"She very frugally housewifed it" says James Heath, "and would nicely and finically tax the expensive unthriftiness (as she said) of the other woman [Henrietta Maria] who lived there before her".

[11] It suggested that "Much ado had she at first to raise her mind and deportment to this sovereign grandeur; and very difficult it was for her to lay aside those impertinent meannesses of her private fortune: like the bride-cat, by Venus's favour metamorphosed into a comely virgin, that could not forbear catching at mice, she could not comport with her present condition, nor forget the common converse and affairs of life.

But like some kitchen-maid, preferred by the lust of some rich and noble dotard, was ashamed of her sudden and gaudy bravery, and for a while skulked up and down the house, till the fawning observance and reverences of her slaves had raised her to a confidence, not long after sublimed into an impudence."

Heath, on the contrary, asserts, "she was trained up and made the waiting woman of Cromwell's providence, and lady rampant of his successful greatness, which she personated afterwards as imperiously as himself".

recorded hearing, "that she was as deeply interested herself in steering the helm, as she had often done in turning the spit; and that she was as constant a spur to her husband in the career of his ambition, as she had been to her servants in their culinary employments".

[citation needed] However, Jesse argued that Elizabeth "seems to have laudably confined herself to the details of domestic life, nor is there any authenticated instance of her having exercised the slightest political influence over her husband.

Besides, not one of her relations were partakers of her greatness, and Cromwell's behaviour to her appeared throughout to have been rather that of a man who respects his wife as the mother of his children, than for any mental or personal qualifications of her own".

[13] He also pointed out "the singular and undoubted fact that she endeavoured to persuade her husband to recall the young King", without success.

Amongst the goods that were pretended to be Mrs. Cromwell's, at the fruiterer's warehouse, are discovered some pictures, and other things belonging to his Majesty: the remainder lay attached in the custody of Lieut.

[27] This broadside, printed before Cromwell's inauguration in the Protectorship, exhibits how early and how generally the Lord Protector's public views of personal aggrandizement were challenged by some contemporaries.

A seventeenth century satirical pamphlet cookbook, The Court and Kitchen of Elizabeth, Commonly Called Joan Cromwell, the Wife of the Late Usurper, portrayed her insultingly as a parsimonious housekeeper "a hundred times fitter for a barn than a palace".

"[citation needed] Other writers portrayed her as unattractive, including Abraham Cowley who, in his play The Cutter of Colman Street (1661), put the following passage into the mouth of Cutter: "He [Worm] would have been my lady Protectress's poet: he writ once a copy in praise of her beauty; but her Highness gave for it but an old half-crown piece in gold, which she had hoarded up before these troubles, and that discouraged him from any further applications to court."

Attribution: This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain: "Memoirs of the court of England, from the revolution in 1688 to the death of George the Second" by John Heneage Jesse (1846)