Real Dictators - Oliver Cromwell Part 4: The Conquest of Ireland

Episode Date: May 7, 2024

In the final part of the Cromwell story, outrage at the King’s execution leads Ironsides to wage war on Scotland and, notoriously, Ireland. Insurgencies over, he’ll become Lord Protector - king in all but name. But as discontent continues to spread, the unthinkable will once again become possible. The Stuart monarchy couldn’t be restored… could it?… A Noiser production, written by Jeff Dawson. Many thanks to Peter Gaunt, Clare Jackson, Anna Keay, John Morrill, Nicholas O’Shaughnessy, Micheál Ó Siochrú. This is Part 4 of 4. Get every episode of Real Dictators a week early with Noiser+. You’ll also get ad-free listening, bonus material and early access to shows across the Noiser network. Click the Noiser+ banner to get started. Or, if you’re on Spotify or Android, go to noiser.com/subscriptions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

TD Direct Investing offers live support, so whether you're a newbie or a seasoned pro, you can make your investing steps count. And if you're like me and think a TFSA stands for Total Fund Savings Adventure, maybe reach out to TD Direct Investing. September the 11th, 1649. September 11th, 1649. We're in Drockeda, Ireland, 30 miles north of Dublin. It's a damp evening, but mild, the last vestiges of summer. The town is surrounded by thick medieval walls. On the battlements, the defenders steel themselves.

In the fields to the south have massed 12,000 red-coated men, the ferocious fighting machine, the New Model Army. Droheda is garrisoned with a mixture of troops, Irish Confederates and refugee English Royalists, all still loyal to the House of Stuart. Under a white flag, a roundhead messenger rides up. He has a request for Drogheda's English governor, Sir Arthur Aston. For the sake of the defenders' lives, will his lordship agree to a surrender? The response is yelled down.

Under no circumstances will they entertain such a cowardly notion. He who could take Drogheda, as Aston puts it, could take hell. The messenger wheels his horse around and digs in his spurs. Back at his lines, he delivers his command in the news. Lieutenant General Oliver Cromwell nods. There is work, God's work, to be done. From Noiser, this is the final part of the Cromwell story. And this is Real Dictators. Let's rewind eight months to the beginning of 1649. The execution of the king on January the 30th means that England is without a monarch. Charles I's successors have also been barred from ascending to the throne,

at least until Parliament figures out what it's going to do next. Professor Clare Jackson. The regicide itself is a massive leap in the dark. I mean, the English Parliament put this king on trial, order his public execution, and it may bring an end to one series of events, but it absolutely provides no solutions. This is all utterly uncharted territory. I mean, whether or not this is what all those thousands who fought and died for during parliament had envisaged or wanted is very unclear.

One historian has sort of said it's government for the people, almost sort of over the people and sort of despite the people. On February the 6th, the rump parliament decrees that the House of Lords is, quote, useless and dangerous. It too will go. The next day, the monarchy is officially abolished. There's a nervousness about the word Republic. Instead, this makeover is given a new name, the Commonwealth.

Parliament will be steered by an executive, a council of state, and its chair, Oliver Cromwell. Professor Peter Gaunt So for the moment, almost by accident rather than design all power rests with initially just a few dozen MPs There's no head of state It's a sort of compromise, it's a messy compromise and it's a compromise that most people realised couldn't continue indefinitely There is a hellfire and brimstone determination to things now that most people realized couldn't continue indefinitely. There is a hellfire and brimstone determination to things now,

and it's sweeping this rebranded nation. There are groups out there with strong ideas about the future of this new Jerusalem. Groups like the Levellers, and now the Diggers, who are plowing up common land, demanding communal ownership of property. There were the Quakers, Muggletonians, Agitators, the sexually permissive Ranters, and the Fifth Monarchists, who believed that the ground is now ripe for the second coming of Christ. Today we may refer to this period as the Interregnum,

as if the return of the monarchy was inevitable, But this is not how it was seen in 1649. Professor Nicholas O'Shaughnessy It's the most fantastic and creative and mad period in British history. We think of other periods like, say, the 1960s. This is different because you not only have the civil war and the clash and the religion and so forth, you have the rise of all these extraordinary groups. It's a sort of cauldron, an anarchy,

which is quite unlike any period in our history before or since. Cromwell tries to put a positive spin on things. He employs a propagandist, a secretary to foreign tongues, a writer by the name of John Milton. Milton may eulogise his boss as our chief of men, but it's a hard sell. Dignitaries from overseas are appalled at what is happening

and they have a fear of contagion. An anonymous Dutch pamphleteer in 1652 calls England devil land. He's playing on a medieval pun whereby the English were traditionally cherished as cherubic angels, angeli. But now for the Dutch, they are diabolical devils. They are an out-of-control people who have placed a divinely ordained king on public trial for his life and had him executed by the common executioner. But Cromwell knows how to harness the energy, how to heal divisions, unify the nation.

For there is still unfinished business, and that business can be found across the water in Ireland. Back in late 1641, Ireland had become engulfed in violence as ethnic and religious tensions boiled over. The Irish Rebellion. The killing of Protestant settlers had caused outrage in England, the press playing it up as a sort of demonic orgy.

It was King Charles' muddled response to the crisis that had helped ignite the English Civil War. But the bust-up in England, never forget, is just one component in a wider conflict – the wars of the Three Kingdoms. The fighting in Ireland has been continuing ever since. It has evolved into the Irish Confederate Wars, or the Eleven Years' War, as it is sometimes known. It is, broadly speaking, a clash between two groups. On one side the Irish and Old English gentry, both Catholic, and on the other the Protestant planters from

Scotland and England, who have usurped land and are dominating the Dublin administration. A settlement had been reached with the establishment of a self-governing Irish confederacy in 1642, its capital at Kilkenny. 80% of the island now comes under its control. But fast forward to 1649, and the Confederacy is alarmed at recent events in England. It sees an opportunity to take the initiative to wrest Ireland away from this roundhead republic.

Professor Miholo Shukra. In the 1640s, the Catholic Confederates would like a deal with the king. They're not separatists. They simply want a position in the new colonial order. And it's not until the execution of Charles in January 1649 that kind of shocks opinion across much of the three kingdoms into now agreeing to come together, whatever their differences, in opposition to the regicides. Confederate troops begin advancing on Dublin. They recognise Charles, Prince of Wales, as the king's legal successor.

And so, the new model army prepares for dispatch across the Irish Sea. There was no question of allowing Ireland to go its own way. There was no question of allowing an independent, Catholic-controlled Ireland. The continuing civil wars and instability in England and Wales had always been a distraction. But now that that problem domestically seems to have been resolved, the rump turned its attention to Ireland as a top priority. I think it's really important to stress that the execution of the king was very unpopular in England. And what do governments do when they're unpopular on the domestic front? They oftentimes look to start a war abroad and here is another example of, if you like, an unpopular regime at home

deciding to target a common hated enemy and so deciding immediately to send an expedition to Ireland is really part of that domestic agenda to bring a degree of accountability for what they see as the unprovoked slaughter and attack on the colonial community back in 1641, and that this is now a moment for vengeance. Sir Thomas Fairfax, the Commander-in-Chief, is required to remain in England to ensure law and order.

So the obvious person to be appointed in command of the military expedition to Ireland was the second in command of the New Model Army, and that was Lieutenant General Oliver Cromwell. Across the summer, Cromwell's right-hand man and son-in-law, Henry Ireton, prepares a huge invasion force. Ships embark in mid-August. The goal is to assert parliamentary rule. More than that, it is to complete the Anglicisation of Ireland, a Protestant crusade. A combined Confederate-Royalist force, under the command of the Marquess of Ormond, has

taken a number of strongholds around Dublin. Most significantly two fortified towns either side of the city, Drockeda to the north, Wexford to the south. Confronting the new model army in the field, as Ormond knows, is suicide. But Cromwell's men can be beaten by other means. Hunger, disease and cold. If they can tie Cromwell into a winter campaign, Mother Nature can take care of the rest. The best way to bog down the new model army is through siege warfare. Shelter behind the medieval walls and weather the initial storm. Unfortunately, Orman's strategy has the opposite effect. Against a ticking clock,

Cromwell knows he must strike hard and fast and with devastating force. This will be a lightning war, a blitzkrieg. Cromwell employs his own rather polite term for it, a campaign of frightfulness. At Drogheda, at 5pm on September 11th, the attack begins. The ancient walls are pounded by an incessant artillery barrage. When the southern fortifications are eventually breached, it's just a matter of time before the town falls. Drogheda is bisected by the river Boyne, with only a single bridge spanning it. It's a town of two halves. You can take it in installments.

When a second petition for a surrender is also rejected, the New Model Army storms across the river. Around 3,000 will die as Cromwell's troops put almost every last member of the garrison to the sword. Plus, significantly, every member of the Catholic clergy within. The snipers on St Peter's Church, shooting down from the steeple, have a bonfire lit under them, made from piled-up pews. Strictly by the rules of war, the refusal of surrender twice has forfeited any right to clemency. But the blood is up. Cromwell's men are out of control.

The lust for revenge clear. Dr Anna Kay. They have sort of seared into their minds the images of babies being roasted in front of fires and women being raped and people being stabbed and sent into the fields and freezing cold and starving to death. At least 700 of those killed at Drogheda are civilians. With all armed males regarded as legitimate targets,

the stats can get confusing. What Cromwell did at Drogheda and at Wexford was in line with many of the continental rules of war as understood at the time. But context is everything. Decrees Cromwell, I am persuaded that this is a righteous judgment of God upon these barbarous wretches who have imbrued their hands in so much innocent blood. barbarous wretches who have imbrued their hands in so much innocent blood.

I think what it shows is the utter contempt to which they held the Catholic Irish. These were people outside the norms of civilised society and civilised behaviour. They didn't deserve the same considerations as you would see in war on the continent and even during the English

Civil War and therefore you could behave differently towards them. The few survivors are transported to be indentured labourers in the Caribbean. Little more than slaves, a new fate for prisoners of war. News of what happens in Drogheda spreads incredibly quickly throughout Europe and we get reports of this arriving on the continent within a matter of weeks. And clearly people see this as something significant, as out of the ordinary

and as not acceptable. At Wexford, three weeks later, Oliver's army repeats the trick, though this time in more premeditated fashion. A nine-day siege, another 2,000 dead. For Cromwell, these sieges are deliberately symbolic,

a demonstration that resistance is futile. The enemy upon this were filled with much terror, he writes. I believe this bitterness will save much effusion of blood. Professor John Morrow. I've rather notoriously said in the past, I sort of believe, is that this is the Hiroshima and Nagasaki of the 17th century.

It works, you see. It works because having done these two massacres, nowhere else resists him. Not initially, but soon, Clonmel, Waterford, Limerick and other towns will start shoring up. The war in Ireland will continue for another four years. The arguments about the morality of that will endlessly go on. There is one war crime he undoubtedly commits.

is one war crime he undoubtedly commits. The senior commander, Aston, who is holed up in this fort on top of a medieval mound, he finds himself in an impossible position and he says to the major, Major Axtell, who is being charged with getting him out, can I surrender with a guarantee of life for me and my men? Axtell looks at this steep hill on all four sides and he thinks we'll lose a lot of men if we have to storm it. It's worth getting them out on a promise of their lives. So he gives them his word and they come out and Cromwell turns up and says,

what the hell's happening here? So Axel explains, he says, you have no authority. My order was to kill all those who are in that place. I'm overruling your judgment, kill them. So these people had surrendered on terms which they had every reason to think would be honored, and then Cromwell overruled the officer who'd given them. Now that is a war crime, even at the time. Governor Aston, by the way, is clubbed to death with his own wooden leg. The killings at Drogheda and Wexford cement his reputation and his legacy in Ireland as a murderer.

And it must be said that whatever else he does in his remarkable career, his actions and behaviour in Ireland are a stain that cannot be removed. And it sets a tone for a campaign that becomes increasingly genocidal in its intent. Wars are expensive. The English exchequer is out of money again. Compensation is sought by way of the 1652 Act of Settlement. Catholic and Royalist estates are seized and transferred to supporters of Cromwell's regime.

This leads to a mass clear-out of the native Irish. The peasantry are banished to unfarmable lands in the West. To hell or to Connacht, as the reputed battle cry goes. First of all, Cromwell never said to hell or to Connacht. It's a nice phrase and we use it all the time. As far as I can make out, it's a 19th century historian who first comes up with the phrase. It's very derogatory towards Connacht,

which is a very nice part of Ireland. But what happens after the war, in terms of the refashioning of Irish society, has a far greater and lasting impact on Ireland. And it consolidates this Protestant ascendancy, a small Protestant landowning class that effectively controls Irish political, economic and social life for the next 250 years.

Between 20 and 40% of Ireland's population of 2 million will die from disease and famine over the next three or four years. Cromwell is in Ireland only for nine months. The bulk of the campaign will be conducted in his absence. Whether aimed specifically at him or as a cipher for all the ills inflicted, Cromwell's name is uttered as a curse in Ireland to this day. However hard Cromwell tries, the spectre of royalism will not evaporate. The civil wars were fought to bring King Charles to heel, to reorder politics.

Not chop his head off, weren't they? Feelings in Scotland run especially high. The Scots are outraged. This was somebody who was also King of Scotland, who had been born in Dunfermline, and who, here as they see it, was illegally executed by a foreign power. In 1649, the Rump Parliament abolished monarchy in England, Wales, and Ireland, but not in Scotland. They technically left the route open for the Scots to go their own way. That is the route the Scots chose to go. They appointed Charles's eldest son, Charles the Prince of Wales. They proclaimed him king but they proclaimed him king not just of Scotland.

They specifically and knowingly and consciously declared him king of Scotland, England, Wales and Ireland. Aged 19, Charles Junior is currently holed up in Brussels. Scots loyalists plan to bring him home. If he accepts Presbyterianism, together they can march on England and complete the job that was abandoned at Preston in 1648. Queen Henrietta Maria is lukewarm about the enterprise, but, Charles tells his mother, resuming the throne is a debt he owes to Dad, and so he sets sail.

In June 1650, his ship sits at anchor in the Murray Firth. On board, lawyers draw up papers while the fresh-faced royal is lectured by Presbyterian ministers. He must wonder what he's let himself in for. When he reaches Aberdeen, he's greeted by a macabre sight. The dead hand of the Marquess of Montrose nailed to the town's toll booth. His royalist rebellion had ended in disaster. But Charles II is not leading a revolt. He is the new head of state.

When news reaches Cromwell, he cuts short his campaign in Ireland. Handing matters over to Ayrton, who will later die at Limerick, he will steal a march on the Scots to snuff out this mischief. Sixteen thousand hardened English veterans trudge up to the Scottish border. The move has an unintended and significant consequence. Fairfax refuses to be involved in this war of aggression against a sister nation. Cromwell is appointed in his stead as Lord General, the new Commander-in-Chief. There is a marked difference in tone to the war Cromwell had waged across the Irish Sea. Even before he started fighting the Scots, he deliberately paused in Musselburgh outside Edinburgh, wrote to the Church of Scotland's General Assembly to question their decision to

proclaim their allegiance to Charles II and said, you know, I beseech you in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken. Nonetheless, the Third Civil War, or Anglo-Scottish War, is soon underway. On September 3, 1650, comes what is regarded as Cromwell's greatest victory, fought against an overwhelming force – the Battle of Dunbar. David Leslie, the Scottish commander, fortifies Edinburgh and scorches the surrounding earth. But political pressure forces him outside the city's walls. Leslie succumbs to the inevitable disaster of facing the new model army in the open.

The battle lasts about an hour, not much more than that. The Scots are utterly defeated. Cromwell loses 40, 4 zero dead in the battle, most of those in a preliminary manoeuvre. The Scots lose 10,000, maybe more than 10,000 men. Cromwell is eyes sparkling, laughing after the battle, can't believe it. It's a sign that God is with him. It's a sign that God is with him. Charles II is crowned on New Year's Day, 1651. There is a simple, hasty ceremony at Schoon in Perthshire,

seat of the ancient Caledonian kings. But as Cromwell's mop-up operations continue around him, this is no time to linger. The new monarch has a plan. While Ironsides is tied up in the east, he will seize a tactical advantage in the west. This isn't a move met with enthusiasm by his generals, but in August Charles II, at its head, a new Scottish army of 16,000 men crosses the border at Carlisle. Marching down England's west, through the old royalist heartlands,

young Charles hopes to generate a snowball effect, people throwing in their lot with him to storm London. But the English people are tired of war, and Cromwell is too smart a general. He zips south at an incredible pace, then sits there waiting, letting Charles' army run out of steam. He will coax the king as far as Worcester, where 30,000 new model men sit sharpening their swords. men sit sharpening their swords. On September 3rd 1651, a year to the day after Dunbar, the Battle of Worcester marks the last significant encounter in England. Bottling up the Scottish army in the city, it's a case of urban warfare, hand-to-hand combat.

But it's game over for the Royalists. As Cromwell calls it, God's crowning mercy. Charles escapes and famously hides in an oak tree. After six weeks on the run, he will be back in exile. Cromwell is in charge of England, has terrified Ireland and pacified Scotland, which is now under military governorship. The wars of the three kingdoms are effectively at an end. Cromwell is hailed as an all-conquering

hero. He wins a succession of victories in Scotland and completes with his defeat of the Scots at Worcester. That is the end of his active military career. He never fights again after that. As ever the treasury is broke. Cromwell must find new ways of raising revenue. One area to be exploited is overseas trade. Business is booming between the Commonwealth and its new colonies. But Cromwell has rivals on the high seas, in particular another republic, a Protestant one to boot, the Dutch. In 1652 a trade war escalates into an actual one.

Cromwell is never at ease with war against the Dutch. In a world governed by Catholic superpowers, they should be bedfellows. He will even later propose an Anglo-Dutch union. Moreover, Cromwell is becoming increasingly unhappy with the decisions that are coming out of his rump parliament. It seems more interested in voting itself into a permanent existence than in the welfare of the nation. As in Ireland, as in Scotland, something must be done. April 20th, 1653. We're at Westminster, the House of Commons.

It's 11.15am. Amid the usual chaos, the doors burst open and in storms Oliver Cromwell. Dressed in a smart black suit, he interrupts the debate and commands the floor. Old Gnarl is tired, war-weary, just weary. You venture he has the mother of all headaches. His voice strains with displeasure as he informs the assembled MPs that he is sick of their antics. They are godless, drunkards, wastrels, whoremongers. Come, come, he says, I will put an end to your prating.

With a wave of his arm he summons in his musketeers, ordering them to clear the chamber. You have sat here too long for any good you've been doing lately, he bellows. In the name of God, go. As MPs scramble for the exit, he approaches the great ceremonial mace, symbol of the Speaker's authority. What shall we do with this bau exit, he approaches the great ceremonial mace, symbol of the Speaker's authority. What shall we do with this bauble? he asks, and rolls it onto the floor. So Cromwell and the New Model Army become distrustful of the Rump, increasingly antagonistic, and that's what leads Cromwell in April 1653,

with the power of the army behind him, to rile against the Rump and to lead to the military ejection, a bloodless military coup in all but name. Cromwell will replace the Rump Parliament with a streamlined national assembly. With just 144 MPs, all hand-picked, the assembly will be referred to as the bare-bones parliament. And that again sends shockwaves in continental Europe. A lot of satirical Dutch prints show him as a dictator. He is often depicted in satirical prints as having a scaly tail, you know, dismissing parliaments at will.

If there is one upshot of the new arrangement, it's that the inconclusive war with the Netherlands is brought to an end. But Cromwell's tyrannical meddling is now starting to sound an awful lot like the earlier shenanigans of a certain Charles I. And there are other tensions brewing, with more traditional adversaries, particularly in the Caribbean, old enemy Spain.

In December 1654, Cromwell sends a naval expedition to try and take the Spanish island of Hispaniola. The mission ultimately fails. But the Commonwealth does gain what will become the linchpin of its West Indian colonies, Jamaica. And war with Spain brings Cromwell an unlikely ally, France. Back in Europe, in June 1658, 6,000 English soldiers will land in Flanders. There they will defeat a Spanish force at the Battle of the Dunes.

England is awarded a possession much closer to home this time, the port of Dunkirk. England, like the Dutch Republic, is conducting its overseas expansion through merchants, private companies. overseas expansion through merchants, private companies. Cromwell has noted the key role that one societal group has been playing in Amsterdam's money markets, its Jewish community. Persecuted throughout the Catholic world, they are thriving in the Puritan Netherlands. And so, having been banned from the country 400 years earlier

under the reign of Edward I, Jews are permitted back into England. Cromwell being basically founded in the Old Testament, kind of understood then. He was from a very mercantile caste. And so the Jews' business, financial acumen, their basis in the Old Testament, all of this is readily intelligible to Cromwell. He's not actually afraid of that. He doesn't see some fierce and diabolical necromancy about the Jews. They are a people of the book, and he welcomes them. There is an important point here.

Cromwell is about freedom of worship. Observe your God in any way you choose. Just do it on your own time without any diktat by the state or allegiance to ecclesiastical authority. He also believes the English to be one of the ten lost tribes of Israel. Cromwell may proclaim his nominated assembly as a people chosen by God to do his work, but its stretching credulity, it amounts to a bunch of misfits and yes-men. Parliament's nickname, Bare Bones,

actually comes not from its slimmed-down nature, but one of its members, an elderly tub-thumping Baptist named Praise God Barebones. Mired in theological disputes and poorly attended, the Assembly is not up to the task of crafting the new constitution that Cromwell demands. Under pressure, it dissolves itself and offers power back.

He actually has a vision of the kind of England he wants, but he can never get anything done. These parliaments are fractious, they're monomaniacal, they're noisy, and of course in the end you have the same problem that Charles I have, you can't control them. The job is given instead to a Major General John Lambert, who drafts the Instrument of Government. This is Westminster's first and only written constitution. The body politic is no longer the Commonwealth, it becomes the Protectorate. It will see the

revival of an obscure historic title, one that has lain dormant since the 15th century. On December 16, 1653, it is conferred on Oliver Cromwell. He is now the Lord Protector, a kind of executive president. On April 12, 1654, Cromwell, Lord Protector, issues an ordinance. It formally brings Scotland into a combined entity with England, with Scottish MPs sitting in Westminster. And it's really the sort of first iteration of what then becomes a permanent set-up in 1707 with the Union of the Parliaments.

But it's often forgotten that it all happened first in the 1650s. It establishes a format and a sort of expectation that this arrangement could work. England has undergone a series of radical, lurching shifts since Charles I's execution. Changes that would have been unthinkable just a decade and a half ago. Cromwell's mission now is one of healing and settling, as he puts it. There will be wholesale electoral reform, a clear separation of church and state, an independent judiciary. He also initiates a new Northern University at Durham. Despite Cromwell's best efforts, still monarchism continues to simmer.

In March 1655, an uprising is led by a Wiltshire landowner called John Penroddock. Though suppressed easily, the threat will not go away. The emergency measures Cromwell takes in response will prove his most controversial yet. Under Cromwellian Dictat, England and Wales are to be split up into eleven districts,

each under the control of a Major General. The Rule of the Major Generals, Martial Law, will be a state of affairs from August 1655. Each general will have responsibility for three functions, police and public order, the collection of taxes, and the strict enforcement of Puritan morality. And he will answer directly to the Lord Protector himself. One of Cromwell's key objectives as Lord Protector was to reform society, to clamp down on sin. And one of the other roles of the Major Generals in the system is to boost that godly reformation.

Cromwell may seek to remove the state from individual worship, but personal morality is still the state's domain. Betting and gambling are forbidden, drunkenness is verboten, ale houses are closed, swearing is outlawed, adultery is punishable by death. Attention is brought to bear on religious feast days, key dates in everyday English life, and one in particular. In London, on the 25th of December, soldiers go house to house, kicking over stoves and trashing cooking meat. Cromwell has cancelled Christmas, backed by a network of spies and informers, and with

the free press gagged, The Protectorate has also become a police state. With characteristic humour, a nursery rhyme is penned about these goose-stepping soldiers, apt to ransack a house and assault those not showing strict religious observance. Goosey, goosey, gander, whither shall I wander? Upstairs, downstairs, in my lady's chamber. There I met an old man who wouldn't say his prayers, so I took him by the left leg and threw him down the stairs. Inevitably there are stories of corruption, of soldiers on the take, of tin-pot megalomania.

Oh, for the days of Charles I's personal rule. They were quite fun by comparison. It becomes a source of great discontent and some of the voices that are loudest in saying this is completely unacceptable were people who had been big leaders of the parliamentarian cause back in the 1640s. So it's a disaster. The protectorate was often attacked in the press and pulpit and there were calls for Cromwell's assassination. There's a trail of gunpowder

that's discovered that was clearly designed to blow up Cromwell and the whole of Whitehall Palace. Cromwell is then a bit disconcerted when he discovers that the originator of this plot is one of his former lifeguards,

John Toope, and that Toope is absolutely unrepentant in insisting he believed it was better to have Charles Stuart to reign here than this tyrant. Conflict with Spain and the inevitable need for more money compels Cromwell to reconvene a second protectorate parliament in the summer of 1656. And its resumption will further compound the irony. One way to bring Cromwell to heel, it is argued, is to imbue him with a sense of public and parliamentary responsibility. He must be harnessed into some kind of structure that restrains his worst impulses.

And so, MPs conspire to do what was only a short time ago unthinkable. On March 31, 1657, in Westminster Hall, Parliamentary Grandees present Cromwell with what is known as the Humble Petition. That Your Highness will be pleased to assume the name, style, title, dignity and office of King of England, Scotland and Ireland. And the respective dominions and territories thereunto belonging. They are offering Oliver Cromwell the crown. At various times during the protectorate, there were suggestions that kingship should be restored

and that Cromwell should take the crown and the title King Oliver. King Oliver I, one assumes. In spring 1657, when the second Protectorate Parliament draws up its revised parliamentary constitution, that certainly would have named Cromwell as a king. And it was debated and the majority wanted it in the House of Commons, and it's presented to Cromwell in that form. If Charles I believed he had a divine right to rule, and Cromwell believes he has been put on earth to do God's work, really, what's the difference? Despite all that's happened over the past 15 years, Cromwell, surprisingly, is not averse to this idea.

It's a myth that the royal bloodline is everything. Throughout history, the crown has been scrapped over by rival warlords. Look how the Tudors came to the throne. To those in the inner circle, Cromwell is already being referred to as Highness. He's now dressing in robes, dishing out knighthoods to his mates. He lives in the Royal Palace at Whitehall. He likes to hang out at Hampton Court at the weekends, where there is even, whisper it quietly, music and dancing. Cromwell is often described as being king in all but name.

There's a huge amount spent on the royal palaces during the time. A lot of the statues that are erected are very similar to those of his royal predecessors. The way in which he signs himself, sort of Oliver P, is not really that different from sort of Charles X. On a practical level, becoming king will also give Cromwell legitimacy as head of state. The role of king is a defined role. Lord Protector, well, there's no precedent,

whereas king has definition to it and for a lot of people was a more kind of known and comfortable and understandable kind of way of saying this person's in charge. It would also have regulated the succession. He is a remarkably physically robust individual, but there are signs that he is becoming

increasingly unwell in the 1650s. And people harked back to the succession uncertainty under Elizabeth I. Confirming Cromwell as king would also settle the succession in a hereditary manner. But as always, there is the army. If he became monarch, how could old Ironsides possibly look his brethren in the eye

after all they fought for? In the end, Cromwell cites the Almighty. By restoring monarchy, that's going against God's explicit will. I would not build up again what God had brought low. I will not build the walls of Jericho again. On May the 8th, 1657, Cromwell gives his answer. Thanks, I'm flattered, but no. Negotiations are entered into. A settlement is reached. He will continue to serve as Lord Protector

but he must have the right to nominate his successor. In return, he will restore full and proper power to a broader Parliament. He will also reintroduce a second chamber in effect a reformed House of Lords. The legislation is ratified on May 25th. On June 26th, 1657, Cromwell's compliance is indulged with a quasi-coronation in Westminster Hall. Swathed in ermine, Cromwell sits in King Edward's throne which has been lugged over from Westminster

Abbey. He is given an ornate Bible and carries a sword and golden sceptre. He even gets his own commemorative portrait by renowned artist Samuel Cooper. Cromwell instructs him to render his own weathered old visage in what will become a familiar expression – warts and all. But none of this seems to prevent him reverting to type. In February 1658, amid Republican howls that he's sold out the revolution, Cromwell angrily dissolves the latest parliament.

He's in a no-win situation. Too regal for the Republicans, just a fraud to the monarch parliament. He is in a no-win situation. Too regal for the republicans, just a fraud to the monarchists. There are assassination plots, rumours of royalists in exile about to launch military expeditions, and, as ever, there is his own new model army. Highly radicalised, it is becoming increasingly seditious. Cromwell's reaction can only be guessed at, for it never comes to pass. Nature is already taking its course. Across 1658 Cromwell begins to withdraw. He falls increasingly ill. The years and the wars have taken their toll. Foreign diplomats had been returning to Cromwell's court of late, but it's remarked upon by dignitaries how haggard and grey he appears.

His hand openly shakes upon greeting them. We can see his signature gets weaker. He doesn't attend council meetings so regularly. Some of the last speeches he gave were noticeably short and indeed he refers to his own ill health in some of those speeches. The summer of 1658 isn't a summer at all. There are hailstorms in June. The unseasonal weather ravages crops and prompts an outbreak of deadly influenza. In August, when his favourite daughter Elizabeth succumbs

to illness, the already ailing Cromwell is devastated. The sorrow proves too much. Amid swirling storms, he takes to his bed, slipping in and out of consciousness over the next two weeks. Most likely, he's suffering from a recurrence of the marsh fever malaria that has afflicted him his whole adult life. Well, yes, as General MacArthur said, old soldiers never die, they only just fade away. He faded away. The Irish campaigns ruined his health. He was never the same or never well after that. What he actually died of was a urinary tract infection.

But he had malaria. And this was, of course, a great weakening factor. On August the 31st, he lapses into a coma. a great weakening factor. On August 31st he lapses into a coma. He dies on the afternoon of September 3rd, 1658. The anniversary of Dunbar, the anniversary of Worcester, and for that matter, the anniversary of his arrival at Drogheda. That night a hurricane sweeps across the land. Ships sink at sea.

It is said that the devil has come to take his soul. He was 59 years old. Oliver Cromwell, Quasi-King, is awarded a state funeral. In the absence of one for Charles I, it is modelled on that held for James I. His body is embalmed and placed in a lead shell, then set in a coffin with a gold plaque bearing his coat of arms. There is an urgency to it, for there are accounts his diseased body swelled and bursted and gave up a noisome stink. It will not prevent Cromwell from laying in state

at Somerset House for a full and fragrant seven weeks, though the mourners filing past the Lord Protector are actually viewing a wax effigy. On November 23, 1658, Cromwell is interred at Westminster Abbey with full honours in the Chapel of Henry VII. It descends into a bit of a farce. The days are quite short, the whole procession slows down, it carries on longer than expected and by the time they reach Westminster Abbey it was pretty well dark and they hadn't got enough candles. Events at Cromwell's deathbed had also proven tragicomic. According to the agreement Cromwell had brokered, he was entitled to name his successor.

But he never did. It is only in the final moments, delirious, a gale rattling the windows, that his associates managed to force the nomination out of him. Amazingly, he had not done so until the moment where he's rasping away in his bed in Whitehall Palace and everyone around him is full of despair because, come on, what are we supposed to do? Tell us who it's going to be. And there's a suggestion there was a name in an envelope, but the envelope couldn't be found. Actually, we know that he sent one of his relatives to find it and it couldn't be found. So somebody didn't like the name that was in it. The name in the envelope is that of his eldest living son,

Richard Cromwell. Richard Cromwell, 32, is a man of good intentions but limited ability. He's just there through nepotism, and everybody knows it. He recalls Parliament, marking the start of the third Protectorate. But Tumbledown Dick, or Queen Dick as people call him, is a disaster. Little Richard takes over, full of the fond hopes of his father, but he just didn't organise for a post-Cromwell order. He never seems to have thought that through.

He should never have thought that Richard could possibly be head of state. It was an act of incredible irresponsibility and also horrific act by a father because his son, Richard Cromwell, who was a perfectly competent, able young man who'd been busy riding his horses and having a nice time being a country gent, was suddenly expected to shoulder this very complicated, very fragile nation and this role with no preparation whatsoever. He hadn't been introduced to anybody. He hadn't been given a training in the army. He hadn't been tutored by his father and what was going to be required. And it was entirely predictably a disaster. Amid parliamentary chaos, strikes, mutinies. There is a question. Who governs Britain?

The answer? No one. In a case of history repeating itself, the military wades in. Army radicals led by Generals John Lambert and George Fleetwood force Richard's resignation. It prompts a second intervention, this time by a General George Monk. He was Oliver's old military commander in Scotland, a man who had begun the wars on the side of King Charles. Amid widespread outbreaks of royalism, Monk's troops march south to confront Lambert and

enter the capital. A convention parliament is assembled, summoned to restore governance along acceptable moderate lines. On the 1st of May 1660, it votes for the restoration of the monarchy. Charles II has been the lawful king from the moment of his father's execution. Charles II is in the Netherlands now. He agrees to return to England, but with limits on his powers. It's where they could have got to 20 years earlier, had his own father not been so stubborn. Sealed by the Declaration of Breda, the navy sails off to bring the new king home.

the navy sails off to bring the new king home. For the sake of national unity the treaty contains pledges of reconciliation. There will be an act of oblivion erasing all that has gone before. With the restoration of Charles II in 1660 there's a determined effort made in England in particular to turn the clock back to 1640 as if the preceding 20 years just had never happened. Cromwell is kind of written out of the story, you know, almost just wipe it from the collective memory and the historical consciousness.

Most countries would commemorate, even celebrate, something so defining as civil war and revolution. Such things will never happen in England. If the Republic had endured, I'm sure that there would be national days of celebration and orders of merit based on it and all that kind of stuff. And it would be like Bastille Day in France. But of course, what happened with our revolution is that it resulted in a republic that did not endure. While there are pardons aplenty, there is one thing Charles II will not forgive. The 59 who signed his father's death warrant. They have largely fled abroad, but he will hunt

them down mercilessly. Many will come to a gruesome end at Tyburn, London's infamous public execution site for common criminals. Some of the signatories had made it to America, to where the war had also spread. Parliamentarians and royalists actually clashed in Maryland in 1655. There the parliamentary ideals will endure. The Puritan colonies of New England will begin to coalesce around a republican notion that will bear fruit in 1776. The old royalist South meanwhile, Virginia, Maryland, the Carolinas, later Georgia, will find itself increasingly at odds with the modernising North.

There is one final piece of theatre, an act of revenge. Charles II orders Cromwell's body to be disinterred from Westminster Abbey. On January 30th, 1661, the anniversary of Charles I's execution, the rotting corpse, along with those of John Bradshaw and Henry Ireton, is bound in chains and loaded on the back of a cart. At Tyburn, the three bodies are hung from the scaffold in a restaged version of a traitor's death. Cromwell's is then decapitated. His body is thrown into a common pit. His head is put on a spike to be mounted outside Westminster Hall, the place of his investiture. Cromwell remains persona non grata for over 200 years.

I mean, Cromwell himself was physically subjected to being exhumed and undergoing a very ritualistic sort of traitor's death. And in a way, that was probably the way in which generations could sort of make sense of him, almost to make him a kind of spirit of fun. In the 18th century, there were lots of sort of folkloric traditions whereby there would be sort of satirical attacks on his large nose, or in the southwest, there would be a sort of blackened figure who would try and blacken people with sort of dark hands. So it became quite carnivalesque. And it wasn't really until the 1840s and the publication of an edition of his letters by Thomas Carlyle that he began to be this kind of hero of non-conformists and meritocracy and liberalism. In the 19th century, conservatives at Westminster still condemned Cromwell as a king killer. But some liberals reinvent him as a patriot, a Christian, a nation builder,

a useful fellow to flaunt at the peak of the British Empire. It is they who were behind the move to put up the statue in Parliament Square in 1899, the statue with which we began this story. There was a committee set up to look at what statues and memorials there should be inside the Palace of Westminster after it had been rebuilt. Cromwell was kind of knocked out as being a figure we didn't want depicted inside, and so the fact that he's outside was a sort of, a bit of an exile. But of course the irony is that in the end it's infinitely more prominent.

Just like his statue, Oliver Cromwell remains controversial, an enigma, his legacy complex. He was England's first Republican leader. He remains its only military dictator. What's the legacies? The legacies are that there is deep in English consciousness and anxiety about giving too much power to military leaders. I mean, with the minor exception of Wellington as an old man, and no general has ever held senior position in the British government since. The problem of British identity and of British identities remains, you know, over Scottish independence and so on and the status of the North Island. So that is a legacy which is still destabilising today.

But a lot of things which he did, which was to promote the notions of responsible government, of separation of powers, of the rule of law, of measures of religious freedom. All those are enduring legacies. Well, you know, Cromwell is an extraordinary figure, a man who comes from a relatively humble background. He is a landowner, but a very small landowner in Cambridgeshire. But for the turmoil of the mid-17th century, he probably would have lived out a fairly unremarkable life. But he's living in extraordinary times.

And by 1653, he has become the effective ruler of England, Scotland and Ireland, which really from where he was 20 years earlier is almost unthinkable. His life has to be looked at in entirety. And unfortunately, Ireland is really a serious problem. So the legacy is a contested one. And maybe perhaps that's what makes him such a fascinating figure as well. In the immediate aftermath of the restoration of the monarchy, he was a kind of ghoul who was

summoned up as representing rebellion and discord and military might. he was much reviled for a long time. But then he had moments of really being revived as a political hero rather than a sort of political bogeyman, not least in the 19th century. And the kind of folks who would later be called nonconformists, he gave them freedom of worship. And so in the 19th century, when you get a great explosion in all of those communities, the nation is covered in chapels. And for them, Cromwell was the liberator.

He is the only commoner to have held that kind of power, who was offered the crown and could have become King Oliver I. I think the sheer unlikely nature of that story to rise from not exactly humble origins to a position of military dominance and political power has captivated different generations. He is a dynamic military leader. But more than that, he grows into a political role. He becomes a political operator of considerable skill and ability. His very sincere and very deep belief in a reformist but loving, beneficent God holds him back

even when the temptations of corrupting power were potentially within his grasp. And Cromwell was careful about not being corrupted by power. And that leads on to his other great attribute and why I see him as a great man, and that is his role as a statesman. I think that we like to idealize our rulers in history. We like an ideal Israeli. We like an ideal Victoria. We like a George III.

We like a fine, well-cut Wellington, a romantic Nelson, and so forth. We like historical figures we can admire. We cannot admire Cromwell. We can respect him. So, you see, what buildings are named after Cromwell? What battleships are named after Cromwell, we can respect him. So you see, what buildings are named after Cromwell? What battleships are named after Cromwell? What other institutions are named after Cromwell? Do we have the Cromwell Institute of Political Thought?

Do we have Cromwell College, Cambridge? No. And the interesting question is why, since you could argue he's the most significant figure in English history. The only thing we do have is the Cromwell tank. There aren't any pubs called Cromwell, but you do get lots of king's heads. Cromwell's head will remain on its spike outside Westminster Hall. But in 1685 it's blown off one night during a storm. It lands at the feet of a guard,

a man named Barnes, who smuggles it home, shoving it up his chimney for safekeeping. On his deathbed some years later, Barnes tells his wife and daughter about his macabre acquisition. They pull it out. The years of smoke from the hearth have cured this unusual artefact,

preserving it in a leathery condition. In 1710 they sell it to a man named Claudius Dupuis, a French-Swiss collector. Cromwell's cranium then passes through several museums of curios, before being sold again to a family named Wilkinson, who pass it down through the generations. In the 20th century Horace Wilkinson, a doctor in Kettering, will bring it out at dinner parties like a ventriloquist's dummy, still stuck on the remnants of the original wooden stake. But in 1960, after his death, the family give it to Sydney Sussex College, Cambridge, Cromwell's old alma mater. There it is buried, in secret, in the college chapel.

Scientific comparisons with his death mask leave little doubt that the head is genuinely Cromwell's. Warts and all. Real Dictators will be back soon, as we travel to South America, to Chile, for the story of Augusto Pinochet.