Into the Archive: Acquisitions Abounding

 

Cromwell is a 1970 British historical drama film written and directed by Ken Hughes. It is based on the life of Oliver Cromwell, who rose to lead the Parliamentary forces during the later years of the English Civil War and, as Lord Protector, ruled Great Britain and Ireland in the 1650s. It features an ensemble cast, led by Richard Harris as Cromwell and Alec Guinness as King Charles I, with Robert Morley as Edward Montagu, 2nd Earl of Manchester and Timothy Dalton as Prince Rupert of the Rhine. The film received negative reviews for its many historical inaccuracies; however, much praise went to the acting. – Wikipedia.

One of the main inaccuracies was the portrayal of Oliver Cromwell as sort of a hero of the common man, when he became little more than a bloody tyrant.

“He was a cadet of one of those millionaire families who had gained their enormous wealth out of the wreck of the monasteries during the period of the Reformation. His father, of whom he was the only surviving son, was himself the only son of the enormously wealthy Sir Henry Cromwell, and Henry was the son of Richard Cromwell, nephew of Thomas Cromwell, the man who dissolved the monasteries under Henry VIII. Richard Cromwell's real name was Richard Williams. He was nephew to Thomas because his mother had been Thomas Cromwell's sister, his mother having married a tavern-keeper in Putney, near London, whose name was Williams. Richard took on his important relative's name, but both he and those who succeeded him had to use the name Williams for legal purposes, and when his great-grandson, Oliver, lay in state, the title "Oliver Cromwell, alias Williams," was embroidered on the half- royal hangings which draped the bed.

“When his father died, Oliver Williams, alias Cromwell, inherited an income of what we should call to-day something rather more than 363,000 a year. But though his fortune was moderate, compared with many of his rank, what marked him out was the immense fortune of those to whom he belonged. The Reformation has been called "a rising of the rich against the poor." This does not apply to it in the remote valleys of Switzerland and the Scandinavian fells, but it is an epigram more than half true of its progress in England, and the fact that Oliver belonged to one of those millionaire families recently founded on the loot of religious endowments is highly characteristic of the whole time. The House of Commons to which he was returned as a young man was composed almost entirely of rich people like himself—great land-owners and their relatives, with here and there a prominent lawyer, or, quite exceptionally, a prominent merchant. 

"The English House of Commons was in those days a body only called together as a rule for brief periods. It was always summoned on the accession of a monarch, and whenever there was important and solemn law-making to be done it was summoned to confirm the King's will and to subscribe to what he and his Council and the great lords had decided. The Crown had become so poor in Cromwell's time that government could not be carried on without special voluntary grants by the owners of property, and for making these grants there was no one but the House of Commons. It took advantage of its position to attack the powers of the King and the quarrel ultimately ended in a civil war. 

"Of the Parliament, the Lords for the most part hesitated to rise in armed rebellion; of their relatives and fellow landowners, the Commons, rather more than half or about half, were prepared to levy a regular war against the King. But even those of the richer classes who were reluctant to attack the Crown physically, were nearly all at heart opposed to the old claims of the Crown in government and they nearly all wanted at heart to supplant government by a king whose duty and function it was to protect the poor against the rich, the weak against the strong. They desired to supplant him and take over the government themselves. That in effect is what they did. They won their war, they put the King to death, and among them was the amateur soldier who so rapidly became the best professional soldier of his time: Cromwell. 

"He was installed the head of the victorious army by the time that he was forty-eight, and in his fiftieth year it was he who plotted for and achieved the death of King Charles. He proceeded to the conquest of Ireland, a task which he accomplished with horrible cruelty and as a result of which he dispossessed nineteen-twentieths of the Irish nation, confiscating their land wholesale. He intended to destroy the Catholic Church altogether in that country. He thought that he had achieved that end before he died; but there he was mistaken. - Hilaire Belloc, Characters of the Reformation.

The Water of the Wondrous Isles, by William Morris (1897, Ballantine Edition 1971)

“The novel was initially printed in 1897 by Morris' own Kelmscott Press on vellum and artisanal paper in a blackletter type of his own design. For the wider reading public, a hardcover trade edition was published later that year by Longmans, Green and Co. It was republished by Ballantine Books as the thirty-eighth volume of the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series in November, 1971. The Ballantine edition includes an introduction by Lin Carter.

“Stolen as a child and raised in the wood of Evilshaw as servant to a witch, Birdalone ultimately escapes in her captress's magical boat, in which she travels to a succession of strange and wonderful islands. Among these is the Isle of Increase Unsought, an island cursed with boundless production, which Morris intended as a parable of contemporary Britain and a vehicle for his socialistic beliefs. Equally radical, during much of the first quarter of the novel, Birdalone is naked, a highly unusual detail in Victorian fiction. She is occasionally assisted out of jams by Habundia, her lookalike fairy godmother. She encounters three maidens who are held prisoner by another witch. They await deliverance by their lovers, the three paladins of the Castle of the Quest. Birdalone is clad by the maidens and seeks out their heroes, and the story goes into high gear as they set out to rescue the women. Ultimately, one lady is reunited with her knight, another finds a new love when her knight is killed, and the last is left to mourn as her champion throws her over for Birdalone.” – Wikipedia.

Well. It was the only one of the Ballantine Adult Fantasy’s William Morris books I did not have. I know I have not read the BAF William Morris books I do have and may not read this one, but it matters not. The compulsion was on me, and it now sits snugly with its brothers. It is in remarkably good condition for a 50+ year old paperback, which is probably a testament to its unread, almost unreadable, nature. I did go over a little section in it while I was cooking supper, though, and I think it is approachable, with the right mental squint and a certain amount of reader’s readjustment. Another Gervasio Gallardo cover!

 

I now, in fact, have an embarrassment of riches when it comes to reading matter. Besides still attempting the monumental The Gulag Archipelago, I have at least five new books of varying complexity in my queue, four of which arrived in the last two days. I was trying to stretch my book acquisitions over at least a couple of weeks, but Amazon proved too efficient for my purposes. These two arrived by truck this afternoon. No more new ‘presents’ for a while yet, no happy anticipation. But lots of diversion.