His troops were commanded by Charles Worsley, later one of his Major Generals and one of his most trusted advisors, to whom he entrusted the mace. The marriage brought Cromwell into contact with Oliver St John and leading members of London's merchant community, and behind them the influence of the Earls of Warwick and Holland. His collection included many rare manuscripts and printed books, medals, paintings, objets d'art, and a bizarre assemblage of "relics".

Through Ludlow, Toland portrayed Cromwell as a despot who crushed the beginnings of democratic rule in the 1640s. Additionally, its 1968 film adaptation, directed by Carol Reed, won six Academy Awards including Best Picture. The stories suggest that his bodily remains are buried in London, Cambridgeshire, Northamptonshire, or Yorkshire. Cromwell's body was exhumed from Westminster Abbey on 30 January 1661, the 12th anniversary of the execution of Charles I, and was subjected to a posthumous execution, as were the remains of John Bradshaw and Henry Ireton.Therefore, we are entitled to accuse the England of Oliver Cromwell of the genocide of the Irish civilian population. This move, a significant step down in society for the Cromwells, also had significant emotional and spiritual impact on Cromwell; an extant 1638 letter from him to his cousin, the wife of Oliver St John, gives an account of his spiritual awakening at this time. Harvard historian Wilbur Cortez Abbott, for example, devoted much of his career to compiling and editing a multi-volume collection of Cromwell's letters and speeches, published between 1937 and 1947.

The first 40 years of his life were undistinguished and at one point he contemplated emigration to New England. Cromwell's foreign policy also provided an attractive forerunner of Victorian imperial expansion, with Gardiner stressing his "constancy of effort to make England great by land and sea". An example is The Perfect Politician, which describes how Cromwell "loved men more than books" and provides a nuanced assessment of him as an energetic campaigner for liberty of conscience who is brought down by pride and ambition.The campaigns under Cromwell's successors Henry Ireton and Edmund Ludlow consisted mostly of long sieges of fortified cities and guerrilla warfare in the countryside, with English troops suffering from attacks by Irish toráidhe (guerilla fighters). A The entrance of an intoxicated Sowerberry doesn't aid matters, and during all the commotion Oliver escapes.