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Oliver Cromwell [1599-1658]

Oliver Cromwell [1599-1658]

Oliver Cromwell's Life

A calendar of key events in Cromwell's life

The final resting place of Cromwell's physical remains is a matter of dispute. However, it is likely that his body lies near Tyburn in London, now the Marble Arch area. The head believed to be Cromwell's became a rather undignified collector's piece until bequeathed to his old Cambridge College in 1960 and buried near Sidney Sussex chapel.

Oliver Cromwell's antecedents

Oliver Cromwell was born into a family which was for a time one of the wealthiest and most influential in the area. Educated at Huntingdon grammar school, now the Cromwell Museum, and at Cambridge University, he became a minor East Anglian landowner. He made a living by farming and collecting rents, first in his native Huntingdon, then from 1631 in St Ives and from 1636 in Ely. Cromwell's inheritances from his father, who died in 1617, and later from a maternal uncle were not great, his income was modest and he had to support an expanding family - widowed mother, wife and eight children. He ranked near the bottom of the landed elite, the landowning class often labelled 'the gentry' which dominated the social and political life of the county. Until 1640 he played only a small role in local administration and no significant role in national politics. It was the civil wars of the 1640s which lifted Cromwell from obscurity to power.

Oliver Cromwell as Politician

Cromwell refusing the crown of England (A high Victorian representation of Cromwell eschewing personal glory)

Oliver Cromwell, idealized by Robert Walker.

Oliver Cromwell, ‘warts and all’. A miniature by Samuel Cooper.

Oliver Cromwell's Military Career

From the outbreak of war in summer 1642, Cromwell was an active and committed officer in the parliamentary army. Initially a captain in charge of a small body of mounted troops, in 1643 he was promoted to colonel and given command of his own cavalry regiment. 

He was successful in a series of sieges and small battles which helped to secure East Anglia and the East Midlands against the royalists. At the end of the year he was appointed second in command of the Eastern Association army, parliament's largest and most effective regional army, with the rank of lieutenant-general. During 1644 he contributed to the victory at Marston Moor, which helped secure the north for parliament, and also campaigned with mixed results in the south Midlands and Home Counties. 

In 1645-6, as second in command of the newly formed main parliamentary army, the New Model Army, Cromwell played a major role in parliament's victory in the Midlands, sealed by the battle of Naseby in June 1645, and in the south and south-west. When civil war flared up again in 1648 he commanded a large part of the New Model Army which first crushed rebellion in South Wales and then at Preston defeated a Scottish-royalist army of invasion. 

After the trial and execution of the King, Cromwell led major military campaigns to establish English control over Ireland (1649-50) and then Scotland (1650-51), culminating in the defeat of another Scottish-royalist army of invasion at Worcester in September 1651. In summer 1650, before embarking for Scotland, Cromwell had been appointed lord general - that is, commander in chief - of all the parliamentary forces. 

It was a remarkable achievement for a man who probably had no military experience before 1642. Cromwell consistently attributed his military success to God's will. Historians point to his personal courage and skill, to his care in training and equipping his men and to the tight discipline he imposed both on and off the battlefield.

Oliver Cromwell's Views on Religion

Cromwell life and actions had a radical edge springing from his strong religious faith. A conversion experience some time before the civil war, strengthened by his belief that during the war he and his troops had been chosen by God to perform His will, gave a religious tinge to many of his political policies as Lord Protector in the 1650s. Cromwell sought 'Godly reformation', a broad programme involving reform of the most inhumane elements of the legal, judicial and social systems and clamped down on drunkenness, immorality and other sinful activities. He also believed passionately in what he called 'liberty of conscience', that is freedom for a range of Protestant groups and faiths to practise their beliefs undisturbed and without disturbing others. Several times he referred to this religious liberty as the principal achievement of the wars, to be strengthened and cherished now that peace had returned. Others, however, viewed these religious policies as futile, unnecessarily divisive or a breeding ground for heresy.

WORDS SAID ABOUT OLIVER CROMWELL 1599-1658

".... he thought secracy a virtue, and dissimulation no vice, and simmulation, that is in plain English, a lie, or perfiderousness to be tolerable fault in case of necessity."
Richard Baxter, Reliquiae Baxterianae.
The Dictionary of Biographical Quotation.

"He was of a sanguine complexion, naturally of such a vivacity, hilarity and alacrity as another man is when he hath drunken a cup too much."
Ibid.

"Cromwell wore a suit of plain cloth which seemed to have been made by an ill country tailor."
A fellow MP on Cromwell's style of dress.
In, Oliver Cromwell, British History Makers.

"He gart Kings ken they had a lith in their neck."
Alexander Boswell, Lord Auchinleck, in James Boswell, Tour of the Hebrides.
The Dictionary of Biographical Quotations.

".. A devotee of law, he was forced to be often lawless; a civilian to the core, he had to maintain himself by the sword; with a passion to construct, his task was chiefly to destroy; the most scrupulous of men, he had to ride roughshod over his own scruples and those of others; the tenderest, he had continually to harden his heart; the most English of our greater figures, he spent his life in opposition to the majority of Englishmen; a realist, he was condemned to build that which could not last."
John Buchan, Oliver Cromwell.
The Dictionary of Biographical Quotations.

"Cromwell was a man in whom ambition had not wholly suppressed, but only suspended, the sentiments of religion."
Edmund Burke, Letters, 1791.
The Dictionary of Biographical Quotaions.

"As close as a goose
Sat the parliament-House
To hatch the royal gull;
After much fiddle-faddle,
The egg proved addle
And Oliver came forth Nol."
Samuel Butler, A Ballad.
The Dictionary of Biographical Quotations.

"Sylla was the first of victors; but our own
The sagest of usurpers, Cromwell; he
Too swept off the senates while he hewed the throne
Down to a block - immortal rebel! See
What crimes it costs to be a moment free
And famous through all ages."
Lord Byron, Child Harold, canto iv.
The Dictionary of Biographical Quotations.

"I confess I have an interest in this Mr Cromwell; and indeed, if truth must be said, in him alone. The rest are historical, dead to me; but he is epic, still living. Hail to thee, thou strong one; hail across the longdrawn funeral-aisle and night of time!..."
Thomas Carlyle, Historical Sketches.
The Dictionary of Biographical Quotations.

"Poor King Charles laid his head on
the block
JANUARY 1649
Down came the axe, and...
In the silence that followed, the
only sound that could be heard was
a solitary giggle, from... Oliver Cromwell, Lord Protector
of England
OLE
Born in 1599 and died in 1658
SEPTEMBER."
John Cleese, ...