|
Oliver Cromwell (25 April 15993 September 1658) was an English military and political leader and later Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland and Ireland. Born into the middle gentry, albeit to a family descended from the sister of King Henry VIII's minister Thomas Cromwell, Cromwell was relatively obscure for the first 40 years of his life. After undergoing a religious conversion in the 1630s, he became an independent puritan, taking a generally tolerant view towards the many Protestant sects of his period.〔"The survival of English nonconformity and the reputation of the English for tolerance is part of his abiding legacy," says David Sharp, 〕 An intensely religious man—a self-styled Puritan Moses—he fervently believed that God was guiding his victories. He was elected Member of Parliament for Huntingdon in 1628 and for Cambridge in the Short (1640) and Long (1640–49) Parliaments. He entered the English Civil War on the side of the "Roundheads" or Parliamentarians. Nicknamed "Old Ironsides", he was quickly promoted from leading a single cavalry troop to become one of the principal commanders of the New Model Army, playing an important role in the defeat of the royalist forces. Cromwell was one of the signatories of King Charles I's death warrant in 1649, and, as a member of the Rump Parliament (1649–53), he dominated the short-lived Commonwealth of England. He was selected to take command of the English campaign in Ireland in 1649–50. Cromwell's forces defeated the Confederate and Royalist coalition in Ireland and occupied the country – bringing to an end the Irish Confederate Wars. During this period a series of Penal Laws were passed against Roman Catholics (a significant minority in England and Scotland but the vast majority in Ireland), and a substantial amount of their land was confiscated. Cromwell also led a campaign against the Scottish army between 1650 and 1651. On 20 April 1653, he dismissed the Rump Parliament by force, setting up a short-lived nominated assembly known as Barebone's Parliament, before being invited by his fellow leaders to rule as Lord Protector of England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland from 16 December 1653. As a ruler he executed an aggressive and effective foreign policy. After his death from natural causes in 1658 he was buried in Westminster Abbey, but after the Royalists returned to power in 1660 they had his corpse dug up, hung in chains, and beheaded. Cromwell is one of the most controversial figures in the history of the British Isles, considered a regicidal dictator by historians such as David Sharp, a military dictator by Winston Churchill, but a hero of liberty by John Milton, Thomas Carlyle and Samuel Rawson Gardiner, and a class revolutionary by Leon Trotsky. In a 2002 BBC poll in Britain, Cromwell was selected as one of the ten greatest Britons of all time. However, his measures against Catholics in Scotland and Ireland have been characterised as genocidal or near-genocidal,〔genocidal or near-genocidal: * Brendam O'Leary and John McGarry, "Regulating nations and ethnic communities", p. 248, in Breton Albert (ed). 1995, ''Nationalism and Rationality'', Cambridge University Press〕 and in Ireland his record is harshly criticised. ==Early years== Cromwell was born in Huntingdon on 25 April 1599, to Robert Cromwell and Elizabeth Steward. He descended from Katherine Cromwell (born c. 1482), an elder sister of Tudor statesman Thomas Cromwell (c. 1485–1540), a leading minister of Henry VIII (Lord Chancellor), whose family acquired considerable wealth by taking over monastery property during the Reformation. Katherine married Morgan ap William, son of William ap Yevan of Wales. The family line continued through Richard Williams, alias Cromwell, (c. 1500–1544), Henry Williams, alias Cromwell, (c. 1524–6 January 1604), then to Oliver's father Robert Cromwell (c. 1560–1617), who married Elizabeth Steward (c. 1564–1654), probably in 1591. They had ten children; Oliver, the fifth child, was the only boy to survive infancy. Cromwell's paternal grandfather, Sir Henry Williams, was one of the two wealthiest landowners in Huntingdonshire. Cromwell's father Robert was of modest means but still inside the gentry class. As a younger son with many siblings, Robert inherited only a house at Huntingdon and a small amount of land. This land would have generated an income of up to £300 a year, near the bottom of the range of gentry incomes.〔Gaunt, p.31.〕 Cromwell himself in 1654 said "I was by birth a gentleman, living neither in considerable height, nor yet in obscurity".〔Speech to the First Protectorate Parliament, 4 September 1654,.〕 He was baptised on 29 April 1599 at St John's Church,〔British Civil Wars, Commonwealth and Proctectorate 1638–1660〕 and attended Huntingdon Grammar School. He went on to study at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, then a recently founded college with a strong Puritan ethos. He left in June 1617 without taking a degree, immediately after the death of his father. Early biographers claim he then attended Lincoln's Inn, but the Inn's archives retain no record of him. Fraser (1973) concludes it was likely that he did train at one of the London Inns of Court during this time. His grandfather, his father, and two of his uncles had attended Lincoln's Inn, and Cromwell sent his son Richard there in 1647.〔Antonia Fraser, ''Cromwell: Our Chief of Men'' (1973), ISBN 0-297-76556-6, p. 24.〕 Cromwell probably returned home to Huntingdon after his father's death, for his mother was widowed and his seven sisters were unmarried, and he, therefore, was needed at home to help his family.〔John Morrill, (1990). "The Making of Oliver Cromwell", in Morrill, ed., ''Oliver Cromwell and the English Revolution'' (Longman), ISBN 0-582-01675-4, p.24.〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Oliver Cromwell」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|