Cromwell, Oliver

I

Introduction

Cromwell, Oliver (1599-1658), English soldier and statesman, a Huntingdonshire gentleman who rose to power as the most successful general of the English Civil War, provided leadership for the New Model Army in its quarrel with the Long Parliament, and was instrumental in the trial and execution of Charles I in 1649. His conquest of Scotland and Ireland (1649-1653) preserved the English Commonwealth, and he governed Great Britain as Lord Protector from 1653 until his death.

II

Early Years

The fortunes of the Cromwell family were made with the dissolution of the monasteries by Thomas Cromwell, Henry VIII's minister and their kinsman. They changed their family name (previously Williams) to that of their benefactor. Oliver, however, was the only son of a younger son of the family, who had also to provide for seven daughters; his inheritance was slender. Born in Huntingdon on April 25, 1599, he attended the local grammar school before going to Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, which had a reputation for Puritanism. Cromwell, as normal with most gentlemen students, did not take a degree at university, and if he studied law in London, as is commonly said, there is no surviving record of it. In 1620 he married Elizabeth Bourchier and settled down on his modest estate. He was Member of Parliament (MP) for Huntingdon in the parliament of 1628-1629.

Cromwell's wealth as a country landowner, never large, declined in the 1630s. In 1631 he sold most of his land at Huntingdon and rented grazing land at St Ives. In 1636, however, he inherited an estate from his wife's family and moved to Ely. His house there, in the shadow of Ely Cathedral, is now a Cromwell museum. As well as a loss of social status, he may have undergone a religious awakening at this time, which placed him among the ranks of the more militantly Protestant, or Puritan, or, as they preferred to describe themselves, the “godly”.

Cromwell was elected to the Long Parliament in 1640, as MP for Cambridge. Although an obscure backbencher, and not rich, he had family connections with better-known Puritan-Parliamentarian leaders, such as John Hampden. In the events which led to the break with the king, he had a small part to play, as a fiery and hot-headed critic of the court and a firm believer in the existence of a Roman Catholic conspiracy against English liberty and Protestantism. He pledged more than he could afford to a scheme for the reconquest of Ireland, after the success of the Gaelic Catholic Irish uprising there in late 1641.

III

The First Civil War

With the outbreak of the Civil War in 1642, Cromwell was sent down to help organize the defence of his locality. He was prompt and eager when many hung back, recruiting men into his first troops of horse who had, like himself, “the fear of God before them and made some conscience of what they did”. He quickly raised a double regiment of horse, which acquired a high reputation for discipline and valour. His troopers were called, after their Colonel, “Ironsides”. When the Eastern Association was formed, of mostly East Anglian counties, and an army raised for its defence, Cromwell was made general of the cavalry. They made a big contribution to the victory over the king's commanders, Prince Rupert and William Cavendish, 1st Duke of Newcastle, at the Battle of Marston Moor in July 1644.

This success was followed by military stalemate, however, and Cromwell, having quarrelled with his commander, Edward Montagu, 2nd Earl of Manchester, gained political allies in his fight to replace the old leadership by new, more committed, reforming, and “godly” men. The Self-Denying Ordinance removed MP and aristocratic commanders, and paved the way for a New Model Army, under fresh officers. (The commander-in-chief was the young Sir Thomas Fairfax.) It did not specifically debar the reappointment of old MP-officeholders, however, and Cromwell was soon made General of the Horse. He played an important role in the decisive defeat of the king's army at the Battle of Naseby on June 14, 1645.

IV

The Search for a Settlement

While victory in the Civil War went to Parliament, that body was no longer politically united, and the king, though defeated, was able to exploit the divisions of his enemies. The more conservative MPs, some of whom were for a Scottish Presbyterian reform of the Church of England (as required by the alliance with the Scots; the Solemn League and Covenant), were known as “Presbyterians”. They favoured a rapid disbandment of the New Model Army, which they viewed as dangerously radical. On the other side were MPs such as Cromwell, who saw Parliament's victory as a stepping-stone to political reform and religious toleration, under a broad national Church with independence for each congregation. They were called “Independents”.

When the army mutinied in 1647, and refused to disband, as the “Presbyterians” wanted, Cromwell attempted to bridge the gap between his men and Parliament. At the same time he and other commanders (the “Grandees”), especially his second-in-command of the cavalry and son-in-law, Henry Ireton, tried to win over the king: Charles's Anglicanism could be accommodated more easily in a broadly tolerant Church than a strictly Presbyterian one. But the king fled to the Isle of Wight and made a secret deal with the Scottish nobility for them to invade England. In the resulting Second Civil War, Cromwell put down a serious revolt in south Wales, and with part of the New Model Army then defeated the Scots at Preston in August 1648. With the other “Grandees”, he now agreed with his more radical junior officers and the Levellers (London civilian radicals) that the king could not be trusted. He did not engineer the reduction of the Long Parliament to the Rump Parliament undertaken by the army (Pride's Purge on December 6, 1648), but approved of it. Once convinced of the need to try, convict, and execute the king, he was the architect of his execution on January 30, 1649.