SNIPPET: Oliver CROMWELL's ruthless attack on the medieval walled town of Drogheda in September 1649 was swift and efficient; no one escaped. The Protestant Ascendancy and the systematic transplantation of the Irish landowners out of all the arable land in Ireland began harshly. With self-righteousness, CROMWELL wrote one week later to the Honorable William LENTHALL, Speaker of the Parliament of England, stating "that which caused your men to storm so courageously, it was the Spirit of God." CROMWELL (1600-58), Ireland's first and only commoner lord lieutenant, campaigned in Ireland between 15 Aug 1649 and 26 May 1650. Backed by a 20,000 strong army, a huge artillery train, and a large navy, he projected himself as a providential liberator from Irish barbarism, royalist misrule and Catholic hypocrisy. His best remembered actions were the sieges of Drogheda (11 Sept. 1649) and Wexford exactly one month later. CROMWELL's triumphant return from Ireland, coupled with the revolutionary situation in England, gave him the opportunity for political power that some previous lord lieutenants had merely contemplated and he ruled England as lord protector from 1653 until his death. He continued to exercise influence in Ireland through his sons-in-law Henry IRETON and Charles FLEETWOOD, and later through his younger son Henry CROMWELL. Although Oliver CROMWELL's direct connection with Ireland lasted only nine months, his dominance in England has meant that his name is associated with the events of the whole period 1649-58, which saw the ruthless suppression of Catholic and royalist resistance, the execution, transportation, or imprisonment of substantial numbers of Catholic clergy, and the wholesale confiscation of Catholic lands. Further reading: R. C. Richardson (ed.), "Images of Cromwell," (1993).