Cromwell: Successes and Failures

• The Rump


  Tasked itself with removing the vestiges of royalism from England
• The Rump


  • Declared they had sole legislative power
  • Elected the council of state which acted like the privy council
• The monarch was abolished


  MARCH 1649
• England was declared a commonwealth


  MAY 1649
• Ireland was a royalist stronghold and Charles II was declared the king of Scotland because they thought he would give them Presbyterianism
• Cromwell at war with royalists in Ireland

  SEPT 1649
• Cromwell at war with royalists in Scotland

  SEPT 1650
• Cromwell finally defeats royalist armies at Battle of Worcester


  SEPT 1651
• Early England parliamentarian pamphlets claimed that 200,000 protestant settlers had been killed.
• Pacification of Ireland


  Cromwell was motivated by revenge and wanted to have complete protestant and English control
• Pacification of Ireland


  1. The process was brutal

  2. In AUG 1649 Cromwell landed with 20,00 men to suppress catholic royalist sympathisers

  3. Cromwell declared he was doing god's work

  4. In OCT 1649 the army stormed Wexford, slaughtering thousands
• DEFEAT OF IRISH

  • After nine months, Cromwell established authority over much of Ireland and ended royalist hopes
  • The subjugation of Ireland was complete in MAY 1652, the Act of Settlement was brutal


  There was transfer of land from natives to the English, the Irish suffered greatly
• IMPACT ON IRELAND

  1. Huge proportion of the Catholics were made to get west
  2. Resulted in famine and outbreak of the plague
  3. Sent at least 10,000 Irish people to the Caribbean and Americas
  4. Ireland became a place of profit to landowners and a source of cheap food


  However, it did not have impact on politics in general in England