[92] Faced with the prospect of an Irish alliance with Charles II, Cromwell carried out a series of massacres to subdue the Irish. [The Act of Settlement of Ireland], and the parliamentary legislation which succeeded it the following year, is the nearest thing on paper in the English, and more broadly British, domestic record, to a programme of state-sanctioned and systematic ethnic cleansing of another people. "The Cromwellian Protectorate: a Military Dictatorship?" [122] The social priorities did not, despite the revolutionary nature of the government, include any meaningful attempt to reform the social order. [165], Late 20th-century historians re-examined the nature of Cromwell's faith and of his authoritarian regime. Cromwell is one of the most controversial figures in British and Irish history, considered a regicidal dictator by historians such as David Sharp,[6] a military dictator by Winston Churchill,[7] a class revolutionary by Leon Trotsky,[8] and a hero of liberty by John Milton, Thomas Carlyle, and Samuel Rawson Gardiner. Cromwell therefore returned to England from Youghal on 26 May 1650 to counter this threat. Their position was further harmed by a tax proposal by Major General John Desborough to provide financial backing for their work, which the second Protectorate parliamentinstated in September 1656voted down for fear of a permanent military state. As with the Parliament of 162829, it is likely that Cromwell owed his position to the patronage of others, which might explain why in the first week of the Parliament he was in charge of presenting a petition for the release of John Lilburne, who had become a Puritan cause clbre after his arrest for importing religious tracts from the Netherlands. [101], Cromwell left Ireland in May 1650 and several months later invaded Scotland after the Scots had proclaimed Charles I's son Charles II as King. Hirst, Derek (1990). Cromwell's father died. In April 1645 the New Model Army finally took to the field, with Sir Thomas Fairfax in command and Cromwell as Lieutenant-General of cavalry and second-in-command. "Thomas Carlyle and Oliver Cromwell", in. The King appeared to be willing to compromise, so Cromwell employed his son-in-law, Henry Ireton, to draw up proposals for a constitutional settlement. [34], Failure to resolve the issues before the Long Parliament led to armed conflict between Parliament and Charles I in late 1642, the beginning of the English Civil War. And it leads on to the greatest redistribution of land in post-Roman Western European history. Oliver Cromwell (25 April 1599 3 September 1658) was an English military and political leader best known for making England a republic and leading the Commonwealth of England and primarily because of ethnic cleansing activities in Ireland euphemistically called as Cromwellian Genocide. [54], In December 1648, in an episode that became known as Pride's Purge, a troop of soldiers headed by Colonel Thomas Pride forcibly removed from the Long Parliament all those who were not supporters of the Grandees in the New Model Army and the Independents. [35] He was subsequently appointed governor of the Isle of Ely[36] and a colonel in the Eastern Association. During the 1980s, the statue was relocated outside Wythenshawe Hall, which had been occupied by Cromwell's troops. [82] However, the scale of the deaths at Basing House was much smaller. [38], The indecisive outcome of the Second Battle of Newbury in October meant that by the end of 1644 the war still showed no signs of ending.