Destiny and Choice in Andrew Marvell's 'An Horatian Ode upon Cromwell's Return from Ireland'

Abstract

After the return of Cromwell from his success in Ireland, William Lenthall, Speaker of the Commons, gave him 'the hearty Thanks of this House for his great good Service', and delivered 'an eloquent Oration, setting forth the great Providence of God in those great and strange Works, which God hath wrought by him, as the Instrument'.1 In her Violence and Religion, Judy Sproxton argues that 'Marvell was as certain as other Puritans of his time that the events which had overtaken England in the mid-seventeenth century indeed manifested the will of God', and that it 'is in terms of his response to this that Marvell portrays Cromwell'.2 But, while this may be truer in the case of the 'Cromwell' portrayed in the second of his Cromwell trilogy, 'The First Anniversary of the Government under His Highness the Lord Protector', especially in the patriotic and apocalyptic context of his foreign policy, Marvell's first recorded response to the head of the military coup, 'An Horatian Ode upon Cromwell's Return from Ireland', as many critics have pointed out, can be regarded neither as a whole-hearted panegyric nor, as I want to make clearer in this paper, as bearing positive testimony that Cromwell is acting under the spiritual guidance of God. Whereas 'The First Anniversary' presents Cromwell's rise to power as divinely ordained, in the 'Horatian Ode' Marvell seems to have been still 'undiscerned among the tumult blind / Who think those high decrees by man designed' ('The First Anniversary', lines 241-242). On the one hand, 'The First Anniversary' was published in 1655, and when Marvell wrote it he was tutor to Cromwell's protege William Dutton. And this panegyric poem might have been meant, and certainly served as, part of the credentials for Marvell's second attempt to acquire a position in Cromwell's government. It should not be surprising, therefore, that the poem was socially and politically conditioned.3 'An Horatian Ode', on the other hand, was not published,