Abstract

In the first written volume of David Hume's History of England, Hume describes Oliver Cromwell in this uncomplimentary way:The strokes of his character are as open and strongly marked, as the schemes of his conduct were, during the time, dark and unpenetrable. His extensive capacity enabled him to form the most enlarged projects: His enterprising genius was not dismayed with the boldest and most dangerous. Carried, by his natural temper, to magnanimity, to grandeur, and to an imperious and domineering policy: he knew, when necessary, to employ the most profound dissimulation, the most oblique and refined artiface, the semblance of the greatest moderation and simplicity. A friend to justice, tho’ his public conduct was one continued violation of it; devoted to religion, tho’ he perpetually employed it as the instrument of his ambition; his crimes derived from the prospect of sovereign power, a temptation, which is, in general, irresistible to human nature.