Oliver Cromwell (25 April 1599 – 3 September 1658) was an English statesman and soldier, widely regarded as one of the most important figures in British history. He came to prominence during the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, initially as a senior commander in the Parliamentarian army and later as a politician. A leading advocate of the execution of Charles I in January 1649, which led to the establishment of the Commonwealth of England, Cromwell ruled as Lord Protector from December 1653 until his death in September 1658.
Although elected Member of Parliament (MP) for Huntingdon in 1628, much of Cromwell's life prior to 1640 was marked by financial and personal failure. He became a religious Independent in the 1630s, and thereafter believed his successes were the result of divine providence. In 1640, he served as MP for Cambridge in the Short and Long Parliaments. He joined the Parliamentarian army when the First English Civil War began in August 1642 and quickly demonstrated his military prowess. In 1645, he was appointed commander of the New Model Army cavalry under Thomas Fairfax, and he played a key role in winning the English Civil War.
The death of Charles I and exile of his son Charles II, followed by military victories in Ireland and Scotland, firmly established the Commonwealth and Cromwell's dominance of the new regime. In December 1653, he was named Lord Protector, a position he retained for the remaining five years of his life. After his death in 1658, he was succeeded by his son Richard, whose weakness led to a power vacuum. This culminated in the 1660 Stuart Restoration, after which Cromwell's body was removed from Westminster Abbey and hanged at Tyburn on 30 January 1661 as a posthumous execution. His head was cut off and displayed on the roof of Westminster Hall. It remained there until at least 1684, then spent the next three centuries in a succession of private collections before being reburied in 1960.
Cromwell's historical reputation is continually debated. He is a controversial figure due to his use of military force to acquire and retain political power, his role in the execution of Charles I, and the brutality of his 1649 conquest of Ireland. Winston Churchill described Cromwell as a military dictator, while others view him a hero of liberty.
First proposed in 1856, his statue outside the Houses of Parliament was not erected until 1895, with most of the funds privately supplied by Prime Minister Archibald Primrose.
Oliver Cromwell was born in Huntingdon on 25 April 1599 to Robert Cromwell and his second wife Elizabeth, daughter of William Steward. His birthplace, the Grade II listed Cromwell House, was at that time the site of Huntingdon Priory, and is commemorated by a plaque. The family's estate derived from Oliver's great-great-grandfather Morgan ap William, a brewer from Glamorgan, Wales, who settled at Putney and married Katherine Cromwell, the sister of Thomas Cromwell, who would become the famous chief minister to Henry VIII. The Cromwells acquired great wealth as occasional beneficiaries of Thomas's administration of the Dissolution of the Monasteries.
Oliver's father Robert Williams, alias Cromwell, married Elizabeth Steward, probably in 1591. Cromwell's paternal grandfather, Henry Williams, was one of the two wealthiest landowners in Huntingdonshire. Cromwell's father was of modest means but still a member of the landed gentry. As a younger son with many siblings, Robert inherited only a house at Huntingdon and a small amount of land. This land would have generated an income of up to £300 a year, near the bottom of the range of gentry incomes. In 1654 Cromwell said, "I was by birth a gentleman, living neither in considerable height, nor yet in obscurity." They had ten children, but Oliver, the fifth child, was the only boy to survive infancy. Oliver Cromwell was baptised on 29 April 1599 at St John's Church, and attended Huntingdon Grammar School. He went on to study at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, then a recently founded college with a strong Puritan ethos. He left in June 1617 without taking a degree, immediately after his father's death. Early biographers claim that he then attended Lincoln's Inn, but the Inn's archives retain no record of him. Antonia Fraser concludes that it is likely that he did train at one of the London Inns of Court during this time. His grandfather, his father and two of his uncles had attended Lincoln's Inn, and Cromwell sent his son Richard there in 1647.
Cromwell probably returned home to Huntingdon after his father's death. As his mother was widowed, and his seven sisters unmarried, he would have been needed at home to help his family.
Cromwell married Elizabeth Bourchier (1598–1665) on 22 August 1620 at St Giles-without-Cripplegate on Fore Street, London. Elizabeth's father, James Bourchier, was a London leather-merchant who owned extensive lands in Essex and had strong connections with Puritan gentry families there. The marriage brought Cromwell into contact with Oliver St John and leading members of London's merchant community, and behind them the influence of the Earls of Warwick and Holland. A place in this influential network proved crucial to Cromwell's military and political career. The couple had nine children:
Robert (1621–1639), died while away at school
Oliver (1622–1644), died of typhoid fever while serving as a Parliamentarian officer
Bridget (1624–1662), married (1) Henry Ireton, (2) Charles Fleetwood
Richard (1626–1712), his father's successor as Lord Protector, married Dorothy Maijor
Henry (1628–1674), later Lord Deputy of Ireland (in office: 1657–1659), married Elizabeth Russell (daughter of Francis Russell)
Elizabeth (1629–1658), married John Claypole
James (b. & d. 1632), died in infancy
Mary (1637–1713), married Thomas Belasyse, 1st Earl Fauconberg
Frances (1638–1720), married (1) Robert Rich (1634–1658), son of Robert Rich, 3rd Earl of Warwick, (2) Sir John Russell, 3rd Baronet