Complicated men

HOW did a member of the minor gentry from Huntingdon become the head of state? It’s one of the great questions of British history, and Ronald Hutton, professor of history at Bristol University, comes as close as possible to answering it.

Until the early 1630s, Oliver Cromwell (1599–1658) was an unremarkable, provincial gentleman. His greatest claim to fame was as a descendant of the sister of Henry VIII’s chief minister, Thomas Cromwell. His real surname would have been Williams, if his family hadn’t adopted the lofty surname of Cromwell.

The main element in Cromwell’s make-up was his belief that he had a special relationship with God. It was Cromwell’s conversion to a passionate Puritanism in his early thirties that sparked him into life. In a 1638 letter to a cousin, he includes no less than 13