This one is super long, but it is one of my favorite periods of history. It was on this day in 1658 that Oliver Cromwell, an English general and statesman who led the Parliament of England's armies against King Charles I during the English Civil War and ruled the British Isles as Lord Protector from 1653 until his death in 1658, died, probably by a bout of malaria that coincided with kidney stones. I love the English Civil Wars and the Interregnum. The names of things are so baroque and events so truly bizarre. For instance, three years after his death, on 30 January 1661, Cromwell’s remains were dug up and executed. Cromwell became the Member of Parliament for Huntingdon in the Parliament of 1628–1629, as a client of the Montagu family of Hinchingbrooke House. He made little impression: records for the Parliament show only one speech (against the Arminian Bishop Richard Neile), which was poorly received. After dissolving this Parliament, Charles I ruled without a Parliament for ...