Historical Footnote: 
Cromwell defiant over allegations of moral turpitude

London, England, October 7, 1652
 

October 7, 2006

On Saturday afternoon’s live address from the Buckingham Palace Press Parapet, Lord Protector of the English Commonwealth, Oliver Cromwell, insisted that the battle against the royalist pond scum was advancing according to plan, despite the loss of 25 Puritan freedom fighters over the past four days in spirited battle on the western moor.  Despite the royalists’ increasing military successes, Cromwell waved prudence aside and confirmed intentions to send a flotilla to overthrow that bastion of mercantile terrorism in the Republic of the United Provinces of the Netherlands.  He excoriated its trade debauchery and maritime ascendancy as an assault on the decency of clean-living, hard-working, honest folk everywhere.

All heads turned at the temerity of the London Times scrivener during the question/answer session following the Lord Protector’s speech, when the pallid and bespectacled correspondent hollered up to the tower.  “Lord Protector Cromwell, sir, has the Minister of Morality Tom Foolery’s messages to his young apprentice damaged in any way the moral authority of your esteemed protectorship of the Commonwealth?”

Rather than having him impaled on the spot by his guard, the fire-breathing overlord of puritanical Christianity instead flushed hotly and replied with testy resolve.  “We have this under control.  Ex-Minister Foolery is presently in stress-position therapy and naked on the rack for an arguably overdue introspective review on his part of his excrescent sin.  The new Morality Minister, whom I expect to name within days, will oversee Mr. Foolery's drawing and quartering once he has adequately reflected in this life upon his craven misdeeds.  To ensure no mistake is made as to how this sort of behavior will be dealt with under my thumb, the young apprentice likely most at fault in this whole sorry affair is nevertheless, a mere boy, and rather than introduce him to a real, ahem, maiden, we have taken the decision to simply banish him to the colonies.  And as regards the pigeon that relayed the Minister’s sordid ministrations, well I dispatched him myself personally last night beneath an austere orange glaze with buttered potatoes on the side.  Let me make clear to you, Reginald,” the Lord Protector wagged his finger from on high at the assembled staff of the note-takers he knew by name and constrained as occasion demanded to the far side of the moat:  “Solicitation to buggery will be considered equivalent to buggery itself and will not be tolerated by this God-fearing nation, its people, and least of all, its Chief Protector.  Moi.”

Suspicions abounded, however, that the royalists were behind the whole scandal and had withheld public revelation of the salacious carrier-pigeon messages to coincide with the launch of the king’s proscription drive for his campaign against the Dutch. 

“Ve have no beef vit Cromvell and der English Puritans,” slave trader Hans van der Shackle commented from a downtown Amsterdam pub around an exhale of pungent smoke.  “And ve have not der royal autority as such over vhich Master Cromvell, Lord bless his bones, might pick der fight vit us.”  He upended a flagon, wiped his whiskers, threw his sash across his shoulder, and leaned conspiratorially into his audience, the La Hague foreign scrivener for the London Times, to wink:  “And vat der English monarch decry from der love-hungry Minister Foolery, vhy, der peace-lovink and tolerant Dutchman might be more likely to tink a small step forvard in der targeted marketink.”

Meanwhile, from the Old Bailey dungeons disgraced House of Commons leaders pled for mercy through their solicitors.  Apparently cracking under the unfamiliarity of imprisonment and subjection to extremes of heat and cold, word surfaced yesterday that conflicting testimonies among the four Commons leaders had emerged, each accusing the others of blatant tolerance toward Minister Tom Foolery’s dastardly missives.  The disheveled masses grumbled over long-simmering suspicions of the leaders’ own proclivities toward wenching, drinking, gambling, doping, thieving, incompetence, occasionally ducking Sunday services, and similar moral travesties.  It all smelled mightily of one hand washing the other, and townspeople converged, angrily pressing the prison gates, rotting vegetables in hand.

As the faithful looked upon one another uneasily, Cromwell’s Minister of Power Procurement and Retention, the reclusive Lord Byron Stove, remained out of sight.  Minister Stove has maintained a low profile since allegations surfaced recently over his subornation and bribery by a coalition of textile and gaming industries operating secretively out of a posh London pub, whose owner, Abraham Moff, has since fled with his ill-gotten fortune to exile in the colonies.

A Chief Deputy for Lord Minister Stove sought to return the debate back to the rise of international terror on the high seas by a Satanic Triangle comprising the treasonous Dutch, blackguard Spanish, and their gallic arch-foes across the Straight.  But along the sewers of Central London, the socially ascendant Cromwell arrivistes were shaking their heads and muttering instead over the worrying rise of the Royalists to the north and west of the Capital, and the nation's drift toward depravity and wickedness.

Unable to effectively direct the Lord Protector’s broader Stay-the-Course message on morality, it was widely expected that a popular referendum on Cromwell’s leadership, scheduled for November, was to be canceled owing to waning interest of polling authorities throughout London and aligned provinces.

This is an editorial.  This is only an editorial.  Had this been an actual fact you would have been advised to withdraw to your nearest fact shelter to await further instructions.  We repeat.  This is only an editorial.  If you wish to add your own two cents to this debate, you may mail me here.

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