How are the two portraits different?

Charles as King Cromwell as Lord Protector

How important was Oliver Cromwell?• 1599 Born in Huntingdon in the county of Cambridge• 1616 Goes to Cambridge University• 1628 Becomes MP for Huntingdon• 1640 Becomes MP for Cambridge• 1642 Raises an army for Parliament to fight Charles• 1644 Becomes one of the army leaders• 1644 Fights at Marston Moor and Newbury• 1645 Fights at Naseby• 1649 Supports the execution of Charles 1• 1649 Leads an army sent to crush the Irish• 1649 Leads an army sent to crush the Scots• 1653 Becomes Lord Protector in charge of the United Kingdom• 1657 Refuses the offer to become king and remains as Lord

Protector• 1661 Dies

Oliver Cromwell – Hero or Villain?

By the end of the lesson you will:1. All be able to describe Cromwell’s

character and decide if he is a hero or a villain

2. Most will have explained why Cromwell is a hero or a villain

3. Some will have analyzed the similarities and differences with King Charles IAssessment

How important was Oliver Cromwell?

1590 1670

Very Important

Quite Important

NotImportant

How important was Oliver Cromwell?

1590 1670

Very Important

Quite Important

NotImportant

Born in Huntingdon in the county of Cambridge

Refuses the offer to become king and remains as Lord Protector

What sort of man do you think he was?

Oliver Cromwell – Hero or Villain?

What sort of man do you think he was?

Loyalist mural celebrating the arrival of Cromwell in Ireland, Shankill Parade,

Shankill, Belfast, 2002    

‘Catholicism is more than a religion. It is a Political Power therefore I’m led to believe there will be no peace in Ireland until the Catholic Church is Crushed - Oliver Cromwell.’

’Our Clergy persecuted and our Protestant churches desecrated. Also our Protestant people slaughtered in their thousands - Oliver Cromwell.’

'To Hell, or Connaught’ declared Cromwell to the Catholics of Ireland

 

At the sight of the poor and barren province, even

one of Cromwell's own generals observed that there was 'neither water enough to drown a man,

nor a tree to hang him, nor soil enough to bury him.'

• Connaught- shaded green, is an area of Western Ireland with poor rocky soil. Thousands were forced to live there after Cromwell’s conquest of Ireland.

A. ‘Young Ned of the Hill’, The Pogues• A curse upon you, Oliver

Cromwell, You who raped our motherland,I hope you’re rotting down in Hell,For the horrors that you sent.To our misfortunate forefathersWhom you robbed of their birthright, ‘To Hell or Connaught’* - may you burn in Hell tonight.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-y2ox2HPnc

B. From Antonia Fraser’s biography of Cromwell, 1973

1.Drogheda taught the lesson of what a siege and a storm meant. It undoubtedly frightened many lesser garrisons into peaceful surrender. Militarily then the sack of Drogheda could fairly be said to have done what Cromwell wanted.

2.The conclusion cannot be escaped that Cromwell lost his self-control at Drogheda, literally saw red - the red of his comrades’ blood - after the failure of the first assaults, and was seized with one of his sudden brief and cataclysmic rages. There were good military reasons for behaving as he did, but they were not the motives that drove him at the time, during the day and night of uncalculated butchery. The slaughter itself stood quite outside his normal record of careful mercy as soldier.

a. What does she say about Cromwell?     b. Does she attempt to justify his actions?

How? What does she say?

Make a table with two columns like below. Use the following slides to

fill it in.

Evidence of Cromwell being a good leader (hero)

Evidence of Cromwell being a bad leader (villain)

Once the table is complete put a star by anything that Cromwell did that was similar to the actions of King Charles I while he was king.

Cromwell And the Levellers• A mass of troops were being disbanded in Salisbury without pay and

with little prospect of getting what they had been fighting for. Eight hundred troops sacked their officers, elected new ones and marched north, over several days, to Burford, with Cromwell on their heels. Despite his promise of peaceful negotiations the following day, Cromwell charged into the town at midnight with 2,000 horsemen. 340 of the Levellers were rounded up and imprisoned in Burford church, where carvings from the incarcerated soldiers can still be seen to this day. Next morning three of the leading Leveller soldiers were summarily executed against the church wall, where you can still see the bullet holes. The following night Cromwell was treated to a slap-up banquet and awarded an honorary degree at Magdalen College Oxford. The last thing Cromwell wanted was democracy.

THE CHARACTER OF OLIVER CROMWELL

• He was not a man of blood. It was confidently reported, that, in the council of officers, it was more than once proposed, 'that there might be a general massacre of all the royal party, as the only way to secure the government', but that Cromwell would never consent to it; it may be, out of too much contempt of his enemies. In a word, as he had all the wickedness against which damnation is denounced, and for which hell-fire is prepared, so he had some virtues; and he will be looked upon by posterity as a brave bad man.

• Edward Hyde First Earl of Clarendon, True Historical Narrative of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England (1843)

THE SIEGE OF DROGHEDA 1649

• The enemy retreated into the Mill Mount; a place very strong and of difficult access, being exceedingly high and strongly palisaded. The Governor, Sir Arthur Ashton, and divers considerable officers being there, our men, getting up to them, were ordered by me to put them all to the sword. And indeed, being in the heat of action, I forbade them to spare any that were in arms in the town, and I think that night they put to the sword about 2000 men.

• Oliver Cromwell quoted in John Buchan, Oliver Cromwell (1941)

THE NIGHT AFTER THE KING'S EXECUTION

• The night after King Charles the First was beheaded, my Lord Southampton and a friend of his got leave to sit up by the body in the Banqueting House of Whitehall. As they were sitting there about two o'clock in the morning, they heard the tread of somebody coming very slowly upstairs. By-and-by the door opened, and a man entered, very much muffled up in his cloak, and his face quite hid in it. He approached the body, considered it very attentively for some time, and then shook his head and sighed out the words, 'Cruel necessity'! He then departed in the same slow and concealed manner as he had come in. Lord Southampton used to say that he could not distinguish anything of his face; but that by his voice and gait he took him to be Oliver Cromwell. Quoted in Esme Wingfield-Stratford, King Charles the Martyr (1950)

DESCRIPTION OF OLIVER CROMWELL

• The first time that ever I took notice of him was in the very beginning of the Parliament held in November 1640, when I vainly thought myself a courtly young gentleman. I came into the House well clad, and perceived a gentleman speaking (whom I knew not) very ordinarily dressed, for it was a plain-cloth suit, which seemed to have made by an ill country tailor: his linen was plain and not very clean. His stature was of good size, his sword stuck close to his side, his countenance swollen and reddish, his voice sharp and full of passion. Sir Philip Warwick, Memoirs of the Reign of Charles I (1676-77)

CROMWELL AFTER MARSTON MOOR

• Truly England and the Church of God hath had a great favour from the Lord, in this great victory given to us, such as the like never was since this war began. We never charged but we routed the enemy. The left wing, which I commanded, being our own horse beat all the Prince's horse, God made them as stubble to our swords. Sir, God hath taken away your eldest son by a cannonshot. It broke his leg. We were forced to have it cut off, whereof he died. There is your precious child full of glory, to know sin nor sorrow any more. He was a gallant young man, exceeding gracious. God give you his comfort. Wilbur Cortez Abbott ed., Writings and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell (1937) Cromwell writing to his sister's husband

http://www.santas.net/

Performers outside the Globe Theatre

                           

Fictional novels

                           

Fictional novels

Performers outside the Globe Theatre

Hero or anti hero?

The first public statue to show Cromwell, which has a long and curious history, depicts him trampled beneath the horse of King Charles II, as a defeated anti-hero. It was erected in 1672, whilst Cromwell's own head was still on view less than two miles away.

• Sir Robert Viner 1631 - 1688, supplied the regalia for the restoration of Charles II, and was appointed as the King's goldsmith in 1661. He was as much a banker as a goldsmith, and was knighted for his services in 1661. To show his devotion Viner purchased a statue made in Italy for the Polish ambassador in London. It depicted King John Sobieski on a horse trampling a Turk. The ambassador could not afford to pay for it and Viner stepped in and had it altered to show Charles II trampling Cromwell. How much was altered is uncertain. Cromwell's image was clearly the less important of the two and he appears to be wearing a turban! The statue was neither physically accurate, nor historically accurate, but it reflects a Restoration perception of Cromwell.

Cromwell And the Levellers• A mass of troops were being disbanded in Salisbury without pay and

with little prospect of getting what they had been fighting for. Eight hundred troops sacked their officers, elected new ones and marched north, over several days, to Burford, with Cromwell on their heels. Despite his promise of peaceful negotiations the following day, Cromwell charged into the town at midnight with 2,000 horsemen. 340 of the Levellers were rounded up and imprisoned in Burford church, where carvings from the incarcerated soldiers can still be seen to this day. Next morning three of the leading Leveller soldiers were summarily executed against the church wall, where you can still see the bullet holes. The following night Cromwell was treated to a slap-up banquet and awarded an honorary degree at Magdalen College Oxford. The last thing Cromwell wanted was democracy.

THE CHARACTER OF OLIVER CROMWELL

• He was not a man of blood. It was confidently reported, that, in the council of officers, it was more than once proposed, 'that there might be a general massacre of all the royal party, as the only way to secure the government', but that Cromwell would never consent to it; it may be, out of too much contempt of his enemies. In a word, as he had all the wickedness against which damnation is denounced, and for which hell-fire is prepared, so he had some virtues; and he will be looked upon by posterity as a brave bad man.

• Edward Hyde First Earl of Clarendon, True Historical Narrative of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England (1843)

THE SIEGE OF DROGHEDA 1649

• The enemy retreated into the Mill Mount; a place very strong and of difficult access, being exceedingly high and strongly palisaded. The Governor, Sir Arthur Ashton, and divers considerable officers being there, our men, getting up to them, were ordered by me to put them all to the sword. And indeed, being in the heat of action, I forbade them to spare any that were in arms in the town, and I think that night they put to the sword about 2000 men.

• Oliver Cromwell quoted in John Buchan, Oliver Cromwell (1941)

THE NIGHT AFTER THE KING'S EXECUTION

• The night after King Charles the First was beheaded, my Lord Southampton and a friend of his got leave to sit up by the body in the Banqueting House of Whitehall. As they were sitting there about two o'clock in the morning, they heard the tread of somebody coming very slowly upstairs. By-and-by the door opened, and a man entered, very much muffled up in his cloak, and his face quite hid in it. He approached the body, considered it very attentively for some time, and then shook his head and sighed out the words, 'Cruel necessity'! He then departed in the same slow and concealed manner as he had come in. Lord Southampton used to say that he could not distinguish anything of his face; but that by his voice and gait he took him to be Oliver Cromwell. Quoted in Esme Wingfield-Stratford, King Charles the Martyr (1950)

DESCRIPTION OF OLIVER CROMWELL

• The first time that ever I took notice of him was in the very beginning of the Parliament held in November 1640, when I vainly thought myself a courtly young gentleman. I came into the House well clad, and perceived a gentleman speaking (whom I knew not) very ordinarily dressed, for it was a plain-cloth suit, which seemed to have made by an ill country tailor: his linen was plain and not very clean. His stature was of good size, his sword stuck close to his side, his countenance swollen and reddish, his voice sharp and full of passion. Sir Philip Warwick, Memoirs of the Reign of Charles I (1676-77)

CROMWELL AFTER MARSTON MOOR

• Truly England and the Church of God hath had a great favour from the Lord, in this great victory given to us, such as the like never was since this war began. We never charged but we routed the enemy. The left wing, which I commanded, being our own horse beat all the Prince's horse, God made them as stubble to our swords. Sir, God hath taken away your eldest son by a cannonshot. It broke his leg. We were forced to have it cut off, whereof he died. There is your precious child full of glory, to know sin nor sorrow any more. He was a gallant young man, exceeding gracious. God give you his comfort. Wilbur Cortez Abbott ed., Writings and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell (1937) Cromwell writing to his sister's husband

Oliver Cromwell – hero or villain?

• In some ways I think that Oliver Cromwell is quite heroic. For example …..

• But Cromwell also did some quite villainous things, such as ……..

• Overall, I feel that Cromwell was …….