The cook, who “dressed” or prepared the leg of mutton in elaborately fancy style, was suspected of trying to poison Cromwell and Fairfax, and therefore should have been “dressed” or prepared for execution by the hangman.

Thomas Fairfax, third Lord Fairfax of Cameron (1612-1671) and Commander of the Parliamentary forces until he was replaced by Cromwell. Fairfax did not approve of the execution of Charles I and played a role in the restoration of Charles II to the throne after Cromwell’s death.

Sic. Likely typesetting error. Should be “invitation.”

Italian for “taste.”

I.e., “noisomeness,” meaning “noxiousness” (OED).

I.e., “scents.” The Rump Parliament was the insulting name given to the English Parliament after members who opposed the trial and execution of Charles I were expelled in 1648. Many jokes were made at the time about the name, and this suggestion that the Rump left a bad smell in the palace is typical.

I.e., “scents.”

Ancient Greek for “royal.” The author means “Basilica,” or palace. They may be thinking of Eikon Basilike (1649), “kingly image,” a Royalist tract presented as a spiritual autobiography of Charles I as he awaited his execution.

In 1 Kings 21:1-16, Jezabel, wife of King Ahab, brings about the death of Naboth so that her husband can seize his vineyard.

This is perhaps an allusion to Mark 9:29 and Matthew 17:21, where Jesus comments on his followers’ inability to cast out a demon: “this kind goeth not out but by fasting and praying.” The author might be trying to say that Elizabeth is “like the Devil,” but her excessive Puritan fasting and praying is actually what one does to exorcise a devil. The author’s attempts to have it both ways result in some confused syntax.

Madam Pride: Elizabeth Pride, wife of Thomas, Lord Pride, Parliamentarian Army officer and regicide; Lady Hewson: wife of John Hewson, “army officer and regicide who rose to prominence from low social origins”; Lady Berkstead: wife of Sir John Berkstead, major-general and regicide; Lady Goff: wife of William Goffe, army officer and regicide; Lady Whalley; wife of Edward, Lord Whalley, major-general and regicide (DNB).

The fable of “The Cat and Venus” in Aesop’s Fables tells about a cat who was turned into a woman by Venus and was unable to stop herself from catching mice at her wedding, suggesting that innate qualities are permanent despite a drastic change in station (https://fablesofaesop.com/the-cat-and-venus.html).

“One sent on before to purvey lodgings for an army, royal train, etc.” (OED).

An annual fair held at West Smithfield (a district of London), the setting for Ben Jonson’s play Bartholomew Fair.

I.e., “trap-stairs,” meaning “a ladder or moveable flight of steps” (OED).

Sic. Likely typesetting error. Should be “Council.”

I.e., “seisin,” meaning “take possession of (a legal term)” (OED).

John Maidstone was Oliver Cromwell’s personal servant.

Penates were Roman household gods. Genii locorum were protective spirits of a place. The author claims that the Palace spirits resented the intrusion of the Cromwells and made them unhappy while they lived there.

Whitehall had a very large and elaborate banqueting house (separate dining room) designed by Inigo Jones. The author does not believe that Elizabeth Cromwell was worthy of the palace or its banqueting hall.

Oliver Cromwell became Lord Protector of England in December of 1653 and his family moved into the Palace of Whitehall, which was then the main residence of English monarchs, in April, 1654.

In 1649-50 Cromwell was appointed Lord Lieutenant of Ireland and led forces of the New Model Army to Ireland in order to stamp out support for Charles II and confiscate lands from his supporters there. After a brutal victory in Ireland, he took command of the New Model Army and led a campaign against Scotland in 1650-51, which ended in a victory over Scottish forces as well (DNB).

Henry Somerset, 1st Marquess of Worcester, a prominent Royalist, was captured by Parliamentary forces in 1646 and died soon after.

Elizabeth Cromwell spent all of her money entertaining the regicides. Once the King had been killed, she was able to stop hosting so many people and closed her house to all but a few of Oliver’s “accomplices” as they celebrated their success.

“Extremely wicked or criminal: heinous, villainous” (OED).

There does not appear to be a classical source for this Latin phrase.

As Cromwell’s followers planned the regicide, Elizabeth Cromwell fed them cheap food: small beer and bread and butter. In humoral theory, such foods were supposed to have a calming effect, but the author claims that in this context they acted like strong drink and food thought to rouse the spirits.

Latin for “strong water.” “The early scientific, and still the popular name of Nitric acid . . . a powerful solvent and corrosive” (OED). In Sylva Sylvarum, Francis Bacon discusses dissolving iron in aqua fortis (§789, p. 189). The term ‘aqua fortis’ was used figuratively by the start of the seventeenth century, as it is in Thomas Middleton and Thomas Dekker’s The Roaring Girl: “Money is that aqua fortis, that eates into many a maidenhead” (II.i.180-1).

“A project, a scheme; a design, a proposal” (OED).

“An adherent of a schismatical or heretical sect. In the 17th-18th centuries commonly applied to the English Protestant Dissenters” (OED).

I.e., “niggardly,” meaning “mean, parsimonious, stingy” (OED).

I.e., Oliver's designs to rule the kingdom.

I.e., “parsimonious,” meaning “tight-fisted, mean” (OED).

Inheritable property.

“A thing that belongs to another, a ‘belonging’; a minor property, right, or privilege, belonging to another more important, and passing in possession with it; an appendage” (OED).

“A casual or occasional profit or emolument” (OED), a kind of tip that Elizabeth received when army officers were commissioned.

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I.e., “pieces.”

Elizabeth is here accused of burying stolen antique gold and silver household goods “in hugger mugger,” or “in secret, clandestinely” (OED), so that they could not be tied to the families that originally owned them.

In England, people from Lombardy were associated with banking, money changing, and especially being pawnbrokers. The author is claiming that Elizabeth stole so many “chattels” – “property; goods; money” (OED) – that her home resembled a pawn shop.

I.e., “pratchant,” meaning “arrogant, conceited” (OED).

Sic. Likely typesetting error. Should be “the.”

I.e., “pieces.”

Basing House was a country house owned by John Paulet, the 5th Marquess of Winchester, in Hampshire. Paulet supported Charles I and Parliamentary forces attacked the house several times during the Civil Wars. Oliver Cromwell besieged the house in 1645 and his forces breached the defenses, carried off valuables, and burned the building.

Sic. Likely typesetting error. Should be “the.”

It will be safe to display the confiscated valuables later on, when people have forgotten who originally owned them.

Burned to ashes.

Melded.

Sic. Likely typesetting error. Should be “Government.”

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This passage continues the author’s strategy of trying to depict the Cromwells as simultaneously greedy and stingy. They don’t display all of the magnificent jewels that Cromwell has stolen because it would make people jealous and angry.

The wedding of Elizabeth and John was undignified because they followed extreme Puritan beliefs and did not follow the usual customs of having fiddle music and wedding rings. Instead the author claims that the guests had a food fight and hit each other with cushions.

“A clown or jester who entertains people with antics and buffoonery” (OED).

A nickname for Oliver.

The Greek god of the marriage ceremony.

The Cromwells’ daughter Elizabeth married John Claypole or Cleypole on January 13, 1646 (DNB).

“A woman who assists at a lady’s toilet” or “a dressmaker” (OED).

“Baggage lady” continues the military metaphor, referring to “the portable equipment of an army” and “the men guarding it” (OED), but probably also playing on “baggage” as “a worthless good-for nothing woman; a woman of disreputable or immoral life” (OED).

I.e., “cap-à-pie,” meaning “from head to foot: in reference to arming or accoutring” (OED).

Seen, recognized.

Nomadic people of the Eurasian steppe, from antiquity considered to be uncivilized and barbaric.

A building often located behind a house containing stables. This may refer to the Royal Mews or King’s Mews located at Charing Cross, London.

Servants of wealthy people normally wore distinctive uniforms identifying them as members of their employer’s household.

I.e., “caroche,” meaning “the 17th cent. name of a coach or chariot of a stately or luxurious kind” (OED).

Sic. Likely typesetting error. Should be “publique.”

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From 1650 to 1654, Elizabeth Cromwell and her family “were living in lodgings assigned to them by Parliament in The Cockpit, adjoining Whitehall Palace. Soon after her husband’s elevation as Lord Protector she and her family took up residence in Whitehall Palace itself” (DNB).

This quotation is from Marcus Tullius Cicero, Tusculan Disputations, V.XXXV, where it is attributed to Plato: “Your dinners are indeed delightful, not only at the time, but on the following day as well.” The author appears not to know much Greek.

The Latin and English appear to translate a passage from the Gnomologium Epicteteum (e Stobaie libris 3-4), Sentenia 20: Ἐν ταῖς ἑστιάσεσι μέμνησο, ὅτι δύο ὑποδέχῃ, σῶμα καὶ ψυχήν, καὶ ὅ τι ἂν τῷ σώματι δῷς, τοῦτο εὐθὺς ἐξέχεας, ὅ τι δ’ ἂν τῇ ψυχῇ, διὰ παντὸς τηρεῖς.

This quotation does not appear to be from the Stoic philosopher Epictetus. It can be translated: “We call it moderation when it preserves practical wisdom, and the soul is the home of wisdom.”

Aulus Persius Flaccus his Satires, trans. Barten Holyday (Oxford: Joseph Barnes, 1616), 2.87-92.

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Temperance was both a medical and moral category in the seventeenth century. Humoral theories of the body and health held that only a properly “tempered” body, in which all four humors were in balance, could achieve health. Humoral balance was strongly affected by diet, so a “temperate” diet, in tune with the body’s natural humoral tendencies, was required. At the same time, gluttony was one of the seven deadly sins and a temperate diet that avoided gluttonous consumption was considered to be a sign of moral virtue. The author of this cookbook needs to get around the fact that the Cromwells’ abstemious diet might seem on the surface to be a sign of good health and moral probity.

Persius, Satires, 2.41-3.

An anonymous Spanish picaresque novel, published in 1554, which was condemned by the Catholic Church because of its satire of corrupt Catholic practices and its representation of poor people oppressed (and starved) by the wealthy and the church.

Francisco de Guzman, Spanish author of Triumphos Morales (1565).

Romans 14:17 (KJV): “For the kingdom of God is not meat and drink; but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost.”

The practice of religious fasting was controversial throughout the civil war period. The Church of England had observed fast days in times of crisis (plague, the Armada) and thanksgiving. Because godly congregations embraced the practice of fasting with particular fervor, Bishop Laud condemned it. During the Civil Wars, both the Parliamentary forces and Charles I set regular days of prayer and fasting to promote the victory of their respective sides. After the regicide, Parliament moved away from regular fast days and returned to the practice of calling for fasts in times of crisis or thanksgiving. In general, though, fervent fasting was viewed with suspicion by Royalists, as this introduction reflects. See Durston (1992).

Machiavellian, after the Italian writer Niccolo Machiavelli, who was associated with sneaky, underhanded plots to attain political power. The Leveller John Lilburne referred to Cromwell as a son “of Machiavel,” in Jonah’s Cry out of the Whale’s Belly, July 1647 (DNB).

Refers to the period between the end of the Second Civil War in 1648 and December 16, 1653, when Cromwell became Lord Protector (DNB).

“To chew tentatively with or as with toothless gums” (OED).

Sabbatarians were a Puritan sect who strictly observed the Sabbath and therefore needed to prepare food ahead of time.

King Midas of classical mythology asked that everything he touched would turn to gold, only to discover that he was then unable to eat or drink. Elizabeth Cromwell and her household would also have no food after selling it, except that they are invited out to eat elsewhere.

he apocryphal Book of Daniel contains the stories of Bel and the Dragon. The prophet Daniel proved to the king of Persia that the pagan god Bel was a false god by showing that the food offerings left at the idol were eaten by the priests and their families and not the god himself. Elizabeth Cromwell does not eat the food given to her, but rather “digests” it into money.

Because of these bribes, Elizabeth Cromwell’s home functioned like a state agency where people received jobs and other benefits in exchange for the bribes.

Brokerage.

Elizabeth Cromwell kept track of bribes the way a mail coach kept track of the distance traveled.

Initially, religious people gave gifts to the Cromwells that were meant to be taken as bribes. The author here suggests that Elizabeth preferred open bribes.

The London Guildhall was involved in collecting various kinds of taxes, loans, and sequestrations imposed by Parliament to pay for its armies. See, for example, the Parliamentary Ordinance of August 1648 “for the better regulating and speedy bringing in of Sequestration-monies,” to be paid to “the Treasurers at Guildhall.”

I.e., “Junto,” meaning “a body of men who have joined or combined for a common purpose . . . In English History the term has been chiefly applied to the Cabinet Council of Charles I, to the Independent and Presbyterian factions of the same period, to the Rump Parliament under Cromwell” (OED).

“A serving of food; a course; a meal” (OED).

“To manage (resources, esp. money) with skill and economy; to eke out, make go further” (OED).

“Manner of conducting oneself socially; demeanour; deportment, behavior” (OED).

At the battle of Marston Moor, July 2, 1644, Parliamentary forces defeated Royalist forces. Oliver Cromwell played an important role in the victory.

A sacrifice or offering to God in the tradition of the Hebrew Bible.

That is, Elizabeth foresaw that her family’s prominent position was tenuous, and that they might lose everything. Knoppers (2011) argues that although the purpose of The Court and Kitchin is to present Elizabeth as unworthy of the elevated station she assumed, it ends up making her appear to be “energetic and scheming” (p. 121).

Latin for “God will provide.”

Because Elizabeth Cromwell was poor for most of her life, the author argues that she became extremely cheap when Oliver became Lord Protector and their fortunes improved.

Liberman (2019) explains, “To bring a noble to nine-pence and nine-pence to nothing” is “said about persons living beyond their means. Its variant is his noble has come down to nine-pence, also said about a person who has been brought down in the world.” These sayings date from the sixteenth century.

I.e., “economy,” meaning “art or science of household management” (OED).

“Management; economy” (OED).

I.e., “elench,” meaning “a logical refutation” (OED).

“A partner or colleague in power,” “an accomplice in cheating” (OED).

Persius, Satires, 1.58: O Iane, a tergo quem nulla ciconia pinsit. “Lucky Janus, never pummelled from behind by a stork.” The “felix” (“lucky”) is implied, since the line means that two-faced Janus is lucky because he can’t be attacked in this way (or behind his back).

Elizabeth Bourchier Cromwell was the daughter of Sir James Bourchier, a merchant and furrier. Elizabeth married Oliver Cromwell in 1620 and they had nine children (DNB). Opponents of Cromwell called her “Joan,” a name that was associated with poverty and low status.

Horace, Odes, III.1.17-9. “For the man who has a naked sword hanging over his unholy neck, no Sicilian banquets will provide a sweet taste.”

Biting and gnawing anxieties, phrases found in the Odes of Horace. Odes, I.18.3-5: Neque / mordaces aliter diffugiunt sollicitudines. / Quis post vina gravem militiam aut pauperiem crepat? (“There is no other way to dispel the worries that gnaw the heart. After wine, who rattles on about the hardships of war or poverty?”). Odes, II.11.18: curae edaces (“gnawing anxieties”). The author argues that Cromwell doesn’t indulge in gluttonous eating because he himself is being eaten by anxiety and guilt.

I.e., “gulous,” meaning “greedy” (OED).

Depraved or spoiled.

French for “something.” In English (sometimes spelled “kickshaw”), it refers to “a fancy dish in cookery” (OED). Since the Cromwells can’t be accused of literal excess or luxury in their diet, the author uses food metaphors to describe other negative qualities that are more plausibly attributed to them, e.g., “sharp sawces of ambition” (7 v).

Fatten. From “saguinous,” meaning “bloodthirsty” (OED).

A pretender to the throne of England during the reign of Henry VII. Yorkists claimed that Simnel was Edward Plantagent, 17th Earl of Warwick, and used him as a pretext to rebel against Tudor rule. The rebellion failed, and Henry VII pardoned Simnel (who was still a child) and gave him a position in the scullery (DNB).

Persius, Satires, 1.43: linquere nec scombros metuentia carmina nec tus. “To leave behind poems that fear neither mackerel or frankincense,” i.e., poems that are too good to be used as wrapping paper.

These types of sculptures were also referred to as “subtleties,” or “ornamental figures, scenes, or other designs, used as a table decoration or eaten between the courses of a meal” (OED). They were made entirely of sugar or almond paste and popular in elite households. May (1660) describes how to make an elaborate scene out of paste which includes a ship of war, a wounded stag, and a castle (“Triumphs and Trophies in Cookery”).

Roman emperor from 37-41 CE, known for tyranny and cruelty.

“The action or act of withdrawal or receding” (OED).

Virgil, Aeneid, I. 203: Forsan et haec olim meminisse iuvabit. “Perhaps even this distress it will some day be a joy to recall.”

The Court and Character of King James, a book that was critical of James I, was published in 1650 and was later attributed to Anthony Weldon, although that attribution has now been questioned. The None-Such Charles, His Character was similarly critical of King Charles I. It was published in 1651 and is attributed to either Sir Balthazar Gerbier or Heinrich Nolle.

Another term for satire, based on the tradition that in Rome, people posted anonymous criticisms on a crumbling statue dating back to the classical period which they referred to as Pasquin or Pasquil, named for a tailor whose shop had been nearby.

Rash or eruption on the skin.

Italian for “grandeur.”

Charles Fleetwood and John Desborough (or Disbrowe) were army officers who played powerful roles toward the end of the Protectorate under Richard Cromwell, Elizabeth and Oliver Cromwell’s son, who succeeded his father.

Legal terminology: “A Law grows antiquated by disuser when . . . the Government drops the Execution of it” (OED).

The metaphor here is of tuning a stringed instrument, raising it to a higher pitch by turning a tuning “pin” or peg.

Elizabeth and Oliver Cromwell’s son Henry was Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, although he resigned in 1659.

“Frequently ironic or humorous. Any grand or powerful person, council, authority, etc.” Derived from Dutch (OED).

A false etymology linking the English word “satire” to the wild woodland satyrs of Greek mythology led to a tradition in England that imagined the speakers of satiric works as satyrs. For this history, see Zimbardo (1998), pp. 61-4.

Sic. “Restitution.”

“The action of rolling or causing to roll; revolution combined with progression” (OED).

The Roman goddess Fortuna was often pictured turning a large wheel (like a Ferris wheel) at random so that the fates of people riding on the wheel changed indiscriminately. The Cromwells were successful and rose to the top of society, only to have their situation reversed when the Protectorate ended.

I.e., “interestedly,” meaning “with interest or concern” (OED).

Since Oliver Cromwell himself had died in 1658, only his family remained as objects for punishment.

Knoppers (2011) notes that 1664 fell during “the brief period between the fall of the Protectorate under Richard Cromwell and the return of Charles II.” In this context, she sees the goals of the publication as “correction, retribution, and entertainment” (p. 121). The author here tries to convince readers that despite the fall of the Protectorate, Elizabeth Cromwell is clinging to her inappropriate status and needs to be taken down by works such as this.