Oliver Cromwell
Oliver Cromwell is known by history as the man who overthrew a King of England and instituted the country’s one and only Commonwealth. On March 31, 1657, the government of England, in a document known as the Great Remonstrance, attempted to offer the throne itself to Cromwell. However, he refused, accepting only the title of Lord Protector. Cromwell died just over a year later at the age of fifty-one of natural causes. It was then that his ministers bestowed upon his corpse the honors he refused in life.
Cromwell’s funeral was in every way the funeral of a King- down to the taking of a death mask. This mask was used to create the traditional death effigies. One was placed on Cromwell’s coffin during his state funeral and internment in Westminster Abbey- the wax death mask covering its face. After the funeral, this effigy and its copy were taken to Somerset House. Here, the original image lay in state, after officials placed the royal orb and scepter refused by the living Cromwell into its hands. The second effigy was taken to another room where it was enthroned and later subjected to a posthumous coronation when the Crown of England was placed upon its head.
Two years later, however, things were very different. The monarchy was restored, and Cromwell’s body was exhumed and treated to a posthumous traitors death at Tyburn. His effigies, previously treated so royally were destroyed. One was burned at Westminster, while the other was symbolically hung at Whitehall to mark the return of King Charles II. However, the death mask survived and remained in the hands of its maker, Thomas Simon. Over the intervening years, six plaster copies have been made from this original, with examples held in the British Museum, National Portrait Gallery and Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum.
The mask’s reveal the real face of Cromwell- literally warts and all. The former Lord Protector’s face is a very ordinary one- even rather ugly. It shows Cromwell’s nose to have been thick, and slightly twisted. As for warts, they are indeed present too, with one on his forehead, one under an eye and another hidden by the Lord Protector’s facial hair just under his mouth. The revelations of his facial imperfections are unlikely to have bothered Cromwell anymore that the subject of the next death mask, who was also a social revolutionary.