Cromwell:An Honourable Enemy

[Peairtach]

I don't have access to "The Wading Pool", but as part of the original poster's research on Cromwell, I'd advise reading "Cromwell:An Honourable Enemy" by Tom Reilly of Drogheda, where one of Cromeell's supposed Irish massacres took place.

These massacres are nothing but a concoction by the strange bedfellows of English royalists and Irish republican nationalists, as Reilly shows.

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[ZackF]

If that is the case, what did Cromwell do in Ireland?

 

[Tom Hart]

All history is biased.

 

[Edward]

Cromwell: The Irish Question
http://www.historytoday.com/tom-reilly/cromwell-irish-question

 

[TylerRay]

From my limited knowledge of Cromwell, the sense that I get is that he was a sincere Christian who, in spite of his good intentions, committed some major sins and crimes.

Something that has not been pointed out very clearly in the two threads dealing with this topic right now is that Cromwell was an Independent, and most of his supporters were Independents. Good, godly men like Goodwin and Owen supported him. It seems to me that there is an analogue in the good intentions and bad direction of Cromwell to the good intentions and bad directions of Independents and their ecclesiastical polity. Independency leaves a church without accountability, and thus tends toward abuse of discipline. Cromwell, too, was immune to accountability, and reigned as a tyrant.

 

[Tom Hart]

Something that has not been pointed out very clearly in the two threads dealing with this topic right now is that Cromwell was an Independent, and most of his supporters were Independents.

That is something I had not considered. I appreciate that you've contributed this point to the discussion.

 

[arapahoepark]

Cromwell: The Irish Question
http://www.historytoday.com/tom-reilly/cromwell-irish-question

Quite good. Even in my Irish History class I had a couple of years ago, the traditional narratives were called into question with things like these.

 

[Philip]

Cromwell is quite an example of how the best of intentions can lead you to become worse than the thing you were fighting against. Cromwell ended up becoming more powerful than Charles ever was and managed to unite the three kingdoms in the conviction that the House of Stuart, whatever its faults, was better than the alternative.

 

[Peairtach]

Cromwell is quite an example of how the best of intentions can lead you to become worse than the thing you were fighting against. Cromwell ended up becoming more powerful than Charles ever was and managed to unite the three kingdoms in the conviction that the House of Stuart, whatever its faults, was better than the alternative.

I don't think the country was ready to be without a monarch of some sort, but the Restoration of the Stuarts in 1660 was followed with the Glorious Revolution in 1688, which settled the relationship between the Crown and Parliament.

 

[Philip]

I don't think the country was ready to be without a monarch of some sort, but the Restoration of the Stuarts in 1660 was followed with the Glorious Revolution in 1688, which settled the relationship between the Crown and Parliament.

But it only happened because Pride (with Cromwell's approval) purged Parliament of its moderate (Presbyterian) elements in order to ensure the execution of Charles. The country likely could have had a constitutional settlement of some nature had the Presbyterians remained in power. The persecution of the Covenanters, the ouster of the Puritan dissenters, all of it might have been avoided if the army had not seized power in 1648 and secured the regicide.

At the very least, Cromwell merits an unfavourable comparison with George Washington or Juan Carlos of Spain. Cromwell was a man of conviction, but he proved all too human when given the opportunity to seize absolute power.