Oliver Cromwell, Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scottland, and Ireland

Oliver Cromwell, Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland and Ireland, was a driven man. Cromwell was driven by his Puritan faith and the desire to see that faith sweep through all of the Commonwealth. Elected to Parliament for the first time in 1628 and then again in 1640 to both the Short and Long Parliaments. A Parliamentarian during the English Civil Wars, he was rapidly promoted to command in the New Model Army. Righteous and at times self-righteous, Cromwell’s letters and speeches show a firm confidence in his belief that Providence’s guiding hand was in his every action and decision; subsequently, any measure taken in the pursuit of Divine Providence’s will, as he viewed it, was fully warranted. His writing also shows a man who has a desire to promote himself and his own cause both politically and religiously, which at the time were one and the same.

One of Cromwell’s earliest known letters was written on 13 October, 1638 to his cousin Elizabeth. This letter shows a man full of zeal for his faith and perhaps a newfound zeal at that. “I was chief, the chief of sinners. This is true: I hated Godliness, yet God had mercy on me. O the riches of his mercy!” The letter continues in the vein of a man who has a recent conversion or revival of faith. It also depicts a man who is unabashed in his conviction when speaking on the subject of that faith despite his financial and personal hardships. John Morrill writes, “His credit-in every meaning of the word- in ruins, he sold up and took on the tenancy of a farm a few miles away. And at or around that time he experienced a profound sense of God’s promise to him of election.” Faith and reformation would be a central theme in many of the letters and speeches of Oliver...

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...igious language. These early letters show a man driven by a cause who believes in the right of the cause as set down by God. He is never cruel and rarely brutal unless warranted on the battlefield. The first act of calculated brutality off of the battlefield is the execution of Private Arnold. He was a straightforward, honest man in his early military and political career. That would all change once he became a regicide.

Works Cited

Thomas Carlyle, H.D. Traill ed., Oliver Cromwell’s Letters and Speeches, (London: Chapman and Hall Limited, 1850) pp. 101.

John Morrill, “Rewriting Cromwell: A Case of Deafening Silences”, Canadian Journal of History, Vol. 38 issue 3, Dec. 2003.

John Morrill, Oliver Cromwell, (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2007) pp. 27

Alan Thomas, “The Ware Mutiny 1647: Order Restored or Revolution Defeated”, (Ware U.K.: Rockingham Press, 1996).