THE FIRST CIVIL WAR
With the outbreak of the Civil War in 1642, Cromwell was sent down to help organize the defence of his locality. He was prompt and eager when many hung back, recruiting men into his first troops of horse who had, like himself, “the fear of God before them and made some conscience of what they did”. He quickly raised a double regiment of horse, which acquired a high reputation for discipline and valour. His troopers were called, after their Colonel, “Ironsides”. When the Eastern Association was formed, of mostly East Anglian counties, and an army rose for its defence, Cromwell was made general of the cavalry. They made a big contribution to the victory over the king's commanders, Prince Rupert and William Cavendish, 1st Duke of Newcastle, at the Battle of Marston Moor in July 1644.
This success was followed by military stalemate, however, and Cromwell, having quarrelled with his commander, Edward Montagu, 2nd Earl of Manchester, gained political allies in his fight to replace the old leadership by new, more committed, reforming, and “godly” men. The Self-Denying Ordinance removed MP and aristocratic commanders, and paved the way for a New Model Army, under fresh officers. (The commander-in-chief was the young Sir Thomas Fairfax.) It did not specifically debar the reappointment of old MP-officeholders, however, and Cromwell was soon made General of the Horse. He played an important role in the decisive defeat of the king's army at the Battle of Naseby on June 14, 1645.
THE SEARCH FOR A SETTLEMENT
While victory in the Civil War went to Parliament, that body was no longer politically united, and the king, though defeated, was able to exploit the divisions of his enemies.
The more conservative MPs, some of whom were for a Scottish Presbyterian reform of the Church of England (as required by the alliance with the Scots; the Solemn League and Covenant), were known as “Presbyterians”. They favoured a rapid disbandment of the New Model Army, which they viewed as dangerously radical. When the army mutinied in 1647, and refused to disband, as the “Presbyterians” wanted, Cromwell attempted to bridge the gap between his men and Parliament.
But the king fled to the Isle of Wight and made a secret deal with the Scottish nobility for them to invade England. In the resulting Second Civil War, Cromwell put down a serious revolt in south Wales, and with part of the New Model Army then defeated the Scots at Preston in August 1648. With the other “Grandees”, he now agreed with his more radical junior officers and the Levellers (London civilian radicals) that the king could not be trusted. He did not engineer the reduction of the Long Parliament to the Rump Parliament undertaken by the army (Pride's Purge on December 6, 1648), but approved of it. Once convinced of the need to try, convict, and execute the king, he was the architect of his execution on January 30, 1649.
THE COMMONWEALTH
The execution of the king, the foundation of the English republican Commonwealth in March 1649, also the new state needed stronger defences. Cromwell put down Leveller-inspired mutinies in the army before departing for Ireland, which was still torn by civil warfare between contending parties, Catholic and Protestant, Irish, English, and Scots. He had long viewed the Catholic Irish as beyond the pale for their supposed massacre of Protestant settlers in 1641. By the time he returned to England (May 1650), most of Ireland was conquered, and the wholesale expropriation of the native tenantry begun, with their replacement by new English settlers, often ex-soldiers. On the death of Charles I, the Scots had welcomed his son and heir, whom they crowned as Charles II. Cromwell, who had now replaced Sir Thomas Fairfax as supreme commander, launched a combined military and naval operation against Parliament's former allies in the summer of 1650. He won a victory in the Battle of Dunbar on September 3, 1650; and in the Battle of Worcester when Charles invaded England the following summer, on September 3, 1651, the first anniversary of his earlier battle.
The Commonwealth was now free of internal enemies, and in 1652 went to war with the country's greatest trade rival, the Netherlands.
The government also built up the British navy so that it was the most powerful in Europe. The resignation of Fairfax and the death of Ireton in Ireland made Cromwell, now at the height of his fame, more dependent on fellow generals Thomas Harrison and John Lambert. On April 20, 1653, at the head of a party of soldiers, he put an end to its sitting.
To replace the Rump, Cromwell summoned a select number of approved individuals to a new assembly, the Little or Nominated Parliament, in July 1653. Harrison, a religious enthusiast, may have influenced him. In fact, it was ahead of its time, passing many sensible reforms before it returned power to Cromwell on December 12, 1653.
LORD PROTECTOR
In the renewed search for political stability, John Lambert devised a written constitution, the Instrument of Government. Under its terms a Lord Protector for life was appointed, advised by Council of State, and a Parliament called when required, with a reformed franchise and including representatives from Scotland and Ireland. Cromwell was installed as the new Protector on December 16, 1653. Rule by a single person and an executive suggested a return to a more traditional form of government, like that of king and Privy Council, after years of experiment. An angry and disappointed Protector dissolved him in January 1655.
Cromwell parcelled up the country into 10, later 11, major-generalships, to restore order, raise a horse militia, and impose new taxation. Its unpopularity, and the absence of any other plots, ended this experiment in 1656.
Cromwell had ended the war with the Dutch, which he disapproved of, in 1654. He sent an expedition to the West Indies that failed in its main purpose but accidentally, and with great loss of life, captured Jamaica. With the aid of France, British forces also took Dunkerque from the Habsburgs. The reputation abroad of the Protectorate, with the largest and most successful navy in the world, was enormous.
In 1657 Cromwell's Parliament offered a new constitution, the Humble Petition and Advice, which included kingship for the Protector.
Cromwell, perhaps influenced by his generals, refused, but accepted a new installation that emphasized his semi-regal position as commander-in-chief and head of state.
It was, when Cromwell died on the anniversary of his victories at Dunbar and Worcester, on September 3, 1658, which led to their overthrow of Richard Cromwell, Oliver's eldest son, in 1659. The period of anarchy that followed was ended by the restoration of Charles II in 1660.
