Oliver Cromwell was born on April 25, 1599, in Huntingdon, England, to Elizabeth and Robert Cromwell. The social status of Cromwell’s family at his birth was relatively low within the gentry class as his father was one of 10 siblings who survived into adulthood. His father’s inheritance was limited to a house in Huntingdon and a small amount of land. As a young boy Oliver Cromwell attended Huntingdon Grammar School, and later he went on to study at Cambridge University. But Immediately after his father’s death, he left in 1617 without taking a degree.
Oliver Cromwell became MP for Huntingdon in the parliament of 1628 – 1629. However, in 1631, Cromwell sold most of his properties in Huntingdon and moved to a farmstead in St Ives. This was a major step down in society compared to his previous position. As a result, Cromwell experienced a religious crisis and became convinced that he would be guided to carry out God’s purpose. He began to make his name as a radical Puritan when, in 1640, he was elected to represent Cambridge, first in the Short Parliament and then in the Long Parliament.
In 1642, as civil war broke out between Charles I and Parliament, Oliver Cromwell created and led a superb force of cavalry, the ‘Ironsides’, and rose from the rank of captain to that of lieutenant-general in three years. Cromwell and his troop fought at the indecisive Battle of Edgehill in October 1642, gaining experience and victories in a number of successful actions in East Anglia, notably at the Battle of Gainsborough on July 28, 1643. He convinced parliament to establish a professional army, the New Model Army, which won the decisive victory over the king’s forces at Naseby in 1645.
The king’s alliance with the Scots and his subsequent defeat in the Second Civil War convinced Oliver Cromwell that the king must be brought to justice. In December 1648, those MPs who wished to continue negotiations with the king were prevented from sitting by a troop of soldiers headed by Colonel Thomas Pride, an episode soon to be known as Pride’s Purge. Those remaining, known as the Rump Parliament, agreed that Charles should be tried on a charge of treason. Cromwell’s letters and speeches by this time started to become heavily based on biblical imagery as he was a prime mover in the trial and execution of Charles I in 1649. Subsequently he sought to win conservative support for the new republic by suppressing radial elements in the army. Cromwell became army commander and lord lieutenant of Ireland, where he crushed resistance with the massacres of the garrisons at Drogheda and Wexford in 1649.
After the execution of the King, a republic was declared, known as the Commonwealth of England. The Rump Parliament exercized both executive and legislative powers, with a smaller Council of State also having some executive functions. Cromwell remained a member of the Rump and was appointed a member of the Council. In the early months after the execution of Charles I, Cromwell tried but failed to unite the original group of ‘Royal Independents’ centred around St John and Saye and Sele, which had fractured during 1648. However only St John was persuaded to retain his seat in Parliament.
Oliver Cromwell effectively ended the civil war defeating the supporters of the king’s son Charles II at Dunbar in 1650, and Worcester in 1651. Frustrated with lack of progress, he dissolved the rump of the Long Parliament in 1653 and made himself lord protector. In 1657 he refused the offer of the crown. At home Lord Protector Cromwell reorganized the national church, established Puritanism, readmitted Jews into Britain and presided over a certain degree of religious tolerance. Abroad, he ended the war with Portugal in 1653, and Holland in 1654, as he allied with France against Spain, defeating the Spanish at the Battle of the Dunes in 1658. Oliver Cromwell died on September 3, 1658, in London. After the Restoration his body was dug up and hanged.
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