Oliver Cromwell and the Rule of the Puritans in England

Either as a soldier or as a statesman Cromwell was far greater than any Englishman of his time, and he was both soldier and statesman in one. We must look to Cæsar or Napoleon t...

Cromwell joined the army because he wished to prevent the outbreak of anarchy or civil war. War was inevitable, if the Presbyterian leaders were allowed to bring Scottish forces...

For the next eleven years Charles ruled without a Parliament. “Remember,” he had warned the Commons in 1626, “that Parliaments are altogether in my power for their calling, sitt...

While Fairfax and Cromwell were fighting the armies raised in the King’s name, the Parliament was once more negotiating with Charles I. In spite of the vote for no addresses, pa...

When the Parliament received the news of Worcester, they voted Cromwell four thousand pounds a year, gave him Hampton Court for a residence, and sent a deputation to present the...

From 1654 to 1658, the fundamental question of English politics was, whether Cromwell would succeed in securing the assent of the nation to the authority which the army had conf...

Cromwell came into power as the nominee of the army, and in domestic affairs the programme which he set himself to carry out was that which the army had set forth in its petitio...

The execution of the King destroyed the alliance which Cromwell had established between Argyle and the Independents. Argyle would have been glad to preserve it, but his power de...

The execution of Charles I. was followed by the abolition of monarchy. On February 6, 1649, the House of Commons voted that the House of Lords was useless and dangerous, and tha...

The Long Parliament met at Westminster on November 3, 1640. Most of its members, even as Cromwell himself, had sat in the Parliament of the preceding May, but they came together...

The settlement of the kingdom after the war ended was a task of far greater difficulty than the defeat of the King’s armies. It could not be solved by putting Charles upon his t...

The “New Model” army which Fairfax commanded had a better chance of success than that of Essex. Essex had failed partly through incapacity, but partly because his forces were ne...

Three aims guided Cromwell’s foreign policy: the first was the desire to maintain and to spread the Protestant religion; the second, the desire to preserve and extend English co...

The fall of the Long Parliament was received with general satisfaction. “There was not so much as the barking of a dog or any general and visible repining at it,” said Cromwell...

The Second Civil War had its counterpart in Ireland, where in May, 1648, Lord Inchiquin and the Munster Protestants threw off obedience to the Parliament and hoisted the royal s...

To contemporaries, the Protectorate had never seemed stronger than it did in the summer of 1658. “From the dissolution of Cromwell’s last Parliament,” writes Clarendon, “all thi...

Cromwell was the first English ruler who systematically employed the power of the government to increase and extend the colonial possessions of England. His colonial policy was...

“I was by birth a gentleman living neither in any considerable height nor yet in obscurity,” said the Protector to one of his Parliaments. Cromwell’s family was one of the many...

From the day when King Charles raised his standard at Nottingham, and even before that date, England was divided into two camps, according as men elected to obey the King or the...

As yet neither party had decidedly gained the upper hand, though the tide seemed setting against the Parliament. Both parties, therefore, looked outside England for allies, one...

At the opening of the campaign of 1643, the strength of the Royalists had greatly increased, and before its close the advantage had passed to the King. In almost every county, t...

“Mr. Lely,” said Cromwell to the painter, “I desire you would use all your skill to paint my picture truly like me, and not flatter me at all; but remark all these roughnesses,...

The Second Civil War broke out in Wales. It began with a revolt of officers and soldiers who had fought zealously for the Parliament throughout the first war. In February, 1648,...

passed the House of Commons and was sent up to the Lords. The Lords demurred, and delayed, and at last rejected it, on the ground that they did not know what shape the new army...