3 September 1658 A.D. Death: Oliver Cromwell—Military & Political Leader in English Civil Wars; Lord Protector, 1654-58
3
September 1658 A.D. Death: Oliver Cromwell—Military &
Political Leader in English Civil Wars; Lord Protector, 1654-58
Plant,
David. “Oliver Cromwell, 1599-1658.” BCW
Project. N.d. http://bcw-project.org/biography/oliver-cromwell.
Accessed 24 Apr 2015.
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 at Putney in London. Williams married
Katherine Cromwell, the sister of Thomas Cromwell, who became chancellor to
Henry VIII. Through his association with Thomas Cromwell, Morgan Williams
gained estates in Huntingdonshire after the confiscation of church lands at the
Reformation. His son Richard changed the family name to Cromwell in honour of
their 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.
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
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
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.Military 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”
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".
The Humble
Petition was modified to remove references to the royal title and Cromwell
was re-installed as Lord Protector on 26 June 1657. The installation ceremony
was still reminiscent of a coronation, with Cromwell wearing a robe of purple
velvet lined with ermine and carrying a golden sceptre. He took an adapted form
of the royal coronation oath and left Westminster Hall in a coach of state amid
cries of "God save the Lord Protector". Under the revised Humble
Petition, he was now allowed to name his own successor. Lacking only a
crown, Cromwell was "King in all but name".
In 1658, Cromwell
convened an Upper House of Parliament in which his nominees sat as peers.
Republicans regarded this as too similar to the former House of Lords and MPs
questioned the titles, rights and legitimacy of the Upper House. Amid fears
that elements of the army supported the republicans, Cromwell went in person to
Westminster on 4 February 1658 and abruptly dissolved the Second Protectorate
Parliament.
Discouraged by his
failure to settle the constitution or to reconcile the Puritan sects in a
cohesive national church, Cromwell withdrew from public affairs. Over the next
few months his health went into a sharp decline, exacerbated by the death from
cancer of his daughter, Elizabeth, in August 1658.
Death and Beyond
During a bout of the recurring malarial fever that had
afflicted him since the 1630s, Oliver Cromwell died at Whitehall on 3 September
1658—the anniversary of his victories at Dunbar and Worcester. A violent storm
wracked England during the night of his death, said by his enemies to be the
Devil carrying away his soul. He was buried in Westminster Abbey with a funeral
service based upon that of King James I. Oliver's eldest son Richard was
nominated to succeed him, but the Protectorate had ended within a year of
Oliver's death, to be followed in due course by the return of the Stuart
monarchy.
After the
Restoration, a vengeful Parliament ordered the exhumation and posthumous
execution of Cromwell's corpse, along with those of the prominent regicides,
Ireton and Bradshaw. Their bodies were removed from their tombs and dragged to
Tyburn gallows, where they were publicly hanged and beheaded on 30 January
1661, the twelfth anniversary of the execution of Charles I. The headless
corpses were thrown into an unmarked pit, but the heads were displayed on
spiked poles above Westminster Hall, where they remained for several decades.
During the 18th and
19th centuries, Cromwell's head became a collector's curiosity and was sometimes
put on public exhibition. After scientific analysis confirmed that the head was
probably genuine, it was finally interred in 1960 in the chapel of Cromwell's
old college Sidney Sussex, Cambridge, its precise location undisclosed.
C.H. Firth, Oliver
Cromwell, DNB, 1888
C.H. Firth, The
Last Years of the Protectorate 1656-58 vol. ii (London 1909)
Antonia Fraser, Cromwell,
our chief of men (London 1973)
Ronald Hutton, The
British Republic 1649-60 (Basingstoke 2000)
John Morrill, Oliver
Cromwell, Oxford DNB, 2004
Ivan Roots (ed), The
Speeches of Oliver Cromwell (London 1989)
Links:
Oliver
Cromwell's head —
all the grisly details
Podcasts
about Oliver Cromwell —
includes lectures by Mark Kishlansky, Barry Coward and David Trim
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