Oliver Cromwell: Regicidal Dictator or a Hero of Liberty?
Volume 3 | Issue 7
Article by Ashley Smith. Edited by Emma Carmichael. Research by Jack Barnes.
With the diamond jubilee just passed us, the royal family is enjoying record-breaking popularity. Britain would be worse off without the monarchy say 69% of respondents to the most recent Guardian/ICM poll, while only 22% felt that the country would be better off. The 47-point royalist margin is the largest chalked up on any of the 12 occasions, since 1997, on which ICM has previously asked the question. In addition to this, only 1 out of 10 voters would prefer an elected head of state instead of a monarchy.
With this in mind, it is unbelievable to think that less than 400 years ago, the Stuart monarchy was overthrown as a result of the English Civil War, with the proceeding English Interregnum lasting 11 years. The man behind all of this, Oliver Cromwell, is consequently one of the most controversial figures in the history of the British Isles.
Where Cromwell is considered ‘a regicidal dictator’ by historians such as David Sharp, he was considered as ‘a hero of liberty’ by others, such as Thomas Carlyle. Judging by the level of support for the monarchy in the 21st century, it is paradoxical that in a 2002 BBC poll in Britain, Cromwell was elected as one of the ‘Top 10 Britons of all time’.
But Cromwell’s rise from an occupation of yeoman farmer to the 1st Lord Protector of the Commonwealth is nothing short of remarkable. After undergoing a religious conversion to Puritanism, he was elected as a Member of Parliament. As a Member on the side of the ‘Roundheads’ in the Civil War, he was soon promoted from leading a single cavalry troop to becoming one of the principal commanders of the army; another enormous transformation. In 1649, he was one of the signatories of Charles I’s death warrant and he was consequently selected to take command of the English command in Ireland before being made Lord Protector of England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland in 1953, after leading another successful campaign against the Scottish army.
So where is the controversy? Many would agree that Charles I was a tyrant and thus Cromwell can be seen to have dismantled an absolute monarchy and inspired the beginnings of a more democratic society. He did, however, fail to establish a written constitution or leave a lasting system of government, not to mention the fact that his measures against Catholics in Scotland and Ireland have been characterised as genocidal.
Nowhere is Cromwell’s reputation more controversial than in Ireland where he was sent to put an end to almost a decade of insurrection. In September 1649, Cromwell’s 12,000-strong forces stormed Drogheda, north of Dublin. His troops massacred nearly everyone in the garrison and the town, which Cromwell justified as “the righteous judgement of God upon these barbarous wretches”, and also necessary to subdue the revolting population.
Cromwell’s foreign policy has been attributed with providing an attractive forerunner to Victorian imperial expansion, but late twentieth century historians have re-examined the nature of Cromwell’s faith and of his authoritarian regime. The issue of a ‘dictatorship’ under Cromwell is subject to two conflicting forces: his obligation to the army and his desire to achieve a lasting settlement by winning back the confidence of the political nation as a whole.
By the time of the restoration of the monarchy in 1661, Cromwell was again an object of hate. Cromwell was given a truly regal funeral ceremony at Westminster Abbey, costing around £60,000, at a time when the average wage was one shilling a day. After the Royalists returned to power, they had his corpse dug up, hung up at Tyburn, beheaded and later cast into a pit under the gallows. Another story says that the severed head, mounted on a pole, fell at the feet of a soldier on a windy night, and was supposedly buried at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge.
In popular culture, it is readily accepted that Oliver Cromwell was a de facto monarch, accordingly included in the 35 monarchs depicted on the façade of Bradford City Hall, in which his statue appears between Charles I and Charles II (who claimed de jure rule when his Father was executed). However, when Winston Churchill suggested naming a British battleship HMS Oliver Cromwell, surprisingly enough, the suggestion did not meet with royal approval. Even today, his presence in statues is controversial. It was, after all, only in 2008 that his statue was finally restored outside Parliament to mark the 350th anniversary of his death. For a man with such a bloody reputation, it is darkly amusing that ‘Cromwell Road’ remains such a popular street name in many British towns and cities.
In modern times, most writers have preferred to debate whether Cromwell, good or bad, has been the product of propaganda. Their pages have helped to make up the estimated 4,000 books written about the man. Consensus of opinion, however, remains elusive. If nearly 400 years of debate have failed to settle the issue of his reputation once and for all, it seems he is destined to forever be Britain’s most controversial ruler. One, perhaps, should not expect the Queen to raise a toast to Oliver on her special day.
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• Charles I was King of England between 1625 and 1629, when he was executed, making England a Commonwealth. The years leading up to the first and second Civil Wars, 1642-1645 and 1648-1649, are most often used to describe his reign as tyrannical, and it is against this tyranny that Cromwell is often held up as a ‘hero of liberty’.
• Charles strongly believed in the Divine Right of Kings, and strained against Parliament’s attempts to curb his Royal Prerogative and make him answerable to them. After years of struggling things came to a head over money in 1629.
• When Charles opened Parliament in 1629, he was confronted by MPs who felt he had previously been encroaching on their Parliamentary rights. When Charles tried to close the session, MPs held the speaker in his chair to force it to remain open. Charles dissolved Parliament and imprisoned those involved, ruling by without Parliament until 1640 when Charles was forced to recall them, needing funds to support his war with the Scottish Bishops.
• During his Personal Rule, Charles was unable to raise taxes without parliament and got round this by circumventing the laws in various ways, forcing unpopular and often harsh taxes on the population. Both before and after his personal rule Charles proved unwilling to listen to the complaints of Parliament, creating a longstanding mutual distrust between the two. Unwilling to attack the King, Parliament impeached his advisors. Shaky relations continued until 1641 when Charles attempted to arrest six members of parliament for negotiating with the Scots. Parliament refused to hand them over, and by January 1642 had taken control of London.