SOURCE: Introduction to Speeches of Oliver Cromwell, edited by Ivan Roots, J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd., 1989, pp. ix-xxiii.

In the following excerpt, Roots asserts that the occasional incoherence and ambiguity of Cromwell's speeches indicate that he spoke "extempore," without the benefit of formal written preparation, and that some of his ambiguity might also have been intentional.

Though Oliver Cromwell seems essentially a man of action, even one dedicated to the sword, he was also very much a man of the word, whether written or spoken, informal or ceremonial. We are fortunate that so many of his utterances and communications, certainly since he began to assume some prominence during the Civil War, have survived in some form or other and have been reasonably accessible, especially since 1845 when Thomas Carlyle, after half-a-dozen frustrated attempts at a life-and-times, published his idiosyncratic but influential edition of The Letters and Speeches—'a really...