Eyre Lines

Sitting waiting for the service today, I was musing about Palm Sunday, and how it represents a tragic misidentification of Jesus as the “strong man” come to liberate Israel, and, as my mind tends to work that way, noticed a prominent tomb which has most of a recumbent statue of the occupant on top of it. I say “most of” because the hands and head have been destroyed.

They were probably destroyed by religious zealots during the period of the Civil War, which was the last time we placed a “strong man” in total control of this country, in the form of Oliver Cromwell, and those religious zealots were very significant in putting Cromwell there. They were Puritans, and considered that imagery in churches was idolatrous, whether it was supposed to represent God (or Jesus) or not. Most of the churches I know which predate the Civil War bear similar scars where religious artistry has been destroyed or defaced. I say “probably” because there was a spate of damage to churches earlier, during the short rule of Henry VIII’s son Edward, when the Puritan tendency had become powerful within the Anglican church and was supported for a while by Edward’s advisors. The damage under Cromwell was, however, far more widespread and severe, so I think it likely to have dated from then.

The same group were significantly instrumental in passing a number of laws during the period of the Protectorate – we did, at least, have a somewhat constitutional despotism (being English, we rarely do things entirely whole-heartedly) which included demanding the strict observance of Sunday, closing down theatres and banning drinking, gambling and public dancing. They also made their own pet brands of very conservative protestantism fully legal, though Quakers and some extreme groups were still beyond the pale! So were Catholics; the late king, executed by command of the same parliament, had at least flirted with Catholicism…

The English Civil War is usually presented in history lessons these days (and to an extent even when I was studying history at school) as a war about freedom versus absolutism, of constitutional, parliamentary rule versus government by a tyrant. Certainly, Charles I had tried to rule without parliamentary approval to an extent, and was an admirer of the European tradition, in France and Spain, of “the divine right of kings”, which was supported by the Catholic church – which may have been one of the attractions of Catholicism to him, had his marrying a French Catholic princess not been sufficient. In fact, the parliament which passed those laws was already pruned by Cromwell (it consisted of less than half the actual elected representatives), and only lasted four years before he dissolved it and ruled as “Lord Protector” – for life, no less, and which title passed very briefly to his son before the country decided it had had enough of what was, in the end, more of an absolute rule than the late Charles had ever managed.

I wonder whether any lessons can be learned by the study of a time when religious conservatives supported a strong man into office, on the basis that he would support their turning of the state into an exclusive homeland for their rather unpleasant religious beliefs, and were then disappointed when he became a greater tyrant than anything he replaced?