CROMWELL'S HEAD.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 20562, 13 May 1930, Page 9

CROMWELL'S HEAD.

BURIAL PLACE DISCUSSED.

GRAVE THAT WAS NOT RESOLD

Is the head of Oliver Cromwell buried in Abney Park Cemetery in North London ? Mrs. Margaret Baillie-Saunders, novelist and wife of tho Rev. Frederick Baillio-Saunders, has publicly endorsed the local belief that this is so, and in an interview with a London journal recently she gave some reasons for her attitude.

" Nothing," said Mrs. Baillie-Saunders, " could be more feasible, sinco at that time part of the present cemetery at Abney Park was the garden of Fleetwood House, where lived General Fleetwood, tho husband of Cromwell's daughter Bridget. " Cromwell had been dead twelvo months when the Restoration occurred, and bis body, together with those oi Ireton and Bradshaw, was disinterred from Westminster Abbey and the heads exhibited on poles at Tyburn, near where the Marble Arch now stands.

" Two Puritan gentlemen went there secretly the same night, seized tho head of Cromwell, and buried it in Yorkshire — moat probably at Naseby. But after some years, when things had quietened down, they are supposed to have ridden back to London with the head, taking it to Bridget Fleetwood at Hacknoy, whero they reverently buried it in the garden. " This garden joined Sir Thomas Abney's garden, and it was Mrs. Abney, a descendant and a strpng Puritan, who left the land to be mado into a cemetery. It is likely that the presence of the head of their leader was responsible for tho decision of the Puritans to make a cemetery at this point. " The head is supposed to lie beneath a mound in what is called Dr. Watts' Walk. Tho mound is surrounded by a rough railing, and' tho ground has never been been rosold, as every other grave in tho cemetery has been sold from time to time. This would seem to bo a further justification for the local belief. " As a matter of fact," continued Mrs. Baillie-Saunders, " Hackney is full of historical- interest. I was talking tho other day to an old man whoso greatgrandfather knew Dick Turpin. Turpin., apparently, when not 'in business,' was in the habit of lounging about Hackney in shabby clotho3, with a dirty old pipe in his mouth and a dog at his heels —not at all the romantic figure we usually picture."