Researching Oliver Cromwell

Cromwell was born into the landed gentry to a family descended from the sister of Henry VIII's minister Thomas Cromwell (his great-great-granduncle). Little is known of the first 40 years of his life, as only four of his personal letters survive, along with a summary of a speech that he delivered in 1628. He became an Independent Puritan after undergoing a religious conversion in the 1630s, taking a generally tolerant view towards the many Protestant sects of the time; an intensely religious man, Cromwell fervently believed in God guiding him to victory. Cromwell was elected Member of Parliament for Huntingdon in 1628, and for Cambridge in the Short (1640) and Long (1640–1649) Parliaments. He entered the English Civil Wars on the side of the "Roundheads", or Parliamentarians, and gained the nickname "Old Ironsides". Cromwell demonstrated his ability as a commander and was quickly promoted from leading a single cavalry troop to being one of the principal commanders of the New Model Army, playing an important role under General Sir Thomas Fairfax in the defeat of the Royalist ("Cavalier") forces.

Cromwell was one of the signatories of Charles I's death warrant in 1649, and dominated the short-lived Commonwealth of England as a member of the Rump Parliament (1649–1653). He was selected to take command of the English campaign in Ireland in 1649–1650. 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, Cromwell 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 (which included Wales at the time), Scotland, and Ireland from 16 December 1653. As a ruler, he executed an aggressive and effective foreign policy.Nevertheless, Cromwell's policy of religious toleration for Protestant denominations during the Protectorate extended only to "God's peculiar", and not to those considered by him to be heretics, such as the Quakers, Socinians, and Ranters.

Cromwell died from natural causes in 1658 and was buried in Westminster Abbey. He was succeeded by his son Richard, whose weakness led to a power vacuum. Oliver's former General George Monck then mounted a coup, causing Parliament to arrange the return to London of Prince Charles as King, Charles II, and the Royalists' return to power in 1660. Cromwell's corpse was subsequently dug up, hung in chains, and beheaded.

Cromwell is one of the most controversial figures in British and Irish history, considered a regicidal dictator by historians such as David Sharp, a military dictator by Winston Churchill, and a hero of liberty by John Milton, Thomas Carlyle, and Samuel Rawson Gardiner. His tolerance of Protestant sects did not extend to Catholics, and the measures taken by him against Catholics, particularly in Ireland, have been characterised by some as genocidal or near-genocidal, and his record is strongly criticised in Ireland, although the worst atrocities took place after he had returned to England. He was selected as one of the ten greatest Britons of all time in a 2002 BBC poll.

Mount Cromwell, a mountain in the Sunwapta River Valley of Jasper National Park, in Alberta, Canada, was named after him. The mountain was named in 1972 by J. Monroe Thorington, to commemorate Cromwell's many first ascents in the Canadian Rockies, including his 1938 first ascent of his namesake mountain.

The year after his first ascent of Mount Cromwell, Cromwell was a member, and base camp commander, of the tragic 1939 American Karakoram expedition to K2. In 1989, Cromwell and two fellow expedition leaders were implicated in a combination of miscommunication and poor decisions which contributed to the deaths of four expedition climbers.

After the K2 expedition, Cromwell relocated to Zermatt, Switzerland until the 70's, then relocated to Interlaken, Switzerland.