Authors starting with C

- Oliver Cromwell (April 25, 1599 - September 3, 1658) -

Ancestry: Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire, Great Britain

Oliver Cromwell was an English military and political leader best known in England for his involvement in turning England into a republican Commonwealth and for his later role as Lord Protector of England, Scotland and Ireland. Events that occurred during his reign and his politics are a cause of long lasting animosity between Ireland and the United Kingdom.

He was one of the commanders of the New Model Army which defeated the royalists in the English Civil War. After the execution of King Charles I in 1649, Cromwell dominated the short-lived Commonwealth of England, conquered Ireland and Scotland, and ruled as Lord Protector from 1653 until his death from a combination of malarial fever and septicaemia in 1658.

Cromwell was born into the ranks of the middle gentry, and remained relatively obscure for the first 40 years of his life. His lifestyle resembled that of a yeoman farmer until he received an inheritance from his uncle. After undergoing a religious conversion during the same decade, Cromwell made an Independent style of Puritanism an essential part of his life. He was elected Member of Parliament 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.

As a soldier, he was more than capable (nicknamed "Old Ironsides"), and was soon promoted from leading a single cavalry troop to command of the entire army. Cromwell was one of the signatories of Charles I's death warrant in 1649. He was a member of the Rump Parliament (1649–1653), which selected him to take command of the English campaign in Ireland during 1649–50. He 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 the Barebones Parliament, before being made Lord Protector of England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland on 16 December 1653. He was buried in Westminster Abbey. After the Royalists returned to power, they had his corpse dug up, hung in chains, and beheaded.

Cromwell has been a controversial figure in the history of the British Isles— considered a regicidal dictator by some historians such as David Hume and Christopher Hill; but as a hero of liberty by others such as Thomas Carlyle and Samuel Rawson Gardiner. In a 2002 BBC poll in Britain, Cromwell was elected as one of the Top 10 Britons of all time. His measures against Catholics in Scotland and Ireland have been characterised as genocidal or near-genocidal, and in Ireland itself he is widely hated.

He was born at Cromwell House in Huntingdon on 25 April 1599, to Robert Cromwell (c.1560–1617) and Elizabeth Steward. He was descended from Catherine Cromwell (born circa 1482), an older sister of Tudor statesman Thomas Cromwell. Catherine was married to Morgan ap Williams, son of William ap Yevan of Wales. Note the Welsh dragon in the Commonwealth coat of arms shown below. 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 or Stewart (1564–1654) on the day of Oliver Cromwell's birth. Thomas thus was Oliver's great-great-great-uncle.

The social status of Cromwell's family at his birth was relatively low within the gentry class. His father was a younger son, and one of 10 siblings who survived into adulthood. As a result, Robert's inheritance was limited to 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. Cromwell himself, much later in 1654, said "I was by birth a gentleman, living neither in considerable height, nor yet in obscurity".