Two Jane Cromwells

Almost every day I look at the traffic sources for my blog.  I can see what search words were used to find my site.  One name which keeps cropping up is Jane Cromwell Pickering.  I had written a blog post about Giles Cromwell of Newbury, Massachusetts  in which I talk about his background and why he is not Giles Cromwell son of Sir Oliver Cromwell.  This gross error is to be found everywhere on the internet, and especially on Ancestry.com. Although Jane is not in my family tree, and since I had so much trouble with the family, I decided to check her out. What I found was the same nonsense written about my Cromwells. And not to beleaguer the point, if you would just do a little independent research, instead of taking everything as gospel, you would reach these same conclusions. So here are two Jane Cromwells.

Horatio Pallavicini 

Jane Cromwell, daughter of Sir Oliver Cromwell and Elizabeth Bromley, married in All Saints Huntingdon, on  April 24th, 1606  Toby Pallavicini, the same day her sister Catherine married Henry Pallavicini. Jane was 11 years old and her husband was not quite 13.  In effect, two very young sisters married two equally young brothers.  The brothers were the sons of the girls' step mother, Anna Hooftman Pallavicini Cromwell.
Sir Toby became  fantastically wealthy when he inherited both his father's and his brother's estates, but squandered his money and ended up in the Fleet prison for debtors in 1637.  His wife Jane died 23 March 1637, at the age of 42 and is buried in the church of St. Martin, Chipping Ongar, Essex, England.  Her son Horatio Pallavicini, Esq. is also buried in this church.  I am willing to state  that Jane Cromwell Pallavicini never set foot in Newbury, Massachusetts and never lived in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Period!

My second Jane of this blog is Jane Cromwell Pickering, her name seems to be frequently googled.   Jane was the daughter of Thomas and Anne Cromwell of Wiltshire, England.  The family lived in Malmesbury in the northwest corner of the county of Wiltshire. This family is not connected in any way with the Cromwell's of Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire, this includes the family of Oliver Cromwell the Protector and his uncle Sir Oliver Cromwell.

Market Cross, Malmesbury, England

Thomas' parents were John and Edith Cromwell. He was a Burgess in the town. John died in 1639, dividing his estate between his wife and sons, Thomas, Richard and Phillip who was "out" of the country.  He left money to Phillip's son John, in the care of his grandmother Edith.  Phillip seems to have abandoned his family and he was admonished in the Colony for not living with his wife.
Thomas and his family emigrated to the Massachusetts Bay Colony about 1652, they brought with them Phillip's son John.  Thomas was a tailor by trade and he set up shop in Salem. His brother Phillip was a butcher. By 1652, Oliver Cromwell, the Protector was in complete control of England.  This was a period of reverse migration of staunch puritans from Massachusetts back to England.  Those who continued to emigrate to the Colony probably did so for economic reasons.
Jane, born about 1649, she was baptized on 4 July, she was only about 3 years old when her family sailed for America.  She married Jonathan Pickering on March 19, 1663 in Salem. Her father Thomas died in March of 1686.  Her mother Edith lived with Jane and her husband. Jane became a full member of the Salem church in August of 1694. Jonathan her husband died in 1729.

There is one website in particular that seems to promote the idea that all Cromwell's in America must be related to Sir Oliver, and I won't name them but I will tell you what they said when I asked why, despite obvious evidence to the contrary, do they continue with these assertions. Their answer was "because it gets people to my site and it's good for business".  How's that for dedicated genealogy!


Sources:
George Ruggle, Ignoramus: Comoedia
St. Martins Church, Chipping Ongar website
Find a Grave
William Harvey, The Visitation of Norfolk in the Year 1563, Vol 2
The Builder, The Church of Chipping Ongar, July to Dec 1904, page 146
Essex Institute Historical Collections, Vol 39, page 368
The Pickering Genealogy, Vol 1
Maryland Historical Magazine, Vol 13, page 398