It is one of the accidental ironies of history that Richard’s great-grandson removed the head of Lady Margaret Douglas’s great-grandson, whose collateral ancestor performed a similar service for Richard’s uncle. The execution of Charles I in 1649 was as great a national trauma as England’s break with Rome in 1533, though in the end it may have had the unintended effect of curbing this country’s enthusiasm for destroying monarchy. More than a century after Richard Cromwell alias Williams/Williams alias Cromwell made his will as a knight of the realm in 1544, one of his descendants reversed
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