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Every student of the seventeenth century in England must desire sooner or later to have his say about its greatest figure. I have yielded to the temptation, partly because I wished to add to my portrait of Montrose a companion piece; partly because Oliver Cromwell has lately been made the subject of various disquisitions, especially on the Continent, which seem to me to be remote from the truth.

I can claim no novelty for my reading of him, which in substance is that of Mr Gardiner and Sir Charles Firth; but I have examined certain aspects of his life in greater detail than these historians. My aim has been, in the words of Edmund Gosse, to give “a faithful portrait of a soul in its adventures through life.” I hope I may claim that at any rate I have not attempted to constrain a great man in a formula.

The authorities are familiar and have for the most part been printed. To earlier scholars I owe a debt which is too obvious to need specifying, but which I most gratefully acknowledge. What new manuscript material I have had access to has been useful chiefly for elaborating the background. I have been sparing in my notes, confining my documentation to points which are still dubious, or on which my view differs from that generally held; but I have been careful to give full references for all Oliver’s own written and spoken words.

J. B.

Elsfield Manor, Oxon.

June 1934.