The Puritan Princess

Miranda Malins’s two Cromwell-family novels tell the story of Oliver Cromwell’s daughters across the English Civil War, Commonwealth and Protectorate. The Rebel Daughter follows Bridget Cromwell from 1643 through her marriages to Parliamentarian generals Henry Ireton and Charles Fleetwood, while The Puritan Princess turns to her younger sister Frances at the height of the Protectorate in 1657. Together the books place women of the Cromwell household at the centre of political events usually narrated through armies, Parliament and male office-holders.

Publication order and story order differ: The Puritan Princess appeared first in 2020, but The Rebel Daughter, published in 2022, is explicitly a prequel and therefore comes first chronologically. Both novels use documented members of the Cromwell family and their political circle under their historical identities, combining extensive period research with reconstructed dialogue, private emotions and domestic incidents.