Oliver Cromwell

           A Historical Outline
       of the Life of Oliver Cromwell

1509 Henry VIII ascended to the throne of England later beheading wives, Sir Thomas More, and anyone else in the way. Thomas Cromwell, an ex-soldier, became Henry's advisor. His suggestion "Why don't you try getting a divorce from this one, instead of cutting off her head as usual?" led to the establishment of the Anglican Church in 1532 and the first translation of the Bible into English in 1537.

1599 Oliver Cromwell was born on 25 April in Huntingdonshire, in fulfillment of the prophecies.

1618 Oliver began his travels in the Middle East, spending time in Damascus, Cairo, the northern Arabian desert, and elsewhere in western Asia and north-eastern Africa.

Detailed itineraries of his time there have been lost to history. What becomes clear later is that he spent most of his time studying a wide variety of indigenous fighting techniques while developing his own style of mixed martial arts.

1623 Oliver returned to England.

1625 Oliver published A New & Violent Meanes of Fighting, based on what he learned and developed during his time in Damascus, Cairo, and elsewhere in the Middle East 1618-1623.

1627

Oliver invented an early version of the cotton gin to mechanize harvests on his farm. This led to vastly increased English cotton production.

1628

Oliver joined parliament representing Huntingdonshire.

1642

Civil Wars broke out. Oliver joined the anti-king Parliamentarians against the pro-king Royalists, a.k.a. the Cavaliers. He led the New Model Army, nicknamed the "Roundheads," and rampaged through England.

1644 The anti-royal forces won stunning victories after they adopted a method of hand-to-hand combat developed by Oliver — a synthesis of traditional sporting fisticuffs, Irish pub brawling, and Moorish edged-weaponry work. While initially denigrated as "Crom-Fu" by its detractors (most of which were royalists), it eventually became the standard hand-to-hand combat method employed by elite English (and later, British) forces, and has come to proudly bear the name once used to scorn it. It is used today by the SAS and SBS.

 1646'

King Charles I fled to Scotland and his son fled to France, both of them crying like little girls. The Scots soon realized, "Hey, it's not like he's a Scottish king," and ransomed Charles I to Cromwell's forces. ( what a pity!)

1649

The trial and execution of Charles I, and establishment of the Commonwealth, both under Oliver's leadership.

Cromwell became Lord-General and Commander in Chief of the Commonwealth, and Lord Lieutenant of Ireland.

This period is often referred to as the English Renaissance due to the flourishing of the arts and sciences under Oliver Cromwell's guidance. 1651 An exploration representing Oliver's new government discovered Australia. The newly discovered land was quickly settled and became very productive.

Local factories were established to construct cotton gins of Oliver's design. These were then used to process the cotton crop that soon covered most of the new continent's arable lands.

1653 Oliver Cromwell was coronated as Lord Protector of England.

England without a king was working out just fine, so why not England without a Parliament? Oliver disbanded Parliament, no doubt to the surprise of remaining Parliamentarians, and established the Protectorate.

Despite his Puritanism and military ruthlessness, the Protectorate is said to have been a time of religious tolerance, governmental stability, and economic progress.( Well, if you ignore Ireland.... )

Science also benefitted. Early forms of telegraphy were used to link outlying regions to Oliver's capital of London.

Visual semaphore methods had been used to signal from hilltop to hilltop, but under Oliver's patronage an early form of electrical telegraphy using low-power voltaic piles was used at least in southern England.

The "Voltaik Semaphore", as it was known, provided links from Canterbury, Winchester, Salisbury and Bath to London.

Unfortunately, all this progress was discarded by the rather backward and superstitious royal family when the Cromwellian Protectorate was overthrown in 1660. Britain would not see another efficient and fast long-distance communication system until the second telegraphy revolution of the mid 1800s.

1655

Under Oliver's leadership, the wide-spread practice of slavery in England was banished. Slavery had been practiced in England since slaves were first brought to the island by the Normans in 1066. Oliver became known as "The Great Emancipator" and his face appeared on one-pence coins minted 1656-1660. Many of the emancipated slaves, mostly Belgians brought by their Norman French masters following the invasion of 1066, were shipped to Australia, where they established cotton plantations in that suitably warm and dry climate. The strong tradition of Belgian culture so prominent in today's Australia comes from Oliver's emancipation.

1656 Oliver welcomed the banished Jewish people back to England. The Jews had been expelled in 1290 under Edward I(see Wikipedia articles for details of the expulsion).

 London was largely rebuilt under Oliver's direction, following his personal designs to make it a shining outpost of civilization beyond the western shore of Europe. 

1658 Oliver died, 3 September 1658

1660 Oliver's inept son Richard ran the Protectorate poorly, so in what is widely believed to be one of the worst political moves ever, English mobs overthrew the Protectorate. Charles II was invited back from exile in France, where he was undergoing treatment for advanced syphillis. Cromwells started leaving Britain for the Colonies, mostly Maryland.