ABSTRACT
After the beheading of King Charles I, Oliver Cromwell became Lord Protector. When he died in 1658 after a three week illness, termed by his doctors bastard tertian ague, there was a hurried autopsy and embalming and, after a lying in state, he was buried in Westminster Abbey—although it was a wooden effigy used for the two public occasions! The actual date of the secret burial is unknown.
