OLIVER CROMWELL

London, Paris, New York, Edinburgh: Goupil & Co., Jean Boussod, Manzi, Joyant & Co., 1899. First Edition, Numbered and Limited to 1475 copies. Illustrated with a portrait frontispiece of Cromwell in colours and 45 other finely engraved full-page plates, head and tail-pieces and illustrations in the text as well as with elaborately decorated grand initials to the chapters, engraved title-page printed in red and black. Folio, handsomely bound and signed by Bickers and Son of England in three-quarter red crushed morocco, the turnovers and corner pieces double gilt ruled, the spine with raised bands gilt ruled, the compartments of the spine with richly gilt panel designs incorporating central gilt devices and elaborate tooling in gilt, two compartments lettered in gilt, marbled end-leaves, the upper cover with elaborate gilt heraldic device at the center, top edge gilt, silk ribbon marker. xii, 260. A very handsome copy with minimal evidence of age or use, some light rubbing to the upper hinge.

FIRST EDITION OF THIS DELUXE ISSUE OF A FINE BIOGRAPHY AND HISTORICAL SURVEY OF CROMWELL, HIS TIME AND HIS ASSOCIATIONS, HANDSOMELY BOUND.
'Oliver Cromwell (25 April 1599 – 3 September 1658) was the English general and statesman who, first as a subordinate and later as Commander-in-Chief, led armies of the Parliament of England against King Charles I during the English Civil War, subsequently ruling the British Isles as Lord Protector from 1653 until his death in 1658. He acted simultaneously as head of state and head of government of the new republican commonwealth. He was elected Member of Parliament for Huntingdon in 1628, and for Cambridge in the Short (1640) and Long (1640–1649) Parliaments. He entered the English Civil Wars on the side of the "Roundheads", or Parliamentarians, and gained the nickname "Old Ironsides". Cromwell demonstrated his ability as a commander and was quickly promoted from leading a single cavalry troop to being one of the principal commanders of the New Model Army, playing an important role under General Sir Thomas Fairfax in the defeat of the Royalist ("Cavalier") forces.
Cromwell was one of the signatories of Charles I's death warrant in 1649, and dominated the short-lived Commonwealth of England as a member of the Rump Parliament (1649–1653). He was selected to take command of the English campaign in Ireland in 1649–1650. Cromwell's forces defeated the Confederate and Royalist coalition in Ireland and occupied the country, bringing to an end the Irish Confederate Wars. Cromwell also led a campaign against the Scottish army between 1650 and 1651. On 20 April 1653, Cromwell dismissed the Rump Parliament by force, setting up a short-lived nominated assembly known as Barebone's Parliament, before being invited by his fellow leaders to rule as Lord Protector of England (which included Wales at the time), Scotland, and Ireland from 16 December 1653. As a ruler, he executed an aggressive and effective foreign policy.
Failure to resolve the issues before the Long Parliament led to armed conflict between Parliament and Charles I in late 1642, the beginning of the English Civil War. The failure to conclude a political agreement with the King led eventually to the outbreak of the Second English Civil War in 1648, when the King tried to regain power by force of arms. Cromwell first put down a Royalist uprising in south Wales led by Rowland Laugharne, winning back Chepstow Castle on 25 May and six days later forcing the surrender of Tenby. The castle at Carmarthen was destroyed by burning. The much stronger castle at Pembroke, however, fell only after a siege of eight weeks. Cromwell dealt leniently with the ex-Royalist soldiers.
In December 1648, in an episode that became known as Pride's Purge, a troop of soldiers headed by Colonel Thomas Pride forcibly removed from the Long Parliament all those who were not supporters of the Grandees in the New Model Army and the Independents. Thus weakened, the remaining body of MPs, known as the Rump Parliament, agreed that Charles should be tried on a charge of treason. Cromwell was still in the north of England, dealing with Royalist resistance, when these events took place, but then returned to London. On the day after Pride's Purge, he became a determined supporter of those pushing for the King's trial and execution, believing that killing Charles was the only way to end the civil wars. Cromwell approved Thomas Brook's address to the House of Commons, which justified the trial and execution of the King on the basis of the Book of Numbers, chapter 35 and particularly verse 33 ("The land cannot be cleansed of the blood that is shed therein, but by the blood of him that shed it.").
The death warrant for Charles was eventually signed by 59 of the trying court's members, including Cromwell (who was the third to sign it). Though it was not unprecedented, execution of the King, or "regicide", was controversial, if for no other reason due to the doctrine of the divine right of kings. Thus, even after a trial, it was difficult to get ordinary men to go along with it: "None of the officers charged with supervising the execution wanted to sign the order for the actual beheading, so they brought their dispute to Cromwell...Oliver seized a pen and scribbled out the order, and handed the pen to the second officer, Colonel Hacker who stooped to sign it. The execution could now proceed." Although Fairfax conspicuously refused to sign, Charles I was executed on 30 January 1649. After the execution of the King, a republic was declared, known as the "Commonwealth of England".
In the volume offered here, Oxford civil war historian Samuel Rawson Gardiner concludes that "the man—it is ever so with the noblest—was greater than his work". Gardiner has stressed Cromwell's dynamic and mercurial character, and his role in dismantling absolute monarchy, while perhaps underestimating Cromwell's religious conviction. 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". Calvin Coolidge described Cromwell as a brilliant statesman who "dared to oppose the tyranny of the kings."' Wiki