Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - Oliver Cromwell

Episode Date: April 12, 2023

For over 1000 years, England has been a monarchy.3…except for twelve years in the 17th century when it wasn’t.  During that period, it was ruled by a very non-royal person by the name of Oliver Cromwell.  He was a highly controversial figure during his life, after his death, and remains so today.  Learn more about Oliver Cromwell, the Lord Protector of England, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Sponsor If you’re looking for a simpler and cost-effective supplement routine, Athletic Greens is giving you a FREE 1 year supply of Vitamin D AND 5 free travel packs with your first purchase. Go to athleticgreens.com/EVERYWHERE.  Subscribe to the podcast!  https://link.chtbl.com/EverythingEverywhere?sid=ShowNotes -------------------------------- Executive Producer: Charles Daniel Associate Producers: Peter Bennett & Thor Thomsen   Become a supporter on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/everythingeverywhere Update your podcast app at newpodcastapps.com Discord Server: https://discord.gg/UkRUJFh Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/everythingeverywhere/ Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/everythingeverywheredaily Twitter: https://twitter.com/everywheretrip Website: https://everything-everywhere.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For over a thousand years, England has been a monarchy, except for 11 years in the 17th century when it wasn't. During that period, it was ruled by a man by the name of Oliver Cromwell. Cromwell was unquestionably a brilliant general and also a bit of a hypocrite when it came to politics. He was a highly controversial figure during his life and remained so even today. Learn more about Oliver Cromwell, the Lord Protector of England, on this episode of Everything everywhere daily. Do you ever climb into bed ready to sleep only to have your mind start racing the moment your head hits the pillow? Thoughts bouncing around, replaying the day or jumping ahead to tomorrow? That is exactly why Catherine Nikolai created Nothing Much Happens. Each episode is a gentle, cozy

bedtime story where, well, nothing much happens. No drama, no tension, nothing you need to follow closely. Just soft narration, calming repetition, and soothing sensory details designed to help your mind slow down and your body relax. It's not about entertainment, it's about rest. And millions of listeners around the world use it every night to quiet their thoughts and finally fall asleep. If you've ever struggled to shut your brain off at night, this might be exactly what you've been missing. You can listen to nothing much happens wherever you get your podcasts. Episodes are every Monday and Thursday. As I have mentioned many times in other episodes, the 16th and 17th centuries were highly tumultuous periods in England. And this

was almost entirely due to the issue of religion. To give a brief summary, Henry VIII broke with the Catholic Church to get a divorce, and he purged most of the Catholic institutions in the country. He was succeeded by his son Edward V. 6th, who was a Protestant but a child, and he was succeeded by Henry's eldest daughter, Mary, who was a Catholic, who was then succeeded by her half-sister Elizabeth, who was a Protestant. Elizabeth had no children and was then succeeded by James the 6th of Scotland, who was baptized Catholic and raised Protestant, and then he was succeeded by his son Charles I, who was Catholic. This religious ping-ponging amongst the monarchs became a problem because England,

by the time of Charles I, was a mostly Protestant country with a Catholic monarch. This was the world that Oliver Cromwell was born into on April 25, 1599, in the small town of Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire, just outside of Cambridge. His father was a minor landowner and he had a relative, Thomas Cromwell, who served under Henry the 8th and was later beheaded by Henry VIII. However, before he was beheaded, he made a small fortune helping Henry in the disillusion of the Catholic monasteries. Oliver was the second of ten children and was baptized into the Church of England. He attended the Huddington Grammar School and then went on to study at Sydney Sussex College in Cambridge. Sydney Sussex College was a rather recent

addition to Cambridge at the time, and was imbued with a very strong Puritan ethic. The Puritans were a sect that emphasized personal piety, biblical literacy, and religious discipline, rejecting the hierarchical and centralized church structure of the Church of England. They were influential in politics, but also faced opposition and persecution from the government and conservative members of the Church of England, which they sought to reform to purge it of its Catholic vestiges. In 1620, at the age of 21, He married Elizabeth Borschier, who came from a wealthy merchant family who were also strict Puritans. However, at this time, there is no indication that Cromwell himself had adopted Puritanism. In 1628, he was elected to Parliament to represent his hometown of Huntingdon.

His tenure in Parliament was short-lived, however, as King Charles dissolved the Parliament in 1629. Financially, things went bad for Cromwell after that. In 1631, he was forced to sell most of his property and moved to a farmhouse, due to a dispute with the town. This was a big turning point for Cromwell. He became depressed and it led to a spiritual awakening. He formerly joined the Puritan Church and in 1634 actually attempted to migrate to the Americas to join the Connecticut colony. The government blocked him from migrating, but if he had gone through with it, it would have radically changed English history.

With this spiritual awakening, he became more critical of the government and the policies of King Charles. Relations between the king and parliament eroded during the 1630s and early 1640s. The issues had to do with the role and power of the monarchy and the role of the Church of England, especially as Puritanism had become popular amongst members of parliament. That is a vast oversimplification, but for the purposes of this episode, things got very bad between King Charles and the Parliament. This came to a head in 1642 when forces loyal to the Parliament called the New Model army squared off against forces loyal to the monarchy in what became known as the first English Civil War. Prior to the outbreak of war, I wouldn't say that Cromwell was a nobody, but he certainly

wasn't a high-ranking figure in England. At the start of the Civil War, Cromwell raised a troop of cavalry from his own lands, which he later transformed into the famous Ironsides Regiment. He quickly gained a reputation as a fierce and effective commander. He played a key role in several of the most important battles of the war, including the Battle of Edgehill, the Battle of Marston-More, and the Battle of Nesby. Cromwell's success on the battlefield was due in large part to his innovative tactics and his ability to inspire his men with religious fervor, all despite having no formal military training. By 1644, after just two years of combat, Oliver Cromwell had risen to the rank of Lieutenant General. The year after, he had become second in command to the leader of the

New Model Army, Sir Thomas Fairfax. In May 1646, King Charles surrendered to Scottish forces and was taken prisoner ending the first English Civil War. The Royalist forces surrendered to Sir Fairfax and Oliver Cromwell in Oxford. In the aftermath of Charles's surrender and imprisonment, there were several forces that all vied for power. The monarchists were one of the parties, of course, but the opposition then splintered into Presbyterians, aligned with much of Parliament who wanted to reform the Church of England along Presbyterian lines. There were independents who aligned with the army who didn't want any religious hierarchy, and then the Scots who were also Presbyterians.

Charles tried to play the various parties off against each other, as they all still wanted to curry favor with the king to support their side. As for Oliver Cromwell personally, with his military success, Cromwell became a leader in the Puritan movement and was once again elected to Parliament in 1648. Except this time he was one of the leaders in Parliament, not just a backbencher. King Charles was kidnapped and taken from Parliament and brought into the hands of the army, where Cromwell was able to negotiate with him directly.

The negotiations went nowhere as Charles was planning another war, this time with the Scots invading England. Royalist uprisings in Wales and a Scottish incursion into England were both put down quickly by Cromwell, and within six months, the second English Civil War had started and ended. At the end of 1648, the new model army was now the most powerful force in England, and Cromwell saw it as the instrument of God's justice. In December 1648, Colonel Thomas Pride entered Parliament and forcibly removed anyone who wasn't a supporter of the Cromwell and Fairfax faction. This became known as Pride's Purge. The remaining members of Parliament, known as the Rump Parliament, now faced the question of what to do with the King.

They decided to put the King on trial for treason. Cromwell was the biggest supporter of executing the king, as he felt it was the only way to once and for all end the civil war. The entire proceeding was on legally shaky ground. As king, you can't really by definition be guilty of treason. As king, he could veto any law passed by parliament, which put him on trial. And as king, he could also pardon himself. The whole trial of Charles I is worthy of a future episode of its own. None of this really mattered, however, as the result was predetermined.

Charles I was beheaded on January 30th, 1649. Without a king, or rather without a king in England, Parliament declared England to be a republic called the Commonwealth of England. One of the first acts of the new Commonwealth was to invade Ireland. They now viewed Ireland as the greatest threat, as the Irish Catholics could join forces with the royalists. Cromwell was sent to Irish. and he was brutally efficient in putting down the Irish. Cromwell wasn't in Ireland for that long,

but he was instrumental in ushering in a period where as many as one-tenth of the entire Irish population died. Cromwell returned to England in 1650 after Scotland declared Charles's son, Charles II, as king. Cromwell led another brilliant military campaign against Scotland, which resulted in the English occupation of Scotland and Charles II fleeing to France. With the fighting, over, Cromwell returned to Parliament to find that without a king, the MPs no longer had anything to unify against, so they started to turn on each other. Cromwell wanted a unified government for all of England, Scotland, and for new parliamentary elections. However, Parliament kept putting off holding another election. So, on April 20, 1653, Oliver Cromwell entered

parliament with 40 soldiers and dissolved Parliament. He supposedly said, quote, Quote, you are no Parliament, I say you are no Parliament. I will put an end to your sitting. After Parliament was dissolved, Major General John Lambert drafted a constitution for the Commonwealth called the instrument of government. And this was passed by a Council of Men, approved by Cromwell. Central to the document was the following section. Quote, Oliver Cromwell, Captain General of the Forces of England, Scotland, and Ireland, shall be and is hereby declared to be, Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland, and Ireland, and the dominions their two belonging for his life." End quote. And if you see shades of Julius Caesar here,

I don't think you're mistaken. Cromwell began to act and have the powers of a king. He signed his documents as Oliver P, the P being for protector, just like how a king would sign something with R for Rex. In 1657, a new constitution gave Cron. Cromwell the power to appoint his successor. And who did he appoint? Why his own son, Richard Cromwell. Oliver Cromwell led a war to fight against a monarchy, only for himself to basically become a monarch. Oliver Cromwell died on September 3, 1658, of what is believed to be kidney disease. He was buried with honors in Westminster Abbey. His son Richard became Lord Protector of England, but he was not his father. Parliament turned on him, and in May of 1659, he resigned from office.

The Commonwealth quickly began to fall apart. In 1660, General George Monk came south with his royalist forces from Scotland. Almost all of the parliamentary forces which went to meet him deserted, resulting in Monk arriving in London and declaring the monarchy restored. Charles II was the new king. Usually, this is the end of the story. Oliver Cromwell, the subject of the episode is deadened in the ground, and history passes judgment on his memory. That is not how this story ends. This episode is now going to take a very bizarre turn. There were a lot of people who didn't like Oliver Cromwell who wanted payback, not the least of which was Charles II, whose father had been killed by Cromwell.

On January 30, 1661, the anniversary of Charles I execution, Cromwell's body was dug up from Westminster Abbey and posthumously executed. His corpse was hung and then beheaded. The head of Oliver Cromwell was put on a spike and placed in front of Westminster Hall where it sat for 30 years, only briefly being moved for repairs. Repairs to the building, not to the head. Supposedly, one evening there was a storm and the wooden pike it was on snapped, and the head fell to the ground, where it was found by a guard.

The guard took it home and hid it in his chimney. When notices were posted a few days later, demanding it to return, he was too afraid to return the head, so he kept it hidden for the rest of his life, only telling his daughter about it. After the guard's death, the daughter supposedly sold it. It turned up in 1710 in a small museum filled with strange artifacts, owned by Claudius Dupuy.

After Dupuy died in 1738, the head disappeared. appeared again for about 40 years. Then it was found in a market stall by a man named John Cox. The person who had it on display was a failed actor and alcoholic named Samuel Russell. Cox offered Russell a hundred pounds for it, which was a lot of money at the time. Russell refused, so Cox took a different approach. Knowing that Russell was down on his luck, he befriended him and gave him a series of small loans. When the amount owed reached 118 pounds, Cox demanded repayment, and all Russell had to give was Cromwell's head.

In 1799, Cox sold the head for 230 pounds to a group known as the Hughes Brothers, who wanted to use it for a museum of their own. The museum failed, and the head wound up in the hands of one of the daughters of the Hughes brothers. She would occasionally show it to people, and eventually sold it in 1815, to Josiah Henry Wilkinson. Wilkinson had no business plans for it. I guess he just liked having a severed head around the house, and he would take it out to show guests at parties. The heads stayed in the Wilkinson family, and by the late 19th century, there were now other Cromwell heads floating around. George Rollerston, a professor of anatomy and physiology at Oxford University, studied the competing Cromwell heads, and declared the Wilkinson's head to be legit, claiming, quote,

while the documentary evidence was slightly dubious, the physical evidence was extremely strong. Although it was not categorically proven that this was Cromwell's head, there was no way possibly that it could be refuted, end quote. One of the identifying features which led to this conclusion was warts on Cromwell's face. Finally in 1960, Dr. Horace Wilkinson was in possession of the head, having had it passed down for generations. He gave the head to Sydney Sussex College at Cambridge, the same college which Oliver Cromwell attended.

In a very small ceremony, the head was buried in the college chapel. Oliver Cromwell's legacy can still be felt today. There's a statue of him outside of the Parliament building in London. There was a great movie made about Cromwell in 1970, with Richard Harris as Cromwell and Alec Guinness as Charles I first, and I highly recommend it. And I also can't forget the 1989 song by Monty Python. In the end, all of the efforts of Oliver Cromwell seems to have been kind of a waste.

He fought and killed a king only to become a type of king himself, and then only to have the actual monarchy restored once he was gone. Oliver Cromwell still invoked strong reactions today. The royal family will still not have anything to do with him, and during World War II, the king actually vetoed the idea of naming a ship after him. To some, Oliver Cromwell was a villain, and to others, he was just a man who was ahead of his time. The executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel.

The associate producers are Thor Thompson and Peter Bennett. I just want to thank everyone, including the show's producers, who support the show over on Patreon. If you'd like to support the show, just head over to patreon.com, which is currently the only place where you can get show merchandise. Also, if you want to talk to other listeners about the show, head over to our Facebook group or Discord server, both of which have links in the show notes. In 201916-58 September I was at first Only MP for Huntingdon But then

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