7 APRIL 1990, Page 26

Sir: After the head was chopped off, Oliver Cromwell's exhumed

body was, Rick Jones relates, flung into a pit beneath Tyburn gallows in January 1661.

Oliver's daughter Mary Viscountess Fauconberg piously retrieved and took the headless trunk to her husband's house, Newburgh Priory in the North Riding of Yorkshire. She put it in a rough and ready tomb under the roof so as to be safe from ill-disposed body snatchers. There it has remained quiescent until recent times. After the last war Newburgh became so infested with dry rot that the whole of one wing had to be gutted. The rot was traced to the Usurper's tomb.

James Lees-Milne

Essex House, Badminton