4 – Oliver Cromwell
If King Charles had become a tyrant by accident and, indeed, got himself executed by accident, then the path that delivered Oliver Cromwell to the top of British politics was if anything even more unlikely. Cromwell was born in 1599, in Cambridgeshire, to a family that was part of the lower nobility, but primarily rural and obscure. He made his living from farming and lived a generally quiet life until the 1620s when he became a staunch believer in Puritanism.
Puritanism was a form of Protestantism that wanted to go even further than the Church of England had in denouncing the Catholic Church. They were extremely devout, lived simple, pious lives and followed an extremely strict moral code. Cromwell was active in his community and wanted to further influence the country towards his beliefs. To this end, he became a Member of Parliament in 1628, only for King Charles to dissolve Parliament soon afterward.
By the time that the Parliament returned 11 years later, Cromwell had become a successful businessman and a well-known Puritan. He was part of a group of religiously-motivated MPs who campaigned for freedom of conscience, Parliamentary sovereignty and regular elections to check the power of the King. When war broke out, he was drafted in as an officer, despite having little to no military experience. Cromwell soon proved himself to be a superb soldier, winning battle after battle until he found himself in charge of the whole Parliamentarian forces. By the end of the war, Cromwell was the most powerful man in England.
As mentioned, he presided over the regicide of King Charles I and was elected by his fellow Members of Parliament to replace the King in the new system, the Commonwealth of England, under the title of Lord Protector. He was, essentially, a dictator, and it was at this point that his reputation for tyranny began. Though the war in England had largely ended, over in Ireland, the Royalist forces were regrouping. As many had suspected that Charles secretly harbored Catholic tendencies – he was married to a Catholic after all – there was much support for him in Ireland, where the aristocracy was mostly made up of Catholics.
Cromwell and the Puritans were vehemently anti-Catholic as well as being anti-Royalist, and invaded Ireland in 1649. He saw Catholicism itself as a tyranny from Rome and showed absolutely no mercy to any Catholics once he landed in Ireland. He laid siege to Drogheda, a major city on the Eastern coast, and when his forces managed to get inside, they massacred 3,500 citizens in one day, including women, children and priests. He moved on to Wexford, where another 3,500 were slaughtered as he razed the whole town. Most of the rest of Ireland surrendered rather than face the same fate. All in all, the campaigns of Cromwell in Ireland lead to the deaths of between 600,000 and 200,000 civilians from war and associated diseases and famines, which was somewhere in the region of a quarter of the whole population.
Cromwell died peacefully in 1658, but he would get his comeuppance through one of the most bizarre incidents of British history. Such was his personality, there was no single figure who could adequately replace Cromwell as Lord Protector and within two years of his death, Parliament was forced to restore the Monarchy via Charles I’s son, Charles II. On the restoration, there was a huge backlash against those who had been involved in the killing of the King, with many of the regicides rounded up and execution. As Cromwell was already dead, this wasn’t possible, but the Royalists found a way. They exhumed his corpse, hung it at Tyburn, the execution grounds, then beheaded. His head was stuck on a pole in central London for the next twenty years.
Cromwell was privy to the execution of one tyrant and then proceeded to become just as dangerous a figure himself. The lesson of King Charles would not be learned by rulers to come, and neither would the lessons of Cromwell. In fact, just over the channel in France, King Louis XVI was about to repeat the mistakes all over again.