I would call it him the definitive example of a swelled head. All his life Oliver Cromwell was such an imperious narcissistic autocrat that in comparson the despotic and conceited King, Charles I, seemed reasonable - once Oliver had behaded him. But then Oliver went on the ultimate ego trip, launching a bloody war trying to eradicate Catholicism from Ireland. He would have had better luck trying to reintroduce the snakes. Oliver became so supercilious that in 1650 he wrote to a Scottish opponent, “I beseech you in the bowels of Christ think it possible you may be mistaken,” and just three years later he suffered no such introspection while making himself dictator, because, “…the spirit of god (was) so strong upon me, I would not consult flesh and blood.” It turns out the one nation Oliver never even attempted to conquer was gall
And then finally, at the age of 59, on his death bed, on the afternoon of September 3, 1658, Oliver Cromwell was beset at lonng last by humility (as well as an urinary tract infection). Oliver whispered, “My design is to make what haste I can to be gone.” But it was far too late to be hasty. Oliver could no longer escape the judgment of those who had suffered under his turgid arrogance.
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His corpse was entombed in Westminster Abbey, along with all those kings and queens he thought himself superior to. His followers attached a plate to his coffin reading “Oliver Cromwell, Protector of England, Scotland and Ireland”, so that on Judgment Day there would be no chance Oliver would be overlooked. They might as well have planted a big arrow above his crypt that read “Dig Here!”
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Judgment day arrived less than three years later, As soon as Charles II was crowned king, he had 12 of those who had participated in his father’s trial tried for high treason. The inevitable executions which followed produced a macabre precursor of Super Bowl Week. From Monday October 8th through Saturday the 13th , 1660, the twelve were each subjected to what contemporary witness William Harrison described as “The greatest and most grievous punishment used in England….drawing from the prison to the place of execution upon an hurdle or sled, where they are hanged till they be half dead, and then taken down…”. You see, it wasn’t until after the hanging that the real punishment got started.
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The guest-of-dishonor was stretched out naked on a butcher block table. First, his genitalia were removed and displayed to him. What a humilating perdicament. They were then thrown into a fire. Then, according to English Wikipedia, “A splash of water was usually employed to wake the man if unconscious…A large cut was made in the gut…and the intestines would be spooled out...Each piece of organ would be burned before the sufferer's eyes, and when he was completely disemboweled, his head would be cut off.” And not quickly removed, mind you, with a single swipe of a massive sword or an axe, but via repeated whacks with a dull meat cleaver. The idea was not to kill the unfortunate honoree, but to torture him.
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This was a spectator sport, drawn out for hype and hyperbole. Samuel Pepys was there for the anticlimax. He noted in his diary, “Saturday 13 October…went out to Charing Cross, to see Major-general Harrison hanged, drawn, and quartered…He looking as cheerful as any man could do in that condition. He was presently cut down, and his head and heart shown to the people, at which there was great shouts of joy…After that I went…home, where I was angry with my wife for her things lying about, and in my passion kicked the little fine basket, which I bought her in Holland, and broke it, which troubled me after I had done it.” An, death, where is thy operant conditioning?
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Oliver Cromwell, being legally and retroactively the villain-in-chief would not be spared these humiliations just because he was deceased. He was spared the pain I guess, but then there had been the urinary tract infection, and they really hurt. Anyway, on the morning of January 30, 1661 Oliver’s corpse and those of two of his fellow deceased co-conspirators, were hung by their necks at Tyburn, the traditional place for the execution of “commoners” - ouch, that little insult must have stung. The un-dearly departed were hung like hams in a smoke house, until four in the afternoon. Then their heads were removed; I presume they cut off Oliver’s last, as we are told it took eight chops. The poor executioner must have been shagged out from a hard day at the office.
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Oliver’s corpse was then discarded into a pit and his head was raised upon a 20 foot wooden pole above the south side of Westminster Palace. Finally, Oliver was as aloof as he had always imagined himself to be, head and shoulders above all others... except he no longer had any shoulders. And there he bobbled about in all weather until at least 1672, by which time it seems, most people had forgotten just whose head was which head.
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Legend claims that in the mid - 1680's Oliver’s pole was blown down in a storm and Oliver’s dome fell into the hands of John Moore, a guard, who snuck the coconut home and stuffed the noggin into his chimney. When it was realized that the arch villain Oliver Cromwell had somehow escaped, rewards were offered and notices posted threatening punishments unless he were returned. So then the nervous Mr. Moore gave Oliver's head to an apothecary in King Street, who then sold Oliver’s skull to a Mr. Humphrey Dove, Esq. Lawyer Dove kept Oliver confined to a chest until his death in 1687 – Mr. Dove’s death that is. After this it appears that Oliver made a clean getaway, no mean feat for a man with no feet...or legs.
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In 1710 a Mr. Claudius Du Puy opened a museum of curiosities in London, containing as its most curious curiosity of all, the head of Oliver Cromwell. That the exhibit was a financial failure was no fault of Oliver’s. He did his part. He was still dead. But he had no body to support his claim that he was the real head of Olver Cromwell. Could it really be he? Or was he just an imposter’s skull masquerading as the demon Protestant?
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It would not be until the 1930’s that two scientist issued a 109 page report authenticating to a “moral certainty” that the head in question was unquestionably the head of Oliver Cromwell. And on March 25, 1960 Oliver’s now morally certain head was finally buried somewhere near the chapel of Sidney Sussex College, in Cambridge, England. Except nobody knows exactly where.
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And that anonymity must be driving poor Oliver out of his skull!
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WEDNESDAY
The Secret Life of Capitalism
Part Two
So Close They Could Taste It