CROMWELL RELICS.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXIX, Issue 70, 21 March 1908, Page 13

CROMWELL RELICS.

"What became of Cromwell?" is the tifle of an article by Profesor Churton Collins which appeared in ISSI in the '"Gentleman's Magazine." The question is a vexed one, says "The Lancet." According to an ancient tradition Cromwell's body was eonr eyed away immediately after his death, in obedience to his last orders, and ■ was buried on Xaseby Field, "where he had obtained vie jreatest victory and glory." Ao cording to another account, Mary Lady Fanconberg, Cromwell's daughter, was able to' convey the body away from its grave in tha ' Abbey and to have it buried in her iiusband"s house at Newbnrgh in where the tomb, an impenetrable marble one, is still shown. Another ' corpse was substituted for Cromwell's in the Abbey, and it was this nameless corpse whidi nnderweut the indignities put on it in January, 1661, when the putative body was hanged on the gallows at Tyburn, together with; Ireton's and Bradshaw's, while the head was set up on a pole above Westminster HalL This head, still transfixed by a spike, ■which, was let through the cranium by means of a specially drilled hole, is now in the possession of Hγ Horace Wilkinson, of Sevenoaks. It is the head, curiously enough, of someone 7 " I whose body has probably been embalmed, 1 for the top of the skull has been "sawn off, in order, presumably, to admit of the removal of the brains. The body to which. this head belonged was buried under the gallows at Tyburn, unless, which is probjable, the Faueoubergs obtained the body J there and carried it off. Death-masks of I Cromwell might throw some light on the question of. the identity ct the head. One Jof these was in the museum of the Koyal j College c£ Surgeons of England a cenjtuty ago. It is described by William Clift as "ah undoubted cast of the face ol Oliver Cromwell." It was presnmablv a death-mask. Another such Is, according to Waylen, in the possession of the Rev. Thomas Cromwell, rector of llichei Deanl Sloncestershlre." Tt' may he ' mentioned!"" that the measurements of- the Seveneaks '. head are said to correspond ■with, ifiose of eas« .taat likenesses and busts of th,e Krot^cfaw,