Oliver Cromwell
Oliver Cromwell rose from obscurity to rule England as Lord Protector, having signed the warrant that killed its king. Born in Huntingdon in 1599 into minor gentry, he spent his first forty years as an unremarkable farmer and small landowner, underwent an intense Puritan conversion in his thirties, and sat briefly in parliament. He had no military training. When civil war broke out in 1642 he raised a cavalry troop in Cambridgeshire and discovered an exceptional talent for it, insisting on recruiting men of conviction rather than social rank and drilling them to halt and re-form after a charge rather than pursue. His Ironsides were decisive at Marston Moor in 1644 and at Naseby in 1645, and the New Model Army was built on his principles. He was central to the army's political radicalisation, to the trial of Charles I, and to the regicide of January 1649. He then took the army to Ireland, where the storming of Drogheda and Wexford killed thousands including civilians and clergy — actions he defended as a righteous judgement and which remain a permanent grievance. He defeated the Scots at Dunbar and the future Charles II at Worcester in 1651. He dissolved the Rump Parliament by force in 1653 and became Lord Protector under a written constitution, ruling through parliaments he repeatedly dismissed and, for a period, through eleven major-generals. He readmitted Jews to England after three and a half centuries and permitted a broad Protestant toleration while suppressing Catholic worship. He refused the crown in 1657. He died in 1658, the protectorate collapsed within two years, and his body was exhumed and hanged.
- Lived: 1599 CE – 1658 CE
- Nationality: English
- Roles: military_leader, head_of_state, lord_protector
