This is a piece about some research I did many years ago on some portraits of Oliver Cromwell’s cavalier cousins in the Heinz Archive at the National Portrait Gallery. The portraits of Colonel Henry Cromwell (1586 – 1657) and his third wife Elizabeth Lady Ferrers (d.1658) didn’t resemble the work of any artist I recognised. A curator happened to be going through the files at the same time and they very kindly suggested David des Granges (1611 – c.1672) as a name worth looking into. You appreciate kindness like that and you never forget it. If the attribution has legs – and I rather think it does – they deserve all credit for it. At the time the paintings were being sold from a private collection. They have since been through the art market. If anyone is working on them I’d be delighted if this is of any use.

Portrait of Colonel Henry Cromwell (1586 – 1657) 1646, Inscribed u.l. Ætat Suae 60 u.r Anno Dom 1646

Portrait of Elizabeth Lucy Lady Ferrars (d.1658) 1646, Inscribed u.l. Ætat Suae 58 u.r Anno Dom 1646

Both portraits are 30 x 25 inches oil on canvas. They were inherited from the Cromwells Arundel 1660 by the Cowpers of Overleigh Hall, near Chester, then by descent to Dorothy Cholmondeley née Cowper, passing through the Cholmondeleys of Condover Hall until the death of Hugh Cholmondeley in 1986. Lady Ferrers’s portrait was exhibited at the National Portrait Exhibition at the South Kensington Museum (V&A) in 1866. George Perfect Harding noted the portraits in his List of Portraits and Pictures in Various Mansions of the United Kingdom Vol II, p.109 (manuscript in the Heinz Archive NPG). Harding wrongly identifies the portrait of Elizabeth Lucy Lady Ferrars as Elizabeth Bromley wife of his father – the Lord Protector’s uncle – Sir Oliver Cromwell KB (c.1563 – 1655). This was evidently a mistaken family tradition. The dates inscribed on the painting, not to mention the fact that Elizabeth Bromley was long dead by 1646, reveal the true identity.

A portrait of the royalist Sir Oliver Cromwell KB (c.1563 – 1655) painted by the same hand in 1647 descended with the present portraits until late last century (fig. 1), along with a portrait of an unknown woman by the same hand and dated to 1633.

fig. 1. Sir Oliver Cromwell KB (1550s – 1655), 1647, Cromwell Museum, Huntingdon.

The portrait of England’s then-oldest-living knight, and the present image of his son, exemplify the loyal and honourable defiance that led the Cromwells to stand firm for King Charles even at this date when the tide of war was irrevocably turning. Sir Oliver was the eldest brother of Robert Cromwell (c.1560 – 1617), father of the Lord Protector. Their father Sir Henry, ‘the Golden Knight’, was a celebrated benefactor, four time High Sheriff of Huntingdonshire and considered for a peerage. In 1564 he entertained Elizabeth I at his great house Hinchinbrooke, just as Sir Oliver his son was to entertain King James I in 1604. Neither man gained the ultimate prizes of Royal favour and the extravagance of receiving the king ruined Sir Oliver who was forced to sell Hinchinbrooke in 1627. This royal visit was the setting for a curious apocryphal incident, where the future Lord Protector is believed to have met the young Duke of York, the future King Charles I and – as it is said – beat him in a fight. This folksy prophecy is unlikely – not least in that though Oliver Cromwell would have been four years old the infant Charles was barely three – though it is likely that the young Oliver would have been among the company at his uncle’s house on so momentous an occasion. Whether or not the waste of so much money and his family’s financial ruin soured Oliver’s opinion of royal patronage and prerogative it did not affect his uncle’s loyalty and the Royalist branch of the Cromwells suffered still further in the later civil wars. Sir Oliver – now living in reduced state at Ramsey Abbey – raised a troop of horse for the King and his sons served in the royalist army. The Cromwells only tasted defeat when their kinsman levied a fine on them on the threat of burning down the town of Ramsey if he did not comply, finally extorting £1,000 and forty horses after the two Olivers met to parlay on the High Bridge in what must surely be one of the more remarkable meetings of the war.

Henry his heir, and the sitter in our portrait was High Sheriff of Huntingdon and a Colonel in the royalist cavalry and served throughout the war. He was a successful commander and the Parliamentary standards were hung in Ramsey Church until 1687. It is a mark of the family’s diehard conviction that these trophies were apparently displayed openly through the whole of the Protectorate. His son Henry (1625 – 1673) by his second wife Mary Doyer was a Member of Parliament and continuing the family tradition of almost foolhardy service to the Crown maintained the royalist cause through a succession of Puritan Parliaments in the Interregnum. Henry did not live to see the Restoration as he died in 1657, though his son became one of King Charles II’s favourites and was made a Knight of the Royal Oak. The Cromwell name became an embarrassment to him, though, and by his death in 1673 he had reverted to the original family name of Williams. The Cromwells of Huntingdon were properly Williams in the paternal line, and adopted the name of Cromwell in the sixteenth century to mark their relationship through a niece to King Henry VIII’s great minister Thomas Cromwell Earl of Essex.

Sir Henry Cromwell’s wife Elizabeth was the daughter of Sir Edward Lucy and widow of Sir John Ferrars, Knight Gentleman of the Privy Chamber to Elizabeth I and James I. She married Sir Henry after the death of his second wife in 1629. 

The four Cromwell portraits which descended to the Cholmondeleys are unsigned, but stylistically they bear considerable affinities to the work of David des Granges (1611 or 1613 – c.1675). Des Grange is best known as a miniaturist. He painted members of the Villiers family including Catharine Manners Duchess of Buckingham in 1639 (Royal Collection) and her daughter Lady Mary Villiers Duchess of Richmond and Lennox in 1648 (Duke of Buccleuch Collection). In the Earl of Haddington’s collection are three miniatures of Buckingham’s nephew the 1st Duke of Hamilton, the Duke’s son Sir James Hamilton and a relative by marriage Lady Christine Lindsay dated to 1648. Other royalist sitters include Inigo Jones (ex Duke of Portland Collection, Welbeck Abbey) but the crowning glory of Des Grange’s career came in 1651 when he joined the young King Charles II in Scotland and was appointed His Majesty’s Limner in Scotland. He was commissioned to produce thirteen portraits of the King (examples Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Cottrell-Dormer Collection Oxfordshire) which are a distinctive interpretation of Adriaen Hanneman’s scale-of-life portrait. In 1671, crippled and unable to work, he was obliged to petition the King for payment of this commission.

Des Granges’s identified oil portraits are rare. But the Cromwell portraits have an excellent claim to be considered for his work. In particular the calligraphy giving sitter ages and date is very closely comparable to the lettering with which Des Granges inscribes his earlier portrait of Sir Robert Chester 1632 (fig.3), sold Sotheby’s London September 21st 1983 lot 277).

The D for Anno Domini in the portrait of Sir Oliver Cromwell appears very similar to the loop-topped D with which the painter marks his signed portraits.

The large conversation piece The Saltonstall Family 1636 – 37 (Tate Gallery) is traditionally attributed to him, and certainly shares the haunting psychology of his one signed oil portrait Sir Robert Chester 1632 (Sotheby’s London September 21st 1983 lot 277). The present portraits, and their former companion portrait of Sir Oliver are worth further consideration as a stylistic fit.

The royalist Cromwells are typical patrons for Des Grange, who like William Dobson nailed his political colours to the mast and took his employment accordingly. The Cromwells are indeed less obscure in a galaxy of celebrity royalist sitters than might first appear. When Sir Oliver entertained King James I on the southern journey to claim his kingdom in 1603 he had ambitions of gaining high court appointment. He was not to be successful, and the King had other suitors, but he was still created a Knight of the Bath for the King’s Coronation and in 1611 he was appointed Master of the Prince’s Game to Henry Prince of Wales. Prince Henry’s death in 1612 cut off any further hope of preferment but he was clearly in the King’s favour and a place in the heir’s household was a shrewd political placement and only ill-luck excluded them from the inner circles of the Court.

Lastly it is worth noting that if Huntingdon lay on the road from Scotland in 1603 it would equally have been one of the best routes northward in 1647/8. The signed miniature in the Haddington Collection suggests that Des Grange was with the Hamiltons either in Scotland or in the very north of England. Nothing seems more reasonable than that his journey there would have included a lengthy stay with the Cromwells at Ramsey Abbey in 1646, especially if they had been patrons of his as early as 1633.

1.Sir Roy Strong (Burlington Magazine Vol CIX May 1967 No 770 pp.276 – 281) explores this provenance in investigating a further ex-Cholmondeley painting Portrait of a Lady of the Cromwell Family after Hans Holbein (National Portrait Gallery, London) which was sold from Condover Hall in 1897.

2. GP Harding wrongly identifies the portrait of Elizabeth Lady Ferrars as Sir Oliver’s wife Elizabeth Bromley, evidently a mistaken family tradition. The dates inscribed on the painting, not to mention the fact that Elizabeth Bromley was long dead by 1646, reveal the true identity.

3. It has been suggested (correspondence on file at the National Portraits Gallery) that this portrait may show Henry Cromwell’s second wife and that the date of her death is in fact 1640 rather than 1627. It is equally possible that the portrait shows one of Henry Cromwell’s four sisters.