Leader in the English Revolution (1640-1660) and the first commoner to rule England.

 

He contributed to the evolution of constitutional government and religious toleration.

 

English soldier and statesman who led parliamentary forces in the English Civil Wars; he was lord protector of England, Scotland, and Ireland from 1653 to 1658 during the republican Commonwealth.

 

As one of the generals on the parliamentary side in the English Civil War against King Charles I, Cromwell helped to bring about the overthrow of the Stuart monarchy, and, as lord protector, he raised his country's status once more to that of a leading European power from the decline it had gone through since the death of Queen Elizabeth I. A man of outstanding gifts and a forceful character, he was one of the most remarkable rulers in modern European history, for although a convinced Calvinist, he believed deeply in the value of religious toleration.

 

At the same time Cromwell's victories at home and abroad helped to enlarge and sustain a Puritan attitude of mind, both in Great Britain and in North America, that continued to influence political and social life until recent times.

 

Youth and early public career

 

Cromwell was born at Huntingdon in eastern England in 1599, the only son of Robert Cromwell and Elizabeth Steward. His father had been a member of one of Queen Elizabeth's parliaments and, as a landlord and justice of the peace, was active in local affairs. Robert Cromwell died when his son was 18, but his widow lived to the age of 89. Oliver went to the local grammar school and then for a year attended Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge. After his father's death he left Cambridge to look after his widowed mother and sisters but is believed to have studied for a time at Lincoln's Inn in London, where country gentlemen were accustomed to acquire a smattering of law. In August 1620 he married Elizabeth, daughter of Sir James Bourchier, a merchant in the City of London. By her he was to have five sons and four daughters.

 

Cromwell in Parliament

 

Cromwell had already become known in the Parliament of 1628–29 as a fiery and somewhat uncouth Puritan, who had launched an attack on Charles I's bishops. He believed that the individual Christian could establish direct contact with God through prayer and that the principal duty of the clergy was to inspire the laity by preaching.

 

Thus he had contributed out of his own pocket to the support of itinerant Protestant preachers or “lecturers” and openly showed his dislike of his local bishop at Ely, a leader of the High Church party, which stood for the importance of ritual and episcopal authority.

 

He criticized the bishop in the House of Commons and was appointed a member of a committee to investigate other complaints against him. Cromwell, in fact, distrusted the whole hierarchy of the Church of England, though he was never opposed to a state church. He therefore advocated abolishing the institution of the episcopate and the banning of a set ritual as prescribed in The Book of Common Prayer. He believed that Christian congregations ought to be allowed to choose their own ministers, who should serve them by preaching and extemporaneous prayer.

 

Cromwell's election to the Parliaments of 1640 for the borough of Cambridge was certainly the result of close links between himself and radical Puritans in the city council. In Parliament he bolstered his reputation as a religious hothead by promoting radical reform. In fact, he was too outspoken for the leaders of the opposition, who ceased to use him as their mouthpiece. Indeed, though Cromwell shared the grievances of his fellow members over taxes, monopolies, and other burdens imposed on the people, it was his religion that first brought him into opposition to the King's government.

 

When in November 1641 John Pym and his friends presented to King Charles I a “Grand Remonstrance,” consisting of over 200 clauses, among which was one censuring the bishops “and the corrupt part of the clergy, who cherish formality and superstition” in support of their own “ecclesiastical tyranny and usurpation,” Cromwell declared that had it not been passed by the House of Commons he would have sold all he had “the next morning, and never have seen England more.”

 

The Remonstrance was not accepted by the King, and the gulf between him and his leading critics in the House of Commons widened. A month later Charles vainly attempted to arrest five of them for treason: Cromwell was not yet sufficiently prominent to be among these. But when in 1642 the King left London to raise an army, and events drifted toward civil war, Cromwell began to distinguish himself not merely as an outspoken Puritan but also as a practical man capable of organization and leadership. In July he obtained permission from the House of Commons to allow his constituency of Cambridge to form and arm companies for its defence, in August he himself rode to Cambridge to prevent the colleges from sending their valuable plate to be melted down for the benefit of the King, and as soon as the war began he enlisted a troop of cavalry in his birthplace of Huntingdon. As a captain he made his first appearance with his troop in the closing stages of the Battle of Edgehill (Oct. 23, 1642) where Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex, was commander in chief for Parliament in the first major contest of the war.

 

During 1643 Cromwell acquired a reputation both as a military organizer and a fighting man. From the very beginning he had insisted that the men who served on the parliamentarian side should be carefully chosen and properly trained, and he made it a point to find loyal and well-behaved men regardless of their religious beliefs or social status. Appointed a colonel in February, he began to recruit a first-class cavalry regiment. While he demanded good treatment and regular payment for his troopers, he exercised strict discipline. If they swore, they were fined; if drunk, put in the stocks; if they called each other Roundheads—thus endorsing the contemptuous epithet the Royalists applied to them because of their close cropped hair—they were cashiered; and if they deserted, they were whipped. So successfully did he train his own cavalrymen that he was able to check and re-form them after they charged in battle. That was one of Cromwell's outstanding gifts as a fighting commander.

 

In the following year he was made colonel of a cavalry regiment, which he led to successive victories. Cromwell quickly achieved a reputation as an effective military administrator, as well as a fierce fighter, and in 1644 he achieved the rank of lieutenant general of horse in the army of his kinsman, the earl of Manchester. In July of that year, he made a decisive contribution to the victory of Parliament’s forces at Marston Moor.

 

By 1647 the army headed by Oliver Cromwell had chased King Charles I out of England, and a commonwealth had been established.

 

Cromwell was now a hero among those who supported Parliament. He was also one of the few army leaders who supported the more radical religious groups demanding that the established Church of England be abolished and replaced with a far less orthodox and tolerant church. After the war ended, many members of the House of Commons were more conservative than the army. These were mainly Presbyterians, who supported a more rigid church structure than Cromwell did. They were afraid of the army’s power and wanted to disband it. They also sought to strip Cromwell of his command to prevent him from extending the fighting to Ireland, where Catholics were revolting against the English.

 

Cromwell was prepared to return to civilian life, but political agitation within the army gave him new prominence. Soldiers were worried about receiving their back pay, and they were angry because the Presbyterians in the House of Commons refused to honour them for their loyal service. Throughout the spring of 1647 Cromwell acted as mediator between elected representatives of the soldiers and the House of Commons, which was attempting to disband the irate army. When the struggle between the army and Parliament could not be resolved, Cromwell threw in his lot with the soldiers. His presence served to restore discipline and moderate the demands of the angry troops, and he was able to prevent a mutiny.

 

In October 1647 in the town of Putney, members of the army held a debate on the form that the new English government should take and who should be allowed to vote. Colonel Thomas Rainborowe represented the views of the Levellers, a group that believed in equal rights for all. Here he argues that people cannot be governed without their own consent.

 

Meanwhile Charles who had  escaped to the Isle of Wight made an alliance with the Scots to invade England. This led to the start of the Second Civil War. Cromwell again united the army and put down an attack in Wales before defeating the Scots in the bloody Battle of Preston in August 1648.

 

Parliamentary commissioners had been sent to the Isle of Wight in order to make one final effort to reach an agreement with the King. But Cromwell told the governor of the Isle of Wight that the King was not to be trusted, that concessions over religion must not be granted, and that the army might be considered a lawful power capable of ensuring the safety of the people and the liberty of all Christians.

 

Officers in the southern army, frustrated by the intransience of the King, took decisive action. They drew up a remonstrance to Parliament complaining about the negotiations in the Isle of Wight and demanding the trial of the King as a Man of Blood. Cromwell finally accepted Charles's trial as an act of justice. He was one of the 135 commissioners in the High Court of Justice and, when the King refused to plead, he signed the death warrant.

 

First chairman of the Council

 

After the British Isles were declared a republic and named the Commonwealth, Oliver Cromwell served as the first chairman of the Council of State, the executive body of a one-chamber Parliament. During the first three years following Charles I's execution, however, he was chiefly absorbed in campaigns against the Royalists in Ireland and Scotland. He waged a ruthless campaign against the Irish defeating them thoroughly. On his return to London in May 1650 Cromwell was ordered to lead an army into Scotland, where Charles II had been acknowledged as its new king. Fairfax had refused the command; so on June 25 Cromwell was appointed captain general in his place. He felt more tender toward the Scots, most of whom were fellow Puritans, than toward the Catholic Irish. The campaign proved difficult, and during the winter of 1650 Cromwell was taken ill. But he defeated the Scots with an army inferior in numbers at Dunbar on Sept. 3, 1650, and a year later, when Charles II and the Scots advanced into England, Cromwell destroyed that army at Worcester.

 

This battle ended the civil wars. Cromwell now hoped for pacification, a political settlement, and social reform. He pressed through an “act of oblivion” (amnesty), but the army became more and more discontented with Parliament. It believed that the members were corrupt and that a new Parliament should be called. Once again Cromwell tried to mediate between the two antagonists, but his sympathies were with his soldiers. When he finally came to the conclusion that Parliament must be dissolved and replaced, he called in his musketeers and on April 20, 1653, expelled the members from the House. He asserted that they were “corrupt and unjust men and scandalous to the profession of the Gospel”; two months later he set up a nominated assembly to take their place. In a speech on July 4 he told the new members that they must be just, and, “ruling in the fear of God,” resolve the affairs of the nation.

 

Cromwell seems to have regarded this Parliament as a constituent body capable of establishing a Puritan republic. But just as he had considered the previous Parliament to be slow and self-seeking, he came to think that the new parliament - The Assembly of Saints, as it was called - was too hasty and too radical. He also resented the fact that it did not consult him. Later he described this experiment of choosing Saints to govern as an example of his own “weakness and folly.”

 

He sought moderate courses and also wanted to end the naval war begun against the Dutch in 1652. When in December 1653, after a coup d'état planned by Major General John Lambert and other officers, the majority of the Assembly of Saints surrendered power into Cromwell's hands, he decided reluctantly that Providence had chosen him to rule. As commander in chief appointed by Parliament, he believed that he was the only legally constituted authority left. He therefore accepted an “Instrument of Government” drawn up by Lambert and his fellow officers by which he became lord protector, ruling the three nations of England, Scotland, and Ireland with the advice and help of a council of state and a Parliament, which had to be called every three years.

 

Administration as lord protector

 

Before Cromwell summoned his first Protectorate Parliament on Sept. 3, 1654, he and his Council of State passed more than 80 ordinances embodying a constructive domestic policy. His aim was to reform the law, to set up a Puritan Church, to permit toleration outside it, to promote education, and to decentralize administration. The resistance of the lawyers somewhat dampened his enthusiasm for law reform, but he was able to appoint good judges both in England and Ireland. He was strongly opposed to severe punishments for minor crimes, saying: “to see men lose their lives for petty matters . . . is a thing that God will reckon for.” For him murder, treason, and rebellion alone were subject to capital punishment. During his Protectorate, committees known as Triers and Ejectors were set up to ensure that a high standard of conduct was maintained by clergy and schoolmasters. In spite of resistance from some members of his council Cromwell readmitted Jews into the country. He concerned himself with education, was an excellent chancellor of Oxford University, founded a college at Durham, and saw to it that grammar schools flourished as they had never done before.

 

Foreign and economic policies

 

In 1654 Cromwell brought about a satisfactory conclusion to the Anglo-Dutch War, which, as a contest between fellow Protestants, he had always disliked. The question then arose of how best to employ his army and navy. His Council of State was divided, but eventually he resolved to conclude an alliance with France against Spain. He sent an amphibious expedition to the Spanish West Indies, and in May 1655 Jamaica was conquered. As the price for sending an expeditionary force to Spanish Flanders to fight alongside the French he obtained possession of the port of Dunkirk. He also interested himself in Scandinavian affairs; although he admired King Charles X of Sweden, his first consideration in attempting to mediate in the Baltic was the advantages that would result for his own country. In spite of the emphasis Cromwell laid on the Protestant interest in some of his speeches, the guiding motive in his foreign policy was national and not religious benefit.

 

His economic and industrial policy followed mainly traditional lines. But he opposed monopolies, which were disliked by the country and had only benefitted the court gentry under Queen Elizabeth and the first two Stuarts. For this reason the East Indian trade was thrown open for three years, but in the end Cromwell granted the company a new charter (October 1657) in return for financial aid. Satisfactory methods of borrowing had not yet been discovered; hence—like those of practically all European governments of his time—Cromwell's public finances were by no means free from difficulties.

 

Relations with Parliament

 

When Cromwell's first Parliament met he justified the establishment of the Protectorate as providing for “healing and settling” the nation after the civil wars. Arguing that his government had prevented anarchy and social revolution, he was particularly critical of the Levellers who, he said, wished to destroy well-tested institutions “whereby England hath been known for hundreds of years.” He believed that they wanted to undermine “the ‘natural' magistracy of the nation” as well as “make the tenant as liberal a fortune as the landlord.” He also thought that the spiritual anarchy that followed the destruction of the Anglican Church had gone too far, for now ordained preachers were frequently interrupted or shouted down in their pulpits. A radical in some directions, such as in seeking the reform of the laws, Cromwell now adopted a conservative attitude because he feared that the overthrow of the monarchy might lead to political collapse.

 

But vociferous republicans, who became leaders of this newly elected Parliament, were unwilling to concentrate on legislation, questioning instead the whole basis of Cromwell's government. Cromwell insisted that they must accept the “four fundamentals” of the new constitution that, he argued, had been approved both by “God and the people of these nations.” The four fundamentals were government by a single person and Parliament; the regular summoning of parliaments, which must not be allowed to perpetuate themselves; the maintenance of “liberty of conscience”; and the division of the control of the armed forces between the protector and Parliament. Cromwell said that he would sooner be “rolled into my grave and buried with infamy, than I can give my consent” to the “wilful throwing away of this Government, . . . so owned by God, so approved by men.” He therefore required all members of Parliament, if they wished to keep their seats, to sign an engagement to be faithful to a protector and Parliament and to promise not to alter its basic character. Except for 100 convinced republicans, the members agreed to do so but were still more concerned with rewriting the constitution than reforming the laws as desired by the protector. As soon as he could legitimately do so (Jan. 22, 1655), Cromwell dissolved Parliament.

 

In the aftermath of that Parliament, Cromwell faced a Royalist insurrection. The rising fizzled out—too many of those who had secretly pledged support to the King waited to see what others were doing—but Cromwell was aware that local magistrates and militia commissioners had closely monitored the situation. He could rely on the acquiescence of the gentry but not on any commitment from them. He therefore determined to increase security by sending senior army officers (the major generals) to recruit veterans of the civil wars into an efficient militia, the costs of which would be defrayed by collections from all those convicted of royalism in the1640s. The major generals also were encouraged to promote “a reformation of manners”—a program of moral rearmament. They ran into serious trouble when the next Parliament met a year early (in 1656, to vote on taxes to pay for a war by land and sea against the Spanish). In that Parliament Cromwell's broad policy of religious toleration also came under fire, especially in relation to the Quakers. In the spring of 1657 Parliament voted to invite Cromwell to become king, since kingship was an office “interwoven with the fundamental laws” of the nation, as Cromwell himself stated, and there would be an end to constant innovation. Torn between his desire for “settlement” and his continued yearning for a godly reformation, he hesitated for many weeks and then declined the title.

 

Cromwell did agree, however, to a new constitutional arrangement that restored many of the trappings of monarchy, including the restoration of a House of Lords. That decision provoked a republican backlash, and Cromwell's final parliamentary session (January–February 1658) ended in bitter recrimination and in accusations of a new “Egyptian bondage.”

 

Ever since the campaign in Ireland, Cromwell's health had been poor. In August 1658, after his favourite daughter, Elizabeth, died of cancer, he contracted malaria and was taken to London with the intention of living in St. James's Palace. But he died in Whitehall at three o'clock on September 3, the anniversary of two of his greatest victories. The embalmers bungled their work, and his putrefying body was secretly interred several weeks before his state funeral and the interment of a probably empty coffin in Westminster Abbey on Nov. 23, 1658. In 1661, after the Restoration of Charles II and on the anniversary of the regicide, a corpse that may or may not have been Cromwell's was exhumed and hung up at Tyburn, where criminals were executed. That body was then buried beneath the gallows. But the head was stuck on a pole on top of Westminster Hall, where it is known to have remained until the end of Charles II's reign.

 

Assessment

 

Oliver Cromwell was by no means an extreme Puritan. By nature he was neither cruel nor intolerant. He cared for his soldiers, and when he differed from his generals he did not punish them severely. He was devoted to his old mother, his wife, and family. While he concerned himself with the spiritual welfare of his children because he believed that “often the children of great men have not the fear of God before their eyes,” he committed the mistake of not preparing for the practical tasks of government his eldest son, Richard, whom in the last days of his life he nominated to succeed him as protector. Music and hunting were among his recreations. He delighted in listening to the organ and was an excellent judge of horses. He was known to smoke, to drink sherry and small beer, and to prefer English food; he permitted dancing at the marriage of his youngest daughter. In his younger days he indulged in horseplay with his soldiers, but he was a dignified ruler.

 

As lord protector, Cromwell was much more tolerant than in his fiery Puritan youth. Once bishops were abolished and congregations allowed to choose their own ministers, he was satisfied. Outside the church he permitted all Christians to practice their own religion so long as they did not create disorder and unrest. He allowed the use of The Book of Common Prayer in private houses and even the English Roman Catholics were better off under the protectorate than they had been before.

 

Although many Quakers were kept in prison for disturbing the peace, Cromwell was on friendly terms with George Fox, the founder of the society of Friends, and explored religious questions with him. When in the winter of 1656 a Quaker entered Bristol in imitation of Christ's entry into Jerusalem, Cromwell tried, though unsuccessfully, to save him from the fury of Parliament, which voted heavy punishments on the blasphemer. The year before, Cromwell interviewed two of the leaders of the Fifth Monarchy Men, an extreme sect: he pointed out to them that they had been imprisoned for sedition but emphasized that no one would hinder them from preaching the Gospel of Christ.

 

In politics Cromwell held no fixed views except that he was opposed to what he called arbitrary government. Before the execution of Charles I, he contemplated the idea of placing one of Charles's sons upon the throne. Cromwell also resisted the abolition of the House of Lords. In 1647 he said that he was not “wedded and glued” to any particular form of government. After the Assembly of Saints failed, he summoned two elected parliaments (1654–55 and 1656–58), but he was never able to control them. His failure to do so has been attributed to “lack of that parliamentary management by the executive which, in correct dosage, is the essential nourishment of any sound parliamentary life” (H.R. Trevor-Roper).

 

In between these two parliaments (1655–56), he sanctioned the government of the country by major generals of the Horse Militia who were made responsible for law and order in groups of counties. But he soon abandoned this experiment when it met with protests and reverted to more normal methods of government. In the spring of 1657 he was tempted by an offer of the crown by a majority in Parliament on the ground that it fitted in better with existing institutions and the English common law. In the end he refused to become king because he knew that it would offend his old republican officers. Nevertheless, in the last year and a half of his life he ruled according to a form of government known as “the Petition and Advice.” This in effect made him a constitutional monarch with a House of Lords whose members he was allowed to nominate as well as an elected House of Commons. But he found it equally difficult to govern either with or without parliaments.

 

Although in the late 17th century Cromwell was execrated as a brave bad man, it was admitted that he had made his country great. In the 18th century, on the other hand, he was considered a nauseating hypocrite, while the 19th century, under the influence of the writer and historian Thomas Carlyle, regarded him as a constitutional reformer who had destroyed the absolutism of Charles I.

 

Modern critics are more discriminating. His belief in God's providence is analysed in psychological terms. Marxists blame him for betraying the cause of revolution by suppressing the radical movement in the army and resisting the policy of the Levellers. On the whole, he is regarded only in a very limited sense as a dictator, but rather as a patriotic ruler who restored political stability after the civil wars and contributed to the evolution of constitutional government and religious toleration.

 

Extracts from:

Encyclopædia Britannica

Encarta

Wikipedia