Oliver Cromwell

Oliver Cromwell (25 April 1599 – 3 September 1658) was an English farmer, soldier, and statesman, considered a pivotal figure in British history. He rose to prominence during the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, first as a senior commander for the Parliamentarian army and later as a politician. He strongly supported the execution of Charles I in January 1649, which led to the creation of the Commonwealth of England, and he governed as Lord Protector from December 1653 until his death.

Cromwell was first elected as MP for Huntingdon in 1628, but before 1640 his life was largely marked by financial struggles and personal setbacks. In the 1630s he became a religious Independent, and from then on believed his achievements were guided by divine providence. He served as MP for Cambridge in the Short and Long Parliaments of 1640. When the First English Civil War began in August 1642, he joined the Parliamentarian army and quickly proved his military skill. In 1645 he was made commander of the New Model Army’s cavalry under Thomas Fairfax, playing a crucial role in winning the war.

After Charles I’s execution and the exile of his son Charles II, military victories in Ireland and Scotland solidified the Commonwealth and Cromwell’s control. He became Lord Protector in December 1653, holding the position for the rest of his life. Following his death in 1658, his son Richard succeeded him, but Richard’s weakness created a power vacuum. This led to the Stuart Restoration in 1660, after which Cromwell’s body was exhumed from Westminster Abbey and hanged at Tyburn on 30 January 1661 as a posthumous execution. His severed head was displayed on the roof of Westminster Hall, remaining there until at least 1684, then passed through private collections for three centuries before being reburied in 1960.

Cromwell’s historical reputation remains fiercely debated. He is controversial for using military force to gain and keep power, his role in Charles I’s execution, and the brutality of his 1649 conquest of Ireland. Winston Churchill called him a military dictator, while others see him as a hero of liberty. A statue of him outside the Houses of Parliament, first proposed in 1856, was not erected until 1895, with most funds privately provided by Prime Minister Archibald Primrose.

Cromwell was born in Huntingdon on 25 April 1599 to Robert Cromwell and his second wife Elizabeth, daughter of William Steward. His birthplace, now a Grade II listed building called Cromwell House, was once the site of Huntingdon Priory and is marked by a plaque. The family’s wealth came from his great-great-grandfather Morgan ap William, a Welsh brewer from Glamorgan who settled in Putney and married Katherine Cromwell, sister of Thomas Cromwell, Henry VIII’s chief minister. The Cromwells gained significant wealth from Thomas’s administration of the Dissolution of the Monasteries.

Cromwell’s father, Robert Williams (alias Cromwell), married Elizabeth Steward, probably in 1591. His paternal grandfather, Henry Williams, was one of the two richest landowners in Huntingdonshire. Robert was a younger son with many siblings, inheriting only a house in Huntingdon and a small amount of land, generating up to £300 a year—near the bottom of gentry incomes. Cromwell later said, “I was by birth a gentleman, living neither in considerable height, nor yet in obscurity.” The couple had ten children; Oliver, the fifth child, was the only boy to survive infancy. He was baptised on 29 April 1599 at St John’s Church and attended Huntingdon Grammar School. He studied at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, a recently founded college with a strong Puritan ethos, but left in June 1617 without a degree after his father’s death. Early biographers claim he attended Lincoln’s Inn, but the Inn’s archives have no record of him; Antonia Fraser suggests he likely trained at one of the London Inns of Court. His grandfather, father, and two uncles had attended Lincoln’s Inn, and Cromwell later sent his son Richard there in 1647. After his father’s death, Cromwell probably returned to Huntingdon to help his widowed mother and seven unmarried sisters.

Cromwell married Elizabeth Bourchier (1598–1665) on 22 August 1620 at St Giles-without-Cripplegate in London. Her father, James Bourchier, was a London leather merchant with extensive lands in Essex and strong ties to Puritan gentry families. The marriage connected Cromwell to Oliver St John, leading London merchants, and the Earls of Warwick and Holland—a network crucial to his later career. The couple had nine children: Robert (1621–1639, died at school), Oliver (1622–1644, died of typhoid while a Parliamentarian officer), Bridget (1624–1662, married Henry Ireton then Charles Fleetwood), Richard (1626–1712, his father’s successor as Lord Protector, married Dorothy Maijor), Henry (1628–1674, later Lord Deputy of Ireland, married Elizabeth Russell), Elizabeth (1629–1658, married John Claypole), James (born and died 1632), Mary (1637–1713, married Thomas Belasyse, 1st Earl Fauconberg), and Frances (1638–1720).