Museum raises money to buy Oliver Cromwell’s watch – The

The Cromwell Museum in Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire, is seeking to acquire one of only two pocket watches known to belong to Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell. As Cromwell fell from favor after his death and the restoration of the monarchy, his possessions were scattered and there was little material with a strong link to him. The only other piece of Cromwell’s watch with provenance is now in the British Museum.

This watch is engraved with delicate finger patterns, “in the style of a Puritan watch.” [Cromwell Museum curator Stuart] “Seventeenth-century watches were completely over-the-top, with perforated leaf-like patterns on the outside, and this watch is so small that to our modern eyes it looks classically beautiful,” Orme said.

The Puritans were Protestants who, like Cromwell, believed that the Reformation in the Church of England did not go far enough. For the second-in-command MP in 1647, such a watch was also a rather expensive status symbol, but “not as serious as one might think”.

This fob watch was made by William Clay around 1645. It has a round clock face with a steel hand, Roman numerals and a gold-plated outer date ring. It is housed in a silver oval case. It’s small, only 1.5 inches long and 1 inch wide. Clay was a famous watchmaker in the mid-17th century. He opened his first London store in the 1630s. In 1646 he opened a workshop in King Street, Westminster.

Cromwell purchased the watch in 1647 when he moved into a house a few doors down from Clay’s shop in King Street. He wore this watch while campaigning in Ireland in 1649. According to Blackwell family legend, in 1650 Cromwell gave the watch to John Blackwell, a cavalry officer and deputy treasurer in the war, and to Elizabeth Smith, a cousin of Oliver Cromwell Be’s husband.

Blackwell later had a colorful career, working in the Treasury, as a judge, and as an MP during the Protectorate. Despite his republican leanings, he remained loyal to Oliver Cromwell, and his statue appeared next to Oliver Cromwell in the state funeral procession in 1658. However, he was not very fond of Oliver’s son and successor Richard, and participated in the military coup that ultimately led to the coup. Overturned him.

During the Restoration, Blackwell was permanently banned from holding government office. He moved across the pond to the Massachusetts Bay Colony, where he was appointed governor of Pennsylvania by William Penn. In 1694 he retired to England. He died in 1701 and bequeathed to his sons the watch Cromwell had given him 50 years earlier.

It has been preserved for more than 350 years by descendants of the Blackwell family (Bagwell is the Irish branch). One of the heirs, Colonel John Bagwell (1751-1816), showed the watch to historian and Cromwellian genealogist Richard Gough. Gough sketched it and published it in the December 1808 issue of the Gentleman’s Magazine, an extremely rare example of a Cromwellian item being documented so early in a scholarly publication.

The family sold the watch at an auction in Carlisle in 2019, and historic jewelery expert Martyn Downer bought it. He bought the watch purely as a 17th-century Puritan watch in a silver case for £18,000, a bargain. For such a rare timepiece, and one with clear links to Cromwell, it is priced at a fraction of its value. During the coronavirus lockdown, Downer restored the watch and researched its history to confirm Blackwell’s legend. In 2021, he sold it for ten times what he paid for it (£180,000). Still for sale today.

The watch has been on display at the museum since January this year. The special exhibition will be held on November 10, but the museum is raising funds to purchase the watch for its permanent collection. It has one of the world’s finest collections of objects from the life and times of Oliver Cromwell, but as a charity it has no acquisitions budget. The museum is working to secure most of the funding it needs from trusts and foundations, but will have to raise £9,500 itself. So far they have raised £1,025 of their target. Click here to donate.