Oliver Cromwell was a mass murdering dictator of an evil government and a stain on this country’s history.
Oliver Cromwell was a traitor to the King and to the Parliamentarians and he would usurp them both to rule with a small handpicked parliament (gang). He controlled our country with an iron fist and persecuted all who did not follow his heretical version of the faith. This butcher murdered countless people in England and Ireland as well as terrorising the populous, he was a dictator who tried to set up his own dynasty.
This is proven history without doubt, there is a huge amount of proof from all sides. With a vast amount of reputable sources backing this up.
So an article from the Guardian via MSN, is trying to rewrite history with the help of a team from Cambridge University. This team found some documents that stated that Cromwell discussed and might have been willing to offer Irish Catholics not any other Catholics, what the article calls religious freedom. This was by letting them be Catholic privately while they would still have to be protestant publicly. This is not what he did. He might have thought of offering this to delay hostilities, to buy time for him to strengthen his position. A tactic which he did often. This is not religious tolerance this is still persecution, if you can and would have been arrested and killed for openly being Catholic or for just not following the dictator’s whims then it’s not freedom or tolerance. This was not done nor was it offered, it might have just been discussed, but we do not know how seriously this idea was taken. The historical treatment of Catholics and at the time these documents were written, was and had been very bad, with broken promises, mass and brutal torture, murder and persecutions.
Cromwell also considered letting in some Jewish merchants into the country under the same deal, so he could make money from their trade deals. Again this was not done, just considered, mainly to raise money for his continued dictatorship. Not exactly a show of tolerance and again it never happened, even though he was absolute ruler. (He had a token parliament and his army commanders.)
The article does try to say that Cromwell was more complicated than just a butcher, which I am sure he was, as he was a human being. However he was still a mass murderer, traitor and a dictator this is an historical fact. When tolerance was shown as the article tries to state, this was due to circumstances that came not from a good place, but from the fact that the country had just come out of civil war that had exhausted it in every way. He was trying to avoid uprisings so that he could recover his strength and was trying not to cause any foreign involvement to occur, he was not trying to unite the country in some modern day-esc, ‘age of tolerance’.
The situation in Ireland back in Cromwell’s day was bloody and complicated, however his involvement and the many coups helped to make this bad situation even worse. His actions led to even more violence and death.
Finally the article states that “This analysis is rightly saying: look at these key documents and think again.” These can hardly be called key documents, they were never acted upon. There have been many other defenders of Cromwell and they have used all they could find to defend him and failed. These obscure documents do nothing to change that. At sometime during his rule he brainstormed some ideas to help himself in the short term which he never used. This is akin, though in no way as severe as when you see Nazis sympathisers/apologists saying that Hitler/Nazis had a plan and even tried various backdoor channels to get the UK and the US to take all Jewish people out of Germany. Or send them to Madagascar. ‘This proves that they were not bad, but just that the allies gave them no choice.’ This disgusting/disingenuous argument is insulting to anyone’s intelligence and moral principles. Just because something was given a few moments of thought that does not wipe out the evil actually done. Even though its important not to conflate the two, it still uses the same flawed logic.
Oliver Cromwell was a mass murdering dictator of an evil government and a stain on this country’s history.