Cromwell, OLIVER, Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland, and Ireland, was born at Huntingdon, April 25, 1599. He was the son of Robert Cromwell, younger son of Sir Henry Cromwell, descendant of a nephew of Cromwell, Earl of Essex, and was a younger brother of Sir Henry Cromwell of Hinchinbrook. His mother was Elizabeth, daughter of Thomas Steward of Ely, afterwards knighted by James I., who, when she married Robert Cromwell, was the widow of William Lynne. He was first-cousin to John Hampden. He was educated at Huntingdon grammar-school, the master of which was the Puritan Dr Beard, and at Sydney-Sussex College, Cambridge, and seems to have carried away a modest share of classical and general culture. He went to London to study law, but never entered an Inn of Court. In June 1617 his father died, leaving him a moderate estate at Huntingdon. In August 1620 he married Elizabeth, daughter of Sir James Bouchier, a London merchant. Of the wildness of his youth there is no proof beyond his own remorseful confession after his conversion that before he knew God he had been the chief of sinners. He was, however, under medical treatment for hypochondria. He embraced Puritanism in its most enthusiastic form, attended and supported the ministry of its proscribed preachers, and became a zealous adherent of the cause, and opponent of its arch-enemy and persecutor Laud.
In 1628 he sat as member for Huntingdon in the stormy third parliament of Charles, and raised his voice against Romanising ecclesiastics. The parliament dissolved, he returned to farming at Huntingdon, whence he removed to St Ives and afterwards to Ely, where property had been left him by his uncle. He appears to have come into collision as a local patriot with the king's commissioners for the drainage of the Fens. He sat for Cambridge in the Short Parliament and in the Long Parliament (1640). In the Long Parliament, though no speaker, he was active and vehement on the Puritan side. Sir Philip Warwick describes him at this period in 'a plain cloth suit, which seemed to have been made by an ill country tailor; his linen was plain, and not very clean; and I remember a speck or two of blood upon his little band, which was not much larger than his collar. His hat was without a hat-band; his stature was of a good size; his sword stuck close to his side; his countenance swollen and reddish; his voice sharp and untunable; and his eloquence full of fervour.' Sir Philip adds: 'It lessened much my reverence unto that great council, for this gentleman was very much hearkened unto.'
When war broke out (1642) he was sent down to organise his district for the parliament, which he did with the greatest vigour and success. He also subscribed £500 to the cause. Becoming captain of a troop of parliamentary horse, he fought at Edgehill. After Edgehill, he warned his friends that the parliament must have soldiers of a better stamp, and that to the spirit of a chivalrous gentry must be opposed that of a God-fearing yeomanry. On this principle he formed his unconquerable Ironsides. With strict morality and organised enthusiasm he combined in the famous corps a rigid discipline, which enabled him always to keep his troopers well in hand, and thus to turn the wavering tide of more than one battle. While the cause of the parliament was depressed elsewhere, his constancy, capacity, and courage upheld it in the eastern counties, which had formed themselves into an association, of which he was the soul. A brilliant action near Gainsborough marked him for high command. In the summer of 1644 he, under Manchester, led the forces of the associated counties to join the Scots and the troops of the Fairfaxes before York, and in the battle of Marston Moor the charges of his cavalry decided the day. He now stood forth as the leader of the Independent and thoroughgoing party against the Presbyterians and moderates. After the second battle of Newbury he impeached the conduct of Manchester in parliament. While the Presbyterian and aristocratic generals were set aside by the Self-denying Ordinance, Cromwell was retained in command. Under Fairfax he led the new model army, of which he no doubt was the chief organiser, to decisive victory at Naseby, June 14, 1645. Fairfax being no politician, Cromwell became the representative of the army in its contest with the Presbyterian parliament, which desired to disband it. The Presbyterians proving intractable, he resorted as usual to strong measures, marched on London, and coerced the parliament. He was never revolutionary, but he cared not for forms when they stood in the way of what he thought right. It was no doubt under his directions that Joyce carried off the king from Holmby. It seems that Cromwell desired, had it been possible, to make terms with the king; but Charles was incurably possessed with the idea of recovering his power by playing off one party against the other. Whether it was by Cromwell or by the Scotch envoys that Charles was induced to fly from Hampton Court is a question on which authorities differ.
As a prisoner in the Isle of Wight, the king, while he was negotiating with the parliament, was carrying on intrigues with his partisans in England and Scotland, which brought on the second Civil War and the invasion of England by Hamilton. Again Cromwell was called to take the field for his cause, which was once more in extreme peril. After swiftly quelling the insurrection in Wales, he marched northwards, attacked the invading army of Hamilton at Preston and totally destroyed it. The soldiery now clamoured for justice on the king; and Cromwell, probably sharing their wrath and despairing of any arrangement with the faithless Charles, complied with their demand, brought the king to trial, sat in the High Court of Justice, and signed the death-warrant (January 1649). Had ambition been his motive for this deed we should hardly have found him at the same time treating for the marriage of Richard, his heir, with the daughter of Mr Mayor, a private gentleman. The Commonwealth having been established, the first service rendered by Cromwell to it was the suppression of the formidable meeting of the Levellers, which he accomplished by a characteristic union of vigour with mercy. He was next sent to Ireland to end the civil war still raging there. This he did effectually, and on the whole humanely, though it cost some strokes of sanguinary severity, the necessity for which he himself deplored.
On his return from Ireland he (Fairfax having declined) took the command against the Scots, who had declared against the regicide republic and called in Charles II. With his usual daring he assumed the offensive and invaded Scotland. But he was out-gencralled by Leslie, and was in extreme peril, when a false move of the Scots, by affording him battle, enabled him once more to display the superiority of the soldiery which he had trained and to win the decisive victory of Dunbar. The image of militant Puritanism was never more vividly presented than by Cromwell's bearing on that scene. With the defeated Covenanters he dealt as with estranged friends. The royalists proper, who still held the field in Scotland, having eluded his strategy and marched into England, he followed, and on September 3, 1651, at Worcester, gained the victory which he called his crowning mercy and which ended the Civil War. Returning to London in triumph, he declared for a constitutional settlement and an amnesty. The parliament, now reduced by revolutionary expulsions to the 'Rump,' was bent on perpetuating its own power. After fruitless negotiations Cromwell turned it out with unwise violence and contumely. Supreme power being now in his hands and those of the other chiefs of the army, he called the convention of Puritan notables, nicknamed the Barebones Parliament, for the settlement of the nation. The Barebones Parliament proving too visionary and revolutionary, was dismissed, and supreme power reverted to Cromwell and his officers.
Cromwell was now declared Protector under the instrument of government, which provided for a government by a single person with one House of parliament elected on a reformed basis of representation, and a Council of State, in the appointment of which nomination by the Protector was combined with election by the parliament (December 16, 1653). A power of legislating by ordinance till parliament should meet was reserved to the Protector, and was largely used by Cromwell for the purposes of reorganisation and reform. His aim evidently was to restore in substance the ancient constitution of the realm, with a Protestant protectorate or monarchy, and full securities for liberty, especially for the religious liberty which had been in his mind at least the main object of the Civil War. But when parliament met, though elected under his writs, it fell to questioning his authority, and he was compelled to exclude the disaffected by a test. His second parliament, from which the recalcitrants were excluded at the outset, offered him the title of king. Cromwell wavered; but the stubborn resistance of the republican soldiers decided him to decline the offer. The Upper House of parliament was, however, restored, and the Protector was empowered to name his successor. A fixed revenue was also voted to him. He was now installed as Protector with a ceremonial resembling a coronation. When the parliament met again, its two Houses fell into a collision which compelled Cromwell to dissolve it; and his power thenceforth rested upon the army, though it was his constant desire to revert to constitutional government, and he was preparing to call a new parliament when he died.
His protectorate was a perpetual conflict with republican resistance on the one hand and with royalist plots and risings on the other, while his life was constantly threatened by royalist assassins. To keep down the royalists he for a time put the country under major-generals, supplying his treasury at the same time by an impost on the property of the cavaliers. He was, nevertheless, able to inaugurate a great policy, home and foreign. He reorganised the national church on the principle of comprehension, including all but Papists, Prelatists, and Antitrinitarians, while the ministry was weeded by commission, the result being, as Baxter, an opponent of the government, testifies, a ministry very acceptable to the people. Personally tolerant, Cromwell upheld toleration as far as he could, especially in the case of the Sectaries, and curbed the persecuting tendencies of parliament. For law reform he did his best, but professional interests were too strong for him. He united Scotland and Ireland to England, giving them both representation in parliament. Scotland, having free trade with England, enjoyed great prosperity under his rule. Ireland he sought to make a second England in order and industry, and if his measures were high-handed it must be remembered that the native Irish were then in an almost savage state. It was his aim to enlist ability, without distinction of party, and youths of promise from the universities into the service of the state. He saved the universities from the fanatics, put good men at their head, and encouraged letters.
But it is his foreign policy that has brought him most renown. Under him the Commonwealth became the head and protectress of Protestant Europe. He made peace with Holland and tried to form a league of all the Protestant states. He protected the Waldenses of Piedmont against their persecutors, using the pen of Milton in his protest. In the interest at once of religious liberty and commerce he allied himself with France, as the more liberal power, against Spain, the power of persecuting Roman Catholicism and the tyrant of the Western waters. He failed in an attempt on Hispaniola, but took Jamaica, and thus gave British enterprise a foothold in those seas. The victories gained by his fleet under Blake over the Spaniards brought him at once glory and treasure. His troops, with those of France, won the battle of the Dunes, and he obtained Dunkirk as his share of the spoil. He sedulously fostered British commerce, and by the hand of Blake chastised the pirate-states of Barbary. His boast that he would make the name of Englishman as respected as that of Roman had been, was, so long as he reigned, fulfilled; and his bitterest enemies could not deny the impression which he had made on the world, or the height to which he had raised his country. His court was simple and frugal, yet dignified; and though there was a strain of coarseness in his character (as illustrated in occasional horseplay), his bearing in public upheld the majesty of the state.
Cromwell had always been a most loving husband and father, and the palace of the Protector was a virtuous English home. His speeches are very rough and unmethodical as compositions, but they are marked by sense, force, and intensity of purpose. He was fond of music, and not without regard for art. It seems that his government was striking root, since people of rank were beginning to ally themselves with it, and his heir succeeded without the slightest opposition. But disease and care, together with grief at the death of his favourite daughter, Lady Claypole, cut short his life. He died September 3, 1658, and the fabric of government which his mighty arm had sustained fell speedily to the ground.
The records of Cromwell's life are very imperfect. Of his greatness as a soldier and statesman there can be no question, but it is difficult across two centuries and a half to see into his heart and pronounce how far ambition mingled with higher motives. That the religious enthusiasm which sent him out to expose his life in war at the age of forty-three was sincere cannot be doubted; but religious enthusiasm is often associated with fanaticism and self-deception. One who knew Cromwell well has described him as 'in body compact and strong, about five feet ten in height, with a head which you might see was a vast treasury of natural parts, with a temper exceeding fiery but under strong moral restraint, and compassionate even to an effeminate measure.' 'A larger soul, I think, hath seldom dwelt in a house of clay than his was.' He was laid with great pomp in the tomb of the kings at Westminster, but after the Restoration his body was exposed on the gibbet at Tyburn and afterwards buried under it.
See Noble, Memoirs of the Protectoral House of Cromwell (1787); Cromwell, Life of O. Cromwell and his Sons (1820); Carlyle, Cromwell's Letters and Speeches (1846); Sanford, Studies of the Great Rebellion (1853); Goldwin Smith, Three English Statesmen (1867); Jas. Waylen, The House of Cromwell (1892); books on the Protector by F. Harrison (1888), R. F. D. Palgrave (1890), S. H. Church (1894), Horton (1897), S. R. Gardiner (1897, 1899), Baldock (1899), Paterson (1899), Roosevelt (1900), Firth (1900), and John Morley (1900). Compare also the articles CHARLES I., ENGLAND, PURITANS, LONG PARLIAMENT, WESTMINSTER ASSEMBLY, MILTON, SELDEN, IRETON, LAMBERT, MONK.