In the constitutional settlement which followed the King’s return, England reverted to the state of things which had existed before the Civil War began. Cromwell’s legislation and all the laws made by the Long Parliament were regarded as null and void. There was a general amnesty for all political offenders excepting the Regicides and a few persons regarded as specially dangerous. Twelve Regicides suffered the penalties of high treason, and Hugh Peters and Sir Henry Vane shared their fate. About twenty escaped into foreign parts, and about five and twenty were imprisoned for life. After the punishment of the living, came vengeance against the dead. In November, 1660, a bill for the attainder of Cromwell and other dead Regicides was introduced into the House of Commons. During its progress, Captain Titus stood up and observed,
“that execution did not leave traitors at their graves, but followed them beyond it, and that since the heads of some were already put upon the gates, he hoped that the House would order that the carcases of those devils who were buried at Westminster—Cromwell, Bradshaw, and Ireton—might be torn out of their graves, dragged to Tyburn, there to hang some time, and afterwards be buried under the gallows.”
It was voted without any opposition, though many present must have agreed with Pepys, whom it “troubled, that a man of so great courage as Cromwell should have that dishonour done him, though otherwise he might deserve it well enough.”
Accordingly, on Saturday, January 26, 1661, the bodies of Cromwell and Ireton were disinterred from their graves in Westminster Abbey, and on the Monday conveyed from Westminster to the Red Lion Inn, in Holborn. Finally, on the morning of January 30th, the twelfth anniversary of the execution of Charles I., their bodies, and that of Bradshaw, were drawn upon sledges from Holborn to Tyburn. “All the way, as before from Westminster, the universal outcry and curses of the people went along with them.” “When these three carcases were at Tyburn,” continues the newspaper, “they were pulled out of their coffins, and hanged at the several angles of that triple tree, where they hung till the sun was set; after which they were taken down, their heads cut off, and their loathsome trunks thrown into a deep pit under the gallows.” The common hangman took the heads, placed them on poles, and set them on the top of Westminster Hall, Bradshaw’s head in the centre, Ireton’s and Cromwell’s on either side.
Yet, though all this was done in the face of day, as many places claim to be Cromwell’s sepulchre as once contended for the honour of being Homer’s birthplace. Strange rumours spread abroad that the body subjected to all these indignities was not Cromwell’s. Two years later, a French traveller in England was told that Cromwell had caused the royal tombs in Westminster Abbey to be opened and the bodies transposed, so that none might know where his own body was laid. Pepys repeated the story to one of the late Protector’s chaplains, who answered, “That he believed Cromwell never had so poor a low thought in him as to trouble himself about it.” Another rumour was that Cromwell’s body was secretly conveyed away, and buried at dead of night on Naseby Field. According to a third, Cromwell’s daughter, Lady Fauconberg, foreseeing changed times, had ere this removed her father’s body from Westminster, and reinterred it in a vault at Newburgh Abbey, in Yorkshire. All these stories found, and find, believers, but there is no reasonable ground for doubting that it was Cromwell’s body which hung on the gallows at Tyburn, or that it was duly buried in the pit beneath them. Where Connaught Square now stands, a yard or two beneath the street, trodden under foot and beaten by horsehoofs, lies the dust of the great Protector.
CHAPTER XXII
CROMWELL AND HIS FAMILY
“Mr. Lely,” said Cromwell to the painter, “I desire you would use all your skill to paint my picture truly like me, and not flatter me at all; but remark all these roughnesses, pimples, warts, and everything, otherwise I never will pay a farthing for it.” Doubtless the Protector would have given a similar charge to his biographers, but their task is more difficult; much contemporary evidence is merely worthless gossip, much is vitiated by party spirit, and on many points the authorities are silent.
John Maidston, the steward of Cromwell’s household, supplies us with what he terms “a character of his person:”