Cromwell Essay, Research Paper
Greetings dearest cousin! I hope all is well with you and your estate in the Netherlands. You must be relieved with the decade of peace your land has seen since the Treaty of Westphalia. I, however, have not been as fortunate as you have. Much has changed in London since you departed sixteen years ago after the outbreak of the Civil War. Oliver Cromwell, the poor MP from Huntingdon, has risen up through the army and shown that he possesses unexpected talent and ability. Even though he lacked previous military experience he led the Ironsides and became a lieutenant in three years. He was also a critic of King Charles’s two-faced political strategies. This proved to be true when Cromwell helped in Parliament’s victory over Charles’s forces at Naseby in 1645. After the defeat the Parliament encouraged Charles to give the people of England more rights, yet he refused. Later it was discovered that he was also enabling Scotland to invade from the North. All of this eventually led to Charles’s very public execution on January 30, 1649. (www.olivercromwell.com.) Kingship was essentially abolished when Charles was beheaded and it has been a commonwealth ever since. It seems that Oliver Cromwell has proved to be the most powerful in England because he controls the army that defeated the royal forces. However, Parliament still has played a major, yet confusing, role in the governing of England. From 1649 till 1653 a Rump Parliament existed; this was basically a fragment of the Long Parliament which was purged after Charles’s death. They were ineffective because they lacked initiative. Also, they sold the Crown’s lands, the Church lands, and royalist lands in order to finance the army’s conquest of Ireland. Cromwell and his army stormed through Drogheda and Wesford and essentially slaughtered all of civilian life. They eventually conquered Scotland as well. Though the majority of people did not outwardly oppose the Rump Parliament, it was dissolved on April 20, 1653 because Cromwell decided he wanted to focus on a godly reformation. A reformation that the Rump Parliament was too occupied and too set in its ways to enforce. Instead of having free elections, Cromwell basically handpicked 140 men drawn from amongst those who were loyal to the godly cause. This was extremely na?ve in my opinion because the men who made up the Barebones Parliament were no nobler than anyone else was. Without a declared leader they simply bickered for 5 months and eventually handed their power back into Cromwell’s hands. (Morgan, pg.326.) Cromwell was then declared the Protectorate of England and he has retained this title ever since. Under this title he has consistently shown his intense zeal for reformation. In his speech at the opening of the first Protectorate parliament he spoke of his ambition to bring about a “reformation of manners
Sincerely,
Edward
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