Oliver Cromwell

Royal styles of
Oliver Cromwell,
Lord Protector of the Commonwealth
Royal styles of; Oliver Cromwell,; Lord Protector of the Commonwealth
Reference style	His Highness
Spoken style	Your Highness
Alternative style	Sir

His Highness

Oliver Cromwell
His Highness; Oliver Cromwell
	A 1656 Samuel Cooper portrait of Cromwell
Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland and Ireland
	In office; 16 December 1653 – 3 September 1658
Preceded by	Council of State
Succeeded by	Richard Cromwell
Member of Parliament; for Cambridge
	In office; 1640–1649
Monarch	Charles I
Member of Parliament; for Huntingdon
	In office; 1628–1629
Monarch	Charles I
Personal details
Born	25 April 1599; Huntingdon, Huntingdonshire, Kingdom of England
Died	3 September 1658 (aged 59); Palace of Whitehall, London, The Protectorate
Resting place	Tyburn, London
Nationality	English
Spouse(s)	Elizabeth Bourchier (m. 1620)
Children	Robert; Oliver; Bridget; Richard; Henry; Elizabeth; James; Mary; Frances;
Parents	Robert Cromwell (father); Elizabeth Steward (mother);
Alma mater	Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge
Occupation	Farmer, parliamentarian, military commander
Signature
Military service
Nickname(s)	Old Noll; Old Ironsides
Allegiance	Roundhead
Branch/service	Eastern Association (1643–1645); New Model Army (1645–1646)
Years of service	1643–1651
Rank	Colonel (1643 – bef. 1644); Lieutenant-General of Horse (bef. 1644–1645); Lieutenant-General of Cavalry (1645–1646)
Commands	Cambridgeshire Ironsides (1643 – bef. 1644); Eastern Association (bef. 1644–1645); New Model Army (1645–1646)
Battles/wars	English Civil War (1642–1651): Gainsborough; Marston Moor; Newbury II; Naseby; Langport; Preston; Dunbar; Worcester;

Oliver Cromwell (25 April 1599 – 3 September 1658) was an English military and political leader best known for making England a republic and leading the Commonwealth of England and primarily because of ethnic cleansing in Ireland that was called, by a euphemism, the Cromwellian conquest.

Cromwell's actions during his career seem confusing today. He supported Parliament against the King, but he ordered his soldiers to break up Parliament. Under his rule, the Protectorate said that people's religious beliefs should be respected, but some people who went against what most of them believed were tortured and imprisoned.

Cromwell was the first ruler of England to be a Puritan. He created the New Model Army. Many English people today think he was one of their greatest leaders.

Early life

Oliver Cromwell started off as a gentleman from Huntingdon and first studied at Huntingdon Grammar School. He had a bad relationship with his father. He went on to Sidney Sussex College. At the new small college of the University of Cambridge, he had the chance to talk about thr new Puritan ideas, which he shared. However, he never took a degree because his father died in 1617 while he was studying.

English Civil War

In 1628, Cromwell became a Puritan Member of Parliament and supported Parliament in its quarrel with King Charles I. When the English Civil War broke out in 1642, the King's army was stronger and better prepared than the Parliamentary army. That made Cromwell decide to train men to fight better. Soon, the New Model Army, which he had trained, began to win battles. As a result, Parliament won the war. By then, Cromwell had become very powerful.

Commonwealth: 1649–1653

During the following years, Cromwell conducted two campaigns to subdue the Irish Catholics (1649-1650), and in the Battles of Dunbar and Worcester (1650-1651), he crushed the Scottish Royalists, who had proclaimed Charles II as king, the first son of Charles I, who had been executed in 1649.

Rump Parliament

After the execution, 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.

Takeover of Ireland

In 1652, Cromwell took over Ireland. Many historians believe that Cromwell committed an ethnic cleansing against the Irish Catholics. Cromwell wanted them to move out of eastern Ireland into the island's northwest. According to those historians, Cromwell and his army used massacres, starvation, and threats of execution to force the Irish to leave. According to the historian Frances Stewart, 600,000 Irish people, 43% of the Irish population, died from those policies.

Protectorate: 1653–1658

The House of Commons tried hard to control the army but was unable to. In 1653, Cromwell dissolved the House of Commons; yielded legislative power to 139 people of his confidence; and took the title of Lord Protector of England, Scotland and Ireland, with powers wider than those enjoyed by the monarch. During his tenure, he reorganized public finances, promoted the liberalization of commerce to ensure the prosperity of the mercantile bourgeoisie, promulgated the Navigation Act (1651) through which he imposed English maritime supremacy on the Netherlands, defeated the Netherlands (1654), snatched Jamaica from Spain (1655), persecuted the Catholics, and placed England at the head of the European Protestant countries.

A new constitution, known as the Instrument of Government, made Cromwell Lord Protector for life. He had the power to call and dissolve parliaments.

In 1657, Cromwell was offered the crown by Parliament. Cromwell thought about the offer for six weeks and then rejected it.He was ceremonially reinstalled as "Lord Protector", with greater powers than had previously been granted him under the title, at Westminster Hall.

Cromwell is thought to have suffered from malaria, which had probably first been contracted while on campaign in Ireland. He died at Whitehall on 3 September 1658, the anniversary of his great victories at Dunbar and Worcester.

After Cromwell's death

Cromwell was succeeded as Lord Protector by his first son, Richard Cromwell. 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, which brough the Protectorate to an end. The Commonwealth had a period of chaos, which ended with the restoration of the monarchy in the person of Charles II by Parliament (1660). A year later, Parliament restored Charles II as king.

After the Royalists returned to power, despite his his prudence, the new monarch allowed Cromwell's corpse to be exhumed, hanged in chains, have its head cut off, and exposed in the Tower of London. That was in revenge for Cromwell having Charles I executed.

It is said that Cromwell's head was lost for months until a soldier found it. His skull was passed around as a token until it was buried at Tyburn.

References

Morrill, John Stephen; Adamson, J.S.A. (1990). Oliver Cromwell and the English Revolution. Longman Publishing Group.
Adamson, John (1987). "The English Nobility and the Projected Settlement of 1647", in Historical Journal, 30, 3.
Carlyle, Thomas (ed.) (1904 edition). Oliver Cromwell's letters and speeches, with elucidations Archived 2006-11-02 at the Wayback Machine; Archived 2012-06-26 at the Wayback Machine
Coward, Barry (2003). The Stuart Age: England, 1603-1714. Pearson Education. ISBN 978-0-582-77251-9.
Durston, Christopher (1998). The Fall of Cromwell's Major-Generals, in English Historical Review 1998 113(450): pp. 18–37, ISSN 0013-8266 .
Gardiner, Samuel Rawson (1901). Oliver Cromwell, ISBN 978-1-4179-4961-8. Archived 2011-06-05 at the Wayback Machine
Gaunt, Peter (1996). Oliver Cromwell. Wiley-Blackwell. ISBN 978-0-631-18356-3.
Morrill, John Stephen; Adamson, J.S.A. (1990). Oliver Cromwell and the English Revolution. Longman Publishing Group.
Kenyon, John Philipps; Ohlmeyer, Jane H.; Morrill, John Stephen (2002). The Civil Wars: A Military History of England, Scotland, and Ireland 1638-1660. Oxford University Press, USA. ISBN 978-0-19-280278-1.
Kishlansky, Mark (1990), "Saye What?" in Historical Journal 33, 4.
Lenihan, Padraig (2001). Confederate Catholics at War, 1641-49. Cork University Press.
Morrill, John Stephen; Adamson, J.S.A. (1990). Oliver Cromwell and the English Revolution. Longman Publishing Group.
Morrill, John Stephen; Adamson, J.S.A. (1990). Oliver Cromwell and the English Revolution. Longman Publishing Group.
Cromwell, Oliver (1989). Speeches of Oliver Cromwell. Tuttle Publishing. ISBN 978-0-460-01254-6.
Woolrych, Austin (1982). Commonwealth to Protectorate. Oxford University Press, USA. ISBN 978-0-19-822659-8.
Morrill, John Stephen; Adamson, J.S.A. (1990). Oliver Cromwell and the English Revolution. Longman Publishing Group.
Woolrych, Austin (1987). Soldiers and Statesmen: The General Council of the Army and Its Debates, 1647-1648. ISBN 978-0-19-822752-6.
Beales, Derek; Best, Geoffrey (2005). History Society Church. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-02189-0.
Worden, Blair (2002). Roundhead Reputations: The English Civil Wars and the Passions of Posterity. Penguin. ISBN 978-0-14-100694-9.
Worden, Blair (1977). The Rump Parliament 1648-53. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-29213-9.
Worden, Blair (2000). "Thomas Carlyle and Oliver Cromwell", in Proceedings Of The British Academy 105: pp. 131–170. ISSN 0068-1202 .
Young, Peter (1999). The English Civil War. Da Capo Press, Incorporated. ISBN 978-1-84022-222-7.

Footnotes

↑ Dickens, Charles (1854). A Child's History of England volume 3. Bradbury and Evans. p. 239.
↑ "Cromwell, Oliver". Retrieved 1 January 2013.
↑ Norbrook, David (2000). Writing the English Republic: Poetry, Rhetoric and Politics, 1627-1660. Cambridge University Press. p. 245. ISBN 978-0-521-78569-3.
1 2 Lutz, James M.; Lutz, Brenda J. (2004). Global Terrorism. Psychology Press. p. 193. ISBN 0-415-70051-5.
↑ Levene, Mark (2005). Genocide in the Age of the Nation-State. I.B.Tauris. pp. 55-57. ISBN 978-1-84511-057-4.
↑ Coogan, Tim Pat (2002). The Troubles: Ireland's Ordeal and the Search for Peace. Palgrave Macmillan. p. 6. ISBN 978-0-312-29418-2.
↑ Axelrod, Alan (2003). Profiles in Leadership. Prentice Hall Press. p. 122. ISBN 978-0-7352-0256-6.
↑ Ellis, Peter Berresford (2004). Eyewitness to Irish History. Wiley (TP). p. 108. ISBN 978-0-471-26633-4.
↑ Parliament of England (August 12, 1652). Act for the Settlement of Ireland. Constitution Society. Retrieved April 9, 2016.
↑ Morrill, John (December 2003). Rewriting Cromwell – A Case of Deafening Silences. Archived 2015-09-14 at the Wayback Machine Canadian Journal of History 38 (3): 553.
1 2 Stewart, Frances (2001). War and Underdevelopment. Oxford University Press. p. 51. ISBN 978-0-19-924187-3.
↑ Gaunt, p.204.

Bibliography

Biographies

Morrill, John Stephen; Adamson, J.S.A. (1990). Oliver Cromwell and the English Revolution. Longman Publishing Group.
Ashley, Maurice (1958). The Greatness of Oliver Cromwell (Macmillan). Archived 2012-07-21 at the Wayback Machine
Bennett, Martyn (2006). Oliver Cromwell. Taylor & Francis US. ISBN 978-0-415-31922-5.
Clifford, Alan C. (1999). Oliver Cromwell: The Lessons and Legacy of the Protectorate. Charenton Reformed Pub. ISBN 978-0-9526716-2-6.
Davis, J.C. (2001). Oliver Cromwell. Bloomsbury Academic. ISBN 978-0-340-73118-5.
Fraser, Antonia (2002). Cromwell: Our Chief of Men. Phoenix. ISBN 978-0-7538-1331-7.
Firth, Charles Harding (2004). Oliver Cromwell and the Rule of the Puritans in England. Elibron Classics. ISBN 1-4021-4474-1.
Gardiner, Samuel Rawson (1901). Oliver Cromwell, ISBN 978-1-4179-4961-8. Classic biography. Archived 2011-06-05 at the Wayback Machine
Gaunt, Peter (1996). Oliver Cromwell. Wiley-Blackwell. ISBN 978-0-631-18356-3.
Hill, Christopher (1970). God's Englishman: Oliver Cromwell and the English Revolution. London : Weidenfeld & Nicholson.
Morrill, John Stephen; Adamson, J.S.A. (1990). Oliver Cromwell and the English Revolution. Longman Publishing Group.
Mason, James; Leonard, Angela (1998). Oliver Cromwell and the Civil War and Interregnum. Longman. ISBN 978-0-582-29734-0.
Morrill, John (2004). "Cromwell, Oliver (1599–1658)", in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, (Oxford University Press)
Morrill, John Stephen; Adamson, J.S.A. (1990). Oliver Cromwell and the English Revolution. Longman Publishing Group.
Paul, Robert (1958). The Lord Protector: Religion And Politics In The Life Of Oliver Cromwell. Archived 2012-06-26 at the Wayback Machine
Smith, David Lee (2003). Cromwell and the Interregnum: The Essential Readings. Wiley-Blackwell. ISBN 978-0-631-22725-0.
Wedgwood, Cicely Veronica (1973). Oliver Cromwell. Bloomsbury Academic.
Beales, Derek; Best, Geoffrey (2005). History Society Church. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-02189-0.

Military studies

Durston, Christopher (2000). "'Settling the Hearts and Quieting the Minds of All Good People': the Major-generals and the Puritan Minorities of Interregnum England", in History 2000 85(278): pp. 247–267, ISSN 0018-2648 . Full text online at Ebsco.
Durston, Christopher (1998). "The Fall of Cromwell's Major-Generals", in English Historical Review 1998 113(450): pp. 18–37, ISSN 0013-8266
Firth, Charles Harding (1992). Cromwell's Army: A History of the English Soldier During the Civil Wars, the Commonwealth, and the Protectorate.
Gillingham, John (1976). Cromwell: Portrait of a Soldier. London : Weidenfeld and Nicolson. ISBN 978-0-297-77148-7.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: publisher location (link)
Kenyon, John Philipps; Ohlmeyer, Jane H.; Morrill, John Stephen (2002). The Civil Wars: A Military History of England, Scotland, and Ireland 1638-1660. Oxford University Press, USA. ISBN 978-0-19-280278-1.
Kitson, Frank (2004). Old Ironsides: The Military Biography of Oliver Cromwell. Weidenfeld & Nicolson Limited. ISBN 978-0-297-84688-8.
Marshall, Alan (2004). Oliver Cromwell, Soldier: The Military Life of a Revolutionary at War. Brassey's. ISBN 978-1-85753-343-9.
Woolrych, Austin (1990). "The Cromwellian Protectorate: a Military Dictatorship?" in History 1990 75(244): 207-231, ISSN 0018-2648 . Full text online at Ebsco.
Morrill, John Stephen; Adamson, J.S.A. (1990). Oliver Cromwell and the English Revolution. Longman Publishing Group.
Young, Peter (1999). The English Civil War. Da Capo Press, Incorporated. ISBN 978-1-84022-222-7.

Surveys of era

Coward, Barry (2002). The Cromwellian Protectorate. Manchester University Press. ISBN 978-0-7190-4317-8.
Coward, Barry (2003). The Stuart Age: England, 1603-1714. Pearson Education. ISBN 978-0-582-77251-9.
Davies, Godfrey (1959). The Early Stuarts, 1603-1660. Oxford : Clarendon Press. ISBN 978-0-19-821704-6. {{cite book}}: ISBN / Date incompatibility (help)CS1 maint: publisher location (link)
Korr, Charles P. (1975). Cromwell and the New Model Foreign Policy: England's Policy Toward France, 1649-1658. Berkeley : University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-02281-2.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: publisher location (link)
Macinnes, Allan I. (2005). The British Revolution, 1629-60. Red Globe Press. ISBN 0-333-59750-8.
Morrill, John Stephen; Adamson, J.S.A. (1990). Oliver Cromwell and the English Revolution. Longman Publishing Group.
Trevor-Roper, Hugh (1967). Oliver Cromwell and his Parliaments, in his Religion, the Reformation and Social Change (Macmillan). online Archived 2008-09-02 at Archive-It
Venning, T. (1995). Cromwellian Foreign Policy. Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-0-333-63388-5.
Woolrych, Austin (1982). Commonwealth to Protectorate. Oxford University Press, USA. ISBN 978-0-19-822659-8.
Worden, Blair (2002). Roundhead Reputations: The English Civil Wars and the Passions of Posterity. Penguin. ISBN 978-0-14-100694-9.

Primary sources

Abbott, W.C. (ed.) (1937-47). Writings and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell, 4 vols. The standard academic reference for Cromwell's own words. Archived 2012-06-26 at the Wayback Machine.
Carlyle, Thomas (ed.) (1904 edition), Oliver Cromwell's letters and speeches, with elucidations. Archived 2006-11-02 at the Wayback Machine; Archived 2012-06-26 at the Wayback Machine
Haykin, Michael A. G. (ed.) (1999). To Honour God: The Spirituality of Oliver Cromwell (Joshua Press), Excerpts from Cromwell's religious writings.
Morrill, John (1990). "Textualizing and Contextualizing Cromwell", in Historical Journal 1990 33(3): pp. 629–639. ISSN 0018-246X . Full text online at Jstor. Examines the Carlyle and Abbott editions.
Cromwell, Oliver (1989). Speeches of Oliver Cromwell. Tuttle Publishing. ISBN 978-0-460-01254-6.
Worden, Blair (2000). Thomas Carlyle and Oliver Cromwell, in Proceedings Of The British Academy 105: pp. 131–170, ISSN 0068-1202 .

Other websites

The Cromwell Association
The Cromwell Museum in Huntingdon Archived 2006-10-05 at the Wayback Machine
Chronology of Oliver Cromwell World History Database Archived 2018-10-15 at the Wayback Machine
Biography at the British Civil Wars & Commonwealth website Archived 2013-09-26 at the Wayback Machine

Preceded by Charles I as King	Lord Protector of England, Scotland and Ireland	Succeeded by Richard Cromwell

[1] Dickens, Charles (1854). A Child's History of England volume 3. Bradbury and Evans. p. 239.

[2] "Cromwell, Oliver". Retrieved 1 January 2013.

[norbrook-3] Norbrook, David (2000). Writing the English Republic: Poetry, Rhetoric and Politics, 1627-1660. Cambridge University Press. p. 245. ISBN 978-0-521-78569-3.

[lutz-4] 1 2 Lutz, James M.; Lutz, Brenda J. (2004). Global Terrorism. Psychology Press. p. 193. ISBN 0-415-70051-5.

[5] Levene, Mark (2005). Genocide in the Age of the Nation-State. I.B.Tauris. pp. 55-57. ISBN 978-1-84511-057-4.

[6] Coogan, Tim Pat (2002). The Troubles: Ireland's Ordeal and the Search for Peace. Palgrave Macmillan. p. 6. ISBN 978-0-312-29418-2.

[7] Axelrod, Alan (2003). Profiles in Leadership. Prentice Hall Press. p. 122. ISBN 978-0-7352-0256-6.

[8] Ellis, Peter Berresford (2004). Eyewitness to Irish History. Wiley (TP). p. 108. ISBN 978-0-471-26633-4.

[9] Parliament of England (August 12, 1652). Act for the Settlement of Ireland. Constitution Society. Retrieved April 9, 2016.

[morrill-10] Morrill, John (December 2003). Rewriting Cromwell – A Case of Deafening Silences. Archived 2015-09-14 at the Wayback Machine Canadian Journal of History 38 (3): 553.

[stewart-11] 1 2 Stewart, Frances (2001). War and Underdevelopment. Oxford University Press. p. 51. ISBN 978-0-19-924187-3.

[12] Gaunt, p.204.

His Highness Oliver Cromwell
A 1656 Samuel Cooper portrait of Cromwell

Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland and Ireland
In office 16 December 1653 – 3 September 1658
Preceded by	Council of State
Succeeded by	Richard Cromwell
Member of Parliament for Cambridge
In office 1640–1649
Monarch	Charles I
Member of Parliament for Huntingdon
In office 1628–1629
Monarch	Charles I

Personal details
Born	25 April 1599 Huntingdon, Huntingdonshire, Kingdom of England
Died	3 September 1658 (aged 59) Palace of Whitehall, London, The Protectorate
Resting place	Tyburn, London
Nationality	English
Spouse(s)	Elizabeth Bourchier (m. 1620)
Children	Robert Oliver Bridget Richard Henry Elizabeth James Mary Frances
Parents	Robert Cromwell (father) Elizabeth Steward (mother)
Alma mater	Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge
Occupation	Farmer, parliamentarian, military commander
Signature
Military service
Nickname(s)	Old Noll; Old Ironsides
Allegiance	Roundhead
Branch/service	Eastern Association (1643–1645); New Model Army (1645–1646)
Years of service	1643–1651
Rank	Colonel (1643 – bef. 1644); Lieutenant-General of Horse (bef. 1644–1645); Lieutenant-General of Cavalry (1645–1646)
Commands	Cambridgeshire Ironsides (1643 – bef. 1644); Eastern Association (bef. 1644–1645); New Model Army (1645–1646)
Battles/wars	English Civil War (1642–1651): Gainsborough Marston Moor Newbury II Naseby Langport Preston Dunbar Worcester