The Image of Cromwell in Folklore and Tradition

Abstract

SINCE his death on 3 September, 1658, Oliver Cromwell has been the subject of ardent debate. Those who in life were closest to him, whether in body or spirit, spoke with one voice. Milton hailed him as 'Our Chief of Men' and though proverbially no man is a hero to his valet, the steward of Cromwell's house could write, 'A larger soul I think, hath seldom dwelt in house of clay.' In the Restoration period and through much of the eighteenth century the voice of calumny spoke loudest in the land, but from Carlyle's first publication of the letters and speeches in 1845 there has been a succession of major authors anxious to vindicate Cromwell's reputation such writers as Gardiner, Firth, Buchan, Barker and Ashley, to name only the giants among them. Yet, for all this distinguished literary activity, Cromwell is still a figure of current controversy. Which other seventeenth-century statesman has had his name involved in a discussion of commercial television?' Or roused such ire in a borough council when it was suggested his name should be given to a new road ?2 He has even been referred to (though quite unjustifiably) in a film review3 when a character in the film King Rat is described as having 'the kind of righteous hatred of his betters that goes back to Oliver Cromwell'. In his own day, it could be truly said of him, as Shakespeare said of Caesar, 'he doth bestride the narrow world like a colossus.' No man more plainly bore, or bears, the stamp of greatness and the innumerable historical, psychological and spiritual problems