So the mutilated corpses of Cromwell, of Ireton, his statesmanlike general and brother-in-law, and Bradshaw, the president at the trial of Charles I., drawn in their shrouds from their tombs in the quiet of Henry the Seventh’s Chapel at the Abbey, gibbeted until sundown as objects for the ridicule and derision of a demoralised mob, and then decapitated, were flung “into a deep hole under the gallows.” And there they may remain until this day. Who knows? The cemetery for the unnamed dead, which extended from the fatal tree towards the Marble Arch, was dug up when hangings ceased on this spot, and it is probable that the unrecognised bones of Cromwell, Ireton, and Bradshaw were in that process swept into oblivion. The heads had been spiked on poles in front of Westminster Hall. The grave has gone; the remains have perished. No vestige of the honoured dead survives; in spite of Cromwell’s gorgeous funeral, his remains are not even located. That is just where history awakens us from musings to the unexpected reality of things. Of all the vanities of life, assuredly the love of funeral pomp and show is the most vain; and that strange vanity Cromwell—hard, narrow, cold though he might be—seems to have shared to an extravagant degree. He had arranged for himself a gorgeous funeral, and one glances with amazement at the documents of the year 1658, when the burial of the Protector had to be put off from 9th November to 23rd November (he died on 3rd September) as the elaborate arrangements for the event could not be completed by the earlier date. During the short Protectorate of Richard Cromwell, sums were voted to the amount of £18,600 for expenses and mourning, and so many claims were brought forward for settlement, that nearly a year later, on 4th July 1659, a Committee was appointed to inquire into the money still owing. They reported that £19,303, 0s. 11d. was the properly audited account, and this merely for baize, cloth, velvet, and fringes. This sum represents about £80,000 of our present money; so that an estimate of £150,000 can hardly be too large for the expenses of Oliver Cromwell’s funeral.