The book is substantial, meticulously footnoted, and written
with the scholarly confidence of a historian who has spent a lifetime immersed
in seventeenth-century sources. Yet its interpretive framework is deeply
ideological. Morrill’s central claim that Cromwell’s actions directly emerged
from his religious worldview, and that historians have misunderstood him by
failing to recognise the depth of his sincerity, is neither new, radical, nor
corrective. It is the latest version of a revisionist method that substitutes
piety for politics, conscience for class analysis, and psychological
interiority for material causation. The result is a biography that obscures
more than it reveals, ultimately helping to sanitise Cromwell’s role in the
English Revolution and the colonial subjugation of Ireland.
The Revisionist Project: Religion as Historical
Determinism
Morrill’s biography rests on a single interpretive engine:
the claim that Cromwell “never doubted he was doing God’s will,” and that his
political, military, and colonial decisions arose from “a profound sense of
providential vocation.” Morrill presents this as a methodological breakthrough,
a way to recover Cromwell’s “authentic voice” from the distortions of
political analysis. In reality, it is neither new nor convincing. It is a
familiar device in English historiography, repeatedly used to exculpate figures
whose actions cannot be defended on political, moral, or historical grounds.
Invoking religious sincerity acts as a solvent, dissolving the structural and
class content of Cromwell’s career into a haze of devotional interiority.
The problem is not that Cromwell was insincere. He was
undoubtedly a man of intense religious conviction. But sincerity is not an
explanatory category, a causal mechanism, or a historical force. Every seventeenth-century
regicide, colonial adventurer, and religious persecutor believed he was doing
God’s will. Sincere belief was a universal condition of the era, not a
distinguishing feature of Cromwell’s career. To elevate religious sincerity
into the primary explanatory framework is to substitute psychology for history,
interiority for social determination, and devotional rhetoric for material
analysis.
This is the hallmark of revisionism. It lets historians detach Cromwell from the revolutionary forces that shaped his career, present him as a man of conscience rather than a political actor, and transform structural violence into personal anguish. The Cromwell who emerges
from this interpretive strategy is not the Cromwell of history but the Cromwell
of apologetics: a man tormented by spiritual dilemmas rather than one executing
the political and military imperatives of a rising bourgeois order.
Morrill’s biography is the most ambitious attempt yet to
complete this transformation. He does more than foreground Cromwell’s religious
language: he presents it as the force driving Cromwell’s actions. The result is
a narrative in which Cromwell’s decisions whether the suppression of the
Levellers, the crushing of the Diggers, the massacres at Drogheda and Wexford,
or the consolidation of the Protectorate appear as tragic expressions of
spiritual duty rather than deliberate acts shaped by class interests and
political necessity.
This displacement has profound consequences. It renders the
English Revolution unintelligible as a social process. It obscures the class
dynamics that drove the conflict between Parliament and Crown, the
radicalisation of the New Model Army, and the emergence of democratic currents
that Cromwell ruthlessly suppressed. It transforms the colonial subjugation of
Ireland into a moral drama rather than a violent assertion of English
landlordism and mercantile expansion. It reduces the revolution to a series of
devotional crises experienced by its leading general.
The irony is that Morrill’s own evidence undermines his
interpretive framework. His biography is rich in archival detail: letters,
speeches, sermons, military dispatches. These sources reveal a man deeply
embedded in the political and social conflicts of his time, navigating class
pressures, military realities, and ideological struggles. But Morrill refuses
to read these sources historically. He reads them psychologically. He treats
Cromwell’s religious language as transparent, as if it were a direct window
into his motivations rather than the ideological form through which political
actors expressed their aims.
The result is a biography that is empirically detailed but
historically evasive. It offers a Cromwell who is always praying, always
doubting, always searching for providential signs but never calculating, never
strategising, never acting in defence of class interests. It is a Cromwell
without politics, without social context, without historical determination.
This is not simply a methodological error. It is an
ideological project. By transforming Cromwell into a man of conscience,
revisionists can detach him from the revolutionary tradition and return him to
a conservative national mythology. They can obscure the revolutionary
destruction of feudal absolutism, the suppression of democratic movements, and
the colonial violence that defined his career. They can rehabilitate Cromwell
by dissolving his actions into the fog of religious sincerity. Morrill’s
biography is therefore not a breakthrough but a culmination: the most polished,
scholarly, and ambitious attempt yet to rescue Cromwell from history by burying
him in piety.
Drogheda and Wexford: The Facts Confirm the Crime
One of the most striking features of Morrill’s biography is
the tension between its empirical detail and interpretive framing. Morrill does
not and cannot deny the brutality of Cromwell’s Irish campaign. The documentary
record is overwhelming, and even the most conservative historians have long
acknowledged the scale of the violence. At Drogheda, Cromwell’s forces killed
more than 3,000 people, including clergy who were summarily executed. At
Wexford, the slaughter was even more indiscriminate: civilians, soldiers, and
priests alike were cut down in a frenzy of violence that contemporaries
struggled to describe without invoking divine wrath. Morrill acknowledges these
facts, surveys the “genocide” allegations, and concedes that Cromwell’s actions
“verge on the genocidal.” In purely descriptive terms, he does not attempt to
conceal the bloodshed.
But this framing turns these events into a moral puzzle
rather than a political one. Morrill asks: How could a sincere Christian commit
such acts? The question is misplaced. It assumes that the central issue is
Cromwell’s inner lifehis conscience and spiritual torment- and that the
massacre at Drogheda is best understood as a contradiction between religious
devotion and military brutality. This is a false contradiction. The real
question is: What class forces and colonial imperatives made such acts
necessary to the English bourgeois revolution?
The massacres were not aberrations; they were policy. They
formed part of the wider subjugation of Ireland required by English capital.
The purpose was clear: to break a rival social order, clear land, destroy
resistance, and reorganise Irish society under English landlordism and
mercantile control. The violence at Drogheda and Wexford was not simply the
product of Cromwell’s religious zeal; it was the military expression of a
colonial project rooted in the material needs of a rising bourgeois order. Morrill’s
own evidence confirms this, yet his Interpretive framework suppresses it.
This suppression is not accidental; it is the inevitable
result of a method that treats religious sincerity as the primary explanatory
category. By placing Cromwell’s spiritual anguish at the forefront, Morrill
turns structural violence into personal tragedy. The massacres become moments
of moral crisis rather than instruments of class power. Cromwell appears as a
man torn between conscience and necessity, rather than as the executor of a
colonial strategy intended to crush Irish resistance and secure English
domination.
The biography’s treatment of Ireland therefore reflects its
broader method. Morrill provides detailed accounts of military engagements,
personal correspondence, and religious rhetoric, reconstructing Cromwell’s
sermons, letters, and speeches with scholarly precision. Yet he refuses to
situate these events within the structural context of English colonialism. He
treats Cromwell’s religious language as transparent. However, it offers a
direct window into his motivations rather than representing the ideological
form through which political actors of the period expressed their aims.
The result is a narrative in which Cromwell’s actions appear
as tragic expressions of religious zeal rather than deliberate instruments of
class power. The colonial conquest of Ireland becomes a moral drama rather than
a political project. The massacres become moments of spiritual crisis rather
than acts of calculated terror designed to break resistance and secure English
control. The plantation system, the confiscation of land, the destruction of
Irish social structures- all of these disappear behind the veil of providential
rhetoric.
This is the central flaw of Morrill’s approach. He does not
misrepresent the facts; he presents them accurately. He refuses to interpret
them historically. He refuses to recognise that Cromwell’s actions were shaped
not by private conscience but by the structural imperatives of a bourgeois
revolution that required destroying feudal absolutism at home and consolidating
colonial power abroad. By dissolving these imperatives into the fog of
religious sincerity, Morrill transforms Cromwell from a political actor into a
spiritual pilgrim. The violence in Ireland was not a theological problem. It
was a political necessity for the English ruling class. Morrill’s biography,
for all its archival richness, cannot confront this reality. It therefore
cannot explain Cromwell’s actions. It can only excuse them.
Cromwell’s Historical Position: Revolutionary General and
Colonial Executor
A materialist analysis places Cromwell where he belongs: as
the military instrument of a bourgeois revolution that overthrew feudal
absolutism in England and cleared the way for capitalist property relations.
The English Revolution took place in the language of religion because its
participants had no other language of political legitimacy. This was true of
Cromwell, the Levellers he suppressed, and the Diggers he crushed. Religion was
not the revolution’s engine; it was the ideological medium through which
political and class forces expressed themselves. Mistaking this ideological form for the underlying content reduces historical explanation to
devotional psychology.
Cromwell’s religious worldview did not cause the revolution;
it provided the ideological form through which class forces expressed
themselves. His providential rhetoric, insistence on divine guidance, and
constant appeals to God’s will were not transparent windows into his
motivations, but discursive conventions of a society in which political
legitimacy could be articulated only through theological language. Treating
“religious sincerity” as an explanatory category mistakes form for content. It
confuses the revolution’s ideological clothing with its material body.
Cromwell’s regime rested on three pillars: destroying feudal
absolutism, consolidating parliamentary sovereignty, and suppressing democratic
currents whose demands exceeded the limits of bourgeois property relations.
This was the revolution’s essential achievement. The monarchy was shattered,
the old feudal order broken, and the foundations for capitalist development
laid. Cromwell’s military leadership was decisive in this process. He was not a
mystic wandering through history; he was the general of a revolutionary army
that destroyed feudalism’s political structures. The Levellers, Diggers, and
radical sectaries represented the revolution’s most advanced democratic
tendencies.
Their demands for expanded suffrage, communal land use, and
social equality threatened the emerging bourgeois order. Cromwell suppressed
them ruthlessly, not because God whispered in his ear, but because their
programme conflicted with the class interests of the propertied layers that
dominated Parliament and the leadership of the New Model Army.
This was also evident in the imposition of colonial terror
in Ireland, where mass killing served the strategic and economic interests of
English capital. The massacres at Drogheda and Wexford were not theological
dilemmas but instruments of colonial domination. Their purpose was to break
Irish resistance, clear land for English landlords, and reorganise Irish
society under English mercantile control. Cromwell’s religious rhetoric
supplied ideological justification, but the underlying motive was to consolidate
English class power.
This is the Cromwell who emerges from the historical record,
not the figure Morrill wishes to present. Morrill’s Cromwell is a man of
conscience: a devout pilgrim navigating spiritual crises, whose political
actions are the tragic outgrowth of religious sincerity. The historical
Cromwell was a revolutionary general, a counterrevolutionary force, and a
colonial executor. The distance between these two figures is the distance
between history and apologetics.
The Polemic Against Tony Benn: A Revealing Anxiety
One of the biography’s more curious and revealing features
is its polemic against Tony Benn and, by extension, the political left more
broadly. Morrill argues that Benn “misunderstood” Cromwell by claiming him as
part of a democratic tradition. This accusation is not incidental; it is a
deliberate intervention in the long-running struggle over the meaning of the
English Revolution. Morrill’s insistence that Benn distorted Cromwell’s legacy
reveals the biography’s ideological purpose more clearly than any archival claim or interpretive gesture. It demonstrates that the political
stakes of Cromwell’s legacy remain very much alive and that Morrill’s biography
is not simply an exercise in historical scholarship, but an attempt to reshape
the usable past of English nationalism.
Benn’s reading was not a distortion but an attempt to
reclaim the English Revolution’s antiabsolutist content. He understood that
Cromwell’s destruction of the monarchy was a progressive act, even though
Cromwell later turned against the revolution’s democratic forces. Benn’s
interest in Cromwell was never naïve hero-worship; it sought to place the
English Revolution within a broader tradition of struggles against autocracy
and for popular sovereignty. Benn recognised that Cromwell’s role cannot be
reduced to religious interiority; it must be understood within the wider
struggle against feudal absolutism. He saw that Cromwell’s actions, whatever
their contradictions, formed part of a revolutionary process that shattered the
old order and opened the way for new forms of political and social
organisation.
Morrill’s anxiety is not that Benn misunderstood Cromwell.
It is that Benn understood him too well. Benn’s attempt to place Cromwell
within a democratic lineage threatens the revisionist project, which seeks to
depoliticise the revolution and detach Cromwell from its progressive content.
Benn’s interpretation insists on the political nature of Cromwell’s actions, on
the class forces that shaped the revolution, and on the historical significance
of the struggle against monarchy and feudalism. This is precisely what
revisionists have spent decades obscuring.
The revisionist school has long sought to sever the
progressive content of the English Revolution from its executor. By insisting
that Cromwell’s politics were purely religious, Morrill can detach Cromwell
from the revolutionary tradition and return him to a conservative national
mythology: a devout man of conscience, a proto-Victorian moralist, a figure of
English providential destiny. This is not scholarship. It is ideological
reconstruction. It attempts to neutralise the revolutionary significance of the
English Civil War and rehabilitate Cromwell by dissolving his political actions
into the fog of religious sincerity.
The stakes of this reconstruction are clear. If Cromwell can
be reimagined as a man driven solely by religious conviction, then the English
Revolution itself can be reinterpreted as a theological drama rather than a
bourgeois upheaval. The destruction of the monarchy becomes a matter of
conscience rather than class struggle. The suppression of the Levellers becomes
a tragic misunderstanding rather than a deliberate act of counterrevolution.
The massacres in Ireland become expressions of spiritual zeal rather than
instruments of colonial domination. In this narrative, Cromwell is not a
revolutionary general but a moral exemplar. This figure can be safely
integrated into a conservative national story about English providence and
constitutional continuity.
Morrill’s polemic against Benn therefore reveals more about
revisionism than about Cromwell. It exposes the biography’s ideological stakes:
the desire to reclaim Cromwell for a conservative national narrative by
stripping him of his revolutionary and colonial realities. Benn’s
interpretation threatens this project because it insists on the political
nature of Cromwell’s actions and on the revolutionary content of the English
Civil War. Benn refuses to allow Cromwell to be domesticated, sanitised, or transformed
into a figure of providential nationalism. He insists on seeing Cromwell as a
historical actor shaped by class forces, political necessity, and revolutionary
struggle.
Benn does not misunderstand Cromwell. It is Morrill.
Benn’s reading recognises the contradictions of Cromwell’s career- the
destruction of monarchy, the suppression of democratic movements, the
imposition of colonial terror- but situates them within the broader dynamics of
a bourgeois revolution. Morrill’s reading dissolves these contradictions into
religious interiority and moral anguish. Benn confronts Cromwell as a political
actor; Morrill retreats from politics into piety.
The polemic against Benn is therefore not a scholarly
correction but an ideological manoeuvre. It seeks to reclaim Cromwell for a
conservative national mythology by erasing the revolutionary and colonial
realities of his career. It also works to neutralise the radical content of the
English Revolution, presenting Cromwell as a figure of providential continuity
rather than revolutionary rupture. In this sense, Morrill’s biography is not
merely a misinterpretation of Cromwell; it is a political intervention in the
ongoing struggle over the meaning of England’s revolutionary past.
Revisionism as Ideology: The Sanitisation of the English
Revolution
Morrill’s biography belongs to a wider historiographical
movement that includes Conrad Russell, Mark Kishlansky, and Blair Worden. This
revisionist school has spent decades attempting to depoliticise the English
Revolution by denying its revolutionary character, minimising class conflict,
and reinterpreting political actors as religious or constitutional
conservatives rather than participants in a bourgeois upheaval. Their project
has been consistent: to dismantle the Marxist and social-historical
interpretations that dominated mid-twentieth-century scholarship and replace
them with a narrative in which the English Civil War was not a revolution at
all, but a tragic misunderstanding between well-meaning constitutionalists.
The aim is clear: to strip the English Revolution of its
radical content and reabsorb it into a conservative national narrative.
In this narrative, the Civil War becomes a quarrel between gentlemen, the
execution of Charles I becomes an unfortunate excess, and the destruction of
feudal absolutism becomes a regrettable but necessary step toward the “balanced
constitution” of later centuries. The revolution’s democratic currents- the
Levellers, Diggers, Fifth Monarchists- are reduced to marginal irritants. The
class forces that drove the conflict are dissolved into theological disputes.
The colonial violence in Ireland is reframed as a tragic consequence of
religious zeal rather than a deliberate instrument of English domination.
Cromwell is the central obstacle to this project. He cannot
be easily domesticated. His career embodies the revolution’s contradictions:
the revolutionary destruction of the old order, the suppression of democratic
forces, and the imposition of colonial terror abroad. Cromwell is too large,
too forceful, too historically decisive to be absorbed into the genteel
constitutionalism revisionists favour. He is the figure who makes the
English Revolution impossible to deny. His actions- military, political, and
colonial- expose the revolution’s class content with brutal clarity.
To rehabilitate Cromwell, revisionists must transform him
from a revolutionary general into a man of conscience. They must dissolve his
political actions into religious interiority. They must replace the structural
imperatives of bourgeois revolution with the psychological drama of spiritual
struggle. Morrill’s biography is the most ambitious attempt yet to complete
that transformation.
The strategy is familiar. It begins by foregrounding
Cromwell’s religious language: his appeals to providence, his insistence on
divine guidance, his constant references to God’s will. It then treats this
language as transparent, as if it were a direct window into Cromwell’s
motivations rather than the ideological medium through which seventeenth-century
political actors expressed themselves. Finally, it elevates religious sincerity
into the primary explanatory category, thereby displacing politics, class, and
material necessity.
The result is a Cromwell who is always praying, always
doubting, always searching for providential signs but never calculating, never
strategising, never acting in defence of class interests. It is a Cromwell
without politics, without social context, without historical determination. It
is a Cromwell who can be safely integrated into a conservative national mythology:
a devout man of conscience, a proto-Victorian moralist, a figure of English
providential destiny.
This ideological reconstruction serves a broader purpose. If
Cromwell can be reimagined as a religious conservative rather than a
revolutionary general, then the English Revolution itself can be reinterpreted
as a theological drama rather than a bourgeois upheaval. The destruction of the
monarchy becomes a matter of conscience rather than class struggle. The
suppression of the Levellers becomes a tragic misunderstanding rather than a
deliberate act of counterrevolution. The massacres in Ireland become
expressions of spiritual zeal rather than instruments of colonial domination.
In this narrative, the English Revolution ceases to be a
revolution. It becomes a moral crisis, a constitutional adjustment, a
providential trial. Its radical content disappears. Its democratic aspirations
vanish. Its colonial violence is softened. Its class dynamics are erased.
Morrill’s biography is therefore not simply a
reinterpretation of Cromwell. It is a political intervention in the ongoing
struggle over the meaning of England’s revolutionary past. It attempts to
reclaim Cromwell for a conservative national narrative by stripping him of his
revolutionary and colonial realities. It seeks to neutralise the radical
content of the English Civil War and present Cromwell as a figure of
providential continuity rather than revolutionary rupture.
The Suppression of the Levellers and Diggers
One of the most revealing absences in Morrill’s biography is
its treatment of the Levellers and Diggers. These movements represented the
most democratic currents of the English Revolution, articulating demands for
expanded suffrage, communal land use, and social equality. They were not
marginal sects or eccentric utopians; they were the political expression of the
plebeian and lower-middle-class layers whose mobilisation gave the revolution
its mass character. The Levellers articulated a coherent programme of political
democracy- annual Parliaments, near-universal male suffrage, equality before
the law- while the Diggers attempted to realise the revolution’s social promise
through communal cultivation of common land. Together, they represented the
revolution’s most advanced aspirations.
Cromwell suppressed them ruthlessly. The Putney Debates,
often romanticised as a moment of proto-democratic deliberation, were in fact
the prelude to repression. Cromwell and Henry Ireton made clear that political
power would remain tied to property. When Leveller agitation continued,
Cromwell responded with force: imprisoning leaders such as Lilburne, Overton,
and Walwyn; crushing mutinies in the New Model Army; and sending troops to
break up Digger communities at St George’s Hill and elsewhere. These were not
peripheral episodes. They were central to the revolution’s trajectory, marking
the moment when the bourgeois forces that had shattered the monarchy turned
decisively against the democratic movements that threatened their newly
consolidated power.
Morrill acknowledges these events, but only in the most
superficial terms. He refuses to interpret them as expressions of class
conflict. Instead, he presents them as tragic misunderstandings, the result of
Cromwell’s “inflexible conscience” and “fear of disorder.” This is a profound
distortion. Suppressing democratic movements was not a matter of conscience. It
was a matter of class power. The Levellers and Diggers threatened the emerging
bourgeois order. Cromwell acted to defend that order.
By refusing to recognise this, Morrill transforms counterrevolution
into moral struggle. The suppression of the Levellers becomes a sad but
necessary act of a man torn between principle and pragmatism. The destruction
of the Diggers becomes a lamentable consequence of Cromwell’s “concern for
stability.” The mutinies in the New Model Army become unfortunate eruptions of
“misguided zeal.” In Morrill’s narrative, Cromwell is always a man wrestling
with conscience, never a political actor enforcing class discipline.
This interpretive strategy is not accidental. It is
essential to the revisionist project. If the Levellers and Diggers are
acknowledged as democratic movements crushed by a bourgeois revolutionary
leadership, then the English Revolution must be recognised as a class struggle.
If Cromwell’s suppression of these movements is understood as counterrevolution,
then Cromwell cannot be rehabilitated as a figure of providential virtue. He
becomes what the historical record shows him to be: the military instrument of
a rising bourgeois order, willing to use force against both feudal absolutism
and plebeian democracy.
Morrill’s silence on the class content of these conflicts
speaks volumes. It reveals the ideological stakes of his biography. To preserve
Cromwell as a man of conscience, the democratic movements he suppressed must be
depoliticised. Their demands must be rendered naïve, their leaders misguided,
their actions destabilising. The class antagonism that defined the revolution
must be dissolved into a moral drama. The Levellers and Diggers must be
stripped of their historical significance so that Cromwell can be stripped of
his political responsibility.
This is not scholarship. It is ideological reconstruction.
It attempts to rewrite the English Revolution as a theological crisis rather
than a bourgeois upheaval. It seeks to transform Cromwell from a revolutionary
general into a moral exemplar. It refuses to confront the revolution’s
contradictions: the same forces that destroyed the monarchy also crushed the
revolution’s most democratic aspirations.
Morrill’s treatment of the Levellers and Diggers therefore
reveals the limits of his entire project. A biography that cannot confront the
class dynamics of the English Revolution cannot explain Cromwell’s actions. It
can only excuse them. By dissolving counterrevolution into conscience, Morrill
obscures the period's political realities and turns history into moral theatre.
The result is a Cromwell who never existed: a man without politics, class interests, or responsibility for suppressing democratic
movements.
The Protectorate: Bourgeois Order in Religious Form
Morrill’s treatment of the Protectorate is similarly
distorted. He presents Cromwell’s regime as an attempt to create a “godly
commonwealth,” a political experiment driven by religious ideals and animated
by a sincere desire to reform the nation’s moral life. In Morrill’s narrative,
the Protectorate becomes the culmination of Cromwell’s spiritual journey: a
providentially guided effort to build a society worthy of divine favour. But
this framing is not merely inadequate; it is fundamentally misleading. It turns
a bourgeois dictatorship into a theological project, replacing the material
realities of class power with the devotional rhetoric that justified it.
The Protectorate was, in essence, a bourgeois dictatorship.
It consolidated property relations, suppressed radical movements, expanded
colonial power, and stabilised the social order the revolution had created. It
was the political form through which the victorious bourgeoisie secured its
gains after destroying feudal absolutism. The religious language of the regime-
its talk of godliness, reformation, providence- was the ideological form of
bourgeois rule. Morrill mistakes this form for content. He treats Cromwell’s
religious rhetoric as transparent, as if it were a direct window into his
motivations rather than the ideological medium through which seventeenth-century
political actors expressed themselves.
The result is a narrative in which Cromwell appears as a
visionary reformer rather than the executor of class power. Morrill’s Cromwell
is a man striving to build a moral commonwealth, wrestling with conscience,
seeking divine guidance. The historical Cromwell was a political actor who
enforced class discipline, suppressed democratic movements, and consolidated
the gains of a bourgeois revolution. The gap between these two figures is the
gap between history and apologetics.
The Protectorate’s policies make its class character
unmistakable. It upheld the primacy of property, restricted political
participation to propertied men, and crushed any movement that threatened the new
order's stability. The Levellers, Diggers, Fifth Monarchists, and other radical
sectaries were suppressed not because Cromwell feared “disorder,” as Morrill
claims, but because their demands exceeded the limits of bourgeois property
relations. The Protectorate’s religious rhetoric- its calls for moral reform,
its denunciations of ungodliness- served to mask these class imperatives. It
provided a moral vocabulary through which the regime could justify its actions,
but it did not determine those actions.
Morrill’s refusal to recognise this leads him to
misinterpret the Protectorate’s most significant features. He treats the Major
Generals as moral overseers rather than instruments of military rule. He
interprets the regime’s censorship and surveillance as efforts to promote
godliness rather than mechanisms of political control. He presents Cromwell’s
dissolution of Parliaments as expressions of spiritual frustration rather than
acts of authoritarian consolidation. In Morrill’s narrative, the Protectorate
becomes a moral experiment gone awry, a noble attempt to reform the nation
undermined by human frailty and political miscalculation.
This is a profound distortion. The Protectorate was not a
failed utopia. It successfully consolidated bourgeois power. Its authoritarian
features were not deviations from its religious ideals; they expressed its
class character. The regime’s stability depended on suppressing democratic
movements, controlling political expression, and maintaining military
discipline. Its religious rhetoric provided ideological cover, but the ruling
class's material needs drove its actions.
By dissolving these realities into the fog of religious
sincerity, Morrill transforms the Protectorate into a moral drama rather than a
political project. He obscures the class dynamics that shaped the regime and
replaces them with psychological speculation about Cromwell’s conscience. The
result is a biography that cannot explain the Protectorate. It can only excuse
it.
Morrill’s treatment of the Protectorate therefore reveals
the limits of his entire interpretive framework. A biography that cannot
confront the class character of Cromwell’s regime cannot explain Cromwell’s
actions. It can only transform them into expressions of spiritual struggle. The
Protectorate becomes a theological experiment rather than a bourgeois
dictatorship. Cromwell becomes a visionary reformer rather than the executor of
class power. History becomes a morality play. Morrill does not misunderstand
the Protectorate. It is Cromwell and the revolution he led.
The Biography’s Method: Archival Detail Without
Historical Explanation
Morrill’s biography is rich in archival detail. It provides
extensive quotations from Cromwell’s letters, speeches, and religious
meditations. It reconstructs military campaigns with precision, often with
admirable command of the sources. It offers nuanced accounts of Cromwell’s
personal relationships, his spiritual crises, and the devotional language
through which he interpreted the world. As empirical scholarship,
Morrill’s work is formidable. But empirical richness is not the same as historical
explanation. The biography’s interpretive framework is so narrow, so
psychologically and theologically fixated, that it cannot make sense of the
very evidence it assembles. It refuses to situate Cromwell’s actions within the
structural context of the English Revolution, the rise of bourgeois property
relations, and the expansion of English colonialism. The result is a narrative
that is detailed but fundamentally evasive.
This is the revisionist method’s fundamental flaw. It treats
political actors as isolated individuals rather than as expressions of social
forces. It replaces class analysis with psychological interpretation. It
transforms revolution into biography. Morrill’s Cromwell is a man of
conscience, a spiritual pilgrim navigating crises of faith, a figure whose
political actions are the tragic outgrowth of religious sincerity. The
historical Cromwell was a political actor shaped by class forces, military
necessity, and the structural imperatives of a bourgeois revolution. Morrill’s
refusal to recognise this produces a Cromwell who is always praying, always
doubting, always searching for providential signs but never calculating, never
strategising, never acting in defence of class interests.
The biography’s structure reinforces this distortion.
Morrill moves from letter to letter, sermon to sermon, meditation to
meditation, treating each as a transparent window into Cromwell’s inner life.
But seventeenth-century religious language was not transparent. It was the
ideological medium through which political actors expressed themselves.
Cromwell’s appeals to providence were not spontaneous eruptions of conscience;
they were the discursive conventions of a society in which political legitimacy
could only be articulated through theological vocabulary. Morrill mistakes this
ideological form for content. He treats Cromwell’s religious rhetoric as the
cause of his actions rather than the language that justified them.
This leads to a series of interpretive failures. Cromwell’s
suppression of the Levellers becomes a tragic misunderstanding rather than a
deliberate act of counterrevolution. His destruction of the Diggers becomes an
expression of “fear of disorder” rather than a defence of bourgeois property
relations. His massacres in Ireland become moments of spiritual crisis rather
than instruments of colonial domination. His authoritarian rule as Lord
Protector becomes a moral experiment rather than the consolidation of class
power. In each case, Morrill dissolves political action into psychological
drama.
The biography’s refusal to confront the structural context
of Cromwell’s career is most evident in its treatment of the English Revolution
itself. Morrill describes battles, debates, and political manoeuvres, but he
never explains why they occurred. The conflict between Parliament and Crown is
reduced to constitutional misunderstanding. The radicalisation of the New Model
Army becomes a matter of religious enthusiasm. The emergence of democratic
movements becomes a problem of “ungovernable zeal.” The destruction of the
monarchy becomes a tragic necessity rather than a revolutionary act. The
revolution’s class dynamics- its destruction of feudal absolutism, its
consolidation of bourgeois property relations, its suppression of plebeian
democracy- are almost absent.
This absence is not accidental. It is the inevitable
consequence of a method that refuses to recognise class as a historical force.
Morrill’s Cromwell is shaped not by the pressures of a rising bourgeois order,
but by conscience. He is not the executor of colonial policy; he is a man
struggling with providence. He is not the suppressor of democratic movements;
he is a leader burdened by moral responsibility. By dissolving politics into
piety, Morrill transforms the English Revolution into a theological drama and
Cromwell into its tormented protagonist.
The result is a biography that is empirically rich but
historically impoverished. It offers detail without explanation, narrative
without analysis, and psychology without politics. It cannot explain Cromwell’s
actions because it refuses to recognise the forces that shaped them. Cromwell
is not misunderstood. The revolution is not misunderstood; Morrill is.
A Genuine
Reckoning
A genuine reckoning with Cromwell requires exactly what
Morrill’s biography sets out to discredit: a materialist analysis of the
English Revolution, its class forces, its ideological forms, and its colonial
consequences. It requires an understanding of Cromwell not as a saint of
providence but as a political actor whose actions were shaped by the needs of a
rising bourgeois order. The revolution was not a theological drama. It was a
social upheaval that destroyed feudal absolutism, consolidated capitalist property
relations, and expanded English colonial power. Cromwell’s religious language
was the ideological medium through which these forces expressed themselves, not
the engine that drove them.
To confront Cromwell historically is to recognise the
contradictions of his career: that the same general who shattered the monarchy
also suppressed the revolution’s most democratic currents; that the same leader
who spoke of liberty and godliness imposed military rule and crushed plebeian
movements; that the same man who invoked divine providence presided over
massacres in Ireland that served the strategic interests of English capital.
These contradictions cannot be dissolved into conscience. They must be explained
through class analysis.
The left did not misunderstand Cromwell. Those who wish to
rescue him from history have misunderstood him. The left’s interpretation, whether expressed by Christopher Hill, Brian Manning, or Tony Benn, has always insisted
on the political nature of Cromwell’s actions. It has recognised that Cromwell
was neither a protodemocrat nor a protofascist, but the military instrument of
a bourgeois revolution shaped by class forces and material necessity. The left
has understood that Cromwell’s religious language was the ideological form of
political action, not its cause. It has understood that the revolution’s
democratic movements were suppressed not because Cromwell feared “disorder,”
but because their demands exceeded the limits of bourgeois property relations.
Morrill’s biography does not correct past distortions.
It is the latest attempt to obscure the revolutionary and colonial realities of
Cromwell’s career behind the veil of religious sincerity. It is an exercise in
historical apologetics, dressed in the language of scholarly revision.
Morrill’s Cromwell is a man of conscience, a spiritual pilgrim navigating
crises of faith, a figure whose political actions are the tragic outgrowth of
religious devotion. The historical Cromwell was a political actor shaped by
class forces, military necessity, and the structural imperatives of a bourgeois
revolution. Morrill’s refusal to recognise this produces a Cromwell who never
existed.
This ideological reconstruction serves a broader purpose. If
Cromwell can be reimagined as a religious conservative rather than a
revolutionary general, then the English Revolution itself can be reinterpreted
as a theological drama rather than a bourgeois upheaval. The destruction of the
monarchy becomes a matter of conscience rather than class struggle. The
suppression of the Levellers becomes a tragic misunderstanding rather than a
deliberate act of counterrevolution. The massacres in Ireland become
expressions of spiritual zeal rather than instruments of colonial domination.
In this narrative, the English Revolution ceases to be a revolution. It becomes
a moral crisis, a constitutional adjustment, a providential trial.
Morrill’s biography therefore reveals the ideological stakes
of revisionism. It is not simply a reinterpretation of Cromwell; it is a
political intervention in the ongoing struggle over the meaning of England’s
revolutionary past. It is an attempt to reclaim Cromwell for a conservative
national mythology by stripping him of his revolutionary and colonial
realities. It seeks to neutralise the radical content of the English Civil War
and present Cromwell as a figure of providential continuity rather than
revolutionary rupture.
A genuine reckoning with Cromwell must reject this
apologetic framework. It must confront the revolution’s class dynamics, democratic
aspirations, colonial violence, and ideological forms. It must recognise
Cromwell as a historical actor shaped by social forces, not as a moral exemplar
guided by divine providence. Only then can the English Revolution be understood
in all its complexity and Cromwell in all his contradictions.
Primary Sources
- Cromwell,
Oliver. Letters and Speeches. The Letters, Writings, and
Speeches of Oliver Cromwell Volume 1: October 1626 to January 1649. Edited
by Andrew Barclay, Tim Wales, and John Morrill. General editor: John
Morrill
- Classic
collections of Cromwell’s correspondence and public addresses, often
edited by Thomas Carlyle and later scholars. These provide insight into
Cromwell’s religious language, military decisions, and political rhetoric.
- The
Clarke Papers (ed. C.H. Firth). Transcriptions of debates and
discussions within the New Model Army, including the Putney Debates.
Essential for understanding the conflict between Cromwell, Ireton, and the
Leveller representatives.
- The
Thomason Tracts. A vast archive of pamphlets, sermons, and political
writings from the 1640s–1650s, documenting the ideological struggles of
the English Revolution.
- John
Lilburne, Richard Overton, William Walwyn – Leveller Pamphlets.
Political writings advocating expanded suffrage, legal equality, and
popular sovereignty. These texts reveal the democratic currents Cromwell
suppressed.
- Gerrard
Winstanley – The Law of Freedom and Digger writings. Radical
proposals for communal land use and social equality, illustrating the
revolutionary aspirations crushed by Cromwell’s regime.
Secondary Sources: Marxist and Social-Historical
Interpretations
- Hill,
Christopher. The World Turned Upside Down; God’s Englishman;
The English Revolution 1640. Foundational Marxist analyses of
the English Revolution, emphasising class struggle, ideological forms, and
Cromwell's revolutionary/counterrevolutionary role.
- Manning,
Brian. The English People and the English Revolution; The Far
Left in the English Revolution. Detailed studies of plebeian
radicalism, Leveller and Digger movements, and the social forces driving
the revolution.
- Morton,
A.L. A People’s History of England. A classic Marxist overview
situating Cromwell within the broader development of English capitalism.
- Reid,
John. The Radical Left in the English Civil War. Analysis of
democratic and egalitarian movements suppressed by Cromwell and the Army
grandees.
Secondary Sources: Revisionist Historiography
- Morrill,
John. Oliver Cromwell: A Life in God’s Providence (forthcoming,
2028). The subject of the review. Morrill’s biography emphasises
Cromwell’s religious sincerity and downplays the revolution's class
dynamics.
- Russell,
Conrad. The Causes of the English Civil War. A key revisionist
text arguing that the conflict was constitutional rather than
revolutionary, minimising class forces.
- Kishlansky,
Mark. A Monarchy Transformed; The Rise of the New Model Army.
Works that reinterpret the revolution as a political crisis rather than a
social upheaval, often downplaying radical movements.
- Worden,
Blair. The English Civil Wars; God’s Instruments.
Revisionist analyses emphasising religious motivation and
constitutionalism over class struggle.
- Woolrych,
Austin. Britain in Revolution. A major narrative history
aligned with revisionist tendencies, though more balanced than Russell or
Kishlansky.
Secondary Sources: Colonialism and Ireland
- Lenihan,
Pádraig. Consolidating Conquest: Ireland 1600–1700. A detailed
study of English colonial policy in Ireland, including Cromwell’s
campaign.
- Ó
Siochrú, Micheál. God’s Executioner: Oliver Cromwell and the Conquest
of Ireland. A modern account emphasising the brutality and
political purpose of Cromwell’s Irish campaign.
- Canny,
Nicholas. Making Ireland British. A broader analysis of English
colonialism, situating Cromwell’s actions within long-term imperial
strategy.
Secondary Sources: Ideology, Religion, and Revolution
- Walzer,
Michael. Revolution of the Saints. A study of Puritan political
ideology, useful for understanding the revolution's religious language.
- Pocock,
J.G.A. The Ancient Constitution and the Feudal Law. A classic
work on the ideological frameworks of seventeenth-century political
thought.
- Sharpe,
Kevin. The Personal Rule of Charles I. Contextualises the
absolutist system Cromwell helped destroy.
Works on Historiography and Method
- Hill,
Christopher. The Century of Revolution. A Marxist
methodological guide to interpreting the English Revolution as a class
struggle.
- Thompson,
E.P. The Making of the English Working Class. While focused on
a later period, Thompson’s method of recovering “history from below”
informs the analysis of Levellers and Diggers.
- Hobsbawm,
Eric. The Age of Revolution. A broader framework for
understanding bourgeois revolutions and their ideological forms.
Additional Contextual Works
- Benn,
Tony. Arguments for Democracy; The Levellers and the English
Democratic Tradition. Benn’s political writings situate Cromwell
within a democratic lineage, precisely the interpretation Morrill seeks to
discredit.
- Rees,
John. The Leveller Revolution. A modern social-historical study of
Leveller politics and their suppression.
