Cromwell and Hamilton have been two of my favorite historical characters for decades. I named my beautiful Australian Shepherd, and ultimately this blog, for Cromwell; I also made a point of seeking out Hamilton’s grave when I went to New York for the first time in 2003.
Neither of them was what you could remotely describe as a flawless character. Hamilton could be an arrogant windbag; his philandering does him no credit; and his political judgment after he left office was almost uniformly abysmal. The stain on Cromwell’s reputation was his participation in judicial murders, although politics at the court of Henry VIII wasn’t exactly beanbag, and his opponents were at least as ruthless as he was; the relative lack of bloodshed in the Reformation is at least in part due to his political skills. That said, both of them combined vision and pragmatism in such a way as to leave us all a legacy for which we should be grateful.
It occurred to me several months ago that there is a very long list of similarities in their careers, including the following:
Cromwell v. Hamilton
Status at Birth Low-born Illegitimate
Commercial Experience Yes Yes
Revolutionary Times Reformation American Revolution
Patron Henry VIII Washington
Woman Trouble Queen(s) Anne Mrs. Reynolds
Literary Legacy English Bible Patron Federalist Papers
Administrative Innovations Numerous Numerous
Opposed by St. Thomas More Jefferson
Violent Death Beheaded Duel with Burr
Broadway Show “Wolf Hall” “Hamilton”
And the winner is. . . All of us, and not just for the high quality of the Broadway shows.