Today is the birthday of Oliver Cromwell, leader of the English Revolution which overthrew and executed King Charles I. Born in 1599, he was a Puritan country gentleman who was elected to Parliament in 1640. When civil war erupted in 1642 he took up arms against the king, rising quickly to the rank of general of cavalry in the forces of Parliament. By 1650 he had consented to the death of Charles, crushed the Irish and put down radical Leveller dissent in England. He was named Lord Protector in 1653 and ruled the new republic -- giving the people "not what they want but what was good for them" -- until his death in 1658. Under his government England defeated the Spanish, captured Jamaica, readmitted the Jews, instituted a limited kind of religious liberty, suppressed the theatre and other popular entertainments and outlawed Christmas.
The diarist John Evelyn recorded that Cromwell's was 'the joyfullest funeral that ever I saw for there was none that cried but dogs'. At the Restoration of the Stuart monarchy in 1660 his body was disinterred and hanged as a traitor; his head was placed on a pole.
Those of a Puritan bent called him the English Moses but the disenchanted John Milton modelled his portrait of Satan in "Paradise Lost" on Cromwell -- one who would rather rule in Hell than serve in Heaven. Edmund Burke said of him that he was a man "in whom ambition had not wholly suppressed, but only suspended, the sentiments of religion." Matthew Arnold was not much kinder, calling him "the Philistine of genius in politics".
Posted by at April 25, 2003 09:01 PM