Cromwell, Oliver 1599-1658
English soldier and statesman

Oliver Cromwell was born in Huntingdon and educated at Huntingdon Grammar School and Sydney Sussex College, Cambridge, He studied law in London, and developed a dislike for Charles I after first sitting in the House of Commons in 1628. When the king dissolved parliament the following year, he took up farming in Huntingdon and subsequently at St Ives and Ely. He was a member of the Short Parliament of 1640 which refused the king funds for the Bishops' War, and of the subsequent Long Parliament, in which he moved the Second Reading of a Bill to introduce annual sittings.

At the start of the English Civil War in 1642, he raised a troop of cavalry for the battles of Edgehill and Gainsborough, and in 1644 he brought the war nearer to an end with a cavalry charge against Royalist troops at Marston Moor. Back in parliament, he led the independent faction that rejected reconciliation with the king, and commanded the army that won a decisive victory over the king's forces at Naseby on 14 June 1645. Cromwell at first professed a willingness to negotiate terms by which the throne might be saved, but Charles' success in rallying the Scots from the Isle of Wight brought further fighting in 1648 and Cromwell resolved to rid himself of the king for ever. Charles was taken to Westminster for trial, and Cromwell's signature was among those on the death warrant that brought the king's execution on 30 January 1649. The monarchy was abolished and Cromwell declared the establishment of a Commonwealth with himself as chairman of its Council of State.

He brutally brought the last vestiges of Irish resistence to an end by massacring the Catholic garrisons at Drogheda and Wexford, and between 1650 and 1651 defeated at Dunbar and at Worcester the supporters of Charles II who had declared him King of Scotland. Frustrated by the obstruction presented by the substantial body of Royalists remaining in the Commons, Cromwell dissolved the Long Parliament in 1653 and ruled briefly as head of the Puritan Convention and then, on the implementation of a new Constitution, as Lord Protector. He reorganized the Church of England and established Puritanism, brought prosperity to Scotland under his administration, and granted Irish representation in parliament.

He dissolved parliament again in 1655 with a view to imposing regional rule under 10 major-generals in England, but the experiment failed, and after recalling the Commons in 1656 he was offered the Crown. He declined it, but instead won the right to name his son, Richard Cromwell, as Lord Protector. However, his relations with parliament worsened to bring another dissolution in 1658, and Cromwell continued to rule absolutely until his death later that year. His son held the promised title of Lord Protector for just a year, but failed to emulate his father's iron grip and surrendered the office a year later. On the Restoration in 1660, Oliver Cromwell's body was disinterred from the tomb of kings in Westminster Abbey; it was later hung from Tyburn gallows and afterwards buried there.

Bibliography: Barry Coward, Oliver Cromwell (1991); Antonia Fraser, The Lord Protector, Cromwell (1973); C V Wedgwood, Oliver Cromwell (1973).