Oliver Cromwell was one of three signatories to the death warrent of King Charles I who were exhumed and posthumously executed, on the orders of Charles II, following the Restoration. The other two were John Bradshaw (the judge who presided over Charles I's trial) and Henry Ireton (a general in the Parliamentary army, and Cromwell's son–in–law).
Of the 59 signatories, twenty were dead by the time of the Restoration. Ireton died in November 1651, while commanding the New Model Army in Ireland, having caught the plague in June of that year while besieging the city of Limerick. Cromwell himself died in September 1658, probably of setpicaemia. He'd been suffering from malaria and a kidney infection. Bradshaw died in October 1659; on his deathbed he said that if called upon to try the King again he would be "the first man in England to do it".
All three were buried in Westminster Abbey. Following exhumation on 30 January 1661 – the 12th anniversary of Charles I's execution – their bodies were thrown into a pit and the heads placed on spikes at the end of Westminster Hall, facing towards the spot where the execution had taken place.
© Macclesfield Quiz League 2022