He Was Already Dead When They Executed Him True Story

[00:00:00]On April 25th, 1599, a baby was born in the town of Huntingdon, England. His father was Robert Cromwell, a modest landowner and justice of the peace, neither rich nor poor. His mother was Elizabeth Stewart, whose family was connected to Thomas Cromwell, the famous minister of King Henry VIII. In January 1661, Oliver Cromwell went to a pub, but there was one shocking problem. He had already been dead since 1658. [music] King Charles II ordered Cromwell's body to be dug up from its grave and dragged through [music] the streets of London.

[00:00:33]Cromwell had been the man who ordered the execution of King Charles I and later became Lord Protector of England. But after [music] his death in 1658, the monarchy was restored and Charles II decided [music] to take revenge. On January 30th, 1661, the exact anniversary of Charles I's >> [music] >> execution, Cromwell's corpse was symbolically hanged, then beheaded. His head was mounted on a metal spike and displayed [music] above Westminster Hall for everyone to see. The head remained there for 25 years. Then, during a violent storm, the wooden pole snapped and the head fell to the ground. A guard secretly picked it up and hid it. The government offered a large reward for its return, but the head disappeared.

[00:01:15][music] In the following century, it resurfaced in the possession of a French curiosity collector who tried to display it in a museum and sell it for [music] 60 guineas. After that, it passed from owner to owner for nearly 300 years.

[00:01:29]Finally, in 1960, a college in Cambridge secretly buried the head. The [music] exact location remains a secret to this day.