He entered the English Civil Wars on the side of the ' Roundheads', or Parliamentarians, and gained the nickname 'Old Ironsides'. Cromwell was elected Member of Parliament for Huntingdon in 1628, and for Cambridge in the Short (1640) and Long (1640–1649) Parliaments.
He became an Independent Puritan after undergoing a religious conversion in the 1630s, taking a generally tolerant view towards the many Protestant sects of the time an intensely religious man, Cromwell fervently believed in God guiding him to victory. Little is known of the first 40 years of his life, as only four of his personal letters survive, along with a summary of a speech that he delivered in 1628. He acted simultaneously as head of state and head of government of the new republican commonwealth.Ĭromwell was born into the landed gentry to a family descended from the sister of Henry VIII's minister Thomas Cromwell. Oliver Cromwell (25 April 1599 – 3 September 1658) was an English general and statesman who, first as a subordinate and later as Commander-in-Chief, led armies of the Parliament of England against King Charles I during the English Civil War, subsequently ruling the British Isles as Lord Protector from 1653 until his death in 1658.
