The head of England's great Puritan, open mouth still drawn down in disapproval of a godless generation, glowered for a new master last week. Dr. Horace Wilkinson of Kettering, Northamptonshire, wondered what to do with a family heirloom left by his late father, Canon Horace Wilkinson, the pike-impaled head of Oliver Cromwell.
The Lord Protector's well-embalmed head has not had a reposeful history. In 1660, two years after the 59-year-old Cromwell died in his bed (of a fever), the House of Commons, full of the heady days of the Restoration and Charles II, directed that his body be disinterred and hanged....
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