Oliver Cromwell

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Oliver Cromwell , Political Leader Born: 25 April 1599 Birthplace: Huntingdon, England Died: 3 September 1658 Best Known As: Lord Protector of
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{{Infobox President| name =Oliver Cromwell| nationality =England| image =Cooper, Oliver Cromwell.jpg| caption =An unfinished Portrait miniature of Oliver Cromwell by Samuel Cooper, 1657.] of the
Commonwealth of England, Scotland and Ireland [1653 [1658 (as King)| successor =[Richard Cromwell, [Cambridgeshire, [London (John Clarke) (b. 1626)
[Henry Cromwell, Lord Deputy of Ireland (b. 20 Jan 1628)
Elizabeth Cromwell (b. 1629)
Mary Cromwell (b. est 1637)
Frances Cromwell (b. est 1638)]| religion =Independent (religion)| signature=Autograph-OliverCromwell.png|-->

Oliver Cromwell (25 April 1599 – 3 September 1658) was an English people Military history of the United Kingdom and Politics of England leader best known for his involvement in making England, Scotland and Ireland into a republican Commonwealth of England and for his brutal Cromwellian conquest of Ireland.

Overview He was born in Huntingdon, seventy miles north of London, into the ranks of the middle gentry, and remained relatively obscure for his first forty years, slipping down to the level of yeoman farmer for a number of years in the 1630s due to personal and financial circumstances. However, he returned to the ranks of the gentry thanks to an inheritance from his uncle. A religious conversion experience during the same decade made an Independent (religion) style of Puritanism a core tenet of his life and actions.

Cromwell was returned to Parliament as Member of Parliament (MP) for Cambridge in the Short Parliament (1640) and Long Parliament, and later entered the English Civil War on the side of the "Roundheads" or Parliamentarians. A brilliant soldier (nicknamed "Old Ironside (cavalry)") he rose from leading a single cavalry troop to eventual command of the entire British Army. Cromwell was the third person to sign Charles I of England's death warrant in 1649 and was an MP in the Rump Parliament (1649-1653), being chosen by the Rump to take command of the English campaign in Ireland during 1649-50. He then led a campaign against the Scottish army between 1650-51. On 20 April 1653 he dismissed the Rump Parliament by force, setting up a short-lived nominated assembly known as the Barebone's Parliament before being made Lord Protector of England, Scotland, and Ireland on 16 December 1653 until his death. When the English Restoration in 1660, his corpse was Posthumous execution.

Cromwell's career is full of contradictions. He was a List of regicides of Charles I who agonised over whether to accept the British monarchy legitimacy. He was a Parliament of the United Kingdom#History who ordered his soldiers to Dissolution of parliament List of Parliaments of England. Under his rule, the The Protectorate advocated religious liberty of conscience (not to be confused with freedom of religion) but allowed blasphemy to be tortured. He advocated equitable justice but imprisoned those who criticised his raising Taxation in the United Kingdom outside the agreement of Parliament. Admirers hail him as a strong, stabilising and stately leader who brought international respect, overthrew tyrant and promoted republicanism and liberty, whilst critics ridicule him as an overly ambitious hypocrisy who betrayed the cause of liberty, imposed puritanical values and showed scant respect for the nation's traditions.

Cromwell has been a very controversial figure in History of the British Isles—a regicide dictator to some historians (such as David Hume and Christopher Hill (historian)) and a hero of liberty to others (such as Thomas Carlyle and Samuel Rawson Gardiner). In Britain he is held in high esteem, being elected as one of the Top 10 Britons of all time in a BBC poll. However, his measures against Irish Catholics have been characterised by some historians as genocidal or near-genocidal,Eyewitness to Irish History. Peter Berresford Ellis. John Wiley & Sons Inc 2002. Page 108. ISBN-13: 978-0471266334. "It was to be the justification for Cromwell's genocidal campaign and settlement."
Genocide in the Age of the Nation State: Volume 2. Mark Levene. 2005. Page 55, 56 & 57. A sample quote describes the Cromwellian campaign and settlement as "a conscious attempt to reduce a distinct ethnic population". ISBN-13: 978-1845110574
Nationalism and Rationality. Albert Breton. Cambridge University Press 1995. Page 248. "Oliver Cromwell offered Irish Catholics a choice between genocide and forced mass population transfer"
The Troubles: Ireland's Ordeal and the Search for Peace. Tim-Pat Coogan. 2002. Page 6. "The massacres by Catholics of Protestants, which occurred in the religious wars of the 1640s, were magnified for propagandist purposes to justify Cromwell's subsequent genocide." ISBN-13: 978-0312294182
The existential nature of such conflict is emphasized by Schmitt: 'There exists no rational purpose, no norm no matter how true, no program no matter how exemplary, no social ideal no matter how beautiful, no legitimacy nor legality which could justify men in killing each other for this reason. If such physical destruction of human life is not motivated by an existential threat to one's own way of life, then it cannot be justified.'
International Institute of Social History' Website (Based in the Netherlands), "Roman Catholic Irish were subdued to ethnic cleansing policy by Oliver Cromwell. After his suppression of a rebellion against the English in 1649 he ordered that the Irish were allowed to live west of the Shannon river only. During guerrilla warfare that followed thousands of Irish died or were sold as slaves to America. Cromwell had promised Irish land to the business investors and soldiers who had helped him perform his expeditions. The 'Act for the Attainder of the Rebels in Ireland' of 17 September 1656 is part of this programme. The land of rebels is attained and 'rebels' are defined in such a way that all Catholics match. By the end of 1656 four fifths of the Irish land was in Protestant hands."
War and Underdevelopment: Economic and Social Consequences of Conflict v. 1 (Queen Elizabeth House Series in Development Studies), Frances Stewart, Oxford University Press. 2000. "Faced with the prospect of an Irish alliance with Charles II, Cromwell carried out a series of massacres to subdue the Irish. Then, once Cromwell had returned to England, the English Commissary, General Henry Ireton, adopted a deliberate policy of crop burning and starvation, which was responsible for the majority of an estimated 600,000 deaths out of a total Irish population of 1,400,000."James M Lutz, Brenda J Lutz, 2004, Global Terrorism, Routledge:London, p.193: "The draconian laws applied by Oliver Cromwell in Ireland were an early version of ethnic cleansing. The Catholic Irish were to be expelled to the northwestern areas of the island. Relocation rather than extermination was the goal."Albert Breton, 1995, Nationalism and Rationality, Cambridge University Press, p 248: "Oliver Cromwell offered the Irish Catholics a choice between genocide and forced mass population transfer. They could go 'To Hell or to Connaught!'"Brendan O'Leary, Thomas M. Callaghy, Ian S. Lustick, 2001, Right-Sizing the State: The Politics of Moving Borders, Oxford University Press: Ethnic expulsion is a right-peopling strategy, the intended, direct or indirect, forcible movement by state officials, or sanctioned paramilitaries, of the whole or part of a community from its current homeland, usually beyond the sovereign borders of the state. A population can also be forcibly 'repatriated', or pushed back towards its alleged 'homeland', as happened to blacks during the high tide of apartheid in South Africa. We may distinguish two paradigm forms: creating 'Serbian exiles', that is coerced transfers within a state or empire, and 'creating refugees', that is, the expulsion of populations beyond the sovereign border. Examples of the former include the treatment of indigenous peoples throughout the world; the Irish Catholics moved by Oliver Cromwell to Connaught during 1649-50 and after; and national minorities within the Soviet Union."Mark Levene, 2005, Genocide in the Age of the Nation-State, I.B.Tauris: London: "Considered overall, an Irish population collapse from 1.5 or possibly over 2 million inhabitants at the onset of the Irish wars in 1641, to no more than 850,000 eleven years later represents an absolutely devastating demographic catastrophe. Undoubted the largest proportion of this massive death toll did not arise from direct massacre but from hunger and then bubonic plagues, especially from the outbreak between 1649 and 1652. Even so, the relationship to the worst years of the fighting is all too apparent. Act of Settlement of Ireland, and the parliamentary legislation which succeeded it the following year, is the nearest thing on paper in the English, and more broadly British, domestic record, to a programme of state-sanctioned and systematic ethnic cleansing of another people. The fact that it did not include 'total' genocide in its remit, or that it failed to put into practice the vast majority of its proposed expulsions, ultimately, however, says less about the lethal determination of its makers and more about the political, structural and financial weakness of the early modern English state. For instance, though the Act begins rather ominously by claiming that it was not its intention to extirpate the whole Irish nation, it then goes on to list five categories of people who, as participators in or alleged supporters of the 1641 rebellion and its aftermath, would automatically be forfeit of their lives. It has been suggested that as many as 100,000 people would have been liable under these headings. A further five categories - by implication an even larger body of 'passive' supporters of the rebellion - were to be spared their lives but not their property."Mark Levene and Penny Roberts, 1999, The Massacre in History, Berghahn Books: Oxford: "Further evidence for a massacre-ridden civil war in Ireland appears to come from population figures. Though military and civilian deaths from civil war were not light in England or in Scotland, in neither country did war inflict a clear drop in population level. It was otherwise in Ireland. Up to 1641 the population had risen steadily: one million in 1500, 1.4 in 1600, 2.1 in 1641; but then there occurred a sharp fall so that numbers stood at 1.7 million by 1672. After this, renewed growth took the population to 2.2 million in 1687, and 2.8 in 1712. By far the greater part of this massive decline - some four hundred thousand people or 19 percent of the 1641 population - took place in the 1640s and 1650, and was the direct or indirect result of over a decade of warfare. Ireland's civil war death toll is comparable to the devastation suffered during the Second World War by countries such as the Soviet Union, Poland, or Yugoslavia, and suggests that the war-time massacres which so contributed to these horrific modern figures, also occurred in mid-seventeenth-century Ireland." and in Ireland itself he and his memory are widely despised."Of all these doings in Cromwell's Irish Chapter, each of us may say what he will. Yet to everyone it will at least be intelligible how his name came to be hated in the tenacious heart of Ireland". John Morley, Biography of Oliver Cromwell. Page 298. 1900 and 2001. ISBN-13: 978-1421267074.; "Cromwell is still a hate figure in Ireland today because of the brutal effectiveness of his campaigns in Ireland. Of course, his victories in Ireland made him a hero in Protestant England." British National Archives web site. Accessed March 2007; From a history site dedicated to the English Civil War. "... making Cromwell's name into one of the most hated in Irish history". Accessed March 2007. Site currently offline. WayBack Machine holds archive here ; From the Channel 4 History site: "Cromwell's name has always been execrated by Irish Catholics for the massacre at Drogheda. He is also hated for the transplanting of Protestant settlers to Ireland, a policy established in the reign of Elizabeth I." Accessed March 2007.

Early years: 1599–1640 Relatively few sources survive about the first forty years of Cromwell's life. He was born in Huntingdon on 25 April 1599, to Robert Cromwell (c.1560-1617). He was descended from Catherine Cromwell (born circa 1482), an older sister of Tudor statesman Thomas Cromwell. Catherine was married to Morgan ap Williams, son of William ap Yevan of Wales and Joan Tudor (Jasper Tudor a granddaughter of Owen Tudor, which would make Cromwell a distant cousin of his Stuart foes). The family line continued through Richard Cromwell (c. 1500–1544), Henry Cromwell (c. 1524–January 6 1603), then to Oliver's father Robert Cromwell (c. 1560–1617), who married Elizabeth Steward or Stewart (1564–1654) on the day of Cromwell's birth. Thus, Thomas was Oliver's second great-granduncle.

The social status of Cromwell's family at his birth was relatively low within the gentry class. His father was a younger son, and one of ten siblings who survived into adulthood. As a result, Robert's inheritance was limited to a house in Huntingdon and a small amount of land. This land would have generated an income of up to £300 a year, near the bottom of the range of gentry incomes.Gaunt, p.31. Cromwell himself, much later in 1654, said "I was by birth a gentleman, living neither in considerable height, nor yet in obscurity.Speech to the First Protectorate Parliament, 4 September 1654, quoted in Roots, Ivan (1989). Speeches of Oliver Cromwell (Everyman classics), ISBN 0-460-01254-1, p.42.

. The building now houses the Cromwell Museum.

Records survive of Cromwell's baptism and of his attendance at Hinchingbrooke School. He went on to study at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, which was then a recently founded college with a strong puritan ethos. He left in June 1617 without taking a degree, immediately after the death of his father. Early biographers claim he then attended Lincoln's Inn, but there is no record of him in the Inn's archives. He is likely to have returned home to Huntingdon, given that his mother was widowed, his seven sisters were unmarried, and there was hence a need to take charge of the family.Morrill, John (1990). "The Making of Oliver Cromwell", in Morrill, John (ed.), Oliver Cromwell and the English Revolution (Longman), ISBN 0-582-01675-4, p.24.

On 22 August 1620, Cromwell married Elizabeth Bourchier (1598–1665). They would have eight children; Cromwell's successor Richard Cromwell (1626–1712) was their third son.Gardiner, Samuel Rawson (1901). Oliver Cromwell, ISBN 1-4179-4961-9, p.4; Gaunt, Peter (1996). Oliver Cromwell (Blackwell), ISBN 0-631-18356-6, p.23. Elizabeth's father Sir James Bourchier was a London merchant who owned extensive land in Essex and had strong connections with puritan gentry families there. The marriage brought Cromwell into contact with Oliver St John and also with leading members of the London merchant community, and behind them the influence of the earls of Robert Rich and Henry Rich, 1st Earl of Holland. Membership of this godly network would prove crucial to Cromwell’s military and political career. At this stage, though, there is little evidence of Cromwell’s own religion. His letter in 1626 to Henry Downhall, an Arminian minister, suggests that Cromwell had yet to be influenced by radical puritanism.Morrill, p.34. However, there is evidence that Cromwell went through a period of personal crisis during the late 1620s and early 1630s. He sought treatment for valde melancolicus (Clinical depression) from London doctor Theodore de Mayerne in 1628. He was also caught up in a fight amongst the gentry of Huntingdon over a new charter for the town, as a result of which he was called before the Privy Council in 1630.Morrill, pp.24–33.

In 1631 Cromwell sold most of his properties in Huntingdon—probably as a result of the dispute—and moved to a farmstead in St Ives, Cambridgeshire. This was a major step down in society compared to his previous position, and seems to have had a major emotional and spiritual impact. A 1638 letter survives from Cromwell to the wife of Oliver St John, and gives an account of his spiritual awakening. The letter outlines how, having been the "the chief of sinners", Cromwell had been called to be among "the congregation of the firstborn".Morrill, p.34. The language of this letter, which is saturated with biblical quotations and which represents Cromwell as having been saved from sin by God's mercy, places his faith firmly within the Independent (religion) beliefs that the Reformation had not gone far enough, that much of England was still living in sin and unsaved, and that Catholic beliefs and ceremonies needed to be fully removed from the church. Cromwell's conversion to these beliefs may have been prompted by the step down from his previous position in Huntingdon.

In 1636, Cromwell inherited control of various properties in Ely from his uncle on his mother's side, as well as his uncle's job as tithe collector for Ely Cathedral. As a result, his income is likely to have risen to around £3-400 per year.Gaunt, p.34. As a result, by the end of the 1630s Cromwell had returned to the ranks of the gentry. He had become a committed puritan and had also established important family links to leading godly families in Essex and London. In his own eyes, he had come through a period of crisis by virtue of God’s providence.

Member of Parliament: 1628–1629 and 1640–1642 Cromwell became the Member of Parliament for Huntingdon in the Parliament of 1628–1629, as a client of the Montagus. He made little impression: records for the Parliament show only one speech (against the Arminian Bishop Richard Neile), which was poorly received.Morrill, pp.25-26. After dissolving this Parliament, Charles I of England ruled without a Parliament for the next eleven years. When Charles faced the Scottish rebellion known as the Bishops' Wars, shortage of funds forced him to call a Parliament again in 1640. Cromwell was returned to this Parliament as member for Cambridge, but it lasted for only three weeks and became known as the Short Parliament.

A second Parliament was called later the same year. This was to become known as the Long Parliament. Cromwell was again returned to this Parliament as member for Cambridge. As with the Parliament of 1628-9, it is likely that Cromwell owed his position to the patronage of others, which would explain the fact that in the first week of the Parliament he was in charge of presenting a petition for the release of John Lilburne, who had become a puritan martyr after being arrested for importing religious tracts from Holland. Otherwise it is unlikely that a relatively unknown member would have been given this task. For the first two years of the Long Parliament, Cromwell was linked to the godly group of aristocrats in the House of Lords and MPs in the Commons with which he had already established familial and religious links in the 1630s, such as the earls of Robert Devereux, 3rd Earl of Essex, Robert Rich and Francis Russell, 4th Earl of Bedford, Oliver St John, and William Fiennes, 1st Viscount Saye and Sele.Adamson, John (1990). "Oliver Cromwell and the Long Parliament", in Morrill, p.57. At this stage, the group had an agenda of godly reformation: the executive checked by regular parliaments, and the moderate extension of liberty of conscience. Cromwell appears to have taken a role in some of this group's political manoeuvres. In May 1641, for example, it was Cromwell who put forward the second reading of the Annual Parliaments Bill, and who later took a role in drafting the Root and Branch Bill for the abolition of episcopacy.Adamson, p.53.

Military Commander: 1642–1646 Failure to resolve the issues before the Long Parliament led to armed conflict between Parliament and Charles I in the autumn of 1642. Before joining Parliament's forces, Cromwell's only military experience was in the trained bands, the local county militia. Now 43 years old, he recruited a cavalry troop in Cambridgeshire after blocking a shipment of silver from Cambridge colleges that was meant for the king. Cromwell and his troop then fought at the indecisive battle of Edgehill in October 1642. The troop was recruited to be a full regiment in the winter of 1642/3, making up part of the Eastern Association under the Edward Montagu, 2nd Earl of Manchester. Cromwell gained experience and victories in a number of successful actions in East Anglia in 1643, notably at the battle of Gainsborough on July 28.http://www.british-civil-wars.co.uk/military/1643-lincolnshire.htm#gainsborough After this he was made governor of Ely and made a colonel in the Eastern Association.

By the time of the Battle of Marston Moor in July, 1644, Cromwell had risen to the rank of Lieutenant General of horse in Manchester's army. The success of his cavalry in breaking the ranks of the Royalist horse and then attacking their infantry from the rear at Marston Moor was a major factor in the Parliamentarian victory in the battle. Cromwell fought at the head of his troops in the battle and was wounded in the head. Marston Moor secured the north of England for the Parliamentarians, but failed to end Royalist resistance. The indecisive outcome of the second Second Battle of Newbury in October meant that by the end of 1644, the war still showed no signs of ending. Cromwell's experience at Newbury, where Manchester had let the King's army slip out of an encircling manoeuvre, led to a serious dispute with Manchester, whom he believed to be less than enthusiastic in his conduct of the war. Manchester later accused Cromwell of recruiting men of "low birth" as officers in the army, to which he replied: "If you choose godly honest men to be captains of horse, honest men will follow them... I 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".Letter to Sir William Spring, September 1643, quoted in Carlyle, Thomas (ed.) (1904 edition). Oliver Cromwell's letters and speeches, with elucidations, vol I, p.154; also quoted in Young and Holmes (2000). The English Civil War, (Wordsworth), ISBN 1-84022-222-0, p.107. At this time, Cromwell also fell into dispute with Major-General Lawrence Crawford, a Scottish Covenanter Presbyterian attached to Manchester's army, who objected to Cromwell's encouragement of unorthodox Independents and Anabaptists. Cromwell's differences with the Scots (at that time allies of the Parliament) would later develop into outright enmity in 1648 and in 1650-51.

Partly in response to the failure to capitalise on their victory at Marston Moor, Parliament passed the Self-Denying Ordinance in early 1645. This forced members of the Commons and the Lords such as Manchester to choose between civil office and military command. All of them — with the exception of Cromwell, whose commission was given continued extensions — chose to renounce their military positions. The Ordinance also decreed that the army be "remodeled" on a national basis, replacing the old county associations. In April 1645 the New Model Army finally took to the field, with Sir Thomas Fairfax in command and Cromwell as Lieutenant-General of cavalry, and second-in-command. By this time, the Parliamentarian's field army outnumbered the King's by roughly two to one. At the Battle of Naseby in June 1645, the New Model smashed the King's major army. Cromwell led his wing with great success at Naseby, again routing the Royalist cavalry. At the battle of Langport on July 10, Cromwell participated in the defeat of the last sizable Royalist field army. Naseby and Langport effectively ended the King's hopes of victory and the subsequent Parliamentarian campaigns involved taking the remaining fortified Royalist positions in the west of England. In October 1645, Cromwell besieged and took Basing House, where he was accused of killing 100 of the 300 man Royalist garrison there after they had surrendered.Kenyon, John & Ohlmeyer, Jane (eds.) (2000). The Civil Wars: A Military History of England, Scotland, and Ireland 1638-1660 (Oxford University Press), ISBN 0-19-280278-X, p.141 Cromwell also took part in sieges at Bridgwater, Sherborne, Bristol, Devizes, and Winchester, then spending the first half of 1646 mopping up resistance in Devon and Cornwall. Charles I surrendered to the Scots on 5 May 1646, effectively ending the First English Civil War. Cromwell and Fairfax took the formal surrender of the Royalists at Oxford in June.

Cromwell had no formal training in military tactics, and followed the common practice of ranging his cavalry in three ranks and pressing forward. This method relied on impact rather than firepower. His strengths were in an instinctive ability to lead and train his men, and in his moral authority. In a war fought mostly by amateurs, these strengths were significant, and are likely to have contributed to the discipline of Cromwell’s cavalry.Woolrych, Austin (1990). Cromwell as a soldier, in Morrill, pp.117–118.

Politics: 1647–1649 In February 1647 Cromwell suffered from an illness that kept him out of political life for over a month. By the time of his recovery, the Parliamentarians were split over the issue of the king. A majority in both Houses pushed for a settlement that would pay off the Scottish army, disband much of the New Model Army, and restore Charles I in return for a Presbyterian settlement of the Church. Cromwell rejected the Scottish model of Presbyterianism, which threatened to replace one authoritarian hierarchy with another. The New Model Army, radicalised by the failure of the Parliament to pay the wages it was owed, petitioned against these changes, but the Commons declared the petition unlawful. During May 1647, Cromwell was sent to the army's headquarters in Saffron Walden to negotiate with them, but failed to reach agreement. In June 1647, a troop of cavalry under Cornet George Joyce seized the king from Parliament's imprisonment. Although Cromwell is known to have met with Joyce on 31 May, it is impossible to be sure what Cromwell's role in this event was.Coward, pp.188-95.

Cromwell and Henry Ireton then drafted a manifesto — the "Heads of Proposals" — designed to check the powers of the executive, set up regularly elected parliaments, and restore a non-compulsory episcopalian settlement.Although there is debate over whether Cromwell and Ireton were the authors of the Heads of Proposals or acting on behalf of Saye and Sele: Adamson, John (1987). "The English Nobility and the Projected Settlement of 1647", in Historical Journal, 30, 3; Kishlansky, Mark (1990). "Saye What?" in Historical Journal 33, 4. Many in the army, such as the Levellers led by John Lilburne, thought this was insufficient demanding full political equality for all men, leading to tense debates in Putney during the autumn of 1647 between Cromwell, Ireton and the army. The Putney Debates ultimately broke up without reaching a resolution.Woolrych, Austin (1987). Soldiers and Statesmen: the General Council of the Army and its Debates (Clarendon Press), ISBN 0-19-822752-3, ch.2–5. The debates, and the escape of Charles I from Hampton Court on 12 November, are likely to have hardened Cromwell's resolve against the king.

The failure to conclude a political agreement with the king eventually led to the outbreak of the Second English Civil War in 1648, when the King tried to regain power by force of arms. Cromwell first put down a Royalist uprising in south Wales and then marched north to deal with a pro-Royalist Scottish army (the Engagers) who had invaded England. At Battle of Preston, Cromwell, in sole command for the first time with an army of 9,000, won a brilliant victory against an army twice that size.Gardiner, pp.144–47; Gaunt (1997) 94-97.

During 1648, Cromwell's letters and speeches started to become heavily based on biblical imagery, many of them meditations on the meaning of particular passages. For example, after the battle of Preston, study of Psalms 17 and 105 led him to tell Parliament that "they that are implacable and will not leave troubling the land may be speedily destroyed out of the land". A letter to Oliver St John in September 1648 urged him to read Book of Isaiah 8, in which the kingdom falls and only the godly survive. This letter suggests that it was Cromwell's faith, rather than a commitment to radical politics, coupled with Parliament's decision to engage in negotiations with the king at the Treaty of Newport, that convinced him that God had spoken against both the king and Parliament as lawful authorities. For Cromwell, the army was now God's chosen instrument.Adamson, pp.76–84. The episode shows Cromwell’s firm belief in "Providentialism"—that God was actively directing the affairs of the world, through the actions of "chosen people" (whom God had "provided" for such purposes). Cromwell believed, during the Civil Wars, that he was one of these people, and he interpreted victories as indications of God's approval of his actions, and defeats as signs that God was directing him in another direction.

In December 1648, those MPs who wished to continue negotiations with the king were prevented from sitting by a troop of soldiers headed by Thomas Pride, an episode soon to be known as Pride's Purge. Those remaining, known as the Rump Parliament, agreed that Charles should be tried on a charge of treason. Cromwell was still in the north of England, dealing with Royalist resistance when these events took place. However, after he returned to London, on the day after Pride's Purge, he became a determined supporter of those pushing for the king's trial and execution. He believed that killing Charles was the only way to bring the civil wars to an end. The death warrant for Charles was eventually signed by 59 of the trying court's members, including Cromwell (who was the third to sign it). Charles was executed on 30 January 1649.

Establishment of the Commonwealth: 1649 After the execution of the King, a republic was declared, known as the Commonwealth of England. The Rump Parliament exercised both executive and legislative powers, with a smaller English Council of State also having some executive functions. Cromwell remained a member of the Rump and was appointed a member of the Council. In the early months after the execution of Charles I Cromwell tried but failed to unite the original group of 'Royal Independents' centred around St John and Saye and Sele, that had fractured during 1648. Cromwell had been connected to this group since before the outbreak of war in 1642 and had been closely associated with them during the 1640s. However only St John was persuaded to retain his seat in Parliament. The Royalists, meanwhile, had regrouped in Ireland, having signed a treaty with the Irish Confederate Ireland. In March, Cromwell was chosen by the Rump to command a campaign against them. Preparations for an invasion of Ireland occupied Cromwell in the subsequent months. After quelling Leveller mutinies within the English army at Andover, Hampshire and Burford in May, Cromwell departed for Ireland from Bristol at the end of July.

Irish Campaign: 1649–50 See also: Irish Confederate Wars and Cromwellian conquest of Ireland

Cromwell led a Parliamentary invasion of Ireland from 1649–50. Parliament's key opposition was the military threat posed by the alliance of the Confederate Ireland and English royalists (signed in 1649). The Confederate-Royalist alliance was judged to be the biggest single threat facing the Commonwealth. However, the political situation in Ireland in 1649 was extremely fractured: there were also separate forces of Irish Catholics who were opposed to the royalist alliance, and Protestant royalist forces that were gradually moving towards Parliament. Cromwell said in a speech to the army Council on 23 March that "I had rather be overthrown by a Cavalierish interest than a Scotch interest; I had rather be overthrown by a Scotch interest than an Irish interest and I think of all this is the most dangerous".Quoted in Lenihan, Padraig (2000). Confederate Catholics at War (Cork University Press), ISBN 1-85918-244-5, p.115.

Cromwell's hostility to the Irish was religious as well as political. He was passionately opposed to the Roman Catholic Church, which he saw as denying the primacy of the Bible in favour of papal and clerical authority, and which he blamed for tyranny and persecution of Protestants in Europe.Fraser, pp.74-76. Cromwell's association of Catholicism with persecution was deepened with the Irish Rebellion of 1641. This rebellion was marked by massacres by native Irish Catholics of English and Scottish Protestant settlers in Ireland. These factors contributed to Cromwell's harshness in his military campaign in Ireland.Fraser, pp.326-328.

Parliament had planned to re-conquer Ireland since 1641 and had already sent an invasion force there in 1647. Cromwell's invasion of 1649 was much larger and, with the civil war in England over, could be regularly reinforced and re-supplied. His nine month military campaign was brief and effective, though it did not end the war in Ireland. Before his invasion, Parliamentarian forces held only outposts in Dublin and Derry. When he departed Ireland, they occupied most of the eastern and northern parts of the country. After his landing at Dublin on August 15 1649 (itself only recently secured for the Parliament at the battle of Rathmines), Cromwell took the fortified port towns of Drogheda and Wexford to secure logistical supply from England. At the siege of Drogheda in September 1649, Cromwell's troops massacred nearly 3,500 people after the town's capture—comprising around 2,700 Royalist soldiers and all the men in the town carrying arms, including some civilians, prisoners, and Roman Catholic priests.Kenyon & Ohlmeyer, p.98. At the Siege of Wexford in October, another massacre took place under confused circumstances. While Cromwell himself was trying to negotiate surrender terms, some of his soldiers broke into the town, killed 2,000 Irish troops and up to 1,500 civilians, and burned much of the town.Fraser, Antonia (1973). Cromwell, Our Chief of Men, and Cromwell: the Lord Protector (Phoenix Press), ISBN 0-7538-1331-9 pp.344-46.

After the fall of Drogheda, Cromwell sent a column north to Ulster to secure the north of the country and went on to Siege of Waterford, Kilkenny and Clonmel in Ireland's south-east. Kilkenny surrendered on terms, as did many other towns like New Ross and Carlow, but Cromwell failed to take Waterford and at the siege of Clonmel in May 1650, he lost up to 2000 men in abortive assaults before the town surrendered.Kenyon & Ohlmeyer, p.100. One of his major victories in Ireland was diplomatic rather than military. With the help of Roger Boyle, 1st Earl of Orrery, Cromwell persuaded the Protestant Royalist troops in Cork (city) to change sides and fight with the Parliament Fraser, pp.321-322; Lenihan, p.113. At this point, word reached Cromwell that Charles II of England had landed in Scotland and been proclaimed king by the Covenanter regime. Cromwell therefore returned to England from Youghal on May 26 1650 to counter this threat.Fraser, p.355.

The Parliamentarian conquest of Ireland dragged on for almost three years after Cromwell's departure. The campaigns under Cromwell's successors Henry Ireton and Edmund Ludlow mostly consisted of long sieges of fortified cities and guerrilla warfare in the countryside. The last Catholic held town, Galway, surrendered in April 1652 and the last Irish troops capitulated in April of the following year.Kenyon & Ohlmeyer, p.100.

(seen in the first map). However, by the end of the 17th century, as a result of Cromwell's campaign, the relationship between ownership of Ireland (and therefore political power) and religion affiliation had been settled.

In the wake of the Commonwealth's conquest, the public practice of Catholicism was banned and Catholic priests were executed when captured. In addition, roughly 12,000 Irish people were sold into slavery under the Commonwealth.Kenyon, Ohlmeyer, p.314. All Catholic-owned land was confiscated in the Act for the Settlement of Ireland 1652 and given to Scottish and English settlers, the Parliament's financial creditors and Parliamentary soldiers. The remaining Catholic landowners were allocated poorer land in the province of Connacht. Under the Commonwealth, Catholic landownership dropped from 60% of the total to just 8%.Lenihan, p.111.

Debate over Cromwell's impact on Ireland The extent of Cromwell's brutalityChristopher Hill, 1972, God's Englishman: Oliver Cromwell and the English Revolution, Penguin Books: London, p.108: "The brutality of the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland is not one of the pleasanter aspects of our hero's career ..."Barry Coward, 1991, Oliver Cromwell, Pearson Education: Rugby, p.74: "Revenge was not Cromwell's only motive for the brutality he condoned at Wexford and Drogheda, but it was the dominant one ..." in Ireland has been strongly debated. Cromwell never accepted that he was responsible for the killing of civilians in Ireland, claiming that he had acted harshly, but only against those "in arms". In September 1649, he justified his sack 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, who have imbued their hands with so much innocent blood".Kenyon & Ohlmeyer, p.98. However, Drogheda had never been held by the rebels in 1641—many of its garrison were in fact English royalists. On the other hand, the worst atrocities committed in Ireland, such as mass evictions, killings and deportation for slave labour to Bermuda and Barbados, were carried out under the command of other generals after Cromwell had left for England.Lenihan, p.122; "After Cromwell returned to England in 1650, the conflict degenerated into a grindingly slow counter insurgency campaign punctuated by some quite protracted sieges...the famine of 1651 onwards was a man made response to stubborn guerrilla warfare. Collective reprisals against the civilian population included forcing them out of designated 'no man's lands' and the systematic destruction of foodstuffs". On entering Ireland, Cromwell demanded that no supplies were to be seized from the civilian inhabitants, and that everything should be fairly purchased; "I do hereby warn....all Officers, Soldiers and others under my command not to do any wrong or violence toward Country People or any persons whatsoever, unless they be actually in arms or office with the enemy.....as they shall answer to the contrary at their utmost peril". Several English soldiers were hanged for disobeying these orders.Reilly, Tom, Cromwell - An Honourable Enemy: The Untold Story of the Cromwellian Invasion of Ireland (2000).

While the massacre at Drogheda (and Wexford) might not have been untypical in the context of the recently ended German Thirty Years War Woolrych, Austin (1990). Cromwell as soldier, in Morrill, John (ed.), Oliver Cromwell and the English Revolution (Longman), ISBN 0-582-01675-4, p. 112: "viewed in the context of the German wars that had just ended after thirty years of fighting, the massacres at Drogheda and Wexford shrink to typical casualties of seventeenth-centry warfare"., which reduced the male population of Germany by up to half, there are few comparable incidents during Parliament's campaigns in England or Scotland. One possible comparison is Cromwell's siege of Basing House in 1645 - the seat of the prominent Catholic the Marquess of Winchester - which resulted in about 300 of the garrison of 1,200 being killed after being refused quarter. Contemporaries also reported civilian casualties. However, the scale of the deaths at Basing House was much smaller.J.C. Davis, Oliver Cromwell, pp. 108-110. Cromwell himself said of the slaughter at Drogheda in his first letter back to the Council of State: "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".Abbott, Writings and Speeches, vol II, p.124. Cromwell's orders—"in the heat of the action, I forbade them to spare any that were in arms in the town"—followed a request for surrender at the start of the siege, which was refused. The military protocol of the day was that a town or garrison that rejected the chance to surrender was not entitled to quarter.Woolrych, Austin (1990). Cromwell as soldier, p. 111; Gaunt, p. 117. The refusal of the garrison at Drogheda to do this, even after the walls had been breached, was to Cromwell justification for the massacre.Lenihan, p.168. Where Cromwell negotiated the surrender of fortified towns, as at Carlow, New Ross, and Clonmel, he respected the terms of surrender and protected the lives and property of the townspeople.Gaunt, p.116.At Wexford, Cromwell again began negotiations for surrender. However, the captain of Wexford castle surrendered during the middle of the negotiations, and in the confusion some of his troops began indiscriminate killing and looting.Stevenson, Cromwell, Scotland and Ireland, in Morrill, p.151. Amateur "From the Author"..."The reaction - among the under forties on the whole - was good, but among historians and the over forties it was bad. They can't seem to accept that an amateur could discover such a fundamental flaw in Irish history ie that neither Cromwell or his men ever engaged in the killing of any unarmed civilians throughout his entire nine month campaign." Irish historian (and Drogheda native) Tom Reilly (Irish historian) has taken this argument further, claiming that the accepted versions of the campaigns in Drogheda and Wexford in which wholesale killings of civilians on Cromwell's orders took place "were a 19th century fiction".Reilly, Tom, Cromwell - An Honourable Enemy: The Untold Story of the Cromwellian Invasion of Ireland (2000). However, Reilly's conclusions have been largely rejected by other scholars. John Morrill. "Rewriting Cromwell: A Case of Deafening Silences." Canadian Journal of History. Dec 2003: 19. Eugene Coyle. Review of Cromwell - An Honourable Enemy. History Ireland

Although Cromwell's time spent on campaign in Ireland was limited, and although he did not take on executive powers until 1653, he is often the central focus of wider debates about whether the Commonwealth conducted a deliberate programme of genocide or ethnic cleansing in Ireland. The sieges of Drogheda and Wexford have been prominently mentioned in histories and literature up to the present day. James Joyce, for example, mentioned Drogheda in his novel Ulysses (novel): "What about sanctimonious Cromwell and his ironsides that put the women and children of Drogheda to the sword with the bible text God is love pasted round the mouth of his cannon?". Similarly, Winston Churchill described the impact of Cromwell on Anglo-Irish relations: "upon all of these Cromwell's record was a lasting bane. By an uncompleted process of terror, by an iniquitous land settlement, by the virtual proscription of the Catholic religion, by the bloody deeds already described, he cut new gulfs between the nations and the creeds. 'Hell or Connaught' were the terms he thrust upon the native inhabitants, and they for their part, across three hundred years, have used as their keenest expression of hatred 'The Curse of Cromwell on you.' ... Upon all of us there still lies 'the curse of Cromwell'".Winston S. Churchill, 1957, A History of the English Speaking Peoples. The Age of Revolution, Dodd, Mead and Company:New York (p. 9): "We have seen the many ties which at one time or another have joined the inhabitants of the Western islands, and even in Ireland itself offered a tolerable way of life to Protestants and Catholics alike. Upon all of these Cromwell's record was a lasting bane. By an uncompleted process of terror, by an iniquitous land settlement, by the virtual proscription of the Catholic religion, by the bloody deeds already described, he cut new gulfs between the nations and the creeds. "Hell or Connaught" were the terms he thrust upon the native inhabitants, and they for their part, across three hundred years, have used as their keenest expression of hatred "The Curse or Cromwell on you." The consequences of Cromwell's rule in Ireland have distressed and at times distracted English politics down even to the present day. To heal them baffled the skill and loyalties of successive generations. They became for a time a potent obstacle to the harmony of the English-speaking people through-out the world. Upon all of us there still lies "the curse of Cromwell"". Cromwell is still a figure of hatred in Ireland, his name being associated with massacre, religious persecution, and mass dispossession of the Catholic community there. A traditional Irish curse was malacht Cromail ort or "The curse of Cromwell upon you".

The key surviving statement of Cromwell's own views on the conquest of Ireland is his Declaration of the lord lieutenant of Ireland for the undeceiving of deluded and seduced people of January 1650.Abbott, W.C. (1929). Writings and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell, Harvard University Press, pp.196-205. In this he was scathing about Catholicism, saying that "I shall not, where I have the power... suffer the exercise of the Mass".Abbott, p.202. However, he also declared that: "as for the people, what thoughts they have in the matter of religion in their own breasts I cannot reach; but I shall think it my duty, if they walk honestly and peaceably, not to cause them in the least to suffer for the same".Abbott, p.202. Private soldiers who surrendered their arms "and shall live peaceably and honestly at their several homes, they shall be permitted so to do".Abbott, p.205. As with many incidents in Cromwell's career, there is debate about the extent of his sincerity in making these statements: the Rump Parliament's later Act for the Settlement of Ireland 1652 of 1652 set out a much harsher policy of execution and confiscation of property of anyone who had supported the uprisings.

Scottish Campaign: 1650–1651 Cromwell left Ireland in May 1650 and several months later, invaded Scotland after the Scots had proclaimed Charles I's son as Charles II of England. Cromwell was much less hostile to Scottish Presbyterians, some of whom had been his allies in the First English Civil War, than he was to Irish Catholics. He described the Scots as "a people fearing His name, though deceived".Lenihan, p.115. He made a famous appeal to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, urging them to see the error of the royal alliance—"I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken".Gardiner, p.194. The Scots' reply was robust: "would you have us to be sceptics in our religion?". This decision to negotiate with Charles II led Cromwell to believe that war was necessary.Stevenson, David (1990). Cromwell, Scotland and Ireland, in Morrill, John (ed.), Oliver Cromwell and the English Revolution (Longman), ISBN 0-582-01675-4, p.155.

His appeal rejected, Cromwell's veteran troops went on to invade Scotland. At first, the campaign went badly, as Cromwell's men were short of supplies and held up at fortifications manned by Scottish troops under David Leslie (Scottish general). Cromwell was on the brink of evacuating his army by sea from Dunbar. However, on September 3 1650, in an unexpected battle, Cromwell smashed the main Covenanter army at the Battle of Dunbar (1650), killing 4,000 Scottish soldiers, taking another 10,000 prisoner and then capturing the Scottish capital of Edinburgh.Kenyon & Ohlmeyer, p.66. The victory was of such a magnitude that Cromwell called it, "A high act of the Lord's Providence to us one of the most signal mercies God hath done for England and His people".Kenyon & Ohlmeyer, p.66. The following year, Charles II and his Scottish allies made a desperate attempt to invade England and capture London while Cromwell was engaged in Scotland. Cromwell followed them south and caught them at Worcester on 3 September 1653. At the subsequent Battle of Worcester, Cromwell's forces destroyed the last major Scottish Royalist army. Many of the Scottish prisoners of war taken in the campaigns died of disease, and others were sent to penal colonies in Barbados. In the final stages of the Scottish campaign, Cromwell's men, under George Monck sacked the town of Dundee, killing up to 2,000 of its 12,000 population and destroying the 60 ships in the city's harbour.http://www.undiscoveredscotland.co.uk/usbiography/biographies/olivercromwell.html During the Commonwealth, Scotland was ruled from England, and was kept under military occupation, with a line of fortifications sealing off the Scottish Highlands, which had provided manpower for Royalist armies in Scotland, from the rest of the country. The north west Highlands was the scene of another pro-royalist uprising in 1653-55, which was only put down with deployment of 6,000 English troops there.Kenyon & Ohlmeyer, p.306. Presbyterianism was allowed to be practised as before, but the Kirk (the Scottish church) did not have the backing of the civil courts to impose its rulings, as it had previously.Parker, Geoffrey (2003). Empire, War and Faith in Early Modern Europe, p.281.

Cromwell's conquest, unwelcome as it was, left no significant lasting legacy of bitterness in Scotland. The rule of the Commonwealth and Protectorate was, the Highlands aside, largely peaceful. Moreover, there was no wholesale confiscations of land or property. Three out of every four Justices of the Peace in Commonwealth Scotland were Scots and the country was governed jointly by the English military authorities and a Scottish Council of State.Kenyon & Ohlmeyer, p.320. Although not often favourably regarded, Cromwell's name rarely meets the hatred in Scotland that it does in Ireland.

Return to England and dissolution of the Rump Parliament: 1651-53 From the middle of 1649 until 1651, Cromwell was away on campaign. In the meantime, with the king gone (and with him their common cause), the various factions in Parliament began to engage in infighting. On his return, Cromwell tried to galvanise the Rump into setting dates for new elections, uniting the three kingdoms under one polity, and to put in place a broad-brush, tolerant national church. However, the Rump vacillated in setting election dates, and although it put in place a basic liberty of conscience, it failed to produce an alternative for tithes or dismantle other aspects of the existing religious settlement. In frustration, in April 1653 Cromwell demanded that the Rump establish a caretaker government of 40 members (drawn both from the Rump and the army) and then abdicate. However, the Rump returned to debating its own bill for a new government.Worden, Blair (1977). The Rump Parliament (Cambridge University Press), ISBN 0-521-29213-1, ch.16-17. Cromwell was so angered by this that on April 20 1653, supported by about forty musketeers, he cleared the chamber and dissolved the Parliament by force. Several accounts exist of this incident: in one, Cromwell is supposed to have said "you are no Parliament, I say you are no Parliament; I will put an end to your sitting".Abbott, p. 643. At least two accounts agree that Cromwell snatched up the ceremonial mace, symbol of Parliament's power, and demanded that the "bauble" be taken away.Abbott, p.642-643.

The establishment of Barebone's Parliament: 1653 After the dissolution of the Rump, power passed temporarily to a council that debated what form the constitution should take. They took up the suggestion of Thomas Harrison for a "sanhedrin" of saints. Although Cromwell did not subscribe to Harrison's apocalyptic, Fifth Monarchists beliefs – which saw a sanhedrin as the starting point f

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