page_title: Bridget Bendish
section_title: Life
hierarchical_section_title: Bridget Bendish / Life
caption_attribution_description: English: Portrait of Bridget Cromwell
context_page_description: Bridget Bendish, was a daughter of General Henry Ireton and Bridget, Oliver Cromwell's eldest daughter. She was born in Attenborough, Nottinghamshire, England. She married Thomas Bendish in 1670. Bridget died early in 1726 at age 76 and was buried in Great Yarmouth.
context_section_description: In 1652, her mother, also named Bridget Ireton (born July 1624), married General Charles Fleetwood after being widowed by the death of Henry Ireton. In 1662, her mother died; and Bridget lived with her stepfather at Stoke Newington, Middlesex, until she was 19. On 24 August 1669 a license was granted for her to marry Thomas Bendish (bap. 1645, d. 1707) of Gray's Inn; in 1670 they married. They moved to Southtown, near Great Yarmouth, where Bendisb owned salt marshes and a saltworks on Cobholme. In 1672, he was charged with landing coal from the vessel of a non-burgess on the west side of the haven without permission.
  Bridget Bendish always took a lively interest in politics, and is said to have compromised herself, along with her husband, in many ways in the Rye House Plot of 1683. Her views may well have been sympathetic to the Whig exclusionists. In May 1685 she aided her brother, Henry Ireton, in his escape from prison on suspicion of complicity. Following his recapture and imprisonment, she was allowed access to him in Newgate in November and December 1685. In 1688-1689 she secretly distributed papers recommending the recognition of William III.
  In 1689 the clergyman Rowland Davies visited Bendish's house "and saw all his contrivance to make salt." Archbishop Tillotson introduced Bridget to Queen Mary in 1694, and a pension was promised her, but it was never granted, owing to the death of both her patrons immediately after the interview.
  On 27 April 1707, her husband Thomas Bendish died, leaving her in charge of their business. Mrs. Bendish was always careless about money matters, and although she received a large bequest from her aunt, Lady Fauconberg, she had to depend for her livelihood in her old age on her own exertions.
caption: Bridget's mother (pictured) died in 1662, and, because her father had died in 1651, Bridget lived with her stepfather, Charles Fleetwood, until age 19.
exif: {}