Frances Cromwell

Frances Russell (née Cromwell; 1638 – 1720) was the ninth and youngest daughter of Oliver Cromwell, Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland and Ireland, and his wife, Elizabeth Cromwell. She was baptized at St. Mary's Church in Ely on 6 December 1638. Like her slightly older sister Mary, Frances (born 1638), the Cromwells’ last and youngest child, was still living with her parents during the Protectorate. Her name, too, was associated with an array of suitors, but her eye fell upon Robert Rich, grandson of Robert Earl of Warwick and son of Robert Lord Rich. The courtship did not run smoothly, for there were doubts and objections on both sides – Robert Lord Rich was heavily in debt and his loyalty to the Protectoral regime was questioned and there were rumours, eventually discounted, that the proposed bridegroom was ‘vicious’, while on their side the Riches were dismayed by Cromwell’s ‘high’ demands for the marriage settlement. Eventually all these difficulties were overcome and the couple married at Whitehall in November 1657, the wedding followed by conspicuously exuberant celebrations which continued over several days. Robert Rich was already ailing by the time of the wedding and he died, possibly from tuberculosis, in February 1658; the marriage produced no children. After the fall of the Protectorate, Frances, ‘Lady Rich’ as she was styled, lived for her time at the house of her brother Richard in Hursley, Hampshire, and it was at Hursley in May 1663 that she married again. Her second husband was John Russell of Chippenham, Cambridgeshire, who succeeded to his father’s baronetcy the following year and whose sister Elizabeth was the wife of Henry Cromwell, Frances’s brother. The couple lived at Chippenham and during the 1660s had five children before the marriage was ended by Sir John’s death in 1670. Frances, now styled ‘Lady Russell’, never remarried and remained a widow for fifty years. During her widowhood, she became very close to her sister Mary and her husband, and frequently stayed with them in Yorkshire and London. When her own and her eldest son’s financial position became precarious in the 1680s – Chippenham had to be sold off – Frances received help from Mary and she also benefited from a very substantial bequest in her sister’s will, which in turn meant that she died a very wealthy woman. With the death in fairly quick succession of Richard and Mary, Frances had outlived all her siblings and became the last surviving child of Oliver Cromwell. She died in 1720, leaving instructions to be buried in Chiswick church, to lie close by her beloved sister. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frances_Russell,_n%C3%A9e_Cromwell