Written by Helene Chaligne
Oliver Cromwell has a tricky legacy; he was a figure of many firsts. His achievements included being the first commoner to lead Britain when he became Lord Protector in 1653. As the head of the army, a seminal figure in the 1640s Civil Wars, and a key person in Charles I’s trial and eventual execution, Cromwell is associated with many hugely important moments in Britain’s history. Historians explain his complicated legacy by pointing to attempts to smear his actions immediately after the Restoration. His very central position has led to him being lauded for his military achievements and, among other things, leading the first British government with a constitution. However, many of his critics point to his campaign in Ireland as a significant stain on his legacy that can seldom be ignored.
Cromwell spent only forty weeks in Ireland between 1649 and 1650. However, during that time, he captured twenty-five fortified towns and castles, starting with Louth and ending with Galway. Albeit short, his time there left a lasting impression on Irish culture, which is evident when looking at the evolution of the memory of Cromwell in Ireland.
Looking first at its evolution more generally, one can see that, formally, the view of Cromwell changed in the nineteenth century as nationalist and unionist movements were on the rise in Ireland. Prior to that, historians of the seventeenth century, most of whom had royalist tendencies, quite often overlooked Cromwell; figures such as James Butler and the Duke of Ormonde were among the most vilified instead, due to their involvement in land transfers into the hands of Protestant minorities. Eighteenth-century Irish histories seemed to focus on the rising of 1641 and Williamite settlements, with Cromwell often being described as an honourable enemy. It was not until Victorian historians that a darker depiction of Cromwell emerged, notably pointing to the massacres at Drogheda and Wexford as being the resettlements which sparked a strong hatred of him. However, historian Sarah Covington points out that the hatred of Cromwell emerged long before nineteenth-century partisan historians. She observes his appearance across oral and popular culture, as well as his perceived culpability for a deep rupture in Irish history, stretching beyond just Drogheda and Wexford.
In the years following the campaign, a large number of sermons and eyewitness letters were written about the execution of priests during the conquest. While the accounts rest on true events, some describe the killing of virgins, connecting them to a legend from centuries before of virgins becoming martyrs. Religious folklore of the seventeenth century took these further and described the monks’ resistance during the campaign, recounting them hiding treasures or fleeing monasteries with books. The latter echoed older stories linked to medieval monastic traditions. The mystical aspects went even further in some cases, claiming Cromwell trained his men under Satan’s flag, sealing pacts with the devil, or as the bearer of a curse or insult (‘the curse of Cromwell on you’). Covington hence lays out the diversity of Cromwell’s memory in Ireland, characterising it as “multimedial and multidirectional, extending across oral and print expressions, high and low culture, regions and countries, the archaic world before and its modern aftermath.” One can see how Cromwell was thus embedded in local folklore and traditions of storytelling after the conquest.
Another indispensable aspect of Cromwell’s legacy lies in the effect of his campaign on the land and the demography of the island. Landscape is often used as a mnemonic device in Ireland, for example, through the tradition of dinnseanchas: stories which feature the landscape and are linked to tales of origin. The poet Seamus Heaney has described them as “a system of reality beyond the visible realities”. This bond between the people and the land in Ireland is hugely significant in relation to Cromwell’s legacy, as he eventually represented the acme of over one hundred years of Tudor and Stuart conquest. He came to signify the defeat of the Gaelic aristocracy and the English-Irish order. The displacement of people that occurred during his campaign struck a lasting blow to this tie between land and people. Having set up this new system in Ireland, Cromwell came to be seen as the new visible symbol of colonial rule. The legislation led to landowners losing their estates; forty thousand people were displaced, while others remained tenants on now English-owned land. Many were sent overseas as indentured servants in Barbados, where they got the nickname “redlegs”, while others fled to France and Spain. Additionally, the famine and violence that would occur in the following centuries can be traced back to Cromwell’s conquest of Ireland and this new form of governance characterised by English dominance.
Covington also underlines how parts of the landscape being given new English names further impacted the relationship of Irish people to their land. However, she notes that there was a counter-naming process that incorporated and subverted Cromwell’s impact. She cites the examples of Trooper’s Mound in Westmeath, where many of Cromwell’s army soldiers were buried, and the ravine of Protestant’s Fall, where his soldiers plunged after being tricked by locals.
One cannot assess Cromwell’s legacy in Ireland without investigating the massacres that took place in Drogheda and Wexford and how they have come to be remembered. Both occurred in 1649 and are remembered for the scale of fatalities. John Morrill lists, among the main pieces of evidence, an official pamphlet about the siege published with the authority of parliament and a letter from Cromwell, as well as an appendix of those killed that was attached to it. Morrill stresses that an assessment of Drogheda and its casualties is difficult, as it isn’t clear how many civilians died. He emphasises that “The sources that discuss this are amongst the least reliable and nothing is to be gained by revisiting that debate.” Cromwell’s account of the siege is also vague as he writes that his soldiers were “ordered by me [Cromwell] to be put to the sword”, adding, “being in the heat of action, I [Cromwell] forbade them to spare any that were in arms in the town.” Morrill underlines that there is a careful vagueness, not being explicit about the fact that the town had surrendered beforehand. Wexford stands out as the other bloodiest siege of the campaign. Cromwell tried to take the town through talks and use it as headquarters, but eventually lost control of the situation, leading to an unauthorised massacre. Cromwell’s subsequent letter is defensive and lays the blame on Synott, the governor of Wexford at the time, for stalling things on the day of the assault. Over two thousand people died at Wexford, with hundreds drowning in the River Slaney as they tried to escape. Drogheda accounts also put casualties at around two thousand. Once again, distinctions between townspeople and garrison are near impossible to discern; nonetheless, atrocities cannot be denied. The scale of the massacre at Drogheda is without parallel in seventeenth-century British or Irish history.
While Morrill does not dispute that what happened at Drogheda was a massacre, he cautions against making other conclusions related to it. He looks at war codes and the extent of Cromwell’s prejudice, stating that Cromwell did not exhibit strong anti-Catholic views or anti-Irish views, especially not as much as his contemporaries. Morrill stresses that, in terms of religious freedom, the 1650s were the easiest decade for Catholics. This is largely due to the fact that Cromwell believed persecution did not work. Cromwell viewed the Irish people as being held in ignorance by the Irish clergy, whom he blamed for the 1641 Rebellion. He had no doubt that the English brought civility and that the Irish people enjoyed peace because of it, until they were corrupted into rebellion. Hence, Morrill makes a distinction between prejudice and the will to exterminate, stating Cromwell came with a sense of “ethnic superiority but not of ethnic hatred.”
A controversial defender of Cromwell, Tom Reilly, often stresses that Cromwell was following the war codes of his era. He states that Cromwell almost exclusively slaughtered enemy combatants. Morrill, as well as other historians, has argued against Reilly on many points, notably his selective use of sources and his downplaying of the casualties at Drogheda, which, interestingly, is where Reilly hails from. John Morrill examines this aspect and points out that executing those held culpable for hindering a surrender and causing loss of life predated Cromwell’s arrival in Ireland. He also highlights that Cromwell’s conquests after Drogheda are characterised by very little bloodshed, even when he was met with defiance from towns for days to weeks. This highlights that while the bloodiness of Drogheda and Wexford cannot be glossed over, it cannot be applied to the entirety of Cromwell’s campaign in Ireland. The evolution of the perception of these events, as well as Cromwell’s wider legacy, largely seems to have been determined by what use they could serve those writing about them, whether it was to rally against the English for a nationalist cause in Ireland or to try to polish Cromwell’s legacy. Margaret MacMillan cautions against this and writes, “We can learn from history, but we can also deceive ourselves when we selectively take evidence from the past to justify what we have already made up our minds to do.”
The liveliness of the debate around Cromwell’s legacy is well encapsulated in an incident involving the aforementioned Tom Reilly wanting to display Cromwell’s death mask at the Drogheda Culture Centre. This resulted in the deputy mayor at the time, Frank Godfrey, challenging him to a duel. It can be observed that the folklore and emotional response to Cromwell’s actions in Ireland have largely impacted his legacy, making the truth of events sometimes hard to ascertain. However, one cannot downplay the importance of such a response or, worse, ignore it. John Morrill rightfully cautions against inflating or distorting the events at Wexford and Drogheda, but those massacres are far from what shaped and still shapes Cromwell’s legacy in Ireland. The aftermath, the war that followed, demographic changes, and topographic changes can all be traced back to this campaign and the systems that Cromwell put into place after his nine months in Ireland, as well as the people he left in charge. As Micheál Ó Siochrú points out, “it’s really the re-fashioning of Ireland post-conquest – that is where Cromwell really leaves his legacy in Ireland.” Furthermore, it is important to be careful not to assign all the workings and consequences of the conquest to Cromwell himself; he was following the vein of his contemporaries and a prejudice and civilising mission that far preceded and outlived him. It is in taking such shortcuts and simplistic narratives that one might lose the more complicated picture that makes up the truth.
Bibliography
Trinity College Dublin. 2025. “Prof Micheál Ó Siochru – Genocide? Oliver Cromwell and Ireland.” YouTube. April 30, 2025.
Siochrú, Micheál Ó. “The Curse of Cromwell?” History Ireland 16, no. 5 (2008): 14–17.
Morrill, John. 2007. ‘The Drogheda Massacre in Cromwellian Context’. In The Age of Atrocity: Violence and Political Conflict in Early Modern Ireland, edited by David Edwards, Padraig Lenihan, and Clodagh Tait, 242–65. Four Courts Press Ltd.
Covington, Sarah. “‘THE ODIOUS DEMON FROM ACROSS THE SEA’.: OLIVER CROMWELL, MEMORY AND THE DISLOCATIONS OF IRELAND.” In Memory before Modernity: Practices of Memory in Early Modern Europe, edited by Erika Kuijpers, Judith Pollmann, Johannes Müller, and Jasper van der Steen, 149–64. Brill, 2013.
Carroll, Rory. 2022. “Irish Amateur Historian on Lonely Mission to Save ‘Bogeyman’ Cromwell from Genocide Charges.” The Guardian. The Guardian. November 26, 2022.
Hopper, Andy. n.d. “Controversy – Oliver Cromwell in Ireland (1649-1650) – the World Turned Upside Down.”
Featured Image Credit: illustration from Chapter XXX from An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800, by Mary Frances Cusack, Illustrated by Henry Doyle, 1868
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