The country gentlemen, neither poor nor noble, together with the trading and manufacturing classes, formed the backbone of the Puritan cause, and like most of the leading Puritans, Cromwell sprang from this middle class. In appearance he was a strongly built man about 5 feet 10 inches, with a fine head. His face was not handsome, but his large, rough-hewn features had a kindly expression, as you can see in his portraits. His nose was large, his eyes a blue-grey, his mouth large and firm; he wore his hair long, as was usual in his time. He dressed plainly and sometimes carelessly, but even his enemies admitted his dignified bearing on all great occasions.

Cromwell himself was descended from the sister of Thomas Cromwell, the famous minister of King Henry VIII. He was educated at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, entering the University on the very day on which Shakespeare died at Stratford. Afterwards he went to Lincoln's Inn, London, according to the custom which made the study of law common amongst English gentlemen. He inherited two small estates near Huntingdon, which he managed himself. He married the daughter of a well-to-do city merchant, and at twenty-nine was elected Member of Parliament for Huntingdon.

From the first, long before the Civil War, Cromwell's chief interest lay in supporting the cause of the Puritan religion. It is, in fact, in the lives of individual men, such as Cromwell, Eliot, Pym, Hutchinson, Fairfax, and hundreds more, that we see how much religion had to do with the revolution. Cromwell spent much time in prayer and Bible-reading and in hearing sermons. He subscribed to maintain Puritan preachers or lecturers, for many of the clergy were not to the liking of their Puritan congregations.

Of his conduct down to the death of the king, after what has been related in the last chapter, little more need be said. Indignant as he was with those who, he thought, had caused the second civil war, his personal feelings towards Charles softened. He risked his own popularity with the army and the Independents in trying to secure terms for the king and to preserve his life. But he shared the same superstitious feelings as most of the army leaders, and believed that it was God's command that the king should be brought to trial. When he was convinced that the execution of the king was a duty imposed by God, he struck down all opposition until the deed was done.

With the death of the king a new chapter in Cromwell's career opens. Hitherto the revolution had been destructive. But in every revolution a time comes when new forms of government must be created and new rulers set up.

Cromwell was no anarchist; he was not even a Republican like Ludlow, whose sole idea was "that the nation might be governed by its own consent." His chief aims were to secure "liberty of conscience" for what he called the "people of God," by which he meant all Protestants. He believed in order and good government, and wished to see Parliament once more restored to what it had been before the war. But he recognized that for the present a strong authority must be set up.

In February, 1649, the House of Commons voted that the House of Lords was useless, dangerous, and ought to be abolished. The House of Commons at that moment was simply the Rump, that is, the members left after Pride's Purge, and not even all those, for some had not come back after the king's execution. On February 8th the office of king was voted, by the same authority, to be unnecessary, burdensome, and dangerous. And after thus getting rid of the king and the lords, an Act established the English Commonwealth or Republic. It was intended that a new Parliament should be elected in due course, but for the present the remnant of the old Long Parliament was to make the laws, and a council of forty-one—of whom only about fifteen sat regularly—was to see the laws carried out.

For three years this was the Commonwealth of England. It was surrounded by enemies. The royalists were ready to rise. The Scots were preparing to invade England. The extreme democrats, called the Levellers, the most famous of whom was John Lilburne, were ready to overturn the Government and set up a pure democracy, that is, a government of annual Parliaments elected by manhood suffrage, every man having a vote, and with Parliamentary control over everything.

Considering its great difficulties, the new Council of State managed its affairs well. It had an army of 44,000 men, the best troops in Europe. The navy was strengthened, new ships were built, the sailors were better paid and better fed than ever before, and England began to be a great sea power.

But it was useless to pretend that it was a popular Government. Even the liberty and worship that was allowed was hateful to the Presbyterians. Without the powerful army the Government could not have existed a single week. The expenses were greater than they had ever been under Charles I. Heavy taxes had to be levied, and the Royalists were ruined by having to pay heavy fines.

The first trouble came from the Levellers. Cromwell saw that they must be put down. "I tell you," he said, thumping the Council table, you have no other way to deal with these men but to break them or they will break you." Lilburne, the leader, was sent to the Tower, but mutiny broke out in the army. Three of the ringleaders were shot in Burford churchyard. The rest were pardoned, and the trouble was over for the present.

The next business was to finish the war in Ireland, which had begun with the Irish rebellion of 1641. The Royalist forces were led by James Butler, Earl, Marquis, and finally Duke of Ormonde, and after the king's execution he had proclaimed the Prince of Wales as Charles II. The situation was one of hopeless confusion when Cromwell sailed for Ireland in August, 1649, having been delayed four months by the task of equipping his army of 12,000. Ormonde and the Royalists were now allied with the native Irish, and if they had acted promptly, they might have swept the Parliamentary forces out of Ireland. But Ormonde was kept too busy with his enemies to face Cromwell on his arrival. He could only throw a garrison into Drogheda, which Cromwell slaughtered without mercy, when he stormed it on September 10th. Wexford and Dundalk were soon captured. Waterford held out until 1650, when Cromwell sailed for England, leaving the rest of Ireland to be subdued by his lieutenants.

His next workday in Scotland. The danger from Scotland was far greater than from Ireland, for already, in 1648, the Scots had sent a great army into England, which only Cromwell's astonishing success at Preston had defeated. The danger was imminent. But Cromwell won a great battle over Charles II and the Scots at Dunbar (September 3rd, 1650), and delivered his final blow at Worcester on the same day in the following year.

The young king escaped after Worcester with a troop of Scottish horse. The Earl of Derby directed him to a safe retreat at Boscobel. Here, with Colonel Careless, he spent a day in a large oak-tree, whilst the woodman Penderel and his wife kept watch. Soldiers passed near in search of Royalist fugitives, but the king was not discovered. From Boscobel, mounted on a miller's horse, and in a threadbare coat and breeches of coarse green cloth, he rode to Moseley, accompanied by the six brothers of the Penderel family.

In the night, Charles proceeded to Bentley disguised as the servant of Mistress Lane, and three days after reached Abbotsleigh. After many adventures, aided by loyal friends who risked their lives to save him, he reached Bridport, hoping to get a ship. But the shipmaster was suspicious, and Charles had to hide, first near Salisbury, and then make his way to Brighton, where a loyal merchant got him a vessel, and the owner—although he had discovered who his passenger was—carried him across to the Norman coast.

Worcester was the last stage of the Civil War in England, and Cromwell now turned his attention to the government of the country, while General Monk reduced Scotland to a province of England, and thus for the first and only time conquered it. Whatever may have been his views in earlier days, Cromwell now realised that the country needed a strong ruler. After all the anarchy of the last few years, no government of any sort could exist without the help of the sword. He realised, what the men of the Rump did not realise, that the existing (so-called) Parliament was a sham; that it exercised its powers simply by leave of the army; and that until the whole nation was at peace with itself the army would be the real ruler of the country.

These ideas were shared by a majority in the army, so that Cromwell was able to count upon its support. But the Rump, instead of dissolving itself in order to make room for a new Parliament that the army leaders had been asking for ever since the king's execution, now proceeded to pass a bill to ensure all its members a seat in the new Parliament without re-election. Cromwell lost patience. He dissolved the Rump and was declared Lord Protector of the Commonwealth by another Parliament.