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.
Those Founders from Virginia, which colony contributed the most in numbers and significance, would heartily disagree. Virginia's status as "The Old Dominion" rests upon the fact that Cromwell's Puritan Revolution never to root in the colony and it remained loyal to royals. Neither would Marylanders agree with you, as their colony had been established to protect Catholics from Puritan persecution. The Carolinians, North and South, would likely have remembered the namesake king of their eponymous colonies. Maybe your idea of "religious freedom" is of the Massachusetts variety.
Um, no. Cromwell was a tyrant in matters of religion as in other matters, who imposed by force of arms his own Calvinist views on the Church of England. If he was for religious freedom, it was religious freedom for me, but not for thee. The same as his fellow Puritans in the Massachusetts Bay Colony.
The real champions of religious freedom were the Quakers and the "recusants" (as persistent Latins in England were called), and the same when it came to this side of the Atlantic: William Penn and Lord Baltimore established colonies with religious freedom. Puritan Congregationalism was established in Massachusetts, and Anglicanism in Virginia.
Yeah, right. The kind where you can got to Hell or to Connacht.
“Cromwell was one of the predecessors of our American founding fathers for religious freedom”
I think it’s a point worth increased study. Three of the Regicides that signed Charles I’s death warrant ended up in RI and CT - as did many other Cromwell followers. Many of these same families started the American Revolution.
Roger Williams (the founder of religious freedom in America) was loosely related to Cromwell thru his wife Mary Bernard Williams.
“Cromwell was one of the predecessors of our American founding fathers for religious freedom.”
Good point considering the personal connection between Cromwell & Roger Williams:
1) Oliver Cromwell (25 April 1599 – 3 September 1658) was an English military and political leader best known in England for his involvement in turning England into a republican Commonwealth and for his later role as Lord Protector of England, Scotland and Ireland. Events that occurred during his reign and his politics are a cause of long lasting animosity between Ireland and the United Kingdom.
He was one of the commanders of the New Model Army which defeated the royalists in the English Civil War. After the execution of King Charles I in 1649, Cromwell dominated the short-lived Commonwealth of England, conquered Ireland and Scotland, and ruled as Lord Protector from 1653 until his death from a combination of malarial fever and septicemia in 1658.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_cromwell
2) Roger Williams (circa 1603 – between January and March 1683) was an American Protestant theologian, and the first American proponent of religious freedom and the separation of church and state. In 1636, he began the colony of Providence Plantation. which provided a refuge for religious minorities. Williams started the first Baptist church in America, the First Baptist Church of Providence, before leaving to become a Seeker. He was a student of Native American languages and an advocate for fair dealings with Native Americans.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Williams_(theologian)
3) “As family chaplain, Williams lets his heart go out to one of his employer’s relatives, Jane Whalley, and his early writings concern her. Lady Joan Barrington, her aunt — and also that of Oliver Cromwell — will not tolerate Williams’s thoughts of love and marriage for her niece. In the spring of 1629, Lady Joan ends the whole matter abruptly.
On realizing that he and Jane will never be married, Williams writes, “We hope to live together in the heavens, though ye Lord have denied that union on earth.” By year’s end, he finds another love, Mary Barnard. They marry, and within a year they have set sail on the Lyon for the Massachusetts Bay Colony. On Feb. 5, 1631, Gov. John Winthrop greets the Lyon in Nantasket, south of Boston, after a 57-day voyage. Winthrop’s greeting is mostly for the cargo of salt pork and salt beef. Still, he notes in his journal that among the 20 passengers there are “a godly minister” and his wife. Roger was 27; Mary, 21.”
http://www.rootcellar.us/wightman/9misc.html
4) “At the return of Charles II, regicides who had had the good fortune to die in peace during the Commonwealth were condemned posthumously, their bodies exhumed and abused, and their heirs’ property confiscated. Of the living, twenty-four vanished into royal dungeons or were executed with the cruelty reserved for traitors: a mere dozen escaped abroad. The three who fled to the American colonies have written a dramatic page in our history.
Among those who dared to kill a king on that fateful day in 1649 were Edward Whalley, William Goffe, and John Dixwell. “
“Whalley, Oliver Cromwell’s cousin [& brother of Roger Williams’ one time romance Jane Whalley], had thrown himself into the civil war at the first rattle of sabers”
http://www.americanheritage.com/articles/magazine/ah/1964/1/1964_1_26.shtml