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Alpinfox

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I'm glad that a head on a stake is an unlikely option in our current government system, unlike when Cromwell was unseated.

 

Actually, Cromwell wasn't "unseated": he died of natural causes. It was Cromwell who unseated Charles I, and then beheaded him. I'm not sure if Charles' head was displayed on a stake afterwards, although it was a common practice.

 

Some years after Cromwell's death, when the monarchy was restored, the Royalists dug up Cromwell's skeleton and symbolically "hanged" him for regicide.

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I'm glad that a head on a stake is an unlikely option in our current government system, unlike when Cromwell was unseated.

 

Actually, Cromwell wasn't "unseated": he died of natural causes. It was Cromwell who unseated Charles I, and then beheaded him. I'm not sure if Charles' head was displayed on a stake afterwards, although it was a common practice.

 

Some years after Cromwell's death, when the monarchy was restored, the Royalists dug up Cromwell's skeleton and symbolically "hanged" him for regicide.

 

Thanks for the history refresher, I must be blurring Cromwell's coming and going stories, coupled with a mental image from some novel of Cromwell's skull on a pike high over London. Certainly a wild time in British history, one I'd not choose to see repeated here. I guess the moral of that story is that the pendulum does swing, doesn't it?

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Here's the Cromwell bit from Wikipedia, his skull was on display for 24 years:

 

In 1661, Oliver Cromwell's body was exhumed from Westminster Abbey, and was subjected to the ritual of a posthumous execution, as were the remains of John Bradshaw and Henry Ireton. (The body of Cromwell's daughter was allowed to remain buried in the Abbey.) Symbolically, this took place on 30 January; the same date that Charles I had been executed. His body was hanged in chains at Tyburn. Finally, his disinterred body was thrown into a pit, while his severed head was displayed on a pole outside Westminster Hall until 1685. Afterwards the head changed hands several times, including the sale in 1814 to a man named Josiah Henry Wilkinson[85], before eventually being buried in the grounds of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, in 1960
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