Oliver Cromwell

This is, specifically, a character study, not a history. Cromwell is one of the figures in history, in English history perhaps pre-eminently the figure, about whom no one can know a little without becoming partisan. We may believe today that Cromwell saved English liberty, but even so we have to realize that he did it in opposition to a party that was served by many gallant and honorable men, and to them he cannot have appeared as anything but a calamity let loose upon society. Cromwell was one of those men whom his very enemies could not condemn without commending him at the same time. - Introduction.