Work and pray, folks

Why is Oliver Cromwell considered a classical villain in British history books? Can anyone explain this to me? 

I mean, Cromwell killed a million Irishmen and deported another million to Barbados. Sounds like any other Englishman I know. He killed Scotsmen and Frenchmen too, for good measure. 

Sure, he beheaded a king. But why is there a fundamental qualitative difference between beheading a king, and overthrowing a king by inviting a foreign usurper to invade the country? Why is the former a henious crime, while the latter is a glorious revolution?

I think I know why poor old Ironside has the same status in the history books as the Joker in a Batman movie. It´s because he didn´t allow the Anglicans to elevate the host and the chalice in a "moderate" manner during Holy Mass. I mean, that *must* be it. The Lord Protector didn´t follow the via media. That´s why we had to dig up his dead body, put it on public display and let it rot. That´s the moderate thing to do, apparently. 

OK, seriously. The real reason is of course that Cromwell didn´t want to give the aristocracy, pardon, "gentry", and monarchy any piece of the capitalist-bourgeois action. I mean, the guy sounded almost French! There is a strange irony in this, since history probably would have looked pretty much the same even if Cromwell had succeeded in neo-modelling England. The British Empire would still have been created, Britannia would have ruled the waves, the Industrial Revolution would definitely have happened, and so on. Indeed, you would even be forced to read John Milton´s poetry! It´s even possible that Britain would have been a monarchy rather than a "commonwealth" (republic), since Cromwell acted as a quasi-monarch during the latter portion of his reign. 

But sure, it would have been immensely *boring*. No Globe theater, no homosexuality in the upper class, no Anglo-Catholic elevations, no celebrity scandals involving the Prince of Wales or Meghan Markle. And absolutely no excentric lords prattling on about UFOs, serpent power, homeopathy or whatever. Indeed, there would *be* no lords at all.

I readily admit I could have thrived in a Neo-Cromwellian Commonwealth...