Oliver Cromwell, the military leader of the Parliamentary forces during the English Civil War, is considered one of the most important figures in British, Irish and European history. Cromwell was eventually victorious in the establishment of a socio-political system dominated by Parliament in what we call Constitutional Monarchy. Although he was a devout Puritan and staunch anti- Catholic, he is thought to have been relatively tolerant in religious matters but unyielding to any concessions to the absolutist tendencies of the Stuart monarch Charles I.
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| The Cromwell mural in the Loyalist-Unionist Protestant working class Shankill neighborhood (Belfast). Cromwell is still a very dividing figure and is used in for political shenanigans. The message on the mural and the detail (below) show a deep sense of pride by the Protestants in Cromwell's heavy handed treatment and massacres of Catholics |
Cromwell was a military and organizational genius who was catapulted to power through his sheer brilliance as a military leader, ruthlessness and zealous discipline that enabled him to ascend to the highest echelon of power as Lord Protector.Cromwell was born in Huntingdon, England in 1599, and was raised in a period when the country was in the midst of enormous social and religious turmoil with the Reformation, Counter Reformation and all the ensuing aftershocks. He lost his father when only 18 and was forced to look after his family, while gradually immersing himself in the Calvinistic values of Puritanism, but early on he was not a yet a “fully fledged Puritan” as he became later. His religious views shaped his career and showed signs of being extremely subjective, rejecting not only Roman Catholicism, but also criticising Anglicanism and Presbyterianism. He rather preferred to “wrestle with the Scriptures and other revelations of God”. He eventually married the daughter of a London merchant and had nine children, and as a descendant of a minor aristocrat, he inherited some lands and became a farmer.
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| Cromwellian siege and massacre at Drogheda against the Royalist Confederate forces in Ireland |
Cromwell was elected to Parliament in 1628 when England and Scotland were basically ruled by King Charles I who had very strong monarchical tendencies and even dismissed parliament for very long periods. Moreover, many detractors felt that the King, like some of his Stuart predecessors, was “ill-serving the Protestant cause, deserting the Reformation principles and refusing to confront Most Catholic Spain” and France. As Ian Paisley, the fiery Northern Irish politician said in a 1999 address to the House of Commons in Westminster, referring to the ascent of Cromwell and the political situation of that epoch:
“No one has suffered more by such diabolical treatment than Oliver Cromwell. At the beginning of the seventeenth century our nation was on a steep decline which it seemed would inevitably plunge her into the overwhelming gulf of Rome. The Stuart monarchs were the leaders in that apostasy. Charles I (1625) was more opposed to the Bible and more inclined to tradition and hierarchy than James I (1603), Charles II more so than Charles I, while James I surpassed all his predecessors”.
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| Cromwell during the battle of Marston Moor in July 2, 1644 (First English civil War) |
King Charles I thought that he could rule without the Parliament, but in 1640 he finally ran short of money and convened a New Parliament to raise the funds he needed. Cromwell was also part of this new Parliament, but he was not part of the established aristocracy. He was rather considered a farmer-gentleman who was Puritan in his views. The new Parliament set conditions demanding assurances against any future unilateral and unwarranted action by the monarch. King Charles I, however, was not in a mood to surrender any of his powers to the Parliament and war broke out between the two opposing sides.
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| The execution of deposed King Charles I, defeated by the Parliamentarian forces under Cromwell |
Cromwell’s rise to the leadership of the Parliamentary side was unexpected. Once war broke out, he promptly returned to his hometown to raise a cavalry corps, and it was during the initial phases of the war that he established himself as a force to be reckoned with. His military ability, intensified by his religious fervor, enabled him to play an important role in the battles of Marston Moor (July 2, 1644) and later Naseby (June 14, 1645), which forced the King to abandon war, fall prisoner and pave the way for Cromwell’s ascent to power. A second phase of the civil war soon followed, triggered by the escape of King Charles I and his attempt to reclaim power through more warfare. The ensuing campaigns enabled Cromwell to crush the King’s forces yet again, at the same time fighting and eliminating relatively more moderate forces within the Parliamentary coalition that was opposing his policies. The net result of these events was the execution of the King in January 30, 1649 and proclamation of England as a Republic or “Commonwealth”. The Council of States was the highest body of authority and Cromwell was the chairman.
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| Oliver Cromwell |
England was now under Cromwell’s de facto reign, but the Royalist forces in Scotland and Ireland soon emerged, regrouped and proclaimed their support to the future Charles II, son of the dead King Charles I and his French Queen Catholic Henrietta Maria. The immediate result of these developments was the prompt invasion of Ireland and then Scotland. The Royalists were defeated after these very bloody and controversial campaigns, but in the end, Cromwell still faced an enormous challenge to draft a new constitution and hence resolve the social and especially religious root causes of the War, namely the deep schism that existed between not only Protestants and Catholics, but also within the various Protestant denomination and sects.
This was a less successful phase for Cromwell’s career, as he attempted to rule with a wide support, but was able to hold onto power by the sheer force of the army. He had in fact become a military dictator, even though he refused to ascend to the throne himself and remained true to his democratic principles. From 1640 until his death various Parliaments were formed and dissolved proving a very difficult rapport of the existing forces. Cromwell ruled as Lord Protector from 1653to 1658 and is generally credited with rather good governance, and relative religious tolerance, despite his memory as a bloodthirsty zealot. He died in 1658 in London, of malaria and was succeeded briefly by his eldest son Richard. Soon after, Charles II was restored as king but the absolutism was forever gone except in a brief period when James II tried to rule as an absolute monarch but was promptly deposed.
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| Kilkenny castle in Ireland was the center of Confederate/royalist forces stormed by Cromwell's invading forces. The castle was partly destroyed. |
Cromwell arrived in Ireland on 15 August 1649 as Commander –in chief to “enforce the control of Parliament and ensure the progress of the new Protestant land settlement”. He therefore implemented a discriminatory policy of transplantation and expropriation of Catholics. As usual, he firmly believed that he was spreading God’s word and enforcing His message. Cromwell therefore wasted no time to go straight to “what he saw as God’s work both to discipline the Irish, considered a race of savages, practicing Catholicism a “despised and corrupt religion” He immediately launched a series of ruthless attacks with his New Model Army, by sieges and massacres that still divide historians today as to their barbarity and use of disproportionate force. Mass killings and terror from Drogheda (2 September), Wexford (2 October) and the siege of Waterford were all bloody affairs. He stormed Leinster and Munster, forced the surrender of all Protestant forces to abandon the Royalist factions. The Confederate royalist groups were headed by James Butler, Earl of Ormonde, who lost most of his English and Protestant soldiers through desertion and was left with a Catholic core.
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| Cromwell's death mask |
In 1650 Cromwell finally took Kilkenny, the confederate capital that had represented the native Irish and and the Anglo-Norman Catholics, functioning for six years as an independent Irish parliament, the first meeting being held in 1642. Therefore the rebellion that had started in 1641 was crushed in a few months after the slaughter of thousands. Scores of Catholics, even those who were no part of the rebellion were sent to the West Indies as slaves. Cromwell left Ireland on May 26, 1650 to become later Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, but the Ireland he left had changed forever and, but he left behind enough armed forces to enforce and expand his campaign against all opposition with most of the Island under his total control with the fall of Leinster, Munster and Ulster. The final phase of the actual campaign came to an end in 1652 when Galway, in the western Connaught Province, was captured by the Parliamentary forces. Cromwell changed Ireland dramatically all in the name of revenge and religious zeal against the followers of “Popery”: just in matter of land ownership, Catholic- owned lands dropped from 60 percent to about 20, huge areas were decimated and “Connaught became a reservation populated by Catholic gentry”, English speaking, Catholic and loyal to the Crown (such as the Sarsfields of Kildare).
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| Cromwell's statue in London (Westminster Parliament building). He was instrumental in cementing Parliament's supremacy over the Monarchy. |
Cromwell died on September 3, 1658 in London and was initially buried at Westminster Abbey. In 1661, after the Restoration of Charles II, a corpse presumably belonging to Cromwell, was exhumed and hung up at Tyburn, where criminals were executed. The head was stuck on a pole on top of Westminster Hall, where it is known to have remained until the end of Charles II’s reign. He was “maligned in life, as he was maligned in death”.
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| Cromwell's attack and massacre on Drogheda, Ireland (September 1649). Hundreds were executed after their surrender to the Parliament forces, led by Protestants. |
Cromwell remains one of the most influential, divisive and somehow misunderstood personalities of British history. He has been described as a “brave bad man”, a “nauseating vagabond”, a “constitutional reformer”, a “regicide”, the winner of the war against absolutism and even a psychopath. He is also seen as a more tolerant reformer than previously thought and possibly the greatest single contributor of constitutional government in England. There is truth in all of the above qualifications, and they all attest to the very complex nature of Cromwell’s character, campaigns, excesses and accomplishments. His statue in front of the Westminster abbey attests to his importance to the political traditions of a Great Britain controlled by Parliament and democratic principles. Furthermore, from an Irish perspective, it is widely agreed that very few men have left their “footprint so deeply imprinted upon Irish history and historiography” as Cromwell. For centuries, the Irish would talk about the “Curse of Cromwell”. Another infamous saying, “Hell or Connaught”, summarizes the intransigent and arguably criminal actions of the Cromwellian politics in Ireland. Cromwell is still a hated figure by most Catholics and Republicans, while he is revered as a great hero, “Lord Protector of the Protestant faith” by loyalist / unionist masses, mostly concentrated in Ulster, off which Northern Ireland was carved. Ian Paisley praises Cromwell as follows:
“Cromwell knew what the Papacy really was about and was prepared to expose it and depose it at every turn... The language of Cromwell today is branded as prejudice and bigotry. Severe lessons will teach us to our cost who is right, the modern leaders in the church and state or the Puritan Colossus of the 17th century... Let me die the death of Cromwell; let my last end be like his”.
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| Fake smiles as Protestant and Catholic sworn enemies sit side by side: Ian Paisley, a staunch Cromwell worshiping Unionist /Loyalist and Gerry Adams (right), president of Sinn Fein and the facto leader of the I.R.A. |
The net and long term results of Cromwellian campaigns were the establishment of a constitutional monarchy, where the monarchs had to be respectful and even subservient to the elected representative body, the Parliament. The other direct influence and impact of Cromwell was that the defeat of absolutism helped pave the way for the French Enlightenment, the American Revolution and other parts of the world. The direct influence of Cromwell has historically been a subject of intense and often very contradicting narratives. Despite the fact that a more balanced history was produced, Cromwell’s record is in Irish history is ‘still inextricably identified with massacre and expropriation’.
In any case, Cromwell was a unique personality, from his origins as an obscure and non- aristocrat farmer, to winning the English civil war, ruling England, Ireland and Scotland as a dictatorial ruler as Lord Protector, refusing the crown and the triumph of long lasting principles of Constitutional monarchy with the unquestioned supremacy of Parliament. The legacy of Oliver Cromwell may still be somewhat in dispute, but his enormous achievements and influence are never in doubt.
© Krikor Tersakian, June 10, Montreal, Canada
Durant, Will & Ariel. The Age of Louis XIV: Simon & Schuster, New York, 1963.
Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online Kilkenny. 2011. Web. 12 Jun. 2011.E
Fraser, Antonia. Cromwell, Our Chief of Men: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, 1997.
Foster, R.F. Modern Ireland 1600-1972: Penguin Books, New York, 1989.
Golway, Terry. “For the cause of Liberty”: Simon & Schuster, New York, 2000.
Hart, Michael. A ranking of the Most Influential: Oliver Cromwell, A&W Publisher, New York, 1978.
Paisley, Ian, Cromwell address: www.ianpaisley.org/article.asp?ArtKey=cromwell
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