Vintage Hand Painted Glass Commentative Vase 1657

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A hand-blown hand painted glass English vase commemorating 1657. Painted with flowers and date on one side and painted Englishman … Read more A hand-blown hand painted glass English vase commemorating 1657. Painted with flowers and date on one side and painted Englishman on the other. Measures 9 ½” tall, 6” wide and 4 ½” deep. Good condition, no marks, chips or damage.
History - The English Civil War between parliamentarians and the royalist forces of King Charles I had ended six years earlier in 1651. The royalists were defeated; Charles I had been beheaded. Oliver Cromwell was a key military leader of the Parliamentarians or “Roundheads” during the civil war. In the aftermath he consolidated dictatorial control. In 1657, when parliament offered him the Kingship he turned it down. He effectively had the job; he just didn’t want the title. Instead he ruled as Lord Protector for about a year before dying of natural causes.
To take him at his word he took the ultimate power not for personal gain or self-aggrandizement but to protect his country: “I am a man standing in the place I am in, which place I undertook not so much out of hope of doing any good, as out of a desire to prevent mischief and evil, which I did see was imminent upon the nation.”
Having set up a police state, this staunch parliamentarian had no taste to dress it up in royalist trappings: “…as far as I can see I am ready to serve not as a King, but as a constable. …to keep the peace of the parish.” Cromwell had the misfortune of dying too late (by some 40 years) to be the subject of a play by Shakespeare and consequently British historians have never been able to agree on his legacy.
Over 350 years later Oliver Cromwell still presents us with a complicated picture. Sure he committed both regicide (against King Charles I) and something close to genocide against the Irish and Scottish people but he also won the victory for constitutional monarchy, brought England back to stability and helped paved the way for parliamentary democracy.
Peace, security and freedom — pick any two.
BM#4
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