January 30th marks the anniversary of the posthumous execution of Oliver Cromwell, former Lord Protector of the United Kingdom. On this day, 359 years ago, Cromwell’s body was dug up along with several of his compatriots, heaved through the streets of London until reaching Tyburn. There his corpse was chained, beheaded and tossed into a pit. His head was then attached to one of the spikes outside Westminster Abbey where it stayed for over two decades.
This ritual execution was carried out under the direction of Charles II. After Oliver Cromwell died of septicemia in 1658, a power vacuum was created in Britain. Without having a clear succession of power established, there was a brief period of political turbulence that concluded in the Protectorate that Cromwell created being demolished, and both the Parliament and Monarchy being restored. Charles II was invited out of exile by the newly reassembled parliament to be the kingdoms sovereign.
Charles II ruled rather differently from his father. He avoided the same controversies and maintained functional relations with the other branches of government. Although King Charles II had no desire to follow in his father’s footsteps, he was also still deeply bereft by what was done to him. One of Charles II’s first official acts as reigning monarch was to declare Cromwell, and many others who were involved in the executing of his father to be guilty of Regicide. It was for this crime that posthumous execution was deemed the appropriate punishment. This was an extremely uncommon punishment in England with little to no precedent, but King Charles II unambiguously craved vengeance and was not going to let the fact that his greatest enemy had already been dead for two years stop him from getting it. The date, January 30th, was a direct symbol of his revenge, as it was exactly twelve years prior that his own father was put to death by Cromwell’s quill.
Cromwell’s head remained on that pike right until the end of Charles II’s reign more than twenty years later. Whether this was purposeful or coincidental remains unclear. There are both people who say it was taken down and others who believe it fell off in a particularly bad storm. After coming down, the head spent the next few centuries being passed around between private estates, collectors, and museums. There is one other central mystery surrounding the body of Oliver Cromwell, which is whether or not the corpse that was exhumed and executed actually was his body. Due to a mistake with the embalming of his remains, Cromwell’s body wasn’t present at his funeral and, for security purposes, was transported several different times to avoid desecration by Royalists. Because of this no one is positive where his true resting place really was or if the dead body that faced execution really was Oliver Cromwell’s.