Blair Worden - A Book of Friendship

BLAIR WORDEN - A BOOK OF FRIENDSHIP

How, then, can we explain the very different attitude to Cromwell expressed by Hollis from that of his friend Macaulay. One possible explanation is the sources on which they drew. Macaulay’s critical attitude towards Cromwell reflected her reliance on The Memoirs of Edmund Ludlow as a key source text, a work that was famously critical of the Lord Protector. Macaulay goes so far as to suggest that Ludlow himself might have provided the solution to the problem of Cromwell: if they [the parliamentarians] had had sufficient caution to have balanced the power of Cromwell with an equal military command in the hands of the brave and honest Ludlow, till time and opportunity had enabled them totally to destroy an influence, which, from the first establishment of the Commonwealth had threatened its existence. 28 Yet Macaulay’s use of Ludlow as a source cannot fully explain the differences between her and Hollis on the subject of the Lord Protector, since Hollis was also familiar with Ludlow’s Memoirs and showed sympathy for Ludlow himself. He sent copies of Ludlow’s Memoirs abroad, including to Harvard College. He also commissioned the Italian-born engraver, with whom he worked closely over many years, Giovanni Battista Cipriani, to produce an engraving of Ludlow based on a seal by Thomas Simon that was in Hollis’s possession. Hollis even wrote the positive text that was to appear under the portrait himself. 29 Instead, the contrasting views of Hollis and Macaulay appear to reflect two related factors. First, their different perspectives on single-person rule and secondly, their contrasting visions of how an individual might become worthy of renown. The period of the Interregnum offered at least two options for advocates of kingless government. The rule of the Rump Parliament from 1649-53 and its brief revival in 1659, offered a version of republican government in which sovereignty lay with a collective body rather than a single individual. In ‘The Act declaring England to be a Commonwealth’, which was passed by the Rump on 19 May 1649, it was declared that England was to be governed ‘by the supreme authority of this

28 Macaulay, Political Writings , pp. 44-5. 29 The Diary of Thomas Hollis , p. 51.

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