Blair Worden - A Book of Friendship

JOHN MORRILL

There are too many subjunctives for comfort in the above. Nonetheless, the newly recovered version of what Cromwell said on 4th July 1653 is important for several reasons, in a descending order of probability. The fact that it survives within a reliable version of significant extracts made by a clerk or under-clerk of the Houses from the fair copy of the Journal of Commons gives it a greater authority than the previously-known versions. The fact that it is substantially the same as the version published to discredit the Protectorate increases the trust we can place in the latter at the expense of the claims of the version that passed through the hands of John Milton and his friends. This would make it more a document that aimed to create a new Jerusalem rather than the thousand-year rule of the saints. If it contains little that is significantly new, the fact that 96.25 per cent of the words in both are the same increases the confidence we can invest in each of them. Its relationship to the Spittlehouse version may remain unclear in important respects. Yet, in sum, it adjusts if it does not transform our understanding of the account Cromwell made of his reasons for dissolving the Rump and planning for a godlier Commonwealth than the Revolution had so far achieved. There are some reasons for preferring the new version and there are tweaks that will affect at least one forthcoming biography of Cromwell. My dismay at its appearance two months after the appearance of my new edition of words is outweighed by my curiosity, and I hope Blair agrees.

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