Cromwell, Oliver

Cromwell, Oliver (1600–58). Ireland's first and only commoner lord lieutenant, he campaigned in Ireland between 15 August 1649 and 26 May 1650. Backed by a 20,000 strong army, a huge artillery train, and a large navy, Cromwell projected himself as a providential liberator from Irish barbarism, royalist misrule, and Catholic hypocrisy.

His best remembered actions were the sieges of Drogheda (11 Sept. 1649) and Wexford (11 Oct. 1649). Giving no quarter to garrisons refusing to surrender was in line with contemporary European practice. However, Cromwell's own explanation of the massacre at Drogheda, which had never been under Confederate Catholic control, was plainly influenced by religious convictions and propaganda about the 1641 massacres. In Wexford the New Model Army ran amok—killing 2,000 in the market place after an outpost had surrendered whilst a parley was still in progress. Though not responsible, Cromwell once more justified his army's action with reference to massacres of Protestants in the vicinity.

Cromwell's campaign was quickly running out of steam. Sickness and the need to man garrisons reduced his army's size and on 2 December 1649 he was forced to abandon the siege of Waterford. He resumed the next year, as a string of towns surrendered with good terms offered to inhabitants and defenders, only to meet disaster at Clonmel (17 May 1650). When his men poured through the breached walls, they were trapped in a killing ground prepared by Hugh Dubh O'Neill. Estimated losses of 1,000–2,500 were the heaviest the New Model Army had experienced anywhere. Cromwell was conspicuously silent about Clonmel in his dispatches to parliament.

Cromwell's success lay as much with the Old Protestants as with the legendary efficiency of his army. Michael Jones's victory at Rathmines provided him with Dublin as a bridgehead; subsequently the victories and influence of Charles Coote and Roger Boyle (see orrery) secured Ulster, Connacht, and south Munster. More generally Protestant royalists began deserting in increasing numbers, culminating in significant submissions in April 1650. Nevertheless Cromwell's triumphant return from Ireland, coupled with the revolutionary situation in England, gave him the opportunity for political power that some previous lord lieutenants had merely contemplated and he ruled England as lord protector from 1653 until his death. He continued to exercise influence in Ireland through his sons‐in‐law Ireton and Fleetwood, and later through his younger son Henry Cromwell.

Although Cromwell's direct connection with Ireland lasted only nine months, his dominance in England has meant that his name is associated with the events of the whole period 1649–58, which saw the ruthless suppression of Catholic and royalist resistance, the execution, transportation, or imprisonment of substantial numbers of Catholic clergy, and the wholesale confiscation of Catholic lands. Barnard suggests that the black legend of Cromwell the oppressor took its present form only in the 19th century. However, his campaign was evidently controversial at the time, and he himself published an extraordinary defence of his policies in response to the decrees of a Catholic ecclesiastical assembly at Clonmacnoise in December 1649. Gaelic poets of the 17th century already associated his name with the destruction of the Catholic elite and their replacement by newcomers of lowly social origins. Hence the ironic picture in Pairlement Chloinne Tomáis (see literature in irish) of churls hailing Cromwell as their liberator, and the poet Daithi Ó Bruadair's references to ‘Cromwellian dogs’.

Bibliography

Barnard, T. C. , ‘Irish Images of Cromwell’, in R. C. Richardson ), Images of Cromwell (1993)

S. J. Connolly/ and Hiram Morgan