Collection: The Cromwell Museum

Collection-level records:

• Collection overview (Cornucopia)

  Personalia

  The museum collections include nearly 200 prints mainly steel engravings of later works such as Thomas Maguire’s painting of Cromwell Refusing the Crown of England ;Small collection of manuscript material, together with books and propaganda pamphlets from the period of the Civil War, such as The King’s Declaration of 1642. The Museum also has copies of some of the key texts of the period, for example The Humble Petition and Advice of 1657, which is the new constitution which confirmed and clarified the organisation of Parliament and the duties of the office of Lord Protector. ;The coinage of the period is in three separate phases. Until the death of the King in 1649 all coinage bore his head: from 1649 onwards the Commonwealth issued coinage with no portrait at all. After the establishment of the Protectorate, Thomas Simon designed a new coinage which depicted Cromwell as a regal figure. The museum collections include examples from both the Commonwealth and the Protectorate. The museum has several portrait medals of Cromwell, including a copy of the Lord Protector medal by Thomas Simon. Ever since Cromwell’s death commemorative pieces of different types have been made which feature Cromwell. They vary from Wedgwood and Staffordshire pottery, to glass, bronzes and needlework. The highpoint of Cromwell as a popular national figure came in the mid to late nineteenth century, when the Protestant movement regarded him as the archetypal Englishman. The majority of the museum’s collection of commemoratives is held in reserve. The Museum loan collections include a unique group of objects and portraits which have been passed down by the descendants of Henry Cromwell. They vary from the spectacular to the mundane, and include the hat that Cromwell is thought to have worn at the dissolution of the Long Parliament in 1653 to his personal flask for carrying gun powder to charge his pistol. The Museum also has on display an apothecaries cabinet, which includes medical implements, which was owned by Cromwell, and a Florentine Cabinet presented to him by the Duke of Tuscany. Cromwell was painted by several different artists during his lifetime, including Robert Walker, Sir Peter Lely and Samuel Cooper. The most prolific artist was probably Walker, (d.1658). He and his studio turned out a number of portraits of Cromwell, of which the Museum has two. One of these, a three-quarter length portrait, appears in several versions, and they are in various collections including the National Portrait Gallery, the Palace of Westminster and Burghley House. The Museum’s picture is known as the Polhill Walker, and is thought to have first been owned by Cromwell’s daughter, Bridget Ireton. The full length painting by Walker shows Cromwell in a buff coat with a breast plate and riding boots, which are pushed down below the knee. The portrait was the gift of Lord Luke, a family closely associated with the Parliamentary side of the English Civil War. The Museum also has a copy of a well known portrait by Sir Peter Lely (1618-1680) which was presented by Cromwell to the Grand Duke of Tuscany and is to be found in the Palazzo Pitti in Florence. It was whilst sitting for this portrait that Cromwell is alleged to have told the artist ,”Mr Lely, I desire you would use all your skill to paint your picture truly like me, and not flatter me at all; but remark all these roughness, pimples, warts, and everything as you see me; otherwise I will never pay a farthing for it.” The Museum also holds a significant late portrait of Cromwell by Edward Mascall, and several miniatures in the style of Samuel Cooper.

  Source: Cornucopia

  Date: Not known, but before 2015

  Licence: CC BY-NC