The statue of Oliver Cromwell, which still stands outside the Houses of Parliament, has a troubled story behind it. In 1895, during the final weeks of Lord Rosebery's Liberal government, the cabinet decided to commemorate the tercentenary of Cromwell's birth, which would occur in 1899, by using public funds to commission a statue in the Protector's honor. But when the proposal was placed before the Commons, it provoked an uproar. “The Irishmen took fire,” John Morley wrote later, describing the scene. “Drogheda, and all the other deeds of two centuries and a half before, blazed into memory as if they had happened yesterday. Nationalist wrath was aided by Unionist satire. Did peace Liberals then, we were asked, honour Oliver as the great soldier, or was it the jingo in international policy, or the founder of a big navy, or the armed destroyer of the House of Commons?” Eventually, the government was forced to withdraw its proposal in order to avoid the risk of alienating such an important Liberal constituency as the Irish. Rosebery, however, was not to be outdone. Taking on himself the cost of the statue, he commissioned Hamo Thornycroft to execute the work, and in 1899 the memorial to Oliver Cromwell appeared outside Westminster Hall as originally planned, angering once again the Irish and Conservatives.

The decision to celebrate Cromwell's tercentenary with a statue, despite the outcry it occasioned, marks something of a watershed in England's appreciation of its Cromwellian past.