Cromwell's Promise

When he returns home after fighting in the English Civil War, Tom Swainson is full of hope for a New Age of equality. But his high ideals are soon quashed by reality: his wife is strangely diffident and his livelihood threatened by the enclosure and draining of the Fens by rich landowners or 'Venturers'. Unwilling to believe himself cuckolded by his best friend, Matt Hobday, Swainson sets off with three chance-met companions to confront Oliver Cromwell, their old commander, who promised to uphold the rights of Fenland Commoners when they answered his call to arms at the beginning of the Civil War. But now he is Lord Protector of England, will Cromwell keep faith?

Set in the uncompromising landscape of the Fens during the turbulent and uncertain years following the execution of Charles I, Cromwell's Promise is a powerful story of betrayal and redemption.