The Strange Saga of Oliver Cromwell’s Head

After the death of Oliver Cromwell due to…Bastard tertian ague” on September 3, 1658His funeral proceedings had all the pomp and circumstance usually seen in the death of a king. Of course, Cromwell was not a king, but rather Lord Protector of England, Ireland and Scotland, the man who abolished the monarchy after ordering the beheading of Charles I, who had rejected the crown during his lifetime.

Cromwell probably hated all the fuss, which cost an estimated £60,000. But it doesn’t matter, he’s dead. After his mummified body was placed in a coffin surmounted by a lifelike statue, in state for two months, he was buried like a king too, in a vault in Westminster Abbey, the final resting place of Kings Henry III, V, and VII; Edwards I, III, V, VI; Mary, Queen of Scots; and Queen Elizabeth Iamong other things.

But Cromwell would not rest in peace for long. In January 1661, a group loyal to the restored Royalists – who had overthrown Cromwell’s son, Richard, in 1659 – exhumed his body and dragged it from Westminster Hall to a pub and then through the streets to the gallows at Tyburn. There, on the twelfth anniversary of the beheading of Charles I, they executed Cromwell’s body (and those of two conspirators who had a hand in the beheading) by posthumous hanging.

Cromwell’s body was on display “from the morning until four in the afternoon,” according to an eyewitness. Then the body was cut off and the head was cut off (eight cuts, causing the teeth to fall out and the nose to be damaged). It was pushed onto a 20-foot wooden pole secured with a metal nail and placed in Westminster Hall for all to see. “(Cromwell’s) severed head was as hollow and dead as his republican ideals,” Francis Larson He writes in Cut off: History of lost heads and found heads“And as long as she plays her role as a marionette on the roof of Westminster Hall, no one will be allowed to forget.”

In death, Cromwell faced many indignities. But this was not the end. No, the strange saga of Oliver Cromwell’s head had only just begun.

From the attraction next to the palace to the museum exhibition

From its position on the south side of Westminster Hall, Cromwell’s head served as a warning and a satisfactory signal. Tourist attractions-For more than 30 years. (It was briefly removed in 1681 for some roof work). As Jonathan Fitzgibbons wrote in his book Cromwell’s head“Anecdotal evidence claims that the head finally fell one evening in the midst of a great storm that struck London at the end of the reign of James II.” The oak shaft which held the head broke off, and deposited it at the feet of the watchman, who is supposed to have picked it up, carried it into the house, and concealed it in his chimney. According to In an account written by the Keeper in 1727, “Having concealed it for two or three days before he saw the signs commanding any person in possession of it to take it to a certain office… he was afraid to divulge the secret.” Although a large reward was offered for the head’s return, the keeper feared retribution, and kept his secret until the day of his death (sometime around 1700), when he finally revealed the head’s location to his daughter.

It is assumed that his daughter, in turn, sold it. After its disappearance from Westminster, Cromwell’s head did not officially appear again until 1710, when it appeared in Claudius Du Puy’s London Museum. The head fit perfectly into the four-room museum, whose vaults were, according to Fitzgibbons, “crowded with curious items intended to attract the inquiries and astonishment of visitors.” Cromwell’s head was in the second room, and Du Puy described it as “one of the most curious items” in his establishment. One visitor called him “that monstrous head.”

After Du Puy’s death in 1738, the head disappeared again, and this time, its location remained a mystery for 40 years.

A drunkard’s valuable possession

James Cox was near the Claremarket district of London when he saw what a curiosity he must have had.

It was around 1780 when Cox – who once owned a museum – discovered Cromwell’s head on display in a stall. It was staged by Samuel Russell, whom Fitzgibbons described as a “failed comedian” and an alcoholic who claimed to be a descendant of Cromwell; Russell claimed that the head came down to him through generations of his family. (Fitzgibbons writes: “There may be some truth to this. The Cromwell and Russell families were related by a number of matrimonial alliances…Oliver’s relatives may have been seen as a ready market for such an exotic commodity after Du Puy’s death.”)

Cox offered Russell £100 for the head, but Russell refused. So Cox decided to get the head by other means.

According to To the booklet A novel about the real mummified head of Oliver CromwellRussell was ‘in indigent circumstances’ and asked Cox for financial assistance, which Cox provided ‘partly out of humanity, and partly (as he admits) with a view to acquiring, at some time or other, this great curiosity’. He patiently lent Russell money until in 1787 he demanded repayment of the £118 he had paid. Russell had nothing to offer…except Cromwell’s head. He reluctantly transferred ownership to Cox.

Cox then began talking about his unusual acquisition to raise its price, spreading the word widely but allowing only a select few to actually see it. In 1799, he sold the head for £230 – almost double what he paid, a handsome profit – to the Hughes brothers, who planned to display it in their private museum on Bond Street in London. (the a novel A brochure was created for this museum.) But the museum failed; After its closure, all three Hughes brothers quickly died, leading to widespread rumors of a curse.

A subject for scientific scrutiny

But no curse could hide Cromwell’s head. The daughter of one of the Hughes brothers began displaying the head again in 1813, and was eager for someone to remove it from her hands. Piccadilly Museum considered purchasing them, but chose not to, as Robert Jenkinson, 2nd Lord of Liverpool and Prime Minister, noted, because of “the strong objection which would naturally arise to the display of any human remains in a public museum frequented by persons of both sexes and all ages”.

Two years later, the daughter finally found a buyer: Josiah Henry Wilkinson. One Kent resident was so pleased with his masterpiece that he placed it in a small oak box and took it out at gatherings. A woman who saw it in 1822 later wrote: “It is a frightful skull, covered with its dry yellow skin like any other mummy, and its chestnut hair, eyebrows and beard in a wonderful state of preservation – the head still attached to the priceless broken part of the original shaft – all black and eaten by a happy worm.” Wilkinson noted that “the nose is flattened as it should be when a body is placed face down to be decapitated… There is Oliver’s famous wart mark just above the forehead of the left eye on the skull.” The head remained in the Wilkinson family, passed down from generation to generation.

But by the 19th century, Wilkinson’s head was not the only head allegedly floating on the Lord Protector’s surface – in fact, there were several others. In 1875, one of these skulls in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford encountered the Wilkinson skull, which at that time belonged to Josiah’s grandson, Horace. George Rolleston, professor of anatomy and physiology at Oxford University, declared Wilkinson’s head to be the real deal. Wilkinson’s head was subjected to further scientific scrutiny in 1911, this time by scientists at the Royal Archaeological Institute, who, according to Fitzgibbons, came to the conclusion that “although the documentary evidence was somewhat doubtful, the physical evidence was very strong. Although it has never been conclusively proven He was Cromwell’s head… There was no way by which this possibility could be disproved.’

Therefore, although the Wilkinsons were convinced that the head in their possession belonged to Cromwell, doubt remained. Thus, in 1934, Canon Horace Wilkinson agreed to let scientists Karl Pearson and Geoffrey Morant take over and publish the results of their evaluation in the journal Biometrics.

Rather than focusing on the provenance of the head, Pearson and Morant chose to focus on the physical appearance of the head: how close was it to Cromwell? Did the details of the head match its supposed date?

The mummification is certainly in keeping with what would have been done at the time of Cromwell’s death. Cromwell’s hood was removed – this was “customary in all disciplines and especially in royal taxidermy” – and sewn back on. The head was still attached to its shaft, which, they wrote, “had long been in contact with the head, because some wormholes passed through the head and the shaft.” The protrusion implanted at the top of the head was gone — rusted out — but using X-rays, scientists were able to see it was still intact in what they called the brain box. “This incision was pushed so forcefully through the skull cap that it split it from the site of the incision to the right edge,” they wrote.

Then, according to Fitzgibbons, they used busts, survival masks and death masks of the late Lord Protector to take measurements, then compared them to the head. Although some shrinkage of the skin made the comparison complicated, Pearson and Morant came to the conclusion that “the correspondence between the average of the masks and busts and Wilkinson’s head is striking.” Fitzgibbons wrote that the measurements were “almost an exact match” – right down to the wart above Cromwell’s eye.

In comfort, finally

In 1960, the long journey of Oliver Cromwell’s head came to an end. Three years ago, after Canon Horace Wilkinson died, his son, Dr Horace Norman Stanley Wilkinson, took possession of the relic – and decided it was time to bury it once and for all. He coordinated with Sydney Sussex Collegeone of the Cambridge University colleges that Cromwell attended, to find his final resting place.

Cromwell’s first funeral was attended by thousands. The burial ceremony for what remained of him on March 25, 1960, was much smaller. Only seven people were present while the head, in its oak box and sealed in an airtight metal container, was buried somewhere near the front chapel of the college. Two years later, a plaque was erected to announce his burial. But as has been the case for the cape for most of its history, its exact location is unknown to all but a few.