CROMWELL, OLIVER, was born at Huntingdon, April 25, 1599. His father was the younger son of sir Henry Cromwell of Hinchinbrook, and a substantial country gentle..., man, not likely to have been a brewer, as some of Oliver's earlier biographers assert. By his mother, genealogists trace Oliver's descent from the royal house of Stuart. Of the boy Cromwell's early life, little or nothing is actually known. What is clearly, ascertained is that, after having been at school in Huntingdon, he went to Cambridge, i and entered himself of Sidnei-Sussex college, April 23, 1616. He had but short timer for study here, his father dying in. the June of the year following, when lie returned, home to take the management of his father's affairs. The stories of his wild life about; this time appear to have no better foundation than the calumnies of royalists. In 1620, C. married the daughter of sir James Bourchier, a gentleman of landed property, in Essex, who had also a residence in London. This fact is pretty conclusive as to C.'s, social position being much above what his enemies have described it. C. now became, intimately associated with the Puritan party, among whom he was soon distinguished , alike for his earnestness and sagacity. In 1628, having been elected by the borough of Huntingdon, C. made his first appearance in parliament. He had but time to make a short blunt speech about the encouragement of the " preaching of fiat popery at Paul's Cross" by the bishop of Winchester, when the infatuated king unceremoniously dis patched him and his fellow-commoners to their homes. C. returned to the fen-coun- I try, not much impressed in favor of kingcraft by his visit to London; and for the next. eleven years devoted himself assiduously to the pursuit of farming by the Black Ouse river and the Cam, first at Huntingdon, then at St. Ives, and finally at Ely—making. himself famous, not by political agitation, but by an effectual resistance to certain unjust schemes of the king in council for the drainage of the fens. In 1640, he was sent to par liament as member for the town of Cambridge. His appearance at this time was by no means prepossessing. Sir Philip Warwick describes him in "a plain cloth suit, which seemed to have been made by an ill country tailor; his linen was plain, and not very clean; and I remember a speck or two of blood upon his little band, which was not much, larger than his collar. His bat was without a hat-band; his stature was of a good size; his swordstuck close to his side; his countenance swollen and reddish; his voice shall), and untunable; and his eloquence full of fervor;" and courtly sir Philip adds: "It. lessened much my reverence unto that great council, for this gentleman was very much, hearkened unto." When all hope of reconciliation between king and parliament failed, through the perfidy of the former, C. was among the first to offer of his substance to, aid in defense of the state. In July, 1642, he moved in parliament for permission to raise two companies of volunteers in Cambridge, having been careful to supply the necessary arms beforehand at his own cost. In the following month, C. seized the magazine in Cambridgeshire, and prevented the royalists from carrying off the plate (valued at £20,000) in the university there. As captain of a troop of horse, C. exhib-r ited astonishing military genius; and against the men trained by himself—" CromweIrs. Ironsides"—the battle-shock of the fiery Rupert, which at the beginning of the parlia mentary struggle none else could withstand, spent itself in vain. Soon promoted to the rank of col., and then to that of lieut.gen., C., in the fight of Winceby, on the bloody field of Marston (July 2, 1644). and in the second battle of Newbury (Oct. 27, 1644), bore himself with distinguished bravery; but, owing to the backwardness of his superiors, the results of these victories to the parliamentary cause were not so great as they might reasonably have been. C. thus complained in parliament of the backward ness of his superiors, Essex and Manchester• " I do conceive if the army be not put into another method, and the war more vigorously prosecuted, the people can bear the war no longer, and will enforce you to a dishonorable peace." Hereupon, the "self denying ordinance "—an act excluding members of the houses of parliament from hold ing command in the army—was passed; but C.'s services were considered of such importance to the common weal, that they were exceptionally retained. Of the new model army, Fairfax was appointed gen., C. serving under him as lieut.gen. of the horse, and in this capacity lie commanded the right wing of the parliamentary army at Naseby, June, 1645, and acquitted himself so well there, that the king's forces were utterly ruined. The royalists in the west were now speedily reduced. Bristel was stormed; everywhere the royal cause was failing; and Charles himself, reduced to the last extremity, in May, 1646, escaped from Oxford in disguise, and threw himself into the arms of the Scotch army at Newark (May 5, 1646), by whom he was shortly given up to the parliamentary commissioners. The source of the strife now fairly within their grasp, the parliament and the army, in the former of which the Presbyterian, and in the latter the Independent, element predominated, became jealous of each other's Bower. With his usual sagacity, C. perceived that the advantage would lie with that party who held possession of the king's person, and with ready decision he had him removed from the hands of the commissioners into those of the army, June, 1647. some of the leading Presbyterians were now turned out of parliament by the army. and Independency, with C. at its head, was gradually obtaining the ascendency. The king still remained with the army, and with his usual duplicity, negotiated with both parties, not without hope that out of their mutual dissensions might arise advantage to himself. On the 11th Nov., 1647, the king made his escape from Hampton court.
Two days after, he was in custody of col. Hammond in the isle of Wight. At this time the 'country was in a critical condition. The Welsh had risen in insurrection, a Scotch army was bearing down from the n. with hostile intent, and Rupert, to whom seventeen English ships had deserted, was threatening a descent from Holland, not to speak of the rampant royalism of Ireland. Prompt measures alone could prevent anarchy and inextricable confusion, and C. was not afraid to employ them. Pem broke had to surrender, and at Preston Moor the Scotch were utterly defeated. On the return of the army to London, the Presbyterians, who were still blindly temporiz ing with the king, to the number of more than 100, were driven ont (Dec., 1648), by the process known in history as " Pride's purge." Then that which C. thought could alone end the strife, happened. In Jan., 1649, the king was tried, condemned, and executed. The abolition of the house of lords followed speedily, and C. became a prominent member of the new council of state; and in the army, though still only lieut.gen., he had really much more influence than the commander-in-chief. The roy alists still strong and rebellious in Ireland, C. went thither in Aug., with the title of lord-lieutenant, and commander-in-chief of the army there; and ere nine months had passed, he had subdued the country so far, that it might be safely left to the keeping of his son-in-law, Ireton. C.'s measures for crushing the Irish rebels were indeed severe, and even sanguinary, but, nevertheless, peace and prosperity followed in a degree unknown before in the history of that unhappy country. Affairs in Scotland now claimed C.'s attention. Scotch commissioners had been negotiating with Charles II. at Breda, had urged him to come among them and take the covenant, and they would crown him king over them at least, and do what force of arms could do to make him king of England also. Charles arrived in the n. of Scotland on the 23d June, 1650; three days thereafter, Cromwell—Presbyterian Fairfax having refused to fight against the Presbyterian Scotch—was appointed commander-in-chief of all the parliament forces. On the 15th of July, Charles Stuart had signed the covenant, and was fully accepted ed as king. On the 3d Sept. following, C. routed the Scotch army at Dunbar. Charles, with what force remained, and other accessions, afterwards marched southward, and had penetrated to Worcester, when C. came up with him, and utterly overthrew the royalists on the anniversary of the battle of Dunbar. This battle placed C. avowedly at the head of public affairs in England, and to write his biography from this time until his death, would be to write the history of the commonwealth. The Long parlia ment had now degenerated into the Rump—had become, in truth, an oligarchy, given to long and useless discussions about mere technicalities—intolerable to the country alike for the extraordinary power it possessed, and for the weak, pusillanimous way in which it exercised it. C., therefore, dissolved the Rump, 20th April, 1653, and henceforth he alone was ruler in England. He immediately summoned a parliament of 190 persons, 138 of whom assembled on the 4th July, but lie found it necessary to dissolve it on the 12th Dec.; its one great work having been the legal investiture of C. with the supreme dower and the titre'of lord protector. it position Upon which the principal foreign powers hastened to congratulate him. C. now acted in a very arbitrary manner, so far as his parliaments were concerned, calling them and dismissing them at pleasure; but his home policy. notwithstanding, was just and liberal towards the mass of the people, and conducive to the prosperity of the country; while his foreign policy was such as to secure England a position among nations more commanding than any she had ever occupied before. Under C.'s rule, swift retribution followed any indignity or injury to Englishmen, no matter by whom or where perpetrated; and religious persecutors on the continent, in terror, stayed their bloody swords on the stern summons of the lord pro tector. He died Sept. 3, 1658, the anniversary of some of his most important victories. C. was buried in Westminster abbey; but on the 30th Jan., 1661 (the anniversary of the death of Charles I.), his grave, along with those of Ireton and Bradshaw, were broken open, the coffins dragged to Tyburn, where the moldering bodies were hanged, and then thrown into a deep hole under the gallows, while their heads were set upon poles on the top of Westminster hall. Such was the sacrilegious brutality of the king and clergy (for the deed was done by their authority) towards England's greatest ruler. It was long a fashion with historians, content to rely upon the calumnies and falsehoods of royalist writers, to represent C. as a monster of cruelty and hypocrisy—a man with a natural taste for blood, who made use of religious phraseology merely to subserve his own ambitious ends; but after the researches of Carlyle and Guizot, the eloquence of Macaulay, and the clear statement and sound sense of Forster, such a view can no longer be upheld. C.'s religion was no mere profession, it was the very essence of the man; by nature, he was not a blood-shedder, and when necessity demanded the grim exercise of the sword, he unsheathed it with reluctance. Never was a religious man less of a bigot; he would not, hi so far as his iron will could effect his purpose, permit any one to be persecuted for religious opinions. He delivered Biddle, the founder of English Unitarianism. out of the hands of the Westminster divines. He would have even given the despised and persecuted Jews the right hand of citizenship. He grasped power, and dispensed with the formality of parliaments, only because he sought to promote, in the speediest possible manner, the prosperity, happiness, and glory of his native land.