Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Cromwell, Oliver (1742?-1821)
CROMWELL, OLIVER (1742?–1821), biographer, born in or about 1742, was the son of Thomas Cromwell of Bridgewater Square, London, by his second wife Mary, daughter of Nicholas Skinner, merchant, of London. From the pedigree in Clutterbuck’s ‘Hertfordshire’ (ii. 95–8) it will be seen that he was lineally descended from the Protector, being the great-grandson of Henry Cromwell [q. v.], lord-deputy of Ireland and M.P. for Cambridge, fourth son of the Protector. For many years he practised as a solicitor in Essex Street, Strand, and was also clerk to St. Thomas’s Hospital. By the wills of his cousins, Elizabeth, Anne, and Letitia, daughters of Richard Cromwell, he became possessed of the manor of Theobalds and estate of Cheshunt Park, Hertfordshire. At the last-named place he built a house in 1795, and died there on 31 May 1821, aged 79 (Gent. Mag. vol. xci. pt. i. pp. 569–70). By his marriage on 8 Aug. 1771 to Mary, daughter of Morgan Morse, solicitor, he had issue a son, Oliver, who died in infancy, and a daughter, Elizabeth Oliveria, married on 18 June 1801 to Thomas Artemidorus Russell of Cheshunt, who succeeded to the estates. The year before his death Cromwell brought out in handsome quarto ‘Memoirs of the Protector, Oliver Cromwell, and of his sons, Richard and Henry’ (third edition, 2 vols. 8vo, 1823), condemned by Carlyle as ‘an incorrect, dull, insignificant book’ (Cromwell’s Letters and Speeches, 2nd edit. ii. 161 n.)
[Noble's Memoirs of the Protectoral House of Cromwell, i. 232–3; Clutterbuck's Hertfordshire, ii. 99, 105; Cussans’s Hertfordshire, Hundred of Hertford, pp. 214, 235; Palmer’s Perlustration of Great Yarmouth, iii. 286–7.]