Chapter 1025: The Lord Protector Emeritus (Seeking Subscriptions)

"Your Majesty the King."

Another man bowed respectfully to Cromwell and addressed him as "Your Majesty the King." This man was Andrew Marvell, who had once fiercely opposed the House of Stuart — the very envoy to the Great Ming who had just returned to London from the English Commonwealth.

"Andrew, why do you address me so as well?" Cromwell looked at this trusted confidant of his with some surprise. "Do you not know what I am thinking?"

"Your Highness the Lord Protector, you wish to truly unite England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, so that millions of people all speak one language, hold one faith, and obey one government and one king. Henceforth there will be no more Englishmen, Irishmen, Scotsmen, or Welshmen — only Britons! Henceforth on the soil of Britain there will be no more Anglicans, Presbyterians, or Catholics — only the purest Puritanism.

Henceforth there will never again be a civil war in which brothers slaughter one another over matters of faith!

That is your ideal, the ideal of the great Lord Protector of England! Am I right?"

The story of the English bourgeois revolution was unknown to Andrew Marvell; he had never read the history books of certain later nations. Cromwell likewise knew nothing of any bourgeois revolution. The two of them only knew that the hapless Charles I had been done in by England's endless religious conflicts.

The so-called English bourgeois revolution was in fact a religious war! A religious war brought on by a series of sectarian contradictions and Charles I's mishandling.

The England that Charles I inherited faced severe problems of proliferating sects and ethnic conflict: on one side, the clashes among the four great denominations — the Anglican Church (the Church of England), the Presbyterian Church (the Church of Scotland), the Catholic Church (the Church of Ireland), and the Puritans; on the other, the mutual hostility of the three great peoples — the English, the Scots, and the Irish.

Charles I's father, James I, had been caught in the middle of the struggles among these four sects and three peoples. He spent his whole life smoothing things over, yielding at every turn both at home and abroad, stifled to the point of misery, and yet he managed to preserve more than twenty years of stability, handing the country over to Charles I — a man of no great intellect who nonetheless fancied himself clever. (Charles I had not originally been the heir, but when he was eighteen his elder brother Henry died, and so he became heir.)

After Charles I took the throne, he made his "stifled" father his negative example, hoping through his own line of "religious fusion" to merge the Anglican, Presbyterian, Catholic, and Puritan denominations into one.

To win over the Catholics, Charles I at first tried to marry a Spanish princess who was a fervent Catholic, but the other side regarded him as a heretic and wanted to keep him in Spain for a year of re-education. So Charles had to marry a French princess who likewise believed in Catholicism but was not so fanatical — yet this French princess still did not convert to the Anglican Church, and therefore met with unanimous opposition from Anglicans, Puritans, and Presbyterians alike; not even her coronation (the queen's coronation) could be held.

And under the influence of this French princess, Charles I again showed pro-Catholic leanings in matters of religious ritual and the appointment of clergy — which was, of course, also a necessary measure for unifying the various churches of England and at the same time obtaining understanding from Rome.

In order to placate the Anglicans, Puritans, and Presbyterians, to establish his authority at home, and to avenge the humiliation he had suffered at Spain's hands, Charles I immediately joined the Thirty Years' War upon his accession and made Spain his enemy. But England's Protestants (Anglicans, Presbyterians, Puritans) did not regard this king as one of their own and unanimously resisted, so that England could not obtain sufficient funds to organize an expeditionary force. As a result, for many years after the English entered the war, no trace of them could be found on the German battlefields; it was not until 1633 that they reluctantly took the field, only to be swiftly defeated.

At the same time, the military operations against Spain by sea were not much of a success either; after a few months they had all failed.

After the war with Spain fell through, Charles I, to curry favor with the various Protestants at home, went on to support the Huguenot rebellion in France — and that too failed because of the lack of support from the Protestant lords and Catholic lords at home.

While suffering one failure after another internationally, Charles I also began meddling in the conflict between the two Protestant denominations, the Anglicans and the Presbyterians (because the Anglican Church, under the king's impetus, was showing a tendency toward Catholicization, which stirred the discontent of Presbyterian believers) — he hoped to merge the Church of England and the Church of Scotland.

To this end he appointed William Laud, who inclined toward Catholic forms in religious ritual, as Archbishop of Canterbury (Primate), and with his assistance launched the campaign to unify the two national churches. This in turn enraged the Presbyterian believers of Scotland, who produced a "Covenanter" faction to oppose the king.

Faced with the resistance of the Scottish Presbyterian Covenanters, Charles I chose war, sending troops to impose his religious line, thereby touching off two Bishops' Wars — and was defeated again.

After the Second Bishops' War failed because of resistance from England's Protestants, Charles I was forced to summon the "Long Parliament" (the very parliament that would do him in) in order to raise more funds to settle the struggle with the Scottish Covenanters.

But the nobles, gentry, and bourgeoisie he had summoned were in fact all allies of the Scottish Covenanters, and all wanted to drive this "heretic king" Charles I from the throne. At first, however, they did not want a republic; they only wanted to hollow out Charles I's power and to educate his son (Charles II) on his behalf, lest Charles I turn the heir into a fatuous ruler who secretly believed in Catholicism. This was the so-called "Grand Remonstrance affair." And after Charles I rejected the Grand Remonstrance, the situation in London immediately spun out of control, and Charles I had to leave London, fleeing north to Nottingham to summon the royal army and start a civil war.

The result, of course, was defeat once more — he even lost his head over it!

The tragedy of Charles I, in truth, had little to do with the bourgeoisie; it was entirely the product of his string of failures in handling religious questions.

And Cromwell, who replaced Charles I, in fact faced the same problems of sectarian division and ethnic conflict. But his way of dealing with them differed from both Charles I and James I: he sought neither the fusion of the various sects nor the smoothing over of contradictions among them; instead he resolutely pushed Puritanism, wanting to build a unified England of Puritans!

The problem was that although the Puritans were formidable fighters, they were numerically a minority and held no advantage within England, so they could only rule by military dictatorship.

And even while ruling by military dictatorship, Cromwell did not dare go too far on religious questions — a coronation ceremony could well turn into a religious showdown. Whether it would be presided over by a Puritan minister using Puritan rites, or by an Anglican minister using Anglican rites, would be a very serious problem!

Cromwell looked at Marvell and sighed softly: "Andrew, we both know where England's problems lie. But solving them is no easy matter. I need time — yet I am already fifty-eight this year. I do not have much time left!"

"Your Highness the Lord Protector," Marvell fully understood Cromwell's predicament, but his journey to the East had broadened his horizons, and so he had a way to solve his lord's difficulty, "during my sojourn in the East, I not only made a deep study of China's political, economic, and religious questions, but also studied Japan, the Great Ming's neighbor."

"Oh, is that so?" Cromwell did not see what Marvell was driving at, and merely nodded perfunctorily.

Marvell said: "In China and Japan, I discovered two methods that can solve the difficulty Your Highness faces."

"What methods?" Cromwell fixed his eyes on Marvell.

"The Ama system of the Qing dynasty in northern China, and the Great Retired Shogun system of the shogunate of Japan." Marvell said, "The Qing dynasty, which once held sway over northern China, would, when their emperor was young, select from the imperial clan a shrewd and capable Prince to serve as the emperor's adoptive father, and marry him to the Empress Dowager, calling him Ama; this Ama would govern in the emperor's stead.

And the shogun of Japan, upon growing old, would voluntarily yield his position to his son, letting the son hold the title of shogun and part of the political power, while he himself, under the title of Great Retired Shogun, would remotely control his son the shogun. In this way a smooth transition of power to the next generation could be guaranteed."

Cromwell's eyes lit up. "These Orientals are rather clever when it comes to power struggles! But the Tartars' Ama system does not suit the England of today. Philip IV, though, is worth considering! And what England needs is a Lord Protector Emeritus!"

(End of Chapter)