Oliver cromwell death mask

I saw him dead, a leaden slumber lyes And mortall sleep over those wakefull eys There is somehow a sense of sleep having closed those eyes. The original wax mask, of which this is a plaster copy, was probably taken as a model for Cromwell's funeral effigy.

Oliver cromwell death mask ashmolean

He had died on 3 September , and his corpse had been quietly buried in Westminster Abbey on 10 November. But, despite refusing to take on the title of king in his own lifetime, he was accorded elaborate funeral rites based upon those that had marked the passing of King James I in A wooden model was made of his body, topped by a wax head, and for eleven weeks this effigy, holding a sceptre and orb and dressed in the traditional royal garb of velvet and ermine, lay in state in Somerset House on the Strand in London.

On 23 November it was solemnly processed to Westminster Abbey. The short journey took seven hours. A special gold medal was issued and distributed to offical mourners at the state funeral — a Dutch copy of one of these can be seen, left.

Oliver cromwell death mask british museum

An anonymous poet of the time crudely recorded his pleasure at Cromwell's passing,. He did not lie long within his grave, however, and the subsequent history of Cromwells head is as bizarre as it is grisly. In May , the monarchy was restored in England and Charles II, son of the executed king, took the throne. The head was displayed on the top of a pole for over twenty years, a vivid and macabre warning against Republicanism.

Sometime after , however, perhaps after being blown down in a gale, it disappeared. The head emerged again, understandably battered, as a collector's item in the eighteenth century, when it changed hands several times. By it was the treasured possession of Josiah Henry Wilkinson, in whose family it stayed until the twentieth century.

In , Canon Horace Wilkinson allowed scientists to test the relic for authenticity.