A curious plaque marks an unoccupied grave at the Henry VII Chapel of Westminster Abbey, where Elizabeth I and Mary, Queen of Scots, are interred. It indicates the former location of the remains of Oliver Cromwell (1599-1658), Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland, and Ireland.
The mercurial leader who emerged out of the fratricidal carnage of the three consecutive English Civil Wars (1642-1651) and regicide who sanctioned the beheading of Charles I (1600-1649), Cromwell was buried in 1658 with pomp and circumstance in the heart of English royalism.Exhumed on the orders of the Restoration king Charles II (1630–1685), Cromwell’s fate is shocking. In 1661, his body was posthumously hanged, beheaded, with the head displayed on a spike above Westminster Hall for over a decade as a warning to potential supporters of the type of revolutionary upheaval that led to the beheading of a king in 1649 and the establishment of a Republic in England from 1649 till 1660.Gruesome violence, including widespread torture and bodily mutilation, characterized the entirety of England’s 17th century. The constant warfare and the genocidal military campaigns in Ireland and Scotland resulted in the death toll of close to 200,000, or just over 4% of the population, making it more deadly than Britain’s involvement in WWI. The publication of pamphlets ideologically inconsistent with the policies of the ruling party resulted in the practice of “clipping” – the public removal of the authors’ ears and/or noses, and the branding of cheeks with the letter “S” for “Sedition.” The 17th century Civil Wars were defined by a standoff between the monarch and Parliament, which was dissolved both during the reign of Charles I in 1629 and by Oliver Cromwell in 1653. Weary of continual violence and economic disruptions, the nation craved stability, and Cromwell’s elevation to the rank of Lord Protector with near-monarchic powers subverted the revolutionary aspirations of the supporters of the Parliamentary faction.
The political divide between Royalists and Parliamentarians resulted in the creation of two distinct camps – the Cavaliers, supporters of the sovereign rule of the monarch, and the staunchly pro-Parliament Roundheads. The exquisite style of the Cavaliers, characterized by colorful silk attire, fashionable accessories, and luxurious long curls for men, was immortalized in the works of Charles I’s court painter Sir Anthony van Dyck (1599-1641). The plainly attired Roundheads sported unfashionable, drab clothes and distinct bowl cuts for which they were named.
The complexity of this violent century proved the source of literary and artistic inspiration, from now lesser known novels such as Daniel Defoe’s Memoirs of a Cavalier (1720) and Walter Scott’s Woodstock; or, The Cavalier (1826) to The Three Musketeers’ (1844) sequels, Twenty Years After (1845) and The Vicomte of Bragelonne (1847-1850).
The swashbuckling heroes Athos, Porthos, Aramis, and D’Artagnan repeatedly cross the English Channel in the service of the English kings Charles I and Charles II. The wife of the beheaded Charles I, Henrietta Maria of France (1609-1669), daughter of France’s first Bourbon king, Henry IV, appears as a character in the Alexandre Dumas novels – and in Vincenzo Bellini’s 1835 opera I puritani, recently staged by the Metropolitan Opera.The ideological and physical violence of this period resulted in repeated book-burning incidents, including the 1660 Cambridge burning of the works of England’s most famous epic poet, John Milton (1608-1674), who graduated from Christ’s College in 1632. In a world where writers could be hanged, drawn, and quartered, Milton’s punishment was mild considering his anti-Restoration stance. Milton, a staunch supporter of the Republic, justified the execution of Charles I and served in Cromwell’s government as the Secretary for Foreign Tongues – or Foreign Minister – 1649-1660.
Arrested and briefly imprisoned, Milton was released during a general amnesty and dedicated the remainder of his life to the creation of Paradise Lost, a twelve-book, 10,000-line epic poem inspired by the Iliad, Odyssey, Aeneid, Divine Comedy, and the Old and New Testaments. Composed between 1658 and 1663 by the then completely blind Milton, the epic features one of the most dynamic and charismatic literary antagonists, Satan, whose rebellion against God was inspired by none other than Oliver Cromwell, the quintessentially English voice of revolutionary change. Satan’s motto, “Better reign in Hell, than serve in Heaven,” reverberates in all subsequent revolutionary uprisings.Britain eventually reconciled with the bloody legacy of the 17th century and erected a monument to Oliver Cromwell next to the Parliament in 1899. The events of the English Civil Wars, the curtailment of the power of the monarch, and the establishment of a constitutional monarchy during the Glorious Revolution in 1688 had a profound impact on the events of the American Revolution, the subject of my next column.
Professor Anna Barker teaches in the UI College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Russian Program. She is a Fellow of the International Napoleonic Society and serves of the Board of Directors of the Napoleonic Historical Society. Her book “13 Notes from Napoleon, Iowa: Musings on the Edge of the French Empire” was published in 2025 (Ice Cube Press).
This article originally appeared on Iowa City Press-Citizen: Age of Revolutions: The English civil wars and glorious revolution | Column
Reporting by Anna Barker, Special to the Press-Citizen / Iowa City Press-Citizen
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