Good horses of every kind were always Cromwell’s delight. English diplomatic agents in the Levant were employed to procure Arabs and Barbs for his riding or for breeding purposes. “Six gallant Flanders mares, reddish grey,” had drawn the General’s coach when he set out for the reconquest of Ireland, and six white horses drew the Protector’s coach when it conveyed the Spanish Ambassador to his place of embarkation. Of these white horses it was said that they were a finer team than any king of England had ever possessed. Another team of six horses—presented by the Count of Oldenburg in 1654—ran away in Hyde Park when the Protector himself was driving them. Cromwell, who was flung off the box upon the pole, got entangled in the harness, and was dragged for some distance by one foot, but he escaped in the end with nothing more than a few bruises. Andrew Marvell and George Wither both published poems celebrating the Protector’s deliverance, and the incident furnished several royalist wits with a theme for satires and epigrams.
Another recreation which found great favour with Cromwell was music. When he gave a banquet to foreign ambassadors or members of the House of Commons, “rare music, both of instruments and voices,” was always an important part of the entertainment. The same thing took place in hours of relaxation or domestic festivities, for the Protector, according to a contemporary biographer, was “a great lover of music, and entertained the most skilful in that science in his pay and family.” In the great hall at Hampton Court he had two organs, and his organist, John Hingston, was a pupil of Orlando Gibbons. James Quin, a student of Christ Church, Oxford, who had been deprived of his place by the Puritan visitors of that university, obtained his restoration to it through the Protector’s love of music. Quin was not a very skilful singer, but he had a bass voice “very strong and exceeding trolling.” Some of his friends brought him into the company of the Protector, “who loved a good voice, and instrumental music well.” Cromwell “heard him sing with very great delight, liquored him with sack, and in conclusion said, ‘Mr. Quin, you have done well; what shall I do for you?’ To which Quin made answer, with great compliments, that his Highness would be pleased to restore him to his student’s place, which he did accordingly.”
A few other notices of the Protector’s personal habits may be gleaned from contemporary sources. In his diet his tastes were very simple; according to a contemporary pamphleteer, it was “spare and not curious”; no “French quelquechoses” were to be found on his table, but plain, substantial dishes. His ordinary drink, according to the same authority, consisted of “a very small ale” known by the name of “Morning Dew.” He also drank freely a light wine which his physicians had recommended to him as good for his health.
In dress Cromwell’s tastes were marked by the same simplicity. When he expelled the Long Parliament in 1653, he was wearing “plain black clothes with grey worsted stockings.” At his installation in the following December he had on “a plain black suit and cloak,” though a few weeks later when he was entertained by the Lord Mayor he wore “a musk colour suit and coat richly embroidered with gold.” When Protector, his dress was naturally more sumptuous than it had been before, and Sir Philip Warwick, who had so contemptuously criticised the cut of his clothes in 1640, attributed the improvement in his appearance to a better tailor as well as to converse with better company. But even then a young Royalist fresh from the French Court described the Protector as “plain in his apparell,” and “rather affecting a negligence than a genteel garb.”
The Protector’s household was naturally organised on a more magnificent scale than that which had sufficed him as General. The sum allowed for its maintenance was sixty thousand pounds during the first Protectorate, and a hundred thousand pounds during the second. But many other expenses were defrayed from this fund, and Cromwell spent a large amount in charity; according to one biographer as much as forty thousand pounds a year. Speaking of the Protector’s second installation, and the increased state which was its consequence, Sir Philip Warwick says: “Now he models his household so that it might have some resemblance to a Court, and his liveries, lackies, and yeomen of the guard are known whom they belong to by their habit.” The forty or fifty gentlemen employed in the internal service of Whitehall and Hampton Court, or in attendance upon the Protector’s person, wore coats of grey cloth with black velvet collars, and black velvet or silver lace trimming. And besides these “yeomen of the guard” he had the life-guard of horse which has been mentioned before. All this show and state offended many rigid Puritans, to whom even the semblance of a Court was hateful. Others held that it was “necessary for the honour of the English nation” that its head should be surrounded by a certain amount of pomp, and this opinion was generally accepted.
Both newspapers and private letters make frequent mention of the Protector’s family. When Cromwell took up his residence at Whitehall in April, 1654, his aged mother removed with him. But she took no pleasure in her son’s grandeur, and it was said that she “very much mistrusted the issue of affairs, and would be often afraid when she heard a musket that her son was shot, being exceedingly dissatisfied unless she might see him once a day at least.” She died in November, 1654, in her ninety-fourth year, and a little before her death, gave her blessing to her son, in words which show how fully she sympathised with the aims of his life. “The Lord cause His face to shine upon you, and comfort you in all your adversities, and enable you to do great things for the glory of the most High God, and to be a relief unto His people. My dear son, I leave my heart with thee: good night.”
Of the Protector’s wife, “her Highness the Protectress” as she was officially styled, little mention is ever made. There is no doubt some foundation for the account of her methodical and economical management of the Protector’s household, which is contained in a contemporary pamphlet, but the main object of the pamphleteer was to sneer at her “sordid frugality” and unfitness for the station in which fortune had placed her. Mrs. Hutchinson, while owning that Cromwell “had much natural greatness and well became the place he had usurped,” describes his wife and children “as setting up for principality,” which suited them no better than fine clothes do an ape. The Protector’s daughters according to her were “insolent fools,” with one exception. The exception was Bridget, the eldest, who after the death of her first husband, Ireton, became the wife of Lieutenant-General Fleetwood. She alone “was humbled and not exalted with these things.”
Elizabeth Claypole, the Protector’s second and favourite daughter, was in her father’s opinion in danger “of being cozened with worldly vanities and worldly company,” while some of the sharp sayings attributed to her account for Mrs. Hutchinson’s severe judgment. On the other hand we have the evidence of James Harrington, the author of Oceana, that “she acted the part of a princess very naturally, obliging all persons with her civility, and frequently interceding for the unhappy.” Harrington owed to her the restoration of the confiscated manuscript of Oceana, and she often interceded with her father on behalf of imprisoned Royalists. Perhaps it was owing to this that, when the bodies of the Protector and Admiral Blake and many other great Parliamentarians were exhumed from their graves in Westminster Abbey, hers was left undisturbed, and lies there still.
Mary, the third daughter, who was born in 1637, married Thomas Belasyse, Lord Fauconberg, in November, 1657, while Frances, the youngest, became in the same month the wife of Robert Rich, grandson of the Earl of Warwick.
Both weddings were celebrated by festivities which scandalised some Puritans. The wedding feast of Frances was kept at Whitehall, “when,” says a news-letter, “they had forty-eight violins and much mirth with frolics, besides mixt dancing, (a thing heretofore accounted profane) till five of the clock yesterday morning.” That of Mary Cromwell was at Hampton Court, and songs for the occasion were composed by Andrew Marvell, in which the bride was introduced as Cynthia, Fauconberg as Endymion, and the Protector himself as Jove.