Oliver Cromwell

Oliver Cromwell (April 25, 1599 – September 3, 1658) was an English military leader and politician. After leading the overthrow of the British monarchy, he ruled England, Scotland, and Ireland as Lord Protector from December 16, 1653 until his death, which is believed to have been due either to malaria or poisoning.

Religious beliefs

Cromwell's understanding of religion and politics were very closely intertwined. He was a committed Puritan Protestant, believing that salvation was open to all who obeyed the teachings of the Bible and acted according to their own conscience. He was passionately opposed to the Roman Catholic Church, which he saw as denying the primacy of the Bible in favour of Papal and Clerical authority and which he blamed for tyranny and persecution of Protestants in Europe. For this reason, he was bitterly opposed to Charles I's reforms of the Church of England, which introduced Catholic-style Bishops and Prayer Books in place of Bible study. Cromwell's associations of Catholicism and persecution were deepened with the Irish Rebellion of 1641, which were marked by massacres (wildly exaggerated in Puritan circles in Britain) by Irish Catholics of English and Scottish Protestant settlers. This would later be one of the reasons why Cromwell acted so harshly in his military campaign in Ireland.

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Cromwell was also opposed to the more radical religious groups on the Protestant side in the Civil Wars. Although he co-operated with Quakers and Presbyterians, he was opposed to their authoritarian imposition of their beliefs on other Protestants. He became associated with the "Independent" faction, which argued for religious freedom for all Protestants in a post-war settlement.

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Finally, Cromwell was also a firm believer in Providentialism - the belief that God was actively directing the affairs of the world through the actions of chosen people. Cromwell believed, during the Civil Wars, that he was one of these people and interpreted victories as indications of God's approval of his actions and defeats as signs that God was directing him in another direction.

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The Oxford historian Christopher Hill has written a semi-popular account of his influential studies in this area in 'God's Englishman' (Penguin, 1970)

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