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2023 marked the centenary of Wallace Notestein's edition of part of Sir Simonds D'Ewes's journal of the Long Parliament. This essay treats the diary's pre‐Notestein emergence as a prime source for the history of the Long Parliament. Thomas Carlyle was first to publicise the diary. He could not read it but paid for a 'transcript' of major passages. Though only indirectly useful to Carlyle's project of editing Oliver Cromwell's letters and speeches, the so‐called transcript prompted Carlyle to experiment at the boundary of history and fiction. Carlyle passed the transcript to the antiquary John Bruce and to John Forster. Both praised the diary, touted their paleographical skills, and also relied on the 'transcript'. Whatever their paleographical limitations, their enthusiasm canonised the text. When Samuel Rawson Gardiner turned to the Long Parliament, D'Ewes's diary joined the Thomason tracts and the State Papers as foundational sources. Though he owed his source‐agenda to Carlyle, Bruce, Forster and J. L. Sanford, Gardiner was determined to supersede them, in large part by correcting their use of D'Ewes's diary. In Forster's case, Gardiner verged on the patricidal. This was a moment in the bifurcation of 'history' from 'letters', and in the creation of the historical 'profession'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Paradise Lost has become a controversial epic in misrepresenting characters especially among pious critics and religious scholars. Based on applying the deconstruction theory analysis on Paradise Lost, this paper discusses three main purposes about the Miltonic exaggerations in Paradise Lost: the infringement of God divinity, the high power position of Jesus Christ, and Oliver Cromwell; as the intended symbolic political figure by Milton. In fact, the Bible and the Holy Quran are considered two main sources to the paradise story, so they apparently deconstruct the Miltonic thoughts in this epic poem. According to deconstructionism in Paradise Lost, Milton consecrated the ideology of the Trinity concept which is not explicitly mentioned in the New Testament. He also exceeded the reasonable limitation of divinity by ignoring the role of the Great God and overstating the role of Jesus Christ as the whole mercy and justices. In addition, Milton came out with Paradise Lost after Oliver Cromwell's death in order to express his grief about Oliver Cromwell and the Commonwealth fall as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on a letter to Transylvania," by English poet John Milton and revolutionary leader Oliver Cromwell. Current researches which are identifying and recovering hitherto unknown state papers translated by Milton as secretary to Interregnum regimes also continue to recover related papers and official originals of Milton documents till now imperfectly known from interim drafts and transcripts. Transylvania, in cinema fantasies a favoured locale for haunted terrors, in real life is called Erdeli by its Magyars and appears to have no objectively written history free from irridentist propaganda by partisans either of Hungary or of Romania.

This article presents a Warwickshire, England case study with reference to the 1656 election, polling and public opinion. The 1656 general election is usually seen as the nation's verdict on Oliver Cromwell's major-generals. A new parliament was summoned by the government so that funds could be voted in order to sustain the war with Spain, but at the hustings, the war was not the dominant issue. Across England and Wales, the contests took place a year after the expedient of the major-generals was devised in the interests of domestic security and moral reformation.

Historical novels, though popular in the 19th century, have not received much critical attention. The novels of this genre attempt to convey the spirit of the past, the manners and social conditions with adequate fidelity to historical facts and impress the reader with an illusion of reality and willing suspension of disbelief. The historical novel started with Scott's Tis Sixty Years Since and in the present century Hilary Mantel attempted to revive the genre in A Place of Great Safety, dealing with French Revolution and Wolf Hall, which narrated, with focus on accuracy, the events during the reign of Henry VIII, the rise of Oliver Cromwell, the fall of Cardinal Wolsey and the destruction of Thomas More. This paper brings out the predatory nature of man who is really wolf to man. The novelist attempted to look at the historical details through the eyes of Cromwell and they appear differently. Among the reading public and also the literary critics, the historical novel has not gained much as an entirely respectable form in the modern times. It was popular during the early 1880s as the reading public of that period evinced interest in reading about "the long ago and far away" (Orel Harold, 1995). It has as its setting a period of history that attempts to convey the spirit, manners, and social conditions of a past age with realistic detail and fidelity to historical fact. It also deals with actual historical personages and it may also contain a mixture of fictional and historical characters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article challenges the widespread belief that Oliver Cromwell nominated his eldest son as his successor. By looking closely at private correspondence, official publications and parliamentary debates, the article demonstrates that the surviving evidence does not suggest that Oliver Cromwell ever nominated a successor in his own lifetime. Instead, it would seem that the ultimate decision to confer the title of lord protector on Richard Cromwell was taken by the privy council at Whitehall in the hours following his father's death. The implications of this are examined, both in terms of the council's motives and the ultimately debilitating effect it had on the protectorate as a whole. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the attitude to the press on the part of Oliver Cromwell and his chief ministers in terms of press control and propaganda and in terms of the theory and the practice of government policy. It examines whether the regime sought and whether it was able to achieve strict press control through pre-publication censorship and swift and severe punishment of malefactors as well as effective and pervasive propaganda, which was centrally organized, controlled, funded, and distributed. It argues that between 1653 and 1659 profound changes were implemented regarding intelligence-gathering, press censorship and propaganda in the deployment of resources and bureaucratic efficiency, not least by centralizing power in the hands of the secretary of state, even if the regime sought to exert its power in only some areas of print culture rather than to achieve a complete press monopoly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article sheds light upon an important but neglected context in which Thomas Barlow (1608/9–1691) and his contemporaries discussed the readmission of the Jews in 1655–56. Previous studies of readmission have shown how the English perception of the Jews evolved, but few have noticed that contemporaries saw the readmission controversy as part of a larger debate on the limit of the civil magistrate's power in religious toleration. By recovering the specific political context in 1655–56, in which the idea of natural law played a key role, this article highlights the legal and constitutional problems of admitting the Jews and Barlow's distinctive intellectual solution to them. Adopting Hugo Grotius' idea of natural law and Catholic jurists' legal method, Barlow redefined the Jews' obligation under natural law and suggested that the civil magistrate could formally admit the Jews. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Andrew Marvell's Miscellaneous Poems (1681) is a puzzling folio. While the title page announces Marvell's parliamentary credentials, its political intent was blunted by the cancellation of the poems on Cromwell from all but two known copies. The signs of this abridgement at press are obvious. What the strange appearance of the folio combined with the removal of the Cromwell poems might mean for our understanding of Miscellaneous Poems has received a good deal of scholarly attention. Most scholars agree that the deletion of the Cromwell poems was an act of self-censorship on the part of the publisher, Robert Boulter, either for financial reasons or because Boulter hesitated at the political consequences of making panegyrics on Cromwell public. Critics argue that the two surviving copies containing the Cromwell poems somehow evaded the process of cancellation. This essay argues that these existing theories are flawed. New bibliographic evidence proves that the Cromwell poems survived for reasons at odds with current assumptions. And tracing Boulter in state papers, newsletters, treatises, and probate and parish records reveals a deeply partisan man unlikely to baulk at the publication of Cromwell memorabilia. Examining newly discovered records about Boulter together with the bibliographical evidence, this essay considers the motivations underlying the publication of the folio and challenges how we view the censorship of Miscellaneous Poems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the problem of recovering early modern utterances by focusing upon the issue of how the 'kingship debates' of 1657 between Oliver Cromwell and a committee of ninety-nine M.P.s came to be recorded, reported and printed. Specifically, it investigates the two key records of the kingship debates which, despite being well known to scholars, have extremely shady origins. Not only does this article demonstrate the probable origins of both sources, but by identifying the previously unknown scribe of one of them it points to the possible relationship between the two. It also questions whether the nature of the surviving sources has exacerbated certain interpretations about the kingship debates and their outcome. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Review Article of Ronald Hutton's new biography of Oliver Cromwell. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The memoirs of the parliamentarian lawyer and MP Bulstrode Whitelocke are invaluable as a primary source for historians wishing to understand the political history of the 1640s and 1650s. Yet, despite broad recognition of the contentious nature of this material, surprisingly little has been done to establish the accuracy of Whitelocke's account or to probe the motives behind the writing of his post-Restoration reflections. By focusing on Whitelocke's recollections of two famous encounters with Oliver Cromwell in 1651 and 1652, this article demonstrates that there is much in the detail of those accounts that fails to convince in the light of what is known of events and the author's activities from evidence beyond his memoirs. Rather, it seems that the accounts of these meetings were fabricated in order to obfuscate Whitelocke's activities during the Interregnum period and to propagate a series of narratives that served the author's purposes as he sought political rehabilitation after the Restoration of 1660. By failing to recognise the memory games at play in Whitelocke's work, historians have unwittingly embedded many of those same narratives in their accounts of the period, not least concerning the durability of the regime established in 1649 and Cromwell's kingly ambitions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An essay is presented on the authorship of an anonymous statement from an officer in the Parliamentarian army supporting allegations made by Edward Montagu, Earl of Manchester, against his Lieutenant-General, Oliver Cromwell, following the 1644 Second Battle of Newbury, England. The author suggests that the statement was written by Lieutenant-Colonel William Dodson. Details on Dodson's career and possible motives for making the statement are presented.

This article explores efforts by different groups of Scots to do business with the complex and hierarchical Cromwellian government, and in particular their attempts to gain access to the protector and his council in London. Three groups are examined: the burghs, which tended to use formal, paid agents; the rival kirk factions, which sought help from different political parties at Whitehall; and private petitioners, especially among the nobility, who relied on personal contacts with individual councillors. None of these strategies was entirely successful, as the Scots found lobbying the government more difficult than their English or Irish counterparts, but their persistence reveals an underlying pragmatism that encouraged them to overcome their misgivings and engage with the Cromwellian state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Daniel Defoe was regarded by many of his contemporaries as a somewhat sinister figure—a representative of the "commonwealth principles" that had propelled the rebellion against Charles I and the advent of Oliver Cromwell. He was viewed, particularly by the Tories, as a proponent of mob rule, an enemy of the divine right of kings, and a proponent of a completely egalitarian society. The Whigs had a somewhat more favorable opinion of him, at least until his defense of the "Tory" peace with France in 1712. Most of these criticisms were correct. Some of his principles were indeed both "Hobbish" and "Mobbish." In fact, Defoe believed in the equality of each person at birth, and he believed that government, at its moment of formation, depended on the will of every person. He also believed that a properly informed "mob," such as that of the Revolution of 1688–89, might be the instrument through which a bad government could be removed. But if self-defense was his most essential principle, he did not believe it would ever lead to absolutism. The heroes and heroines of his fictions tend to rise, through their natural abilities, from dire poverty or extreme conditions to considerable wealth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Glencairn Uprising (1653–1654) was a military rebellion by Scottish Highlanders under the leadership of William, Earl of Glencairn, against the English government of Oliver Cromwell. This paper investigates the presentation of actors and groups on both sides of the Uprising — but most especially Glencairn himself — in the contemporary London press. The theoretical framework of the analysis is Critical Discourse Analysis (modelled especially on the approach of van Dijk 1991); however, a corpus-based methodology, and a partially-quantitative analysis, are employed. The documents in question — a corpus of newsbooks published in late 1653 and the first half of 1654 — are analysed by a process of assigning concordance lines extracted using a wide set of search terms to particular categories of discourse-semantic meaning. The newsbooks are shown to make use of greatly contrasting discourses in their representations of Glencairn and others, resulting in “discourses of empowerment and disempowerment” (the latter being associated secondarily with a “discourse of disunity”). By employing these discourses, the newsbook journalists discredit Glencairn and his associates, whilst crediting the English and their associates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Humble Petition and Advice came in two distinct versions: the monarchical one presented to Oliver Cromwell on 31 March 1657, and the protectoral one accepted by him on 25 May – under which he was reinstalled as protector on 26 June. Yet only the protectoral version has been available to historians in a printed form. This article seeks to clarify the differences between the two versions, and to explore the often inconsistent and unsatisfactory ways in which this major constitutional change was achieved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the first months of his Protectorate, Oliver Cromwell’s council created two administrative bodies of ‘Triers’ and ‘Ejectors’ to govern England’s clergy. This church settlement lasted for the remainder of the Interregnum and aroused heated controversy. The Protector repeatedly recognized it as the most important administrative achievement of his regime. Nevertheless, the settlement of 1654 has been largely neglected (or misinterpreted) by historians. This article narrates the history of the Cromwellian church settlement and examines how it operated. It establishes that the effort to secure the settlement ranked as a central political issue of the Interregnum, and it details Cromwell’s close personal involvement in that effort. Finally, this article places the Cromwellian church settlement within the broader religious history of the English Revolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article considers aspects of Cromwell's finances, his relationship with John Thurloe and the marriage negotiations concerning his son Richard, all in the period 1646-8. This is based on a previously unnoticed document from chancery proceedings in the Public Record Office. The article argues that Thurloe had a professional relationship with Cromwell earlier than previously thought. It sheds light on the marriage negotiations of Richard Cromwell and Dorothy Maijor and in particular on the transitional phase in Cromwell's finances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This chapter reconstructs the life of Jean-Baptiste Stouppe (1623–1692), a Huguenot of Italian origin who in the 1650s moved to England and was employed by Oliver Cromwell in important diplomatic / espionage missions. Passing into the service of Louis XIV as a soldier, he published some pro-French propaganda works aimed at Protestants, including a famous description of Dutch religious life, published in 1673, notorious for its negative portrayal of Spinoza's philosophy. While presenting himself as a defender of Protestant orthodoxy, Stouppe was in fact a libertine with magical-alchemical interests. An unscrupulous and ambiguous figure, his intellectual trajectory is clearly inserted in what has been defined as the crisis of the European conscience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article looks at the circumstances under which London got its first permanent commemorative statue of the Lord Protector, in 1899. In a period in which republican ideals seemed to be rather in retreat, the main opponents of the project were Irish Catholics, offended by the Liberal Party's sidelining of Home Rule. The Earl of Rosebery, frustrated in his search for government funding for the statue, found support from the Jewish community, for whom Cromwell had been a historic benefactor. The problem for the sculptor was how to represent a man who for some had been a murderous oppressor, while by others he was seen as a tolerant facilitator of trade. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The Cromwellian regime has long endured a one‐dimensional reputation for anti‐popery. Historians are beginning to challenge this view, pointing to the relative absence of religious persecution during Oliver Cromwell's tenure as Lord Protector. Cromwell massacred Catholic rebels at Wexford and Drogheda in Ireland, but he did not compel Catholics to attend Protestant churches, and does not seem to have hunted priests as vigorously as his predecessors. This article explores the impact of Cromwellian rule on the Catholic community in Scotland, where the military governor George Monck granted Catholics a significant degree of effective toleration. Monck prohibited the Presbyterian church from subjecting Catholics to ecclesiastical discipline, and actively intervened to protect Catholics if kirk sessions and other church courts summoned them anyway. In return, many Catholics ostentatiously professed their loyalty to the commonwealth. Although Monck did not repeal Scotland's penal laws, his intervention demonstrates that the commonwealth's liberty for ‘tender consciences’ trickled down to those formally excluded from it. Cromwellian officials in Scotland would not allow any institution to coerce one's inward beliefs, even if it meant defending known Catholics from a Protestant kirk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sir William Petty (1623-1687), the founder of the method of "political arithmetick," was a trained physician and anatomist. Receiving medical education both in England and on the continent, he later turned away from an academic career and a medical practice in favour of dealing with political and social matters, becoming one of the first advocates of quantifying social phenomena in order to better govern a population. Offering his services to both Oliver Cromwell and Charles II, Petty sought to reform and transform society (in Ireland in particular), while considering the physician's treatment of natural bodies and the political advisor's treatment of the body politic to be analogous enterprises. In doing so, he did not refrain from suggesting serious interventions into social life - something that his contemporary peers did not consider compatible with their medical backgrounds. This article attempts to investigate how Petty's proposals could have differed so much in their scope and content from those of his colleagues, while remaining true to their largely shared Baconian and Harveyan origins. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is the first article dedicated to Payne (or Fitzpayne) Fisher (1615/6–1693), Cromwell’s forgotten laureate, who had a successful career as a Latin poet during the short-lived English Commonwealth (1649–1653) and Protectorate (1653–1659). The article examines in detail the four surviving versions of Fisher’s breakthrough success, the long Latin poemMarston Moor, first published in print in 1650, with a revised edition in 1656, but circulated in a much shorter manuscript form – of which two closely related examples are extant – from around 1648. Fisher fought atMarston Mooron the losing royalist side, and this remarkable poem evolves from a royalist elegy in its earliest versions, to a panegyric of Parliamentarian military strength effective enough to secure Fisher a series of commissions throughout the 1650s. The article charts each stage of these revisions, and the poetic strategies of the work, with a particular focus upon Fisher’s use of epic similes. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Independent minister Hugh Peter, chaplain to the New Model Army and close associate of Oliver Cromwell during the Interregnum, was a controversialfigure in the public affairs of mid-seventeenth-century England. His memory lingered long after his execution as a regicide in October 1660. Close investigation of how he was represented in print, manuscript, peformance, and speech sheds fresh light on the reinvention of antipuritanism during the Civil War and after the Restoration and on its metamorphosis into a broader concern about 'fanaticism'. It also illuminates the long and contested afterlife of the English Revolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An essay is presented on the failure of the family of Ukraine Hetman Bohdan Khmelnytskyi to become the hereditary rulers of Ukraine. Topics covered include the political tradition, process and culture of 17th-century Ukraine, the impact of the death of Khmelnytskyi on July 27, 1657, and the association of dynasty and hereditary succession with sovereignty and power. It also discusses the thwarted dynasty of military leader Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell in England, Scotland and Ireland.

Focusing primarily on Milton's sonnet of 1652 addressed to the then Lord General Cromwell, this article provides a more complex understanding of the much- examined relationship between the poet-polemicist and eventual Lord Protector. More specifically, I argue that their shared dedication to liberty of conscience makes Milton's covert or complete repudiation of Cromwell unlikely. While Cromwell's dismissal of an elected body and his assumption of power seem to conflict with Milton's championing of religious and civil liberty, if we consider more closely the language of and occasion for Milton's sonnet, it is clear that Milton dismissed the Rump Parliament long before Cromwell ever did. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reassesses the relationship that existed in the period 1649–53 between war in Ireland and politics in England. Drawing upon a largely overlooked Irish army petition, it seeks to remedy an evident disconnect between the respective historiographies of the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland on the one hand and the Rump Parliament on the other. The article reconstructs some of the various disputes over religion, authority and violence that undermined the unity of the English wartime regime in Ireland. It then charts the eventual spilling over of these disputes into Westminster politics, arguing that their impact on deteriorating army-parliament relations in the year prior to Oliver Cromwell’s expulsion of the Rump in April 1653 has not been fully appreciated. The key driver of these developments was John Weaver, a republican MP and commissioner for the civil government of Ireland. The article explains how his efforts both to place restraints on the excessive violence of the conquest and to exert civilian control over the military evolved, by 1652, into a determined campaign at Westminster to strengthen the powers of Ireland’s civil government and to limit the army’s share in the prospective Irish land settlement. Weaver’s campaign forced the army officers in Ireland to intervene at Westminster, thus placing increased pressure on the Rump Parliament. This reassessment also enables the early 1650s to be viewed more clearly as a key phase in the operation of the longer-term relationships of mutual influence that existed between Dublin and London in the seventeenth century. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article considers the London agent through the careers of Gilbert Mabbott and, to a lesser extent, William Raylton. The London agent was a commonplace in early modern political culture, but the phenomenon is rarely addressed in the historiography. I argue for the importance of the agent to early modern English history in general, but I also consider Mabbott's situation in particular. Because of the civil wars, Mabbott was able to rise beyond his social station as a scrivener and freed himself from the bonds of the patron-client relationship. This article seeks to define some of the roles played by agents in the early modern period by looking at Mabbott's and Raylton's work for their major employers: Thomas Wentworth, Hull, royalist delinquents and their children, various parliamentary armies, and Oliver Cromwell. It ends by looking at the wealth that Mabbott acquired through his work, both before and after the Restoration, as demonstrative of how an agent's power could yield impressive rewards when freed of social constraints. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1999 the public interpretation and presentation of the battlefield of Naseb­y (1645) was trivial and inaccurate. The creation of an open-site, self-guided tour trail first demanded attention to recent scholarship, archaeological discoveries and landscape investigation and then to effective authoring and design of information boards and positioning and design of viewpoints. This account gives a revised description of the events of 14 June 1645 and a description of the presentation of the conclusions to the public in a way that invites their critical evaluation and appreciation of the evidence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Historians usually describe the parliamentary offer of the Crown to Oliver Cromwell in 1657 as something of a self-fulfilling prophecy. Throughout the second Protectorate Parliament, plans to create a Cromwellian monarchy were ‘secretly maturing’; the civilian members of parliament (MPs), tired of military rule, were just waiting until the ‘time was right’. While this article does not seek to deny that many MPs were thinking of constitutional change from an early stage, it will demonstrate that the form of settlement first proposed in the opening months of the second protectorate Parliament was very different to the one eventually embodied in the Humble Petition and Advice. Rather than marking a process of inevitable backsliding towards monarchy, the constitutional debates during the opening months of the second Protectorate Parliament can best be understood by consideration of previous succession crises. In their first motions for constitutional reform, MPs did not seek to make Cromwell king; they proposed to make him a hereditary Protector. By February 1657, however, all mention of hereditary government disappeared suddenly; the parliamentary constitution offered to Cromwell the following month centred upon a non-hereditary monarchy. This article will demonstrate that by failing to trace the development of the scheme to make the supreme magistracy hereditary, and the reasons why it was abandoned in early 1657, historians have failed to appreciate both the motives of those who went on to offer the Crown to Cromwell and the flawed nature of the constitution once Cromwell refused that offer in May 1657. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

When Oliver Cromwell died on 3 September 1658, addresses of sympathy poured in from across the country. Formal ceremonies channeled sincere anxiety about what would happen to England now that the binding force of the Lord Protector was absent. Yet Gilbert Burnet tells us, in a piece of clerical gossip, that the scene taking place inside Whitehall Palace was, at times, comical. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses the Fifth Monarchists political movement and the radical Thomas Venner's position within the movement in the mid 17th century England. The article often references and critiques the book "The Fifth Monarchy Men: A Study in Seventeenth Century Millenarianism," by Bernard Capp. An overview of Venner's role in leading rebellions against English ruler Oliver Cromwell and English King Charles II is presented. Particular focus is given to the debate among historians over whether Venner and his violent tactics represented the Fifth Monarchists' mainstream movement.

Deborah Huish's spiritual experiences were recorded and published by her brother-in-law William Allen in 1658 as The Captive Taken from the Strong. By examining her writings and prefatory materials by members of her Loughwood congregation, the article will both analyse the text as an 'anatomy' of Huish's inward spiritual condition, and also explore how her plight is used as an allegory for the troubles of God's chosen 'saints' on Earth (the Baptists and Fifth Monarchists). Disillusioned by Cromwell's constitution, the compilers express a desire to rally the diminishing saints to welcome in the Fifth Monarchy. Huish's release from Satan, which coincides with her baptism, is presented as an example of how the saints could, and would, overcome the powers of the antichrist, whether it be Satan or Cromwell. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the role played by the recollection of the Irish rebellion of 1641 (or more properly the perception of the often exaggerated accounts of atrocities committed by the rebels) in formulating fundamental legislative elements of the late seventeenth-century Irish state. Repressive and punitive measures against Irish Catholics, intended in part to forestall further rebellions, were justified and rationalized by the fear of a potential recurrence of the attacks on Protestants. Thus, the representation of 1641 played an integral part in the Restoration settlement in Ireland, and arguably underpinned the 'penal laws' of a later era. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traditionally historians have accepted Cromwell's explanation for the failure of Parliament's generals to win a decisive victory in the Newbury campaign, and thus bring an effective end to the First English Civil War by destroying the last of the king's field armies. Cromwell blamed his commanding officer the earl of Manchester, who avoided excellent opportunities to engage with the enemy in order to further his aspiration that the war should be ended by negotiations rather than by outright victory for Parliament. This article examines various factors that might explain why the Newbury campaign ended in the way that it did: rivalry between the generals, the military expertise of the royalist commanders, the landscape, the weather and the time of year, command and control, and the relative strength and battle-worthiness of the opposing armies. It concludes that Cromwell bears more of the blame than Manchester for the campaign's failure. It also suggests that Cromwell's inactivity was deliberate as in terms of their war aims the Independents had most to lose from outright victory in the autumn of 1644. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The transformation of Irish towns in the early modern period (from bastions of English loyalism, to centers of Catholic resistance, to stridently Protestant colonial outposts) has received relatively little attention from historians. Instead, scholars have focused on the major land transfers of the seventeenth century, but the change in urban settlement patterns proved even more dramatic and was closely related to the positioning of civic communities in relation to the military struggles of the 1640s and 1650s. The central argument is that the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland marked a crucial and irrevocable transformation in both the possibilities of civic militarism and the nature of urban society and politics more generally. It demonstrates that during the 1640s, the citizens of Ireland's major provincial cities participated in the troubles through strategic neutralism and the retention (or careful negotiation) of military force, acting with the fortunes of the citizenry in mind. This approach continued a tradition of relative civic autonomy, which was probably more embedded and accentuated in Ireland than either Scotland or England. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Oliver Cromwell remains a deeply controversial figure in Ireland. In the past decade, his role in the conquest has received sustained attention. However, in recent scholarship on the settlement of Ireland in the 1650s, he has enjoyed a peculiarly low profile. This trend has served to compound the interpretative problems relating to Cromwell and Ireland which stem in part from the traditional denominational divide in Irish historiography. This article offers a reappraisal of Cromwell's role in designing and implementing the far-reaching 'Cromwellian ' land settlement. It examines the evidence relating to his dealings with Irish people, both Protestant and Catholic, and his attitude towards the enormous difficulties which they faced post-conquest. While the massacre at Drogheda in 1649 remains a blot on his reputation, in the 1650s Cromwell in fact emerged as an important and effective ally for Irish landowners seeking to defeat the punitive confiscation and transplantation policies approved by the Westminster parliament and favoured by the Dublin government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An essay is presented on the historical events leading to the regicide of King Charles I of England. Emphasis is given to whether or not a secret mission was undertaken by the earl of Denbigh on behalf of military leader Oliver Cromwell in order to resolve the governmental dispute in lieu of a public trial. An analysis is presented on the historical sources that document the mission.

This article challenges the recent interpretation of the trial of Charles I which sees it as an ' extended negotiation ', an attempt to achieve a settlement with the king, and depicts the execution as the byproduct, contingent and reluctantly undertaken, of the failure of that attempt. This argument was developed by Dr Sean Kelsey in a number of articles, not least one in this journal, and has been embodied in recently published general works on the period. I argue that this revisionist account of on-going negotiation with Charles I up to and during the trial is defective. It relies on an uncritical approach to the evidence, particularly that distilled from newspaper accounts. It misunderstands the significance of several key texts, notably the army's November Remonstrance, the Act establishing the High Court of Justice, and the charge against the king. Finally, it emphasizes a unity of purpose among conservative judges eager to do a deal with Charles, and fails to comprehend the force of the army's and Cromwell's insistence on public justice upon ' this man against whom the Lord hath witnessed '. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The revision of the historical reputation of Oliver Cromwell in the Victorian period associated with writers such as Thomas Carlyle was expressed in many forms, in histories and biographies, novels, public lectures, magazine articles, and also in the erection of outdoor public statues. Two Cromwell statues were erected in the North of England, Manchester in 1875 and Warrington in 1899. This article traces the history and responses to the installation of the statue of Cromwell, sculpted by John Bell, in Warrington. The gift of a prominent local Liberal businessman, the statue exposed divisions within the community, reinforcing the view that the reassessment of Cromwell's status and place in the making of modern Britain was far from settled. Opposition to the scheme was especially evident within the town's substantial Irish community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to the traditional view, the breeding of high quality horses collapsed after the execution of Charles I and the dispersal of the royal stud at Tutbury. This article questions this assumption by looking at Oliver Cromwell's interest in horses and in particular his efforts as protector to import Neapolitan coursers, Barbs and Arabian horses to improve English bloodstock. The effects of this on the development of the thoroughbred is debateable, but Cromwell's activities had important political by-products, as foreign dignitaries were impressed, aristocratic breeders were drawn into government circles, and the protector himself grew closer to those civilians at court who shared his love of horses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay concern the European dimension of Cromwell's myth in the seventeenth century. It starts examining the writings which were published and circulated in the Italian states of the time, and then it compares Cromwell's representations among contemporary Italians with both English and European reputations of him. Finally, it aim to demonstrate how the prevailing seventeenth-century image of Cromwell as a machiavellian schemer relates both to the shared European heritage of tacitism and machiavellism, and to the capacity of the Lord Protector of embodying the prevailing conceptions of politics and statecraft of the time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on John Lisle, and the last eighteen months of the Comwellian Protectoral regime. Lisle was one of the Commissioners of Great Seal during the Interregnum. He wrote the manuscript book "Abridgements of Chancery Causes," which cast a little more light on this period, enhancing the sense of Oliver Cromwell's waning grip on affairs during the last months of his life, and of the uncertainty, confusion and division at the centre that followed his death. The manuscript also provokes some reflection on the better known period of factional infighting during the session of Richard Cromwell's Parliament, which eventually led to the overthrow of the Protectorate.

Ireland's status as a kingdom or as a colony continues to influence the historiographical debate about the country's relationship with the wider world during the early modem period. Interest in the continent is almost exclusively focused on exiles and migrants, rather than on diplomatic developments. Yet during the 1640s confederate Catholics in Ireland pursued an independent foreign policy, maintaining resident agents abroad, and receiving diplomats in Kilkenny. Following the execution of Charles I in 1649, they sought foreign assistance in their struggle against Oliver Cromwell. In alliance with the exiled House of Stuart, Irish Catholics looked to Charles IV, duke of Lorraine, as a potential saviour. For three years the duke encouraged negotiations in Galway, Paris, and Brussels. He despatched vital military supplies to Ireland, and attempted on at least one occasion to transport troops there from the Low Countries. Although his intervention ultimately failed to turn the tide of the war in Ireland, the English parliamentarians nevertheless believed he posed a serious threat. This detailed study of the duke's role, in the international struggle for Ireland during the early 16505, largely ignored until now, helps to place the crises of the three Stuart kingdoms in their broader European context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sir Thomas Fairfax (1612–71) was one of the most distinguished parliamentarian soldiers of the Great Civil War. He assumed command of the New Model Army at its inception in 1645 and was at its head during the succeeding five years when it was transformed from a victorious military force into an engine of political revolution. An inarticulate and in some respects a staid and conservative figure, Fairfax has often been depicted as an impotent opponent of the army's radicalization or as a political innocent manipulated by his subordinates, principally Oliver Cromwell and Henry Ireton, for their own ends. This article seeks to challenge these conceptions. It examines the political connotations of his conduct during the war and his readiness to stand by his men throughout their conflict with the parliamentary Presbyterians after it. It further probes his response to the upheavals of 1648–9 and his attitude to the new republican regime. Whatever his reticence, Fairfax's actions do not resemble those of an apolitical neutral and a balanced assessment of his sympathies has the virtue of explaining much about how the army was able to retain a remarkable unity of purpose, albeit sometimes tenuous, as it stepped onto the political stage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the reactions and declarations of the Poore Opprest Commons of Scotland. The break down of the 1648-51 movement had caused Scots to experience bitterness and division after the Engagers were defeated at the battle of Preston and which the Kirk Party took over. On the execution of King Charles I, the party had declared King Charles II as king but divisions caused the people to split. Charles II's return to Scotland aroused invasion by a regime led by Oliver Cromwell.