[TO THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."]
SIR,—There is obvious confusion between father and son, a generation being lost in describing the ancestry of " our chief of men." It should be generally known that the Protector came originally of Welsh extraction. His progenitor, Morgan Williams, son of Evan ap Morgan, married a sister of Thomas Cromwell, Earl of Essex. Of the issue, two sons continued the name of Williams, but Sir Richard, the eldest, assumed his uncle's name of Cromwell, and married Frances Mervyn. This Sir Richard Cromwell was great-grandfather of the Protector. There is no ground for supposing the Mervyns were related, as stated, to Thomas Cromwell, or that the estate of Hinchinbroke was bequeathed by him to the nephew.
It should be recognised that Cromwell is a noble name, there being two dormant baronies of Cromwell, one dating from 1308, a very respectable antiquity for England. Also, it is not gene- rally known that Thomas Cromwell's own line was continued. His son Gregory, Lord Cromwell, was summoned to Parliament vita patris ; he was related by marriage to Queen Jane Seymour, and not involved in his father's ruin. These Cromwells proved Royalists, and fought in opposition to their more distinguished relative ; though they lost the English Earldom of Essex, they held for several generations the Irish Earldom of Ardglass. It seems a great pity that the leading points of Oliver Cromwell's extraction are not permanently grafted on all histories of this
Previous page
