Oliver Cromwell was an English military and political leader and later Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland, and Ireland.
Cromwell was born into the middle gentry, albeit to a family descended from the sister of King Henry VIII's minister Thomas Cromwell. Little is known of the first 40 years of his life as only four of his personal letters survive alongside a summary of a speech he delivered in 1628. He became an Independent Puritan after undergoing a religious conversion in the 1630s, taking a generally tolerant view towards the many Protestant sects of his period. He was an intensely religious man, a self-styled Puritan Moses, and he fervently believed that God was guiding his victories. He was elected Member of Parliament for Huntingdon in 1628 and for Cambridge in the Short and Long parliaments. He entered the English Civil War on the side of the "Roundheads" or Parliamentarians. Nicknamed "Old Ironsides", he demonstrated his ability as a commander and was quickly promoted from leading a single cavalry troop to being one of the principal commanders of the New Model Army, playing an important role in the defeat of the royalist forces.
Cromwell was one of the signatories of King Charles I's death warrant in 1649, and he dominated the short-lived Commonwealth of England as a member of the Rump Parliament . He was selected to take command of the English campaign in Ireland in 1649–1650. Cromwell's forces defeated the Confederate and Royalist coalition in Ireland and occupied the country, bringing to an end the Irish Confederate Wars. During this period, a series of Penal Laws were passed against Roman Catholics , and a substantial amount of their land was confiscated. Cromwell also led a campaign against the Scottish army between 1650 and 1651.
On 20 April 1653, he dismissed the Rump Parliament by force, setting up a short-lived nominated assembly known as Barebone's Parliament, before being invited by his fellow leaders to rule as Lord Protector of England , Scotland and Ireland from 16 December 1653. As a ruler, he executed an aggressive and effective foreign policy. He died from natural causes in 1658 and was buried in Westminster Abbey. The Royalists returned to power in 1660, and they had his corpse dug up, hung in chains, and beheaded.
Cromwell is one of the most controversial figures in the history of the British Isles, considered a regicidal dictator by historians such as David Sharp, a military dictator by Winston Churchill, but a hero of liberty by John Milton, Thomas Carlyle, and Samuel Rawson Gardiner, and a class revolutionary by Leon Trotsky. In a 2002 BBC poll in Britain, Cromwell, sponsored by military historian Richard Holmes, was selected as one of the ten greatest Britons of all time. However, his measures against Catholics in Scotland and Ireland have been characterised as genocidal or near-genocidal, and in Ireland his record is harshly criticised.
“No one rises so high as he who knows not whither he is going.”
Statement to Pomponne de Bellievre, as told to Cardinal de Retz in 1651; Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz (1717) http://www.gutenberg.org/files/3846/3846.txt
Variant: One never rises so high as when one does not know where one is going.
Statement to Parliament (4 February 1658) quoted in The Diary of Thomas Burton, esq., volume 2: April 1657 - February 1658 (1828), p. 466
“It's a blessed thing to die daily.”
Letter to Sir Thomas Fairfax (7 March 1646)
Context: It's a blessed thing to die daily. For what is there in this world to be accounted of! The best men according to the flesh, and things, are lighter than vanity. I find this only good, to love the Lord and his poor despised people, to do for them and to be ready to suffer with them.... and he that is found worthy of this hath obtained great favour from the Lord; and he that is established in this shall ( being conformed to Christ and the rest of the Body) participate in the glory of a resurrection which will answer all.
Address to the Rump Parliament (20 April 1653)
Speech to the First Protectorate Parliament (12 September 1654)
“Since providence and necessity has cast them upon it, he should pray God to bless their counsels.”
On the trial of Charles I (December 1648)
“God has brought us where we are, to consider the work we may do in the world, as well as at home.”
Speech to the Army Council (1654)
As quoted from "Dying Sayings" of Oliver Cromwell's Letters and Speeches by Thomas Carlyle
Speech to the First Protectorate Parliament (12 September 1654)
After the Siege of Drogheda, where Cromwell had forbid his soldiers "to spare any that were in arms in the town" (1649)
Letter to Walter Dundas (12 September 1650)
On the passing of the revolutionary Grand Remonstrance of November 1641 listing Parliament's grievances against King Charles I, as quoted in A History of the Rebellion (first published 1702 – 1704) by Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon (1609 - 1674)
To the First Protectorate Parliament (12 September 1654)
Letter to Sir Thomas Fairfax (21 December 1646)
Speech to Parliament http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.asp?compid=36881 (4 February 1658), quoted in The Diary of Thomas Burton, esq., volume 2: April 1657 - February 1658 (1828), p. 465-466
Speech in the Commons during the debate which preceded the "Vote of No Addresses" (January 1648) as recorded in the diary of John Boys of Kent
Context: We declared our intentions to preserve monarchy, and they still are so, unless necessity enforce an alteration. It’s granted the king has broken his trust, yet you are fearful to declare you will make no further addresses... look on the people you represent, and break not your trust, and expose not the honest party of your kingdom, who have bled for you, and suffer not misery to fall upon them for want of courage and resolution in you, else the honest people may take such courses as nature dictates to them.
“The dimensions of this mercy are above my thoughts. It is for aught I know, a crowning mercy.”
Letter to William Lenthall, Speaker of the House of Commons (4 September 1651)
Letter to Charles Fleetwood (1652)
Speech to the First Protectorate Parliament (12 September 1654)
“Take away that fool’s bauble, the mace.”
Speech dismissing the "Rump Parliament" (20 April 1653)
“Though peace be made, yet it's interest that keep peace.”
Quoted in a statement to Parliament as as "a maxim not to be despised" (4 September 1654)
Letter to Colonel Valentine Walton (5 July 1644)
“I tell you we will cut off his head with the crown upon it.”
To Algernon Sidney, one of the judges at the trial of Charles I (December 1648)
Speech to his army officers (23 March 1649)
Statement to Colonel Valentine Walton (5 or 6 September 1644)
Speech dissolving the First Protectorate Parliament (22 January 1655)
As quoted in Anecdotes of Painting in England (1762-1771) by Horace Walpole often credited as being the origin of the phrase "warts and all".
Variant: Paint me as I am. If you leave out the scars and wrinkles, I will not pay you a shilling.
“It is not my design to drink or to sleep, but my design is to make what haste I can to be gone.”
Words that Cromwell spoke as he was dying and was offered a drink (3 September 1658)
Speech to Parliament http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.asp?compid=36871 (25 January 1658), quoted in The Diary of Thomas Burton, esq., volume 2: April 1657 - February 1658 (1828), p. 361
Response to John Lambert's remarks that he "was glad to see we had the nation on our side" as they were cheered by a crowd in June 1650; as quoted by Gilbert Burnet in History of My Own Time http://books.google.com/books?id=-iswAAAAYAAJ&q="do+not+trust+to+that+for+these+very+persons+would+shout+as+much+if+you+and+I+were+going+to+be+hanged"&pg=PA145#v=onepage (1683); also in in God's Englishman by Christopher Hill (1970), Ch. VII, p. 188
“I need pity. I know what I feel. Great place and business in the world is not worth looking after.”
Letter to Richard Mayor (July 1650)
Answer to the Conference at the Committee at Whitehall, Second Protectorate Parliament (13 April 1657), quoted in The Diary of Thomas Burton, esq., volume 2: April 1657 - February 1658 (1828), p. 504
On his forcible dissolution of parliament (April 1653) quoted in Flagellum: or the Life and Death Birth and Burial of Oliver Cromwell the Late Usurper (1663) by James Heath
Speech dissolving the First Protectorate Parliament (22 January 1655)
On the Quakers, after meeting with George Fox, as quoted in Autobiography of George Fox (1694)
Letter to Sir William Spring (September 1643)
Speech to the "Barebones Parliament" (July 1653)
“I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken.”
Letter to the general assembly of the Church of Scotland (3 August 1650)
Answer to the Conference at the Committee at Whitehall, Second Protectorate Parliament http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.asp?compid=36885 (13 April 1657), quoted in The Diary of Thomas Burton, esq., volume 2: April 1657 - February 1658 (1828), pp. 496-497
“Put your trust in God, but keep your powder dry.”
Attributed by William Blacker (not to be confused with Valentine Blacker), who popularized the quote with his poem "Oliver's Advice" http://books.google.com/books?id=JmEaAQAAIAAJ&dq=%22Oliver%27s+Advice%22+Cromwell&q=%22Oliver%27s+Advice%22+Cromwell#v=snippet&q=%22Oliver's%20Advice%22%20Cromwell&f=false, published under the pseudonym Fitz Stewart in The Dublin University Magazine, December 1834, p. 700; where the attribution to Cromwell appears in a footnote describing a "well-authenticated anecdote" that explains the poem's title. The repeated line in Blacker's poem is "Put your trust in God, my boys, but keep your powder dry".
Attributed
Variant: Trust in God and keep your powder dry.
Variant: Put your trust in God, but keep your powder dry.
Reported remarks over the body of Charles I after his execution (January 1649), as quoted in Oliver Cromwell : A History (1895) by Samuel Harden Church, p. 321
“Being comes before well-being.”
As quoted by Chief Justice John Greig Latham in his sole dissent in Australian Communist Party v Commonwealth (1951), for his argument that defence is the pre-eminent responsibility of the state
Attributed
