OLIVER CROMWELL’S WIFE.
The two following notable instances of this Lady’s niggardliness are taken from a very scarce little book intitled “The Court and Kitchen of Elizabeth Cromwell,” &c. printed in 1664.
“The first, was the very next summer after Oliver’s coming to the Protectorate in 1654. In June, at the very first season of green pease, where a poor country woman living some where about London, having a very early but small quantity in her garden, was advised to gather them and carry them to the Lady Protectress; her counsellors conceiving she would be very liberal in her reward, they being the first of that year; accordingly the poor woman came to the Strand; and having her pease amounting to a peck and a half, in a basket, a cook by the Savoy as she passed, either seeing or guessing at them, demanded the price, and upon her silence offered her an angel (a coin so called) for them, but the woman expecting some greater matter, went on her way to Whitehall, where after much ado, she was directed to her chamber, and one of her maids came out, and understanding it was a present and a rarity, carried it in to the Protectress, who out of her princely munificence sent her a crown, which the maid told into her hand; the woman seeing this baseness, and the frustration of her hopes, and remembering withal what the cook had proffered her, threw back the money into the maid’s hands, and desired her to fetch her back her pease, for that she was offered five shillings more for them before she brought them thither, and could go fetch it presently; and so half slightingly and half ashamedly, this great lady returned her present, putting it off with a censure upon the unsatisfactory daintiness of luxurious and prodigal epicurism. The very same pease were afterwards sold by the woman to the said cook, who is yet alive (that is in 1664) to justify the truth of this relation.
“The other is of a later date. Upon Oliver’s rupture with the Spaniards, the commodities of Spain grew very scarce, and the prices of them raised by such as could procure them under-hand. Among the rest of these goods, the fruits of the growth of that country were very rare and dear, especially oranges and lemons. One day as the Protector was private at dinner he called for an orange to a loin of veal, to which he used no other sauce, and urging the same command, was answered by his wife, that Oranges were oranges now; that crab oranges would cost a groat, and for her part she never intended to give it; and it was presently whispered that sure her Highness was never the adviser of the Spanish war: and that his Highness would have done well to have consulted his digestion, before his lusty and inordinate appetite of dominion and riches in the West Indies.”