CROMWELL'S HEAD.

Otaki Mail, 12 November 1923, Page 3

CROMWELL'S HEAD.

I Street repair work near the Marble ! Arch iias led to the disinterring ot a c number oi bones and skulls, near the 1 sii e oi fclie old Tyburn gallows., where Oliver Cromwell's body was shamefully buried, and many writers are conjecturing whether Cromwell's skuil is not one. of these relics. It cannot be, declares the "Manchester Guardian," because Cromwell's iiead at present lies in a box lined with red silk in a .Suffolk vicarage. There is no doubt about its identity, which was accepted by the Hoyal Archaeological Society. Its history can be easily followed.

Cromwell's body was exhumed from tho Abbey, hung at Tyburn, taken down, and the head struck oh by the I executioner. The head Was set up j upon the roof of Westminster Hall, an oaken iron-tipped spike being j driven, up through tire top of the head. It remained there for twenty-five years, and Bepys mentioned seeing it. In 1686, during a heavy storm tiie ! head of Cromwell, pike and all, w'as ' blown down, and the sentry secretly took it home, it remained hidden lill after his death, when his wile sold it to a kinsman of the Protector named Kussell, whose family sold it a century later for £llß to a Mr Cox, who sold it to a company of three men for £230 and it was exhibited at half a crown a bead. All three tusn had a violent, death,, and the daughter of- the last survivor sold it to ibs, grandfather of the present owner, 1 There is no documentary proot until; it came into the hands of Cox in 1787, but since then it is fully documented. The. main proof lies in the head itself. It is in a good state of preservation, although the flesh bas almost disappeared between the skin and the bone. The upper part of the skull has been sawn off and replaced by the embalmer. The famous wart can be discerned. Tho moustache and beard ' grown in illness still exist and are | still brown. The beard appears in ' the death mask. The bead was botb . embalmed and impaled, one of the i few in history that had had these j vicissitudes. The late Professor llol- • leston. of Oxford, and Professor Boyd , Dawkins both minutely examined and j measured the head and accepted it us -the original, of the- death-mask. There is a skull in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford shown as Cromwell's skull;, 'but its claims were entirely rejected ! by these experts.

' It is strange to think that the head of the tremendous Cromwell, who refused a crown and made the name of England shine through Europe as it never did before, should lie as a curio in a country vicarage, and stranger still that its possessor—the possessor of the head of Cromwellshould dare to have it there.