New reports are set to shock historians - Oliver Cromwell was a metro-sexual in touch with his feminine side.
Researchers now claim the merciless English tyrant was addicted to fancy cosmetics and infatuated with his appearance.
Cromwell, perhaps the most hated figure in Irish history, slaughtered tens of thousands of Irish men, women and children in 1649.
He also coined the phrase ‘To Hell or to Connacht’ as he built a reputation as a warlord to be feared.
Now it transpires that he had a softer, effeminate side according to a report in the Irish Sun.
The newspaper says that academics now believe Cromwell was obsessed with his appearance.
The claim has been made after chemical tests on the contents of mysterious pots that once belonged to Cromwell.
The research concludes that the pots contain soft soap, most likely made from olive oil.
The scientists at Exeter University in England say the items had no medicinal use and were even scented with delicate fragrances.
Most soaps in the mid-17th century were made using animal fat or fish oils and tended to have a foul stench says the report.
Study group leader Sally Pointer explained: “The metrosexual Cromwell slathered himself in only the finest quality women’s creams which would have made him smell like flowers.
“This is real top-of-the-range stuff - like going into Harrods and shopping from the most expensive make-up counter.
“It shows appearances were important even for a person like Cromwell, who was very godly, with personally very strong puritan convictions.”
Pointer revealed the grooming products were taken from a small wooden chest containing 55 pots that once belonged to Cromwell.
Curators found four labels previously hidden under embroidered lids that list the perfumes in the products as ‘jasmine’, ‘orange tree flowers’, ‘bitter oranges’ and ‘cassia’, a spice similar to cinnamon.
Chairman of the British Cromwell Association Dr Patrick Little said: “If this was a gift from abroad, it shows that he was not perceived as being austere.”
The chest will be the centrepiece of an exhibition which opens this weekend at the Cromwell Museum in Huntingdon, England.
62 Comments
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
Switch to the desktop site to post a comment.handsome68 | May 16, 2013, 10:42 AM EDT
(Cat has returned my tongue, slightly used.) Ollie looks a bit foppish in this particular portrait, and who knew he was once young?
handsome68 | May 15, 2013, 10:52 AM EDT
* (* = Words fail me.)
Bythebay | Jun 15, 2012, 04:15 PM EDT
Cromwell murdered in retaliation for the murders of thousands of Protestants at the hands of Catholics. It was reprisal pure and simple.
OBPiper | May 15, 2012, 01:52 PM EDT
Sounds like an S & M, D & S closet gay. How fitting penitence it would have been for some big, burly Irishman to tie him up and give it to him well!
OBPiper | May 15, 2012, 01:45 PM EDT
I wonder if Ollie used any of this on his arse with a big burly Irishman as penitence?
sirpeter | May 14, 2012, 05:17 PM EDT
I couldn't resist it Seano.lol
markfrom1730 | May 14, 2012, 07:00 AM EDT
/so Cromwell was a fraud, not just a murderous tyrant. Sort of like Obama.
seanomelb | May 13, 2012, 07:50 PM EDT
You brighten my day sirpeter LOL
sirpeter | May 12, 2012, 07:34 PM EDT
STEVO."SHOO SHOO SKKKAAA GO ON GET OUT OF HERE YOU ANNOYING FLY !!!"Have a wash!!I'm sure the fly will go away then. ;))
seanomelb | May 11, 2012, 08:08 PM EDT
bythebay and Stevenfallingstar are more to be pitied than laughed at.
STEVENSTAR | May 11, 2012, 02:03 PM EDT
ancavker | May 11, 2012, 11:03 AM EDT sirpeter: That is the revisionist way. The Irish fight to take back what was stolen from them and it is horrible. The Native Americans do it, and it is understandable. Michael Collins was a gangster and a gunman (according to the revisionists), the PLO/Hamas are legitimate freedom fighters.................>>>>>>>>> SHOO SHOO SKKKAAA GO ON GET OUT OF HERE YOU ANNOYING FLY !!!
Intercessor | May 11, 2012, 12:37 PM EDT
Excuse me, but if Cromwell murdered "10's of thousands" of Irish men, women and children, how can he be described as "very godly?" Who did his PR campaign? That's something one would expect to come out of the PR machine for Cardinal Brady!
ancavker | May 11, 2012, 11:03 AM EDT
sirpeter: That is the revisionist way. The Irish fight to take back what was stolen from them and it is horrible. The Native Americans do it, and it is understandable. Michael Collins was a gangster and a gunman (according to the revisionists), the PLO/Hamas are legitimate freedom fighters.
EphraimKibbey | May 11, 2012, 01:33 AM EDT
@Bythebay - You forgot religous intolerance. The Puritans came to America seeking religous freedom but did not extend it to any other religous group. The Quakers all got shipped off to Rhode Island. If you were catholic you were in big trouble. The Puritan belief that God showed his blessing by making one wealthy is still at the root of many of America's current problems. If you are poor, then God considers you a sinner and is punishing you according to our modern puritans.
sirpeter | May 10, 2012, 09:21 PM EDT
Bythebay.Quote"Cromwell's pillage of Ireland was in retribution for the massacre of Protestants in Ireland"Unquote.These Protestant settlers had settled on land SEIZED from former,native Catholic owners to make way for the NON-NATIVE Protestants.Who was the aggressor?Who stole the land? Who forced the native Irish off the land?When the Native Irish use force to get their land back that's a massacre?But you defend Native Americans who also used force and killed settlers who also SEIZED land.Pillage of Ireland = Retribution.Pillage of Native American land = Brutalized and robbed.Anyway the main reason Cromwell came to Ireland was the military threat posed by the alliance of the Irish Confederate Catholics and English royalists.First and foremost it was about power and control of IRISH land.
seanomelb | May 10, 2012, 07:54 PM EDT
If your by the bay bythebay jump in.
Bythebay | May 10, 2012, 07:47 PM EDT
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.
Bythebay | May 10, 2012, 07:44 PM EDT
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.
Bythebay | May 10, 2012, 07:36 PM EDT
There are always various facets to history, not one sided ones.
sirpeter | May 10, 2012, 03:46 PM EDT
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"
eiriamach | May 10, 2012, 12:40 PM EDT
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.
IrelandNorth | May 10, 2012, 06:07 AM EDT
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!
sirpeter | May 09, 2012, 10:51 PM EDT
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.
eiriamach | May 09, 2012, 09:46 PM EDT
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.
sirpeter | May 09, 2012, 09:45 PM EDT
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.
Murph46 | May 09, 2012, 09:23 PM EDT
Byethebay check your revisionist history-Cromwell was sent to Ireland by Parliament to usurp taxes and capture Irish land holdings.
Bythebay | May 09, 2012, 08:26 PM EDT
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.
Murph46 | May 09, 2012, 08:03 PM EDT
pilibo4 regrettably there are many more atrocities by Cromwell ,then later the Black&Tans etc.
seanomelb | May 09, 2012, 06:35 PM EDT
"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.
beachcomber | May 09, 2012, 05:39 PM EDT
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.
manhattan | May 09, 2012, 05:31 PM EDT
In the floor at Westminster Abbey is a grave that has Cromwells name on it.
DanOLoingsigh | May 09, 2012, 05:17 PM EDT
manhattan - not sure whose grave you were 'jigging on' in Westminster Cathedral, but it certainly wasn't Cromwell's...this is a 20th century Catholic church...in fact nobody knows the fate of Cromwell's body...it was exhumed from Westminster Abbey by the restored monarchy.
pilib04 | May 09, 2012, 05:04 PM EDT
Murph46, don't forget about the massacre at Dundee Scotland.
pilib04 | May 09, 2012, 05:02 PM EDT
Oliver Cromwell was the bin Laden of his day. Although he received a state funeral, his body was dug up and beheaded a year later. The Head rolled around for several hundred years until finally getting buried in 1960. This is what happens to the bodies of evil people.
dermotfastnet | May 09, 2012, 03:57 PM EDT
There's a statue of this man outside UK Parliament fittingly covered in pigeon droppings
Murph46 | May 09, 2012, 03:53 PM EDT
bythebay"very common practices'" such as the sacking ,rape and pillaging in Drogheda,and burning of Wexford?
Bythebay | May 09, 2012, 02:45 PM EDT
The British Founding Fathers of the US followed the same very common practices which were also followed for hundreds of years before in many countries of the world.
greensod | May 09, 2012, 01:34 PM EDT
He was a butcher period.
connemaragirl | May 09, 2012, 01:33 PM EDT
He looks like an ugly little weasel,there isn't enough perfume in the world today never mind back in his day to kill the stench from this mans atrocities .
Nicomax | May 09, 2012, 01:19 PM EDT
Now this is just 'dandy', if not a bit 'randy'. But with a visage like that, he needed all the cover up possible.
Searlit | May 09, 2012, 12:50 PM EDT
I find the photograph repulsive! No cream could cover such deeds that foul the soul of the likes of him.
FastEddy | May 09, 2012, 12:31 PM EDT
So, this e-rag is turning gay? You fools can marry a goat for all I care, as long as my taxes don't go up.
sirpeter | May 09, 2012, 12:30 PM EDT
In a 2002 BBC poll in Britain,Cromwell was elected as one of the Top 10 Britons of all time.Mass murder of thousands and deportation of over 50,000 men,women and children as slaves to the West indies.It just proves how the educational system in the UK is very economical with the truth when it comes to British atrocities committed in Ireland.
McNamara31 | May 09, 2012, 12:23 PM EDT
Cromwell received his just due with historical desecration ...After death and burial he was dug up, hung and beheaded. His head was then impaled on a spike for 25 years until it was sold to someone who gave it to Cromwell's former college where they buried it in a hidden place. Even in death the actions that caused the suffering of millions of Irish people followed him beyond the grave. Irish karma: mighty strong stuff!
manhattan | May 09, 2012, 12:06 PM EDT
Believe it or not there is also a large statue in the town square in Huntington. I had the pleasure of spitting on the statue and did a jig on his grave in Westminster cathedral where he is buried in the floor. It wasn't much but it was in memory of what that beast did in Ireland.
phinsman | May 09, 2012, 11:52 AM EDT
Oliver Cromwell was an egocentric, sadistic and unethical person, by all means. I feel so sorry for all the grief he brought upon Ireland. This is not a person who should be honored in any way.
Murph46 | May 09, 2012, 11:19 AM EDT
Red Branch you are a trip.Spingtime for Hitler-pretty good!
beachcomber | May 09, 2012, 11:06 AM EDT
I'm wondering, too, why there is a museum??? And like my great-grandpappy said: you can't polish a turd. (Or in Cromwell's case, make it smell like a delicate flower) The stench of death followed him, too bad it didn't torment the ever-loving poop out of him, too.
ProudCanadian | May 09, 2012, 10:56 AM EDT
That is not all he was obsessed with. He was a sadistic killer that should have been executed before he was. He wasa very bad man.
RedBranch | May 09, 2012, 10:53 AM EDT
What Ireland needs now is another Oliver Cromwell! Burn the banks, lay siege to the Dail and execute a few developers; then apply a little mascara and sing 'Springtime for Hitler'!
johnshiel | May 09, 2012, 10:29 AM EDT
how is it that a museum exists around the subject of this abomidable man? (or even a wall mural, for that matter?)
2RhodeIsland | May 09, 2012, 10:16 AM EDT
He probably wore high heels, suspenders, and a bra - just like dear papa....
KSERRAHN | May 09, 2012, 10:05 AM EDT
WELL WELL WELL. A softer side,like that's gonna get him in heaven. Hope he rots.
hermitTalker | May 09, 2012, 10:02 AM EDT
A godly man she says. They should canonise him along with Hitler and Stalin with that standard of judgment.
Murph46 | May 09, 2012, 10:00 AM EDT
I hope he is sampling the hell side of his famous quote,was he or wasn't he also responsible about the Burren quote "There is not enough water to drown a man,nor trees to hang a man,nor soil to bury a man in this god forsaken place"
gaosullivan | May 09, 2012, 09:49 AM EDT
Source is the Irish Sun?
TimWhitmore | May 09, 2012, 09:44 AM EDT
I'm not surprised. I once had a wife who smelled good but was also had all the "endearing" qualities that make Cromwell the object of such richly-deserved hatred. Tim Whitmore, Suffolk, VA
CitizenWhy | May 09, 2012, 09:36 AM EDT
It's probable that the prostitutes he frequented told him to use these soaps (as did they).
faberm1 | May 09, 2012, 09:32 AM EDT
Whatever in the world he did to his outward appearance, we know that he was a wicked cruel person that was rotten to the core, and he will forever live in infamy in the minds and psyches of all people of Gael origin. He was a butcher, a bastard, and an all around sob.
jamieLM | May 09, 2012, 08:56 AM EDT
All the fragrant perfumes in the world couldn't cover up the stink of evil that Cromwell had on him.
sirpeter | May 09, 2012, 08:13 AM EDT
So he was a genocidal maniac with a smell of flowers from him.Bet he didn't smell that good when the Royalist's returned to power and dug up his corpse and beheaded him.
JHShanahan | May 09, 2012, 08:11 AM EDT
Fancy soaps and creams aside, the bastard was still a butcher. The locals will be glad to tell you more. John Shanahan Drogheda, County Louth