GRIM HEIRLOOM.

Franklin Times, Volume XIX, Issue 93, 12 August 1929, Page 3

GRIM HEIRLOOM.

OLIVER CROMWELL’S HEAD.

LYING IN OAK CHEST. The head of Oliver Cromwell- —or what is reputed to he 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 Rev. Horace Ricardo Wilkinson, rector of Woodbridge, a picturesque old-world town ten miles from Ipswich, writes a special correspondent in the London Daily Express. When the correspondent called at ?dr 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 came into the possession of his great-grandfather. Dr. Wilkinson more than 100 years ago. He describes how, after the Restoration, the head was impaled on Westminster Hall for twenty-five 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. Here the rector broke off his narrative in order to produce the grim heirloom. Going into his study, he 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 key and removed a large black cloth. Then he carefully drew aside the red silk covering, and there was the head of the great Cromwell, the 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 thehole over the eye where Cromwell’s famous wart had been. “I have the documents to prove 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.”