SP28/15/12; SP28/17/226. In the closing weeks of 1643 it is clear that Fleetwood was still held in high regard by Essex, who on 30 November recommended him to be appointed, in place of his royalist brother, Sir William Fleetwood, as receiver of the court of wards.60HMC Portland, i. 164. Essex’s patronage may have been important in securing a resolution of the Commons on 11 December that Fleetwood’s case be taken into consideration, and also in the passage of the ordinance making him receiver, which was initiated in February and voted through in early April 1644.61CJ iii. 391b, 438a, 448a, 452a; LJ vi. 415a, 504a, 507a. Within a month of this ordinance being passed, however, Fleetwood suddenly left Essex’s army, and joined the Eastern Association army of Edward Montagu, 2nd earl of Manchester, instead. Fleetwood’s defection was abrupt, and the cause was almost certainly religious. An entry in Thomas Juxon’s* diary a month later recorded that Essex had come under attack from London radicals, and

upon this, [Sir Philip] Stapilton* and that party … took occasion to quarrel with Fleetwood and Harrison – two gentlemen that had from the beginning served my lord in his lifeguard and other charges and done extreme good service – for being forward to reform the army, [and] were counted enemies and endeavour[ed] to commit them.62Juxon Jnl. 33, 52.

The involvement of Stapilton, Essex’s right hand man, suggests that the attempt on Fleetwood (and his friend, Harrison) had the general’s full approval. Fleetwood’s reception in the rival Eastern Association was correspondingly warm, and he was immediately promoted from captain to colonel (with Harrison becoming his major), perhaps benefiting from Cromwell’s general policy of favouring non-Presbyterians for positions of authority.63SP28/14/58-9; SP28/17/414; Holmes, Eastern Association, 172, 201.

Soon after joining the Eastern Association, Fleetwood became involved in the dispute between Manchester and the inhabitants of Great Yarmouth and neighbouring boroughs over the garrisoning of the isle of Lothingland. The original commander appointed by Manchester, Colonel Francis Russell, was withdrawn in February 1644 and Fleetwood replaced him immediately after his arrival in East Anglia in April, despite protests from locals, who wanted to organise the defence themselves.64HMC Var. iv. 297; Holmes, Eastern Association, 188-9. Fleetwood was withdrawn in July, but in September there were fears, voiced by the burgesses of Aldeburgh, that Parliament would agree to confirm his commission, and it was felt that only the Scottish members of the Committee of Both Kingdoms stood in his way.65HMC Var. iv. 309. As mention of the Scots suggests, the vehemence of local opposition to Fleetwood may have been influenced by religion, and it is also telling that the Aldeburgh burgesses were also soliciting support from the Presbyterian chaplain of the earl of Manchester.66HMC Var. iv. 309. When Cromwell launched his public attack on Manchester in October, Fleetwood was implicated, with one opponent describing him and Harrison as leading nothing but ‘a cluster of preaching officers and troopers’.67Manchester Quarrel, 72. From October 1644 until April 1645, Fleetwood was put in charge of the defence of Lincolnshire against threats from the north and east, and on the creation of the New Model army his regiment was transferred complete, simply being ordered to march to Sir Thomas Fairfax’s* headquarters as a body.68CSP Dom. 1644-5, pp. 1-2, 22, 58, 63, 390-1. Fleetwood’s connection with religious radicalism was as strong as ever in early June 1645, when he defended the conduct of two of his officers who had preached without permission at Newport Pagnell, incurring the wrath of the Presbyterian governor, Sir Samuel Luke*.69Gentles, New Model Army, 100-1. Luke saw Fleetwood’s regiment as among ‘the chiefest praying and preaching regiments in the army’, and Fleetwood, for his part, complained to Luke that he had acted harshly

In these times, wherein we expect light from God, our duty is not to force men but to be tender of such as walk conscientiously, and rather than deprive them of liberty, for we know not but those who dissent from us may be in the right, and to disturb a saint Christ takes it as done to himself.70Luke Letter Bks. 324, 328, 583.

At Naseby (14 June 1645), Fleetwood’s regiment formed part of the left wing of the New Model army, commanded by the commissary-general, Henry Ireton*, and in the aftermath Fleetwood was sent with 2,000 horse ‘to follow the rear of [George] Goring*, whose forces hastened away’.71Firth and Davies, Regimental Hist. i. 92; Whitelocke, Mems. i. 468. In August he was sent by Fairfax to seize the ringleaders of the local clubmen, known as the ‘king’s commissioners’, at Shaftesbury in Dorset. According to one account, Fleetwood divided his forces, ‘set one part to surround the town, whilst the rest marched into Sherborne, where the commissioners were then sitting, and surprised them all, not one of them escaping’.72Two Great Victories (1645), 2 (E.296.6); Sprigge, Anglia Rediviva, 86. From October 1645 Fleetwood was based at Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire, guarding against any activity from the royalist forces in and around Oxford.73CSP Dom. 1645-7, pp. 176, 191, 204-5, 351. In the spring of 1646 he was one of the colonels engaged in blockading Oxford itself, and joined in the sieges of Boarstall House and Woodstock Manor in April.74LJ viii. 189b-190a; CJ iv. 523b-524b; Whitelocke Mems. ii. 6; Firth and Davies, Regimental Hist. i. 92. In the same month Juxon noted a rumour that Fleetwood’s brother Sir William had visited him with a message from the king, that ‘his majesty will put himself into his hands, he assuring him security for his person’. Fleetwood allegedly reported this to Parliament, which told him ‘not to meddle’.75Juxon Jnl. 116. (Other evidence suggests that Sir William had indeed visited his brother at this time, but his mission was a less romantic one: to surrender himself, and secure his estates.) 76CCC 1403. It was Fleetwood who first reported to Parliament that the king had fled from Oxford (28 Apr.), and he, with Colonel Thomas Rainborowe*, negotiated the surrender of James Stuart, 1st duke of Richmond, and John Lindsay, earl of Lindsay-Crawford, among other luminaries, in the days before the final capitulation of the royalist capital in May 1646.77CJ iv. 527a.

Long Parliament, 1646-8

In the closing months of the first civil war Fleetwood continued to be something of a controversial figure, not least because he was now an MP as well as a colonel, having been returned for Marlborough in a recruiter election on 8 May 1646. On 23 June the Oxfordshire county committee wrote to the Speaker, William Lenthall*, to counter ‘a petition from divers of the inhabitants on this side of [the] county … without the direction or desire of this committee, in behalf of Colonel Fleetwood to be appointed governor of Oxford’. The committee protested that Fleetwood was now an MP, and ‘doubt whether he may so freely pass the election of the House’ for that command, even if he had Fairfax’s support.78Bodl. Tanner 59, f. 359. It seems likely that the Oxfordshire committee’s objections were founded on Fleetwood’s reputation as a radical, as much as on local politics, and it is significant that their alternative candidate as governor, Colonel Charles D’Oyly, was the brother of one of the local committeemen, the Presbyterian John D’Oyly*. Certainly Fleetwood’s connections with Fairfax and the army’s high command were already public knowledge. In June he had been chosen, with Cromwell, Ireton, John Lambert* and Bulstrode Whitelocke*, to negotiate the surrender of the royalist stronghold of Wallingford, and late in the month he was described as belonging to the general’s ‘select council’.79Whitelocke, Diary, 186-7. In early July Fleetwood took his seat at Westminster, and it is perhaps indicative that his first recorded appointment, on 9th of that month, was to the committee to examine the imprisonment of the radical former associate of Cromwell, Lieutenant-colonel John Lilburne.80CJ iv. 611b.

Fleetwood took the Solemn League and Covenant on 26 August 1646, and seems to have attended Parliament fairly regularly through the autumn and winter that followed. Fleetwood’s committee appointments indicate that he was involved in military affairs, notably on 15 October, when he was named to the committee to consider a petition by London officers seeking indemnity for their actions during the war, and on 25 December he was added to the committee on army pay, specifically to settle the claims of soldiers who had served in Edward Massie’s* brigade.81CJ iv. 694b; v. 28b. There are also signs that Fleetwood was working with Cromwell and Ireton in the House. Six of the seven committees to which Fleetwood was appointed between September and December included either Cromwell or Ireton, or both.82CJ iv. 666b, 694b, 701a, 709a; v. 6b, 14b, 28b. Their influence might also have encouraged moves by the Commons to reward Fleetwood. On 26 October it was ordered that his accounts should be stated and certified, so that his arrears might be settled; and on 24 November a resolution was passed that the committee on the court of wards (a body that included Cromwell) would now consider the losses incurred by Fleetwood and others with the abolition of the court of wards earlier in the year.83CJ iv. 727a. On 9 January 1647 it was resolved that Fleetwood would be paid the handsome sum of £3,250 in recompense for his office, even though he had held it only nominally, and for little over two years.84CJ v. 46b, 301b; LJ ix. 443b. More remarkably, the stipulated sum was remitted, in full, over the next two years.85CJ v. 403b; SC6/ChasI/1661; SC6/ChasI/1665-6.

In the spring of 1647 Fleetwood was again working closely with Cromwell during the crisis that followed Parliament’s attempt to disband the New Model and ship its regiments to Ireland. On 30 April he and Cromwell were among the four officers appointed as commissioners by the Commons, with instructions ‘to go down to their charges in the army’ and quieten discontent.86CJ v. 158a. Fleetwood’s regiment, which was one of those selected to go to Ireland, debated Parliament’s votes at Saffron Walden in May 1647, drew up its own list of grievances, and appointed two agitators to meet with others and decide what action to take next. Cromwell and Fleetwood were reported to ‘work most hard to pacify the army’ in the discussions that followed, and the heads agreed by the army were delivered to Parliament by them on 20 May.87Clarke Pprs. i. 52-3, 78, 94; Harington’s Diary, 52. The following day, they and the other commissioners received the official thanks of Parliament ‘for the great and faithful pains and endeavours they have diligently employed in this service’.88CJ v. 181b. Despite his role in mediating between the army and Parliament, it is probable that Fleetwood, like Cromwell, was happy to harness military discontent for political ends. When Cornet George Joyce seized the king at Holdenby House in June, he immediately reported his actions in a letter addressed to Cromwell, ‘or in his absence to Sir Arthur Hesilrige* or Colonel Fleetwood’; but Fleetwood (like Cromwell) denied all prior knowledge of Joyce’s activities when confronted by an outraged House of Commons on 5 June.89Abbott, Writings and Speeches, i. 455-6.

Fleetwood was also held in high regard by Sir Thomas Fairfax. On 1 July Fairfax appointed Fleetwood, his old friend Harrison, Ireton and other senior officers as commissioners to negotiate between the army high command and Parliament; in mid-July 1647 Fleetwood was among those senior officers summoned by Fairfax to attend the general council of war at Reading; and he was one of those ordered to meet with the twelve agitators ‘in order to the settling of the liberties and peace of the kingdom’.90LJ ix. 312a; Abbott, Writings and Speeches, i. 475; Clarke Pprs. i. 176, 216-7. The army’s march on London in early August brought his friends in the Independent faction back into power, but Fleetwood’s role in this coup is unknown. On 29 August he was among those chosen to sit as a general committee of the army, but he did not attend the famous debates at Putney in October of that year, even though his regiment was represented by two captains and two other ranks.91Clarke Pprs. i. 223, 438. In fact, Fleetwood’s activities during this period are unclear. He does not seem to have attended Parliament again until 10 January 1648, and thereafter his involvement in the Commons was at best sporadic.92CJ v. 425a, 543b. In February 1648 Fairfax appointed Fleetwood, with Cromwell, Ireton and others, ‘to meet every day in Whitehall, to receive petitions and consider businesses relating to the army’.93Whitelocke, Mems. ii. 275. During the second civil war, Fleetwood’s regiment, stationed in East Anglia, put down a riot in Norwich, suppressed an attempted rising at Bury St Edmunds, took part in the early stages of the siege of Colchester, and stood guard over the disaffected inhabitants of Great Yarmouth.94Whitelocke, Mems. ii. 304; Firth and Davies, Regimental Hist. i. 94; CSP Dom. 1648-9, pp. 52, 107, 109, 116, 118; CJ v. 546b; LJ x. 267b. Fleetwood was presumably still in East Anglia in September, when he was excused for his absence at the call of the House.95CJ vi. 34b. In October his regiment petitioned Parliament to complain that lack of pay had forced them to extract free quarter from their unwilling hosts, and in December it was one of the units that converged on London in support of Pride’s Purge.96CJ vi. 55a; Firth and Davies, Regimental Hist. i. 95. Fleetwood’s part in the revolution of 1648-9 is unclear. He distanced himself from the regicide, and although he was appointed as a commissioner for the king’s trial, he made sure he was out of town at the crucial moment, avoiding signing the death warrant, and missing the execution on 30 January 1649.97Abbott, Writings and Speeches, i. 727; Gentles, New Model Army, 310-1.

Cromwell’s lieutenant, 1649-52

Fleetwood’s reticence was soon forgiven. On 28 February 1649 the Commons ordered that he and a handful of others who had not ‘entered their dissents’ before 1 March should not be proceeded against, and he was formally readmitted to the House on 14 May.98CJ vi. 153a, 208b. Thereafter, he was assiduous in his attendance at Westminster. Between 21 and 29 May he was added to an array of important committees, including those for Plundered Ministers, for Indemnity, the sale of the king’s lands, and the speedy settling of military accounts.99CJ vi. 216a, 216b, 217a, 219b. The last three indicate that the army remained at the heart of Fleetwood’s parliamentary involvement, even though he was also named to committees on law reform and religion.100CJ vi. 245b, 260a, 263b, 270a. This bias can also be seen in June, when he was teller on an amendment in the bill for relief on articles of war, and in July, when he was named to a committee on amendments introduced by Thomas Harrison I to measures to secure the army’s arrears.101CJ vi. 236a, 254a. As well as men like Harrison, Fleetwood also retained his connection with Cromwell. When Cromwell was preparing to sail for Ireland in July 1649, he put his personal business into the hands of various friends, including Fleetwood and Harrison, who were asked to assist his kinsman, William Steward, in his petition to the Commons.102Abbott, Writings and Speeches, ii. 91. On 15 August, after Cromwell’s departure, Fleetwood was named to the committee on the petition of Barnabas O’Brien, 6th earl of Thomond, which had been especially recommended to Parliament by Cromwell.103CJ vi. 279a. With the support of Cromwell and other senior figures, Fleetwood also secured promotion for himself. He was given joint command (with William Sydenham*) of the forces on the Isle of Wight, with their commission as governors receiving formal approval on 14 August.104CSP Dom. 1649-50, pp. 267, 277, 584, 588.

It is doubtful whether Fleetwood ever went to the Isle of Wight, as he remained active in Parliament until the early summer of 1650. In the autumn of 1649 he was named to committees to enforce the taking of the Engagement, at first among MPs (12 Oct., 9 and 27 Nov.), and he was also involved in religious affairs, notably the bill for preaching the gospel in Wales – a cause championed by Harrison.105CJ vi. 307b, 321b, 326b, 352a. During this period Fleetwood also became more involved in questions of finance, reporting both the amendments to the bill for taking the accounts of the commonwealth (21 Sept.) and the general state of the revenues, including money for the Isle of Wight (23 Oct.).106CJ vi. 299a, 311a. On 16 March 1650 he was named to the committee of trade, and appointed a trade commissioner, and he was evidently interested in the sale of delinquents’ estates (being named to committees on this on 23 Nov., 6 Apr. and 23 Aug.), an issue that affected soldiers seeking the settlement of arrears as well as the financial survival of the state. More importantly, perhaps, Fleetwood and his first wife had a personal stake in trying to influence the fate of her family’s estates.107CJ vi. 325b, 383b, 393b, 459a, 474b.

The two years from the summer of 1650 until the autumn of 1652 marked the high point of Fleetwood’s relationship with Oliver Cromwell. When Cromwell left for Scotland in June 1650 he was accompanied by Fleetwood and Lambert, and insisted that Fleetwood was promoted to lieutenant-general of horse – a rank superior to that enjoyed by Lambert, who remained major-general of foot.108Abbott, Writings and Speeches, ii. 277; Firth, Cromwell’s Army, 60-1. During the difficult Edinburgh campaign, Fleetwood was one of Cromwell’s closest advisers, and at the council of war at Musselburgh on 30 August he was an important voice in favour of withdrawing further from the capital. It was, he said, impossible to force the Scots to fight, ‘the passes being so many and so great that as soon as we go on the one side, they go over on the other’.109Abbott, Writings and Speeches, ii. 311. Retreating to Dunbar, where the Scots were able to hem in the English forces, was hardly ideal, but Cromwell again used Fleetwood when choosing positions for his army around the town, and he was one of the key commanders in the decisive victory that followed on 3 September.110Abbott, Writings and Speeches, ii. 314, 317. After Dunbar, Fleetwood remained with the army in Scotland, and joined Cromwell in questioning the more important prisoners. This could take the form of debates, rather than interrogation, but few were as amenable as Alexander Jaffray*, who willingly engaged in ‘frequent conference’ with Cromwell, Fleetwood and Dr John Owen*, ‘by occasion of whose company, I had first made out unto me not only some clear evidences of the [Lord’s] controversy with the family and person of our king, but more particularly the sinful mistake of the good men of this nation… in matters of religion’.111Diary of Alexander Jaffray, ed. J. Barclay (1833), 38.

Fleetwood had returned to London by February 1651, when he was elected to the council of state.112A. and O. On 20 March Parliament resolved that Fleetwood take over from Harrison as the commander with ‘care of these parts, and of the Parliament’.113CJ vi. 551a. During the spring and summer he served on council committees to confer with the army officers, to raise troops and provide for the security of the south of England, and was appointed to the committee of Irish and Scottish affairs.114CSP Dom. 1651, pp. 67, 94, 135, 148, 155, 166, 175, 176, 187-8, 204, 207, 274, 297. He was also involved in East Anglian affairs, considering petitions from Norfolk, discussing the continuing danger from Great Yarmouth, and making arrangements for the Isle of Ely and Landguard Fort near Felixstowe.115CSP Dom. 1651, pp. 131, 134, 165, 170, 179, 201. In Parliament, he was mostly involved in securing arrears for the army – including acting as teller to increase the compensation paid to the late Colonel Mauleverer’s family (21 May) – and influencing measures against royalists and their estates.116CJ vi. 569b, 576b. In June and July he was twice teller on votes concerning the sale of delinquents’ estates, and on 11 July he told in favour of banishing (rather than executing) the Presbyterian minister Christopher Love.117CJ vi. 584b, 603b, 605a. Fleetwood’s political prominence and the continuing favour of Cromwell, soon reaped financial benefits. In June 1651 Cromwell, incensed that the treasurers-at-war had not included Fleetwood within the military establishment, and had stopped his pay as a result, wrote to the council of state to complain and the Commons soon ordered the mistake to be rectified.118Abbott, Writings and Speeches, ii. 424; CJ vi. 592b. A month later, when the act for sale of forfeited lands was passed, a proviso was included ensuring that lands in Norfolk and Suffolk that had come to Fleetwood by his first marriage would not be affected.119A. and O.

At the very end of July the Scottish army, accompanied by Charles Stuart, began its long march south from Stirling, in the hope of striking at London while Cromwell and his troops were busy in Scotland. The council of state had the task of concentrating the remaining English forces to head off the Scottish advance, and Fleetwood was given a key role in this mobilisation, working with Harrison.120CSP Dom. 1651, pp. 306-7, 311-12, 319, 335, 338; CJ vi. 619a. On 20 August Fleetwood was also instructed ‘to hold constant correspondence with Lambert, who was shadowing the Scots to the north.121CSP Dom. 1651, pp. 347-50. When the Scottish army entered the city of Worcester, Fleetwood was in charge of ‘an army of the country forces, with some old regiments’ which had hastily mustered at Banbury, and when battle was forced on 3 September, he led the first attack on the Scottish lines.122CSP Dom. 1651, pp. 390, 398. The Worcester campaign also served to reinforce further the connection between Fleetwood and Cromwell. Again, Cromwell was eager to discuss strategy with his younger colleague, bringing him from Banbury to Warwick to attend a council of war on 24 August, and at the end of the month Fleetwood accompanied Cromwell on his personal reconnaissance of the royalist defences around Worcester. In Cromwell’s letter to Speaker Lenthall after the victory on 3 September, Fleetwood and Major-general Richard Deane* were the only officers mentioned by name. Fleetwood went back to London with Cromwell, sharing the entertainments laid on by an advance party of MPs at Aylesbury; they went into the Commons together on 15 September; and both were to receive the thanks of the House.123Abbott, Writings and Speeches, ii. 452, 455, 457, 461, 471, 476; CJ vii. 18b.

This close connection with Cromwell continued in the autumn and winter of 1651, when Fleetwood returned to his administrative duties on the council of state. He rejoined the committee for Irish and Scottish affairs and was appointed for the first time to the committee for trade and foreign affairs - both committees including Cromwell among their membership.124CSP Dom. 1651-2, pp. 43, 67. Fleetwood was also involved in army matters in the council, and in January 1652 he intervened, at Cromwell’s behest, to ensure that the Committee for Advance of Money respected the Oxford and Exeter articles of war.125CSP Dom. 1651-2, pp. 82, 85, 174; CCAM 99. Fleetwood seems to have been increasingly involved in the business of Ireland in the spring of 1652, presenting a report on the state of the country to the council.126CSP Dom. 1651-2, pp. 241, 243. Again, he may to have been acting on Cromwell’s behalf, as an unofficial spokesman for the lord lieutenant. During this period, Fleetwood was also active in Parliament, and there are signs that here, too, he was working closely with Cromwell, being named to committees on the regulation of the law (one of Cromwell’s pet schemes) and serving as reporter from the council to Parliament about the charges and supplies of the army in Ireland.127CJ vii. 58b, 80a, 107b. On 13 April he was appointed with Cromwell to the committee on the bill for incorporating Scotland into the English state.128CJ vii. 118b.

Fleetwood’s steady promotion, and in particular his increasingly close relationship with Cromwell, may have soured his relations with another ambitious young officer, John Lambert. Tensions between the two men had been growing for a number of years. In the Scottish campaign of 1650, Fleetwood had been given seniority in rank; he, rather than Lambert, had been singled out for praise after Worcester in 1651; and while Fleetwood was lauded thereafter, Lambert was snubbed, when the title and status of lord deputy of Ireland, promised to him in the early months of 1652, was suddenly withdrawn on 19 May.129Abbott, Writings and Speeches, ii. 557. Fleetwood’s part in this is uncertain, but it is interesting to note that he was teller, with Sir Henry Vane II, against continuing the debate on Ireland on 21 May.130CJ vii. 134b. Lambert chose to blame Parliament for the slight, but suspicions must have been raised by what followed. On 8 June Fleetwood married Bridget Ireton, daughter of Cromwell and widow of the former lord deputy of Ireland; on the same day Lambert’s regiment was ordered to Ireland; and on 9 July, barely a month later, Fleetwood was chosen by the council of state as the new commander-in-chief of the forces in Ireland – a lesser post, perhaps, but one that Lambert had turned down with contempt once the deputyship was denied to him.131Abbott, Writings and Speeches, ii. 558, 562-4; CSP Dom. 1651-2, p. 322; CJ vii. 152a. The story recorded by the acidic pen of Lucy Hutchinson, that Fleetwood first met Bridget Ireton after she had been publicly snubbed by Mrs Lambert in the spring of 1652, may be apocryphal, but it reflects the reality of tension of the situation; and by the autumn there was no doubt that Fleetwood had triumphed over Lambert.132Mems. of Colonel Hutchinson, ed. J. Hutchinson (1806), 327-8. So complete was his success, that in July and August Fleetwood was urgently trying to smooth badly ruffled feathers, by trying to raise £2,000 compensation for the money Lambert had expended in the expectation of high office.133Add. 21421, ff. 198, 205; D. Farr, Lambert, Parliamentary Soldier and Cromwellian Major-General, 1619-1684 (Woodbridge, 2003), 116-19. The debacle over the Irish command provided an unequivocal, and very public, sign that Fleetwood was now Cromwell’s favourite. On 1 September 1652, shortly after the Fleetwoods left for Ireland, Cromwell wrote to a ‘personal friend’ complaining that he did not have ‘one friend in our society to whom I can unbowel myself … You absent; Fleetwood is gone; I am left alone’.134Abbott, Writings and Speeches, ii. 576.

Governing Ireland, 1652-55

Between Fleetwood’s appointment in July and his departure for Ireland in September, he was busy making preparations. In Parliament he continued to be involved in the sale of delinquents’ estates, and on 4 August his own reversionary interest in his first wife’s lands was passed as a proviso in the general bill.135CJ vii. 153a, 157b, 160b, 161a. Unsurprisingly, Fleetwood was also involved in Irish affairs, being named to a committee on the Irish Adventurers and acting as reporter on a bill for settling the accounts of former and current soldiers in Ireland.136CJ vii. 162a, 167a-b. On 13 August the council recommended that Fleetwood head a team of commissioners (the others were Edmund Ludlowe II, Miles Corbett*, John Jones* and John Weaver*) which would manage civilian government in Ireland, and this was confirmed shortly afterwards.137CJ vii. 164b, 167a-b. Fleetwood began his tenure as commander-in-chief in Ireland with enthusiasm, confident that he had the full support of Cromwell in England. Cromwell was certainly open in his early letters to his son-in-law, apologising in August 1653 for ‘thus unbowelling myself to you’, and mixing affectionate greetings to ‘your dear wife’ and ‘your little babe’ with complaints at the difficulty of his task (‘fain would I have my service accepted of by the saints (if the Lord will) but it is not so’).138Abbott, Writings and Speeches, iii. 88-9. Other signs of Cromwell’s support followed. Fleetwood was added to the new council of state on 14 July 1653, and was among the smaller group chosen as protectoral councillors in December 1653.139CSP Dom. 1653-4, p. 25. He was also retained as commander-in-chief and commissioner after the creation of the protectorate; in May 1654 he was granted £2,000 for his transportation costs twenty months before; and in August of the same year it was agreed that he would be made lord deputy – the post enjoyed by Ireton, and denied to Lambert.140CSP Dom. 1654, p. 191; Abbott, Writings and Speeches, iii. 271. He was sworn in, ‘with no extraordinary solemnity, yet sufficient’ in Dublin on 13 September.141Mercurius Politicus no. 223 (14-21 Sept. 1654), p. 3780 (E.812.8).

Despite these outward signs that Cromwell and his son-in-law were inseparable, it soon became clear that they had their differences. The policy of transplantation, whereby the Catholic landowners were resettled in Connaught (leaving their estates open to Adventurers, soldiers and other deserving settlers) had been instituted immediately after the conquest had been completed in 1653. Fleetwood had not initiated the scheme, but he supported it wholeheartedly, not least because he believed in the justice of the soldiers’ claims. Yet by the spring of 1654 Fleetwood was concerned that decisions made at Whitehall about ‘the disposing of land’ were not acceptable to the officers in Ireland.142TSP ii. 196-7. Worse still, the policy was being undermined by a steady drip of exceptions, pardons and concessions, many of them granted by the protector himself.143Abbott, Writings and Speeches, iii. 131, 699, 709, 714, 801; CSP Ire. 1647-60, pp. 609, 611. Fleetwood’s complaints about this had only brought counter-claims (possibly originating with his brother-in-law, Henry Cromwell*) that he had made his own exceptions and so could not point the finger of blame at others.144CSP Ire. 1647-60, p. 531. His response, in May 1654, was one of outrage: ‘instead of thinking you in England blameworthy for disposing of lands, I am looked upon as most blameable, though I can call to mind but one that I have written for’; besides, there was now talk that the four counties around Dublin should be withdrawn from the army’s share, a decision that ‘I cannot think … advisable’.145TSP ii. 290-1. In November 1654 Fleetwood brought matters to a head by issuing a general order that transplantation must take place by 1 March next.146Abbott, Writings and Speeches, iii. 520. The result was not what he had hoped for. Following the first protectorate Parliament, the entire policy came under attack, the way being paved by an Irish Protestant, Vincent Gookin*, whose book attacking the transplantation of Catholic tenants as well as landowners was condemned by Fleetwood as ‘very strange [and] scandalous’, and an attack on ‘those that did and now do serve the state here’.147TSP iii. 139. The transplantation scheme – which he now described as ‘our partial transplantation’ - limped on, with Fleetwood hoping that some progress might be made through the autonomous powers vested in the Irish council, and in May 1655 he hoped that ‘the Lord will appear in owning it, though it hath been strangely obstructed and discouraged by the discountenance it hath received in England’.148TSP iii. 196, 468; Abbott, Writings and Speeches, iii. 687, 722. In July he claimed to have proof of his earlier fears ‘that the work of transplantation might receive some obstructions from England, through misrepresentations’, as settlement in the west of Ireland had been hampered by those who claimed to have orders ‘to keep Irish proprietors on their estates’.149TSP iii. 612.

Behind this harsh policy was the fear that Ireland, like Scotland, would provide the kindling from which the royalist cause might be reignited. In February 1654 Fleetwood told Secretary John Thurloe* of his suspicion that ‘the Irish have some design to make some disturbance’ in the west, and that he feared that only arms and ammunition were lacking for a new rebellion to break out.150TSP ii. 89. Repeated alarms followed, and the tense situation was not helped by the outbreak of Penruddock’s rising in western England in March 1655.151TSP iii. 196, 245. In July, as his own time in Ireland drew to an end, Fleetwood issued new orders against any Catholics found with weapons, and also warned that soldiers who neglected to search for them would themselves be court-martialled.152Abbott, Writings and Speeches, iii. 778. Fleetwood’s private attitude seems to have been based on the generally-held belief that the Irish were naturally inferior and malicious. In February 1654 he explained how treason in Ireland had traditionally been very broadly defined, even to include arson, ‘by reason of the barbarism of this people, so apt to such crimes’.153TSP ii. 94. A few months later he condemned the Irish as ‘an abominable, false, cunning and perfidious people; and the best of them to be pitied, but not to be trusted’.154TSP ii. 343. For Fleetwood, Cromwell’s willingness to grant exceptions from transplantation to such people was simply baffling.

In Fleetwood’s eyes, the Old Protestant settlers of Ireland were little better than Catholic Irish. Many were former royalists, or Presbyterians who would no doubt support the Stuarts at the drop of a hat, and in the summer of 1654 Fleetwood warned Thurloe that ‘both cavalier and Irish’ were plotting against the protector, and begged that ‘you will suffer no Irishman, under what pretence soever, to come near my lord’s person’, and in this he included Old English as well as native Irish, and perhaps even the Old Protestants.155TSP ii. 343. It was this attitude that perhaps lay behind the wholesale dismissal of Old Protestant regiments in the summer of 1653, with the units commanded by Sir Charles Coote*, his brothers Thomas* and Richard*, Sir Theophilus Jones* and Lord Broghill (Roger Boyle*) all being reduced.156SP28/93/92, 100, 102; SP28/94/7, 13, 518, 574; SP28/96/141; CSP Dom. 1653-4, p. 77. Fleetwood was not automatically hostile to all Old Protestants, and those seeking favours soon learned which approach yielded the greatest benefits. For example, the co. Cork landowner, John Percivalle, who wanted official backing for ‘planting of my waste lands’, emphasised that without support ‘some [Catholic] Irish gentlemen who still have an influence over the people of the country’ would be able to prevent wider attempts to bring in English settlers. This pressed all the right buttons, and within ten days Fleetwood had ordered the local governor to give Percivalle every assistance.157Add. 46934, ff. 83, 96. The 2nd earl of Cork (Sir Richard Boyle*) was treated less kindly, perhaps because Fleetwood considered his brother, Lord Broghill, to be an enemy. Cork, despite his royalist past, had secured his estates at the beginning of 1653, but continued to be anxious that the relatively lenient ruling might be reversed. In October 1654 he waited on Fleetwood at Dublin, who ‘did assure me that no such thing was attempted’, and he continued to receive similar promises at later, even though he knew that Fleetwood’s allies on the council, especially Miles Corbett and Matthew Tomlinson, were working against him.158Chatsworth, CM/29, unfol.: 17 Oct. 1654, 17 Feb. 1655, 30 May 1655, 2 June 1655, 10 Aug. 1655.

Despite Fleetwood’s opposition, it was becoming clear that the Old Protestants were gradually being rehabilitated in the eyes of the regime. This was partly through the influence of Henry Cromwell, but there were others close to the protector, like Lord Broghill, whose influence was also increasing. One aspect of this changing policy was a willingness to reintroduce traditional forms, including the old Irish law courts. Before 1649 there had been four courts in Dublin, but Fleetwood questioned whether this was really necessary, suggesting that only two – common pleas and chancery – would suffice.159TSP ii. 224. A further problem was the time that erecting the traditional four courts would take, leaving ‘our judicatures here … in a very unsettled condition’.160TSP ii. 224. In March 1655 Fleetwood received unequivocal orders that ‘the four courts are going up here’, and the best he could do was try to make sure that ‘honest men’ received ‘under places’ in the new courts.161TSP iii. 196, 407 Later he reacted angrily to any suggestion that he hoped to put his own candidates into any of the civilian positions that were now available, including the four courts: ‘I have not one near kinsman in office in the three nations. My business is to serve the public, not myself’.162TSP iii. 468.

There was no serious attempt to reintroduce the Irish Parliament, but under the Instrument of Government Ireland was allowed to return 30 MPs to Westminster. Fleetwood received the Irish writs for the first protectorate Parliament on 12 July 1654, but without enthusiasm. Cromwell had already asked him to consider how the seats might be distributed, and ‘whether you conceive any places … to be capable of electing members themselves’ or whether ‘particular persons be called by writ’ as had happened for the Nominated Assembly.163Ire. under the Commonwealth, ii. 424. Fleetwood, taking the opportunity offered, argued that Ireland was not yet ‘in a fit posture to elect their own members’, and held a ‘private junto’ to decide who would be nominated.164HMC Egmont, i. 546; Ludlow, Mems. i. 387-8, 388n. Cromwell, however, insisted that conventional elections should continue, and at the polls the Old Protestants or their allies took 19 of the 30 seats, much to Fleetwood’s chagrin. On 23 August he was apparently resigned that the result had gone against him, telling Thurloe that ‘I do not think, as the case stands… to detain any person that is elected a Member of Parliament here’, but at the same time he submitted a list of the six senior officers who would be ordered to remain at their posts rather than travel to Westminster: Sir Hardress Waller*, Sir Charles Coote, Daniel Axtell*, Thomas Sadleir*, Daniel Redman* and William Purefoy II*.165TSP ii. 558. This was a mixture of Old Protestants, trusted allies of Fleetwood and more moderate officers, and suggests that Fleetwood was attempting to be even-handed. Fleetwood had himself been elected for no fewer than three English constituencies in July 1654 - Marlborough, New Woodstock and Oxfordshire – but he did not ask to return to England.166Clarke Pprs. v. 193. Instead, he monitored the first protectorate Parliament with disquiet – fearing that the debate on the constitution ‘gave liberty enough to unravel all’ - and greeted the premature dissolution with grim satisfaction, commenting that ‘good men’ rejoiced at Cromwell’s last speech condemning the truculent MPs, while ‘evil men are very much dejected and disappointed in the late dissolution’.167TSP iii. 136; v. 548. By now, the foot-dragging over key policies, and the reversal of decisions over others, had left Fleetwood disillusioned not only with Parliament but also the protectoral council. In an extraordinary statement of distrust, in February 1655 he commented on the ending of the council’s ability (in conjunction with the protector) to pass ordinances on its own authority:

I am very glad to hear his highness hath declined the legislative power, which by the Instrument of Government in my opinion he could not exercise after this last Parliament’s meeting; and therefore those things which we hear are attempted to be done in England concerning Ireland will be prevented through the want of that power.168TSP iii. 183.

From Fleetwood’s point of view, if the government in England was inclined to oppose his policies, only their weakness would ensure that he was able to get the job done.

Fleetwood’s suspicions were confirmed by news of his recall to London. Henry Cromwell arrived in Dublin on 11 July and ‘positive commands’ for Fleetwood’s departure were received on 7 August.169TSP iii. 632, 697. Despite Cromwell’s assurances that he would retain the deputyship, Fleetwood was left with a nasty taste in the mouth. He had, after all, witnessed (perhaps been complicit in) the disgrace of Lambert three years before, and now the wheel of Cromwell’s favour was turning once again, with Henry apparently coming to the top. The disagreements over policy during Fleetwood’s time in Ireland had taken their toll, and the implicit trust between him and Cromwell, so apparent in 1651-2, had eroded away. This can be seen most clearly during the protectorate, but its roots can be found in the winter of 1652-3, when Cromwell as an affectionate, if slightly overbearing, father-in-law, told Fleetwood to ‘take heed also of your natural inclination to compliance’.170Abbott, Writings and Speeches, ii. 601-2. The criticism is implicit, but coming immediately after Cromwell had sent his commendations and prayers for the officers in Ireland, it perhaps indicates that he knew that Fleetwood might easily be influenced by radicals whose zeal, although useful for the moment, could not hope to form the basis for a lasting settlement.

There was no shortage of radicals in Ireland to unsettle Fleetwood, and rather than guarding against ‘compliance’, he set out to give them every encouragement. He worked happily with commissioners like Ludlowe, Corbett and Jones, who favoured Baptists and other sectaries and opposed the political changes during 1653.171Barnard, Cromwellian Ireland, 101. Although Fleetwood remained a religious Independent, he was utterly committed to liberty of conscience, and thus supported the Baptist churches in Ireland. He employed as a preacher to the general officers Thomas Patient – who then went on to convert Colonels Richard Lawrence and Daniel Axtell* to his beliefs; Christopher Blackwood was also favoured; Baptist officers, like Captain John Vernon, Adjutant-general William Allen and the governor of Cork, Robert Phaier, were valued advisers.172Barnard, Cromwellian Ireland, 102-3, 110. Lawrence was a close ally of Fleetwood who took up his pen in the new year of 1655 to defend the transplantation policy against Gookin; Fleetwood questioned the necessity of imprisoning Allen in March of the same year; and in later months he lobbied Whitehall for favours to Phaier (although he baulked at Phaier’s encouragement of Quakerism).173TSP iii. 246, 690; Barnard, Cromwellian Ireland, 110. Others who became close advisers of Fleetwood included Colonels Jerome Sankey* and John Hewson*, whom he recommended to join the Irish council in July 1654, as ‘good men, and faithful to the lord protector’.174TSP ii. 493. Henry Cromwell, in his brief visit to Ireland in the spring of 1654, saw this policy of encouraging radicals as a fundamental flaw, telling Thurloe that ‘I do think he [Fleetwood] is a little too deeply engaged in a partial affection to the persons of the Anabaptists, to answer your end; though I do believe it rather to proceed from tenderness [than] love to their principles’.175TSP ii. 149-50. In other words, Fleetwood was being misled. But there is another side to the argument. Rather than showing Fleetwood’s gullibility, or his blindness to the hostility that these men felt towards the protectorate, the extent of his patronage of the Baptists in Ireland suggests that this was a deliberate policy, intended, perhaps, to provide an example to the protector and his councillors in England.

The sincerity of Fleetwood’s support for the army can be seen in his angry complaint, shortly after Henry’s brief visit to Ireland in the spring of 1654, that ‘peace-breakers’ and ‘enemies of our spiritual as well as civil peace’ had caused ‘a very deep resentment among some good men’, and also in his warnings to Thurloe that the council of the officers in Ireland had to be mollified about ‘some practices’ in England and Wales, and persuaded ‘how much contrary they are unto my lord [protector]’.176TSP ii. 256. For Fleetwood, the threats to unity came not from the army but from the insinuations of those, like former royalists ‘who have peace in their mouths, but war still in their hearts’; with ‘the common enemy’ still abroad, the ‘saints’ should unite, ‘not divide so sadly as we do’.177TSP ii. 391. The key to survival, Fleetwood explained to Thurloe in July 1654, was ‘to take that good old way of solemn seeking of the Lord for counsel and strength’, but, he added, ‘I fear we have of late been too remiss in those near approaches. The Lord awaken us to our duty’.178TSP ii. 445. Did ‘of late’ mean since December 1653? Shortly afterwards Fleetwood told Thurloe that he was content ‘to serve your highness and this precious cause’, but there was a hint that the two might not always be the same thing.179TSP ii. 530. At the end of September 1654 he was more open in his criticism:

I am persuaded the Lord still keeping my lord protector’s heart firm to that great duty of minding the saints’ interest, as saints, he will prosper. I must say I am fearful of nothing so much as lest he should be tempted and prevailed upon by that spirit, which I doubt too much rules and governs some men’s hearts.180TSP ii. 620.

Despite his fears, Fleetwood undoubtedly remained faithful to Oliver Cromwell, and he used his influence to ensure that the army was unanimous in signing a petition of loyalty to the regime later in the same month, and he was able to claim ‘there is not one of the three armies that have less dissatisfaction than this hath’.181TSP ii. 631. In November Fleetwood was putting a brave face on it: ‘I know my lord’s strait is great; but I trust his heart will ever keep firm to the saints’ interest, and then we need not care or fear… I know some have of late been dissatisfied, but his standing firm to that principle will unite hearts to him’.182TSP v. 548-9 [misdated 1656]. By mid-December, however, Fleetwood was again cast into despair. Even though the army was still ‘firm to my lord protector’ he was increasingly aware that decisions about Ireland were being taken behind his back: ‘indeed, I think it somewhat strange, I should no more understand in anything more than what is communicable to everyone’. He suspected his enemies among the Old Protestants (‘some who relate to Ireland (not of the soldiers)’) were briefing against him, and again he feared Cromwell’s resolves to resist such blandishments: ‘It is not everyone who pretends faithfulness will prove so, but the Lord, I trust, will ever keep his highness’s heart to the interest of good men … I know his trials, difficulties and temptations are many’.183TSP iii. 23. In February 1655 Fleetwood greeted orders to cashier four officers accused of disloyalty with dismay: ‘I am persuaded nothing but what my lord did suppose necessity could have satisfied his highness to have dealt so with these persons, who have been so eminently faithful to the public interest’.184TSP iii. 183. The failure of Penruddock’s rising was for him not an occasion for jubilation but repentance – a reminder that ‘trusting in an arm of flesh’ was not enough for ‘the Lord’s people’, ‘and confident I am, so long as the Lord keeps my lord protector on that principle, he will prosper’.185TSP iii. 245, 292, 305 (quotation on p. 292). Once again, Fleetwood saw there was a real danger of Cromwell departing from the way of the Lord.

By June 1655 it was beginning to dawn on Cromwell that all was not well. His letter to Fleetwood of 22 June was oddly defensive, almost apologetic, and quite unlike his earlier communications. He begins with protestations of affection that appear stilted in comparison with his usual unguarded profusion: ‘I write not often: at once I desire thee to know I most dearly love thee, and indeed my heart is plain to thee as thy heart can well desire: let nothing shake thee in this’. He then hints at the distance that had grown between them personally (as well as between different political and religious camps), bemoaning the ‘wretched jealousies that are among us’, before insisting that ‘My heart is for the people of God: that the Lord knows, and I trust will in due time manifest’ – as if he had been accused of being otherwise. The point of the letter was to deny that Henry was to be lord deputy instead of Fleetwood, ‘which truly never entered into my heart’; but then, apparently unsolicited, Cromwell reveals another problem that he feared (or knew) was troubling Fleetwood: ‘The noise of my being crowned, etc are like malicious figments’. It is only at the very end that Cromwell returns to the old intimacy, with love being sent to ‘dear Biddy’ and the family.186Abbott, Writings and Speeches, iii. 756. More than any other piece of evidence, this letter reveals that relations between Cromwell and Fleetwood were in poor shape in the summer of 1655; and, crucially, that Fleetwood was deeply disappointed with his father-in-law, perhaps suspecting him of failing ‘the people of God’, even of coveting the crown.

Cromwellian councillor, 1655-6

As it turned out, Fleetwood’s arrival in London in September 1655 brought reconciliation rather than confrontation. Initially, a suite of rooms was provided for him and his family in the former royal palace of Somerset House, and Derby House was also put at his disposal, but at the intercession of the lady protectress, Wallingford House was finally allocated to him.187CSP Dom. 1655, p. 260, 265; Henry Cromwell Corresp. 57. Meanwhile arrangements were made for the Fleetwoods to be met on their way to London, and they were ‘gallantly entertained’ in Oxfordshire, with ‘most of the council, as well as several of the chief officers of the army … meeting my lord upon the way’.188Henry Cromwell Corresp. 58, 62; TSP iv. 32. His return was widely heralded by rumourmongers, who expected Fleetwood to be made ‘generallissimo of all the forces in the three nations’ or to be given a high civil office in government, such as lord treasurer.189Clarke Pprs. iii. 48-9. The reality was less glorious, as the only office that Fleetwood was granted at this time was that of major-general of a precinct including Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, Hertfordshire, the Isle of Ely, Cambridgeshire, Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire; but there was no doubt that he was destined to become a powerful figure in the central administration. Unlike John Disbrowe*, he did not rule in person as major-general, rather relying on his deputies: his cousin Colonel George Fleetwood*, his old major, Hezekiah Haynes*, and the former Eastern Association radical, William Packer*.190Abbott, Writings and Speeches, iv. 102; CSP Dom. 1655, p. 387. Fleetwood kept in close contact with these men, advising Haynes over the disputed election for mayor of Colchester in December 1655, and working with him to secure pay for the militia, and he was eager to praise the whole scheme in correspondence, boasting to Henry Cromwell in January 1656 that the work ‘goes on very thoroughly’.191TSP iv. 330; v. 328; Henry Cromwell Corresp. 95, 129. Fleetwood was also able to increase his influence within the regular army, and when in the early summer of 1656 the soldiers lobbied Cromwell for an active commander, Fleetwood and Lambert were the obvious candidates (although the soldiers themselves ‘would rather have General Lambert’).192CSP Ven. 1655-6, p. 227; Abbott, Writings and Speeches, iv. 177. In the council, Fleetwood joined the other senior officers – his old rival, Lambert, his colleague as governor of the Isle of Wight, William Sydenham, and Cromwell’s brother-in-law, John Disbrowe – in pushing forward military rule, and safeguarding the finances needed to pay for it. As well as Irish matters, during the year from September 1655 to September 1656 he was appointed to ad hoc committees for security (including several dealing with the major generals’ scheme and major garrison towns), finance (including the sale of royal forests), Scotland and foreign policy.193CSP Dom. 1655-6, pp. 89, 106, 164, 169, 233, 234, 243, 283, 291, 297, 306, 312, 352, 375, 385; 1656-7, p. 5, 13, 20, 24, 50, 57, 64, 90, 103; CCC 736-7. Fleetwood was among those councillors who pressed for closer alliance with Sweden (perhaps influenced by his brother, the unofficial spokesman for the Swedish crown, George Fleetwood), and he was keen to bring about a ‘Protestant union’ against the Catholic states, discussing the plan at length with Bulstrode Whitelocke and the Swedish ambassador.194Whitelocke, Diary, 421-2, 428, 441-2.

Fleetwood’s energetic engagement with the government was influenced by his improved relations with his father-in-law. Once ensconced in Whitehall, Fleetwood was not prey to the doubts and fears that had grown up during his tenure in Dublin. He could also attend the protector in person, and ensure that his voice was heard. In October 1655 he told Henry Cromwell (with glee) that the protector had agreed to send the radical William Allen back to Ireland, despite Henry’s objections. ‘It is a matter of rejoicing to your dear father’ added Fleetwood,

to hear that there is so right an understanding twixt you and good men … His interest, and his mercy, lies in the saints, and still he is kept, I trust, with a precious sense thereof, and I am not in despair but that good men will more and more (through mercy) see wherein lies their true interest.195Henry Cromwell Corresp. 68.

Fleetwood was also hopeful that a reinvigorated protector would now embrace the Protestant cause abroad. On 11 December 1655 he told Henry, apparently candidly, about the progress of talks with Sweden: ‘I am not without hope but that the Lord may make my lord protector an instrument of great good upon this occasion to the whole Protestant interest’.196Henry Cromwell Corresp. 86-7. By this stage Fleetwood’s concerns about Cromwell’s intentions had receded, even if they had not disappeared altogether. Yet, despite the influence of the ‘army interest’, and the success of the major-generals, Fleetwood and his allies were not always able to sway the protector. The appointment of Lord Broghill as president of the Scottish council in March 1655 (although he did not take up his post until September) and the appointment of Henry Cromwell as de facto governor of Ireland, created particular problems, as both were intent on pushing a ‘civilian’ agenda, which involved reducing the army, and with it taxation, and encouraging the Protestants of each country to settle their differences with the regime. This new policy, and the noticeably more regal form of Cromwell’s court in England, was of serious concern to men like Fleetwood, who had already seen signs of Cromwellian backsliding in the early years of the protectorate.

His relations with the protector had improved, but from the moment of Fleetwood’s return to England there were serious tensions between him and Henry Cromwell. As lord deputy, Fleetwood retained a large say in Irish policy, and this was reinforced by his importance at Whitehall, as a councillor and as a member of the Irish committee, where his principal colleague was Lambert.197P. Little, Lord Broghill and the Cromwellian Union with Ire. and Scot. (Woodbridge, 2004), 134. Other councillors deferred to him. This could be seen even before his arrival in London, as on 18 September 1655 the council ordered that a petition from the Protestants of Ireland would not be considered until the lord deputy was present.198CSP Dom. 1655, p. 339. Fleetwood had no scruples about bypassing Henry when he thought it expedient. For example, on leaving Ireland he had instructed Dr Henry Jones, the bishop turned scoutmaster-general, to report intelligence of Irish plots directly to him.199TSP iv. 445, 483. Such highhandedness led to protests from Henry, but there was no avoiding the fact that Henry relied on Fleetwood’s influence in England to get things done. In December 1655 he asked Fleetwood for help in tackling the problems of the navy victualling office at Dublin; in January 1656 he asked Thurloe to ‘speak with my brother Fleetwood’ about the sending of money; and in February he needed his brother-in-law’s approval for the promotion of Judge William Donnellan.200TSP iv. 307-8, 484, 509; Henry Cromwell Corresp. 87. Fleetwood also had the ultimate responsibility in selecting new Irish councillors (much to Henry’s irritation), granting commissions in the Irish army (ditto) and more mundane tasks such as sending out writs for Irish elections.201TSP iv. 606; v. 208; CSP Dom. 1655-6, p. 68; Henry Cromwell Corresp. 113. As money became tighter, the Irish treasury reached an ‘exceeding low ebb’ and Fleetwood’s influence was crucial in ensuring that the army was paid.202Ire. under the Commonwealth, ii. 617-8, 626-7; Henry Cromwell Corresp. 104, 149. Fleetwood could also ration the amount of information that Henry received, especially from the council, leading Henry (in an echo of Fleetwood’s own complaints a few months earlier) to complain to Thurloe in August 1656 that his enemies in Ireland ‘are more privy to your secret management of affairs than myself’.203TSP v. 278.

Fleetwood’s agents in this fight were his old army colleagues, and this underlines the fact that the dispute was ideological as well as political. In November 1655 the Baptist officers in Ireland made their dissatisfaction with Henry all too apparent, and in early December a number of officers, including Colonels Hewson and Lawrence, wrote to the protector commending ‘our present precious lord deputy, which was a refreshment to all the godly in this nation’ and pointing out that his efforts had placated the enemies of the regime, ‘so that the most fearing the Lord are convinced there is no other means visible, whereby the interest of the God’s people can be secured but in your highness’s hands’. The officers also urged that Fleetwood be returned to Ireland as soon as possible.204TSP iv. 197, 227, 276. In January 1656 Henry complained to Thurloe of Allen and Vernon, and when it came to Sankey, ‘I’ll trust as far as I can see him’.205TSP iv. 483. It is not always possible to see how Fleetwood was directing these men in their troublemaking, not least because he met any suggestion that he was undermining Henry with a wounded denial, but there is little doubt that collusion was happening.

Fleetwood’s oleaginous letters to Henry must certainly be read with caution. On 1 December 1655, for example, just as Hewson and Lawrence were writing to the protector (presumably with Fleetwood’s knowledge), Fleetwood told Henry that those who petitioned could not succeed, as ‘our interests are so nearly interwoven, one in another’, and that he was innocent of any involvement. Any remaining suspicions were down to Henry’s suspicious nature: ‘whatsoever you do with me, yet be confident you shall find me plain hearted’.206Henry Cromwell Corresp. 78. Later letters followed a similar vein. Rather than censure Sankey in January 1656, Fleetwood told Henry not to worry himself with such trifles: ‘I am confident Jerome will rather make it his business to heal mistakes than widen them’.207Henry Cromwell Corresp. 96. In February, Fleetwood was quick to defend another of his henchmen, Daniel Axtell, asking Henry to treat such ‘honest men’ with ‘tenderness’.208Henry Cromwell Corresp. 113. Disconcertingly, such letters were mixed with the familiar and the personal: news of Elizabeth Claypoole’s illness, or the doings of ‘dear, sweet little ones’.209Henry Cromwell Corresp. 86, 127, 129. This (perhaps unfairly) increases the sense of insincerity. Only once in this period did the mask slip, in August 1656, when Fleetwood learned of Henry’s attempt to cashier the Baptist officer, John Vernon. ‘I desire to have no personal prejudice of any man’, he snapped, ‘but I am persuaded you are much more mistaken in some persons than you think I am in others’.210Henry Cromwell Corresp. 171. Thankfully, Henry was able to compare Fleetwood’s letters with other accounts, such as those from John Thurloe or Sir John Reynolds*. The latter warned him in June that ‘the former prejudicial counsels’ of Fleetwood and his friends were having only a limited effect on the protector, who was instead following ‘the judgement of sober men’.211Henry Cromwell Corresp. 140.

Amid the wrangling between Fleetwood and Henry Cromwell, it was announced that elections would be held for a second protectorate parliament, to sit in September 1656. As major-general, Fleetwood was also involved in English elections. Hezekiah Haynes did his best to secure him election for Norfolk, in the face of firm opposition ‘against the honest interest’, and Fleetwood travelled to East Anglia to advise with Haynes in person on this and other contests.212TSP v. 220, 353. Fleetwood was eventually elected for Norfolk (but only after ‘extraordinary engagements’), and also for Oxfordshire and Marlborough.213TSP v. 328, 370. Fleetwood’s influence over the Irish elections, even as lord deputy, was limited, and he was reduced to recommending men like Colonel John Clerke II* to Henry Cromwell.214Henry Cromwell Corresp. 166. It speaks volumes for the fractured relationship between the two men that Clerke was not one of those returned in the August poll. Instead, the Old Protestant interest and its allies, with the open support of Henry, scored another significant victory in these elections. Among the new MPs were men who were open in their hostility to Fleetwood, including his old adversary in the transplantation debate, Vincent Gookin, who, a few weeks later, told Henry Cromwell of an interview with the protector in which he had defended Henry’s reputation against his detractors:

By whom that was done I could not say, but desired his highness to consider and observe whether any person of, or from, Ireland, did ever say anything to his highness to your prejudice, who was not either accidentally by his custom to rule unlimitedly or naturally a man of a proud and haughty spirit (at which his highness smiled).215Henry Cromwell Corresp. 183; TSP v. 648

Thus, as the second protectorate Parliament opened, Fleetwood’s position was still not entirely clear-cut. His hostility to the person and policies of Henry Cromwell in Ireland was ill-concealed; and for all his praise of Oliver Cromwell in recent months, his years in Ireland had left a legacy if not of distrust, then of wariness, which was apparently reciprocated. His problems with both men were more than a matter of jealousy or weakness, nor were they the result of his too-ready ‘compliance’ with discontented officers in Ireland: rather, they were rooted in his long-standing beliefs, which were more radical than the policies that either Henry or Oliver were now able to countenance. Fleetwood had been associated with radicals since the mid-1640s - his regiment had a reputation for godliness as early as 1644, his officers were arrested for preaching in 1645 and his personal friendships with firebrands and troublemakers can be traced further back still. Among Fleetwood’s oldest friends was Edmund Ludlowe II, who turned against Cromwell after the dissolution of the Rump but retained his post as commissioner in Ireland and an officer in the army there. When in 1655 Fleetwood was called upon to strip him of his commission, he stalled, and even asked if another way was possible, ‘by reason of our ancient acquaintance’.216TSP iii. 112-3. He tried to prevent Ludlowe’s imprisonment, assuring the authorities in London that Ludlowe would retire quietly to the country ‘to avoid jealousies and temptations’, and insisted that he receive half-pay in the interim; and later he would attract the protector’s displeasure when he deliberately disobeyed orders and allowed Ludlowe to return to England.217TSP iii. 136, 407, 743-4; Abbott, Writings and Speeches, iii. 838, 863, 872. The order was immediately countermanded at Whitehall, but through the continuing good offices of Fleetwood (‘who holds himself much concerned for him’), Ludlowe was able to have a private interview with the protector, to argue his case.218Ire. under the Commonwealth, ii. 550-1; Ludlow, Mems. i. 426-7, 432, 436; TSP iv. 100, 107-8. Then there was Thomas Harrison I, who had been a friend of Fleetwood and Ludlowe before the civil wars, became Fleetwood’s major, and then an importance influence over the ‘rule of the saints in 1653’, and then an arch-enemy of the protectorate. Harrison was imprisoned by Cromwell, but he was not forgotten by Fleetwood.219TSP iii. 246. The same fate befell Colonel Nathaniel Rich*, who was later described as Fleetwood’s ‘friend’.220Abbott, Writings and Speeches, iv. 121. George Cokayn is another, less well known, example. An Independent minister, Cokayn had served as chaplain to Fleetwood’s regiment in the 1640s, and became his personal chaplain in August 1651, but in December 1653 he joined Fifth Monarchists like Vavasor Powell and Christopher Feake in attacking Cromwell, and was even accused of plotting with Sexby, Wildman and the Levellers later in the decade.221Whitelocke, Diary, 256, 259; Whitelocke’s Contemporaries, ed. Spalding, 16, 51-2. In January 1656, however, he was still in contact with Fleetwood, and he retained the connection in later years.222Whitelocke, Diary, 420, 536.

Nor was Fleetwood merely continuing such friendships for old time’s sake. He seemed to attract radicals during the protectorate. One such was Philip Sandys, who wrote to him in January 1656 to warn him that ‘this age may be complied with, [but] it can never be subdued with your sweetness’, and that the temptations of power had to be guarded against.223TSP iv. 405-6. The printer John Jones, imprisoned for his part in a Fifth Monarchist attack on Cromwell in the autumn of 1655, contacted Fleetwood in the winter of 1656-7, hoping that he might gain him ‘access’ to the protector, ‘to inform his verbally of some business that concerneth him’, although it seems this request was prudently ignored.224Add. 33374, ff. 77-8v; Abbott, Writings and Speeches, iii. 870. It is notable that Fleetwood was one of the very few Cromwellians who received favourable comment from Lucy Hutchinson, who saw Bridget Fleetwood during the protectorate as ‘humbled, and not exalted with these things’ in contrast to the rest of her siblings, who behaved like ‘insolent fools’; while Fleetwood was the only conduit through which Colonel John Hutchinson* could gain access to the protector.225Mems. of Col. Hutchinson, 336, 339-40.

In some ways, Fleetwood was only doing what Cromwell famously did: insisting that he was available to men of all opinions; but at times, his actions deliberately went against the grain. Although Fleetwood shared the general feeling that the defeat at Hispaniola was a ‘sad rebuke’ from God, he did not agree with Cromwell’s ‘great rage’ against his old colleague General Robert Venables*, instead visiting him in prison (as did Lambert) and keeping in touch thereafter through their mutual friend, Mr Eaton, minister of Stockport.226TSP iii. 690; CSP Ven. 1655-6, p. 119; Abbott, Writings and Speeches, iii. 826-7. The final case is the most startling, as Fleetwood was apparently on good terms with the imprisoned republican, Sir Henry Vane II*, who was rumoured to be encouraging the Fifth Monarchists and other firebrands to bring down the regime.227TSP iv. 509. According to Ludlowe’s memoirs, when Vane had completed his damning critique of the protectorate, A Healing Question, in the spring of 1656, ‘he showed it to Lieutenant-general Fleetwood, who seeming to approve it, desired to take it with him, and promised to communicate it to Cromwell’.228Ludlow, Mems. ii. 16. Once again, Fleetwood was acting as conduit between radicals of various persuasions and the protector – what one contemporary termed his ‘useful’ skill of being ‘so accessible’.229Henry Cromwell Corresp. 65. Jerome Sankey – who should have known – also noted that ‘exceeding many people (I hope honest) and sufficiently dissatisfied come to him’ and commended ‘his excellent temper to deal with them’. He also recorded that these ‘people’ included the Fifth Monarchist, John Simpson.230Henry Cromwell Corresp. 67, 69. Such connections were very useful to the regime, of course; but Fleetwood’s role in this was not entirely benign, as he could only perform it if he maintained personal contact with those who were no longer acceptable to the protector – and even those who were his bitter enemies – and this underlines the point that he was certainly not his father-in-law’s poodle. There may even be some truth in royalist claims, in later months, that ‘Fleetwood drives his trade with the fifth monarchy men and Quakers’, or that opponents of the protectorate hoped that Fleetwood ‘will be no bitter enemy’ to their designs.231CCSP iii. 239; iv. 85. In September 1656, as Parliament began, Fleetwood remained loyal to the protector and the protectorate; but his loyalty was not unconditional.

Parliament and the ‘army interest’, 1656-7

During the 1656-8 Parliament, Fleetwood finally came to the centre of the political stage. He was naturally an important player in Irish affairs. He was named to the parliamentary committee of Irish affairs on 23 September, and the Irish council wrote to him in September and November 1656 concerning the assessments, religion and indemnity for civilian and military officers: measures that would be discussed in the protectoral council as well as Parliament.232CJ vii. 427a; Ire. under the Commonwealth, ii. 626-7, 637, 646-9. In December Fleetwood and other councillors were appointed to a committee to consider how to raise £20,000 for Ireland, and in the same month he intervened in Parliament to encourage the passage of individual land cases, joining Lambert and others in pressing for a committee to remove ‘obstructions’ that were hindering plantation in Ireland.233CSP Dom. 1656-7, p. 198; Burton’s Diary, i. 198, 202-3. On 23 December Fleetwood and Henry Cromwell’s friend, Sir John Reynolds, in a show of unity, moved that the Irish union bill should run in parallel with that for Scotland.234Burton’s Diary, i. 215. He also championed other legislation, as on 12 January 1657 when he interrupted debate to insist that the bill attainting the Irish rebels – ‘without which no purchaser or adventurer could be secured’ - must be passed quickly, and again he gained support from Henry’s allies, this time Anthony Morgan*.235Burton’s Diary, i. 337-8. Regardless of differences over other issues, there was something approaching a united front when it came to Irish domestic policy. On 30 March Fleetwood joined many other Irish MPs on the committee on the bill for the attainder of Irish rebels, and on 29 May he and Morgan argued that ‘the bills for the settlement’ of Ireland must be passed ‘before you lay assessment upon Ireland’.236CJ vii. 515a; Burton’s Diary, ii. 155.

Personal land grants were more divisive. On 5 June, when the Commons agreed to allow extra lands to Lord Broghill, Fleetwood and his friends withdrew from the chamber in silent protest.237Burton’s Diary, ii. 178. This poisoned attempts by Morgan and William Aston to reward Fleetwood with £1,500 a year in Irish lands, only three days later. Even though this move had been meant kindly, and had received the blessing of Lambert and others, Fleetwood suspected it was a trap, implicating him in the general corruption of the regime.238Henry Cromwell Corresp. 281. Both Hezekiah Haynes and John Disbrowe opposed it, with Disbrowe commenting that such a grant was ‘neither for his honour nor yours’ while the poor in Ireland were without food and the soldiers without pay. Lambert, more succinctly, now claimed that ‘I know it will not please him’.239Burton’s Diary, ii. 197-9. Morgan was dismayed, saying ‘I am sorry I moved it’.240Henry Cromwell Corresp. 281. The Commons voted the grant through anyway, and on 12 June Fleetwood made political capital by publicly refusing to accept it: ‘many debts and charges lie upon you, and I am tender of your honour, considering what reproaches may lie upon you by this means’. Instead, he presented a petition from ‘some members that serve for Ireland’ asking that the assessment might be reduced.241Burton’s Diary, ii. 224-6; CJ vii. 555b, 557a. For Fleetwood, ‘to retrench your charge in Ireland is the way to plant it, and the way to make it yield you better hopes’.242Burton’s Diary, ii. 245. As far as he was concerned, the bottom line was still land confiscation and plantation, and in the last days of the sitting he again joined Morgan and the others in pushing for the attainder bill to be passed.243Burton’s Diary, ii. 303-4; CJ vii. 574b.

Fleetwood was also involved in Scottish affairs during this Parliament, probably as an ally of Lambert, although he had been lobbied before the Parliament began by men like Sir Archibald Johnston* of Wariston, who realised that Fleetwood was a good route to get messages to the protector. This point was reiterated in October 1656 by the marquess of Argyll (Archibald Campbell*), who told Wariston ‘that my friend Fleetwood assured him of my lord protector reserving one ear for my friends’.244Wariston Diary, iii. 27, 29, 36, 41, 48. In the spring of 1657 he remained ‘kind and respective’ to Wariston, working with Lambert, and was now accounted a supporter of the Protester faction in general, and James Guthrie and Patrick Gillespie in particular. It is doubtful that Fleetwood’s knowledge of Scottish affairs was very extensive: he was certainly not up to date on Scottish gossip, greeting hoary allegations of dishonesty and sexual malpractice levelled against leading Protesters with the shocked comment that he thought ‘these to be very gross escapes in men professing such godliness’.245Wariston Diary, iii. 58, 62; Consultations ed. Stephen, ii. 20, 23-4, 26, 30, 32. In June 1657 Fleetwood was among those who forced through the modification of the fourth article of the Humble Petition, which gave relatively generous terms to former royalists who had shown ‘signal testimony’ to the new regime. Disbrowe and Lambert were the leaders of this move, but Fleetwood was also vehement, describing the clause as ‘dangerous’, as it ‘let in all’ by attempting to favour a few, and adding that ‘I would have you give a check to this spirit of old malignants that is growing, and I doubt will be fatal to this nation’.246Burton’s Diary, ii. 306-8. It says much of his interest in Scottish affairs that by ‘this nation’, Fleetwood probably meant England.

Fleetwood was also involved in foreign policy. On 2 October he was named to the committee to attend the protector to get his consent for a day of thanksgiving for the victory of the navy against the Spanish plate fleet at Tenerife.247CJ vii. 432b. He was impatient with the way in which the debate about the fate of the notorious Quaker, James Naylor, delayed consideration of foreign affairs, telling the House on 18 December that ‘you have voted a war with Spain long since, and have made no provision for monies to carry it on. I desire a day may be appointed to consider of that business with all speed’. The Commons resolved to debate the Spanish war on the following day, but again the matter was swallowed by the Naylor controversy.248Burton’s Diary, i. 174. By contrast, Fleetwood was surprisingly inactive in religious affairs in the Commons, being named only to the committees for the maintenance of ministers (31 Oct.) and for encouraging religion in Exeter (9 Feb.), and his other involvement seems to have reflected his official role as a leading member of the government.249CJ vii. 448b, 488a-b. As a councillor, he was called upon to liaise with John Owen and Philip Nye about augmentations for ministers in October, and in the same month he was on the committee to consider errors in the translation of the bible. In December he was again involved in augmentations, and in the spring of 1657 he was one of the committee appointed to settle the arrears of pay of Cromwell’s chaplain, Peter Sterry.250CSP Dom. 1656-7, pp. 132, 136, 192, 280. Later, he also worked with Hugh Peter in gaining relief for the relatives of Fairfax’s old chaplain, William Dell.251Henry Cromwell Corresp. 283. Fleetwood was named to the committee for examining Naylor on 18 December, and again he acted as an official capacity.252CJ vii. 470a. Amid the debate on Naylor’s punishment on 23 December, Fleetwood intervened as one of the protector’s chief ministers, even though he framed his remarks as ‘my own thoughts’, reminding them ‘you are not an authority of yourselves, but you ought to have had his highness’s concurrence in it’ before they embarked on judicial proceedings against the Quaker. Interestingly, Fleetwood appealed not just to Cromwell’s authority as protector, but also to the written constitution, saying that his intention was not ‘to lessen your judicature, but by the Instrument I am unsatisfied’.253Burton’s Diary, i. 220. On 26 December, when Cromwell’s letter concerning Naylor had been read, Fleetwood again questioned Parliament’s right to proceed, and advised them to send a committee to ‘confer’ with the protector, ‘that we might not walk without a rule’.254Burton’s Diary, i. 253-4. On 30 December, Fleetwood was adamant that Parliament should be governed by the protector, as ‘it concerns the people of England, and his highness expects an account of it’.255Burton’s Diary, i. 270. For Fleetwood, the protector and his council were the guardians of the interests of the ‘people’, defending them against usurpation of ‘authority’ by wayward and wilful Parliament. Unsurprisingly, this was a view that was supported by major generals, such as William Goffe*, Edward Whalley*, William Boteler* and William Packer.256Burton’s Diary, i. 270.

Fleetwood’s concern to limit Parliament dovetailed with his desire to see military rule extended. The brief debate on the succession in November 1656 had unnerved many in the army, and Fleetwood, as a trusted figure, was involved in calming their fears: there were reports of a meeting at Wallingford House, where 30 officers ‘resolved vigorously to oppose a settlement in that great point’.257Henry Cromwell Corresp. 186. In the winter, Fleetwood was an active supporter of the major-generals, sorting out the pay of the militia, and keeping an eye on his own precinct.258CSP Dom. 1656-7, pp. 152, 167, 214, 256; CCC 919. The militia bill, introduced by Disbrowe on 25 December, would decide the fate of the ‘decimation’ tax on royalists, and thus the effective continuation of the major-generals’ scheme. In the heated debate of 7 January, however, it was clear that the enemies of military rule were massing, and Fleetwood called for an adjournment until the next day, ostensibly so that the ‘moneys for the Spanish war’ might be debated instead’; he also attacked attempts to refer the bill to a grand committee, which might extend the debate on the bill and delay progress.259Burton’s Diary, i. 320; Bodl. Carte 228, f. 86v. There are hints that Fleetood was trying to broker a deal privately, in the hope of saving the militia bill. On 17 January, for example, it was noted that a leading opponent of the major-generals, Thomas Bampfylde, was late attending a committee ‘because he dined with Lord Fleetwood’.260Burton’s Diary, i. 352. Despite his efforts in and out of the House, the militia bill was voted down on 29 January. Its failure not only brought the major-generals’ rule to an end; it also dented Fleetwood’s relationship with the protector, whose surprisingly lukewarm support for the scheme had allowed it to founder. Worse still, it was increasingly clear that instead of relying on his military advisers, Cromwell was now taking advice from civilians, like Oliver St John* and William Pierrepont*; it was also ominous that the protector’s son-in-law and master of horse, John Claypoole*, had been a leading opponent of the militia bill in the Commons.261Abbott, Writings and Speeches, iv. 393-4. According to Gookin, writing immediately after the bill was voted down, Oliver also made a point of praising Henry Cromwell’s rule in the presence of another councillor, Sir Gilbert Pykeringe*, ‘who his highness well knows tells all to the lord deputy, therefore be assured it was spoken that it might be noted’.262TSP vi. 37. It seems that Fleetwood was no longer privy to Cromwell’s counsels: he heard things at second hand.

When the new civilian constitution, known initially as the Remonstrance, was introduced into the Commons on 23 February 1657, Fleetwood was one of its foremost opponents. The French ambassador listed him alongside Lambert, Disbrowe, Sydenham and Walter Strickland* as those who ‘talk with the greatest anger’ against the proposed new constitution.263PRO31/3/101, f. 81. Others wrote of Fleetwood as speaking against it ‘but calmly’, in contrast to Lambert, who spoke ‘violently’.264Henry Cromwell Corresp. 203, 205. Fleetwood’s letter to Henry Cromwell, of 24 February, revealed his alarm at this development, just when there were warnings of an invasion attempt by the Stuarts, and his continuing uncertainty about the protector’s true motives.

The only hopes of honest men is that the Lord will so manage his highness’s heart in this business, who we know hath been a man of great prayer and faith, and to whom the Lord hath given much of his counsel in dark cases, and I trust will still own him with a more than ordinary presence of his at this time.265Henry Cromwell Corresp. 201.

There was more than a hint of bitterness in Fleetwood’s use of the past tense when describing Cromwell’s prayer life and faith - was the protector still to be counted among the godly? In later weeks, Fleetwood’s reaction to the Remonstrance became even more emotional. According to the Venetian resident, in March ‘Fleetwood was so moved that after a long invective against monarchy, he could not hold back his tears, in full Parliament, showing his mortification at this resolution’.266CSP Ven. 1657-9, p. 35; PRO31/3/101, f. 128. There were prayer meetings at Wallingford House, and a fast day was held, ‘where there were divers officers’.267Consultations ed. Stephen, ii. 30 This was important to Fleetwood, who on 17 March gave thanks that ‘the Lord doth quicken up a spirit of prayer’, and hoped that the protector would also be influenced by it.268Henry Cromwell Corresp. 228. Cromwell took Fleetwood’s concerns seriously. He agreed that kingship should not be debated until the final stages of the bill’s passage, at the very end of March, ‘for the satisfaction of Fleetwood and Disbrowe’.269Henry Cromwell Corresp. 214. He also tried to persuade them that his intentions were honourable, and, according to Ludlowe

invited himself to dinner with the colonel, and carried the lieutenant-general with him, where he began to droll with them about monarchy, and speaking lightly of it, said it was but a feather in a man’s cap, and therefore wondered that men would not please the children, and permit them to enjoy their rattle.270Ludlow, Mems. ii. 24.

Such arguments would not wash, but the personal contact may have encouraged the two men to soften their line, and it was reported at the end of March that ‘Fleetwood does not mutiny, but lament’.271Henry Cromwell Corresp. 243. This certainly fits the tone of Fleetwood’s letter to Henry of 31 March, written shortly after the constitution, now renamed the Humble Petition and Advice, was passed by the Commons: ‘the business of settlement is now before his highness, who, I trust, will be so directed by the Lord as to make it appear how much it lies upon his heart the careful minding of the interest of the saints’.272Henry Cromwell Corresp. 240.

The passing of the Humble Petition was followed by a long delay as Cromwell considered his answer. His refusal to give an immediate reply encouraged opponents of the new constitution, with Fleetwood at last being able to ‘trust the Lord will well carry him through it’.273Henry Cromwell Corresp. 250. Instead of opposing the Humble Petition as a whole, in April Fleetwood and Disbrowe concentrated on opposing ‘with all earnestness’ the title of king, ‘but think the other things in the Petition and Advice are very honest’.274TSP vi. 219. Fleetwood even claimed that the initiative had been his, saying that he had ‘persuaded rather to quit the title and accept of the rest’ during discussions in early April, and relating ‘a meeting with some of the chief of the other opinion’ to strike a deal later in the month.275Henry Cromwell Corresp. 247, 255. A further – perhaps the crucial – factor in Fleetwood’s new-found willingness to negotiate may have been the abortive Fifth Monarchist rising in mid-April, which had revealed, perhaps for the first time, the true dangers of encouraging radical opponents of the protector. According to Anthony Morgan

This plot of the fifth monarchy men, and such other things as I know my lord [Fleetwood] must needs see every day amongst his wild party, I hope will undeceive him. He is a good man, and I hope will come to love those who are plain, downright honest, without welt or guard…276Henry Cromwell Corresp. 259.

During April Fleetwood, like Cromwell, was the focus of letters and petitions from religious radicals of all hues, aghast at the prospect of England becoming a monarchy once again. An anonymous letter to Fleetwood, probably from the end of the month, appealed to his ‘profession … of holiness’, ‘hoping the glory of Whitehall hath not blinded nor perverted your judgement’, and urged him to emulate Joshua, and ‘declare whom you would serve’. ‘Think not, like Pilate, to wash your hands from guilt’ the letter continued, ‘because you advised not your father to assume this power, if you now adhere to him and assist in supporting him’.277TSP vi. 244-6. Whether such appeals influenced Fleetwood or not, at the beginning of May he and Disbrowe, with the assistance of Lambert, renewed their efforts. According to Thurloe, ‘my lord deputy and General Disbrowe seem to be very much fixed against his being king, and speak of nothing but giving over their commands, and all employment, if he doth accept that title’.278TSP vi. 261. In the next few days Thurloe claimed that Cromwell was again wavering in his resolve, but ‘the three great men … said that immediately after his acceptance thereof they must withdraw from all public employment’ and that other senior officers would do the same.279TSP vi. 281. Fleetwood and Disbrowe were also implicated in the army petition, presented to Parliament on 8 May, which demanded that the crown should not be offered after all, and which had made the protector ‘extreme angry’.280Henry Cromwell Corresp. 271. Fleetwood denied any prior knowledge of the petition, and told Henry (apparently without irony) that ‘I like not army’s interposings’; but, according to one newsletter writer, ‘though Lord Fleetwood and Major-general Disbrowe did both disown the knowledge of the petition in the House, yet they both perused it and saw it and showed it my lord protector, before ever that it was presented’.281Henry Cromwell Corresp. 270; Clarke Pprs. v. 261. This fits with Ludlowe’s story that Cromwell sent for Fleetwood, complaining that he had allowed the petition to be drawn up and signed, ‘since he knew it to be his resolution not to accept the crown without the consent of the army’, and asking him to intervene to stop it being debated in the House.282Ludlow, Mems. ii. 27. Fleetwood’s involvement with the petition, and the threats of resignation, demonstrate not only the strength of his opposition to kingship but also his lingering concern that Cromwell might change his mind and take the crown after all. As it was, Cromwell stuck to his decision and Fleetwood was jubilant, telling Henry that ‘it pleased the Lord… to incline his highness’s heart to give a positive denial to the business of kingship’, but he was also very relieved: ‘surely none except the Israelites were ever led in such dark paths and ways as we hitherunto have been’.283Henry Cromwell Corresp. 270. Henry’s comment, made to Lord Broghill, was that his father had refused kingship because he ‘had the highest force put upon him that ever was by the three grandees’.284Henry Cromwell Corresp. 274.

The crisis was over, and with it, it seemed, Fleetwood’s most serious doubts about Cromwell were calmed. His activity in Parliament picked up. On 19 May he was teller in favour of inserting the title ‘protector’ into the revised Humble Petition: a vote by 77 to 45, with Lord Broghill being a teller on the losing side.285CJ vii. 535a. In the last week of May, Fleetwood was named to other committees to speed the passing of the protectoral Humble Petition, to draw up an Additional Petition and Advice modifying it further, and to ensure other attendant legislation was drafted.286CJ vii. 538b, 540b, 542a. The last days of the parliamentary sitting apparently saw Fleetwood and Cromwell fully reconciled. Richard Cromwell* noted this with some disquiet, telling his brother that ‘some persons’ who had opposed ‘settlement’ were now emerging from the shadows. He declined to ‘particularise persons or things’ but trusted that Henry would know ‘the fox by his smell’.287Henry Cromwell Corresp. 287. On 24 June 1657 Fleetwood was again acting as the protector’s spokesman in the Commons – a role that he had not played since the previous December – advising on what needed to be done to perfect the Humble Petition, and telling the Commons that there was no time to consider the membership of the Other House. Instead, ‘I shall move that the approbation and nomination may be in his highness’.288Burton’s Diary, ii. 297-8. The royalists contrasted Lambert’s ‘silence’ at the end of June 1657 with the prominence of Fleetwood and Disbrowe, who were ‘more absolutely the protector’s than before’, and there were rumours that, to appease the ‘godly’, Fleetwood would be continued as lord deputy of Ireland.289CCSP iii. 322. On 26 June Fleetwood joined a number of leading councillors of both sides in presenting to Cromwell a vote of the Commons, urging him to encourage Protestant unity across Europe.290CJ vii. 578a; Burton’s Diary, ii. 313. On the same day he took part in the ceremony marking Cromwell’s re-inauguration as protector, standing with Richard Cromwell and other privy councillors behind the chair of state.291Whitelocke, Diary, 471; Burton’s Diary, ii. 513. On 4 July, Sir Francis Russell* commented that ‘my lord deputy and General Disbrowe begin to grow in request at Whitehall’, while the discontented Lambert remained estranged.292Henry Cromwell Corresp. 298.

Last years of the Protectorate, 1657-9

When Cromwell had his tense final interview with Lambert in July, Fleetwood was present, and with Lambert’s resignation he replaced him as lieutenant-general of the army, and was assigned his regiment of foot.293CSP Ven. 1657-9, p. 88; CCSP iii. 334; Clarke Pprs. iii. 111. Fleetwood now moved into Lambert’s position as the leading councillor: on 21 July he was added to the Scottish committee as well as its Irish counterpart, and also to the crucial committee on ‘public money’, which oversaw the finances of the household, the council, and the armed forces.294CSP Dom. 1657-8, pp. 32-4. It was telling that, in the same period, the agent for the Scottish Resolutioners, James Sharp, was anxious to ensure that Fleetwood might be ‘taken off, at least, from being our enemy’ and advised the Edinburgh ministers to curry favour with him.295Consultations ed. Stephen, ii. 51. It was said in late July or early August that the army’s loyalty now depended on Fleetwood, who ‘must not be disgusted’.296Henry Cromwell Corresp. 311. It was even rumoured that ‘Fleetwood is appointed to succeed on Cromwell’s death’.297CCSP iii. 344.

In the aftermath of the kingship debates, there was little love lost between Fleetwood and the civilian courtiers who were increasingly conspicuous in the inner circles of the protectorate. Rumours in court circles in September 1657 had it that Fleetwood was to lose his command, that it was to be assigned to Robert Rich (shortly to become Cromwell’s son-in-law), ‘and that he who lost it did not resign it, but was commanded from him by his highness, neither was he permitted to continue of his council’.298TSP vi. 480. Such stories, however comforting for the courtiers, did not reflect reality. Fleetwood was one of those who advised Cromwell in November 1657 on the choice of those to sit in the Other House, and he was duly chosen as one of the new lords in the following month.299TSP vi. 630, 668. He retained his powerful position in the council, and with the demise of Lambert became the main champion for the Protesters in the Scottish committee.300Consultations ed. Stephen, ii. 105, 117, 123, 125, 128; Wariston Diary, iii. 97. The council orders suggest that he was involved in a wide range of issues, from local petitions to foreign affairs.301CSP Dom. 1657-8, pp. 50-269. Fleetwood relinquished the lord deputyship in September, but he continued to have a strong influence on Irish affairs, much to Henry Cromwell’s irritation. In November, when Henry was at last appointed lord deputy, Thurloe told him that the appointment had only been passed in council ‘after some debate’, that ‘the endeavours of some’ had almost restricted his powers, and that he saddled with the same, pro-Fleetwood, Irish council, except for Henry’s ally, Goodwin, who had been removed.302TSP vi. 599. As a leading councillor in England, Fleetwood continued to have a say in Irish affairs. In December 1657 Henry complained to Thurloe that he had just received ‘a letter from my brother Fleetwood, so full of discouragements’, and made veiled comments about those who ‘make it too much their work to frustrate my endeavours therein’, not least by delaying money.303TSP vi. 649, 651. In December Henry also complained that he had been left to reduce the forces (following a plan he did not like) without the money to do so, and added ‘I hope you have not put me upon this employment to ruin me by it’.304TSP vi. 658; Henry Cromwell Corresp. 319, 326. Whether Henry’s accusations were just is another matter. It is interesting to note that Fleetwood was also in charge of reducing the Scottish army, but that General George Monck* was more robust in his response, reacting to new orders from Whitehall with the curt comment that ‘it came too late’, and that he had already made his own arrangements.305TSP vi. 664, 681. Perhaps Fleetwood’s reply to Henry, in which he insisted that ‘I am not deservedly blamed in this action’, and that the fault lay with Henry’s ‘jealousies’, should be taken seriously this time.306TSP vi. 680; Henry Cromwell Corresp. 357-8. It certainly fits with the protector’s letter to his son, a few weeks earlier, which, in effect, told him to calm down:

I am sorry you wrote me some sad apprehensions I have enemies of your about me; truly none dare appear so, and I am persuaded if you think your brother Fleetwood to be so, you are mistaken. It were dangerous for you to think so and he not to be so, and therefore for you to be mistaken, for indeed none (I hope) can wrong you with me …307Add. 36652, f. 1; Abbott, Writings and Speeches, iv. 646.

The new ‘Lord Fleetwood’ greeted the second sitting of Parliament in January 1658 with apparent enthusiasm, welcoming ‘our great meeting’, when ‘the Lord’s appearing amongst us will make it comfortable and happy to us in the further settlement of this poor nation’.308TSP vi. 752; Henry Cromwell Corresp. 361. Fleetwood was also intending to play a major role in Irish affairs, working with ‘Lord Broghill and others’ in the hope of raising more money, and as before there were signs that the different factions were prepared to cooperate for the common good on this issue.309TSP vi. 752, 774. There were, however, difficulties with getting members of the Other House to take their seats, and the ‘state of the revenue’ to be presented to the Commons ‘is not yet perfected, nor can it be so’.310Add. 43724, f. 23. The republicans, who had returned to Parliament once the council’s right to exclude them had been removed by the Humble Petition, created such chaos in the Commons that Cromwell dissolved Parliament after only a few days. According to one source, when he learned that Cromwell intended to dissolve Parliament on 4 February, ‘the Lord Fleetwood said, “I beseech your highness consider first well of it; it is of great consequence”. He replied, “you are a milksop; by the living God I will dissolve the House”’.311Abbott, Writings and Speeches, iv. 727-8. The meaning of this exchange is not entirely clear, but the remark may echo Cromwell’s earlier view that Fleetwood’s ‘compliance’ with the army went too far. He was not weak per se; only when it came to resisting those whose agenda did not suit Cromwell. There may be a religious implication as well, as the word ‘sop’ has resonance with Judas’s betrayal of Christ in John 13: 26, 27 and 30. Cromwell’s words were widely reported, and Henry Cromwell commented sourly that ‘the milk wherein [Fleetwood] was sopped had much water in it’ – referring to Fleetwood’s close association with the Baptists.312TSP vi. 811; Ludlow, Mems. ii. 33. Fleetwood’s bitter disappointment can be seen in his letter to Henry announcing news of dissolution, which added, pointedly, that the lack of money would ‘obstruct our work’, and that it was only ‘through mercy’ that the army had not become mutinous.313TSP vi. 786.

Although Fleetwood was now arguably the protector’s chief minister – an argument supported by his busyness in the council chamber - he was in an unenviable position, uncertain ‘which way the Lord will direct his highness for the future management of affairs’, and at the same time needing to act decisively to head off the twin threats of army disunity and cavalier plotting.314CSP Dom. 1657-8, pp. 285-380; 1658-9, pp. 3-119; TSP vi. 817. An overriding problem was lack of money. In early March he was hopeful that ‘we shall suddenly have a Parliament’, to help solve the financial crisis, but as no final decision had been taken, ‘we are at a stand’.315TSP vi. 840. There was also a growing disunity within the protectoral regime. The protector continued to encourage courtiers like Claypoole and Viscount Fauconberg (Thomas Belasyse*), and his elder son, Richard, was considered the likely successor to his father, yet the army still dominated the council and the administration. In March 1658 it was said that important affairs of state were only discussed with Fleetwood, Thurloe, and a handful of senior officers, with men like Broghill and even St John being frozen out.316CCSP iv. 19; Bodl. Clarendon 57, f. 175v. Whatever his feelings about the direction of policy, Fleetwood continued to use his influence to keep the army united. At a meeting in March he made a speech to the assembled officers, ‘showing how necessary a thing it was for the army to unite themselves’ and he managed to persuade those present to sign an address ‘as one man’.317Clarke Pprs. iii. 143-4.

Fleetwood was also engaged in backstairs deals. In the same month, Henry Cromwell asked anxiously about the truth of rumours of ‘any intimacy between my brother Fleetwood, General Disbrowe, and Lambert’, ‘for when such as they do correspond with such as he, it argues their power to be greater than one would wish.’318TSP vi. 857, 858. The ‘power’ exercised by Fleetwood and his friends in the spring of 1658 may in fact have been curtailed by indecision at the very top. As Fleetwood told Henry at the end of May, ‘his highness is not as yet come to a resolution as to the time of Parliament; the delay of which, I fear, will put us upon some extremity’.319TSP vii. 144. Privately, Henry thought the delay was down to ‘the unripeness of the design of Disbrowe and Fleetwood’.320TSP vii. 146. In later weeks there were said to be nine men, including Fleetwood, who met to consider the calling of Parliament, but there was little hope that it would sit before September.321TSP vii. 159, 192, 218. Fleetwood’s mood brightened briefly, in June, with the defeat of the Spaniards and the capture of Dunkirk (seen by Fleetwood as ‘a signal answer’ to their prayers), but it soon became apparent that he was losing the confidence of the protector once again.322TSP vii. 159, 176, 190. Thurloe told Henry in July that ‘we are out of danger of our junto, and I think also of ever having such another’, as the protector, ‘finding he can have no advice from those he most expected it from, saith he will take his own resolutions’.323TSP vii. 269. The nature of the disagreement between Cromwell and Fleetwood is unclear, although Fleetwood’s constant complaints about the delay in calling a Parliament might have been ill received by a protector who had had his hands burned so often in the past.

Cromwell’s personal rule was to prove short-lived: he fell ill in August and died on 3 September. Fleetwood attended his father-in-law in person, and he organised a fast day for the army at his own house on 1 September.324TSP vii. 367, 369. He saw Oliver’s death as ‘a sore rebuke’ and a sign that ‘we have sinned’, and hoped that it might be taken as ‘a blessed example’ for those whose were concerned for ‘the interest of the Lord’s people’.325TSP vii. 375. On the day of Oliver’s death the secret letter with the name of his successor was opened, nominating Richard. For all the talk of his coveting the office for himself, Fleetwood bit his tongue and accepted the succession of Richard Cromwell without a murmur, immediately attending the officers at Whitehall to tell them the news and gain their ‘general consent’.326Clarke Pprs. iii. 162; PRO31/17/33, pp. 1, 3. At a further meeting, Fleetwood encouraged the officers to sign an address of loyalty, and it was said that he would soon be promoted to being ‘generalissimo of all the forces’.327Clarke Pprs. iii. 164. On 21 September Fleetwood told Henry that he thought Richard had handled the officers well, but again he made it clear that their loyalty was conditional:

it is our duty to be earnest for him, that he may be kept up to walk in his father’s paths with that integrity as may manifest by what spirit he is led forth by. I need not tell you what the temptations of such a station is: he hath hitherto much exceeded expectation, and did speak heartily to old friends.328TSP vii. 405-6; Henry Cromwell Corresp. 406-7; F. Guizot, Hist. of Richard Cromwell and the Restoration, trans. A.R. Scoble (2 vols., 1856), i. 239.

The cracks were showing by mid-October, when there was a series of meetings among the officers, voicing their concerns at the new protector’s policies, and demanding changes to the army. The French ambassador reported that Fleetwood and Disbrowe ‘excited the others to take this step’, as a way of pressurising the protector.329Guizot, Richard Cromwell, i. 246, 248; CSP Ven. 1657-9, p. 254. Henry Cromwell was told of a meeting of up to 300 officers, and that ‘dirt was thrown upon his late highness at that great meeting. They were exhorted to stand up for that good old cause, which had long lain asleep’. Henry saw Fleetwood as complicit in this, and warned him that ‘God and man may require this duty at your hand, and lay all miscarriages in the army, in point of discipline, at your door’.330TSP vii. 454. Denials followed, and Fleetwood said he was wounded by what had been written (‘I do wonder what I have done to deserve such a severe letter from you’, ‘I hope you know me better than to believe such things’); but this was not entirely Henry Cromwell’s imagination at play.331TSP vii. 490, 498, 500.

If Fleetwood had been dissatisfied at Oliver’s rule, he was even more discontented with Richard’s. And this time he had the full support of the army. In October and November it was reported that sections of ‘the army are resolved, that they would have a general’, and that Fleetwood and Lambert were the preferred candidates to replace Richard as commander-in-chief.332TSP vii. 506; Clarke Pprs. iii. 165-6. It was said that Fleetwood, for his part, ‘is not well satisfied’ with the rank of lieutenant-general’.333Guizot, Richard Cromwell, i. 251. Further trouble was brewing in the council. In December there was a bad tempered council meeting, at which Fleetwood accused Montagu and his cronies (including the protector’s brother-in-law, Viscount Fauconberg) of plotting against him and Disbrowe.334CCSP iv. 118; Guizot, Richard Cromwell, i. 271. As yet, every effort was made to disguise such tensions. Throughout the autumn preparations were being made for the elaborate rites that accompanied the funeral of the old protector, and these became an occasion for a badly-needed show of public unity. Fleetwood was on the council committee charged with the arrangements, and on 23 November, when the formal funeral procession wound its way to Westminster Abbey, Fleetwood walked behind the hearse as chief mourner (as it was not fitting that Richard, as the new head of state, should take part).335PRO31/17/33, p. 56; Burton’s Diary, ii. 528.

With the obsequies finished, Parliament could at last be summoned. There were further gestures of reconciliation during December. Richard appointed Fleetwood and Disbrowe as joint wardens of the Cinque Ports and constables of Dover Castle; Thurloe spoke of ‘very considerable persons’ who had promised to use their influence to prevent malcontents from being elected to Parliament; Fleetwood wrote to Henry Cromwell hoping that they might now work together ‘to serve the public’.336TSP vii. 559, 581, 582. Fleetwood brought news of the coming Parliament from the protector to the council on 14 December, and he was part of the council team that managed the elections, who ‘did take the best care we could to put in such persons as might be deserving’.337PRO31/17/33, p. 286; TSP vii. 589, 595. There is little evidence that Fleetwood was directly involved in these elections, but this was not an indication that he favoured the opposition groups. On 1 February 1659 Fleetwood told Henry Cromwell that he was hopeful of progress in Parliament, and that the Humble Petition might be ‘generally amongst us owned’, with kingship – ‘what formerly was a bone of contention, will be wholly laid aside’. Ominously, he continued to insist that ‘the interest of the Lord’s people should be uppermost’ and that any who opposed his narrow definition of this ‘interest’ would be deemed ‘in opposition to the work of the Lord’.338TSP vii. 604.

As a Member of the Other House, Fleetwood’s direct influence in Parliament was limited. On 8 February he complained that ‘we are very silent in our House, and little probability we shall be owned’ by the Commons.339TSP vii. 609. He could use his influence in other ways, however. There were dark stories that the ‘night meetings’ of the protector’s party, held at Fleetwood’s house in the early weeks of Parliament, had ceased by mid-February, which ‘makes some suspect he is fallen off to the republicans; others more probably think he is the leader of that third party, who are [for] a mere titular protector’.340Bodl. Clarendon 60, f. 130; TSP vii. 616. Others reported that the officers were again meeting at Wallingford House to draw up a petition against Parliament, although Richard’s threats against them apparently made Fleetwood and Disbrowe distance themselves from the petitioners.341Guizot, Richard Cromwell, i. 304, 306; Clarke Pprs. iii. 182.

Any hopes that this was the end of the matter were soon dashed. In March Fleetwood, with Disbrowe, Lambert, Sydenham and others, had joined ‘a congregation about Whitehall’, founded by the Independent Dr John Owen, which, it was reported, had been created ‘upon a state project’.342Consultations ed. Stephen, ii. 158; Henry Cromwell Corresp. 475. In the same month one royalist reported that ‘my Lord Fleetwood is secretly aspersed to entertain at this time the Levellers, Seekers, etc, with his usual affability’ even though he knew that they were also causing disturbance among the regiments in England.343Clarendon SP iii. 442. This was not entirely wishful thinking on the part of royalists. In April, despite occasional reports of reconciliation, Fleetwood and Disbrowe were increasingly open in their criticism of the protector, who ‘apprehends that Fleetwood and Disbrowe do betray him’.344Bodl. Clarendon 60, f. 304. There were real fears that ‘the Wallingford House party’ was now making common cause with the republican commonwealthsmen.345Ludlow, Mems. ii. 61, 63. Again the army held ‘prayers and speeches’ at Wallingford House, joining the senior officers in meetings where (according to a royalist source) they ‘seek God for counsel and act their own way’.346CCSP iv. 174, 186; Guizot, Richard Cromwell, i. 362-3; Nicholas Pprs. iv. 122; Henry Cromwell Corresp. 502-4. In part, these meetings were to assert the authority of the senior officers, and Fleetwood was at pains to stress ‘the great sense he had of the want of pay for the soldiers’, as well as the need for unity, and for ‘a strict walking before the Lord’.347Clarke Pprs. iii. 188-90. It was becoming increasingly apparent that such a united army would not strengthen the protector.

Parliament’s attack on the army on 18 April, and the threat of an all-out mutiny, gave Fleetwood and Disbrowe the excuse they needed to intervene. On 22 April Fleetwood attended a rendezvous of the army, while Disbrowe went to Whitehall to tell Richard that he would have to dissolve Parliament or face mutiny.348Ludlow, Mems. ii. 69; CSP Dom. 1658-9, p. 336. When the regiments marched into Whitehall, and Richard commanded them to return to barracks, the message from the soldiers was that, ‘having received other order from the Lord Fleetwood’, they would obey him, not the protector.349Henry Cromwell Corresp. 506-7. Richard, writing a few weeks later, sadly warned his brother: ‘pray have a care who you trust, for the world is false … though they were relations, yet they forsook me. I know Fleetwood and Disbrowe regard not ruin so that they may have their ends; they are pitiful creatures’.350Henry Cromwell Corresp. 516.

Rump and Restoration, 1659-88

As it turned out, by forcing the dissolution of Parliament and undermining Richard’s protectorate, Fleetwood and Disbrowe had made a fatal miscalculation. Even enemies of the protectorate thought Fleetwood’s role in the collapse of Richard’s government was dishonourable, agreeing with Lucy Hutchinson that Fleetwood had been ‘unworthily assistant’ in the coup.351Mems. of Col. Hutchinson, 347. Others saw them as little more than ‘self-seekers’, and one newsbook commented tersely, ‘ambition it seems will acknowledge no kindred’.352TSP vii. 666; Clarke Pprs. v. 289. Wariston visited Fleetwood, attended by Sydenham and Dr Owen, and learned that they ‘agreed to bide one by another and maintain civil and spiritual liberties already obtained, and to submit to what government God shall incline them to’.353Wariston Diary, iii. 106. This was a not a firm basis from which to launch a revolution. Indeed, it seems that neither Fleetwood nor Disbrowe had a clear plan of action. The need to destroy the corrupt protectorate had overridden any such considerations. Others were not so naïve, and instead of controlling events, Fleetwood and Disbrowe soon found themselves driven before the demands of the republicans and the radical army officers.

At first, all went well. The ten-man army council (including such old friends as Sydenham, Sankey and Rich) met daily at Wallingford House at the end of April, and the army seemed willing to go along with Fleetwood’s plans, even producing a declaration that he should be the new commander-in-chief.354CCSP iv. 189; CSP Ven. 1659-61, p. 14; Guizot, Richard Cromwell, i. 366; Whitelocke, Mems. iv. 365; Clarke Pprs. iii. 196; iv. 1-2. But rumour abounded that he and Disbrowe intended only ‘some little alteration’, leaving Richard as a puppet protector, a ‘protector of wax, whom they can mould as they please, and lay aside when they can agree upon a successor’, or with ‘a kind of limited supremacy (somewhat like that of a duke of Venice)’.355CCSP iv. 191; Baker, Chronicle (1679), 642; TSP vii. 666; Guizot, Richard Cromwell, i. 374; Nicholas Pprs. iv. 127, 136. Meetings between Fleetwood, Disbrowe and the protector did nothing to scotch such rumours, and Owen admitted privately that Fleetwood was looking to bring back the protectorate, but with a stronger council.356CSP Ven. 1659-61, p. 14; Wariston Diary, iii. 107-8. This displeased many in the army, who wanted the whole protectoral system to be swept away, and there was talk of deposing Fleetwood and bringing back his old rival, Lambert, as head of the army.357CCSP iv. 191-2; Clarke Pprs. v. 296. Worse still, Fleetwood was now blamed for failing to provide regular pay for the soldiers, who ‘have found godliness not a good payment’.358CCSP iv. 193, 206, 220. The commonwealthsmen also accused Fleetwood of reneging on an earlier ‘private engagement’ to bring down the protectorate and re-establish the republic once again.359CCSP iv. 193. The army officers were beginning to agree with them, calling for ‘a commonwealth, and the Long Parliament revived’, and it was said that ‘the troops are beginning to criticise his actions and abandon him’.360TSP vii. 666; CSP Ven. 1659-61, p. 14.

Despite opposition from Fleetwood and others, the Rump Parliament was restored on 7 May, and on the same day a committee of safety was created, with Fleetwood as one of its members.361CSP Dom. 1658-9, p. 341. This was succeeded by a new council of state, created on 19 May, which also included Fleetwood.362CJ vii. 644a-5a; A. and O.; CSP Dom. 1658-9, p. 349. Fleetwood had been made lieutenant-general on 11 May, but the high command was to be shared with four other ‘commissioners’ of the army, with some suspecting that this was ‘the work of Lambert’, who was jealous of his position.363CJ vii. 649a; CSP Ven. 1659-61, p. 24; CSP Dom. 1658-9, pp. 386-7. Fleetwood resumed his seat as MP for Marlborough, and was named to series of committees, including those considering the validity of laws made since April 1653, and the land settlement to be granted to Richard Cromwell.364CJ vii. 661b, 665a, 666a. On 7 June Parliament made Fleetwood lieutenant-general and commander-in-chief in England and Scotland, but they retained the right to commission officers.365A. and O.; TSP vii. 679; CJ vii. 672b, 673a, 673b, 674b. The new arrangements maintained Fleetwood’s position in the army, but effectively prevented him from wielding power within the civilian administration. There was also the question of whether he should accept a commission from Parliament, and one account states that he delayed attending the House on 8 June because ‘it was a day set apart by himself and others to seek the Lord’.366Clarke Pprs. iv. 17-18. Despite his misgivings, Fleetwood was left with little choice but to accept second best, and he ‘dissembled his passion and yielded to necessity’ a day later, being commissioned by the Speaker in front of the assembled Commons.367Baker, Chronicle, 648; CJ vii. 677a.

Fleetwood was only an occasional visitor to the House during June and July. His few committee appointments included one to consider how much was still owed by the state for the funeral of his father-in-law, and he was consulted about the retirement of his brother-in-law, Henry Cromwell.368CJ vii. 694b, 704b, 705a, 710b. The extent of his influence over affairs was correspondingly limited, although he was able to secure the overall command of the Irish forces for his friend, Edmund Ludlowe II, and he made sure Daniell Axtell became a full colonel in July.369Ludlow, Mems. ii. 94; CSP Dom. 1659-60, p. 12. According to one report, during the summer Fleetwood tried to repair his damaged reputation, insisting on taking 40s a day for his pay, rather than the £10 he was entitled to, ‘to teach others the lesson of self-denial and to husband their money the better’.370TSP vii. 687. Whatever the success of such ploys among the soldiery, it was already apparent that there was ‘a great division’ between the senior officers and the MPs.371Guizot, Richard Cromwell, i. 420. On 6 July Wariston said that he was ‘troubled to find such jealous and hot words between Fleetwood and Sir Henry Vane’ and feared ‘jealousies rooting both in the members of the House and army’.372Wariston Diary, iii. 123. There were accusations that Fleetwood secretly wished to restore Richard, leading to a debate in Parliament on 19 July, and strenuous denials by Fleetwood thereafter.373Clarke Pprs. v. 309. The crisis created by Sir George Boothe’s* rising in Cheshire during August brought Parliament and the army together again, and the senior officers were spurred into action, with Lambert marching north against the rebels, Disbrowe returning to the west, and Fleetwood guarding London while recruiting more forces.374Wariston Diary, iii. 129; CSP Dom. 1659-60, pp. 123, 128, 135. But at the end of August Fleetwood proposed that Lambert be created major-general, allegedly because he knew that Hesilrige and others ‘would endeavour to obstruct it’, and in September the officers met at Wallingford House before petitioning Parliament ‘that they desired… Fleetwood to be established lieutenant-general without limitation of time and with power to give commissions’.375Ludlow, Mems. 115, 118; Wariston Diary, iii. 137. Fleetwood, who had returned to the Commons, did his best to facilitate the officers, and on 23 September he was teller against condemning a petition from Lambert’s men as ‘unseasonable and of dangerous consequence’.376CJ vii. 784b-5b.

On 12 October 1659 the unnatural alliance between the army and Parliament at last broke down, with the Commons deciding to cancel the commissions of the senior officers, to demote Fleetwood as commander-in-chief and to appoint army commissioners instead.377Clarke Pprs. iv. 60-1; CJ vii. 796a. In response, the army, led by Lambert, seized control, dismissing the council of state, suspending the Rump Parliament, and setting up their own committee of safety. Fleetwood played an important part in this, apparently using his influence to keep ‘the millenarians and Anabaptists’ on side, and receiving support from old allies, like John Jones and Edmund Ludlowe, who had resumed their official positions in Ireland, and from his former chaplain, George Cokayn, who was now ‘very great with Fleetwood’.378‘Inedited Letters of Cromwell, Colonel Jones, Bradshaw and other Regicides’ ed. J. Mayer, Trans. Hist. Soc. of Lancs. and Cheshire, n.s. i. 262-4, 268-71; Ludlow, Mems. ii. 94; Whitelocke, Diary, 536. He was also reappointed commander-in-chief by the general council of officers, and it was in this capacity that he wrote to break the news to Monck on 18 October:

I know the actions here will seem very strange to you, and so they have been to us, further than what was conceived by many a necessity of Providence leading to what hath been done … if our eyes are to the Lord, a little silence surely may be expected, and that as men we are called unto, besides what our duty is as Christians. Our own divisions will be our ruins, which hitherto the Lord hath greatly prevented.379Clarke Pprs. iv. 63-4.

Fleetwood’s words suggest that his actions in October were motivated by the same considerations that had caused him to move against Richard in April: a practical concern for military unity, and a desire to follow the dictates of Providence. He was naturally horrified at Monck’s refusal to support the coup and his assumption of ‘a posture of opposition to your old friends upon a bare report’, especially as disunity risked letting in the Stuarts through the back door.380Clarke Pprs. iv. 71-3.

Despite Fleetwood’s prominence, it was Lambert who was the driving force in the new military government, as Whitelocke acknowledged when he called the new ruling group ‘Lambert and his party’.381Whitelocke, Diary, 535. By late October it was suspected that Lambert was playing games, encouraging Fleetwood to reinstate Richard Cromwell, while courting Baptists and Fifth Monarchists who would be implacable enemies of any such plan.382Guizot, Richard Cromwell, ii. 276; CCSP iv. 424. There were also stories in November that Lambert intended to use Fleetwood, then to replace him as head of the army, just as Oliver Cromwell had out-manoeuvred Fairfax.383CCSP iv. 431. Others said that the boot was on the other foot, and that Fleetwood was ‘contented with the name of general, allowing Lambert the power of it, till he should find a fair occasion to assume it in his own right’.384Baker, Chronicle, 654. At the same time there were reports that ‘Fleetwood … is not popular or esteemed by the troops’.385CSP Ven. 1659-61, p. 74. It was the worst possible foundation for such a scheme. In late November and early December, as the officers’ government looked ever shakier, and as General Monck’s opposition to them became still more entrenched, there were still more rumours that Fleetwood and Lambert were growing apart.386CCSP iv. 457, 491; Guizot, Richard Cromwell, ii. 293.

With Lambert with the army in the north, Fleetwood was left to deal with increasing pressure from his former allies on the council of state, who were now openly defiant. On 16 December Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper*, Thomas Scot I* and others were brutal in their assessment of his position, pointing out ‘the shame you have brought upon God’s people, with the breach of faith to the Parliament, with the ruin you have brought upon your native country … and with the misery you have led the poor soldiers into’.387TSP vii. 795, 797. Monck had been trying to weaken Fleetwood’s resolve, writing to him directly, and making approaches through friends like Dr John Owen.388Clarke Pprs. iv. 154, 162, 192. There were also stories that Fleetwood had been approached by royalist agents, who urged him ‘to send forthwith to the king at Breda, to offer to bring him in upon good terms, and thereby to get beforehand with Monck’.389Whitelocke, Diary, 551-3. Whatever the truth of this, it can be said that the submission of Fleetwood and the Wallingford House officers was not unexpected; but once again Fleetwood’s reputation suffered, as even royalists accused him of acting in bad faith, as ‘Lambert is left in the lurch’.390CCSP iv. 492. Friends like Wariston were dismayed, describing his submission as ‘his failing to God and men’.391Wariston Diary, iii. 163; Ludlow, Mems. ii. 179. At the end of December, Fleetwood gave the keys of Parliament back to the Speaker, ‘and, shortly after’, as the French ambassador put it, ‘upon the refusal of some corps to obey his orders, he resigned to them also the direction of the army, and prepared for retirement’.392Guizot, Richard Cromwell, ii. 318-9. For Fleetwood, the humiliation was almost too great to bear. He told the Speaker ‘that the Lord had blasted them and spit in their faces, and witnesses against their perfidiousness, and that he was freely willing to lie at their mercy’.393Clarke Pprs. iv. 220; HMC Leyborne-Popham, 136; Clarendon, Hist. vi. 160-1.

It had been thought in January 1660 that Fleetwood would lose all his estates as well as his office as a punishment for his actions in support of Lambert, but in the event he was not considered to be an important target.394CSP Ven. 1659-61, p. 107. He was put under house arrest in early January, stripped of the commands, and on 24 January he was summoned to attend Parliament.395CSP Dom. 1659-60, p. 311; CJ vii. 808a, 820b. By then, he had already gone into retirement, and he instead wrote a letter asking for ‘a little more time, he being a great way out of town’.396Eg. 2618, f. 58v; Pepys’s Diary, i. 34. It is uncertain whether Fleetwood returned to face the Commons, and in early March he was resident at Feltwell in Norfolk.397Pepys’s Diary, i. 34-5. In his absence, on 24 February the Commons had passed a bill, repealing both the army commissioners and Fleetwood’s own commission, as granted by the Parliament in June 1659.398CJ vii. 841b, 851b.

Fleetwood might have departed, but he left his reputation behind him. In the dying days of 1659, he was already a figure of fun. He was likened to Richard Cromwell, but it was said that ‘compared with Fleetwood’s weakness, Prince Dick’s meanest behaviour was Hectorish’.399CCSP iv. 499. A mock petition said that he had been ‘taught that moderation with which he lately disciplined his brother Richard’ and had suffered ‘the unavoidable fate of that family … to be baffled and become the scorn, contempt and derision of the nation’; his ‘piety, zeal, love to, and delight in the saints’ were also ridiculed.400Petition of Charles Fleetwood (1659, 669.f.22.46). ‘Fleetwood has now nothing to do but seek the Lord’, said one royalist, ‘for his army will be no more found’.401CCSP iv. 501, 512. An anonymous letter from The Hague, from the end of February 1660, enjoyed news that ‘everybody laughs at the Lord Fleetwood and Disbrowe’ who had ridden so high, ‘drunk with their fortune’, only a few months before.402TSP vii. 823. He was hounded by the press, with broadsheets joking that sought ‘a certain pious lieutenant-general’ who had ‘strayed from Wallingford House’, recognised for his periwig, as ‘his hair came off with being much stroked on the head by old Oliver for good boy’s tricks’.403An Outcry after the late Lieutenant General Fleetwood (1660, 669.f.23.58).

After the Restoration of the monarchy in May 1660 Fleetwood was initially included among those excepted from the Act of Indemnity (June), but, according to Ludlowe, he escaped punishment thanks to Charles Stuart, 1st earl of Lichfield, and others, and was merely disabled from office-holding for life.404Ludlow, Mems. ii. 287; Oxford DNB. On 21 January 1662 the Commons finally granted Fleetwood a reprieve from execution, on the grounds that he had not taken part in the king’s trial.405Pepys’s Diary, iii. 16. The rest of Fleetwood’s life was uneventful. His second wife died later in 1662 and he remarried in January 1664 Mary, the widow of Sir Edward Hartopp, moving with family to Stoke Newington shortly afterwards. He continued to be a member of Dr Owen’s congregation, and the two men were intimate during the 1670s and early 1680s. Owen shared Fleetwood’s sense of despair (writing in 1674 that ‘I begin to fear that we shall die in the wilderness’) but he urged Fleetwood to keep the faith, to remain hopeful that God would not fail them.406Corresp. of John Owen, ed. P. Toon (1970), 159-60, 172-4. On 22 August 1683, two days before his death, Owen wrote his last letter to Fleetwood, urging him to ‘live and pray and hope and wait patiently, and do not despair; the promise stands invincible and He will never leave thee not forsake thee’.407Corresp. of John Owen, ed. Toon, 174. In the same year Fleetwood was briefly required to give security for good behaviour, and in 1686 he was among those investigated for attending an illegal conventicle at Stoke Newington.408Hackney Archives Dept., M4134. He died at Stoke Newington on 4 October 1692 and was buried at Bunhill Fields.409Oxford DNB. In his will, drawn up in 1690, he left £200 ‘to the poor distressed people of God’, including £10 ‘to the poor of that society with whom I have had Christian communion in the gospel’, and £3 to his former army colleague, ‘my ancient friend, James Berry* Esq’, as well as sums to various dissenting ministers.410PROB11/412/58. He was succeeded by his son from his first marriage, Smith Fleetwood; his son by the second, Cromwell Fleetwood, died in 1688.411Vis. Norf. 1664, 202; Gaunt, Gazetteer, 239; PROB11/412/58.

Conclusion

Seen through the lens of the years 1659-60, it is easy to dismiss Fleetwood as a political lightweight, prone to fatal indecision, whose mistakes rendered him ridiculous to contemporaries. In the words of Clarendon, ‘Fleetwood was a weak man’.412Clarendon, Hist. vi. 144. Some earlier comments also suggest that Fleetwood was eager to please, ready to be led. A royalist jibe in January 1657 said that he lacked ‘apprehension, design, courage: his virtues are meekness, justice in promise and readiness to oblige a few’.413CCSP iii. 239. These ‘virtues’ are those of the stock puritan, but there is also the implication that this was a false show, that his famously nice manners were in fact (in the words of a later writer) ‘contemptibly smooth’.414CCSP iv. 193. This element of duplicity was something that Henry and Richard Cromwell recognised, and they were not alone. Vincent Gookin, apparently tongue-in-cheek, told the protector in November 1656 that attacks on Henry would be ‘grievous to the meekness of my lord deputy’s spirit’.415TSP v. 648. Gookin also saw, behind the meekness, ‘a man of a proud and haughty spirit’ who could not bear to be crossed.416Henry Cromwell Corresp. 183.

Yet those who agreed with Fleetwood politically saw him a very different light. It was said, in March 1654, that Fleetwood’s relationship with the Baptists in Ireland was based on ‘tenderness’ to them personally.417TSP ii. 150. Sir John Reynolds noted, in November 1655, that it was Fleetwood’s ‘sweetness’ that had kept malcontents in order, and his comment was echoed by Hewson a few months later, who talked of Fleetwood’s ‘sweet, healing, peaceable spirit’ among the godly of Ireland.418TSP iv. 197, 276.. There is no doubt that religious belief is key to understanding Fleetwood’s political career. His religious motivation was apparently sincere, to the extent that even those who shared his zeal could find him exasperating. Oliver Cromwell’s reminder to Fleetwood to guard against his ‘natural inclination to compliance’ towards the army radicals in 1652 was accompanied with the wish that ‘the Lord give you abundance of wisdom, and faith, and patience’.419Abbott, Writings and Speeches, ii. 602. A year later, Cromwell urged him to ‘persuade friends with you to be very sober’ when it came to religion.420Abbott, Writings and Speeches, ii. 89. As protector, there are signs that at times Cromwell found his son-in-law’s militancy a little unnerving, provoking him to write defensively, insisting that ‘my heart is for the people of God’.421Abbott, Writings and Speeches, iii. 756.

Fleetwood’s personal relationship with the Cromwell family was the other pillar of his public career, but here again the relationship was complex. Despite his antagonistic relations with first Henry then Richard, and for all his criticism of Oliver, Fleetwood retained a strong bond of personal loyalty to the Cromwell family. His defence of the Cromwells after the fall of the protectorate went well beyond what was politically wise.422CJ vii. 665a, 705a. In the summer of 1659 he did his best to protect Richard from the debts incurred during his protectorate, telling Richard’s father-in-law, Richard Maijor*, that ‘I shall not, I cannot, I hope, neglect my duty in doing what lies in me to free from that bondage which I know the debts bring’, and that he would use his influence in Parliament to make sure of it.423Add. 24861, f. 128. In January 1660, as his career crashed down around him, Fleetwood wrote to Monck ‘on the behalf of the distressed family of his late highness, whose condition I think is as sad as any poor family in England’.424Eg. 2618, f. 58. This sense of duty towards Richard sits awkwardly with Fleetwood’s actions in deposing his brother-in-law from office. Yet, when writing to Maijor, he even defended himself on that count, saying that ‘I can fully clear myself from all intentions of evil in what hath been done’, adding that ‘the Lord will vindicate my reputation and justify my innocency’.425Add. 24861, f. 128. It was a forlorn hope, and Fleetwood knew it. In his letter to Parliament in January 1660 he reportedly declared that he was ‘quite ashamed of himself, and confesses how he had deserved this for his baseness to his brother’.426Pepys’s Diary, i. 34-5. Even if his actions in destroying the protectorate had been motivated by a concern to revive the ‘good old cause’, there was no getting away from the fact that the results had been catastrophic, politically, religiously and personally.