In August the young people of CRAY visited St Margaret’s church beside Westminster Abbey to see two of the key characters from our Vindication of Christmas project: Charles I and his nemesis, Oliver Cromwell.
The lead bust of King Charles I. is mounted in a window facing of St Margaret’s Church facing Parliament directly opposite the statue of Oliver Cromwell peering back at him from his plinth in front of Westminster Hall.
Cromwell’s statue has his head bowed in thought, which many claim is because he is avoiding the avenging gaze of the King that he had executed. Although this legend gave us the idea for our animated film, its concept is entirely false. This is because Cromwell’s statue was erected fifty-one years before Charles I arrived on the scene in 1899 and was designed by Sir William Thornycroft who was keen on Cromwell and unlikely to approve of a design seen to be ashamed of his history.
When Cromwell’s statue was first placed outside Parliament, for the grand sum of £500, it was incredibly controversial as he was despised by the Irish who protested against honouring a man they considered to be guilty of genocide in their country in the months following the Second English Civil war (the focus of our project). The Irish connection may be the reason for the legend of Cromwell’s statue hanging his head in shame.
The lead bust of Charles I was donated to St Margaret’s Church in 1956, many years after Cromwell arrived on the scene, which automatically disproves the legend. Charles’s bust had been found in a Fulham scrap yard a the end of WW2 by Hedley Hope-Nicholson, secretary of the Society of King Charles the Martyr. He donated it to the church and a matching bust to the Banqueting House further up Whitehall, where Charles was executed. A far grander tribute to Charles I comes in the equestrian statue of him on the edge of Trafalgar Square that looks towards his place of execution and the second bust of him.
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