Oliver Cromwell talk for Rotary Club of Ely members

Matthew works at Oliver Cromwell’s House in Ely, so he has become very well informed.

At the start, Matthew said the Oliver Cromwell we knew was not actually called ‘Oliver Cromwell’; his name was Oliver Williams.

From this moment, the listeners were hooked as Matthew corrected many misconceptions about the historical figure.

Matthew said Oliver was not the man who executed the king – his name was only one of many on the order for the execution and he certainly didn’t lift the axe himself.

Oliver was not the person wholly responsible for the atrocities in Ireland or for banning Christmas.

Oliver was not just a boring man dressed all in black with no sense of humour.

In fact, he was a practical joker who once put a pie on the chair of a priest while the priest led a prayer at a wedding.

When the priest sat down on the pie, the priest roared with laughter and laughed so much that they had to check his airways for he went purple.

Oliver started off poor and only when his uncle died did he inherit the house at 29 High St. Ely where he worked collecting the tythes for the church.

People had to pay 10% to the church of what they earned from cultivating church land. You can still see the tythe office today. It was then that Oliver became on of the landed gentry and an MP.

It was only when the King went too far and sent soldiers to purge parliament that Oliver became an activist.

The country endured civil war and was split down the middle. The two civil ways that divided the country had more people die than in the two world wars.

It was from Oliver’s time that soldiers wore red, because red dye was cheap.

After the King had been executed there was a vacuum and Oliver was asked to take over – but he refused to be King, merely ‘Lord Protector’.

The atrocities in Ireland were just one example of what was happening all over Europe at the time and as priests there took up arms, they joined in the fight so that is why some of them were killed.

The unwritten agreement that members of the clergy should never be killed in warfare was thus broken – not willingly.

Oliver had studied at Sydney Sussex College in Cambridge where one of the Rotarians had worked. There was some discussion about where Oliver’s head had been buried in the college.

Oliver eventually died of malaria but his body was put through a hanging and disembowelling. The new King did all he could to discredit his predecessor so that his how many of the false myths had been created.

Matthew said we don’t think of extremes and ask if he was man or monster, he was a complex man of his time.  Oliver was also a farmer and a man who loved his wife and family.

The Rotary Club welcomes new members contact rotary-ribi.org/clubs/homepage.php?ClubID=467 or search Rotary Club of Ely, Cambridgeshire, on Facebook.