Cromwell's death and the Devil's pact

Oliver Cromwell died at Whitehall on 3 September 1658, on the night of a great storm. A later story says he had bargained with the Devil seven years before.

Oliver Cromwell died at Whitehall on 3 September 1658, aged 59. Wikipedia gives the most likely cause as sepsis following a urinary infection. The date was the anniversary of his victories at Dunbar and Worcester. Wikipedia records that a great storm swept England and much of Europe on the night he died. He was buried with great ceremony, and his funeral at Westminster Abbey followed the pattern of the one held for James I.

A legend grew up around these events. As Darren Oldridge of the University of Worcester retells it, Cromwell encountered the Devil among trees the night before the 1651 battle at Worcester and received a promise of seven prosperous years, with his soul as the price. He then died seven years later, in the storms of September 1658.

Oldridge's study of the legend argues that the story first grew out of how Cromwell died on 3 September 1658. Later tellers moved its focus back to the events before the battle of 1651. He sees it as an example of how English Protestant thought pictured a bodily Devil.