Oliver Cromwell was a metrosexual obsessed with his appearance

If your by the bay bythebay jump in.

Native Americans in the US were brutalized and robbed of their lands for centuries. Cromwell's pillage of Ireland was in retribution for the massacre of Protestants in ireland, the Native Americans were hunted, robbed of their lands, murdered and the few left herded into reservations with no rights.

Not only did the British Founding Fathers of the US use the same powders, perfumes as Cromwell, and they wore very ostentacious powdered and perfumed wigs as well. They supported slavery which is what the US was built on. Many thousands of slaves were brutalized for decades.

There are always various facets to history, not one sided ones.

eiriamach,Yup.You know revisionism is all part of studying history.But articles like these make me cringe.I can just see a student handing up a paper saying Cromwell was a closet metrosexual lol.This man was a military leader,a politician,a puritan,a regicidal dictator,a genocidal maniac,and an ethnic cleanser.All the qualities Hitler had.Hitler too appeared to have a softer,effeminate side.But like all serial killers/mass murderers,they act the part but without empathy towards their follow human beings.Cromwell is to the Irish as Hitler is to the Jews."To hell or to Connacht/Concentration camp"

sirpeter, you're a historian, right? I didn't mean to drift into your field. My reading in history is very limited. Reading Renaissance lit, I learned more about Liz I, James I, etc. than I wanted to know (what a pathetic set of monarchs). As for Cromwell's one admirable quality, I guess his wife would know. Too bad it wasn't something he could share with the rest of the world.

The English-British ruling elite reputedly exploited Cromwell's infamous sectarianism by deflecting him to Ireland to keep him out of republican mischief at home. Our quality broadsheet - The Irish Times, published a photograph of his deathmask some years ago, which was quite an uncanny experience for someone whom anyone who might have have had the [dis]pleasure of his acquaintance centuries before. Quite an average looking guy actually, warts and all. Quite unlike the airbrushed painting. A bit like pop singer Tom Jones actually, with all due deference to the Welsh warbler himself. Still, a Hobson's choice would dictate that the only thing worse than being hung, drawn and quartered - is to be hung, drawn and quartered by a despot smelling of 3/6/9 omega fish oils! Let's be thankful for small mercies that he was a fragrant transvestite at weekends. And he was that mother of all oxymorons - an English/British republican!

eiriamach. I was going to say what you said in your comment below.But I hate rubbishing every article on IC.I'm glad you are educated the million who drift onto this site though.His wife did say he did have one admirable quality.I'm inclined to agree due to the length of his nose.

It was common for men of his era to use cosmetics, and anyone who could afford fragrances used them to cover the odor of rotting teeth, smelly clothes, chamber odors, and other hygiene problems common at the time. During Elizabethan and Jacobean regimes and into the Caroline, England had Sumptuary Laws, which specified the fabrics and colors of clothing people could wear according to their social classes. Anyone entitled to wear a velvet jacket or lace cuffs, for example, would try to have them them since they signified social status. This is not to say that Cromwell had any admirable qualities, just that he seems to have had the same silly obsessions with clothing and appearance as many others in 17th century England.

Bythebay.So what's your argument?Reprisal is justified?That's what you are saying.In which case you have to justify the Catholic PIRA continuation of reprisals.So I take it that the end of your crap condemning the PIRA.

Byethebay check your revisionist history-Cromwell was sent to Ireland by Parliament to usurp taxes and capture Irish land holdings.

Cromwell's pillaging of Ireland in 1649-50 was in reprisal for the massacre of English and Scots Protestants in Ireland, primarily in what is now Northern Ireland, in 1641 and 42. Irish Historians such as Dr. Mary O'Dowd believe that was the beginning of the sectarian animosity in Ireland. The Depositions, accounts from the time of the Protestant massacres, are in the Trinity College Library in Dublin, accessible to the public. They are also online. Former Irish President Mary McAleese, whose second term of office ended last autumn, hosted Dr. Ian Paisley from Northern Ireland at the launch of the Depositions in 2010 at the Trinity College Library in Dublin. The Library is also home to the Book of Kells.

pilibo4 regrettably there are many more atrocities by Cromwell ,then later the Black&Tans etc.

"He was in touch with his feminine side" so now we know why he slaughtered so many women and children at the "touch" of a sword. He is England's equivalent to Hitler.

Let's not forget the Levellers either...Cromwell was a bloody tyrant and terror to anyone who didn't further his cause. That he liked to smell like a whore seems fitting.