Oliver Cromwell

United Kingdom state institutions 1599–1658 ○ Natural causes

Parliamentarian commander of the English Civil War who became Lord Protector

Born at Huntingdon in 1599 into a minor gentry family, he became an MP in 1628 and in the 1630s a religious Independent who saw his successes as divine providence. He sat in the Short and Long Parliaments from 1640, and when civil war broke out between king and Parliament in 1642 he joined the Parliamentarian army and made his name as a cavalry commander. As commander of the New Model Army cavalry from 1645 he helped rout the royalists at Naseby. He was a leading advocate of executing Charles I in 1649, and under the Commonwealth he brutally conquered Ireland and subdued Scotland. In April 1653 he dissolved the Rump Parliament by force, and in December he became Lord Protector, ruling until his death in 1658. After the Restoration his body was dug up and hanged at Tyburn.