It is a common myth that Cromwell personally abolished Christmas. The ancient city of Ely occupies the largest island in the Fens. Hidden away in Holborn, this small public square has a very intriguing history. It has been the scene of a…. Military and Political Leader The summer of saw the outbreak of the first English Civil War between the Royalists, the supporters of King Charles I who claimed that the King should have absolute power as his divine right as king, and the Parliamentarians who favoured a constitutional monarchy and later the abolition of the monarchy and the House of Lords completely.
Related articles. Bits and Pieces. A Puritan Christmas under Cromwell. Ely, Cambridgeshire. Next article. Cromwell was among the lead negotiators for the Parliamentarians as they attempted to work out a settlement with Royalists loyal to the monarch.
When those talks collapsed, fighting between the two sides resumed in , and the Second English Civil War began. Cromwell travelled to Scotland to lead troops against forces there loyal to the king.
After Pride's Purge, in which troops under the command of Colonel Thomas Pride arrested those in Parliament still loyal to the monarch, the chamber was reconvened with a membership that was decidedly anti-monarch. In the aftermath of the purge, the remaining Parliamentarians voted to arrest and execute Charles I.
However, the Royalists regrouped, signing a treaty with Catholics in Ireland. Cromwell led the invasion of Ireland, landing in Dublin on August 15, , and his forces soon took the ports of Drogheda and Wexford. His troops killed an estimated 1, civilians at Wexford, which they allegedly attacked while he was trying to negotiate a truce.
By the time the Irish surrendered in , the practice of Catholicism was banned in Ireland and all Catholic-owned land was confiscated and given to Protestant Scottish and English settlers, beginning a long period of suffering and poverty for the Irish people. Cromwell would lead a subsequent military campaign against the Scots, including a decisive victory at the Scottish city of Dundee.
With the Scots defeated, Parliament re-formed in Cromwell sought to push the legislative body to call for new elections and establish a united government over England, Scotland and Ireland. When some opposed, Cromwell forcibly disbanded Parliament. Several months later, following various attempts to establish a government, John Lambert, himself a key Parliamentary general during the English Civil Wars, drafted a new constitution, effectively making Cromwell Lord Protector for life.
The so-called Second Protectorate Parliament, instated in , offered to make Cromwell king. However, given that he had fought so hard to abolish the monarchy, he refused the post, and was ceremoniously appointed Lord Protector for a second time. Cromwell died from kidney disease or a urinary tract infection in at age 59 while still serving as Lord Protector.
His son Richard Cromwell assumed the post, but was forced to resign due to a lack of support within Parliament or the military. In the leadership vacuum that ensued, George Monck assumed control of the New Model Army and spearheaded the formation of a new Parliament, which proceeded to pass constitutional reforms that re-established the monarchy. For a time in he imposed military rule on the country by dividing it into regions each ruled by a Major-General, and during this period he was not always careful to follow the rule of law.
In George Cony, a London merchant who refused to pay customs duties on the currants he imported on the grounds that they had not been authorised by parliament, was thrown into gaol along with his lawyers. For those of you who have an authoritarian streak in your make-up, Cromwell is very well worth studying. Ironically, the expeller of parliaments, on other occasions appears as the champion of parliamentary liberties.
And when he became Protector in December the Protectorate constitution, the Instrument of Government, made provisions for the calling of regular parliaments even if the Protector and Council failed to do so.
It had very definite limits excluding Catholics of course , but his vision allowed a greater degree of religious tolerance for different religious views including Jews than many of his contemporaries. Earlier during his military campaign against the Scottish Presbyterians who controlled Scotland in , he had bombarded them with paper declarations arguing in favour of greater religious liberty.
Follow up military victory with radical reform was his message to MPs. All these, then are valid reasons why you might find Cromwell worth studying. His career illustrates a lot about the history of this locality, about the connections between war and politics and about the nature of politics and politicians that are not just relevant to the seventeenth century. And to that list I might also add the power of religious ideology in politics that is in some parts of the world whether in northern Ireland or in the Islamic world is still as strong nowadays as was in the days of Cromwellian Britain.
Could I spend my last few minutes telling you what are these two aspects of Oliver Cromwell. These are two aspects that encapsulate two central historical questions that push history as it should be pushed beyond mere story-telling into the fascinating and debatable area of historical analysis.
How can one reconcile Cromwell the upholder of parliamentary liberties with the man who used soldiers to expel parliaments? How can one reconcile Cromwell the campaigner for religious toleration with the man who stood by and in at least one case at Drogheda in Ireland in encouraged his troops to massacre Catholics?
How can one reconcile the Cromwell who had a major role in executing Charles I in , which was followed by the abolition of monarchy itself, with the Cromwell who in seems to have seriously considered restoring monarchy in the person of King Oliver I?
I hope that you would not expect me now given the constraints of time to give you an adequate answer to that major conundrum. What he had in mind was not a reformation of the political and social order, because Cromwell was in many ways a social and political conservative who wanted to restore social and political normality after the trauma of the past decade.
The reformation he wanted to bring about was a reformation in the way people thought and lived their lives. I think that this is an aspiration he probably formed when he lived in this part of the world in the s when the economic and political crisis he faced then was probably accompanied by a crisis of conscience, a spiritual crisis.
I think that for Cromwell that was the bottom line. In he came to believe that making a settlement with Charles I would make God angry and that God required the execution of Charles, the sinner, the Man of Blood. Which leaves another my last reason why I study Cromwell. Both Charles and his brother, James II — , who succeeded him in , worked to reassert the absolutism of the Stuart monarchy. But both kings butted heads with Parliament, particularly when it came to financial matters.
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