Oliver Cromwell: Commander in Chief

Oliver Cromwell #2

by Ronald Hutton

The second volume in an acclaimed biography of Oliver Cromwell, from the capture of Charles I to the expulsion of the Long Parliament
 
In 1647, the Parliamentarians were divided. They had won the first civil war and the king was in custody, but disagreements over the way forward had led to a stalemate. As the leader of one party, Oliver Cromwell found himself again at the centre of events.
 
In the second volume of his pioneering biography, Ronald Hutton traces Cromwell’s career from 1647 through to his seizure of supreme power. These decisive years saw the execution of Charles I and the establishment of the Commonwealth of England, as well as notorious and savage campaigns in Ireland and Scotland. Cromwell’s political and military leadership were well honed after years of practice, but this was also the period of his greatest ruthlessness and brutality.
 
This groundbreaking account reveals a different kind of Cromwell, showing how he navigated the many forces ranged against him—and rose to the pinnacle of his power.

Genres: History, Biography, Nonfiction, British Literature, Biography Memoir, Military Fiction, European History

480 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 2024

About the author

Ronald Hutton (born 1953) is an English historian who specializes in the study of Early Modern Britain, British folklore, pre-Christian religion and contemporary Paganism. A professor of history at the University of Bristol, Hutton has published fourteen books and has appeared on British television and radio.

Reviews

[Anthony · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hammer of the Commonwealth

Ronald Hutton has said that he never intended to write this book, but was almost backed into a corner with the success and interest from the first volume. It was always going to be a ‘take it or leave it’ type of project. Commander in Chief picks up where The Rise of Oliver Cromwell left off, an intellectually rigorous continuation of Oliver Cromwell’s life and legacy. This book, is volume two in the series (who knows if or when we will get a third volume) and follows Cromwell into the heart of his political ascendancy; charting his role as Lord Protector and his efforts to govern a deeply fractured post-civil war England. With his characteristic scholarly care, Hutton avoids both the hagiographic treatment some biographers fall into and the relentless vilification found in others, instead offering a compellingly complex portrait of a man driven by principle, ambition, and an unshakable religious conviction.

Hutton’s meticulous attention to the nuances of Cromwell’s character and context shows great scholarship. He situates Cromwell not as a solitary genius or tyrant but as a deeply contextual figure; someone constantly negotiating the unstable political, military, and religious terrain of the Interregnum. Hutton’s analysis of Cromwell’s theology is particularly striking, illuminating how Puritan belief was not merely a backdrop to his decisions but the very lens through which he interpreted the world. This focus may prove dense for casual readers, but for students of early modern history, it’s a rich and rewarding thread.

Hutton also spends considerable time reassessing Cromwell’s policies, especially his foreign ventures, his treatment of Ireland and Scotland, and his vision for constitutional reform. He challenges several long-standing assumptions, often revisiting older narratives with fresh archival evidence or reframed questions. His Cromwell is not a man with a clear master plan for dictatorship or even republicanism, but rather a leader often improvising sometimes brilliantly and sometimes disastrously, in a world where stable governance seemed perpetually out of reach. Hutton’s Cromwell is an undoubted military genius who had a fired temper but was able to reconcile with those he had fallen out with. This is probably a fair analysis.

I would say that the weakness of Commander in Chief lies in the pacing. Hutton’s commitment to precision occasionally leads to long, digressive passages, particularly on the theological disputes and administrative minutiae of the Protectorate. While these sections are undoubtedly important, they can bog down the narrative flow, making the book feel more like a scholarly monograph than a fluid biography. Additionally, readers looking for dramatic flair or vivid character sketches may find Hutton’s restrained prose style a bit too clinical.

Yet these are minor drawbacks in the context of Hutton’s broader achievement. This is a serious, thoughtful, and fair-minded contribution to Cromwell studies, one that neither lionises nor demonises its subject but seeks to understand him in full. In doing so, Hutton encourages readers to grapple with Cromwell as a product of a chaotic age, whose legacy continues to provoke debate because he himself embodied so many contradictions: military hero and political pragmatist, zealous reformer and cautious conservative, religious radical and national leader.

For me, although comprehensive this is not the definitive Cromwell biography, but it might be the most honest and carefully constructed attempt yet to situate him within the world he tried, and ultimately failed, to reshape. Overall Commander in Chief is a deeply intelligent and rewarding work if you are willing to engage with the complexity of both Cromwell and the times he inhabited. It is a book for historians, students of the English Revolution, and anyone interested in the perennial struggle between authority, faith, and liberty.

[Graham · Rating 3 out of 5]

Just finished:

"Oliver Cromwell: Commander and Chief"

By: Ronald Hutton

New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2024.

I found this book to be a mixed bag. In some ways it really hit home. In other ways, I expected much more.

Hutton's account is a revisionist history. He is more skeptical towards Cromwell, thought not as critical as histories that came before the 1800s.

Pros. Hutton's analysis of Cromwell's army at Drogheda and Wexford was indepth and that the evidence disagrees with the assertion that Cromwell's troops killed civilians there. Civilians survived to tell what happened.

Cons. I felt like Hutton should have focused on Cromwell's rule after 1653. His account only covers 1647-1653. He devotes very little to Charles's trial and execution.

Yes, Hutton demonstrates that Cromwell could be a political schemer when it suited him. However, I found much to be desired with this book.

[Charles Haywood · Rating 4 out of 5]

Most know about the English Civil War, and that it ended with the execution of Charles I, in 1649. But this is not really true. That war, the First English Civil War, which alone killed, directly and indirectly, around five percent of the English population, was merely part of the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, meaning among England, Ireland, and Scotland, lasting from 1639 to 1653. These complicated conflicts arguably made the West what it is, or was, and they therefore are worthy of much more study than we give them. Moreover, the crucial role played by Oliver Cromwell in nearly all these conflicts is further illuminating for our own time. Studying Cromwell is therefore something we should bring back into fashion.

A good place to start is Ronald Hutton’s trilogy biography of Cromwell. This is the second volume, just published, to be followed in a few years by the third. Hutton’s excellent first volume covered Cromwell’s early life, up until 1646 and the end of fighting in the First English Civil War, including his rise from obscure provincial to important military commander. This volume covers Cromwell’s involvement in the immediately-subsequent struggles between the New Model Army and Parliament; his involvement in the killing of King Charles; the reduction of Wales, Ireland, and Scotland; and almost up to his ascension to Lord Protector, the new head of state of the realm of England, in 1653. As he did in his first volume, Hutton writes expressively. Not only does he offer lush descriptions of landscape and wildlife, his geographic descriptions, particularly of cities, are also excellent. The reader almost feels like he is there; despite all the detail, this book is a delight to read.

In 1647, when this book begins, Cromwell was forty-eight years old. He was living in London, as a member of Parliament, but his power base was the military. More precisely, it was the cavalry of the New Model Army, most of which Cromwell had commanded by the end of the war. Cromwell was not the leader of the New Model; that was Sir Thomas Fairfax, with whom Cromwell generally was on excellent terms. Fairfax, however, was much less political than Cromwell, who passed very easily between war and politics, operating in both at the highest level of competence.

What comes through most of all in these pages is how much of a political animal Cromwell was. Unlike many military men, he enjoyed the constant whirl of politics, what would today be called networking. He was good at it, too. Among many other skills, rarely found in combination, he frequently worked privately to adjust the behavior of opponents or problem-causers, striving to align them with his cause and himself, and only resorting to public action against them if absolutely necessary. This is even more impressive given Cromwell’s notoriously bad temper, which he managed to control much of the time by force of will (a characteristic he shared with George Washington, as it happens).

Similarly, he was an excellent bridge-builder and manager of men, often able to get men opposed to each other to cooperate to pursue joint ends, Cromwell’s ends. He himself was more than willing to reconcile with former enemies to achieve his goals. He was decisive, patient, flexible, and able to react to each moment, each surprise, with a fresh strategy. He was also slippery and more than once justly accused of duplicity. But he regarded all that he did as done in the service of God, so no doubt, this bothered him little. Unfortunately, his inner life is mostly opaque to us; he left no archive of letters, and he sent few letters that survive. Most of what we know we have to surmise from his actions, or view through claims made by others about what Cromwell said.

The problem the victorious Parliament faced in 1647 was like the old joke about the dog chasing the car—what does the dog do if he actually catches the car? The royalist forces had been defeated, and Charles was a prisoner of the Scots. But Parliament was unsure what to do with the country’s royalists, who were many, and several of whom were among the richest and most powerful landowners in the country (though many others, along with Charles’s wife and son, had wisely departed for France after Charles’s defeat). Parliament was unsure what to do with the royalists’ property, though the massive debts that Parliament owed, in particular to the soldiers, suggested confiscation and redistribution was the answer. Parliament was unsure what to do about the established church and hierarchy, and what forms of Christian belief and practice to allow. Parliament was unsure what to do about Scotland, which had joined Parliament in fighting the King, but was now in a prickly relationship, mostly because of religious differences. Parliament was unsure what to do about Ireland, where battles were being fought between Catholics and Protestants, and a royalist lord still held Dublin and the surrounding region. All of this led to an unstable situation.

As so often with Protestants, the victorious Parliament proved fissiparous in its religious beliefs. The basic split that became crucial as soon as the war was won (though it was visible before, certainly) was between “presbyterians,” who wanted a reformed church which still retained a national center and hierarchy, along with largely uniform liturgical practice and doctrine, and “independents,” who wanted near-total freedom of worship and organization on the parish, even individual, level. (Many of the Puritans of New England were essentially a type of independent.) The split was not always clear, however, and men moved from one position to another, depending on the specific issue at hand. This religious division was accompanied by another split, which came to the fore in these years. Some independents also wanted massive political change—increasing suffrage, ending the monarchy, eliminating the House of Lords, and other such changes.

Following such matters in this book is a little more difficult than it should be. Hutton, “as a matter of personal taste”, refuses to use many “insulting” traditional terms such as “Rump Parliament” or “Levellers.” This makes little sense; it may be that these terms were originally designed as polemics, but they have long since lost that force by passing into common usage. Unfortunately, his choice leads to some confusion for the casual reader, who is used to seeing those terms, and subconsciously looks for those terms to map onto his existing knowledge. This is not a fatal defect in the book, however.

In the nation as a whole, the presbyterians were far more popular and numerous. In Parliament they were the majority. However, in the army, the independents held the upper hand. Cromwell was an independent, and knew very well on which side his bread was buttered, given that his base of support was the New Model. But he was a moderate; he generally was willing to accept a presbyterian system if it gave latitude to those who wished to remain outside it.

The division between presbyterians and independents largely drove English history in these years. At this point, it meant that tension was increasing between Parliament and the army. The army wanted to be paid; Parliament wanted to shrink the army, both as a means of saving money, and because it was increasingly seen as a hotbed of problematic heresies, although it also wanted to use the army against potential enemies in Ireland and Scotland. A return to normalcy made sense, but many in the army, which was bored and was constantly whipped up by anonymous pamphlets and itinerant freelance preachers, saw no reason to return to normalcy until their desired goals were achieved.

In March of 1647, Parliament tried to disband much of the New Model, while promising they would be paid, and send the rest to Ireland to subdue the conflict there. The soldiers responded with a “petition,” a standard device of the time, in essence combining a refusal to obey commands with demands of their own. Parliament saw this as mutinous, logically enough. Still, they sent four members of Parliament to negotiate with the soldiers, one of whom was Cromwell. Negotiations were complicated by that they were typically framed in religious terms, but the material conditions of the soldiers, most of all their back pay, lurked in every discussion. If Parliament had been able to pay the soldiers, none of what transpired would probably have happened. Both sides were suspicious—the soldiers suspected that Parliament was trying to cut a deal with the King and disband them without fulfilling any of their demands, while Parliament was suspicious that the soldiers would mutiny and attack Parliament.

The first might have happened, but it was precluded by the second actually happening. It was triggered by Parliament formally voting to disband the New Model, and preparing to bring the London militia, almost as large as the New Model, but not as experienced, again to arms. Cromwell was later accused here of playing both sides, though Hutton thinks this unjustified. Regardless, he ultimately always sided with the army, which was inevitable, because that was his power base. Parliament might or might not have intended to arrest him, but Cromwell skipped town and joined the army in the countryside. The New Model, fifteen thousand strong, kidnapped the King (who had earlier been handed over to Parliament by the Scots) and prepared for renewed war. Parliament at first tried to mollify the soldiers; they quickly realized the army’s demands had escalated to a total purge of Parliament, so Parliament also prepared for war.

It quickly became evident that Parliament had a very inferior military position. Wisely, they sued for peace, including expelling MPs the army found particularly distasteful. This made the soldiers “an independent power in the land.” After some more negotiation, and attempts by Parliament to re-establish their primacy, the soldiers finally had enough, and marched into London to “liberate” it. There was little violence, because the London militia simply didn’t turn out to fight. What this meant, in practice, was that Parliament (minus some more members, and now dominated by independents) continued sitting, and various factions, from the King to the radicals, all competed to pass their own desired legislation or otherwise obtain their desired ends, while the soldiers chafed at the continued lack of pay, even as taxes rose ever higher to merely pay them a portion of their current wages.

In the following year, the spring of 1648, Welsh royalists rose in rebellion. Cromwell was sent with an army to defeat them, which he quickly and competently accomplished, setting the pattern for all of his activities for the subsequent years of his career. He had to wrap it up quickly, because a royalist Scots army invaded England in mid-summer, with the aim of establishing a presbyterian Church in England and reaching a settlement with the King. At this point the expectation of nearly all in England, including most of the independents, was that the King would be restored to his throne, after he had agreed to a wide range of restrictions on his power, as well as to relinquish much of his control over the Church. Nobody who mattered was openly talking about removing him from the throne permanently, much less executing him. Charles was a difficult man to negotiate with, however—he took very seriously his role as a monarch appointed by God, which meant he was obliged to maintain the power of the monarchy. Moreover, the multiplicity of parties involved made it easy for him to believe that he could play them off against each other to reach a favorable settlement for him, and for his many supporters in the war he had lost, some of whom were threatened with execution. Hutton spends quite a bit of time on the details of negotiations Charles had with all the relevant parties. Charles negotiated in good faith, for the most part, but was always looking for a better deal. Unfortunately for him, over time his position continuously eroded, and much of that was due to Cromwell’s defeat of those more favorable to the King, and Cromwell himself turning against the King.

At the Battle of Preston (really a series of battles in that general area), in northern England, Cromwell thumped the Scots, even though they had “superior numbers and no obvious weaknesses.” As always, Cromwell took this as an opportunity to write self-congratulatory letters of propaganda to Parliament, carefully cloaked in terms of personal modesty and giving thanks and credit to God, which were widely published and publicized by his allies in the press. Cromwell then marched into Scotland, and by the fall had forced a settlement on the Scots without more significant fighting, including removing from the Scots government those who had encouraged the incursion into England.

Meanwhile, the army still in England was becoming increasingly restless, perceiving no progress toward satisfying their religious and pecuniary demands. The New Model again occupied London, under the command of Fairfax, while Cromwell was still occupied in the north, reducing a royalist rebellion in Yorkshire, centered on the powerful Pontefract Castle—although there is some evidence Cromwell was involved behind the scenes in encouraging this second rebellion against Parliament’s authority. His own soldiers were among the most radical in the army, and Cromwell was himself dissatisfied with Parliament, so this seems very likely. In Pride’s Purge (again, a term not used by Hutton), in December, the army prevented all parliamentarians they regarded as not friendly to them from sitting in the Commons, creating the Rump Parliament that was wholly in sync with the army, and totally dominated by the independents. In practice this was a simply a military coup.

Parliament immediately moved to put Charles on trial, now with the general expectation that he would be executed as a result. Cromwell had returned to London, and was very active as one of the judges, while also conducting other parliamentary business, as well as suppressing independents deemed too radical (collectively now known as Levellers, but consisting of many different individuals and groups). On January 30, Charles was executed, something with which Cromwell was completely in agreement.

A matter Hutton does not remark on, but which is interesting to me, is that on many, many occasions Cromwell and others, facing a difficult decision, engaged in a “day of prayer and fasting” before making their choice. It is interesting because fasting has fallen so completely out of favor among Protestants, and has also nearly disappeared among Roman Catholics, although it is still a significant part of Orthodox practice. Certainly the New Testament is full of Christ and his followers fasting as a spiritual discipline, up to and including Christ declaring that certain demons can only be exorcised by “prayer and fasting.” Cromwell and his compatriots, obsessive readers of Scripture, no doubt fasted for this reason. But why Protestants later abandoned it, at least as a major, quasi-compulsory practice, I am not really sure.

In February, Cromwell was made president of the Council of State, the new chief executive body of the country, now declared a Commonwealth, making him officially the most powerful man in England. He was also now one of the richest men in England, because with each success of his, Parliament added more estates and income to his name. The new militant Parliament’s first order of business was permanently ending the Irish problem. Ireland had long been unsettled, a complex stew of Catholics combined with relatively recent Protestant settlers, with the latter divided among those with royalist and Parliamentarian sympathies, and a long history of accusation and counter-accusation of atrocities among the groups. In 1649 Cromwell was sent to Ireland with a large, well-funded, and well-equipped army. He remained in Ireland for a little more than year, having successfully attacked and captured several major cities, including Drogheda and Wexford.

The brutality of these battles, and the massacres that took place after them, are the most controversial aspects of Cromwell’s career, and Hutton goes into great detail about the evidence, both with respect to the degree of killing and the responsibility for it, essentially taking a middle position between those who see Cromwell as a bloodthirsty monster and those wishing to absolve him from responsibility, with a tilt toward the former. Cromwell, after all, was a Protestant ideologue, nearly a fanatic, and he was ruthless when faced with opposition he could not coopt or negotiate with. “[H]e was remaining perfectly true to his nature, because he had always been a killer,” a “born holy warrior.” Aside from that, these battles showed once again Cromwell’s extreme competence as a military commander, coupled with constant luck, though as it is said, luck is where preparation meets opportunity. But Cromwell saw his luck as Providence, which was a perfectly reasonable interpretation in the frame through which he viewed the world.

Parliament, and England, were thrilled with Cromwell’s success in Ireland. The Scots, however, were again preparing for war, even after Cromwell had remade their government. They were insulted by the regicide Parliament had committed—for, after all, Charles was separately King of Scotland, and nobody had asked their opinion about what should be done with him, or whether England should become a Commonwealth. In fact, the governing treaty between Scotland and Parliament, the Solemn League and Covenant of 1643, explicitly called for the monarchy to be preserved, and so the Scots declared Charles’s son (the later Charles II), abroad in France, to be the new king of not only Scotland, but also England and Ireland—although they made clear he would have to accept the presbyterian religious limitations demanded by the Scots before they would help install him.

The Scots had excellent commanders as well as . . . . [Review completes as first comment.]

[Toby · Rating 5 out of 5]

In his introduction Ronald Hutton tells us that his previous volume, The Making of Oliver Cromwell, was not intended to form the first part of what is now a (likely) trilogy. He was concerned that the descriptions of the flora and fauna of seventeenth century England and the possible responses of Cromwell to his environment sailed dangerously close to historical fiction. We can be thankful that the earlier volume was received so warmly because he has followed it up with a wonderfully evocative and readable account of the period between Cromwell's victory at Naseby and his assumption of supreme power in 1653.

The nature notes are still there, and provide their own interest. I had to go to the footnotes at the back to check that there really had been golden eagles in southern Wales. Nice to the see the Great Bustard making a brief appearance as well. Having holidayed this year in Edgehill, and seen the escarpment under which the first of the English Civil War battles took place, I did appreciate more Hutton's descriptions of the natural world.

The six years covered in this book are ones that I knew comparatively little about and so was pleased to read about them in detail. Cromwell comes across as the master tactician. The same commander that led his Cavalry into victory in the English Civil War repeats his successes in Ireland, Scotland and England in the years that followed. This of course resulted in the civilian massacre at Drogheda and the destruction of the Scottish army at Dunbar. Hutton deals with the former with a judicious historians eye, trying to peel off the accreted layers of myth making around Cromwell's most notorious act.

As with the first volume, Cromwell himself remains a mystery to us. The disappearance of much of his correspondence doesn't help this but as Hutton points out in the introduction and conclusion, Cromwell was a man seemingly entirely driven by an Old Testament notion of God and godliness. His acts, often pragmatic, were directed towards the one aim of creating a truly Godly society, a Godly society brought about through the power of his increasingly militant army. The purging of Parliament 1648 and the absolute coup in 1653 see a narrowing down of political life as more and more of those who are seen as less than fervent or compromising the faith are driven out. 140 years separated the English and French Revolutions, but the patterns of uncompromising fanaticism and the radicalisation of the military are present in both. This is a truly excellent book and I look forward to the concluding volume.

[Farah Mendlesohn · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed the first book very much but expressed my uneasiness with Hutton's conclusions in my Goodread notes. It seemed to me that Hutton was judging Cromwell's behaviour without any comparison to that of his colleagues, and in the context of world that functioned through nepotism/sponsorship.

With this book unease has turned into clanging alarms. Hutton has revived pre-Carlyle Cromwell, the view that was absolutely convinced that a lower class man could not possibly rise through his own merits, talents, skills, the admiration of his peers, and the simple fact that pretty much everyone else who might have led the Commonwealth was dead (Pym) or disabled (Fairfax). In order to rise, Cromwell must therefore be a devious plotter who connived against his allies, and set out to betray everyone from self interest.

I am not convinced; of course Cromwell was ambitious, but so was everyone else. He gets flack because his contemporaries did not actually believe in meritocracy, that just wasn't their world. And the problem with being the great compromiser and negotiator is that everyone believes you betrayed them-that doesn't mean it's true.

--
Other issues are the number of times that Hutton makes an unsubstantiated assertion about something. Just a couple that jumped out at me.

- that Parliament was more representative than the army. How does that work exactly? The Rump is tiny, and it was elected on a narrow franchise; the army is drawn from across the country, there is barely a county that didn't have men in it. Yes, it leaned radical and independent and in that sense was 'biased' but the Rump leaned Presbyterian as was no less either biased or more in step with religious practice across the country.

- the assertion that London didn't rise to prevent Fairfax and the army because it was tired of fighting. Maybe it's true but Hutton presents no evidence, and it's equally possible that the presence of their fathers, sons, and brothers in the army was an inhibiting factor.

There are a number of places in the book like these when I just stop and think; this is a guess, it has no footnote, no evidence, just assumptions.


--
The two most valuable chapters are on Ireland and Scotland, but given the arguments that Hutton wants to make actually comparing those two fields of operation (which I've never seen anyone do) as we can because the two chapters sit next to each other, would have been (and is if you do it) really illuminating.

[Matthew Welker · Rating 5 out of 5]

This second volume in Hutton’s biographical work continues where the last one left off. It’s just so good. This second volume covers Cromwell’s life following the close of the first Civil War to when he shuts down the Parliament in 1653.

There’s a lot to learn here and I think anyone interested in this era & Cromwell will learn something. I’m also a fan of Hutton’s writing style. This isn’t a very academic book imo, but feels like a nice bridge between a more casual easy to read biography and something leaning academic. Hutton writes very descriptively & in that “narrative” style when it comes to the action to allow the reader to give a mental image of events. I also think his analysis is really good. He recognizes what you could say are the positives of Cromwell such as being
part of a time or movement that planted the seeds of modern democracy, liberalism, etc… I think when understanding the very revolution America had to get founded, you can trace that back to what happened during Cromwell’s time. Yet Hutton also recognized the darker side of the man especially with his ruthlessness in battle & what happened in Ireland.

Anyway, this is a great second volume in what will surely be a great overall biographical work on Oliver Cromwell when volume 3 comes. Will it be the definitive biography? Lord only knows, but we shall see & I am very much looking forward to it!

[Alistair Robinson · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the second installment in Ronald Hutton 's biography of Oliver Cromwell, this book taking us up to Cromwell assuming supreme power. The author is balanced and draws on a wide range of sources.
Events such as Drogheda, where Cromwell's ruthlessness is used to blacken his name by Irish nationalists are placed in their historical context and by the rules of war of the period such as they existed. The account is comprehensive but doesn't become bogged down in the minutae of the negotiations between various factions in England and Scotland, the second civil war and parliamentary manouevering.
Perhaps lesser known battles such as Dunbar and Worcester are covered well.
All in all what emerges is a portrait of a complex and determined man, brutal but then so were the times and for good or ill a man with the drive to succeed and see England governed effectively.
Recommended

[Big Otter Books · Rating 5 out of 5]

5 stars. Engrossing and well-researched; brings Cromwell to vivid life for the reader. If all you know about Cromwell is that he cut off the head of the King-buckle up for what happens next. The politics, power, and bloody brutality combine to shape history as masterminded by Cromwell. Hutton is a wonderful writer and his enjoyment of the topic shows through as he pulls all the details together to give the reader an engaging story that reads like historical fiction and brings the polarizing Cromwell and his time into perspective. This is book two of a planned trilogy and I highly recommend reading any and everything written by Hutton on any topic.

[Alex Spedding · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant. The books I've read on this period tend to cover up to the execution of Charles I so it was nice to fill in some more gaps for me. I found this book very readable, my preference being the Ireland and Scotland chapters in particular.

For the majority of my read I assumed this was the second and final book, and was confused how the author was going to cover the five years of the Lord Protector with such few words, but I'm glad to know it wasn't reach and will remain hopeful that this will turn into a trilogy.

[Rick Forncett · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is the second of a trilogy on Cromwell. It covers the period from the end of the Civil War in 1646 to Cromwell’s coup against the Rump Parliament of 1653.

It is a very interesting read, both scholarly and well researched but never dry.

The factors that stick in my mind are Cromwell’s attachment to the Army through this preiod and also his ruthlessness. This is particularly evident in the Irish campaign which was very savage compared with the battles fought in England.

I look forward to reading the final instalment when it is published.

[The Bauchler · Rating 3 out of 5]

For me this was a disappointing sequel to Hutton's 'The Making of Oliver Cromwell' which I thoroughly enjoyed.

I found it difficult to 'get into' and read it over a couple of weeks and honestly struggled to take it back up after a period of not reading it.

It may be because this period of his life, although important, is more about the political machinations of parliament, the army and the factions therein.

It is still a very good reference book, but I felt it lacked the flair of the previous volume.

It does have a very insightful summation of Cromwell's character and his motives in which Hutton argues well.

Despite my criticisms I still wish to read the final volume.

[Julia Dietz · Rating 4 out of 5]

It’s an engaging book, which is to be expected from a veteran writer such as Professor Hutton. From my American perspective I found it accessible and even engaging, if not slightly confusing (that might be on me). He’s a master of his craft and I enjoyed his explorations outside of the realm of witches.

[Mason Wyss · Rating 3 out of 5]

It’s unfortunate that so much of the book is about the military campaigns because that is of basically no interest to me. Which is a shame because the parts of the book about politics are quite good.