A Cyclopaedia of Female Biography/Cromwell, Elizabeth

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CROMWELL, ELIZABETH,

Wife of Oliver Cromwell, was the daughter of Sir James Bourchier, knight, of Felsted, in Essex. She was married on the 22nd. of August, 1620. In person and manners she was very plain, and not well educated, even for those times. She seems to have been an upright, religious, and charitable woman, who however did not possess much influence over her husband. After the death of Cromwell, in 1658, she retired for a short time into Wales, and then went to the house of her son-in-law Claypole, at Norborough, in Lincolnshire, where she lived till her death, October 8th., 1672. She was probably upwards of seventy when she died.