Oliver Cromwell

[hibernicus]

*Originally posted by Olentzero *
For his time, Oliver Cromwell was a progressive figure in that he successfully challenged the Divine Right of Kings and placed ultimate political power in an elected body of representatives. Even the Restoration was allowed after his death only if it was a constitutional monarchy rather than absolute. Essentially, the English Revolution was the first bourgeois revolution and a progressive step. I hold Cromwell in high regard because of it.

What was Cromwell’s political legacy? By the time he died he had dismantled the institutions of state and left a hereditary dictatorship in the hands of an incompetent son. The system that fell out of this power vacuum happened to be a consitutional monarchy. Credit Cromwell? I think not.

[hibernicus]

BTW, you might let me know when you’re going to O’Neills.

[yojimbo]

No problem hibernicus. You also may want to keep a eye out in MPSIMS as we usually bang on about it there first.

You may be interested in the following threads. There’s upcoming fests in London at the end of Jan. and Amsterdam on Paddys wkend.

End of hijack.

[Northern_Piper]

The evidence that Thomas Cromwell was Oliver’s great-great-great-uncle can only be inferred indirectly (Williams is a common name, particularly in Wales), but everyone accepts that this is the case.

APB, the source I used for Oliver Cromwell’s relation to Thomas Cromwell, including the marriage between Thomas’ sister Katherine to Morgan Williams, was Antonia Fraser’s book, *Cromwell - Our Chief of Men,*at pp. 7-9.

Fraser gives a very detailed account of Oliver Cromwell’s geneology - is it not reliable?

[APB]

Fraser’s biography is generally reliable but this is just the sort of very minor uncertainty which she is tends to ignore. All the circumstantial evidence suggests that the traditional hypothesis is correct.