[citation needed] The historian Austin Woolrych, using 21st-century terminology, said that the Puritans did not consider it inappropriate to "employ senior military officers as vice squad chiefs".
[6] In late July, news of the defeat of the expedition to Hispaniola, commanded by William Penn and Robert Venables, reached London in 1655.
The argument of Woolrych against such definition is that the major-generals remained within the boundaries of the law, they had minimal or no long-term influence in local government and their authority only lasted for less than two years.
Few have addressed the subject without emotion.... Others have traced back to this period the English love of freedom and hatred of standing armies and military rule.
Modern historians tend to portray the major-generals either as the gauleiters of the Cromwellian military state or as misguided religious zealots.