Oliver Cromwell was born on the 25th of April 1599 in Huntingdon, England, to Robert Cromwell and Elizabeth Steward, but his early life offered no hint of the power he would soon wield. He was the fifth child of ten, the only son to survive infancy, and his family's wealth was modest, placing them at the very bottom of the landed gentry. His father inherited only a small house and land that generated an income of up to £300 a year, a sum near the bottom of the range for their social class. Cromwell attended Huntingdon Grammar School and then Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, a recently founded institution with a strong Puritan ethos, yet he left in June 1617 without taking a degree immediately after his father's death. For years, he lived as a farmer, raising chickens and sheep, selling eggs and wool to support his family, a lifestyle that resembled that of a yeoman farmer rather than a future dictator. In 1628, he was elected to Parliament from Huntingdon, but he made little impression, delivering only one poorly received speech against the Arminian Bishop Richard Neile. The next eleven years saw King Charles I rule without Parliament, and Cromwell's life was marked by financial and personal failure, leading him to seek treatment for depression and even contemplate emigration to New England before being prevented by the government. It was not until the late 1630s, after inheriting properties in Ely and becoming a committed Puritan, that his fortunes began to turn, setting the stage for a man who would one day rule a nation.
The Godly Captain and The New Model Army
When the English Civil War began in August 1642, Cromwell's only military experience was in the local county militia, yet he quickly demonstrated a prowess that would change the course of history. He recruited a cavalry troop in Cambridgeshire after blocking a valuable shipment of silver plate from Cambridge colleges meant for the King, and although he arrived too late to participate in the indecisive Battle of Edgehill, his troop was soon recruited into a full regiment. By the time of the Battle of Marston Moor in July 1644, Cromwell had risen to the rank of lieutenant general of horse, and his cavalry's success in breaking the ranks of the Royalist cavalry and then attacking their infantry from the rear was a major factor in the Parliamentarian victory. He fought at the head of his troops, was slightly wounded in the neck, and stepped away briefly to receive treatment before returning to help secure the victory. Cromwell's experience at the indecisive Second Battle of Newbury in October 1644 led to a serious dispute with his superior, Edward Montagu, the Earl of Manchester, whom he believed to be less than enthusiastic in his conduct of the war. Cromwell famously replied to accusations of recruiting men of low birth as officers by stating, If you choose godly honest men to be captains of horse, honest men will follow them. He would rather have a plain russet-coated captain who knows what he fights for and loves what he knows than that which you call a gentleman and is nothing else. This philosophy of meritocracy over aristocracy became the cornerstone of his military success. At the critical Battle of Naseby in June 1645, Cromwell led his wing with great success, routing the Royalist cavalry and effectively ending the King's hopes of victory. He also participated in the defeat of the last sizeable Royalist field army at the Battle of Langport on the 10th of July 1645, and subsequently mopped up resistance in Devon and Cornwall. Cromwell's ability to lead and train his men, combined with his moral authority, proved decisive in a war fought mostly by amateurs, and his introduction of close-order cavalry formations, with troopers riding knee to knee, was a major factor in his success.
Cromwell's invasion of Ireland from 1649 to 1650 remains one of the most controversial and brutal chapters in British history, driven by a deep-seated hostility to Catholicism and a belief that he was executing the righteous judgement of God. He landed at Dublin on the 15th of August 1649, and within months, his forces had taken the fortified port towns of Drogheda and Wexford to secure supply lines from England. At the Siege of Drogheda in September 1649, his troops killed nearly 3,500 people after the town's capture, including around 2,700 Royalist soldiers, all men carrying arms, some civilians, prisoners, and Roman Catholic priests. Cromwell wrote afterwards, I believe we put to the sword the whole number of the defendants. I do not think thirty of the whole number escaped with their lives. The massacre at Wexford in October 1649 was equally devastating, with another 2,000 Irish troops and up to 1,500 civilians killed in the confusion, and much of the town burned. Cromwell justified the sacking of Drogheda as revenge for the massacres of Protestant settlers in Ulster in 1641, calling the massacre the righteous judgement of God on these barbarous wretches. Although he claimed to protect civilians who surrendered, the scale of death was staggering, and the subsequent Act for the Settlement of Ireland 1652 confiscated all Catholic-owned lands, giving them to Scottish and English settlers and Parliament's financial creditors. The last Catholic-held town, Galway, surrendered in April 1652, and the last Irish Catholic troops capitulated in April 1653, but the public practice of Roman Catholicism was banned, and Catholic priests were killed when captured. The total excess deaths for the entire period of the Wars of the Three Kingdoms in Ireland was estimated by the 17th-century economist William Petty to be 600,000 out of a total Irish population of 1,400,000 in 1641, a figure that has led modern historians to debate whether the Commonwealth conducted a deliberate programme of ethnic cleansing.
The King Who Would Not Die
The execution of Charles I on the 30th of January 1649 was a moment that shattered the doctrine of the divine right of kings and established the Commonwealth of England, but it was a decision that Cromwell had to make with his own hands. After the Second Civil War broke out in 1648, Cromwell put down Royalist uprisings in south Wales and then marched north to defeat a pro-Royalist Scottish army at Preston, winning a decisive victory with an army of 9,000 against an enemy twice as large. During 1648, his letters and speeches became heavily based on biblical imagery, and he began to believe that God had spoken against both the King and Parliament as lawful authorities. In December 1648, a troop of soldiers headed by Colonel Thomas Pride forcibly removed from the Long Parliament all those who were not supporters of the Grandees in the New Model Army, an episode known as Pride's Purge. Cromwell, who was still in the north of England dealing with Royalist resistance, returned to London and became a determined supporter of those pushing for the King's trial and execution. He approved Thomas Brook's address to the House of Commons, which justified the trial and the King's execution on the basis of the Book of Numbers, chapter 35, verse 33, stating that the land cannot be cleansed of the blood that is shed therein, but by the blood of him that shed it. Charles's death warrant was signed by 59 of the trying court's members, including Cromwell, who was the third to sign it. When the officers charged with supervising the execution refused to sign the order for the actual beheading, Cromwell seized a pen and scribbled out the order, handing the pen to Colonel Hacker who stooped to sign it. The execution could now proceed, and Charles I was beheaded, leaving his son Charles II in exile and the Commonwealth in a fragile state of existence.
The Lord Protector and The Crown He Refused
After the King's execution, a republic was declared, known as the Commonwealth of England, and Cromwell remained a member of the Rump Parliament, appointed to a Council of State, but the political situation was fractured and unstable. In April 1653, Cromwell was so angered by the Rump's failure to set dates for new elections and to produce an alternative for tithes that he cleared the chamber and dissolved the Parliament by force, supported by about 40 musketeers. He snatched up the ceremonial mace, the symbol of Parliament's power, and demanded that the bauble be taken away, an act that marked the end of the Rump Parliament. Power passed temporarily to a council that debated what form the constitution should take, and after the dissolution of Barebone's Parliament in December 1653, John Lambert put forward a new constitution known as the Instrument of Government. This made Cromwell undertake the chief magistracy and the administration of government, and he was sworn as Lord Protector on the 16th of December 1653, wearing plain black clothing rather than any monarchical regalia. As Lord Protector, he was paid £100,000 a year, and although he stated that Government by one man and a parliament is fundamental, he believed that social issues should be prioritised. In 1657, Cromwell was offered the crown by Parliament as part of a revised constitutional settlement, presenting him with a dilemma since he had been instrumental in abolishing the monarchy. He agonised for six weeks over the offer, and in a speech on the 13th of April 1657, he made clear that God's providence had spoken against the office of King, stating, I would not seek to set up that which Providence hath destroyed and laid in the dust, and I would not build Jericho again. Instead, he was re-installed as Lord Protector on the 26th of June 1657, sitting on King Edward's Chair, and imitated a royal coronation as he wore many royal regalia, such as a purple robe, a sword of justice, and a sceptre.
The Storm That Followed The Death
Cromwell's body was exhumed from Westminster Abbey on the 30th of January 1661, the 12th anniversary of the execution of Charles I, and was subjected to a posthumous execution, as were the remains of John Bradshaw and Henry Ireton. His body was hanged in chains at Tyburn, London, and then thrown into a pit, and his head was cut off and displayed on the roof of Westminster Hall at the Palace of Westminster until at least 1684. Afterwards, it was owned by various people, including a documented sale in 1814 to Josiah Henry Wilkinson, and it was publicly exhibited several times before being buried beneath the floor of the antechapel at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, in 1960. The exact position was not publicly disclosed, but a plaque marks the approximate location. Many people began to question whether the body mutilated at Tyburn and the head seen on Westminster Hall were Cromwell's, and these doubts arose because it was assumed that Cromwell's body was reburied in several places between his death in September 1658 and the exhumation of January 1661, in order to protect it from vengeful royalists. The stories suggest that his bodily remains are buried in London, Cambridgeshire, Northamptonshire, or Yorkshire, and the Cromwell vault was later used as a burial place for Charles II's illegitimate descendants. In Westminster Abbey, the site of Cromwell's burial was marked during the 19th century by a floor stone in what is now the RAF Chapel reading, The burial place of Oliver Cromwell 1658, 1661, a silent testament to a man whose legacy remains as controversial as the head that once stared down from the roof of Westminster Hall.