The Letters, Writings, and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell Volume 1: October 1626 to January 1649

This is the first truly scholarly edition of all the recorded writings and recorded speech acts of Oliver Cromwell (1599-1658) and consists of more than 1,000 texts. Oliver Cromwell, one of Britain's greatest and most controversial generals, rose from lowly provincial origins to preside over the trial and execution of a king, to undertake the most complete conquest of Ireland and Scotland ever achieved, and to spend the last five years of his life as head of state, as Lord Protector of Britain and Ireland. A passionate speaker who claimed to be called by God to overthrow tyranny in church and state, and a powerful advocate for a very broad religious liberty and equality, his speeches and letters reveal the public and the private man more completely than for almost any other early modern political leader. This new edition not only publishes a number of new items, but also edits a large number from recovered originals not previously edited. Every item has its own detailed introduction explaining the status of the text and its context or contexts, but also very full annotation - identifying for example almost every person, place and event mentioned in the text and also - where there is no holograph but also variant copies - all significant differences between variant early copies.

John Morrill was educated in Oxford and spent forty years teaching and researching in Cambridge, where he was Professor of British and Irish History and successively Tutor, Senior Tutor, and Vice Master of Selwyn College. As Vice President of the Royal Historical Society, Vice President for Public Engagement at the British Academy, and Chair of the Research Committee at the Arts and Humanities Research Board, he promoted historical scholarship and digital humanities. He has published 25 books and acted as series editor for four major publishers and he edited The Historical Journal for 10 years and then served as Chair of the Editorial Board. He is an Honorary Fellow of both Trinity College Dublin and Trinity College Oxford and is an Hon.Member of the Royal Irish Academy. Although he has written on every century since the fifteenth century, his centre of gravity has always been the middle decades of the seventeenth century and the career of Oliver Cromwell. Andrew Barclay is a Senior Research Fellow at the History of Parliament Trust. He is the Secretary of the Jacobite Studies Trust and the author of Electing Cromwell: the making of a politician (2011). Tim Wales has been an independent researcher who has worked with many of the leading scholars especially of the seventeenth century over the past 40 years. He was Research Editor at the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (to which he has also contributed some twenty lives).