Portrait of Oliver Cromwell, 1599-1658.
Rose from obscurity to become the
most successful military and political leader of the Civil Wars. Lord Protector
of England from 1654-8, he was offered—and refused—the Crown itself.
Oliver Cromwell was born in Huntingdon on 25 April
1599 and baptised at the church of St John four days later. He was the second
son of the ten children of Robert Cromwell (d.1617) and Elizabeth Steward
(d.1654). The family estate derived from Oliver's great-grandfather, Morgan
Williams, a brewer from Glamorgan who settled in London. He married Katherine,
the sister of Thomas Cromwell, who later became chancellor to Henry VIII.
Williams benefited from the confiscation of church lands at the Reformation and
changed his family name to Cromwell in honour of his benefactor.
Oliver attended the free school attached to the
hospital of St John in Huntingdon, where he was taught by Dr Thomas Beard, then
spent a year at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge. However, his university
career was cut short by the death of his father in June 1617. He returned home
to manage his family estate and to look after his widowed mother and seven
unmarried sisters.
Militant Puritan
In August 1620, Cromwell married Elizabeth Bourchier
(1598–1665), daughter of Sir James Bourchier, a London merchant. The marriage
was long and stable and produced nine children. Cromwell and his growing family
settled in Huntingdon. Thanks to connections between the Cromwells and the
powerful Montagu family, he was elected MP for Huntingdon in the Parliament of
1628, where he became associated with the opposition to King Charles that
culminated in the declaration of the Petition of Right in June 1628. At some
time during the late 1620s, following a period of illness and depression,
Cromwell experienced a profound spiritual awakening that left him with deep and
uncompromising Puritan beliefs.
In 1631, Cromwell's fortunes were in decline. He was
forced to sell nearly all his property around Huntingdon and to lease a
farmstead at St Ives, where he worked as a farmer for five years. The tide
turned in 1636 when Cromwell's childless and widowed maternal uncle Sir Thomas
Steward died, leaving him a substantial inheritance, including a house next to
St Mary’s Church in Ely and the position of collector of tithes in the two Ely
parishes of St Mary's and Holy Trinity.
Cromwell's improved social status and his connections
with local Puritans led to his nomination as a freeman of the borough of
Cambridge and election as MP for Cambridge in the two Parliaments of 1640.
During the first week of the Long Parliament, he made a passionate speech that
called attention to the injustice of the imprisonment of John Lilburne, and
during the following month he was prominent in parliamentary attacks on
episcopacy. Although he was not regarded as a fluent speaker, Cromwell's
passion and sincerity gained him a reputation as a solid supporter of
opposition leaders such as John Pym and Cromwell's own cousin, John Hampden.
Cavalry Commander
On the outbreak of the First Civil War in August 1642,
Cromwell took up arms for Parliament. He led one of the earliest military
actions of the war when with 200 lightly-armed volunteers he prevented the
King's men from carrying off the silver plate of the Cambridge colleges.
Cromwell raised a troop of sixty horsemen and effectively secured
Cambridgeshire for Parliament. In October 1642, Cromwell's troop joined the
army of the Earl of Essex and was present during the later stages of the battle
of Edgehill. The superiority of the Royalist horse impressed upon Cromwell the
need for a well-trained Parliamentarian cavalry corps. Returning to East
Anglia, he was careful to recruit only "godly, honest men" as his
troopers and to lead them with firm discipline. His innate skills as a cavalry
commander were in evidence at the skirmishing around Gainsborough in July 1643.
Having helped to secure most of East Anglia for Parliament by the summer of
1643, Cromwell was appointed governor of Ely and promoted to colonel in the new
Eastern Association army raised by the Earl of Manchester.
Cromwell at Marston MoorDetail
from Cromwell at Marston Moor by Ernest Crofts
Rising to prominence in the Eastern Association, Cromwell
attained the rank of lieutenant-general of horse in January 1644. He played a
major role in Parliament's victory at Marston Moor, where his troopers routed
both Prince Rupert's and Lord Goring's cavaliers. Rupert himself is said to
have coined the name "Ironside" for Cromwell, which became popular
with the army and was extended to his regiment. However, Cromwell's
encouragement of religious zealots among his officers and men drew criticism
from Major-General Crawford, a Scottish Presbyterian attached to the Eastern
Association. Cromwell became increasingly critical of the leadership of the
Earl of Manchester, and denounced him before the House of Commons in November
1644 for his unwillingness to take decisive action against the Royalists.
A leading supporter of the Self-Denying Ordinance,
Cromwell was one of the few Members of Parliament exempted from resigning his
commission in the army under its terms. He was officially appointed
lieutenant-general of horse under Sir Thomas Fairfax in the New Model Army just
before the decisive Parliamentarian victory at the battle of Naseby in June
1645, during which Cromwell routed Langdale's Northern Horse and rallied the
Ironsides for a charge against the Royalist infantry that decided the outcome
of the battle. Despite having no military training or experience prior to 1642,
Cromwell was generally regarded as one of the greatest soldiers in England by
the time he and Fairfax received the surrender of Oxford in June 1646.
Army Grandee
Cromwell supported the Agitators in the conflict
between the Army and Parliament of 1647. He was a firm advocate of
parliamentary authority but he lost patience with those Presbyterian MPs who
seemed willing to risk another civil war rather than settle the soldiers'
grievances honourably. Acting independently of Fairfax, and in close
association with his son-in-law Henry Ireton, he used the threat of military
force to oust the Presbyterian Eleven Members from the House of Commons in
August 1647. However, Cromwell opposed Leveller demands for manhood suffrage
("one man, one vote") and other social and political reforms. He
tried to adopt a conciliatory attitude towards the King, proposing to restore
him to power in the interests of achieving a peaceful settlement. This alienated
radicals in the Army and in Parliament, who came to regard Cromwell as a
hypocrite motivated by his own self-interest. In any case, Cromwell's attempts
to secure a peaceful settlement were frustrated by the King's refusal to
compromise and by his negotiations to bring a Scottish army into England, thus
provoking another civil war.
The Second Civil War
When war broke out In 1648, Cromwell marched to crush
a Royalist uprising in South Wales while Fairfax dealt with the Royalists in
Kent and Essex. Cromwell then went north to take command of Parliament's forces
against the Duke of Hamilton's Engager army and their English Royalist allies.
In August 1648, Cromwell led a daring campaign that resulted in the total
defeat of the Scots at the battle of Preston. He then marched into Scotland and
negotiated with the Marquis of Argyll to remove all Engagers and Royalist
sympathisers from office in Scotland.
Cromwell was in the north clearing up the last
Royalist military resistance during the dramatic events of November and
December 1648, when Ireton and the council of officers resolved to prosecute
King Charles, the "Man of Blood". Cromwell delayed his return to
London until the day after the Army's enemies in Parliament had been ejected in
Pride's Purge. He claimed to have known nothing of the design, but nevertheless
expressed his approval of the purge. Having realised at last that Charles could
not be trusted, and recognising that the Army was determined to avenge itself
upon the King, Cromwell became a relentless supporter of the King's trial and
subsequent execution in January 1649. He had come to believe that regicide was
an act of justice and the will of God.
Ireland and Scotland
Cromwell in Ireland
1649-50Cromwell in Ireland 1649-50
In 1649, Cromwell suppressed the Leveller mutinies in
the New Model Army and prosecuted John Lilburne, whom he held personally
responsible for the unrest amongst the soldiery.
After meticulous preparations, Cromwell then took the
army to Ireland (1649-50) where Royalist supporters of the Stuart dynasty had
formed an alliance with the Irish Confederates. Cromwell's Irish campaign was a
military success, and by the time he returned to England in May 1650, the
provinces of Ulster, Leinster and Munster were substantially under the control
of the English Commonwealth. However, Cromwell's reputation was indelibly
stained by notorious massacres that took place during the attacks on Drogheda
and Wexford in the autumn of 1649, which have lived on in Irish folk memory,
making his name into one of the most hated in Irish history.
When Charles II was proclaimed King of Scots in
Edinburgh with the support of the Covenanters, Fairfax declined to lead an army
of invasion into Scotland and resigned his commission. Cromwell was appointed
Captain-General and commander-in-chief of the Army in his place and marched
into Scotland in July 1650. Although initially outmanoeuvred by Alexander
Leslie, he succeeded in defeating the Scots at the battle of Dunbar (3
September 1650), which is regarded as the greatest of Cromwell's victories.
After spending nearly a year trying unsuccessfully to persuade the Covenanters
that Charles II was an unsuitable king for a godly nation, Cromwell lured
Charles and the Scots into an attempt to invade England. Cromwell pursued from
the north and decisively defeated the Scots and Royalists at the battle of
Worcester on 3 September 1651, the anniversary of Dunbar and the last major
battle of the civil wars.
The Commonwealth
After the execution of Charles I and the declaration
of the republic in 1649, the English Commonwealth was governed by the so-called
Rump Parliament and the Council of State. The Rump Parliament was regarded as
an interim government and was expected to prepare for a permanent representative
but divisions arose between factions in Parliament and in the Army over what
form the new government should take.
When the military campaigns in Ireland and Scotland
were over, Army leaders became increasingly impatient over Parliament's
lethargy in formulating the new representative. Although Cromwell attempted to
moderate the Army's more extreme demands, he too finally lost patience. On 20
April 1653, he led a body of musketeers to Westminster and forcibly expelled
the Rump Parliament. His exact reasons for doing so are unclear; he may have
come to believe that Parliament was planning to perpetuate itself. There were
no plans for an alternative government in place and Cromwell made no attempt to
take power himself.
The Rump Parliament was replaced by the Nominated
Assembly, popularly known as "Barebone's Parliament", which first met
in July 1653. Cromwell regarded the Assembly as a "Parliament of
Saints" and expected it to bring righteous, godly government to the
Commonwealth. The Nominated Assembly was the most radical constitutional
experiment of the 1650s, but the legal and ecclesiastical reforms it tried to
introduce were regarded as too extreme by moderates. In December 1653—less than
six months after its inauguration—moderates manoeuvred to dissolve the Assembly
and to hand power over to Cromwell, whom they regarded as having granted it to
them in the first place.
Lord Protector
Cromwell-coat-of-armsProtectorate
coat-of-arms
Headed by Major-General Lambert, the council of
officers proposed a new constitution. In discussions with the officers,
Cromwell made it clear that he did not want to be made king. Seeking to
maintain links with the ancient constitution yet distance himself from the
disgraced monarchy, Cromwell proposed a revival of the title "Lord
Protector", which had precedents going back to the 15th century. Under the
terms of the Instrument of Government, executive power now passed to an elected
Lord Protector advised by a Council of State. Cromwell was declared Lord Protector
for life and formally installed at Westminster Hall on 16 December 1653. His
decision to accept the office of Protector alienated many republicans and
religious radicals, who regarded it as a betrayal of the principles for which
the civil wars had been fought. In April 1654, Cromwell moved into Whitehall
Palace, the former residence of King Charles.
“No man rises so high as he who
knows not whither he goes.”
Cromwell, as recorded in the
memoirs of Cardinal de Retz
Domestic Policy
Despite opposition from many quarters, Cromwell held
on to power throughout the 1650s by retaining the loyalty of the Army. He also
tended to grant important positions in civil and military government to those
with personal attachments to himself or who had reason to be grateful to him for
their advancement. Senior army commands were granted to officers who had served
with him during the civil wars, particularly those connected to his own family
such as his son-in-law Charles Fleetwood and brother-in-law John Disbrowe. The
dependence of the Protectorate régime upon a standing army in England, armies
of occupation in Scotland and Ireland as well as a powerful navy led to
unprecedented levels of taxation. Despite an aggressive foreign policy,
Cromwell gradually reduced army numbers and levels of taxation, but this was
never enough to satisfy his critics or to deal with arrears of pay in the army
and navy.
Cromwell's overriding concern in domestic policy was
the creation of a broadly-based national church with toleration of radical
Protestant groups who remained outside it but were prepared to keep the peace.
During the first year of the Protectorate, a central commission of clergy and
laymen was established to examine candidates for the ministry
("Triers") and local commissions were appointed to eject ministers
who proved unsuitable ("Ejectors"). Although Cromwell's religious
policy made steady progress towards reconciliation among the Protestant sects,
the emergence of the Quakers, who opposed all organised churches, was
disruptive and alarming.
Foreign Policy
Within months of his inauguration as Protector,
Cromwell negotiated a treaty to bring the first Anglo-Dutch war to an end,
having never been in favour of war against a Protestant nation. However, his
hopes of forming a grand alliance of the Protestant states of Europe came to
nothing, and during 1654, Cromwell became involved in secret negotiations with
the two great Catholic powers France and Spain.
The two nations were at war with one another and each
sought an alliance with the Protectorate against the other. Cromwell finally
opted for an alliance with France and secretly promoted the Western Design to
attack Spanish colonies in the West Indies. The Anglo-Spanish War resulted in
the seizure of Jamaica in 1655 and Dunkirk in 1658, but Cromwell's anti-Spanish
foreign policy was criticised as damaging to English trade and commerce.
Miltary Rule
In September 1654, Cromwell summoned the First
Protectorate Parliament, which was elected on a wider franchise than any
previous parliament and which included MPs representing Scotland and Ireland at
Westminster for the first time. Distrust between the Army leaders and civilian
politicians became strikingly clear, however. Heated constitutional debates,
amendments to the Instrument of Government aimed at strengthening Parliament's
powers at the expense of the Protector's, and criticism of Cromwell's
leadership by republican MPs prompted him to dissolve this Parliament at the
earliest possible opportunity, in January 1655.
Following the Royalist insurrections in March 1655
(Penruddock's Uprising), Cromwell felt obliged to impose direct military rule
rather than attempt to govern through another civilian assembly. He had already
come to regard the failure of the Western Design in its principal objectives as
a sign of God's displeasure at the nation's progress. Consequently, England and
Wales were divided into twelve districts, each governed by a Major-General
answerable directly to the Protector. The Major-Generals were charged not only
with maintaining security but also with enforcing moral reform in the
localities. The Rule of the Major-Generals proved deeply unpopular. Growing
civilian disquiet and the need to finance military operations against Spain
forced Cromwell to call the Second Protectorate Parliament in September 1656.
Bowing to pressure from MPs who insisted that the Major-Generals were
unconstitutional and against law and custom, Cromwell agreed to abolish the
system in January 1657.
“King in all but Name”
Engraving of Oliver Cromwell19th
century engraving of Matthew Noble's statue of Cromwell
The Protectorate gradually adopted the trappings of a
monarchy. Cromwell was usually addressed as "your Highness" and by
1656 he was rewarding his loyal followers with knighthoods. In February 1657, a
group of MPs headed by Lord Broghill presented a new constitution known as The
Humble Petition and Advice under which Cromwell was formally offered the crown.
This was primarily an attempt to stabilise the constitution under a
civilian-led style of government. Cromwell's powers would be limited as king
because they would then be defined by precedent. Furthermore, since the offer
came from an elected Parliament, there could be no further doubts regarding the
legality of the Cromwellian régime. However, after much agonising and in the
face of strong opposition from republicans and army leaders, Cromwell finally
decided to reject the offer, saying "I will not build Jericho again".