The Encyclopedia of Fantastic Victoriana

by Jess Nevins

The Lord Protector (1902)

copyright © Jess Nevins 2022

The Lord Protector was written by S. Levett-Yeats. Sidney Kilner Levett-Yeats (circa 1858-1916) was a writer of historical fiction.

The Lord Protector is set in England in the mid-1650s, during the reign of Oliver Cromwell, the titular Lord Protector. Cromwell does appear in The Lord Protector, and is memorably portrayed as a Puritan military hard-ass, grave, dignified and severe, but at the same time human, capable of being moved to tears, a victim to momentary self-doubt, and wary of his own vanity. But the hero of The Lord Protector is Antony “Black Tony” Maunsell. Maunsell is a Colonel in Cromwell's New Model Army, “the grim leader of horse, whose name was a terror to the Royalists.”¹ The plot of The Lord Protector involves Maunsell being dispatched to the mansion of Coombe Royal to hunt down Sir Christopher “Kit” Harden, a former leader of the Royalist forces and, after the Royalist defeat at the Battle of Worcester, a guerrilla: "Since Worcester was won, and the King's side scattered for ever, there had been no greater thorn in Cromwell's side than this fiery spirit."² Levett-Yeats spends more time with Kit Harden than he does with Black Tony, but Harden is the villain of the novel and Black Tony is the hero, despite their respective positions. Maunsell is stern, nearly humorless, and a Puritan zealot, while Harden enjoys his life, is an expert swordsman, fights on, alone, against overwhelming forces, and has a wry sense of humor about most things. But Maunsell is a good man, honorable, willing to sacrifice his career and his life for the happiness of the woman he loves and who hates him (she is a Royalist), and he has a respectful attitude toward women, while Harden is without honor, a habitual liar, focused only on gold and sex, sees women as things to be used and then cast aside, and is almost completely without conscience. Maunsell loves Dorothy Capel, the mistress of Coombe Royal, but she is in love with Harden, who vows to wed her but desires only her money and estates. Harden, meanwhile, also strings along Patience Burnside, a Puritan maiden who he romanced, swived, and then abandoned. (Levett-Yeats is not explicit, but when Patience says that Harden has “taken from me all that a woman holds dear,”³ and that he “ruined” her, and that “at last he gained his desire,”⁴ it’s pretty clear what's being implied). After an entertaining series of events Harden and Maunsell duel, but Harden is killed by one of Maunsell's men, and Patience kills herself in sorrow (she had earlier betrayed him after discovering his true nature). Maunsell goes to America, having angered Cromwell by helping Dorothy Capel to shield Harden, but after Cromwell's death Maunsell returns to England, and the novel ends with Maunsell and Dorothy together.

The Lord Protector is interesting in the way that it provisionally celebrates Cromwell. The tercentenary of Cromwell’s birth, 1899, saw high profile commemorations, the culmination of a century of reputational rehabilitation.

During the century and a half after Cromwell’s death, in general he was viewed with hostility. To royalists he was of course beyond the pale, as the architect of the regicide and a shameless usurper, even if, as we have seen, they allowed him some grudging respect for his successes abroad. The persistence of the monarchical, Anglican ancien regime, which remained largely unchallenged until the first third of the nineteenth century, meant that the dominant ideology of the state was profoundly unsympathetic to the ideas of the puritan revolution. Nor did the heirs of the pure republican tradition have much affection for Cromwell. From their perspective he was the lost leader, who had betrayed the radical ideals of the 1640s by dissolving parliaments and assuming quasi-royal powers. Even those who placed a high premium on religious tolerance gave him little credit. Eighteenth century rationalists looked back on Cromwell as the leader of a narrowly fanatical faction, who had denied the power of reason in human affairs.

As Timothy Lang has argued, it was only as Protestant nonconformists were assimilated into mainstream society, instead of being seen as the heirs to a disruptive puritan inheritance, that a more positive view of Cromwell became possible. This began to happen in the early Victorian era, as the state gradually lost its exclusively Anglican character and nonconformists acquired equal civil and religious rights with members of the established Church. As nonconformists won social acceptance and shared in the rising prosperity and peace of mid-nineteenth century Britain, they became less wary of celebrating a figure who had hitherto been a symbol of division and conflict. It was now possible to take a more positive view of the values of puritanism, in which the nonconformist movement of industrial Britain located its origins. Whilst militant radicals looked back on Cromwell as a man of action, who had saved his country from royal and spiritual tyranny, a more moderate school of thought praised his championship of liberty of conscience. In the closing decades of the Victorian era, as the British Empire reached its peak, Cromwell won regard for his military skills, strong national leadership and assertive overseas policies.⁵ 

The Lord Protector is part of this celebration, although Levett-Yeats is no unthinking worshiper of Cromwell. Rather, Levett-Yeats attempts a balanced and historically-accurate portrayal of Cromwell, and largely succeeds.

The Lord Protector is quite good. It lacks the wit and good humor of Stanley J. Weyman's work (see: From the Memoirs of a Minister of France), but it is similarly spare and swift-moving. Levett-Yeats aptly describes the environment and setting and the moods of his characters. He has a sure hand at quick characterization and is good portraying realistic relationships. Perhaps best of all, he omits the prolixity of Alexandre Dumas (see: The Hunchback of Notre Dame) and Walter Scott (see: Waverley), and he leaves out the didacticism of Charles Kingsley (see: Hypatia). Levett-Yeats includes more romantic content than was common in turn-of-the-century swashbucklers (see: The Historical Romance), but the reader will not complain, as they will be happy to see Maunsell and Dorothy together at the end of the novel. The purpose of Levett-Yeats' work, like that of Weyman, is to entertain, first and foremost, and in that he greatly succeeds.

Recommended Edition

Print: Sidney Levett-Yeats, The Lord Protector. London: Forgotten Books, 2018.

Online: https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/012371381