Oliver Cromwell was a well organised man who benefitted England greatly in his time. Firstly, Cromwell started the new model army which was a great success as it one some of the most important battles such as the battle of Naseby, 14th June 1645, which helped parliament win the civil war. Secondly, Cromwell was one of the greatest generals England has ever seen, mostly due to the outbreak of the Civil War as Cromwell served as captain of horse soldiers for Parliament. Within a year he became a well-respected colonel, in command of a regiment. Cromwell knew instinctively that good quality soldiers, disciplined troops and religious motivation were the key to victory, and he recruited his men accordingly to that. Thirdly, Cromwell was extremely religious. He was destined to be religious from the early stages of his life, his teacher (Dr Beard) taught them mostly about religion (Pg.6-7 1612). Oliver Cromwell’s life wouldn’t be the same without religion as it made up his mind for a lot of his decisions. Such as when he had the most important decision in his life when he had to decide whether to become king or not, religion over powered any other reasons in Cromwell’s mind (Pg.38-39). This religious side to Cromwell was exceedingly good as many people (in the 16th century) had strong religious beliefs; in fact nearly the whole population in England had some sort of religious beliefs! Fourth and finally, Cromwell was a political man; he supported executions; he got offered the crown; voted often and was lord protector. He was trusted by many people to run army’s and become general, they must have trusted him for a reason, mustn’t they?
Although Cromwell was thought to be a good man, he can be seen as a bloodthirsty person who would kick a man while he was down. One of the most two-sided stories was the levellers; the levellers were a political movement in Cromwell’s time who wanted the taxes to lower, the Long Parliament gone and a new one elected and they wanted all men to be able to vote. Cromwell did not agree with this and executed the three main leaders in front of all their followers; these people were Cornet Thompson, Private Church, and Corporal Perkings. After that the leveller’s movement collapsed and there idea of “one man, one vote” was not heard again for nearly 200 years. Another major thing was the battle of Drogheda in Ireland; this was probably the most controversial part of Cromwell’s story. England was protestant in 1530 and the Irish stayed catholic, but English monarchs gave Irish land to protestant shelters which made the Irish Catholics very angry and killed lots of Protestants. So Parliament sent an army to Ireland under Cromwell’s control, and landed his army in August 1649. Cromwell needed to capture Drogheda or he would fail with 12,000 soldiers although the town only had 2500 soldiers and 4000 civilians. So Cromwell wrote them a letter asking them to surrender or he would kill them all, but after a victorious battle Cromwell sent 2,000 prisoners to Barbados to work. This shows how unreliable and untrustworthy he is and that he is not a good general. He also killed many innocent people and soldiers who had surrendered! In 1642 Cromwell supported MP’s when they voted to close all theatres this made him very unpopular, but that’s not all. In 1647 Parliament voted to ban Christmas and Easter as they were not mentioned in the bible and were associated with the Catholic Church. Although new, shorter holidays were added, it still made people very angry that Cromwell supported these and made less people vote for Cromwell in those situations.
There have been many different interpretations of Cromwell through the years and nearly all of them are varied in some way or another. In Charles II reign (1669- 1685) people thought that Cromwell was an absolute monster, who killed King Charles to seize the power for himself, although if this was true then why didn’t Cromwell take the offer of the crown? But people hated him so much that they dug up his mouldy, decaying body, chopped of his head and threw his body in a ditch, whilst displaying his skull on a spike outside parliament. The main reason why they disliked him so much was that people blamed Cromwell for all the bad things that happened as historians made up stories that could never of happened; a story tells of four-year Cromwell punching two-year Prince Charles in the face but these two people never met when they were young. Secondly, the Victorian period (1837 – 1901) was completely different to the previous time as Cromwell was a hero, an idle to many of the people. They thought he made England a fairer, Stronger, wealthier and a more religious country. People loved him so much that in 1899, they got rid of Cromwell’s skull and made a statue of him in front of parliament; Cromwell was holding a bible (Showing he was religious) and he was holding a sword (showing that he was good military general). The Victorian liked him as they were proud to be ruled by an elected member of parliament, everyone could worship freely, admired the soldiers who had built up their empire, Middle class Victorians disapproved of drinking and gambling and Cromwell helped ban these things. Victorians also said that Cromwell helped create a parliamentary system, start the British government, establish religious freedom and improve moral behaviour of most of the people. In the 1930’s and 1940’s many historians thought that Cromwell was a cruel military dictator, they thought he was much like Hitler, and at that time England was in the second World War (1939 – 1945). Hitler also captured, tortured and murdered millions of Jews, this meant that Hitler was hated (Pg.44 – 45). To this day historians find Cromwell very confusing, complicated and cannot seem to understand him. Cromwell was an MP who believed in parliament, a soldier who believed the army did the work of God; he was a revolutionary who supported the execution of Charles I and a conservative who wanted to protect the power of land owners. Cromwell was a deeply religious man who failed to discover Gods will for him and his country. Finally, Cromwell was a ruler, not a perfect one, but a ruler, who made mistakes but had many successes; he always put the country before himself, whatever happened.
In conclusion, due to all of the evidence and reliable sources, I (and you) believe that Cromwell was a good man who was in no way perfect. He had played a key part in many events during his life, Cromwell was heroic but was a villain at the same time. Many different people thought differently of him, and to this day people still can’t make a statement saying whether Cromwell was a Hero or a Villain.
