Person1599 – 1658

Oliver Cromwell

Also called: Cromwell, Lord Protector

English soldier and statesman who led the Puritan Revolution, defeated the Royalists with Parliament’s army, founded the Commonwealth and became Lord Protector

Born into a gentry family at Huntingdon in eastern England, he studied at Cambridge. After a profound religious experience around the age of thirty he became a fervent Puritan, and in 1640 he entered the Long Parliament. Though without military experience, he raised a cavalry troop of devout soldiers who became known as the “Ironsides”. The massacres at Drogheda and elsewhere during his conquest of Ireland are still resented there today. He refused the offer of the crown, and after the Restoration his body was dug up and ritually executed.

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2 related events

1642 – 1660Puritan Revolutionleader
In 1642 civil war broke out between Parliamentarians and Royalists; Parliament’s side under Cromwell won, executed Charles I in 1649 and set up a republic. This English revolution lasted until the monarchy was restored in 1660.
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1649Execution of Charles Ileader
On 30 January 1649 Charles I, condemned for treason by a special court set up by Parliament, was executed at Whitehall in London.

People who appear alongside

Charles I1600 – 1649
King of England and Scotland from 1625 to 1649 whose clash with Parliament brought on the Puritan Revolution; he was tried and executed

Themes this person appears in

Scientific Revolution, Enlightenment and the English Revolutions1543 – 1796
The Scientific Revolution from Copernicus to Newton, parliamentary government in England won through the Puritan and Glorious Revolutions, and the Enlightenment that sought to remake society by reason — the groundwork of the civic revolutions and the Industrial Revolution