Oliver cromwell what was his job

As Protector , Cromwell could not agree with his Parliaments and he dismissed them both. Instead, he ruled the country through his major-generals, which meant that England virtually became a military dictatorship. He allowed greater religious freedom for Protestants, but introduced a string of 'moral' laws to 'improve' people's behaviour which banned the theatre and bear-baiting, and forbade people to drink or celebrate Christmas, among other things. Cromwell increased the navy, which defeated the Dutch and captured Jamaica from the Spanish.

Cromwell died from natural causes in and was buried in Westminster Abbey. However, after the Reformation in , royalists had his remains dug up, hung in chains and beheaded. Summer reading: British book settings.

Restaurant review: The Inn on Loch Lomond. Subscribe Newsletter. Given his lack of previous military experience, Cromwell's military rise was spectacular: captain in , colonel early in , in charge of the cavalry of the second most important of the regional armies by the end of the year, Lieutenant General of the New Model and Lord General for the campaigns in Ireland and Scotland In , he helped to put East Anglia under complete parliamentarian control, and worked tirelessly to create the most efficient and responsive civilian support structure in the country, ensuring the flow of money and supplies to his troops.

He took part in five of the ten major battles, moving his troops as far west as Newbury and as far north as York. His role in the greatest of victories, at Marston Moor in July , was crucial. In he again played a vital role, in the planning of campaigns and on major battlefields, as the New Model systematically destroyed the remaining royalist armies at Naseby in Northampton in June , Langport in Somerset a month later and then in a relentless series of sieges of royalist strongholds.

He was not a military innovator or a brilliant tactician, but he had an extraordinary ability to instill self-belief into his men, to share with him his own utter conviction that God was with them and willing them to victory; and he ruthless and relentlessly ensured that they were better paid and fed than were other armies, even if that meant some controversial requisitioning of supplies. In , he struggled to maintain the unity of army in the face both of Parliament's attempts to disband it before a political settlement was reached with a defeated king and of radical attempts to eliminate monarchy and to establish a constitution that would promote a major redistribution of wealth and social and economic power.

In , Charles I tried to overturn his defeat in the First Civil War by making a new alliance with the Scots and calling on former royalists and disillusioned Parliamentarians to rise up. Faced by revolt across Britain, the New Model divided and Cromwell took on the lion's share of the work, crushing a major rebellion in South Wales, defeating a Scots invasion force at Preston and then pacifying Yorkshire.

It was in accordance with the laws of war, but it went far beyond what any General had done in England. In the summer of , Cromwell was sent to Ireland with two objectives: to place it firmly under English control; to superintend the confiscation the land of all 'rebels' - as a result almost forty per cent of the land of Ireland was redistributed from Catholics born in Ireland to Protestants born in Britain. His first target was the town of Drogheda north of Dublin which he stormed and captured.

Perhaps 2, men, mainly in arms, were killed during the storm and several hundred more - all the officers, all Catholic priests and friars, every tenth common soldier - were killed, many clubbed to death.

Cromwell then perpetrated a messier massacre at Wexford. Thereafter most towns surrendered on his approach, and he scrupulously observed surrender articles and spared the lives of soldiers and civilians. It was and is a controversial conquest. But, from the English point of view, it worked.

In the summer of , he returned to England and was sent off to Scotland, where Charles II had been proclaimed and crowned as King of Britain and Ireland.

In a campaign as unrelenting but less brutal, he wiped out the royal armies and established a military occupation of the lowlands and west that was to last until In September he returned to a roman-style triumphant entry in London. One foreign ambassador watching predicted that he would soon he king. He was almost right.

The summer of saw the outbreak of the first English Civil War between the Royalists, the supporters of King Charles I who claimed that the King should have absolute power as his divine right as king, and the Parliamentarians who favoured a constitutional monarchy and later the abolition of the monarchy and the House of Lords completely. Colloquially, Royalists were also called Cavaliers in reference to the Latin caballarius , meaning horseman and in Henry IV, Part 2 Shakespeare used the word to describe a haughty member of the gentry.

Both names were used derisively by their opponents. From the very beginning Cromwell was a committed member of the parliamentary army. Westminster Hall above, left where the trial of King Charles I took place, and his subsequent execution above, right. Cromwell led the English military campaigns to establish control of Ireland in and later Scotland in This resulted in the end of the Civil War with a Parliamentary victory at the Battle of Worcester on 3 September and the introduction of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland and Ireland.

Cromwell was appointment to Lord General, effectively commander in chief, of the parliamentary armed forces in In December , Cromwell became Lord Protector, a role in which he remained until his death five years later.

Co-incidentally this was also the anniversary of his victories at Worcester and the Scottish town of Dunbar during the Scottish campaign of