ford madox brown - eTheses Repository - University of Birmingham

ehabilitation and through his work Cromwell went from a ruthless regicide to ‘a
visionary leader and man of destiny.’ 92 Cromwell was ‘evangelical in religion, a self-
made man, anti-aristocratic and anti-establishment by inclination, a reformer of
passionate moral conviction’ and therefore had ‘all the ingredients to make him the
hero of the reformers, liberals and new men of nineteenth-century England.’ 93 His
popularity can be measured in the large number of paintings depicting scenes from his
life exhibited at the Royal Academy between 1830 and 1880. 94 The new admiration
for Cromwell was part of a renewed interest in the Civil War. In this conflict between
cavaliers and roundheads many Victorians could see their own political division
between the old and new nation. ‘Parliamentary reformers encountering conservative
obstructions turned back to an earlier period when Parliament had asserted the will of
the people against Stuart tyranny’ and ‘high churchmen … found inspiration in the
seventeenth-century churchmen who had suffered at the hands of an interfering
Parliament.’ 95 As with all his paintings depicting scenes from English history Brown
was wise enough to choose those he knew would be popular and therefore more
saleable.
92 Op. cit. at note 9, p. 51.
93 Op. cit. at note 1, p. 149. Strong also points out that Brown in Cromwell Discussing the Protection
of the Vaudois with Milton and Andrew Marwell celebrates the fact that Cromwell’s ‘achievements
abroad in terms of foreign policy and maritime power foreshadowed the great age of the British
Empire’ (ibid., p. 150).
94 There were 23 paintings exhibited between 1830 and 1880 which depicted Oliver Cromwell. See
Appendix in ibid. p. 166.
95 Op. cit. at note 9, p. 50.
106