Oliver Cromwell, Lord Protector and ruler of the Commonwealth of England after the defeat and beheading of King Charles I during the English Civil War, died on 3 September 1658 of natural causes.

When King Charles II was recalled from exile, his new parliament, in January 1661, ordered the disinterment of the elder Cromwell's body from Westminster Abbey, as well as those of John Bradshaw and Henry Ireton, for a posthumous execution at Tyburn.

[3] Although no firm evidence has been established for the head's whereabouts from 1684 to 1710,[4] tradition says that on a stormy night in the late 1680s, it was blown off from the top of Westminster Hall, thrown to the ground, and picked up by a sentry who carried it home.

[4][5][a] After its disappearance from Westminster, it was in the hands of various private collectors and museums until 25 March 1960, when it was buried at Sidney Sussex College in Cambridge, Cromwell's alma mater.

Thomas Carlyle dismissed it as "fraudulent moonshine",[6] and scientific and archaeological analysis was carried out to test the identity after the emergence of a rival claimant to be the true head of Oliver Cromwell.

Upon his army's victory, he oversaw the conversion of England into a republic, abolishing the monarchy and the House of Lords after the execution of King Charles I in January 1649.

The body itself had already been buried at Westminster Abbey two weeks earlier due to its fast decay (by the time of the funeral procession, he had been dead over two months).

[b][13] In addition, the recalled parliament ordered the posthumous execution of the deceased regicides Oliver Cromwell, John Bradshaw and Henry Ireton.

[13] Cromwell's body, hidden in the wall of the middle aisle of Henry VII Lady Chapel, took effort to exhume because the wood and cloth were difficult to shift.

[2] Various conspiracy theories exist as to what happened to the body, including a rumour that Cromwell's daughter Mary had it rescued from the pit and interred at her husband's home at Newburgh Priory.

A sealed stone vault was claimed to contain the remains of the headless Cromwell, but generations of the family have refused requests, including one from King Edward VII, to open it.

The loss of the head was still significant in London at the time, and many searched for it, hoping to claim the "considerable reward"[17] being offered for its safe return.

[18] The first firm sighting of the head since its disappearance from Westminster Hall was recorded in 1710, when it was in the possession of Claudius Du Puy, a Swiss-French collector of curiosities, who displayed it in his private museum in London.

[23] The head fell out of prominence until the late 18th century, when it was in the possession of a failed comic actor and drunkard named Samuel Russell, who was rumoured to be a relative of Cromwell.

[25][26] Some time around 1780,[27] it was spotted by the prominent goldsmith, clockmaker and toyman James Cox, who was "convinced by all the circumstances that it was the identical head of Oliver Cromwell".

[28] Cox offered £100 (the 2023 equivalent of £15,181),[20] but "poor as he was, and considerably in debt, Russell refused to part with it, so dear to him was that which he knew to be the sacred relic of his great ancestor.

[33] William Bullock, considering a purchase, wrote to Lord Liverpool, who stated "the strong objection which would naturally arise to the exhibition of human remains at a Public Museum frequented by Persons of both Sexes and of all ages".

He did not, and on the basis of a friend's visit, wrote a scathing dismissal of the authenticity of the head: "it has hair, flesh and beard, a written history bearing that it was procured for £100 (I think of bad debt) about 50 years ago ... the whole affair appears to be fraudulent moonshine, an element not pleasant even to glance into, especially in a case like Oliver's.

Pearson and Morant upheld the originally understood position—traditionally, Bradshaw's head was in the middle, with Cromwell to the right and Ireton to the left—through careful analysis of contemporary poems and plans.

[40] The Hughes brothers' failure to piece together a solid history of the head was possibly partly responsible for their inability to attract visitors.

According to Fitzgibbons, the rumours surrounding Cromwell's body immediately after his death are "merely good yarns born out of over-active imaginations".

They could not pretend to keep it for the Pomp of a publick burial ... and to prevent its falling into barbarous hands, it was resolved to wrap it up in lead, to put it aboard a Barge, and sink it in the deepest part of the Thames, which was done the night following Cromwell's death.

[47] If this story had any accuracy, Fitzgibbons suggests the irony would be that the posthumous act was possibly carried out on an English monarch rather than Cromwell himself.

Another story even suggested that Cromwell's body was substituted for Charles I, adding what Fitzgibbons describes as "an even greater mockery of the events of 30 January 1649".