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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 February 2009
1 Carlyle, Thomas, The letters and speeches of Oliver Cromwell (2 vols., London, 1845)Google Scholar.
2 The dramatic impact of the appearance of Carlyle's work is well described by Sir Charles Firth, in his introduction to The letters and speeches of Oliver Cromwell with elucidations by Thomas Carlyle edited in three volumes with notes, supplement and enlarged index by S. C. Lomas (3 vols., London, 1904), 1, xxxii–xxxviiGoogle Scholar (henceforth referred to as Carlyle/Lomas).
3 Stainer, C. L., Speeches of Oliver Cromwell, 1644–1658 (Oxford, 1901)Google Scholar. Stainer's texts which are (aswe shall see) superior to Abbott's have recently formed the basis of IvanRoots' collection of twenty six speeches, though this new edition lacks Stainer's annotations. Roots, Ivan, Speeches of Oliver Cromwell (1989)Google Scholar.
4 Roots, , Speeches, p. viiGoogle Scholar.
5 The War may also explain why Abbott undertook so little checking of printed versions (often eighteenth and nineteenth century printed versions) of surviving manuscript originals. But as the Preface to volume 1 indicates (1, xviii), all the research he intended to undertake had been completed by 1937. This is very much the Harvard libraries edition of Cromwell, with the advantages and disadvantages of that.
6 See below, p. 637.
7 Abbott, Ed. W. C., Bibliography of Oliver Cromwell (Cambridge, Mass., 1929)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. This lists (annually since his lifetime) items published about Cromwell. It contains over 3,500 items. At the end of vol. iv of the Writings and speeches (pp. 957/72) is a list of 73 addenda to the 1929 Bibliography and of 173 items published between 1929 and 1944. (Hardacre, P. contributed a further list for the years 1944/54 to the Journal of Modern History (1981)Google Scholar.)
8 Abbott, III, 72n.
9 Abbott, 1, xv. Many of the additions, including all Mrs Lomas' are consigned to appendices (in vol. ni of her edition), which does detract from the ease of use.
10 Abbott, I, 470–1 (letter delivered to Berkeley on 3 July 1647).
11 B.L., Additional MSS 6125, fo. 285. It is typical of Abbott's sloppy annotation (see below) that he gives no page number (his text is on iv, 417/18). He is simply reproducing the text in Carlyle/Lomas and saw no need. One cannot therefore go straight from him to the manuscript original.
12 B.L., Lansdowne MS 821, fo. 314. The version he gives is in fact the one printed by SirFirth, Charles in ‘Cromwell and the Crown’, English Historical Review, XVIII (1903), 60–1Google Scholar. Abbott does not take the opportunity to weigh the reliability of the two texts (e.g. against the shorter summary in ed. Firth, C. H., The Clarke Papers (Camden Society, 1894), III, 92)Google Scholar.
13 Some of the accounts of the meetings of sectarian leaders with Cromwell that Abbott prints are useful in the same way. Not all are easily available elsewhere (e.g. the account of the Fifth MonarchistJohn Rogers with Cromwell in March 1655 in Abbott, 111, 607–16).
14 Many of them (e.g. the Venetian ambassador's reports from the Calendar of Stale Papers Venetian or ofthe French ambassadors from Guizot, F.'s History of Oliver Cromwell and the English commonwealth [2 vols., 1854]Google Scholar, appendices to both volumes) are from familiar sources; others such as Beverning's and Nieupoort's reports to the States General of the Netherlands were only previously in an eighteenth-century Dutch edition (see p. 630).
15 I am not suggesting that Abbott is a careless editor. When we come to discuss his editing of the speeches, we will see he drew up his own composites, every word of which can be found in original printed sources. He is an unimaginative editor, failing consistently to recognize the needs of his readers.
16 Carlyle/Lomas, III, supplement 25.
17 Abbott, 1, 517.
18 Abbott, 1, 68.
19 Cambs. Record Office (Huntingdon) Montagu papers, DDM/80/1983/1. See the discussion in ed. Morrill, J. S., Oliver Cromwell and the English revolution (1990), pp. 19–26Google Scholar.
20 Abbott, iv, 737 (citing HMC, 5th Report, Appendix p. 177 (Sutherland MSS).
21 Abbott, iv, 58, where he is (without making it clear) summarizing what Cromwell must have written to Colonel Hewson by deduction from Hewson's reply!
22 Abbott, rv, 69–70.
23 The first version (the basis of Stainer's edition) isThe Lord General Cromwels Speech delivered in the Council-Chamber, upon the 4 of July, 1653 (London, 1654)Google Scholar, a version almost certainly put out at the time of the First Protectorate Parliament by Fifth Monarchist opponents of the protectorate as a pointed reminder of Cromwell's earlier zeal. The version I used for checking was in Brit. Lib., Thomason tracts E813 (13); The second version (the basis of Carlyle/Lomas), is in ed. Nickols, J., Original letters and papers of state of… Mr John Milton (London, 1743)Google Scholar, which is an accurate transcript (though in eighteenth-century spelling and punctuation) of a mid-seventeenth century manuscript then and now in the possession of the Society of Antiquaries. See also Roots, , Speeches, p. 241Google Scholar. There is an important discussion of the texts of this speech and the important discussion in Woolrych, A. H., Commonwealth to protectorate (Oxford, 1982), pp. 399–402Google Scholar. He concludes that ‘comparing the texts, one has the impression of two writers struggling independently tocapture Cromwell's flow of words with their primitive speed-writing, and differing where they have to supply what they have not exactly caught, or where they attempt to tidy up his syntactical loose ends’. Woolrych also draws attention to Bodl. Lib., Tanner MS 52, fos. 20–3, a short summary of the speech.
24 Stainer, , Speeches, pp. 86–118Google Scholar (for the text), pp. 426–36 for the analysis. I have checked Stainer's transcript which is extremely accurate except for his modernization of spelling (which does not affect the meaning) and of punctuation (less extreme than that of other editors). He does, however, reparagraph the speech, and appears to me sometimes to shift the weight of the argument for no good reason.
25 Carlyle/Lomas, II, 272–303. This further ‘adjusts’ the spelling and punctuation of the already adjusted eighteenth-century edition; but Carlyle's textual interpolations are always indicated by the use of inverted commas and are not seriously distracting.
26 Abbott, III, 66n.
27 Abbott, III, 52–66 for his text.
28 This is not to say that any of them have misread the extant manuscript versions. The complaint is not that Abbott produced a careless edition; simply a personal compilation from different versions without indicating alternatives. (I have reconstructed Abbott's version by parallel reading of it against his originals. He is a careful transcriber who has failed to understand the inappropriateness of his effort.)
29 Abbott, IV, 444n.
30 Abbott, IV, 446n.
31 Abbott, IV, 497n.
32 Abbott, I, 61–2.
33 Gardiner, S. R., History of England… 1603–1642 (10 vols., 1883–1884), VII, 55nGoogle Scholar.
34 Carlyle/Lomas, I, 57n.
35 Notestein, and Relf, , Commons debates of 1629, pp. 139Google Scholar, 193 both refer to Neile as ‘then bishop of Lincoln’.
36 SirDugdale, William, A short view of the late troubles (1681)Google Scholar; Heath, J., Flagellum (1663, 1674)Google Scholar.
37 Abbott, I, 103–4.
38 Abbott, I, 108–10. Cf. ed. Morrill, , Cromwell, pp. 44–6Google Scholar.
39 Paul, Robert, The Lord Protector (London, 1955), pp. 399–400Google Scholar.
40 Eds. Beales, D. and Best, G., History, society and the churches (Cambridge, 1985), pp. 125–45Google Scholar.
41 Abbott, III, xi.
42 E.g. Abbott, IV, xii.
43 E.g. Abbott, IV, 26.
44 Abbott, IV, 76.
45 Abbott, II, 4. Cf. the later statement that ‘this new system of government [was] based on the Agreement of the People’ (ibid, IV, 34). What makes Abbott's comprehension hereabouts seem even shakier is the statement that the Officers' Agreement was effectively the one drawn up in October 1647 (ibid, IV, 4).
46 Abbott, I, 81n. He goes on to give references to this Samuel Wells as Essex's chaplain.
47 The real Dr Wells is identified and his importance discussed in Morrill, , Cromwell and the English revolution, pp. 38–42Google Scholar.
48 The great hope, as the century comes to its end, is that Blair Worden will do so. His interim reports, in the form of several articles (see note 49), promise so.
49 Worden, A. B., ‘Toleration and the Cromwellian protectorate’, in ed. Sheils, W. J., Persecution and toleration (Oxford, 1984), pp. 199–233Google Scholar; Worden, A. B., ‘Providence and politics in Cromwellian England’, in Past and Present, CIX (1985), 55–99CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Worden, A. B., ‘Oliver Cromwell and the sin of Achan’, in eds. Beales, D. and Best, G., History, society and the churches (Cambridge, 1985), pp. 125–45Google Scholar; Davis, J. C., ‘Cromwell's religion’, in ed. Morrill, , Cromwell, pp. 181–209Google Scholar.
50 For some suggestions on this point, see Sommerville, Johann, ‘Oliver Cromwell and English political thought’, in Morrill, , Cromwell, pp. 234–58Google Scholar.
