CROMWELL. OLIVER ( 1599-1658). Lord Protector of England. He was born at Hunting don, April 25, 1599, and was the only surviving son and heir of Robert Cromwell and Elizabeth, daughter of William Steward, whose family, tra dition notwithstanding, has no connection with the royal house of Stuart. The Cromwell family sprang from Katherine, who was the sister of Thomas Cromwell, the Hammer of the Monks, and who married Williams, a Welsh brewer of means. Their son Richard took the surname Cromwell, and, profiting by his uncle's ililluence, ro-e to wealth and honor in the service of Henry VIII., retaining his sovereign's favor even after his uncle's fall in 1540. The family continued to be prominent from that time, and was noted for its lavish entertainment of royalty, but owing to the extravagance of Oliver's uncle of the same name, the fortunes of the family had been squandered, and in 1627 the family seat at Bin•hinbrook was sold to Sir Sidney Montague. Oliver's father was the second son of Ilem•. the Golden Knight, and the grandson of Richard (Williams) Cromwell, and he therefore repre sents a younger branch of the family, whose in come was never large.
Little is known of Cromwell's early life. He was educated at the free school of lluntingdon under Dr. Thomas Beard, an austere Puritan. In 1616 he entered Sidney Sussex College at Cam bridge, a stronghold of Plritanism, but soon withdrew, probably owing to his father's death, in 1617. There is no foundation for the reports by royalist biographers of wildness and profligacy in his early years, though he was boisterous and only moderately successful at his studies. He probably studied law for a short time at Lin coln's Inn. In 1620 he married Elizabeth Bour ehier, daughter of a London merchant, and she seems to have brought hint a considerable dowry. The few glimpses that we have of his life before the beginning of his active public career, which may be said to date from the meeting of the Long Parliament in 16-10, leave no doubt as to which side• he would espouse in the approaching strug gle. For some years he was in the throes of a re ligionsconflict, from whieh he emerged in a trium phant conversion. Throughout the rest of his life he was deeply religinns,an ardent, though tolerant Puritan. The earliest letter from his pen which has come down to us (1636) is a solicitation for a subscription to maintain a lectureship, by which means the Puritans supported preachers, owing to the neglect of this function by the established clerp•. He was elected to the Parliament of 1628. where his only recorded speech is directed against the opponents of Puritanism. He watched the career of Gustavus Adolphus with eager sympathy, and it is thought that his own early military successes were in part a result of his careful study of Gustavus Adolphus's eam paigns. lie took less interest in purely political matters, hut we know of three instances where he championed the poorer inhabitants of his dis tricts whose rights of pasturage were threatened. He was fined £10 in 1630 for having neglected to lie knighted, but we have no mewl] of his having resisted the forced loan or the payment of ship money. Yet there can be no doubt that he was dissatisfied with Charles's arbitrary rule, and there is a tradition which corresponds well with circumstances, that he once intended to emigrate to New England. It this is true, it was probably between 1631 and 1036, and it may have been pre vented by a legacy which fell to him in the bitter year, Ile was elected to the Short Parliament ia 1640, and to the Long Parliament in the same year.
Cromwell belayed a subordinate part in the de liberations of the Long Parliament. lle had no share in the inqicaehment of Strafford. lle was rather more interested in the constitutional re forms, but most of all in ccelcsiastk-al matters, and joined Sir Henry Vane and Hampden in de manding the abolition of the episcopacy, 'root and branch.' On the outbreak of the Irish insur
rection of 1641, it was lie NO10 proposed that Pa• liament shenbl assume control of the militia. When the Civil War broke out in 1642, lie was very active in seen ring the authority of Parlia ment in the eastern counties, and commanded a troop of horse in the battle of Edgehill, October 23, 1643. In 1643 the war everywhere went against Parliament except in the Eastern Asso ciation, where Cromwell not only kept the royal ists at bay, but even gained ground. His one troop had grown to ten, and afterwards grew to fourteen, forming two regiments of the best drilled cavalry in England. For his services in the Eastern Association, Parliament made him Lieutenant-General of the Army of the Eastern Association (1644), and appointed him a member of the Committee of both King doms. In the battle of Marston Moor, July 2. 1644. lie commanded the Parliamentary horse, whose final charge decided the fortunes of the day. Hitherto, the Parliamentarians had been inferior in cavalry, whose military impor tance was greater in those days than now. It was due to Cromwell that this inferiority was overcome. It is at about this time that the division of the Puritans into two parties clearly appears. The Presbyterians, who were largely in the majority in Parliament, were alarmed at the growth of religious sects in the army, and they were anxious for an accommodation with Charles in order to be free to suppress Independency. The army, on the other hand, had become the stronghold of Independency, and desired religious toleration and a vigorous prosecution of the var. Cromwell was the spokesman of the party of toleration. He impeached Manchester for half hea•tedness in the prosecution of the campaign, and found support with the Commons, but not with the Lords. He then disinterestedly proposed the reorganization of the army under new leaders, and on the adoption of the New model (q.v.), and the Self-Denying Ordinance (q.v.), assumed that his military career was over. On the contrary, he was appointed lieutenant-general in command of the cavalry, and by a charge of the Parliamen tary horse, decided the day at Naseby. the last battle of the First Civil War..Tune 14, 1045. The distrust between the Presbyterian Parliament and the Independent army became an open breach when the Parliament not only proposed to hand the army without paying the arrears due to the 1111•11, but made overtures to Charles which seemed to the army a surrender of what they had been fighting for. Cromwell, now the recognized leader of the army, hesitated, as was his wont, and tried to mediate between the two parties, but in the end threw in his lot with the army. It was lie who ordered the abduetion of the King from lloImby. In the Second Civil War, a (-wise Ipicnce of this rupture, in which the King played off one pa rty against the ot her, Cromwell defeated the Scots under Ilainin in, who were twice his number, in a remarkable three days' battle near Preston, .kug,ust 1T-19, 1648. The army now clamored for the life of the King, whose duplicity had caused the renewal of the war. For a time Cromwell held hack, but when his inhul was made up no legal technicality could stop him. "I tell you we will cut off his head with his crown upon it," lie cried roughly, ill answer to an argument denying the jurisdiction of the High Court of .Justice. Ile had nothing to do with Pride's Purge, being absent at the time, but he accepted the result of it, and was foremost in all the events leading up to the King's execution (January 30, 1649).