His father died in and Oliver had to leave Sidney Sussex College at Cambridge to look after the estate, his widowed mother and then his wife Elizabeth and ultimately their nine children. The lease carried with it the responsibility of collecting the local taxes. Everything changed for Oliver Cromwell when he was in his early 40s. King Charles I began to make changes to the church in England that were unacceptable to men like Oliver.
During his 20s or 30s, Cromwell had experienced a religious conversion and for the remainder of his life he was a zealous Protestant. He believed that God had chosen him for a purpose which would at some point be revealed to him.
He criticised the King in Parliament, his passionate and often angry speeches, driven by his religious zeal. When war broke out between King and Parliament in , Oliver Cromwell was one of the first MPs to take up arms and fight.
A Civil War broke out in England in August On one side stood King Charles I, and those who supported his rule. On the other, the men who had come to see him as a tyrant. Those who took arms against the king included some of the aristocracy as well as small landholders and businessmen from the richest parts of the country, London, the ports, and the cloth and clothing areas of East Anglia, Yorkshire, Lancashire and the southwest.
Men like Oliver Cromwell. The conflict spread to Scotland, Ireland and Wales and lasted nearly nine years. Families and friends found themselves on opposite sides but were prepared to fight each other to the death. Religion also played a part in the collapse of the country into war. England had become a Protestant country under King Henry VIII but there were some, the Puritans, who thought that the reform of the church had not gone far enough.
There was a great fear that England would become a Catholic country again and those that feared this most eventually fought against the king. In the summer of , the relationship between the king and Parliament had broken down irretrievably, but war had not yet been declared. He did this brutally, especially in Ireland and in particular at the siege of Drogheda in He found that he could not agree with them about how to rule the Commonwealth as to do so without a king was an entirely new and untested concept.
To solve this problem, the army as the most powerful group took control and declared Cromwell Lord Protector. The title was to suggest he was not a king but in reality he ruled as such.
As Protector , Cromwell could not agree with his Parliaments and he dismissed them both. Instead, he ruled the country through his major-generals, which meant that England virtually became a military dictatorship.
Cromwell retained the position of Lord Protector until his death in He was given a state funeral, as elaborate as those of the kings who came before him, and was buried in Westminster Abbey. In , following the Restoration of the monarchy, his body was dug up. His corpse was subjected to a posthumous execution and his severed head was placed upon a pole outside Westminster Hall - a potent public act that recast him as a traitor.
Throughout his turbulent career, Cromwell attributed his success to Divine Providence. But his energy, personal example and ruthlessness are all the qualities of a great battlefield commander. His triumph won the First English Civil War for Parliament and ensured that monarchs would never again be supreme in British politics.
Although the military played a crucial role in his return, the King soon established a new force - the British Army. Fought between and , these wars were primarily disputes between Crown and Parliament about how the British Isles should be governed. But they also had religious and social dimensions, and witnessed the creation of the first national standing army.
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View this object. General Oliver Cromwell at Marston Moor, Oliver Cromwell, Lord Protector of England, c Commander Cromwell realised instinctively that good quality, disciplined troops, motivated by religious zeal, were the key to victory. The Battle of Naseby, King Charles I, c Cavalry of the New Model Army, c
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