Cromwell's Seat

Oliver Cromwell's head was severed from his body in 1661, three years after his death and burial. The head was placed on a 20-foot (6.1 m) pole and displayed on the roof of Westminster Hall until at least 1684. Cromwell's body had been removed from Westminster Abbey, where it had been buried since he had died on 3 September 1658 of natural causes. Cromwell had been Lord Protector, the ruler of the Commonwealth of England, after the defeat and the beheading of King Charles I after the Second English Civil War. On his death, Cromwell was given a public funeral at Westminster Abbey as elaborate as those of the monarchs who had ruled before him. His position passed to his son Richard, but Richard was overthrown shortly thereafter, leading to the re-establishment of the monarchy under King Charles II, who had been living in exile in continental Europe. In January 1661, after Charles II's reinstatement, his new parliament ordered the disinterment of Cromwell's body, as well as those of John Bradshaw and Henry Ireton, for posthumous execution at Tyburn. The three bodies were left hanging at Tyburn "from morning till four in the afternoon" before being cut down and beheaded, with Cromwell's head being impaled at Westminster Hall, which had been the location of the trial of Charles I. Although the head's whereabouts from 1684 to 1710 is uncertain, tradition says that on a stormy night in the late 1680s, it was blown from the top of Westminster Hall, thrown to the ground, and picked up by a sentry who carried it home. After its disappearance from Westminster, it was in the hands of various private collectors and museums until 25 March 1960, when it was buried at Sidney Sussex College in Cambridge, Cromwell's alma mater. The symbolic value of the head changed over time. Originally, it was displayed as an act of revenge by Charles II, and a warning to all who saw it, but by the 18th century it had become a historical curiosity and a relic. The head has variously been admired, reviled and dismissed as a fake. Thomas Carlyle dismissed it as "fraudulent moonshine", and scientific and archaeological analysis was carried out to test the identity after the emergence of a rival claimant to be the true head of Oliver Cromwell. Inconclusive tests culminated in a detailed scientific study by Karl Pearson and Geoffrey Morant, which concluded that there was a "moral certainty" that the head was Oliver Cromwell's, based on a study of the head and other evidence.