ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author suggests that the tale positions Reginald Musgrave of Hurlstone as Charles II and his father as Charles I; Brunton-Cromwell’s first name is Richard, the name of Cromwell’s son who succeeded him as Protector and died on his estate at Hursley. These are signifiers again sliding into each other, as indeed might be the alphabetical closeness of the corresponding letters in the names Brunton and Cromwell. But Brunton is dead and the details of the position of his head and his arms in relation to the box are unmistakeably those of a man about to be executed. That is, the vengeance meted out to this Cromwell is the duplication of what that Cromwell exacted on Charles I, regicide by execution. He, and in effect republicanism, have been buried alive – in a sepulchre, the word with inescapably Christian-royalist connotations: Hamlet uses it about his idolised-deified father.
