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AFTER THE FUNERAL
We all hope to rest in peace after we die, and most of us will. But an unlucky few of us...well, read on and see for yourself .
    O LIVER CROMWELL (1599–1658)
    Claim to Fame: Puritan, Member of Parliament, and leader of the forces that won the English Civil War in the 1640s, Cromwell presided over the trial and execution of King Charles I in 1649, then ruled England until his death in 1658.
    After the Funeral: You can’t kill a king without making enemies. By 1660 Charles I’s son, Charles II, was back on the throne, and the royalists were ready for revenge. On January 30, 1661, Cromwell’s body was removed from its burial vault in Westminster Abbey, hanged in a posthumous “execution,” and decapitated. The body was then dumped in a pit; the head was impaled on a 20-foot spike and displayed for more than 20 years above Westminster Hall, the same building in which Charles I was tried and condemned to death. In 1685 the spike came down during a storm, and the weather-beaten head passed from one private collector to another for nearly three centuries. In 1960 the last owner arranged for it to be buried in a secret location at Sidney Sussex College in Cambridge, England, where it remains to this day.
    What happened to the rest of Cromwell’s body? It’s either still in the pit where it was dumped in 1661, or was retrieved by Cromwell’s daughter Mary and interred in a family crypt. No one knows for sure except, perhaps, the family: For more than 300 years, Cromwell’s descendants have refused all requests to open the crypt to find out if the headless body is in there.
    SIMON DE MONTFORT (1208–65)
    Claim to Fame: An English nobleman who in A.D. 1264 led a rebellion against his brother-in-law, King Henry III, and then called the first elected parliament in English history. Because of this he’s known as “the father of the (British) House of Commons.” Unlike Oliver Cromwell, de Montfort did not execute the King or his son, Prince Edward, after capturing them in the battle of Lewes in 1264. He lived to regret it the following year, when Edward escaped from imprisonment, raised an army, and slew de Montfort and his son Henry (named after the King) in the battle of Evesham on August 4, 1265.
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    After the Funeral: The dead body of Montfort was decapitated, emasculated (that’s the polite way of putting it), and otherwise cut into pieces, with the noblemen who defeated him taking the choicest parts home as souvenirs. (The first Baron Wigmore, Roger de Mortimer, got the head; he gave it to his wife, Baroness Maud, as a gift.) Afterward the parts that nobody wanted were buried beneath the altar of nearby Evesham Abbey, which soon became a popular pilgrimage site. When King Henry learned of this, he ordered de Montfort removed from the abbey and buried under a tree, the precise location of which has long been forgotten. Even the abbey is gone; it was destroyed during the reign of King Henry VIII (1491–1547). Today all that remains is a memorial stone where the altar once stood.
    BENNY HILL (1924–92)
    Claim to Fame: Bawdy British comedian and host of The Benny Hill Show , which aired from 1951 to 1989 in 140 countries around the world.
    After the Funeral: Despite having a fortune estimated at $15 million, Hill was famously frugal. He lived simply, residing in a rented flat within walking distance of the TV studio where he taped his show. He never married and never even owned a car. So when he was found dead of a heart attack in his flat in April 1992, people couldn’t help but wonder whatever happened to all that money.
    Hill kept his millions in the bank, and when he died it all passed to his closest relatives. But that didn’t stop rumors from spreading that Hill was buried with a large amount of gold jewelry, and