We all know about how important Oliver Cromwell was when he was alive, you know, him ruling over the whole of England for life and not being called a king?but here’s a question I bet you’ve never thought of before; what happend to him when he died? At first when my teacher brought it up in class, I thought nothing of it. People die, they get buried, end of story right? Well here’s something that might not have registered. Oliver cromwell had one very powerful enemy that would like nothing more to exact their revenge wether Cromwell was alive or dead. That enemy was called the parliament. Of course, the parliment only came back when Cromwell died, but they were angry all the same that they had been defied.

The first thing they did was exhume Cromwell’s grave along with two other regicides, Irton and Bradshaw. Then, they executed their corpses. Yes, that’s right. Their corpses. They were publicly hung and then beheaded. The bodies were hung on January 30th, 1661 (the twelfth anniversary of the execution of King Charles the first.) This was kind of a waste of materials in my opinion, being that they are already dead but hey, at least it got the parliaments point across!

The headless corpses were then thrown into some random pit and their heads were placed on spiked poles on display in the Westminster hall.

After a while, Cromwell’s head has become a collectors item which, in itself is pretty weird. I mean, can you imagine what that would be like? Just owning some head from a famous leader of England? To be honest, it would freak me out. If there’s one thing to take any from this though, it’s to make sure that when you die, you don’t leave any psychotic enemies around.