The Fate of Oliver Cromwell

Of all the figures in English history, few loom larger than Oliver Cromwell. As “Lord Protector” of England, Cromwell served as England’s chief executive during the Interregnum of 1649–1660 – the only significant period of time since the Romans left England that the island was not ruled by a monarchy. It’s a curiosity, then, that although there are thousands of books written about Cromwell, although every English schoolkid learns about him, and although there’s a huge statue of him outside the Houses of Parliament, Oliver Cromwell has no grave.

Welcome to the mystery of Oliver Cromwell’s head.

It all started with King Charles I. The son of King James I, Charles saw himself as an absolute monarch in the mold of the kings of France. He was on the throne by Divine Right, and no man could tell him what to do. Unfortunately for Charles, there was a group of men who didn’t quite see it that way: the English Parliament.

On June 15, 1215, King John signed Magna Carta at Runnymede. The document was a specific list of grievances the aristocracy had against the crown. By signing it, King John not only agreed to end those specific practices, he established the notion that no one in England – not even the monarch – was above the law. So although future kings like Richard III and Henry VIII might have had ghastly legislation passed, they did so by begging, browbeating, or bribing the Parliament. They didn’t dare think of ignoring it.

Charles I wasn’t nearly as smart. Throughout his reign, he continually tried to take power from the Parliament and give it back to the Crown. Charles seized a small power here, and a little tax there. Parliamentarians protested, but Charles managed to smooth things over… most of the time.

Charles’ downfall happened, in large part, due to the Scots. Charles was in favor of a more “traditional” (i.e. Catholic) Church of England and Scotland. Seeking to remove as much Calvinist influence as possible, Charles authorized his Archbishop of Canterbury, William Laud, to dismiss Calvinist-leaning clergymen, and to close any Calvinist-friendly organizations. Laud also used two of the most feared institutions in England – the Court of High Commission and the Court of Star Chamber – to achieve these ends. The use of the Star Chamber was especially disturbing, as a subject could be hauled in front of it without indictment, due process of the law, or right to confront witnesses. Torture was also standard operating procedure in the Star Chamber.

If this was unpopular in England, it was especially unpopular in Presbyterian Scotland, where armed rebellion broke out against the Crown. This put Charles in a tight place. He could only get the money for a war against the Scots by calling Parliament into session. But by calling a Parliament, Charles risked them shutting down his religious reform plan. Charles tried to make do with what he had, and his battle plan was actually pretty good. Unfortunately, the logistics were just too complicated for the military of the day, and the English troops lost. Charles was forced to sign the Pacification of Berwick, wherein he granted the Scots many civil and ecclesiastical freedoms.

Charles’ war against the Scots created a military and financial crisis for the Crown, and so Charles was forced to call a Parliament. Unfortunately, Charles hadn’t called Parliament in 11 years, and so the new Parliament released a decade’s worth of pent-up anger at the Crown. Although the Parliament granted the King money to wage war against the Scots, Parliament came close to blowing up over Charles’ religious “improvements” (the king’s view) or the “abuses” (the Parliament’s view). Charles dissolved the Parliament after only a month in session. This became known as the “Short Parliament”.

So, Charles tried again to defeat the Scots. And he failed again, too. The “Second Bishop’s War” ended in October 1640 with Charles signing the humiliating Treaty of Ripon, which required him to pay the expenses of the Scottish army. This required the then-staggering sum of £850 a day. Charles was so overwhelmed that he called the first Magnum Concilium in centuries – a council of all the Peers of the Realm. They helpfully advised him to call Parliament into session.

This second Parliament, called the “Long Parliament”, would not be abused. They passed the Triennial Act, which required the monarch to call a Parliament at least once every three years, and it gave them power to meet independently if the monarch failed to do so. The Act received Royal Assent in February, 1641. But Parliament was just getting started. It soon passed another bill whereby the Crown could not dissolve Parliament without its permission. Parliament continued its reforming ways, abolishing the Courts of Star Chamber and High Commission, making forced loans to the Crown illegal, and removing dozens of powers that Charles had claimed for himself. For Parliament, it all came to a head in 1641, when it issued the “Grand Remonstrance”, a huge laundry list of grievances against Charles’ powers. Oh, and to make matters even worse for the Crown, the Irish chose this time to rebel against their English masters.

The final straw for all came on January 4, 1642. A rumor began spreading throughout royal circles that Parliament was planning to impeach Charles’ wife and queen, Henrietta Maria, a devout Catholic. Possibly acting under a suggestion from Henrietta, Charles took a small force to the House of Commons, where he burst in and demanded the arrest of five of its members. Parliament, tipped off in advance, had fled, save for the Speaker William Lenthall, who famously told Charles “[m]ay it please your Majesty, I have neither eyes to see nor tongue to speak in this place but as the House is pleased to direct me, whose servant I am here”. Charles had overplayed his hand, and it would now cost him dearly. For although English monarchs had an incredible list of powers, arresting members of Parliament inside the House of Commons simply was not done by any king, ever. Ever. Charles fled London, and the Royalists and Parliamentarians prepared for war.

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The Parliamentarians won of course, and Charles was executed on January 30, 1649. Much of the success of the Parliamentarians was due to the work of a member of Parliament from the Cambridge area called Oliver Cromwell. After Charles stormed into the House of Commons, Cromwell, who only had limited military experience, went back to Cambridge and formed a cavalry regiment, which proved especially adept at defeating the Royalist cavalry. Cromwell rose to the rank of Lieutenant General in Parliament’s army and became an important member of Parliament. He was often called away to fight rebellious elements in Ireland and Scotland. With the backing of the army, Cromwell became ever more powerful, so that by the time Parliament adopted the Instrument of Government (the world’s first written constitution), Cromwell was appointed “Lord Protector” and chief executive for life.

Sadly, for the Cromwell family, anyway, it wasn’t to last. Oliver Cromwell died on September 3, 1658. Ironically, Cromwell’s funeral was based on the funeral of James I, the father of the king that Cromwell had executed. Executive power passed to Cromwell’s son Richard, who proved to be weaker and far more indecisive than his father. Without a power base, Richard resigned his office on May 25, 1659, paving the way for the return of the monarchy. And, exactly one year and four days later, Charles II returned to London.

As you might guess, Charles II was more than a little pissed off about his father’s execution. Although the legislation that brought Charles II to the throne granted amnesty to Cromwell’s supporters generally, the act included a specific list of 50 people that the amnesty did not apply to. Nine of the people on this list were executed by hanging, drawing and quartering. Others were jailed for life, while others were simply forbidden from holding public office.

But Charles II’s worst punishments were saved for Cromwell and two of his closest supporters: son-in-law Henry Ireton and John Bradshaw, the lawyer who presided over Charles I’s trial. Although all three were dead, Charles II ordered their bodies exhumed and executed again. That, my friends, is vengeance done right!

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It’s at exactly this point that everything gets murky. It’s known for certain that Cromwell’s body was exhumed from Westminster Abbey on January 30, 1661 (symbolically chosen, as Charles I was executed January 30). Only monarchs and the very rich could afford to be embalmed at the time, and Cromwell – a king in all but name – was afforded the same option. Contemporary reports from the exhumation noted that Cromwell looked quite good overall. Henry Ireton and John Bradshaw, however, were not embalmed, and their stinking, year-old corpses were reported to be like piles of putrid Jell-O. All three were taken to the gallows at Tyburn, near modern-day Marble Arch. On the way, royalist onlookers pummeled the “piles of putrid Jell-O” with stones, bricks, and other items, making a disgusting scene even worse.

Cromwell and the others were hanged at 9 in the morning, and their bodies left hanging for all to see until 6 that evening, at which point all three were decapitated and their bodies thrown into a pit. So if you ever walk around modern-day Marble Arch, just underneath your feet is a giant pit containing the bodies of thousands of executed prisoners from Newgate prison… and the headless body of the Lord Protector.

Or is it? There’s one theory that some diehard republicans, acting on behalf of Oliver’s daughter Mary, managed to sneak into the pit, retrieve Cromwell’s body and spirit it away to Yorkshire. And thus, on the top floor of Newburgh Priory, in Coxwold, North Yorkshire there is a tomb that’s said to contain the headless body of Oliver Cromwell.

Maybe.

There are two versions of the story. In the other version, Mary is said to have gotten the bodies switched before the exhumation, and thus, the body hanged at Tyburn was not the body of Cromwell at all. This second theory is even less likely than the first, as there is not a single instance of any of the thousands of spectators doubting that it was Cromwell that was hanged, as Cromwell was embalmed, if you remember, and therefore still recognizable. Regardless, the current owners of Newburgh Priory have made it quite clear that the tomb will not be opened any time soon… for any reason.

After decapitation, Cromwell’s head was put on a large iron spike and hung on a pole outside of Westminster Hall. It was still hanging there 23 years later, when a newspaper reported that the decapitated head of a member of the Rye House Plot was placed next to Cromwell’s head on the same wall. This is the last time any one can officially account for the whereabouts of Cromwell’s head.

In all of the newspapers, diaries, letters, and books that make up England’s history, there is only one tale about what happened next, and that’s this: that one night, Cromwell’s head was knocked to the ground by a high wind with the iron spike still intact. A soldier on patrol the next morning decided to take it home with him as a souvenir. Thinking that the head had been stolen by Cromwell sympathizers, authorities offered a large reward for the head’s return. This caused the soldier to worry about what might happen to him if he returned it, so he hid it away, only revealing its location on his deathbed. His family kept it a secret, until the granddaughter of the soldier married one Samuel Russell, a down-on-his-luck comedian.

Russell first tried to sell the head to Doctor Ellison, the head of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge. Ellison refused the purchase. In 1787, Russell, who apparently thought of Cromwell’s head as his retirement fund, sold it to a London jeweler named Samuel Cox for £118 (which is, very roughly, $18,101.19 in 2006 dollars). Cox then put together an exposition for the head, complete with guidebooks. Unfortunately for Cox, the French Revolution was going on across the Channel, and it made “republicanism” a dirty word in England. The exhibition was a bust, so Cox sold the head to a group of investors, who in turn sold it on to a man named Josiah Henry Wilkinson in 1814.

Wilkinson, finally, treated the head with respect and not as a curiosity. He was determined to use science to prove that the head was that of Cromwell. He first looked to history, where he could find no other instance of an embalmed person being decapitated in English history. Although Wilkinson refused to display the head publicly, he did use it as a showpiece in his own home. The Wilkinson family, early in the 1910s, allowed the Royal Archaeological Institute to display the head to other scientists (but not the general public). Papers were written by academics both for and against the authenticity of the head. A picture of the head was also given to the newspapers, which set off a torrent of public opinion to give it a proper burial.

By 1935, the Wilkinson family decided to determine once and for all if the head was Cromwell’s or not. They gave the head to University College, London, where two scientists thoroughly examined the head. They determined that the embalming was consistent with embalming methods of the era. They further determined that the body was embalmed and then decapitated, (which made forgery unlikely) and that the decapitation was consistent with the multiple swings of the executioner’s axe recorded at the time of Cromwell’s decapitation.

The Wilkinson family, tired of the circus surrounding the head, finally donated it to Cromwell’s alma mater, Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge. In March 1960, a private ceremony was held in which Cromwell’s head was placed in the chapel… but there’s one last thing: the plaque placed in the chapel bears no relationship to the actual location of the head. Only a select few know where the head now lies, in hopes that Cromwell’s poor head might rest in peace… forever.