Background
Richard Cromwell was born on October 4, 1626, in Huntingdon, United Kingdom; son of Oliver Cromwell.
Richard Cromwell was born on October 4, 1626, in Huntingdon, United Kingdom; son of Oliver Cromwell.
He was educated at Felsted School and studied law at Lincoln's Inn in London.
His aging father, Oliver, was concerned with the succession of the lord protectorship, and in 1657 he brought Richard to London and appointed him to several offices. The republican army did not welcome Richard's appointment, partly because he had not fought with them as an officer during the English civil war. There was also opposition to Richard from the Republicans, who regarded the protectorate as a disguised form of monarchy, as well as from the royalists, who wanted to restore Charles II to the throne and who mocked Richard as "Tumbledown Dick. "
They were willing to accept him in the post of the lord protector but demanded that one of their own number, Charles Fleetwood, Richard's brother-in-law, be given the other important post held by Oliver, that of commander-in-chief. Lacking his father's talents and faced with such opposition, Richard submitted to pressure from the army generals, at whose insistence he dissolved parliament on April 22, 1659.
Although Fleetwood and the other generals wished to retain Richard as a figurehead behind whom they could govern, the junior officers and republicans compelled the generals to recall parliament, which reassembled on May 7.
He had apparently never really wanted the protectorship and he now made no efforts to retain it. He formally submitted his resignation to parliament on May 25, 1659, and thereafter retired to private life. After Charles II was restored to the throne in 1660, Richard went to live in France under the name of John Clarke. He lived privately, in exile from 1660 to 1680.
Richard married to Dorothy Major in 1649 and settled down in Hampshire.
