The Cromwell Museum is the only significant museum collection relating specifically to Oliver Cromwell. The Museum was created in 1962 and has grown by gift, purchase, bequest and loan to form a nationally important collection. It includes within it a rich variety of different types of object, the majority of which are on display.
Portraits
Cromwell was painted by several different artists during his lifetime, including Robert Walker, Sir Peter Lely and Samuel Cooper. His image was also represented in medallic form by Thomas Simon.
The most prolific artist was probably Walker, (d.1658). He and his studio turned out a number of portraits of Cromwell, of which the Museum has two.
The Museum also has a copy of a well known portrait by Sir Peter Lely (1618-1680). The portrait was presented by Cromwell to the Grand Duke of Tuscany and it is to be found in the Palazzo Pitti in Florence. It was whilst sitting for this portrait that Cromwell is alleged to have told the artist:
"Mr Lely, I desire you would use all your skill to paint your picture truly like me, and not flatter me at all; but remark all these roughness, pimples, warts, and everything as you see me; otherwise I will never pay a farthing for it."
The Museum also holds a significant late portrait of Cromwell by Edward Mascall, and several miniatures in the style of Samuel Cooper.
Manuscripts
The Museum's collection is not extensive, and the main public documents of the period are held by the The National Archives in Kew. For most purposes the four volumes of the writings and speeches of Oliver Cromwell edited by W.C. Abbott, (Harvard and OUP), provides a comprehensive and readily accessible source of information.
Books and Pamphlets
The Civil Wars saw an incredible amount of propaganda published by both sides, often in the form of 'newsbooks' carrying reports about events in the field. This has left a rich legacy for historians to use, although everything needs to be read with caution.
The Museum also has copies of some of the key texts of the period, such as The Humble Petition & Advice of 1657, which is the new constitution which confirmed and clarified the organisation of Parliament and the duties of the office of Lord Protector.
Coins and Medals
The coinage of the period is in three separate phases. Until the death of the King in 1649 all coinage bore his head: from 1649 onwards the Commonwealth issued coinage with no portrait at all. After the establishment of the Protectorate, Thomas Simon designed a new coinage which depicted Cromwell as a regal figure.
As well as examples of coins of both the phases, the Museum has several portrait medals, including a copy of the Lord Protector medal also by Thomas Simon.
Personalia
The Museum is very fortunate in being able to display a unique group of objects and portraits which have been passed down by the descendants of Henry Cromwell. They vary from the spectacular to the mundane, and include the hat that Cromwell is thought to have worn at the dissolution of the Long Parliament in 1653 to his personal flask for carrying gun powder to charge his pistol.
The Museum also has on display an apothecaries cabinet, which includes medical implements, which was owned by Cromwell, and a Florentine Cabinet presented to him by the Duke of Tuscany.
Commemoratives
Ever since Cromwell's death commemorative pieces of different types have been made which feature Cromwell. They vary from Wedgwood and Staffordshire pottery, to glass, bronzes and needlework. The highpoint of Cromwell as a popular national figure came in the mid to late nineteenth century, when the Protestant movement regarded him as the archetypal Englishman.
Imaginative paintings of the great stages of Cromwell's life were created, and often reproduced in steel engravings which could be published and sold to be hung over the mantlepiece. Thomas Maguire's painting of Cromwell refusing the crown of England, which was life sized, was reproduced in an engraving by Frederick Hunter.
Because of the constraints of space the majority of the commemorative collection is held in reserve.