Bridget Cromwell

Bridget Cromwell (born 1624) was Sir Oliver Cromwell, Lord Protector's eldest daughter and the eldest of his children to survive into full adulthood. Almost nothing is known of her life until 1646, when she married Henry Ireton, senior parliamentarian officer and close confidant of Oliver. In 1651 she crossed over to Ireland to join her husband, who was leading the English campaign there, though she returned to England later that year and was in London when she learned of Ireton's death at Limerick on 26 November. Her widowhood was brief, for in summer 1652 she married Charles Fleetwood, another senior officer and close colleague of Cromwell, who was about to be appointed commander of the army in Ireland. She was with her husband in Ireland from September 1652 until their return to London in September 1655, whereupon they were assigned lodgings in Derby House. According to some reports she tried to defend and encourage her husband during the dark days of winter 1659-60, to speak up for him and to give him some backbone. After the Restoration, she lived quietly in London with her husband, who had been debarred from public office at the Restoration but otherwise left unmolested. Bridget died in June 1662 and was buried in St Anne's church, Blackfriars. She had had four children by her first marriage to Ireton, all of whom survived into adulthood, and at least three by her second marriage to Fleetwood, one of whom had died in infancy and been buried within Westminster Abbey only to be exhumed at the Restoration.