Milton, in the final crisis of the republic in 1659–1660, was desperate to safeguard liberty of conscience in religion and prevent the return of a ‘single person’ to power. In the autumn of 1659, he was suggesting that some version of the Rump Parliament needed to be recalled again and sit as the supreme power. Tellingly, he regarded this remnant of a House of Commons not as a popular assembly but as a ‘Senate’ and he noted that ‘although Magistracies be annuall in most commonwealths yet the place of Senator hath bin alwayes during life both in Rome, Venice & elsewhere’ (Milton 1980: 336). A senate of this kind was an essential foundation for much-needed stability and this justified bypassing the people, at least temporarily. In the second edition of his Readie and Easie Way the following year, Milton suggested that in due course, once the republic was genuinely secure, the people would be allowed local assemblies in their towns to balance the power of the central, perpetual senate or Grand Councel. But he summarised the history of Rome to warn that ‘the ballance… must be exactly so set, as to preserve and keep up due autoritie on either side, as well in the Senat as in the people’. The story of the Roman Republic was the story of the growing ambition of the people and the increasing concessions made to them: but the people’s victory was Pyrrhic, bringing down the ‘tyrannie’ of Sulla upon them in reaction against their gains under Marius (and, presumably, paving the way for the loss of the Republic altogether). At least at the outset of the Roman Republic, the people had had the prudence not to press for representation via the tribunes until the Republic was secure (Milton 1980: 435–443). During the dying throes of the English Republic, Milton thus looked to the earliest years of the Roman Republic as a model which demonstrated how controlled and aristocratic government might have warded off the chaos of the late Roman Republic.
3.6 Monarchism
As we have seen, then, Rome was often used to think through the claims of popular and aristocratic government, and to grapple with the relationship between the many and the few. But Rome also came into play when considering the possibility of monarchical rule, whether Stuart or Cromwellian. Scholars dispute whether early modern republicanism should be defined by anti-monarchism (Worden 2002). Certainly not all of those who we tend to class as republicans were willing to exclude all forms of monarchy under all circumstances, and those who valued virtue more than institutional forms could invoke Aristotle’s criterion of superlative virtue to justify some forms of single rule – as Milton did for Cromwell’s rule in 1654 (Worden 2007: 257). If Rome was understood, in a Polybian vein, as a mixed polity composed of monarchy (the consuls), aristocracy (the Senate) and democracy (the popular assemblies) (see Chapter 8), then a quasi-monarchical role such as Cromwell’s might be justified by Roman precedent as part of a genuinely republican constitution. However, the consular role as such was a poor analogy for what actually happened in the 1650s, with Cromwell appointed for life and not elected. Thus, depictions of Cromwell as a Roman republican hero tended to sidestep the question of his exact constitutional role, while critics of Cromwell looked to the late Republic and the early emperors for exempla which proved that the extension of office – whether that of dictator or that of consul – could only portend the extinction of republican freedom. Even James Harrington, who defended a provision for temporary dictatorship (in the form of a committee) in times of emergency on the basis of Roman precedent and Machiavelli’s approval, was attempting to persuade Cromwell to relinquish his protectoral power rather than prolong it (Harrington 1977: 252–255).
Attitudes to the Lord Protector – Oliver Cromwell, followed by his son Richard Cromwell – were sometimes expressed in rather veiled terms, and even praise could display considerable ambivalence (Norbrook 1999: 326–378). A ‘single person’ at the head of the state – and one who had achieved his place through military leadership – could be presented as a Roman republican hero. Such classicising representations of Cromwell, as Laura Knoppers has shown, made room for praise of Cromwell to be framed in republican terms (rather than terms which implicitly threatened the republic) in pre-Protectoral works such as Payne Fisher’s Irenodia Gratulatoria of 1652. Fisher ‘both links and dissociates’ Cromwell and Caesar in this Latin panegyric, invoking the comparison only to pointedly deflect it by contrasting Cromwell’s virtue and self-control with the empty applause of the Roman triumph and the avarice implied by Caesar’s violation of the treasury of Saturn (Knoppers 2000: 58–66). Similarly, Milton’s 1654 account of Cromwell’s triumph over his own passions and defeat of private interest and kingship gave the title of pater patriae (father of the fatherland), which he bestowed on him, a republican edge – perhaps reinforced by the disapproving reference elsewhere in the text to Catiline’s conspiracy, which Cicero had capitalised on to be granted that title himself. Cromwell remained civis maximus & gloriosissimus, dux publici consilii (the greatest and most glorious of our citizens, the director of public counsel), a republican citizen and leader rather than an Imperator (commander or emperor) in any sense but the military (Milton 1933: 222–223).
Other republicans, however, were to align Cromwell with Caesar rather than with Cicero. Edward Sexby, urging the assassination of Cromwell, turned around the pater patriae trope when he addressed Cromwell: ‘All this we hope from your Highnes [sic] happie expiration, who are the true Father of your Countrie, for while you live we can call nothing ours, and it is from your death that we hope for our inheritances’ (Sexby 1657: title page). Caesar – soon to be assassinated – may be the model for this more sinister version of the pater patriae. John Streater, a notably populist republican, recoiled particularly violently from Cromwell’s elevation to the Protectorate, which he was warning of, with Roman parallels, several months before it actually happened. For Streater, the dictatorship of Caesar was an example of the dangerous concentration and prolongation of power in the hands of one person. Streater’s contemporaries should study such cases to see ‘how persons that affect absolute Government endeavour the accomplishment thereof’ (Streater 1653: 1–2, 5, 18). Whether republicans were contemplating the tyranny of Charles I or of Oliver Cromwell, Roman examples of tyrannicide could afford useful arguments: Sexby drew on Roman texts in constructing his argument for the assassination of Cromwell, but Milton’s Second Defence, justifying the regicide, also drew on Cicero in arguing that a tyrant is ‘the general enemy… of the whole human race’ (Milton 1932: 196–197).
3.7 English Republicans and Machiavelli
The Roman Republic was not merely a static model for English republicans, but a historical exemplum, and they drew lessons from its development and eventual demise as well as from its institutions. In doing