The wife of the remarkable man, who for some years swayed the sceptre of England, and dictated to Europe, is differently represented by various writers, according to the party they espoused. By some, his rise and perseverance is attributed to her influence; by others, she is represented as an ordinary person. One author says, that she was by Oliver “trained up and made the waiting-woman of his providences, and lady-rampant of his successful greatness, which she personated afterwards as imperiously as himself.”

The enemies of her too successful husband load her with contempt, accusing her of errors such as were sufficiently common in the court of the monarch whom Cromwell's death restored, but the motive for such accusations is so apparent, that they deserve no kind of attention.

That she was an excellent housewife was certainly no recommendation to a throne, and as that is a qualification only commendable when its exercise is required, she did not probably intrude it when the necessity ceased of her attending to domestic affairs: as she was not royally or nobly born, her talents of this description were useful and available at a period when her fortunes were less exalted than afterwards, and doubtless she could let them lie dormant at the proper time; but to listen to the sneers and sarcasms of the loyalists, one would imagine that, like Queen Dollalolla, she cooked her husband's dinner after he was Protector; as set forth in a work called “The Court and Kitchen of Joan Cromwell, Wife of the late Usurper.”