GRIM HEIRLOOM

Evening Post, Volume CVIII, Issue 24, 27 July 1929, Page 20

GRIM HEIRLOOM

OLIVER CROMWELL'S HEAD

The head of Oliver Cromwell—or what is reputed to be the head of England's Lord Protector—is lying in a century-old oaken. chest in a secret drawer of a Suffolk rector's study. Its owner is the Bey. Horace Rieardo Wilkinson, rector of Woodbridge, a picturesque old-world town ten miles from Ipswich, writes a special correspondent in tho London "Daily Express." When the correspondent called at Mr. Wilkinson's house, the old man readily assented to show him the. head of the Protector, and while he planed a piece of timber he related the romantic way in which it camo into the possession of his groat-grandfather, Dr. Wilkinson more than 100 years ago.. He described how, after the Eestoration, the head was impaled on Westminster Hall for twenty-flvo years. '- One windy night it blew down, and was picked up by a sentry. It passed through various hands until Dr.: Wilkinson received it from a .patient. . . ; . '.

Hero-the rector .broke off his narrative in order, to produce the grim heir loom. Going into, his study, ho opened a door of a large cabinet,, unlocked a secret drawer in a chest and drew out a heavy oak box. He unlocked this box with another *icy and .removed a large black cloth. Then he carefully drew aside the red silk covering, and there was the head of tho great Cromwell, most romantic figure in England's history.

The rector picked up the head as tenderly as if it had been the head of one of his own ancestors. He pointed to the iron-tipped spike driven through the top of the.skull, and showed the hole over the eye where Cromwell's famous wart had been. ■ .

"I have the documents to pro.ye my claim and how it came into my great-' grandfather's possession," Mr."Wilkinson said. "It will never go out of the possession of my family."