[quote=""Christina""]
Huge 
!!! Must have been an excess of meade or something!! Ah ha! So Richard Harris is to blame! I'm afraid I simply cannot stand a man who banned doing anything on a Sunday except reading the Bible (totally contrary to what it actually says in the Bible!!); who banned Maypole dancing (which, happily we still do today); who banned Christmas...and basically banned anything that was fun...
I must confess, too, that part of my liking for Charles, is simply that I liked the look of the Cavaliers' flashy clothes more than the Roundheads'
- and Queen Victoria's eldest daughter, Vicky, the brilliant, brilliant Empress Frederick of Germany, was such a huge fan of Charles I, that she quite persuaded me (not personally! I mean reading her letters) to see him from her point of view.[/quote]
That is a bit of a myth. Cromwell didn't ban Christmas. The Long Parliament abolished the feasts on Christmas and several other major ones. To compensate they did declare the 2nd Teusday of every month a secular holiday, much like modern bank holidays. The objection to the Christmas feast was twofold. One, it was seen as a Roman Catholic practice and two, it was wasteful, extravagant and full of drunkeness and lewd behaviour. Rather like the carnival in Rio de Janeiro, but with less decorum.
The ban wasn't very effective anyway.
He didn't ban maypoles either!!
Cromwell was not against fun, that is a myth. He was against drunkeness and rioting. Most of his actions were actually very pragmatic. The sort of thing which went on in theatres, pubs (the wilder sort) and racecourses wasn't good for the public order, but even worse than that they were often a hotbed of Royalist conspiracies. By clamping down on those places, Cromwell was dealing with a major threat. He wasn't against drinking, he was against drinking to excess, he wasn't against dancing, he was against the loose morals. He loved music and practical jokes.
Not all Parliamentarians were Puritans and not all Royalists were Cavaliers, in fact there were many Puritans among them. Not all Puritans were roundheads either. Cavalier had less to do with court fashions and more to do with your political outlooks. Fashions on both sides were pretty similar.
...I like him. I know he was bombastic and believed in the Divine Right of Kings, but he wasn't an idiot - he was intellectually far more gifted than he is given credit for, I think. And, in spite of what is generally written, the main objection that horribly nasty Oliver Cromwell 
had to him was religious rather than any concern for the people. continent...I also really enjoyed Gettysburg - in spite of the false beards!!)[/quote]
I think its because I saw the movie "Cromwell" at an impressionable age, and I've always had a bit of a thing for Richard Harris 
