BY DOC SPEARS
Am I one of those weirdos who thinks about the Roman Empire every day? Check!
But I also think about a man named Oliver Cromwell, and the unusual office he rose to, Lord Protector of England.
Why should an American like myself have such a connection to the 17th century English Civil Wars and the life of Oliver Cromwell? It’s largely due to the movie bearing his name, and a pretty darn good one at that.
Slightly more than 100 years before our own war of independence, England waged a long civil war. Wars, really. The English conflict ended with a first in history; the execution of their monarch. While religion plays a significant role in understanding the connections I’m going to make—necessary in acquiring some appreciation of what Cromwell faced—this is not a discussion about religion or any religious faith’s hits or misses. So do not attempt to make it so in the comments.
I live in central Missouri (a most diverse place) where we have two types of people; German Catholics and German Lutherans. I dearly love my catholic family and friends, and admire and respect the catholic faith. So when I hear, “Martin Luther shattered the oneness of Christianity that is the true church,” I just let it go. It’s hardly different than saying, “The world would be a better place if guns never existed.”
Guns do exist. Luther existed. The Protestant Reformation happened. There’s no changing those things. There are many logical fallacies involved in such arguments. It’s a counterfactual fallacy to believe that other factors wouldn’t have played out to upset the alternate reality imagined by excluding Luther’s existence. These types of arguments are also examples of post hoc ergo propter hoc; assuming any one thing is the sole cause behind any ill. (Whew. Just had to get that out. I feel better now.)
But to defend my interest (and yours) regarding Cromwell, the religious issues of the time are necessary history, but don’t demand you choose a sectarian side in order to understand what happened and why.
To start, let’s briefly go back even a little bit earlier in English history to another famous Cromwell, a distant predecessor of Oliver Cromwell’s; Thomas Cromwell, high minister to King Henry VIII—yeah, that Henry. (Maybe you learned the rhyme in school to remember what became of the six wives of Henry VIII: divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived).
It was Thomas Cromwell who figured out the legalese permitting King Henry’s divorce from his first wife, Catherine of Aragon (a Catholic), so that he could remarry to Anne Boleyn. Once Henry committed his kingdom whole-heartedly to Protestantism (established by Martin Luther in 1517), it was also Thomas who managed the confiscation of the wealth of the Catholic monasteries, starting around 1534.
(I provide dates to impress that a lot of big things happened in a relatively short period of time after the start of the Protestant Reformation, and these directly shaped Oliver’s life and role in the events I mean to make interesting to you.)
King Henry rewarded Thomas Cromwell with a big slice of the pie he helped confiscate from the English Catholic church and in turn, Thomas shared much of that wealth with his larger family. We care about this part of history when telling Oliver’s story as it explains both the start of the religious schism in England and how Oliver came to be the beneficiary of the largess that allowed him to grow up as part of the landed gentry—essentially, the upper middle class—allowing Oliver’s rise to membership in Parliament in 1628.
Oliver’s place in history is due in no small part to his ancestor’s generosity with the wealth he confiscated from the Church of Rome.
(To my catholic friends—take heart! It ended badly for Thomas, as it did for most everyone in Henry’s circle. For arranging an unsuitable fourth marriage to Anne of Cleves, Henry had Thomas beheaded in an equally unsuitable manner. It took multiple whacks by an incompetent executioner to finish the job.)
By the 1600s, Catholics were a minority in England, due largely to Henry VIII’s establishment of the Church of England in 1534. By the time Oliver Cromwell came to Parliament during the reign of the Stuarts, he and many of his peers in Parliament were of the Puritan persuasion. Influenced by John Calvin, the Puritans believed in simplicity of worship, free of rituals and vestments they took to be idolatrous. They especially believed in a direct relationship with the creator, one not requiring intermediaries such as layers of clergy (especially catholic priests).
The Puritans practice of Protestantism included a level of intolerance for Catholicism that made King Henry’s seem mild.
Enter the antagonist in this story, King Charles I.
Henry VIII’s daughter Elizabeth I reigned as queen for 44 years. She continued her father’s commitment to Protestantism for England, but dying a virgin, the throne of England then passed to a cousin, James VI of Scotland and in 1603, crowned James I of England, beginning the royal dynasty of the Stuarts.
With the reign of the Stuarts comes a tepid commitment to Protestantism and by the time the next Stuart monarch, our story’s antagonist, Charles I, sits the throne of England (with a French catholic as his queen), he introduces a decidedly catholic influence into the practices of the Church of England.
If you’re a Puritan who believes the practices of the catholic church not only deviate from how God should be worshipped, but that Catholicism is a political power that infiltrates government to pervert its policies for the benefit of Rome—look out! This is when the real shitstorm begins.
I won’t spoil it, but if you watch Cromwell, very early in the movie Harris gives several legendary performances as his character responds to these influences. Though the dialogues are products of the writer’s imagination, they serve to provide good context to the events of the time, and the performances are nothing short of iconic. You’ll see. (It just doesn’t seem we have those roles, nor the gravitas actors to play them anymore.)
So, let me sum up where we are in the actual history:
King Charles I, a crypto-catholic, meddles with the protestant Church of England of which, as king, he is the head. Charles is a dyed-in -the-wool believer in the doctrine of the divine right of kings. He needs Parliament to levy taxes, but feels no need to cooperate with any of their petitions to restrain his disastrous financial management of the kingdom, because… God put him on the throne!
Oliver Cromwell, a Puritan—as are most of his peers in Parliament—has many issues with the king (like ordering the arrest of its members and dissolving Parliament). But the practice of religion in England is most def a core issue which starts the civil war between the Parliamentarians and the Royalists.
Finally, push comes to shove, and the first civil war between the armies of Parliament and the Royalists kicks off in 1642. A series of victories eventually drives Charles into Scotland in 1646, leaving unsettled the issue of how England was to be governed. With Scottish backing, the Royalists wage a second civil war in 1648, ending in a decisive defeat for Charles, with his subsequent trial and beheading in 1649 and the abolishment of the monarchy.
The battles are too numerous for a short essay, but here’s what’s most noteworthy: Cromwell’s leadership was a decisive factor in the war against the Royalists. But Oliver, in his 40s by the first civil war, had never been a soldier!
The Royalist army was organized as small militias and private armies, its leaders appointed through class distinctions and nepotism. In contrast, Parliament established its army with Cromwell’s guidance; a professional standing army, with unified command, its leaders selected by competence. And by his talent on the battlefield, Cromwell rose quickly through the ranks to become its general.
It's a timeless lesson that serves to remind us that provenance or identity is a poor quality compared to ability. Or for that matter, DEI. History is replete with examples of destroyed armies and civilizations that failed to absorb such obvious lessons.
After the beheading of Charles, Cromwell’s New Model Army is used to suppress rebellions in Scotland and Ireland. It’s a measure that he did so with such brutal efficiency that to this day, the children of those lands are taught to revile Cromwell. But in doing so, Cromwell unified Britain, and became head of state as Lord Protector of the Commonwealth, and attempted to establish a republican government.
If the story ended there, it would be pretty incredible, and Cromwell would be forever known as the first in a long line of Lord Protectors. But we all know that didn’t happen.
So why did England return to a monarchy?
The chain of events is long, but you deserve the abridged version, just so you don’t spend hours on the internet tonight when you should instead be reading any one of many fine WarGate books.
Cromwell died in 1658—not entirely popular—and his son briefly held the post of Lord Protector before resigning. Sometimes, you just go with what you know best, and that’s what Parliament did. The son of the beheaded king, Charles II, was named monarch, and everyone tried to go back to business as usual.
It didn’t work.
Charles II, a secret catholic, and the brother that succeeded him—James II, an open catholic—marginalized the Puritans that beheaded their father. Parliament was disbanded again, England supported catholic France in a war against the Protestant Dutch, all returning the rancor of the majority Protestant country towards Catholicism.
All of which led to the next civil war in 1688, the Glorious Revolution.
English nobles and parliamentarians joined to invite a Dutch Protestant prince, William of Orange, to invade England. The royalists put up little resistance to the invading Dutch army and English revolutionaries, and King James II went into exile.
When you’re watching March Madness, ever wonder where the name of the Virginia school, College of William and Mary came from? William of Orange his co-ruled England with his wife, Mary. They established the sovereignty of Parliament and put limitations on the monarchy, as well as ensuring permanent protestant succession to the throne.
And ever since it’s all just been bangers and mash in England. Ha! Not with their current monarch inviting Islam into the Church of England’s places of worship. I predict another civil war coming to England.
Anyway… watch Richard Harris in Cromwell. As I’ve said, the dialogue is superb, the battle scenes are vast, the tension builds and builds, and continues even after the regicide is complete. As events make parliament’s war with the king inevitable, the struggle of Cromwell and his allies to do the hard and right thing creates genuine empathy for their burden; rare emotions for a movie to produce in a viewer. It’s a guaranteed pleaser. I forgive the film its historical errors, because the real events are complex beyond understanding to any save the most diligent student of history.
Cromwell is a great investment of your entertainment time (I think it’s free on YouTube) and for its flaws, still paints a decent picture of the broad elements of the history behind the first-ever execution of a king. Plus, it makes me forgive Richard Harris for singing one of the greatest cringe songs of the 60s, the melodramatic and pretentious MacArthur Park—truly one of the worst songs ever. (When it comes to over-the-top actors making records, I rather prefer Shatner belting out Rocket Man.)
If you’ve hung in with me until the end, at last, here’s the answer to the question I raised at the start: why should you care about Oliver Cromwell?
Considering the logical fallacies I brought up much earlier, I ask, would 1776 have occurred when it did without Oliver Cromwell? When I consider the inestimable odds against the founding of this country, it is the regicide of Charles I that set into motion the conditions that led to the Enlightenment; the movement defined by the thoughts and works of John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, Isaac Newton, Adam Smith, David Hume, and the many other English and Scottish intellects who shaped our future.
If a tradition of the divine-right-of-kings had continued, would those giants have been able to express themselves to influence the greater world? I believe not.
Most importantly, you should care about Oliver Cromwell for this reason; because the worldview collectively birthed by the thinkers of the Enlightenment produced the most important embodiments of that philosophical earthquake. The only perfect documents ever set down by the hand of man.
The Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution.
It’s for this reason we owe some reverence to Lord Protector of England Oliver Cromwell and the wars he fought to kill a king.
Thank you for sharing, Doc! Looks like I need to brush up on my British History. Before it’s swallowed up by Islam.