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Oliver Cromwell

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Monarchs of Great Britain

   Oliver Cromwell
   Oliver Cromwell

   An unfinished miniature portrait of Oliver Cromwell by Samuel Cooper,
   1657.
     __________________________________________________________________

   Lord Protector of the
   Commonwealth of England
   In office
   16 December 1653 –  3 September 1658
   Preceded by Charles I (as King)
   Succeeded by Richard Cromwell
     __________________________________________________________________

   Born April 25, 1599(1599-04-25)
   Flag of England Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire
   Died September 3, 1658 (aged 59)
   Whitehall, London
   Nationality English
   Spouse Elizabeth Bourchier
   Religion Independent
   Signature Oliver Cromwell's signature

   Oliver Cromwell ( April 25, 1599(1599-04-25)– September 3, 1658) was an
   English military and political leader best known for his involvement in
   making England into a republican Commonwealth and for his later role as
   Lord Protector of England, Scotland and Ireland. He was a mid- gentry
   yeoman farmer for the first forty years of his life; a religious
   conversion experience made religion the central fact of his life and
   actions. A brilliant soldier (called "Old Ironsides") he rose from the
   ranks to command the army. Politically he took control of England,
   Scotland, and Ireland as Lord Protector, from December 16, 1653 until
   his death. Cromwell is a very controversial figure in English history—a
   regicidal dictator to some historians (such as David Hume and
   Christopher Hill) and a hero of liberty to others (such as Thomas
   Carlyle and Samuel Rawson Gardiner). In Ireland, where his measures
   against Irish Catholics have been characterised by many historians as
   genocidal or near-genocidal he and his memory are widely despised.

   Cromwell's career is full of contradictions. He was a regicide who
   debated whether to accept the crown himself and decided not to—though
   ironically he had more power than Charles I. He was a parliamentarian
   who ordered his soldiers to dissolve parliaments. Under his rule, the
   Protectorate advocated religious liberty of conscience but allowed
   blasphemers to be tortured. He advocated equitable justice but
   imprisoned those who criticised his raising taxation outside the
   agreement of Parliament. Admirers hail him as a strong, stabilising and
   stately leader who brought international respect, overthrew tyranny and
   promoted republicanism and liberty. In a BBC poll of 100 Greatest
   Britons, he was voted number 10. Cromwell's critics ridiculed him as an
   overly ambitious hypocrite who betrayed the cause of liberty, imposed
   puritanical values and showed scant respect for the nation's
   traditions. When the Royalists returned to power, his corpse was dug
   up, hung in chains, and beheaded.

Early years: 1599–1640

   Cromwell was born in Huntingdon on 25 April 1599. He was descended from
   Catherine Cromwell (born circa 1482), an older sister of Tudor
   statesman Thomas Cromwell. Catherine was married to Morgan ap Williams,
   son of William ap Yevan of Wales and Joan Tudor. The family line
   continued through Richard Cromwell (c. 1500–1544), Henry Cromwell (c.
   1524– January 6, 1603), then to Oliver's father Robert Cromwell (c.
   1560–1617), who married Elizabeth Steward or Stewart (1564–1654) on the
   day of Cromwell's birth. Thus, Thomas was Oliver's second
   great-granduncle.

   Records survive of Cromwell's baptism and of his attendance at
   Huntingdon grammar school. He went on to study at Sidney Sussex
   College, Cambridge, which was then a recently founded college with a
   strong puritan ethos. He left in June 1617 without taking a degree,
   immediately after the death of his father. Early biographers claim he
   then attended Lincoln's Inn, but there is no record of him in the Inn's
   archives. He is likely to have returned home to Huntingdon, given that
   his mother was widowed, his seven sisters were unmarried, and there was
   hence a need to take charge of the family.

   The crucial event of the 1620s was his marriage to Elizabeth Bourchier
   (1598–1665) on 22 August 1620. They had eight children; his successor
   Richard Cromwell (1626–1712) was the third son. Her father Sir James
   Bourchier was a London merchant who owned extensive land in Essex and
   had strong connections with puritan gentry families there. The marriage
   brought Cromwell into contact with Oliver St John and also with leading
   members of the London merchant community, and behind them the influence
   of the earls of Warwick and Holland. Membership of this godly network
   would prove crucial to Cromwell’s military and political career. At
   this stage, though, there is little evidence of Cromwell’s own
   religion. His letter in 1626 to Henry Downhall, an Arminian minister,
   suggests that Cromwell had yet to be influenced by radical puritanism.
   However, there is evidence that Cromwell went through a period of
   personal crisis during the late 1620s and early 1630s. He sought
   treatment for valde melancolicus ( depression) from London doctor
   Theodore Mayerne in 1628. He was also caught up in a fight amongst the
   gentry of Huntingdon over a new charter for the town, as a result of
   which he was called before the Privy Council in 1630.

   In 1631 Cromwell sold most of his properties in Huntingdon—probably as
   a result of the dispute—and moved to a farmstead in St Ives. This was a
   major step down in society and seems to have had a major emotional and
   spiritual impact. A 1638 letter is a conversion account of how after
   having been "the chief of sinners", he had been called to be among "the
   congregation of the firstborn". By 1638, it is likely that Cromwell was
   a committed puritan, firmly associated with the Independent vision of
   religious freedom for all Protestants. He had also established
   important family links to leading godly families in Essex and London.
   In his own eyes, he had come through a period of crisis by virtue of
   God’s providence.

Member of Parliament: 1628–1629 and 1640–1642

   Cromwell became the Member of Parliament for Huntingdon in the
   Parliament of 1628–1629, as a client of the Montagus. He made little
   impression—records for the Parliament are largely complete, and show
   only one speech (against the Arminian Bishop Richard Neile) that was
   poorly received.

   Charles I ruled without a Parliament for the next eleven years (having
   dissolved Parliament, of which Cromwell was a member, in 1629). When
   Charles was facing a Scottish rebellion known as the Bishops War, he
   was forced by shortage of funds to call a Parliament again in 1640.
   Cromwell was returned to this Parliament as member for Cambridge, but
   it only lasted for three weeks and became known as the Short
   Parliament. A second Parliament was called later in the same year,
   which was to become known as the Long Parliament. Cromwell was again
   returned to this Parliament as member for Cambridge. As with the
   Parliament of 1628-9, it is likely that Cromwell owed his position to
   the patronage of others, which would explain the fact that in the first
   week of the Parliament he was in charge of presenting a petition for
   the release of John Lilburne, who had become a puritan martyr after
   being arrested for importing religious tracts from Holland. For the
   first two years of the Long Parliament, Cromwell was linked to the
   group of aristocrats in the Lords he had already established links with
   in the 1630s, such as the earls of Essex, Warwick and Bedford, and
   Viscount Saye and Sele. At this stage, the group had an agenda of godly
   reformation: the executive checked by regular parliaments, and the
   moderate extension of liberty of conscience. In May 1641, for example,
   it was Cromwell who put forward the second reading of the Annual
   Parliaments Bill, and who later took a role in drafting the Root and
   Branch Bill for the abolition of episcopacy.

   Cromwell himself, though intensely religious, was little concerned with
   the outward forms of religion, and did not affiliate himself with any
   confessional group, such as the independents or Presbyterians. Instead
   he sought a broad religious liberty in the belief that all the
   Protestant faiths contained some elements of God's truth, and hoping
   they would coalesce.

Military Commander: 1642–1646

   Oliver Cromwell
   Oliver Cromwell

   Failure to resolve the issues before the Long Parliament led to armed
   conflict between Parliamentarians and Royalists in the autumn of 1642.
   Support for Parliament tended to be concentrated in London, the
   South-East and the Midlands, whereas the Royalists gathered most of
   their support from the North, the West Country and Wales.

   Before joining the Parliamentary Army, Cromwell's only military
   experience was in the trained bands, the local county militia. Now 43
   years old, he recruited a cavalry troop in Cambridgeshire after
   blocking a shipment of silver from Cambridge colleges that was meant
   for the king. Cromwell and his troop fought at the indecisive battle of
   Edgehill in October 1642. The troop was recruited to be a full regiment
   in the winter of 1642/3, making up part of the Eastern Association
   under the Earl of Manchester. Cromwell gained experience and victories
   in a number of successful actions in East Anglia in 1643, notably at
   the battle of Gainsborough on July 28. After this he was made governor
   of Ely and made a colonel in the Eastern Association.

   By the time of the Battle of Marston Moor in July, 1644, Cromwell had
   risen to the rank of Lieutenant General of horse in Manchester's army.
   The success of his cavalry in breaking the ranks of the Royalist horse
   and then attacking their infantry from the rear at Marston Moor was a
   major factor in the Parliamentarian victory in the battle. Cromwell
   fought at the head of his troops in the battle and was wounded in the
   head. Marston Moor secured the north of England for the
   Parliamentarians, but failed to end Royalist resistance. The indecisive
   outcome of the second Battle of Newbury in October meant that by the
   end of 1644, the war still showed no signs of ending. Cromwell's
   experience at Newbury, where Manchester had let the King's army slip
   out of an encircling manoeuvre, led to a serious dispute with
   Manchester, whom he believed to be less than enthusiastic in his
   conduct of the war. Manchester later accused Cromwell of recruiting men
   of "low birth" as officers in the army, to which he replied: "If you
   choose godly honest men to be captains of horse, honest men will follow
   them... I would rather have a plain russet-coated captain who knows
   what he fights for and loves what he knows than that which you call a
   gentleman and is nothing else". At this time, Cromwell also fell into
   dispute with Major-General Lawrence Crawford, a Scottish Covenanter
   Presbyterian attached to Manchester's army, who objected to Cromwell's
   encouragement of unorthodox Independents and Anabaptists. Cromwell's
   differences with the Scots (at that time allies of the Parliament)
   would later develop into outright enmity in 1648 and in 1650-51.

   Partly in response to the failure to capitalise on their victory at
   Marston Moor, the Parliament passed the Self-Denying Ordinance in early
   1645. This forced members of Parliament such as Manchester to choose
   between civil office and military command. All of them — with the
   exception of Cromwell, who was exempted — chose to renounce their
   military positions. The Ordinance also decreed that the army be
   "remodeled" on a national basis, replacing the old county associations.
   In April 1645 the New Model Army finally took to the field, with Sir
   Thomas Fairfax in command and Cromwell as Lieutenant-General of
   cavalry, and second-in-command. By this time, the Parliamentarian's
   field army outnumbered the King's by roughly two to one. At the Battle
   of Naseby in June 1645, the New Model Army smashed the King's major
   army. Cromwell led his wing with great success at Naseby, again routing
   the Royalist cavalry. At the battle of Langport on July 10, Cromwell
   participated in the defeat of the last sizable Royalist field army.
   Naseby and Langport effectively ended the King's hopes of victory and
   the subsequent Parliamentarian campaigns involved taking the remaining
   fortified Royalist positions in the west of England. In October 1645,
   Cromwell besieged and took Basing House, where he was accused of
   killing 100 of the 300 man Royalist garrison there after they had
   surrendered. Cromwell also took part in sieges at Bridgwater,
   Sherborne, Bristol, Devizes, and Winchester, then spending the first
   half of 1646 mopping up resistance in Devon and Cornwall. Charles I
   surrendered to the Scots on May 5, 1646, effectively ending the First
   English Civil War. Cromwell and Fairfax took the formal surrender of
   the Royalists at Oxford in June.

   Cromwell had no formal training in military tactics, and followed the
   common practice of ranging his cavalry in three ranks and pressing
   forward. This method relied on impact rather than firepower. His
   strengths were in an instinctive ability to lead and train his men, and
   in his moral authority. In a war fought mostly by amateurs, these
   strengths were significant, and are likely to have contributed to the
   discipline of Cromwell’s cavalry.

Politics: 1647–1649

   In February 1647 Cromwell suffered from an illness that kept him out of
   political life for over a month. By the time of his recovery, the
   Parliamentarians were split over the issue of the king. A majority in
   both Houses pushed for a settlement that would pay off the Scottish
   army, disband much of the New Model Army, and restore Charles I in
   return for a Presbyterian settlement of the Church. Cromwell rejected
   the Scottish model of Presbyterianism, which threatened to replace one
   authoritarian hierarchy with another. The New Model Army, radicalised
   by the failure of the Parliament to pay the wages it was owed,
   petitioned against these changes, but the Commons declared the petition
   unlawful. During May 1647, Cromwell was sent to the army's headquarters
   in Saffron Walden to negotiate with them, but failed to reach
   agreement. In June 1647, a troop of cavalry under Cornet George Joyce
   seized the king from Parliament's imprisonment. Although Cromwell is
   known to have met with Joyce on 31 May, it is impossible to be sure
   what Cromwell's role in this event was.

   Cromwell and Henry Ireton then drafted a manifesto—the " Heads of
   Proposals"—designed to check the powers of the executive, set up
   regularly elected parliaments, and restore a non-compulsory
   episcopalian settlement. Many in the army, such as the Levellers led by
   John Lilburne, thought this was insufficient demanding full political
   equality for all men, leading to tense debates in Putney during the
   autumn of 1647 between Cromwell, Ireton and the army. The Putney
   Debates ultimately broke up without reaching a resolution. Cromwell
   would later have to use force to put down the most radical elements
   within the New Model in May of 1649. The debates, and the escape of
   Charles I from Hampton Court on 12 November, are likely to have
   hardened Cromwell's resolve against the king.

   The failure to conclude a political agreement with the king eventually
   led to the outbreak of the Second English Civil War in 1648, when the
   King tried to regain power by force of arms. Cromwell first put down a
   Royalist uprising in south Wales and then marched north to deal with a
   pro-Royalist Scottish army (the Engagers) who had invaded England. At
   Preston, Cromwell, in sole command for the first time with an army of
   9,000, won a brilliant victory against an army twice that size
   comprising the Scots allies of the king.

   During 1648, Cromwell's letters and speeches became drenched in
   biblical imagery, many of them meditations on the meaning of particular
   passages. For example, after the battle of Preston, study of Psalms 17
   and 105 led him to tell parliament that "they that are implacable and
   will not leave troubling the land may be speedily destroyed out of the
   land". A letter to Oliver St John in September 1648 urged him to read
   Isaiah 8, in which the kingdom falls and only the godly survive. This
   letter suggests that it was Cromwell's faith, rather than a commitment
   to radical politics, coupled with parliament's decision to engage in
   negotiations with the king at the Treaty of Newport, that led him to
   realise that God had spoken against both the king and Parliament as
   lawful authorities. For Cromwell, the army was now God's chosen
   instrument. The episode shows Cromwell’s firm belief in "
   Providentialism"—that God was actively directing the affairs of the
   world, through the actions of "chosen people" (whom God had "provided"
   for such purposes). Cromwell believed, during the Civil Wars, that he
   was one of these people, and he interpreted victories as indications of
   God's approval of his actions, and defeats as signs that God was
   directing him in another direction.

   In December 1648, those MPs who wished to continue negotiations with
   the King were prevented from sitting by a troop of soldiers headed by
   Colonel Thomas Pride, an episode soon to be known as Pride's Purge.
   Those remaining, known as the Rump Parliament, agreed that Charles
   should be tried on a charge of treason. Cromwell was still in the north
   of England, dealing with Royalist resistance when these events took
   place. However, after he returned to London, on the day after Pride's
   Purge, he became a determined supporter of the King's trial and
   execution. He believed that killing Charles was the only way to bring
   the civil wars to an end. A court was duly constituted, and the death
   warrant for Charles was eventually signed by 59 of its members,
   including Cromwell. Charles was executed on January 30, 1649. This was
   the first time a monarch had ever been publicly executed in recorded
   history. The Royalists, meanwhile had regrouped in Ireland, having
   signed a treaty with the Irish Confederate Catholics. Preparations for
   an invasion of Ireland occupied Cromwell in the subsequent months.
   After quelling Leveller mutinies at Andover and Burford in May,
   Cromwell departed for Ireland from Bristol at the end of July.
   Half-Crown coin of Oliver Cromwell, 1658. The Latin inscription reads:
   OLIVAR.D.G.RP.ANG.SCO.ET.HIB&cPRO (OLIVARIUS DEI GRATIA REIPUBLICAE
   ANGLIAE SCOTIAE ET HIBERNIAE ET CETERORUM PROTECTOR), meaning "Oliver,
   by the Grace of God Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland
   and Ireland and other (territories)".
   Half-Crown coin of Oliver Cromwell, 1658. The Latin inscription reads:
   OLIVAR.D.G.RP.ANG.SCO.ET.HIB&cPRO (OLIVARIUS DEI GRATIA REIPUBLICAE
   ANGLIAE SCOTIAE ET HIBERNIAE ET CETERORUM PROTECTOR), meaning "Oliver,
   by the Grace of God Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland
   and Ireland and other (territories)".

Irish Campaign: 1649–50

   Cromwell led a Parliamentary invasion of Ireland from 1649–50, with the
   twin aims of eliminating the military threat posed by the alliance of
   the Irish Confederate Catholics and English Royalists (signed in 1649)
   to the Commonwealth and punishing the Irish for their rebellion of
   1641. The English Parliament had long planned to re-conquer Ireland
   since 1641 and had already sent an invasion force there in 1647.
   Cromwell's invasion of 1649, however, was much larger and, with the
   civil war in England over, could be regularly reinforced and
   re-supplied. By the summer of 1649, the Irish-Royalist alliance was
   judged to be the biggest single threat facing the Commonwealth.
   Cromwell wrote, "I had rather be overthrown by a Cavalierish interest
   than a Scotch interest; I had rather be overthrown by a Scotch interest
   than an Irish interest and I think of all this is the most dangerous".

   Cromwell's nine month military campaign was brief and effective, though
   it did not end the war in Ireland. Before his invasion, Parliamentarian
   forces held only outposts in Dublin and Derry. When he departed
   Ireland, they occupied most of the eastern and northern parts of the
   country. After his landing at Dublin on August 15, 1649 (itself only
   recently secured for the Parliament at the battle of Rathmines),
   Cromwell took the fortified port towns of Drogheda and Wexford to
   secure logistical supply from England. At the siege of Drogheda in
   September 1649, Cromwell's troops massacred nearly 3,500 people after
   the town's capture—comprising around 2,700 Royalist soldiers and all
   the men in the town carrying arms, including some civilians, prisoners,
   and Roman Catholic priests. At the Siege of Wexford in October, another
   massacre took place under confused circumstances. While Cromwell
   himself was trying to negotiate surrender terms, the New Model Army
   soldiers broke into the town, killed 2,000 Irish troops and up to 1,500
   civilians and burned much of the town. These actions still have
   resonance in Irish nationalist historical memory. The two atrocities,
   while horrifying in their own right, were not exceptional in the war in
   Ireland since its start in 1641, but are well-remembered even today. In
   part this is because of a concerted propaganda campaign by the
   Royalists, which portrayed Cromwell as a tyrant who indiscriminately
   slaughtered civilians wherever he went. This theme has been continued
   in histories and literature up to the present day. James Joyce, for
   example, mentioned Drogheda in his novel Ulysses: "What about
   sanctimonious Cromwell and his ironsides that put the women and
   children of Drogheda to the sword with the bible text God is love
   pasted round the mouth of his cannon?".

   After the fall of Drogheda, Cromwell sent a column north to Ulster to
   secure the north of the country and went on to besiege Waterford,
   Kilkenny and Clonmel in Ireland's south-east. Kilkenny surrendered on
   terms, as did many other towns like New Ross and Carlow, but Cromwell
   failed to take Waterford and at the siege of Clonmel in May 1650, he
   lost up to 2000 men in abortive assaults before the town surrendered.
   One of his major victories in Ireland was diplomatic rather than
   military. With the help of Roger Boyle, 1st Earl of Orrery, Cromwell
   persuaded the Protestant Royalist troops in Cork to change sides and
   fight with the Parliament At this point, word reached Cromwell that
   Charles II had landed in Scotland and been proclaimed king by the
   Covenanter regime. Cromwell therefore returned to England from Youghal
   on May 26 1650 to counter this threat. The Parliamentarian conquest of
   Ireland dragged on for almost three years after Cromwell's departure.
   The campaigns under Cromwell's successors Henry Ireton and Edmund
   Ludlow mostly consisted of long sieges of fortified cities and
   guerrilla warfare in the countryside. The last Catholic held town,
   Galway, surrendered in April 1652 and the last Irish troops capitulated
   in April of the following year.

Debate over Cromwell's actions in Ireland

   The extent of Cromwell's alleged brutality in Ireland has been strongly
   debated. It is clear that Cromwell saw the Irish Catholics in general
   as enemies. During the civil wars, the Parliamentarian side in
   particular nursed a hatred towards the Catholic Irish, who were long
   seen as "savages" and inferior by the English. A desire for revenge for
   the massacres of the 1641 Irish Rebellion against English rule added to
   the general climate of Protestant hostility. Cromwell's hostility to
   them was religious as well as political. He was passionately opposed to
   the Roman Catholic Church, which he saw as denying the primacy of the
   Bible in favour of papal and clerical authority, and which he blamed
   for tyranny and persecution of Protestants in Europe. Cromwell's
   association between Catholicism and persecution were deepened with the
   Irish Rebellion of 1641. This rebellion was marked by massacres by
   native Irish Catholics of English and Scottish Protestant settlers in
   Ireland, which were wildly exaggerated in puritan circles in Britain
   (from 4,000 killed to 120,000). These factors contributed to Cromwell's
   harshness in his military campaign in Ireland.

   In September 1649, he justified his sack of Drogheda as revenge for the
   massacres of Protestant settlers in Ulster in the Irish Rebellion of
   1641, calling the massacre "the righteous judgement of God on these
   barbarous wretches, who have imbued their hands with so much innocent
   blood". Drogheda had in fact never been held by the rebels in 1641—many
   of its garrison were in fact English Royalists. Addressing the Irish
   defenders of New Ross in 1649, who were negotiating the surrender of
   the town, Cromwell stated, "I meddle not with any man's conscience, but
   if by liberty of conscience you mean the liberty to exercise the
   Mass... where the Parliament of England has authority, that will not be
   allowed of." In a letter to the Irish Catholic Bishops later that year
   he wrote, "you are part of the Anti-Christ and before long you must
   have, all of you, blood to drink." Moreover, the records of many
   churches such as Kilkenny Cathedral accuse Cromwell's army of having
   defaced and desecrated the churches, another case of a desecrated
   church by Cromwell is widely reported in southern Galway in Killeely
   part of parish of Clarinbridge.

   On the other hand, on entering Ireland, Cromwell demanded that no
   supplies were to be seized from the civilian inhabitants, and that
   everything should be fairly purchased; "I do hereby warn....all
   Officers, Soldiers and others under my command not to do any wrong or
   violence toward Country People or any persons whatsoever, unless they
   be actually in arms or office with the enemy.....as they shall answer
   to the contrary at their utmost peril". Several English soldiers were
   in fact hanged for disobeying these orders.

   With regard to the massacre at Drogheda, Cromwell's orders followed
   military protocol of the day, in which a town or garrison was first
   given the option to surrender and receive just treatment, and the
   protection of the invading force. The refusal of the garrison at
   Drogheda to do this, even after the walls had been breached, meant that
   Cromwell's orders—"In the heat of the action, I forbade them to spare
   any that were in arms in the town"—was severe, but not unusual by the
   standards of the day. Cromwell wanted his severity at Drogheda to act
   as a deterrent to Irish resistance, saying "it will tend to prevent
   effusion of blood for the future, which are satisfactory grounds for
   such actions, which otherwise cannot but work remorse and regret".
   Moreover, where Cromwell negotiated the surrender of fortified towns,
   as at Carlow, New Ross, and Clonmel, he respected the terms of
   surrender and protected the lives and property of the townspeople.

   Cromwell never accepted that he was responsible for the killing of
   civilians in Ireland, claiming that he had acted harshly, but only
   against those "in arms". In fact, the worst atrocities committed in
   Ireland, such as mass evictions, killings and deportation for slave
   labour to Bermuda and Barbados, were carried out by Cromwell's
   subordinates after he had left for England.

   In the wake of the Cromwellian conquest, the public practice of
   Catholicism was banned and Catholic priests were executed when
   captured. In addition, roughly 12,000 Irish people were sold into
   slavery under the Commonwealth All Catholic-owned land was confiscated
   in the Act for the Settlement of Ireland 1652 and given to Scottish and
   English settlers, the Parliament's financial creditors and
   Parliamentary soldiers. The remaining Catholic landowners were
   allocated poorer land in Connacht. Under the Commonwealth, Catholic
   landownership dropped from 60% of the total to just 8%. (see
   Plantations of Ireland).

   Cromwell is still a figure of hatred in Ireland, his name being
   associated with massacre, religious persecution, and mass dispossession
   of the Catholic community there. A traditional Irish curse was malacht
   Cromail ort or "The curse of Cromwell upon you". This saying is still
   occasionally heard in parts of Ireland.

Scottish Campaign: 1650–1651

   Cromwell left Ireland in May 1650 and several months later, invaded
   Scotland after the Scots had proclaimed Charles I's son as Charles II.
   Cromwell was much less hostile to Scottish Presbyterians, some of whom
   had been his allies in the First English Civil War, than he was to
   Irish Catholics. He described the Scots as, "a people fearing His
   [God's] name, though deceived". He made a famous appeal to the General
   Assembly of the Church of Scotland, urging them to see the error of the
   royal alliance—I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it
   possible you may be mistaken.

   His appeal rejected, Cromwell's veteran troops went on to invade
   Scotland. At first, the campaign went badly, as Cromwell's men were
   short of supplies and held up at fortifications manned by Scottish
   troops under David Leslie. Cromwell was on the brink of evacuating his
   army by sea from Dunbar. However, on September 3 1650, in an unexpected
   battle, Cromwell smashed the main Covenanter army at the battle of
   Dunbar, killing 4,000 Scottish soldiers, taking another 10,000 prisoner
   and then capturing the Scottish capital of Edinburgh. The victory was
   of such a magnitude that Cromwell called it, "A high act of the Lord's
   Providence to us [and] one of the most signal mercies God hath done for
   England and His people The following year, Charles II and his Scottish
   allies made a desperate attempt to invade England and capture London
   while Cromwell was engaged in Scotland. Cromwell followed them south
   and caught them at Worcester in September. At the subsequent Battle of
   Worcester, Cromwell's forces destroyed the last major Scottish Royalist
   army. Many of the Scottish prisoners of war taken in the campaigns died
   of disease, and others were sent to penal colonies in Barbados. In the
   final stages of the Scottish campaign, Cromwell's men, under George
   Monck sacked the town of Dundee. During the Commonwealth, Scotland was
   ruled from England, and was kept under military occupation, with a line
   of fortifications sealing off the Highlands, which had provided
   manpower for Royalist armies in Scotland, from the rest of the country.
   The north west Highlands was the scene of another pro-royalist uprising
   in 1653-55, which was only put down with deployment of 6,000 English
   troops there. Presbyterianism was allowed to be practised as before,
   but the Kirk (the Scottish church) did not have the backing of the
   civil courts to impose its rulings, as it had previously.

   Cromwell's conquest, unwelcome as it was, left no significant lasting
   legacy of bitterness in Scotland. The rule of the Commonwealth and
   Protectorate was, the Highlands aside, largely peaceful. Moreover,
   there was no wholesale confiscations of land or property. Three out of
   every four Justices of the Peace in Commonwealth Scotland were Scots
   and the country was governed jointly by the English military
   authorities and a Scottish Council of State. Although not often
   favourably regarded, Cromwell's name rarely meets the hatred in
   Scotland that it does in Ireland.

The Commonwealth: 1649-1653

The Rump Parliament

   After the execution of the King, a republic was declared, known as the
   Commonwealth of England. A Council of State was appointed to manage
   affairs, which included Cromwell among its members. His real power base
   was in the army; Cromwell tried but failed to unite the original group
   of 'Royal Independents' centred around St John and Saye and Sele, but
   only St John was persuaded to retain his seat in Parliament. From the
   middle of 1649 until 1651, Cromwell was away on campaign. In the
   meantime, with the king gone (and with him their common cause), the
   various factions in Parliament began to engage in infighting. On his
   return, Cromwell tried to galvanise the Rump into setting dates for new
   elections, uniting the three kingdoms under one polity, and to put in
   place a broad-brush, tolerant national church. However, the Rump
   vacillated in setting election dates, and although it put in place a
   basic liberty of conscience, it failed to produce an alternative for
   tithes or dismantle other aspects of the existing religious settlement.
   In frustration, Cromwell eventually dismissed the Rump Parliament in
   1653.

Barebone's Parliament

   After the dissolution of the Rump, power passed temporarily to a
   council that debated what form the constitution should take. They took
   up the suggestion of Major-General Thomas Harrison for a " sanhedrin"
   of saints. Although Cromwell did not subscribe to Harrison's
   apocalyptic, Fifth Monarchist beliefs – which saw a sanhedrin as the
   starting point for Christ's rule on earth – he was attracted by the
   idea of an assembly made up of a cross-section of sects. In his speech
   at the opening of the assembly on 4 July 1653, Cromwell thanked God’s
   providence that he believed had brought England to this point and set
   out their divine mission: “truly God hath called you to this work by, I
   think, as wonderful providences as ever passed upon the sons of men in
   so short a time”. Sometimes known as the Parliament of Saints, the
   assembly was also called the Barebone's Parliament after one of its
   members, Praise-God Barebone. The assembly was tasked with finding a
   permanent constitutional and religious settlement (Cromwell was invited
   to be a member but declined). However, the assembly’s failure to do so
   led to its members voting to dissolve it on 12 December 1653.

The Protectorate: 1653-1658

                Styles of
   Lord Protector of the Commonwealth
    Reference style  His Highness
     Spoken style    Your Highness
   Alternative style Sir

   After the dissolution of the Barebone's Parliament, John Lambert put
   forward a new constitution known as the Instrument of Government,
   closely modelled on the Heads of Proposals. It made Cromwell Lord
   Protector for life to undertake “the chief magistracy and the
   administration of government”. He had the power to call and dissolve
   parliaments but obliged under the Instrument to seek the majority vote
   of a council of state. However, Cromwell's power was also buttressed by
   his continuing popularity among the army, which he had built up during
   the civil wars, and which he subsequently prudently guarded. Cromwell
   was sworn in as Lord Protector on 15 December 1653.

   The first Protectorate parliament met on 3 September 1654, and after
   some initial gestures approving appointments previously made by
   Cromwell, began to work on a moderate programme of constitutional
   reform. Rather than opposing Parliament’s bill, Cromwell dissolved them
   on 22 January 1655. After a royalist uprising led by Sir John
   Penruddock, Cromwell (influenced by Lambert) divided England into
   military districts ruled by Army Major Generals who answered only to
   him. The fifteen major generals and deputy major generals—called "godly
   governors"—were central not only to national security, but Cromwell's
   moral crusade. The generals not only supervised militia forces and
   security commissions, but collected taxes and ensured support for the
   government in the English and Welsh provinces. Commissioners for
   securing the peace of the commonwealth were appointed to work with them
   in every county. While a few of these commissioners were career
   politicians, most were zealous puritans who welcomed the major-generals
   with open arms and embraced their work with enthusiasm. However, the
   major-generals lasted less than a year. Many feared they threatened
   their reform efforts and authority. Their position was further harmed
   by a tax proposal by Major General John Desborough to provide financial
   backing for their work, which the second Protectorate
   parliament—instated in September 1656—voted down for fear of a
   permanent military state. Ultimately, however, Cromwell's failure to
   support his men, sacrificing them to his opponents, caused their
   demise. Their activities between November 1655 and September 1656 had,
   however, reopened the wounds of the 1640s and deepened antipathies to
   the regime.

   During this period Cromwell also faced challenges in foreign policy.
   The First Anglo-Dutch War which had broken out in 1652, against the
   Republic of the Seven United Netherlands, was eventually won by Admiral
   Robert Blake in 1654. As Lord Protector he was aware of the
   contribution the Jewish community made to the economic success of
   Holland, now England's leading commercial rival. It was this—allied to
   Cromwell’s toleration of the right to private worship of those who fell
   outside evangelical puritanism—that led to his encouraging Jews to
   return to England, 350 years after their banishment by Edward I, in the
   hope that they would help speed up the recovery of the country after
   the disruption of the Civil Wars.

   In 1657, Cromwell was offered the crown by Parliament as part of a
   revised constitutional settlement, presenting him with a dilemma, since
   he had been "instrumental" in abolishing the monarchy. Cromwell
   agonised for six weeks over the offer. He was attracted by the prospect
   of stability it held out, but in a speech on 13 April 1657 he made
   clear that God's providence had spoken against the office of king: “I
   would not seek to set up that which Providence hath destroyed and laid
   in the dust, and I would not build Jericho again”. The reference to
   Jericho harks back to a previous occasion on which Cromwell had
   wrestled with his conscience when the news reached England of the
   defeat of an expedition against the Spanish-held island of Hispaniola
   in the West Indies in 1655—comparing himself to Achan, who had brought
   the Israelites defeat after bringing plunder back to camp after the
   capture of Jericho.

   Instead, Cromwell was ceremonially re-installed as " Lord Protector"
   (with greater powers than had previously been granted him under this
   title) at Westminster Hall, sitting upon King Edward's Chair which was
   specially moved from Westminster Abbey for the occasion. The event in
   part echoed a coronation, utilising many of its symbols and regalia,
   such as a purple ermine-lined robe, a sword of justice and a sceptre
   (but not a crown or an orb). But, most notably, the office of Lord
   Protector was still not to become hereditary, though Cromwell was now
   able to nominate his own successor. Cromwell's new rights and powers
   were laid out in the Humble Petition and Advice, a legislative
   instrument which replaced the Instrument of Government. Cromwell
   himself, however, was at pains to minimise his role, describing himself
   as a constable or watchman.

Death and posthumous execution

   Oliver Cromwell's death mask at Warwick Castle.
   Oliver Cromwell's death mask at Warwick Castle.

   Cromwell is thought to have suffered from malaria (probably first
   contracted while on campaign in Ireland) and from " stone", a common
   term for urinary/kidney infections. In 1658 he was struck by a sudden
   bout of malarial fever, followed directly by an attack of
   urinary/kidney symptoms. A Venetian physician tracked Cromwell's final
   illness, saying Cromwell's personal physicians were mismanaging his
   health, leading to a rapid decline and death, which was also hastened
   by the death of his favourite daughter Elizabeth Cromwell in August at
   age 29. He died at Whitehall on 3 September 1658, the anniversary of
   his great victories at Dunbar and Worcester.

   He was succeeded as Lord Protector by his son Richard. Although Richard
   was not entirely without ability, he had no power base in either
   Parliament or the Army, and was forced to resign in the spring of 1659,
   bringing the Protectorate to an end. In the period immediately
   following his abdication the head of the army, George Monck, took power
   for less than a year, at which point Parliament restored Charles II as
   king.

   In 1661, Oliver Cromwell's body was exhumed from Westminster Abbey, and
   was subjected to the ritual of a posthumous execution. Symbolically,
   this took place on January 30; the same date that Charles I had been
   executed. His body was hung in chains at Tyburn. Finally, his
   disinterred body was thrown into a pit, while his severed head was
   displayed on a pole outside Westminster Abbey until 1685. Afterwards
   the head changed hands several times, before eventually being buried in
   the grounds of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, in 1960.
   Plaque commemorating the reinterment of Cromwell's head at Sidney
   Sussex College.
   Plaque commemorating the reinterment of Cromwell's head at Sidney
   Sussex College.

Posthumous reputation

   During his lifetime, some tracts painted him as a hypocrite motivated
   by power—for example, The Machiavilian Cromwell and The Juglers
   Discovered, both part of an attack on Cromwell by the Levellers after
   1647, present him as a Machiavellian figure. More positive contemporary
   assessments—for instance John Spittlehouse in A Warning Piece
   Discharged—typically compared him to Moses, rescuing the English by
   taking them safely through the Red Sea of the civil wars. Several
   biographies were published soon after his death. An example is The
   Perfect Politician by the anonymous "L.S.", which described how
   Cromwell "loved men more than books" and gave a nuanced assessment of
   him as an energetic campaigner for liberty of conscience brought down
   by pride and ambition. An equally nuanced but less positive assessment
   was published in 1667 by Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon, in his
   History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England. Clarendon famously
   declared that Cromwell "will be looked upon by posterity as a brave bad
   man". He argued that Cromwell's rise to power had been helped not only
   by his great spirit and energy, but also by his wickedness and
   ruthlessness. Clarendon never knew Cromwell well, and his account was
   written after the Restoration of the monarchy (which may have shaped
   the narrative)—but it is still looked upon by some as a "masterpiece".

   In the early eighteenth century, Cromwell’s image began to be adopted
   and reshaped by the Whigs, as part of a wider project to give their
   political objectives historical legitimacy. A version of Edmund
   Ludlow’s Memoirs, re-written by John Toland to excise the radical
   puritan elements and replace them with a Whiggish brand of
   republicanism, presented the Cromwellian Protectorate as a military
   tyranny. Through Ludlow, Toland portrayed Cromwell as a despot who
   crushed the beginnings of democratic rule in the 1640s.
   Statue of Oliver Cromwell outside the Palace of Westminster, London.
   Statue of Oliver Cromwell outside the Palace of Westminster, London.

   Thomas Carlyle began a reassessment of Cromwell in the 1840s by
   presenting Cromwell as a hero in the battle between good and evil and a
   model for restoring morality to an age Carlyle believed to be dominated
   by timidity, meaningless rhetoric, and moral compromise. Cromwell's
   actions, including his campaigns in Ireland and his dissolution of the
   Long Parliament, according to Carlyle, had to be appreciated and
   praised as a whole. However, readers were free to interpret Carlyle
   selectively. His picture of Cromwell appealed to nonconformists, who
   saw him as a champion of denominational independence, and to
   working-class radicals (including some Marxists), who saw him as a man
   of the people who had stood up against monarchical and aristocratic
   oppression. Nonconformist churches supported a campaign to have
   Cromwell's statue erected outside the Palace of Westminster; Ford Madox
   Brown and other artists depicted Cromwell as a heroic figure in
   paintings such as Cromwell, Protector of the Vaudois. In 1899, when
   commemorative events to mark the anniversary of Cromwell's birth took
   place, they were all organised by the Congregational and Baptist
   churches. At the London ceremony David Lloyd George said that he
   believed in Cromwell because "he was a great fighting dissenter".

   By the late nineteenth century, Carlyle’s portrayal of Cromwell,
   stressing the centrality of puritan morality and earnestness, had
   become assimilated into Whig and Liberal historiography. The Oxford
   civil war historian Samuel Rawson Gardiner concluded that "the man—it
   is ever so with the noblest—was greater than his work". Gardiner
   stressed Cromwell’s dynamic and mercurial character, and his role in
   dismantling absolute monarchy, while underestimating Cromwell’s
   religious conviction. Cromwell’s foreign policy also provided an
   attractive forerunner of Victorian imperial expansion, with Gardiner
   stressing his “constancy of effort to make England great by land and
   sea”.

   In the first half of the twentieth century, Cromwell's reputation was
   often shaped by the rise of fascism in Germany and Italy. Wilbur Cortez
   Abbott, for example—a Harvard historian—devoted much of his career to
   compiling and editing a multi-volume collection of Cromwell's letters
   and speeches. In the course of this work, which was published between
   1937 and 1947, Abbott began to argue that Cromwell was a proto-fascist.
   However, subsequent historians such as John Morrill have criticised
   both Abbott's interpretation of Cromwell and his editorial approach.
   Ernest Barker similarly compared the Independents to the Nazis.
   Nevertheless, not all historical comparisons made at this time drew on
   contemporary military dictators. Leon Trotsky, for example, compared
   Cromwell to Lenin, arguing that "Lenin is a Proletarian Cromwell of the
   Twentieth Century".

   Late twentieth-century historians have re-examined the nature of
   Cromwell’s faith and of his authoritarian regime. Austin Woolrych
   explored the issue of "dictatorship" in depth, arguing that Cromwell
   was subject to two conflicting forces: his obligation to the army and
   his desire to achieve a lasting settlement by winning back the
   confidence of the political nation as a whole. Woolrych argued that the
   dictatorial elements of Cromwell's rule stemmed not so much from its
   military origins or the participation of army officers in civil
   government, as from his constant commitment to the interest of the
   people of God and his conviction that suppressing vice and encouraging
   virtue constituted the chief end of government.

   Historians such as John Morrill, Blair Worden and J.C. Davis have
   developed this theme, revealing the extent to which Cromwell’s writing
   and speeches are suffused with biblical references, and arguing that
   his radical actions were driven by his zeal for godly reformation.

   Locally Cromwell has retained popularity in Cambridgeshire, where he
   was known as "Lord of the Fens". In Cambridge, he is commemorated in a
   painted glass window portrait in the Emmanuel United Reformed Church;
   St Ives, Cambridgeshire has erected his statue in the town centre.

Cromwell in popular culture

   Various songs refer to Cromwell. In 1989 Monty Python released a song
   entitled " Oliver Cromwell", a parody of Cromwell's biography. The song
   " Oliver's Army" by Elvis Costello references the New Model Army. A
   number of other songs are more critical. The song "Young Ned of the
   Hill" by Terry Woods and Ron Kavana (made famous by The Pogues)
   criticises Cromwell's exploits in Ireland with words: "A curse upon you
   Oliver Cromwell, you who raped our motherland, I hope you're rotting
   down in hell for the horrors that you sent". On 2004 album You Are the
   Quarry, British artist Morrissey recorded a song " Irish Blood, English
   Heart" with lyrics: "I've been dreaming of a time when, The English are
   sick to death of Labour, And Tories, And spit upon the name Oliver
   Cromwell, And denounce this royal line that still salute him, And will
   salute him forever". The song "Tobacco Island" by Flogging Molly is
   about Cromwell deporting Irish workers to Barbados with the lyrics
   "Cromwell and his roundheads/ battered all we knew/ shackled bolts of
   freedom/ we're now but stolen goods/ dark is the horizon/ blackened
   full the sun/ this rotten cage of Bridgetown/ is where I now belong".
   The Finnish doom metal band Reverend Bizarre recorded a song called
   "Cromwell" as part of the album II: Crush the Insects (2005).

   Cromwell's character has also featured in a number of plays and films.
   Victor Hugo wrote a play about Cromwell in 1827. In 2003 playwright
   Steve Newman produced his An Evening With Oliver Cromwell, which looked
   at the relationship between Cromwell and Major General Thomas Harrison.
   The play was performed in the "Shreeves House" in Stratford-upon-Avon
   where Cromwell is thought to have stayed prior to the battle of
   Worcester. On film he has been portrayed in The Moonraker (1958) by
   John Le Mesurier, in Witchfinder General (1968) by Patrick Wymark, in
   Cromwell (1970) by Richard Harris (ironically an Irishman) and in To
   Kill A King (2003) by Tim Roth. On television he was played by Peter
   Jeffrey in the BBC series By the Sword Divided and in the BBC docudrama
   Warts and All (2003) by Jim Carter. The Doctor Who 2006 Big Finish
   audio play The Settling, written by Simon Guerrier, centres on Cromwell
   during the sieges of Drogheda and Wexford. He was also a playable
   leader in the 2001 computer game Empire Earth
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