Oliver Cromwell

Oliver Cromwell (25 April 1599 in Huntingdon, England - 3 September 1658 in London) was an English political and military leader. He made England a republic called the Commonwealth of England (in English, Commonwealth of England ).

For the first forty years of his life he was a middle-class landowner, but he rose meteorically to command the New Model Army and eventually impose his leadership over England, Scotland and Ireland as lord protector, from the December 16, 1653, until the day of his death. Since then he has become a highly controversial figure in English history.

Her career is full of contradictions. He was a regicide who questioned whether or not he should accept the crown for himself and ultimately decided against it, but he amassed more power than Charles I of England himself. He was a parliamentarian who ordered his soldiers to dissolve parliaments. A religious fanatic, a follower of Protestant Christianity, his campaigns to conquer Ireland and Scotland were brutal even by the standards of the time, since he considered that he was fighting against heretics. Under his command, the Protectorate allowed blasphemers to be tortured, in addition to cruelly persecuting Catholics. He was in favor of the criterion of fairness in justice, but he locked up those who criticized his policy of increasing taxes without the permission of the Parliament of England.

His admirers cite him as a strong, stabilizing and state-minded leader who earned international respect, overthrew tyranny, and promoted the republic and freedom. His critics see him as an openly ambitious hypocrite who betrayed the cause of liberty, imposed a puritanical value system and showed scant respect for the country's traditions. When the royalists returned to power, his corpse was dug up, hung in chains and beheaded, and his head exposed for years to public derision. In a 2002 BBC poll (Top 100 Britons), occupies position number 10.

Biography

Early Years

Oliver Cromwell was descended from Katherine Cromwell (b. 1482), older sister of Thomas Cromwell, a Tudor statesman. Katherine was married to Morgan ap Williams, son of William ap Yevan, of Wales, and Joan Tudor. The family tree continued with Richard Cromwell (1500-1544), Henry Cromwell (1524-6 January 1603) and Oliver's father Robert Cromwell (1560-1617), who married Elizabeth Steward or Stewart (1564-1654).) on April 25, 1599, the day of Oliver's birth.

There are records of his baptism and passage through Huntingdon Grammar School. He subsequently moved to Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, a recently founded center with a strongly puritanical ideology. He left him without graduation in June 1617, immediately after his father's death. The first biographers of him affirmed that he also attended Lincoln's Inn, but no records or documentary evidence of said stay are preserved in his files. It is likely that he returned to his home in Huntingdon, as with his widowed mother and his seven unmarried sisters his presence was needed to take care of the family.

The main event in the 1620s was his marriage to Elizabeth Bourchier on 22 August 1620. They had seven children: his successor, Richard Cromwell, was the third. Cromwell's father-in-law, sir James Bourchier, was a London merchant with extensive country estates in Essex and strong connections to Puritan families in the area. The marriage brought Cromwell into contact with Oliver St John and other leading members of the business community in London, and more importantly, in the sphere of influence of the Earls of Warwick and Holland. His membership in this network of contacts would be crucial to the success of his future political and military career. However, at this historical moment there is little record of the religion he professed. His 1626 letter to Henry Downhall, an Arminian minister, suggests that he was not yet influenced by radical Puritanism at this time. However, there is evidence that he went through a period of personal crisis in the late 1620s and early He sought treatment for valde melancolicus (depression) from Dr. Théodore de Mayerne of London in 1628. He was also involved in a fight between the people of Huntingdon, started over a new bill of rights of the people, as a result of which he was required in the presence of the Privy Council in 1630.

In 1631 he sold most of his Huntingdon estates—possibly as a result of the dispute cited above—and moved to a farm in St. Ives, Cambridgeshire. The change of residence was a marked setback in his social standing, and he seems to have had a major emotional and spiritual impact. In a 1638 letter, he gives an account of his conversion and how, having been "the chief of sinners," he had been called to remain among "the congregation of the first-born.";. In 1638 Cromwell is already, without a doubt, a committed Puritan and firmly associated with the independent vision of religious freedom for all Protestants. He had also established important ties with prominent families in the religious reform movement in Essex and London. From his own perspective, he had gone through a period of crisis thanks to divine providence.

Member of Parliament: 1628-1629 and 1640-1642

Cromwell was elected to the House of Commons (the lower house of England's Parliament) as an MP for Huntingdon in Parliament from 1628-1629, under the patronage of the Montagu family. He made little impression on it: the parliamentary records are reasonably complete, showing only one intervention of his, against the Arminian Bishop Richard Neile, which was poorly received.

Charles I of England dissolved Parliament in 1629 and ruled without Parliament for the next eleven years. Driven by the pressing need for funds to alleviate the financial disaster caused by the suppression of the Scottish rebellion, known as the Bishops' War, he was forced to summon Parliament again in 1640 to ask them to legitimize new taxes..

As in 1628, Cromwell, MP for Cambridge, most likely owed his election to the patronage of others. This would explain, among other things, why in the first week of the new Parliament's life he dedicated himself to presenting a petition for the release of John Lilburne, who at that time had become a Puritan martyr after being arrested for importing religious tracts. from Holland. In any case, during the first two years of the new Parliament, Cromwell was closely associated with the group of aristocrats, belonging to the House of Lords, with whom he had been associated in the 1630s, such as the Earls of Essex, Warwick and Bedford, as well as Viscount Saye and Sele.

This group had as its main objective religious reform, control of the executive by regularized parliaments, and the moderate extension of freedom of conscience. For example, in May 1641 Cromwell promoted the second reading of the Annual Parliaments Act, and two years later he played a leading role in drafting the Branch and Root Act for the abolition of the episcopate.

Military Commander: 1642-1646

Portrait of Cromwell by Robert Walker (c. 1649)

Failure to resolve disputed issues in 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 central lands, while the royalists concentrated in the north, west and Wales.

Before joining Parliament's army, Cromwell counted only his membership in the armed bands of the local county militia as his military experience. At the age of 43, he raised a squadron of cavalry in Cambridgeshire after intercepting a shipment of silver from Cambridge colleges bound for the king. The squadron became a regiment during the winter of 1642-43, forming part of the Eastern Association under the Earl of Manchester. Cromwell gained experience and victories in a series of successful actions in East Anglia, and then at the pitched battle of Marston Moor and the indecisive Second Battle of Newbury.

His experience at Newbury led him into a heated dispute with the Earl of Manchester, whom he considered to be less than enthusiastic in his conduct of the war. Manchester later accused Cromwell of recruiting people of "low status" in the army, to which he replied: "If honest, God-fearing men are chosen to be captains, honest men will follow them... I prefer a modestly dressed captain who knows what he is fighting for and love what you know, rather than one of those you call gentlemen and who is nothing more than that." After Parliament accepted the Selfless Resolution - which removed members of Parliament such as Manchester from the line of command, but did not affect Cromwell himself - it was also accepted that the army would be 'remodelled', under a more national structure, replacing the old associations of units by counties. In June 1645 the formation of the New Model Army was completed, with Sir Thomas Fairfax in command, and Cromwell as second with the rank of lieutenant-general of cavalry. He successfully led his units at the Battle of Naseby. He also took part in the sieges of Bridgwater, Sherborne, Bristol, Devizes and Winchester, and spent the first half of 1646 eliminating remaining pockets of resistance in Devon and Cornwall.

Cromwell had no theoretical training in military tactics, and followed the general basic practice of dividing his cavalry into three ranks and charging. This method relied much more on impact power than firepower. Cromwell's strength as a warlord therefore lay chiefly in his instinctive ability to lead and train his men, and in his own moral strength. In a war largely carried out by amateurs, both characteristics were highly significant, and no doubt contributed to the discipline displayed by Cromwell's cavalry.

Politics: 1647-1649

Half British crown with Oliver Cromwell's effigy, 1658. In the registration is read OLIVAR.D.G.RP.ANG. SCO.ET.HIB falsecPRO (OLIVARIUS DEI GRATIA REIPUBLICÆ ANGLIÆ SCOTIÆ ET HIBERNIÆ ET CETERA PROTECTOR), which means "Oliver, by the Grace of God Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland and Ireland and cetera". The "et cetera" refers to the English claims to the throne of France, to which not even Cromwell was prepared to give up.

In February 1647 he suffered an illness that kept him out of political life for more than a month. By the time he had recovered, the parliamentarians were divided over the issue of the king. A majority in both chambers tried to force an agreement that would financially liquidate and discharge the army of Scotland, dissolve the majority of the New Model Army, and restore Charles I in exchange for a Presbyterian position of the country regarding the church. However, Cromwell's belief in freedom of conscience and freedom of assembly forced him to reject the Scottish model of Presbyterianism, which threatened to replace one authoritarian hierarchy with another. The New Model Army opposed these changes, but the House of Commons declared such opposition illegal. During May 1647 Cromwell was sent to the army headquarters at Saffron Walden to negotiate with them, but no agreement was reached. A month later, in June 1647, a squadron of cavalry under the command of the cornet George Joyce brought the king out of the prison in which he was kept by parliament. Although it is known that Cromwell had met Joyce on May 31, it is impossible to know for sure what his exact role in the incident was.

Cromwell and Henry Ireton published a manifesto, the Heads of Proposals, intended to establish the powers of the executive, seat regularly elected parliaments and reinstate a non-binding Episcopalian agreement. Many in the army, such as the Levellers led by John Lilburne, thought it insufficient, leading to tense debates at Putney in the autumn of 1647 between Cromwell, Ireton and the army. The Putney Debates ended without any resolution. The debates, as well as Charles I's escape from Hampton Court on 12 November, possibly hardened Cromwell's resolve against the king. The inability to come to political terms with the king eventually led to the Second English Civil War in 1648. At the Battle of Preston, Cromwell, as commander-in-chief for the first time in a major battle, scored a brilliant victory against Scottish allies. of the king.

During 1648, Cromwell's letters and speeches were filled with biblical imagery, much of it meditations on the meaning of particular passages. For example, after the battle of Preston, the study of Psalms 17 and 105 led him to tell Parliament that "those who are relentless and do not cease to ravage the land will be swiftly destroyed and driven from it." In a letter to Oliver St. John in September 1648, he urges you to read Isaiah-8, where the kingdom falls and only the faithful survive. This letter suggests that it was Cromwell's faith, rather than an engagement in radical politics, together with Parliament's decision to enter into negotiations with the king on the Treaty of Newport, that led him to believe that God himself spoke against both of Parliament and of the King as legal authorities. For Cromwell, the army was now God's chosen instrument. The episode is indicative of Cromwell's strong belief in providentialism, that is, the belief that God himself was intervening in worldly affairs through the actions of "chosen people" (which God had "provided" for that purpose). Cromwell believed, during the Civil Wars, that he himself was one of those people, and he interpreted victories as indications of God's approval of his actions, just as defeats were signs that God wanted to lead him in another direction.

In December 1648, members of Parliament wishing to continue negotiating with the King found their way cut off by a squad of soldiers led by Colonel Thomas Pride, an episode that soon became known as the "Pride Purge&" #3. 4;. The remaining members of what, from then on, would be known as the Rump Parliament (Rump Parliament) agreed that Charles I should be tried for treason. A court was established, and Charles' death sentence was finally signed by 59 of its members, including Cromwell. Charles was executed on January 30, 1649, marking the first time a monarch had been publicly executed in Western history. The following months Cromwell was busy preparing for the invasion of Ireland. Following the suppression of the Leveling riots at Andover, Hampshire, and Burford in May, Cromwell left Bristol for Ireland at the end of July.

Campaign in Ireland: 1649-1650

Cromwell led the Parliamentarian invasion of Ireland in 1649-1650, with two simultaneous objectives: to eliminate the military threat against the English Commonwealth posed by the alliance between the Catholics of the Irish Confederation and the English royalists (signed in 1649) and to punish to the Irish in their fight for independence, after their rebellion of 1641 against the English invaders. The English Parliament had long planned the recapture of Ireland, which they considered a province of England, having unsuccessfully sent an invasion force there in 1647. However, Cromwell's invasion of 1649 was much larger, and after the civil war in England, he was already able to receive regular reinforcements and supplies. In the summer of 1649, the Royalist-Irish alliance was considered the greatest threat facing the Commonwealth. The Irish chiefs considered their forces less powerful than the English, so instead of presenting battle in the open field (Cromwell's specialty, due to the use of cavalry) they sought refuge in various fortresses. Cromwell invented a simple but effective tactic (his own): He would attack fortress walls with artillery (in Ireland at the time, few could withstand cannon attacks) at two points simultaneously, to divide the forces enemy until breaking the walls and attacking with the infantry until taking the square.

The campaign he undertook lasted nine months and was as effective as it was short, although it did not end the war in Ireland. Before the invasion, Parliamentary forces only maintained enclaves in Dublin and Derry. When Cromwell left the island, they controlled most of the eastern and northern parts of the country. Landing in Dublin on 15 August 1649 (which had only just been secured for Parliament at the recent Battle of Rathmines), Cromwell seized the fortified ports of Drogheda and Wexford in order to secure supply lines from England. At the Siege of Drogheda in September 1649, Cromwell's troops massacred around 3,500 people after conquering the town. Among those killed were some 2,700 royalist soldiers and all townspeople who carried arms, as well as civilians, prisoners, and Catholic chaplains. At the sack of Wexford in October, another massacre took place in very unclear circumstances. While Cromwell himself was trying to negotiate terms of surrender, soldiers of the New Model Army stormed the town, killing 2,000 Irish soldiers and some 1,500 civilians and setting most of the town on fire. These actions are still remembered in the historical memory of Irish nationalism. Both atrocities were not exceptional in the war in Ireland that began in 1641, although they are still well remembered today, partly due to a contemporaneous campaign by royalists to present Cromwell as a tyrant who massacred the civilian population indiscriminately. everywhere.

After the fall of Drogheda, Cromwell sent a column to Ulster in order to secure the north of the country, and proceeded to besiege Waterford, Kilkenny and Clonmel, in the southeast of the island. Kilkenny surrendered on conditions, as did many other towns such as New Ross and Carlow, but Cromwell failed to take Waterford, and in May 1650 he lost nearly 2,000 men in repulsed assaults before he managed to take the town of Clonmel. One of his greatest victories in Ireland was diplomatic, rather than military: with the help of the Earl of Orrery, he persuaded Protestant royalist troops in Cork to switch sides and fight for Parliament. Just at that moment the news reached him that Charles II had landed in Scotland and had been proclaimed king by the Covenanter regime, so he immediately returned to England to deal with this new threat. Parliamentary conquests in Ireland continued for three more years after Cromwell's departure. The campaigns of his successors, Henry Ireton and Edmund Ludlow, consisted mainly of long sieges of fortified cities and guerrilla warfare in rural areas.

Debate on Cromwell's actions in Ireland

The extent of the brutality of which Cromwell is accused in Ireland has been long debated. Although atrocities were committed, they did not constitute a form of genocide against the Irish, although it is clear that Cromwell viewed the Catholic Irish as enemies in general. During the civil wars, strong hatred arose on the Parliamentary side for Irish Catholics, whom the English considered little more than "savages"; lower. Also, the desire to avenge the massacres of the 1641 rebellion added to the general climate of Protestant hostility, so that Cromwell's animosity towards the Irish was both religious and political. He was passionately opposed to the Catholic Church, which he saw as denying the primacy of the Bible in favor of clerical and papal authority, and which he blamed for the tyrannization and persecution of Protestants in Europe. Cromwell's association between Catholics and persecution was reinforced by the Irish Rebellion of 1641, which was marked by massacres of English and Scottish Protestant settlers by native Irish Catholics, though they were greatly exaggerated in Puritan circles in England (4,000 or more). of 120,000 killed). These factors contributed to Cromwell's harshness during his military campaign in Ireland.

In September 1649, he justified the sack of Drogheda as revenge for the massacres of Protestant settlers in Ulster during the Irish rebellion of 1641, calling the carnage caused by his troops "God's just judgment on those barbarians, who have soaked their hands in so much innocent blood". Drogheda was never actually in the hands of the rebels in 1641; most of its garrison were English royalists.

However, his religious stance admits little discussion. Addressing the Irish defenders of New Ross in 1649, who were negotiating the town's surrender, Cromwell said: 'I do not meddle with any man's conscience, but if by liberty of conscience you mean the liberty of celebrating mass...then where Parliament has authority, that will not be allowed. In a letter to Irish Catholic bishops later in the year, he wrote: "You are part of the Antichrist, and shortly you will all have blood to drink." Similarly, the records of many churches, such as the cathedral of Kilkenny, accuse Cromwell of having defaced and desecrated Catholic images and churches.

On the other hand, when Cromwell arrived in Ireland, he ordered that supplies not be requisitioned from the civilian inhabitants, and that everything his troops needed should be bought fairly from the people. In fact, several English soldiers were hanged for disobeying that order. With regard to the Drogheda massacre, Cromwell's orders followed the prevailing military protocol at the time, according to which a garrison was first offered the option of surrendering and receiving fair treatment and protection from the attacking force. The refusal of the Drogheda garrison to surrender, even after its walls had been breached, makes the orders – "I forbade them to offer surrender to anyone in the town who was under arms" –, while severe, were not unusual by the standards of the Drogheda garrison. The time. Cromwell wanted the severity at Drogheda to act as a deterrent to Irish resistance, in his own words: 'It will prevent future bloodshed'. Furthermore, where he negotiated the surrender of fortified towns, such as at Carlow, New Ross and Clonmel, he respected the terms of surrender and protected the lives and property of the locals.

Cromwell never accepted any responsibility for the murder of civilians, claiming he had come down hard, but only against those "in arms". In fact, the worst atrocities he committed, such as forced removals, murders, and deportations as slave labor to Bermuda and Barbados, were carried out by his subordinates after he left for England. William Petty estimated in his demographic survey of Ireland in the 1650s that the war of 1641-1653 resulted in the death or exile of more than 600,000 people, or about a third of the pre-war population. After Cromwell's conquest, the public practice of the Catholic rite was outlawed, Catholic clergymen were executed upon capture, and all Catholic lands and property were confiscated under the Settlement of Ireland Act 1652. , and given to Scottish and English colonists, Parliament's financial creditors and their soldiers (see Irish Colonizations ).

Scottish Campaign: 1650-1651

Cromwell left Ireland in May 1650, and several months later invaded Scotland, after its inhabitants had proclaimed Charles II, son of Charles I, lawful King of England. His view of Scottish Presbyterians was far less hostile than his view of Irish Catholics; after all, many of them had been his allies during the First Civil War. Cromwell tended to see 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 their alliance with the king: "I implore you, by the guts of Christ, think that you may be wrong."

After his claim was rejected, Cromwell's veteran troops prepared to invade Scotland. At first the campaign went very poorly, his soldiers suffering from a chronic lack of supplies and being delayed by fortifications under the control of Scottish troops led by David Leslie. The Parliamentarian army was on the brink of evacuation by sea from Dunbar. However, on 3 September 1650, Cromwell unexpectedly crushed the main body of the Covenanter army at the Battle of Dunbar, in which 4,000 Scottish soldiers were killed, 10,000 more taken prisoner, and the capital, Edinburgh, was captured. such a magnitude that Cromwell himself called it "a lofty gesture of God's Providence to us [and] one of the most remarkable gifts God has made to England and His people".

The following year, Charles II and his Scottish allies made a desperate attempt to invade England and conquer London while Cromwell was busy in Scotland. However, it returned south and caught up with them at Worcester in September. In the ensuing battle, the English commander's forces annihilated the last major Royalist Scottish army. Many of the Scottish prisoners captured during the campaign died of disease and others were sent to penal colonies in Barbados. In the latter stages of the Scottish campaign, Cromwell's men under the command of George Monck sacked what was then the town of Dundee. During the Commonwealth period, Scotland was ruled from England and kept under military occupation by a line of fortifications that sealed off the northern ranges, which had provided soldiers for Scotland's armies, separating it from the rest of the country. The practice of Presbyterianism was allowed, as it had always been, but the Church of Scotland no longer had the backing of civil courts to enforce its rules.

Cromwell's conquest, while not exactly welcome, left no trace of rancor in Scotland. Commonwealth and Protectorate rule was mostly peaceful and fair, and there were no major confiscations of land or property. In Ireland, by contrast, most of the land ownership was transferred from the native Catholic Scotti population to creditors to Parliament, Protestant colonists from England, and veterans of the New Model Army. That created a festering heritage that lived on long beyond the memories left by the sack of Drogheda and Wexford. Although he is not remembered in an extremely favorable light, Oliver Cromwell's name is not received with anywhere near as much hate in Scotland as it is in Ireland.

Oliver Cromwell v. 1655 by Samuel Cooper.

The Commonwealth: 1649-1653

The “Rump Parliament”

After the king's execution, a republic known as the Commonwealth of England was established. A Council of State was instituted to manage the country, which included Cromwell among its members. The real power of him came from the army; Cromwell unsuccessfully tried to unify the original group of "Royal Independents" centered around St John, Saye and Sele, but only St John agreed to keep his seat in Parliament. From mid-1649 to 1651, while Cromwell was away on campaign, with the King deposed (and with him the unifying factor in his cause), the various factions in Parliament began to find themselves embroiled in internal disputes. On his return, Cromwell tried to influence members of Parliament to set a date for the next election, uniting the three kingdoms under a single policy and starting a tolerant national church. However, the "Rump Parliament" (Rump Parliament) vacillated on the election date, and while it launched a basic freedom of conscience, it failed to craft an alternative to religious taxes, nor did it dismantle other aspects of the situation existing religious. In frustration, Cromwell ended up dissolving Parliament in 1653.

The “Barebone Parliament”

After the dissolution of the Rump Parliament, power temporarily passed to a council that debated the form the constitution should take. He accepted General Thomas Harrison's suggestion to form a Sanhedrin of Saints. Cromwell did not subscribe to the apocalyptic and Fifth Monarchist views of Harrison, who saw a Sanhedrin as the starting point of Jesus Christ's reign on earth. But he was attracted to the idea of an assembly made up of a mixture of sects. In his inaugural address to the assembly, on July 4, 1653, Cromwell thanked Divine Providence, which he considered responsible for bringing England to this point and for initiating them on their divine mission: "Indeed, God you have been called to this task by, I believe, the most wonderful providences that have ever befallen the sons of men in so short a time". Sometimes called the "Parliament of Saints", the assembly was eventually known as the " Barebone Parliament", in a play on words that uses the name of one of its members, Praise-God Barebone. Ultimately, the assembly was charged with finding a permanent constitutional and religious agreement. Cromwell was invited to join it, but declined the offer. However, the assembly's failure to achieve its goals led its members to vote for its dissolution on December 12, 1653.

The Protectorate: 1653-1658

After the dissolution of the Barebone Parliament, John Lambert pushed through a new constitution known as the Instrument of Government, much like the previous Heads of Proposals. He made Cromwell a lifelong lord protector to attain 'the highest magistracy and administration of government'. He had the power to call and dissolve parliaments, but bound by the Instrument to seek a majority vote for the Council of State. However, Cromwell's power was also bolstered by his great popularity in the army, which he had enlarged during the civil wars, and which he prudently kept in good shape afterward. Cromwell accepted the oath as Lord Protector on December 15, 1653.

The First Protectorate Parliament met on 3 September 1654, and after some initial nods approving measures Cromwell had taken, it began work on a moderate program of constitutional reforms. Rather than oppose Parliament's reforms, Cromwell dissolved it on 22 January 1655. Following a royalist uprising led by sir John Penruddock, Cromwell (influenced by Lambert) divided England into military districts ruled by generals (the exact rank was Major General) who only answered to him. The fifteen generals—called "divine governors"—were essential not only to national security, but also to Cromwell's moral crusade. They not only supervised the militia forces and security commissions, but also collected taxes and ensured support for the government in the English and Welsh provinces.

Commissioners were established in each county to ensure peace in the Commonwealth. While some of them were career politicians, most were radical Puritans who welcomed the generals with open arms and embarked on their work with enthusiasm. However, the generals lasted less than a year. Many saw them as a threat to their authority and their reform efforts. His position was further battered when the Second Protectorate Parliament – formed in September 1656 – voted against a tax proposal made by Major General John Desborough in order to provide his task with resources. financial. Ultimately, it was Cromwell's inability to support his men, sacrificing them to their political opponents, that would bring about their downfall. In addition, his activities between November 1655 and September 1656 had reopened the wounds of the 1640s and widened antipathy towards the regime.

During this period, Cromwell also faced challenges in his foreign policy. The First Anglo-Dutch War, which broke out in 1652, against the United Provinces of the Netherlands, was finally won by Admiral Robert Blake in 1654. Commercial rivalry with Spain in the Indies led to the Anglo-Spanish War. As Lord Protector he was well aware of the contribution that the Jewish community had made to the economic development of the Netherlands, which had become England's main commercial rival. This, combined with Cromwell's tolerance of the right of private worship for all non-Evangelical Puritans, led him to approve the resettlement of the Jews in England, 350 years after Edward I's expulsion from England, in the hope that help speed the nation's recovery from civil wars.

In 1657, Parliament offered Cromwell the crown, as part of a new constitutional amendment, creating a great dilemma for him who had been instrumental in the abolition of the monarchy. For six weeks he debated doubts, trying to make up his mind. Although he was attracted by the stability that the government would gain with the position, in a speech of April 13, 1657, he made it clear that divine providence had spoken against the royal figure: "I will not try to establish what Providence has destroyed and thrown to the dust, and I will not build Jericho again". that he compared himself to Achan, who had reaped a defeat for the Israelites after bringing back to his camp some of the plunder gained during the capture of Jericho.

In his place, Cromwell was ceremoniously reinstated as Lord Protector, with greater powers than he had previously held, in the Palace of Westminster, sitting in St Edward's Chair, which had been specially transferred to Westminster Abbey. for the occasion. The event largely imitated a coronation, using many of his symbols and paraphernalia, such as the ermine-edged purple cape, sword of justice, and scepter (but without crown or orb). Most notably, the office of lord protector remained non-hereditary, although Cromwell could now name his successor. His new rights and powers were drafted in the Humble Petition and Advice , a piece of legislation that replaced the Instrument of Government . However, Cromwell himself took pains to minimize his own role, describing himself as a constable or guardian .

Death and posthumous execution

Oliver Cromwell's mortuary mask at Warwick Castle.

Cromwell is believed to have suffered from malaria (probably contracted during his campaigns in Ireland) and kidney stones. In 1658 he suffered from both at once: a sudden outbreak of malarial fevers, immediately followed by an attack of kidney stone symptoms. A Venetian doctor followed up on Cromwell's fatal illness, claiming that Cromwell's personal physicians were treating him poorly, leading to his rapid decline and death. No doubt his decline was hastened by the death of his favorite daughter, Elizabeth Cromwell, on August 29, 1658, aged 29. He died at Whitehall on September 3, 1658, the anniversary of his great victories at Dunbar and Worcester.

He was succeeded as Lord Protector by his son Richard. Although he was not entirely without ability, Richard had no support either in Parliament or in the army, and he was forced to resign in the spring of 1659, bringing the Protectorate to an end. In the immediate aftermath of his abdication, Army Chief George Monck seized power for less than a year, at which time Parliament reinstated Charles II of England as king.

In 1661 his body was exhumed from Westminster Abbey and subjected to the ritual of posthumous execution. The process took place, symbolically, on January 30, the same date that Charles I of England was executed. His body was hung in chains at Tyburn for a time, before finally being thrown into a ditch, while his severed head was displayed atop a post nailed to the entrance to Westminster Abbey until 1685. After that year, the head changed hands until it was finally buried in the grounds of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, in 1960, where Oliver had studied.

Posthumous reputation

During his lifetime, some pamphlets painted Cromwell as a hypocrite motivated by the lust for power—for example, The Machiavellian Cromwell and The Jugglers Uncovered, both part of an attack on Cromwell by the Levellers after 1647—and portray him as a Machiavellian figure (for example Edward Sexby in his famous pamphlet Killing Is Not Murdering). Some more positive contemporary assessments—for example that of John Spittlehouse in A Discarded Notice Piece—used to compare him to Moses rescuing the English and leading them to safety across the Red Sea from the civil wars. Several biographies were published shortly after his death. An example is The Perfect Politician, by anonymous L.S., which describes how Cromwell "loved men more than books" and gives a nuanced assessment of him as a forceful defender of freedom of conscience defeated. by pride and ambition.

In 1667 Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon, published another assessment, equally nuanced but less positive, in his History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England. Hyde declared that Cromwell "will be seen by posterity as a brave bad man."He argued that Cromwell's rise to power had been aided not only by his great spirit and energy, but also by his wickedness and the cruelty of he. Hyde never met Cromwell personally, and his book was written after the English restoration of the monarchy, which may have influenced the narrative of him. But despite that, still today there are those who consider it "a masterpiece".

In the early 18th century, Cromwell's image began to be adopted and modified by the Whigs as part of its broader project of giving historical legitimation to its political objectives. A version of Edmund Ludlow's Memoirs, rewritten by John Toland in order to eliminate radical Puritan elements and replace them with a branch of republicanism centered on Whig historiography, featured Cromwell's Protectorate as a military tyranny. Through Ludlow, Toland portrayed Cromwell as a despot who crushed the beginnings of democratic government in the 1640s.

Statue of Oliver Cromwell outside the Palace of Westminster, London.

Thomas Carlyle initiated a revision of Cromwell in the 1840s, presenting Cromwell as a hero in the battle between good and evil, and a model for restoring morality to an age Carlyle considered dominated by timidity, meaningless rhetoric and compromised morality. Cromwell's actions, including his campaigns in Ireland and the dissolution of the Long Parliament, according to Carlyle were to be appreciated and praised as a whole. However, readers were free to interpret Carlyle selectively. His Cromwellian image appealed to nonconformists, who saw him as a champion of sectarian independence, and also to working-class radicals (including some Marxists), who saw him as a man of the people who stood up to the oppression of the monarchy and the aristocratic class.

Nonconformist churches supported a campaign to erect a statue of Cromwell outside the Palace of Westminster; Ford Maddox Brown and other artists depicted a heroic Cromwell in paintings such as Cromwell, Protector of the Waldensians. In 1899 all commemorative events celebrating the anniversary of Cromwell's birth were organized by Congregationalist and Baptist churches.. At the London ceremony, David Lloyd George said that he believed in Cromwell because he "was a great maverick fighter."

At the end of the 19th century, the Cromwell shown by Carlyle, insisting on the importance of Puritan morality and seriousness, had been assimilated into Whig and Liberal Party historiography. Samuel Rawson Gardiner, an Oxford University historian and civil war specialist, concluded that "the man—as always with the noblest—was greater than his work." Gardiner emphasized Cromwell's dynamic and changing character. and in his role in dismantling the absolute monarchy, while underestimating his religious conviction. Cromwell's foreign policy also provided Gardiner with an attractive background to Victorian imperial expansion, as it emphasized "consistency in striving to make England greater by land and by sea."

In the first half of the 20th century, Cromwell's reputation was often influenced by the rise of political movements. totalitarians in Germany, Italy and other European countries. For example, Wilbur Cortez Abbott, a Harvard historian, spent most of his career compiling and editing a multi-volume collection of Cromwell's letters and speeches. In the course of his work, which was published between 1937 and 1947, Abbott began to claim that Cromwell was a proto-Fascist. However, later historians, such as John Morrill, have criticized Abbott's interpretations and his editorial approach.Similarly, Ernest Barker compared the independents to the Nazis. However, not all historical comparisons made during this period pointed to contemporary military dictators. Leon Trotsky, for example, equated Cromwell with Lenin, arguing that "Lenin is a proletarian Cromwell of the 20th century".

Historians of the late 20th century century have re-examined the nature of Cromwell's faith and authoritarian rule. Austin Woolrych explored the issue of dictatorship at length, arguing that Cromwell found himself subject to two competing forces, his obligation to the army and his desire for a lasting commitment by regaining the confidence of the political nation as a whole. Woolrych argued that the dictatorial elements in Cromwell's government arose not so much from his military origins or the involvement of army officers in civilian government as from his interest in God's people and his conviction that suppressing vice and promoting Virtue was the main purpose of government.

Historians such as John Morrill, Blair Worden, and J. C. Davis have developed that theme, revealing the extent to which Cromwell's writings and speeches were replete with Biblical references, and arguing accordingly that his radical actions were driven by his zeal for divine reform.

Locally, Cromwell has retained his popularity in Cambridgeshire, where he was known as 'Lord of the Fences'. In Cambridge there is a commemorative stained glass window in the United Reformed Church, and St. Ives, Cambridgeshire, has erected a monument to him in the town square.

Cromwell in popular culture

Oliver Cromwell's personal shield.

There are several songs and musical works that refer to Cromwell. For example, the comedy group Monty Python released a song titled "Oliver Cromwell" in 1989, a parody of his biography. The song "Oliver's Army" by Elvis Costello talks about the New Model Army. Other songs are much more critical. The song "Young Ned of the Hill", by Terry Woods and Ron Kavana (made popular by The Pogues), criticizes Cromwell's actions in Ireland with the words: "I curse you, Oliver Cromwell, you who violated our motherland, I hope you you are rotting in hell for the horrors you sent us.

On his 2004 album You Are the Quarry, British recording artist Morrissey recorded the song "Irish Blood, English Heart," which contains the lyrics: "I've been dreaming of a time when Englishmen have had enough of Labor and Conservatives, and spit on the name of Oliver Cromwell, and denounce this royal line that still praises him, and will praise him forever.'

The song "Tobacco Island" by Flogging Molly tells of how Cromwell deported Irish laborers to Barbados, with the lyrics: "Cromwell and his roundheads bludgeoned all we knew, fettered lightning bolts of freedom, now we're nothing but stolen goods, dark is the horizon, completely blackened the sun, this rotten bridgetown cage It's where I belong now."

Finnish doom metal band Reverend Bizarre recorded a song called "Cromwell" as part of their album II Crush the Insects in 2005.

The Cromwell character has appeared in many films and works of fiction. Victor Hugo wrote a play about Cromwell, titled Oliver Cromwell, in 1827. In 2003, playwright Steve Newman produced An Evening with Oliver Cromwell, which delved into the relationship between Cromwell and Major General Thomas Harrison. The play opened at Shreeves House in Stratford-upon-Avon, where Cromwell is believed to have stayed before the Battle of Worcester. Cromwell's character has appeared in films such as The Moonraker (1958), played by John Le Mesurier, in Witchfinder General (1968), played by Patrick Wymark, in Cromwell (1970), played by Richard Harris (who, ironically, was Irish), and in To Kill a King (2003), where he was played by Tim Roth. On television he has been portrayed by Peter Jeffrey in the BBC series By the Sword Divided, and in the BBC docudrama Warts and All (2003) he was portrayed by Jim Carter.

Ancestors

Succession