A great statesman can never be properly estimated by his contemporaries. They are easily blinded by his brilliancy, or else they feel his proximity and the conditions of his rule to be oppressive. Cromwell, like most extraordinary men, died little known, and hated rather than loved. The world saw only the darker side of his career.

Subsequent generations can appreciate the advantage which English trade has gained through Cromwell's West Indian conquests. The mercantile class of the day merely observed that great immediate losses had followed from the rupture with Spain. They counted up the number of merchant-vessels that had thus been destroyed and the millions of pounds that their cargoes were worth. Cromwell had forced the Dutch, however unwillingly, to attach themselves to him in general matters of policy, and thus early indicated the attitude which after many interruptions has been finally accepted. But it was reserved for later history to appreciate this. His contemporaries regarded the Dutch above all as rivals, and as secret or open enemies. They disliked the treaty made with them, and ignored the Navigation Act, which was in their own favour. Cromwell's home-administration was even more loudly blamed. In those points which had caused the rupture with Charles I he had afforded even stronger ground of complaint, he had openly collected taxes on his own authority, had again and again dissolved Parliaments of the most different kind, had been guilty of insolent encroachments upon the course of justice and personal liberty.