Free Choice Book Report: The Making of Oliver Cromwell by Ronald Hutton
Oliver Cromwell is one of the most fascinating British historical figures in its history. A commoner who became the ruler of his land, Cromwell has been hated, admired, and everything in between for nearly four hundred years, there have been many, many books about the man, his life and his impact on history. One of these books attempts to take a different approach to the life of Oliver Cromwell. Ronald Hutton in his book The Making of Oliver Cromwell, Sutton calls Cromwell “the greatest commoner of all time”. Sutton also touches upon how extraordinary Cromwel’s life was. Sutton stars his book by acknowledging the many numbers of biographies that have been about Oliver Cronwell. But Sutton says that his own biography will be different than the rest. Many books either worship Cromwell or look at him through a less heroic Lense. Hutton tries to read through it all and find a balanced narrative despite the historiography that tends to either fully hate or fully love the man Hutton writes about, Oliver Cromwell.
The Making of Oliver Cromwell covers the first forty-eight years of Cronwell’s life. From birth, to 1647. Sutton notes that there is a lack of knowledge of Cromwell’s early life. We know his locations around this time, but as for actual personal information about Cromwell, it is severely lacking. That is why Sutton spends little time on Oliver’s childhood. We go from his birth, to him attending Cambridge at age seventeen in just a few paragraphs. What I like about Sutton is that when he needs to, he makes reasoned interpretation based on what we know of Cromwell.
Hutton concludes that “it has been clear to most of Cromwell’s biographers that the informing and defining experience of his life was his conversion to a passionate, Puritan, religiosity… Until then he seems a genuinely undistinguished and unambitious provincial minor gentleman.”(421). Usually when there are little to no historical knowledge on the early life of a figure, it can be hard to assume what events in that person’s life shaped why acted the way they did. For Oliver, thankfully despite a lack of evidence of early life, we do know that his conversion really shaped him into being who he became as a person.
Sutton writes “Can any more flesh be put onto these scraps of archival bone? Do we have any sense of what the young Cromwell was like as a person? Here there is an obvious problem with the early biographies of him: that, naturally, enough, the sycophantic accounts produced just after his death represented him as a paragon of sagacity, repairing for a great future, and those written later by political enemies make him an exemplar of most follies and vices…All or none of these portraits and accounts may be true. We are on safer ground when both the admiring nd hostile accounts agree on occasional detail.”(42-43). This could be one of Sutton’s purposes for writing The Making of Oliver Cromwell. Many biographies choose a side, they worship Cromwell, or they villainize him. Sutton is taking the middle ground, weaving through the biased sources that either adored Cromwell or detested him.
An example of Sutton’s balanced narrative is how he doesn’t make Cromwell perfect. Cromwell was far from perfect, but biographers can pick and choose what characteristics to highlight and some to leave under the table. Sutton brings up Cromwell’s constant self-promotion. For example, his rise in parliament, Sutton credits to when he defended John Lilburn. Cromwell had never met Lilburn before, but John was a “celebrated victim of the crackdown on Puritanism instituted by Charles I’s Personal Rule. It was doubtless conducted, as has been said, with passionate sincerity, but it also immediately brought Cromwell to the attention of the House of Commons in a context which could reasonably be expected to win him sympathy and regard, and so it did.”(423). Oliver tended to leave all the glory to himself. The only names that he would be mentioned as deserving of praise is God. Hutton remarks that Cromwell remains modest while also taking all the glory. (424). Cromwell is not a comic book villain. We see how capable he is in battle. For example, Cromwell was a capable cavalry leader at both Marston Moor and Naseby. A author looking to demean Cromwell would have belittle these achievements which Sutton does not do. Ronald Sutton walks the fine line between praising Cromwell but keeps himself from deifying Cromwell’s memory.
I always appreciated it when authors actually flesh out characters and don’t just treat them like a name on a page. Sutton does this with important historical figures such as Sir Thomas Fairfax, Prince Rupert and King Charles among many others. Cromwell is the main focal point of this story, but Hutton does not forget the other important people in Cromwell’s life. Another thing I appreaicted is that It is easier to understand Oliver Cromwell and his actions if you are able to fiully comprehend the historical and political context of the world in which Cromwell emerged. For this, I thought Sutton did a capable effort of relaying what tensions were during this period without turning it into a different book altogether.
In conclusion, in his book The Making of Oliver Cromwell, Hutton intentionally tries to take a balanced look at the man’s life. Going into reading this book, I knew a little about Oliver Cromwell’s life. I watched the film Cromwell but other than that, I didn’t know too much about the man. Hutton really does paint a balanced picture of a man who had good and bad qualities. Hutton doesn’t portray Cromwell as a evil villain or a misunderstood hero. Here, Oliver Cromwell is first and foremost, a human being.