The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1875-01-30 00:00:00

OLIVER CROMWELL'S HEAD.
(From The Times.)

A correspondent draws our attention to a strong
corroboration of the main incidents of the story lately
told in these columns respecting the head of the Lord
Protector Cromwell, to be found in the "Fifty Years'
Recollections, Literary and Personal," of the late
Mr. Cyrus Redding, and resting on the authority of
Horace Smith, one of the authors of "Rejected Ad-
dresses," &c. Redding writes under date about 1821
or 1822 :—" Horace Smith was acquainted with a
medical gentleman who had in his possession the
head of Oliver Cromwell, and in order to gratify
my curiosity be gave me a note (of introduction) to
him. There accompanied the head a memorandum
relating to its history. It had been torn from the
tomb with the heads of the Ireton and Bradshaw after
the accession of Charles 11., under a feeling of impotent
vengeance. All three were fixed over the entrance of
Westminster-hall, the other bones of those three distin-
guished men being interred at Tyburn under the gibbet
—an act well befitting the Stuart character. During a
stormy night," he adds, "the head in the centre, that
of Cromwell, fell to the ground. The sentryon guard
beneath having a natural respect for an heroic soldier.
no matter of what party, took up the head and placed
t under his cloak until he went off duty. He then
carried it to the Russells, who were the nearest re-
lations of Cromwell's family, and disposed of it to
them. It belongbd to a lady, a descendent of the
Cromwells who did not like to keep it in her house.
There was a written minute extant along with it. The
disappearance of the head (off Westminster-hall) is
mentioned in some of the publications of the time. It
had been carefully embalmed, as Cromwell's body is
known to have been two years before its disinterment.
The nostrils were filled with a substance like cotton.
The brain had been extracted by dividing the scalp.
The membranes within were perfect, but dried up
and looked like parchment. The decapitation had
evidently been performed after death, as the state of
the flesh over the vertebrm of the neck plainly
showed. It was hacked, and the severance had evidently
been done by a hand not used to the work, for there
were several other cuts beside that which actually
separated the bone. The beard, of a chestnut colour,
seemed to have grown after death. An ashen pole,
pointed with iron, had received the head clumsily im-
paled upon its point, which came out an inch or so
above the crown, rusty and time-worn. Tha wood of
the staff and the skin itself had? been perforated by
the common wood-work. I wroteAto Horace Smith
that I had seen the head, and deemed it genuine.
Smith replied, 'I am gratified that you were
pleased with Cromwell's head, as I was when I saw
it, being fully persuaded of its identity. ' " It
remains, then, on record that two persons, both men
of the world and of large experience, and yet so
different from each other in character as Horace
Smith and Cyrus Redding, were satisfied with the evi-
dence brought before them to prove its being genuine
nearly 50 years ago.