Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 11.djvu/474

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [io s. XL MAY 15, im

Taking all circumstances into consideration, I think only a mind naturally sceptical will be able to resist the impression that this is the veritable head of the Protector.

EDWARD BELL, F.S.A. 6, Portugal Street, W.C.

I should like to draw attention to a letter of Bishop Welldon in a Manchester paper of 19 December last. In it he says :

"Some time ago, when I was living in West- minster Abbey, the thought occurred to me that if the Protector's head or any part of his remains could be recovered, it might still be possible in some sense to undo the act of sacrilege which was perpetrated in the Abbey when his body and the bodies of his mother, his sister, and several of his colleagues, including Ireton, who was his son-in-law, and Bradshaw, were exhumed at the Restoration. But after careful, and, I hope, complete inquiry, not without inspecting, through Mr. Wilkinson's kindness, the skull in his possession, I satisfied myself that there was no such evidence as would justify the belief in its genuineness. If it should happen that there is any one among your readers who feels an interest in the strange story of Oliver Cromwell's obsequies and the fate of his remains, he might perhaps like to know of an article which I was permitted by the late Sir James Knowles to contribute to The Nineteenth Century and After in June, 1905. It will be enough for me now to quote the concluding words of the article: 'All the evidence which I have collected and compared establishes the belief that the body of Oliver Cromwell was privately buried, not long after his death, in Westminster Abbey ; that his body was taken to Tyburn, and there decapitated and buried ; that the trunk of his body remained where it was buried beneath the site of the gallows at Tyburn ; it has long since mouldered away, or has been removed or disturbed in the course of excavation, and it is now irrecoverable ; that his head, after being exposed in Westminster Hall for more than twenty years, disappeared ; it has never been seen since, and it, too, is now irrecoverable.' "

The majority of his countrymen will doubtless accept the thorough and impartial investigations of Bishop Welldon; but if there are any who still believe in the genuine- ness of this head, I should like to suggest that it would be only respectful to the memory of the Protector either to deliver it up to the present representative of his family, or to have it decently and privately interred, instead of being kept as a curiosity by those who have no ties of blood to Oliver Cromwell. It would be interesting to know the opinion of the Rev. T. Cromwell Bush upon the point. E. F. W.

A minute and authentic account of this gruesome relic appeared in a letter, signec "Senex," in The Times of 31 Dec., 1874 which is quoted at length in ' Old and New London ' (ed. c. 1876), vol. iii. p. 539 et sea

Mr. Wilkinson, who died recently, was, to

my knowledge, firmly convinced of the authenticity of his relic ; but there are many who think that, authentic or not, the only proper way of disposing of it would be o give it decent interment.

ALAN STEWART.

This subject has been much discussed in

N. & Q.,' commencing with 1 S. v. 275.

Mr. David Wilkinson, writing to me about

.891, stated that his grandfather became

possessed of it about 1815, that in 1832 it

was brought by him to Sandgate, and from

Jiat date to 1842 was kept at the Hill House,

Seabrook ; afterwards it was preserved at

Shortlands, in Kent. Dean Stanley " certi-

ied his belief in its authenticity."

R. J. FYNMORE. Sandgate.

See James Waylen's ' The House of Cromwell' (1897 ed.), pp. 224-6.

A. R. BAYLEY.

ST. MARY THE EGYPTIAN (10 S. xi. 288).

I believe I first read of this strange saint in Mrs. Jameson's ' Sacred and Legendary Art,' pp. 385-90, and next I found her at Blois in the church which was formerly dedicated in the name of St. Laumier, and is now called St. Nicolas. There I saw the mutilated retable of the fifteenth century and a window of possibly the same date to which MR. F. G. MONTAGU POWELL refers, which much of St. Mary's startling history appears. Her adventures are well told in ' La Legende Doree,' vol. ii. pp. 63-5.

St. Mary the Egyptian lived in the fourth and fifth centuries, and that was long before the Roman Church withheld, by decree, the cup from all except the celebrating priest, the formal general deprivation dating only from the Council of Constance in 1415, though from the twelfth century many bishops had forestalled it in their dioceses. The artists at Blois did not forget to notify the practice of Christians in earlier ages.

" St. Mary of Egypt," says Mrs. Jameson, '* was early a popular saint in France, and particularly venerated by the Parisians, till eclipsed by the increasing celebrity of the Mag- dalene. She was styled, familiarly, La Gipesienne (the Gipsy), softened by time into La Jussienne. The street in which stood a convent of reformed women, dedicated to her, is still La Rue Jussienne."

P. 389.

ST. SWITHIN.

I have a scarce and curious pamphlet published in Liverpo, 1755, entitled ' The Life of St. Mary of Egypt,' &c., 77 pp., with a frontispiece representing her in the desert,