Was Oliver Cromwell - founder of the British empire - the greatest ever Englishman?

The Daily Mail UK ^ | 1st January 2011 | Dominic Sandbrook

[Alex Murphy]

In many ways, though, what drove Cromwell was his burning religious passion.

Around 1630, when his financial woes were at their worst, he went through a dramatic religious conversion, becoming convinced that God had marked him out for eternal salvation.

‘Oh, have I lived in and loved darkness and hated the light,’ he wrote a few years later. ‘I was a chief, the chief of sinners . . . I hated godliness; yet God had mercy upon me. O the riches of His mercy!’

But Cromwell was not merely exceptionally religious. He belonged to a particular religious group — the Puritans — who believed that the frivolous Charles I, with his stubborn faith in the Divine Right of Kings and his fondness for elaborate Catholic-style church ceremonies, was betraying the Protestant Reformation.

A century earlier, Henry VIII’s tumultuous break with Roman Catholicism had given rise to a new sense of English identity, rooted in Protestant independence, localism and individualism, and fiercely antagonistic to Continental European influence. But to England’s Protestant middle classes, the return of Papal rule remained a genuine and terrifying threat.

Given his wild mood swings between jubilation and gloom, some biographers have suggested that he suffered from manic depression. That might explain why he laughed ‘as if he had been drunk’ after the Battle of Dunbar. To men like Cromwell, the sinister armies of international Catholicism were always poised to strike across the Channel and extinguish English Protestantism for ever.

And to those who remembered the Spanish Armada and the Gunpowder Plot, and who were horrified by news of the Thirty Years War, the gigantic conflict that tore much of central Europe apart as Spain, France, Sweden and Holland battled for supremacy at the cost of some ten million lives, their fears seemed all too realistic.

[Darren McCarty]

Fighting back? The bastard should have stayed the hell out of Ireland.

[IrishCatholic]

Nice try. But no.

I read the article at the link. It was interesting. But I also noted what Alex chose to highlight:

"....Cromwell was not merely exceptionally religious. He belonged to a particular religious group — the Puritans — who believed that the frivolous Charles I, with his stubborn faith in the Divine Right of Kings and his fondness for elaborate Catholic-style church ceremonies, was betraying the Protestant Reformation."

New year, same old Know Nothings.

[Darren McCarty]

Anyone who set forth to force Catholicism on people, Puritans included, deserved to be killed.

I don't see how a family of Irish Catholics in the middle of Offaly or Clare as a threat to any Protestants in England or Scotland, unless you are a Bin Laden type like Cromwell.

The Catholic church is the esteemed Head of the still socially backwards Latin American culture and its heir countries throughout the Americas.

Liberation Theory isn't endorsed by the Catholic Church.

[RegulatorCountry]

Well, in the spirit of historical comparison, Cromwell is to Irish Catholics what William Tecumseh Sherman is to southerners.

[RegulatorCountry]

And how does this make the entire article “anti-Catholic?”

It’s not.

[catfish1957]

I don’t know if you would consider him the greatest, but William’s little excursion in 1066 is most profound event in Anglo history.

[ConservativeMind]

Nothing in your post legitimizes killing people if they don’t become Catholic.

I don’t see how Catholics could justify killing Protestants in the same way you stated in reverse.

[GeronL]

Didn’t Cromwell try to ban Christmas??

figures.

[Mike Darancette]

Got my ancestor Maj. Genral Harrison in real trouble.

[RegulatorCountry]

... but William was Norman.

[Antoninus]

Sure. If greatness is measured by how many people you killed.

[Darren McCarty]

I'm not talking about Catholics or Protestants, but CROMWELL (The subject of this article). Cromwell didn't belong in Ireland. Period. He probably didn't belong in England either, but that's another topic.

Should Catholics kill Protestants if they don't become Catholic? No. Of Course Not. Should Cromwell have been offed much sooner than he was? Absolutely, for being in the same class of mass murderer as Saddam Hussein, Hitler, Stalin, and Pol Pot.

[T bench]

He burned people alive...pretty much a bastard.

[Natural Law]

"There was a war, started by King Charles I, against Scotland, in which he tried to force Catholicism upon the Scottish Puritans."

You are entitled to your own faith and own opinion, but not your own history or facts. Charles I never tried to impose Catholicism on anyone including the Scottish Puritans. His crimes against the Puritans was in not more forcefully imposing the Reformation on the Catholic Scots. He was executed because he lost a civil war in which nearly 5% of the English population was killed.

[ConservativeMind]

Christmas is a pagan-rooted holiday. It was an attempt by the Catholic church to mollify complaining Christians when they didn’t have something to otherwise celebrate.

Mistletoe and the Christmas tree itself are all from pagan beliefs.

Now, simply because a Christian has such in their home, it does not mean they are pagan, but honestly, it’s not anything Christ would have encouraged, including honoring His birth in the ways we do.

We should honor Him all days, not just one, and His birth meant less to our Salvation than His death

[familyop]

Cromwell was one of the predecessors of our American founding fathers for religious freedom. And (seeing some of the commentary) during the mid-1800s in the USA, maybe American Protestants were right about the immigration problem at that time after all.

[RegulatorCountry]

He burned people alive...pretty much a bastard.

He was hardly alone in the practice, T bench, and was far removed from the origins of it.

[skeptoid]

I don't know much about Cromwell, but if the following quote is in fact his, I wish he was alive today so that he could deal with our "Congress".

Oliver Cromwell's Speech on the Dissolution of the Long Parliament
Given to the English House of Commons

20 April 1653

It is high time for me to put an end to your sitting in this place, 
 which you have dishonoured by your contempt of all virtue,
 and defiled by your practice of every vice; ye are a factious crew,
 and enemies to all good government; ye are a pack of mercenary wretches,
 and would like Esau sell your country for a mess of pottage,
 and like Judas betray your God for a few pieces of money.
 Is there a single virtue now remaining amongst you?
 Is there one vice you do not possess?
 Ye have no more religion than my horse;
 gold is your God;
 which of you have not barter'd your conscience for bribes?
 Is there a man amongst you that has the least care for the good of the Commonwealth?
 Ye sordid prostitutes have you not defil'd this sacred place,
 and turn'd the Lord's temple into a den of thieves,
 by your immoral principles and wicked practices?
 Ye are grown intolerably odious to the whole nation;
 you were deputed here by the people to get grievances redress'd,
 are yourselves gone!
 So!
 Take away that shining bauble there, and lock up the doors.
 In the name of God, go! 

[rollo tomasi]

Cromwell was probably pissed off about what happened to his granddad.

Sort of in the same vain with "Bloody Mary", who was pissed off about RCC persecution. "Religious" revenge, not appealing at all.

[RegulatorCountry]

Should Cromwell have been offed much sooner than he was?

Cromwell died in his bed in 1658, due to pneumonia according to historic accounts. He was not "offed."