English Civil War

Cromwell and the Execution of Charles I

Oliver Cromwell was at heart no republican; but he believed that God manifested His will through the triumphs or misfortunes that He awarded to those engaged in “great businesses”. Charles Ogilvie writes how Charles's continued misjudgments revealed that, if the world were to be made safe for the “Godly,” the King must be executed.

Cromwell and the Historians

Critics of Cromwell, both British and foreign, have long continued to “find what they were looking for” in the records of his career and character. Some have denounced him as a hypocritical tyrant; others have described him as the finest type of middle-class Englishman. Once at least, writes D.H. Pennington, he has been acclaimed as “the greatest Englishman of all time”.

The Cromwells at Whitehall

With his “great and majestic deportment and comely presence Cromwell himself was fully equal to his new dignities as Lord Protector. Not so, writes C.V. Wedgwood, all the members of his household; his wife was accused of squalid parsimony, and his younger daughters of undue frivolity.

John Thurloe: Secretary of State 1652-1660

Edmund Baker describes how Cromwell's principal assistant in foreign affairs and his most devoted friend, Thurloe, saw in the Protectoral system “a mean between two intolerable extremes of unrestrained anarchy and reaction.”

Puritans at the Font

J. Leslie Nightingale describes how, during the 17th century, Puritanism spread into English villages, with the twelve sons of Jacob and all the major and minor prophets to be found on the village greens. Names after the Christian graces and virtues—Patience, Honour, Faith, Hope, Charity—were also widely bestowed at Puritan baptisms.

Admiral Robert Black, 1599-1657

Christopher Lloyd marks the tercentenary of Robert Black, Cromwell’s “General at Sea,” whose name ranks with those of Drake and Nelson in English naval annals.

Yorkshire’s Treaty of Neutrality

Always a staunchly independent race, Yorkshiremen made strenuous efforts to preserve their neutrality during the struggle between King and Parliament. By Austin Woolrych.

John Mason and the End of the World

Christopher Hill examines the millenarian religious ferment of the seventeenth century and finds that it threw up many strange figures—among them an eccentric Anglican divine who prophesied that the second coming was soon to occur in his own parish, where he gathered a large community of religious squatters.