Cromwell was a tyrant in the eyes of the established elites, an epithet he actually didn’t deserve.
But everything he said in this speech was true. Interestingly, with the deposition of King Charles, and the dissolution of his Court, England entered into an economic boom, fueled by the free markets that replaced the monumentally corrupt system of royal prerogatives that had grown up over generations.
The Irish, of course, loathe his memory for his having rather violently put down the Irish-based attempt at restoring by force of arms the hegemony of Roman Catholicism in England, something that the English rank and file didn’t want at all. If the Irish hadn’t signed on to Papal intrigues, Irish history would have been a lot more peaceful, right to this day.
Cromwell wasn’t just a tyrant in the view of the elites. For example the other side in the civil war, the Cavaliers hated him. Pretty much anybody who wasn’t a Puritan such as Anglicans, Catholics, Presbyterians, Quakers and others were all oppressed under his tyrannical rule.
After all, these were the guys who banned maypoles. They banned football. They tried to ban celebrating Christmas. Eventually pretty much everybody had had it with these fanatical intolerant killjoys. When he died and his son “Tumbledown Dick” tried to take power, pretty much nobody was having any of it. They brought the king back.