|
The
increasing ethnic diversity of British society means it is
difficult to define what makes someone British. |
 |
Oliver Cromwell
House: Commonwealth
Reign: 1649-1658
|
Oliver Cromwell (April 25, 1599 – September 3, 1658) was an English military
and political leader, considered by critics to be a dictator, best known
for making England a republic and leading the Commonwealth of England.
A middling farmer he rose from the ranks to command the Army and eventually
to impose his rule on England, Scotland, and Ireland as Lord Protector,
from December 16, 1653 until his death. Cromwell remains perhaps the most
controversial figure in English history-- a regicidal
|
 |
|
dictator
to some historians (such as David Hume and Christopher Hill) and a hero
of liberty to others (such as Thomas Carlyle and Samuel Rawson Gardiner.)
He was a king-killer who agonized about whether to be king himself and
decided not - though ironically he had more power than Charles I. He was
a parliamentarian who made his soldiers break and purge parliaments. He
was profoundly devoted to Christian values yet his conquests of Scotland
and Ireland were extraordinarily brutal. He passionately advocated religious
liberty for his own kind, but let blasphemers be tortured. He was an advocate
of equitable justice who imprisoned critics if they challenged his powers
to raise extra-parliamentary taxation. Admirers hail him as a strong,
stabilizing and stately leader who brought international respect, overthrew
tyranny and promoted republicanism and liberty. His critics ridiculed
him as an overly ambitious hypocrite who betrayed the cause of liberty,
imposed puritanical values and showed scant respect for the nation's traditions.
When the royalists returned to power, they dug up his corpse, hung it
in chains, and beheaded it.
|
<<< Back |
|
|
