Toward the end of his life, Oliver Cromwell – leader of the Roundheads and Lord Protector of the Commonwealth – was plagued by kidney or urinary tract infections. In the summer of 1658, he was also struck down by malaria and the death of his adult daughter. The ailing Cromwell was transported to Whitehall for medical treatment but died in considerable pain on September 3rd.

According to a contemporary account by English MP Thomas Burton, preparations for Cromwell’s funeral did not go well. The government planned a public viewing, a grandiose funeral and internment in Westminster Abbey. Given that all of this would take time to organise, they ordered that Cromwell’s corpse be immediately disembowelled and embalmed.

This preservation was carried out as instructed, however just three days after his death Cromwell’s corpse was already in a horrendous state:

“[The day after Cromwell’s death] his body… was washed and laid out; and being opened, was embalmed, and wrapped in a sere cloth… and put into an inner sheet of lead, inclosed in an elegant coffin of the choicest wood. Owing to the disease he died of… his body, though bound up and laid in the coffin, swelled and bursted, from whence came such filth [that] raised such a deadly and noisome stink…”

Another observer was George Bate, a physician present at Cromwell’s embalming. According to Bate, Cromwell’s corpse was wrapped tightly in four layers in cloth then buried in two coffins, one lead and one wood – yet despite this it still “purged and wrought through all”, or leaked from the outer coffin. Hence the decision was made to bury the putrid Protector, prematurely and privately:

“The corpse being quickly buried, by reason of the great stench thereof…”

Cromwell’s body was buried in Westminster Abbey several weeks before his funeral. In mid-October, Londoners were invited to view Cromwell’s ‘body’, though what they saw was an ornately-dressed wooden mannequin sporting a wax face. The funeral procession did not take place until November 23rd, eight weeks after Cromwell’s death. The coffin transported to Westminster Abbey was probably empty. Some £60,000 was spent on this elaborate charade.

Cromwell’s real body did not rest long. It was hauled out of the Abbey in January 1661 and later subjected to a posthumous execution and public humiliation. Cromwell’s head survived this mistreatment and was passed about by collectors for the next four centuries.

Source: Diary of Thomas Burton, v.2, 1657-58. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2019-23. Content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.