Cromwell’s coffin plate on the auction block

This copper-gilt coffin plate, bearing an inscription in Latin with the dates of Oliver Cromwell’s birth, death and inauguration as Lord Protector and the arms of the Protectorate to the reverse, was found when his body was exhumed from the Henry VII chapel at Westminster Abbey on January 26, 1661.

Two years after he had been buried with pomp and ceremony, he suffered a Royalist posthumous executi…

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