Soldier and statesman, b. 25 April 1599 (Huntingdon, England), d. 3 September 1658 (London).
Oliver Cromwell came from a Protestant landowner family. His father had been a member of parliament under Queen Elizabeth and a justice of the peace. Both parents owed part of their property to the confiscation of Catholic church lands during Henry VIII's reign.
Oliver attended the local grammer school and went to college for a year; but when his father died he returned to look after his mother and sisters. From his Calvinist protestant upbringing he had inherited a strong sense of responsibility to the public and a conviction that the essence of Christianity was found in personal dialogue with God and that the church had no authority beyond assisting its members to lead a moral life (a conviction which could easily be extended towards secular authority if that authority proved irresponsible).
As a landowner of limited means Cromwell had to suffer under a range of taxes and felt the burden of the ship money introduced by king Charles I to finance the navy (and to support the luxurious life at the court). Cromwell had been elected to the House of Commons of Parliament in 1628, but the king had dissolved parliament and did not call it again for 11 years. In 1641 Cromwell supported the "Grand Remonstrance" to the king, one of the events that lead to the English Civil War.
When the Civil War broke out Cromwell organized a military force in his birthplace and soon gained a reputation as a good military organizer and man of courage. Not satisfied with mere defense of his home territory, he led his army into a successful attack. His growing reputation allowed him to convince parliament that it was time to create a new national army. He was appointed second in command (under Edward Montague, 2nd earl of Manchester) and became a member of the Committee of Both Kingdoms, repsonsible for the war strategy of the alliance with Scotland.
When it became clear that the aristocratic leadership of the new army was not determined to defeat the royalist forces, Cromwell insisted on replacement of the earl of Manchester by Sir Thomas Fairfax. The Royalists were soon defeated under the new leadership, and Cromwell, still second in charge, received 2,500 pounds annually in confiscated royalist lands.
When the First Civil War was over in 1647 the House of Commons wanted to rid itself of the army as quickly as possible. It ordered the army to disband, hiring at the same time a Scottish force for its own pretection. Cromwell took the side of his soldiers and resisted the decision.
There were now three political forces in the land: the parliament, the king and the army. Cromwell tried to negotiate between all parties. When the army seized the king and put him under house arrest, he tried to get the king's agreement to a new constitution. When the army marched towards the Houses of Parliament he insisted that the authority of the institutions (parliament and monarchy) should be upheld. But he changed his position when the king escaped and began negotiations with the Scots in preparation of another war. From the Second Civil War, which began in 1648, Cromwell's aim was the abolition of the monarchy. At the king's trial he was one of the 135 commissioners in the High Court of Justice, and when the King refused to plead, he signed the death warrant.
Britain was declared a republic with a single-chamber parliament (the House of Lords was abolished). Cromwell served as the first chairman of the Council of State, parliament's executive body. Towards the end of the Second Civil War he became captain general, and his military campaign ended the War in 1650. But his military activities were not only directed towards the abolition of absolutist monarchism. He also waged a remorseless campaign to maintain English control over Ireland and suppressed a revolt in the army led by the Levellers, a Puritan fundamentalist movement that aimed to eliminate the difference between the rich and the poor.
Cromwell now embarked on a course of political reform. His actions soon brought him dangerously close to the style of the government he had just deposed. In 1653 he used his army to dissolve the parliament and set up a new one to his liking. He accepted that parliament had to be called every three years; but before it was called into its first session in 1654 he and his Council of State had already passed more than 80 "ordinances".
In December 1653 an attempted coup d'etat led parliament to make Cromwell lord protector for three nations of England, Scotland, and Ireland. Cromwell now factually ruled on his own. When the republicans, who controlled the parliament, questioned the basis of his government, Cromwell promoted the "four fundamentals" of the new constitution that, he argued, had been approved both by "God and the people of these nations":
Faced with continued republican opposition, Cromwell dissolved the parliament twice, as soon as he could legally do so.
Oliver Cromwell was a gifted military leader and a politician driven by moral conviction. Although a convinced protestant, he supported religious tolerance and often aimed at conciliation. He declared an "act of oblivion" (amnesty) after the war and allowed Jews to settle in Britain again.
But Cromwell was no revolutionary, and some of his more savage acts were directed not against the supporters of absolute monarchy but its opponents, particularly the Irish and the Levellers. In the end he missed the opportunity to establish a modern republic. His actions created the conditions for the re-emergence of autocratic royal rule and the need for a second, "glorious" revolution.