Mrs. Cromwell's Kitchen

The Court and Kitchen of Mrs. Elizabeth alias Joan Cromwell.

To confine and limit this treatise to its purpose and designment prefixed in the title, we must (though with some petty injury to the reader) pass over her economy at her private home, before Oliver's bold achievement and attainment of the supreme power, (because part of it is already public) when she had brought as (we say) a noble to nine pence, by her pious negligence and ill management of the domestic affairs, and was as giddy to see her bare walls as Oliver was mad with enthusiasms and divinations of regal furniture and all princely pomp and greatness. Those memorials may be reduced to this present use in this short corollary.
That the former extremities of her necessitous and indigent Condition, upon the bettering thereof (by the general Ruin) raised in her such a quick sense of the misery of want, that she became most industriously provident, and resolvedly sparing and cautious for the future, and to prefer the certainty of her own care and diligence to the extempore, fond and easy delusions of Deus providebit, with which she had been fooled before into an almost voluntary and devoted poverty.
This her aspect and consideration of the future, extended itself (with more prudence and sagacity then her husband would descend to) in some humble thoughts of her present rise levelled to her past depression: she took a prophetical prospect of the times, and having seen two, three or four variations in the calmness and tranquillity of her husband's fortunes, did wisely presage to herself that after those hurly-burlies of war and the tempest of rebellion, wherein he had whirled, and with so much impatient precipitancy engaged himself, there would another turn happen, against which she concluded to be more discreetly armed. The first eddy of that boisterous and unruly current of his prosperity, which at last over-ran all banks and boundaries flowed into the receptacle of her committee-ship in the associated counties, particularly Cambridge and Huntingdon, where to recover and piece up her ruins, she with the same spirit of zeal and piety of her husband, consecrated her house to be the temple of rapine, one of the prime goddesses next the cause; whither for sacrifices all manner of cattle clean and unclean, were brought from all the adjacent parts; as other costly utensils of the best moveables to adorn and enrich this sacred place; from whence to hope for any re-delivery was mental sacrilege, and to endeavour it was punished with irreparable ruin; and I am sure (like the guilt of that crime) there are some who now feel it to the third generation, and may without miracle to perpetuity.
For not only was her Corban to be satisfied with the product of such oblations, but lands were to be set apart and sequestered, the revenue of which passed first through her fingers, and were made impropriations of her own.
Having thus recruited her estate, and adjusted her present seizures to her past losses, and exalted above the dignity of Mrs. Sheriff, or Countess of those Shires, no person her equal in greatness; upon the success of her husband after Marston Moor she abandoned the dull country, partly not enduring the ordinary demeanour of her acquaintance towards her, nor sufferable nor endurable by her betters, for her imperious and unsociable Carriage towards all persons of quality; and partly to partake in the supreme fruition of the City's more elaborate & exquisite pleasures, & to housewife early admiration: for the ladies of the cause began to appear at thanksgiving dinners, and to reckon as many dishes to a mess, as their husbands numbered achievements.
At her arrival in town she was little less then saluted by the whole junta, though not in a body, yet severally by them all, and afterwards by the pastors, elders and brethren of the sects, who came not a house warming with the breath of their mouths, in zealous gratulations, but brought all silver implements for her accommodation of household stuff, and offered them according to the late pattern of reformation in Guildhall. Nor did tis humour cease here, the middle sort of the religiously fanatic, sent her in Westphalia hams, neat's tongues, puncheons, and tierces of French wine, runlets, and bottles of sack; all manner of preserves and comfits, to save her the trouble of the town; the most of which gifts, they being multiplied upon her, she retailed by private hands, at as good a rate as the market would afford.
But much more of these was given afterwards when Oliver was returned from the ending the war, and was looked upon as the great motion of the Parliament's proceedings: not to reckon on those immoderate bribes that obtruded themselves upon her, more welcome by far than those saintlike benevolences and civil offices of love, under which their corrupting practices were veiled to no purpose; for she very well understood the very first addresses though never so innocently remote from the main design, and would rate them (as they do post miles, for she kept her constant distant stages in all her public brocage and transactions) duly and exactly.
And indeed her house was in this respect a political or state exchange by which the affairs of the kingdom were governed, and the prizes of all things set, whether offices, preferments, indemnity; as all other manner of collusion and deceits were practised, and money stirring nowhere else: and in the other respect of provisions, it might have passed for the temple of Bel and the Dragon, (to pursue the former sanctity of her rural mansion) where all those offerings of diet were consumed, or as good, altered and assimilated to her nature (the use of the nutritive faculty) by serving her covetousness in their reduction to money.
Now she needed no such austere diligence in the preservation of an estate, for it was more than she and her ministers could do to receive it. It was impossible to keep any decorum or order, in that house where masterless money like a haunting spirit, possessed and disquieted every room. It was a kind of Midas his palace, where there was nothing but gold to eat, only instead of being confined to that indigestible food, she and her servants were most frequently invited out of doors to most sumptuous and magnificent treatments, whence because of that more sacred employment at home, (like Sabbatarians that provide themselves baked and cold meats for the superstitious observation of the day) they and their progging lady brought home such relics, as they might mumble down in the dispatch of their business, and save the trouble or magic of their long graces, which had brought a curse instead of a blessing, upon their master's and mistress's first endeavours, though she herself (so hard it is to forgo and shake off an habitual customary hypocrisy and fallacy) would look as religiously upon a marchpane, preserve or comfit, as despairing lover upon his mistress's lips.
But the war expired, and those thanksgiving and triumphal festivals over and ended, this pious family began to enter upon the years of famine after those of plenty. Her husband was now engaged in deep designs and practices upon the King and Kingdom, and in order to ruin them both, upon the army; Every one of those mischievous and Machiavellian consultations and projects, were ushered continually by a fast, which being appointed for, and observed by the host, were always intimated to the friends and relations of the officers, and kept by them with no less strictness in their private households; which by the frequent shifts, and various turns of policy, which Cromwell's fate, and the uncertainty of the times guided him to, came so often and thick upon the neck of one another, that her domestics had almost forgot dinner time; upstart piety, like the modern frugality, baiting a meal, and as that had limited the diet to noon, this changed it and inverted it to night.
So that, as in other authoritative continued fasts, there is a political and humane reason, viz. the sparing the creature, even to the same end, this good housewife directed her domestic abstinence; and when on such occasions she had cause to suspect a general discontent of her people and household; she would up with this scripture expression, and lay it in their teeth for better fare; The Kingdom of God is not meat and drink, but righteousness and peace, and some such scriptural dehortations from gluttony and the like luxurious intemperance, and other zealous sentences of moderation in diet; as that the pleasure of a full diet consists more in desire then in satiety; that to have the stomach twice repleted in the day, is to empty the brain, and to render the mind unserviceable to the actions of life; no abyss, no whirlpool is so pernicious as gluttony, which the more a man eats, makes him more a-hungry; and the better he dines to sup the worse, with such other morals, taken out of Guzman and Lazarillo de Tormes,[Note 1] and only altered a little, by being made serious in practice.
Yet I cannot pass this necessary lesson of temperance, however it proceeds from this sophistical corrupt teacher thereof, without some reflection on some more ancient and authentic instructions, but because it is a little beside my design, I will conclude them in some fit sentences, as of the satrist Persius.