ABSTRACT
Date and publication. Cromwell died on 3 September 1658. Because of ineffectual embalming, the body had to be buried privately at an unknown date before the state funeral on 23 November, at which an effigy was used. On 20 January 1659 Henry Herringman entered in SR ‘a booke called Three poems to the happy memory of the most renowned Oliver, late Lord Protector of this Commonwealth, by Mr. Marvell, Mr. Driden, Mr. Sprat.’ But Herringman did not proceed with publication, possibly because of changing political circumstances. It was William Wilson who at an unknown date in 1659 published Three Poems Upon the Death of his late Highnesse Oliver Lord Protector of England, Scotland, and Ireland, with Waller’s ‘Upon the Late Storm, and of the Death of his Highness ensuing the same’, already printed, replacing Marvell’s poem. D.’s poem was reprinted in 1681 with the title An Elegy on the Usurper O.C. by the Author of Absalom and Achitophel, published to shew the Loyalty and Integrity of the Poet, which was evidently a Whig attempt to embarrass D.; there were two similar unauthorized reprints in 1682, and another in 1687, which described D. as ‘the Author of The H—d and the P—r’. An authorized reprint was issued by Tonson in 1691 or 1692 as part of a uniform set of D.’s earlier poems.
