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ABSTRACT
On the eve of the Battle of Worcester in 1651, Oliver Cromwell was reputed to have sold his soul to the Devil. This article examines the construction of this legend and places it in the larger context of English Protestant thought about the ‘ancient enemy’. It argues that the story originally arose from the circumstances of Cromwell’s death on 3 September 1658, but later came to focus on events before the battle seven years earlier. The legend illustrates the persistence of ideas about a physical Devil, despite the emphasis on Satan as an invisible tempter in English theology. This portrayal emerged from the polemics of the 1640s and 1650s and had something in common with the demonization of the royalist commander Prince Rupert. But it drew mainly on earlier stories such as the legend of Johann Faust, which provided the core themes in the tale of Cromwell’s supposed diabolism.
Disclosure statement
The author reported no potential conflict of interest.
Notes
1 As early as 1649, John Arnway’s The Tablet, or Moderation of Charles I (The Hague: 1649) acclaimed the king’s martyrdom: see especially Arnway, Tablet, pp. 79–80.
2 P. Gaunt, ‘Oliver Cromwell’s Last Battle’, Transactions of the Worcestershire Archaeological Society, Third Series, Vol. 20 (2006), 148.
3 See, for example, J. Vicars, A Brief Review of the Most Material Parliamentary Proceedings (2nd ed. 1652), pp. 26–7.
4 I. Peck, Recollections in the Republic: Memories of the British Civil Wars in England, 1649–1659 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021), pp. 34–5.
5 A drumhead service is a military religious service which uses drums as an altar.
6 T. M., The History of Independency. The Fourth and Last Part (1660), p. 31.
7 L. Echard, The History of England. From the Beginning of the Reign of King Charles the First to the Restoration of King Charles II, Vol. II (London: Jacob Tonson, 1718), pp. 712–13.
8 In 1657 a Quaker apprentice supposedly met the Devil in human form in Worcester, and a former royalist soldier told Richard Baxter that he saw a demonic monster on College Green during the wars. A Sad Caveat to All Quakers (1657), pp. 8–9; R. Baxter, The Certainty of the Worlds of Spirits (London, 1691), pp. 58–9.
9 T. M., pp. 31–2.
10 An Account of the Last Hours of the Late Renowned Oliver Lord Protector (1659), p. 9.
11 J. Reynolds, Upon the Much Lamented Departure of the High and Mighty Prince Oliver Lord Protector (1658).
12 P. Ackroyd, Newton (London: Vintage, 2007), p. 10.
13 E. Waller, Upon the Late Storme, and the Death of His Highnesse (1658).
14 R. Watson, The Storme Raised by Mr Waller (1659).
15 T. M., p. 32.
16 Echard, pp. 712–13.
17 Ibid.
18 Ibid.
19 Ibid.
20 For Thorowgood’s career and political leanings, see R. W. Cogley, ‘The Ancestry of the American Indians: Thomas Thorowgood’s Iews in America (1650) and Jews in America (1660)’, English Literary Renaissance, 35, 2 (Spring 2005), 304–5.
21 I am grateful to the cathedral librarian, David Morrison, for this information.
22 L. Spring, The Regiments of the Eastern Association, Vol. 1 (Bristol: Stuart Press, 1998), p. 21.
23 See D. J. Appleby, ‘The Third Army: Wandering Soldiers and the Negotiation of Parliamentary Authority, 1642–51’, in Battle-Scarred: Mortality, Medical Care and Military Welfare in the British Civil Wars ed. by D. J. Appleby and A. Hopper (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2018), p. 138; and A. Hopper, Turncoats and Renegadoes: Changing Sides During the English Civil Wars (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), chapter seven.
24 Echard, p. 712.
25 T. M., The History of Independency. The Fourth and Last Part (1660), p. 713.
26 J. Oldmixon, The Critical History of England, Ecclesiastical and Civil, 2nd ed. (London: J. Pemberton, 1726), p. 147.
27 A True and Faithful Narrative of Oliver Cromwell’s Compact with the Devil for Seven Years (1720), title page. I am grateful to Tony Spicer for drawing my attention to this pamphlet.
28 True and Faithful Narrative, pp. 9–10, 11, 13.
29 R. Palmer, The Folklore of Worcestershire (Eardisley: Logaston Press, 2005), pp. 42–3.
30 I. Gentles, The New Model Army in England, Ireland and Scotland, 1645–1653 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992), p. 408.
31 Palmer, pp. 42–3.
32 A. Smith, ‘The Image of Cromwell in Folklore and Tradition’, Folklore, 79, 1 (1968), 36.
33 True and Faithful Narrative, p. 26.
34 N. Johnstone, The Devil and Demonism in Early Modern England (Cambridge: CUP, 2006); D. Oldridge, The Devil in Tudor and Stuart England (Stroud: History Press, 2010), and The Supernatural in Tudor and Stuart England (London: Routledge, 2016), chapter four.
35 Johnstone, p. 106.
36 Oldridge, Devil, pp. 23–31, 45–52.
37 M. D. Brock, ‘Internalising the Demonic: Satan and the Self in Early Modern Scottish Piety’, Journal of British Studies, 54 (2015), especially 29–31.
38 R. Baxter, The Christian Directory, or A Summ of Practical Theologie (1673), pp. 11, 89.
39 G. Gifford, A Dialogue Betweene a Papist and Protestant (1599), p. 72.
40 W. Perkins, A Discourse of the Damned Art of Witchcraft, 2nd ed. (1610), p. 167; T. Cooper, The Mystery of Witchcraft (1617), pp. 64–6; R. Bernard, Guide to Grand-Jury Men (1627), p. 216.
41 On the Lutheran roots of the Faust legend, see E. M. Butler, The Fortunes of Faust (Stroud: Sutton, 1952), and J. Burton Russell, Mephistopheles: The Devil in the Modern World (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986), pp. 58–66.
42 Cooper, p. 69.
43 William Perkins made this point emphatically in The Foundation of Christian Religion (1591), which went through over 20 editions before 1660.
44 2 Corinthians 11:14.
45 A Blow at the Root. Or, Some Observations Towards a Discovery of the Subtilties and Devices of Satan (1650), pp. 8, 17.
46 J. Quarles, Gods Love and Mans Unworthiness, Whereunto is Annexed A Dialogue Between the Soul & Satan (1651), p. 93.
47 A Blow at the Root, p. 162.
48 Johnstone, pp. 248–9.
49 M. Stoyle, The Black Legend of Prince Rupert’s Dog: Witchcraft and Propaganda during the English Civil War (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2011), p. 145; A Most Certain, Strange and True Discovery of a Witch (1643).
50 S. Clarke, A Mirrour or Looking-Glasse Both for Saints and Sinners, 2nd ed. (1654), pp. 92–3.
51 The Rebells Warning-Piece (1650), pp. 5–6.
52 Johnstone, p. 244.
53 Rebells Warning-Piece, p. 8.
54 J. Sharpe, Instruments of Darkness: Witchcraft in England, 1550–1750 (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1996), p. 142.
55 Stoyle, passim. See pp. 18–21 for the concept of ‘hard men’; pp. 37–9 for early portrayals of Rupert as demonic; chapter five for familiar spirits; and pp. 151–8 for the myth of Rupert’s pact in the East Anglian trials.
56 Ibid., p. 167.
57 More Warning Yet. Being a True Relation of a Strange and Most Dreadful Apparition (1654), pp. 1–3.
58 Ibid., p. 135.
59 The Historie of the Damnable Life, and Deserved Death of Dr John Faustus (1592), p. 7.
60 C. Marlowe, Doctor Faustus and Other Plays (Oxford: OUP, 1995), pp. 147–8; The Just Judgment of God Shew’d on Dr John Faustus (c. 1640).
61 Strange and Wonderfull News of a Woman Which Lived Neer unto the Famous City of London (c. 1630).
62 The Life and Death of the Merry Devill of Edmonton (1631), A4r.
63 Historie of the Damnable Life, p. 81.
64 Marlowe, pp. 182, 244.
65 Thomas Bromhall, A Treatise of Specters (1658), p. 111.
66 Job 1:19.
67 A Warning-Piece for Ingroosers of Corne (c. 1647–60).
68 T. M., p. 32.
69 The Lord Henry Cromwels Speech in the House (1659), p. 5. See also Richard Watson’s The Storme, cited above.
70 Historie of the Damnable Life, p. 2.
71 Marlowe, pp. 144, 191.
72 W. Perkins, The Combat Betweene Christ and the Divell Displayed (1606), p. 6.
73 G. Gifford, A Dialogue Concerning Witches and Witchcrafts (1593), J4v-Kr.
74 A Wonder in Stafford-shire (1661), p. 6.
75 R. Scot, The Discovery of Witchcraft, 3rd ed. (1665), pp. 215–6.
76 Historie of the Damnable Life, 5–7; Marlowe, pp. 152, 199; The Just Judgment.
77 M. Gaskill, Witchfinders: A Seventeenth-Century English Tragedy (London: John Murray, 2005), p. 171; E. Reis, Damned Women: Sinners and Witches in Puritan New England (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1997), pp. 131–5.
78 Palmer, pp. 37–8, 42.
79 J. Davenport, The Witches of Huntingdon (1646), p. 13.
80 Historie of the Damnable Life, pp. 6–7, 9.
81 Echard, p. 712.
82 True and Faithful Narrative, title page.
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Notes on contributors
Darren Oldridge
Darren Oldridge is Professor of Early Modern History at the University of Worcester. His publications include The Supernatural in Tudor and Stuart England (London: Routledge, 2016) and Strange Histories, 2nd ed. (London: Routledge, 2018). He is currently writing a study of demonology in sixteenth and seventeenth-century England.