1730s by a John Oldmixon, claims that "a reliable Gentlewoman who attended Cromwell in his last sickness" had said the coffin was sunk in the deepest part of the River Thames the night following Cromwell's death. Fearful of royalists, "it was consulted how to dispose of his Corpse. They could not pretend to keep it for the Pomp of a publick burial ... and to prevent its falling into barbarous hands, it was resolved to wrap it up in lead, to put it aboard a Barge, and sink it in the deepest part of the Thames, which was done the night following Cromwell's death." In 1664, Samuel Pepys wrote of a story he had heard in which "Cromwell did, in his life, transpose many of the bodies of the Kings of England from one grave to another, and by that means it is not known certainly whether the head that is now set upon a post be that of Cromwell, or one of the Kings". If this story had any accuracy, Fitzgibbons suggests the irony would be that the posthumous act was possibly carried out on an English monarch rather than Cromwell himself. Another story even suggested that Cromwell's body was substituted for Charles I, adding what Fitzgibbons describes as "an even greater mockery of the events of 30 January 1649". This story is known to be false; Charles's tomb was opened in 1813, and his remains, including the cut that severed his head, remained as they were in 1649. Fitzgibbons argues that it was not impossible for Cromwell's body to have been substituted before his posthumous execution. One proposition is that Sergeant Norfolke, who exhumed the bodies from the abbey, found the tombs of Cromwell and Ireton empty, prompting the government to sanction an exhumation of two other graves. This has been put forward because Bradshaw's body arrived at the Red Lion Inn at Holborn a day after Cromwell and Ireton, prompting rumour that he was the only real body to be hanged at Tyburn. Prestwich says that "His remains were privately interred in a small paddock near Holborn", but an alternative theory is that other corpses were substituted so that when the sledges dragged the bodies to the gallows, Cromwell's body was already buried. The faces on the three bodies, although heavily shrouded, were clearly visible; and since no witnesses expressed any doubt that the bodies were those