Levina Beke

From page 160 of The Topographer and Genealogist, Volume 3 edited by John Gough Nichols

"A Certificate of Major Richard Beke his Marriage with Mrs. Levina Whetstone, a Relation of the Lord Protector, O. Cromwel. Dated 7 Feb. 1655.

"This Marriage was solemnized on Thursday the vii. of Feb. Mdclv. at Whitehall, in Presence of his Highnes the Lord Protector, the Lord President, Lord Deputy of Ireland, [Edmund Sheffield] Earl of Mulgrave, and many others. "Hen. Scobell."
It will here not be out of place to say a few words respecting this Levina Whitstone and her parents. Roger Whitstone, her father, was a gentleman of good family at Whittlesea, in the Isle of Ely, in the county of Cambridge. He served in the British forces in the pay of Holland,11 and was afterwards "an officer in the Parliament army, but died before Oliver came to his greatness."" His wife was Catherine, daughter of Robert Cromwell, of Huntingdon, Esq. and Elizabeth his wife, the parents of Oliver the Protector, to whom "she is said to have been very unlike."* She was twice married; her first husband being the said Roger Whitstone, by whom she had issue three sons and two daughters: 1st. Henry, who is supposed to have been born in England; 2nd. Thomas; 3rd. Richard, who married Catherine a foreigner; 4th. Catherine; and 5th. Levina.
Catherine Cromwell's second husband was Colonel John Jones, whom Anthony a Wood describes* as "a pretended gentleman of Wales, a recruiter of the Long Parliament, and a Colonel; afterwards one of the King's judges, Governor of the Isle of Anglesea, one of the Commissioners of Parliament for the government of Ireland (in which office he acted tyrannically), and one of the other House that is, House of Lords belonging to Cromwell, &.c. He was hanged, drawn, and quartered, at Charing Cross, for having had a hand in the murder of his prince, on the 17th of October, 1660."
As it has been already observed, the four younger children of Roger Whitstone and Catherine Cromwell were born abroad; in consequence of which, and after the marriage of Levina Whitstone with Major Beke, it appears to have been deemed expedient that three of them, Thomas, Catherine, and Levina, (the fourth, Richard, appears to have settled abroad,) should be naturalised by Act of Parliament, though both parents were Britishborn subjects Accordingly, their names were inserted in " An Act for naturalising Florentine Tanturier and others," to which die Lord Protector's consent was given on November 27th, 1656. Major Richard Beke, who represented Coventry in the Parliaments of 1654 and 1656,b was on the committee to which the said Act of Naturalisation was referred.0
Mrs. Levina Beke seems not to have lived very long after her marriage. Lord Fauconberg says, in a postscript to a letter to his brother-in-law Henry Cromwell, Lord Deputy of Ireland, "Our shee-cosen Beake is out of all hopes of lyfe;" and most probably she died at that time, leaving no child.d