EMH Document 2020
2020 Wednesday 1 st January, 2020 The first thing that caught my attention this morning was Jesse Child’s review in The Guardian of Paul Lay’s new book, Providence Lost: the Rise and Fall of Oliver Cromwell’s Protectorate published by Zeus Books. Her own writing has been largely upon the Tudor period but she found Lay’s work a highly rewarding discussion of a complex and intriguing period. Oliver Cromwell believed that God’s providence had raised him from the ranks of the lesser gentry in Huntingdonshire and the isle of Ely to Lord Protector of England, Scotland and Ireland in 1653. He was the de facto ruler of all three realms with the fundamental aims of preserving good order, ensuring a high degree of liberty of conscience and of preparing these islands for the return of Christ. These aims entailed repressing royalist insurrections, the moral reformation of the ungodly by banning drunkenness, fornication and gambling, and carrying into effect the assault on the Spanish in ...