Please tell, by what standard can Charles be measured a tyrant but by which Cromwell cannot?
What a weird doubling of the post!
I’ll take a crack at it.
The logical drive of ideology for Charles and his supporters was towards absolute monarchy like that in France and Spain. This was actually considered modern and the wave of the future at the time. Englishmen whining about their “rights” was antiquated and behind the times. Very old fashioned.
When Cromwell and his guys not only overthrew the king but chopped his lying head off, they demonstrated in the most literal sense possible that the People, or some group of them, or their delegates, rule in England, not a Monarch by the Grace of God. Parliament was always supreme after that. And that tradition of rejection of absolutism is that from which America sprang. There is a line of descent from Cromwell to Washington and Jefferson. Not from Charles to the Founders.
Actually, I think neither Charles nor Cromwell was much of a tyrant at heart. Charles just wanted others to respect and obey him as was his right as King. The trouble was that the political world was changing and Charles refused to adapt. He was a remarkably decent man in his private life, but was not competent to ride the wave of a political tsunami.
(It’s interesting that some of the most decent monarchs - as men - had the greatest tragedies befall them: Nicholas II, Charles I, George V and Louis XVI. Meanwhile lots of ahole kings who deserved horrible fates lived and died in enjoyment of their pleasures.)
When things started going badly for Charles he comprehensively and repeatedly demonstrated that he simply could NOT be trusted to keep his word. Not because he was a lying deceiving SOB, but because he quite honestly viewed it as his Duty to break his word when it would help to reinstate his proper position in the realm. Since none of his more effective opponents could trust him to keep his word, they had no real alternative but to take him out of the picture, since if he came back to power and did not keep his word with regard to amnesty and such, they would all be hanged, drawn and quartered.
Cromwell also desmonstrated little of the hunger for absolute power shown by Napoleon, Hitler and other tyrants. He crushed revolts and struggled to establish a legitimate basis for power other than the King. He failed, of course, and reverted to military despotism as a last resort. But he was remarkably mild as tyrants go, repeatedly trying to work with the leading men of the realm to establish a new and better system of governance instead of just imposing his will.