Sly, vindictive, glory-guzzling, ruthless: a warts-and-all life of Oliver Cromwell

It’s about time we had a really cynical biography of Oliver Cromwell, and Ronald Hutton’s “Old Noll” is sly, vindictive, glory-guzzling and ruthless. He manipulates the press, lies in the House of Commons and destroys erstwhile allies with relish. He cannot be taken at his word, Hutton argues, because he employed a scattergun approach in his letters, firing out volleys of sentiment and scripture in the hope that something would hit the mark.

This makes him a slippery subject to profile and is one of the reasons, Hutton contends, that Cromwell – except in Ireland – is so often let off the hook. Another is the sheer complexity of the period and the incomplete, frequently conflicting, nature of the evidence. (Apart from anything else, Hutton, a historian of eminence, demonstrates the sheer graft required to write with authority about the Civil War.)

“Pitifully little” is known about the first four decades of Cromwell’s life. As with his equally enigmatic kinsman, Thomas Cromwell, there is plenty of retrospective anecdotage, but little substance. Even Oliver’s baptism record has been tampered with. Hutton dissects hoary myths with surgical precision and refuses to project the future Lord Protector on to the unspectacular Cambridgeshire provincial. There were some flashes of steel, such as when Cromwell tried (probably) to have his wealthy uncle declared insane, but he seemed destined for a life of little consequence in the fens.

Religion turned his world upside down. Sometime in the early 1630s, when he suffered a loss of status (from gentleman to yeoman farmer) and possibly also a breakdown, he turned to Puritanism. This was an intense form of Protestantism that assured him that he was God’s instrument in this life and would be saved in the next. His religiosity was extreme, writes Hutton, even by the standards of his age. It led to acts of compassion, such as his defence of the persecuted radical John Lilburne (“that courageous, wayward and rather irritating man”), but it also put iron in his side. Once he had identified the enemy – anyone who impeded religious liberty, from “papists” and the Archbishop of Canterbury to “presbyterian” Protestants – Cromwell attacked with existential force. He became, in Hutton’s piquant phrase, “a Puritan jihadi”.

This made him a useful, if somewhat volatile, ally of Charles I’s reformist opponents in the Long Parliament, the Parliament that would take him to war. Cromwell’s speeches as the Member for Cambridge may not have been pretty – he had a blotchy face, bad suit and “untunable” voice – but they rode the populist wave. This was a time of protests, petitions and the collapse of censorship. When war came, and others havered, Cromwell acted decisively, riding to Cambridge and seizing the university’s plate for Parliament. He had no military experience, but over three years, he climbed the cavalry ranks from captain of a troop of harquebusiers (light cavalry), to colonel of a horse regiment, to lieutenant-general of the cavalry in the New Model Army, which would win the war for Parliament.

Cromwell never lost a major battle. He was an outstanding tactician and an inspired leader of men. He learnt on the job – only once did he chase fleeing opponents too far off the field – and he grew to be as disciplined as he was fearless. He was also, Hutton argues, a tremendous self-publicist who magnified himself and his regiment while hazing the achievements of others. The “few Scots in the rear” at Marston Moor deserved more from his pen.

More than half of The Making of Oliver Cromwell is military history. This is not to diminish it, rather to define it, and the man. Hutton’s scenes are cinematic. He delineates every change of season and furrow in the land. This not only conveys the poetry of history, but also highlights the value of Cromwell’s grasp of terrain. Hutton also offers nuggets of practical knowledge – the laxative effect of gunpowder smoke, for example – gleaned from 30 years’ experience in the Sealed Knot re-enactment society. It is a rare history professor who writes about “cream-crested wigeons” and “fragrant foamy meadowsweet”, while also warning against following a gunner into a Portaloo.

Cromwell was lucky, too, as all great commanders have to be. He was as good as dead on the ground at Winceby before being rescued by his men. Every escape, every providential deliverance, as he saw it, enhanced his holy glow. He had no business in the New Model Army – the Self-Denying Ordinance of 1645 excluded MPs – but he was in the right place at the right time and, after Naseby, he was indispensable.

Hutton does not trust Cromwell, but nor does he minimise his qualities or repeat calumnies. Cromwell was not responsible for the atrocities against the royalist female camp followers after Naseby, nor was he as merciless towards the Catholics of Basing House in Hampshire as the law of war permitted. He did, however, prepare for the storming of that great garrison with a savage psalm against idolatrous heathens, the full dehumanising effects of which would be realised four years later across the Irish Sea.

This book closes in 1646, with Charles I defeated and Cromwell poised to take power. Had he died at this point, he would be considered an effective MP, a strenuous Puritan and a distinguished cavalry commander. That he was so much more – “arguably the greatest commoner of all time”, writes Hutton, and the first to become head of state, is because of what came next. Hutton has produced a superb, coruscating, immensely stimulating profile of the rising Cromwell. The key questions about this singularly fascinating man – his role in the regicide, his Irish policy, his designs on the crown – cry out for a sequel. Hutton dangles the prospect – “if I continue to deal with Cromwell’s life”. Yes please.

The Making of Oliver Cromwell is published by Yale at ￡25. To order your copy for ￡19.99 call 0844 871 1514 or visit the Telegraph Bookshop