Generational

Two tales from history that highlight curious parallel lives and achievements.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to Aaron Manke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
Our world is full of the unexplainable, and if history
is an open book, all of these amazing tales are
right there on display, just waiting for us to explore.
Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities. It had been a

(00:37):
tumultuous decade in England. For generations, the Stuart monarchs had
reigned over England, claiming a divine right to rule the nation.
Their authority came straight from God himself and thus should
not be questioned. Parliament at the time had become increasingly Puritan,
and so when King Charles the First married the French
Catholic Henrietta Maria, and his support of an English High

(01:00):
Church was redoubled, they worried about a backslide into Roman Catholicism.
Tensions between the crown and the Parliament grew until sixteen
forty two, when the King tried to arrest five members
of the House of Commons, widely considered an assault on
its constitutional privilege. Negotiations between parties fell apart, and on

(01:21):
August twenty second of sixteen forty two, Charles declared war
on Parliament. The civil war that erupted as a result
would last for two whole years and exposed the deep
divides in politics and religion that had long been simmering
in England. In the end, the Royalist army was defeated
and Charles was captured by Parliament's forces. In victory, Parliament

(01:43):
faced a massive dilemma, what exactly do we do with
the King? Debate raged on for months before a grim
decision was finally made. On January thirtieth of sixteen forty nine,
Charles the First was brought to London Bridge, where, in
front of a crowd of his former subjects, London's official executioner,
Richard Brandon, ended the king's life with an axis blow.

(02:06):
The head was displayed on a spike to deter any
Royalists from further action. Eventually it made its way to
the Tower of London, where it was placed into storage.
In the coming years, another would rise to take the
mantle of Leader of the Commonwealth. One Oliver Cromwell, a
farmer and a senior officer in the Parliamentarian Army, who

(02:28):
rose to claim the mantle of Lord Protector in sixteen
fifty three. His Puritan administration championed religious tolerance, although brutally
cracked down on Royalist descent wherever it reared its head,
and conspiracies to reinstate the royal line were many. The
beheading at Charles the First cast a long shadow over
the political landscape. Cromwell would rule until his death in

(02:51):
the autumn of sixteen fifty eight, after a stroke left
him incapacitated. With its figure had gone, Parliament was once
again leaning toward Royalist sentiment. Within days of the Lord
Protector's death, a measure was passed Oliver Cromwell's corpse was
a trader, and so a posthumous execution was ordered for

(03:12):
the dead man, who was exhumed and summarily beheaded, and,
as with Charles's skull displayed at the Palace of Westminster,
now as a warning to those who may try to
carry on Cromwell's republican tradition. It would be displayed there
for nearly two years. As the Stuart monarchy reclaimed the
throne after the coronation of Charles the Second in sixteen sixty,

(03:33):
the head was removed from its public perch, boxed up
and placed in Saint George's Chapel at Windsor Castle, with
the thought that its gruesome reminder was no longer necessary.
It would remain hidden until sixteen eighty five, after Charles
the Second's brother, James the Second, took the throne. You see,
it was during his reign that yet another uprising took place,

(03:55):
and although it was quelled, Cromwell's head was brought back
out and put on display at the Tower of London
just to be safe. And after that, while the head
vanished from official inventories, its ultimate fate shrouded in mystery.
And looking at these two gruesome spectacles, several striking parallels
and contrasts emerge. Both heads were exhibited in highly visible

(04:18):
civic locations, ensuring that the largest possible number of ordinary
citizens would witness the stark warning. Yet the timing of
the displays diverged dramatically. Charles the First's head was shown
immediately after his death, serving to legitimize a brand new
Commonwealth and a signal that the old order had been broken.

(04:38):
Cromwell's head, by contrast, was displayed years after his burial,
precisely to delegitimize the Republican experiment that he had embodied
and to try to reinforce the restored Stewart claim to
divine right. But the most striking difference of all between
those heads was probably how they were treated after they.

Speaker 1 (04:57):
Were on display. Charles the first head was buried neat
the floor of Saint Peter ad Vincula, a gesture of
royal clemency that allowed the king's remains to rest in
consecrated ground. Crownwell's head, on the other hand, simply vanished,
reflecting the monarchy's intention to erase his legacy entirely. Erasmus

(05:31):
was a large, friendly man, although his face didn't always
show it. His features tended to droop and make it
look like he was scowling, but in truth he had
never been happier in his life. The year it was
seventeen ninety and he was living with his second wife
and their children in their home in Derbyshire, England. Although
he was a doctor by trade, he also had a
second passion invention. He was seated now in his workshop

(05:56):
sketching plans for a combustion device that could be used
to propel carriages. He already tinkered with his existing carriage,
making it sturdier and easier to steer. Now, he wondered
if he could get it to move on its own
without horses. But this invention would have to wait. The
sun was rising and he needed to get out to
his garden to observe his plants. Now that might sound

(06:18):
boring to you and I, but natural observation had always
been an important part of Erasmus's medical practice, because, as
far as Erasmus was concerned, the only difference between a
doctor and a shaman was observation as to whether a
plant was actually effective at treating the disease in question.
Keeping an open mind, but also doing empirical research allowed

(06:39):
Erasmus to find success treating people who other doctors hadn't
been able to help. For example, back in the seventeen sixties,
he had become so well known for this approach to
medicine that the King himself asked Erasmus to be his
personal physician, but Erasmus declined. He wanted to have time
to focus on his experiments. Looking at a thorn apple

(07:00):
plant growing in his garden, he was pleased at how
well it was doing. Erasmus had learned to cultivate plants
by splicing different samples to create the strongest possible plant.
It was the kind of thing that humanity had done
for thousands of years, but now he was putting these
plants to the greatest possible use. After his work in
the garden was done, he spent his afternoon at his

(07:21):
medical practice, attending to patience. He saw one man who
he felt quite bad for, because thus far he'd been
unable to help him. The span was large, like Erasmus himself,
but unlike Erasmus, he had poor circulation and stamina. His
heart seemed to be struggling. In the past, Erasmus had
also treated this man's father, who had died from a

(07:42):
similar condition. The father ate as much as Erasmus and
was also quite large, and so it seemed to this
doctor that the father had passed this propensity toward overeating
onto his son. Erasmus worried that he had done the
same to his own children. But as he checked the
man's vitals, a star startling link formed in his mind
between the thorn apple and his garden and the man

(08:04):
on his exam table. Both were the product of their parents.
Only one had inherited traits that were useful, and the
other had inherited traits that were harmful, and while the
plant and its offspring would endure, this patient sadly would not.
Much of the plant and animal kingdom that Erasmus had
observed behaved in a similar way. Each species produced variations,

(08:25):
the most adaptable of which survived and even evolved into
new species. It had struck him as odd that so
many plants and animals all seemed to be a variation
of one another. Even humans themselves were a sort of
variation on a chimpanzee if one observed how similar the
two species were. And so that night, Erasmus took his

(08:45):
idea to the latest meeting of the Lunar Society, a
group of scientists and inventors that he was friends with.
His friend Josiah Wedgewood was present. Josiah was a businessman
who always encouraged Erasmus's endeavors, including his writing of poetry,
which had in fact led to him becoming the most
popular poet in England on top of all of his

(09:05):
other accomplishments. Josiah thought that Erasmus's theory that all life
might somehow be connected in some way was quite interesting,
and told him that he should expand on it in
a book. Encouraged, Erasmus decided to do just that. They
spent the rest of the meeting discussing the abolition of
slavery and the education of women, two causes the society supported,

(09:27):
but they were having trouble gaining traction for in English society,
and over the next few years, Erasmus expanded on his
ideas in his two volume work Zoonomia, where he detailed
his understanding of anatomy and how to treat various illnesses.
And in the book, this is something that he wrote,
would it be too bold to imagine that, in the

(09:48):
great length of time since the earth began to exist,
perhaps millions of years, that all warm blooded animals have
arisen from one living filament. Sadly, the book didn't gain
much traction during his lifetime. Decades later, though, long after
Erasmus's death, his grandson Charles, began to research his grandfather

(10:09):
in an attempt to get to know him. Erasmus's ideas
inspired Charles's own research, and eventually, through observing animal and
plant life, Charles put forth his own theory of evolution. Curiously,
it was Erasmus Darwin and not his grandson Charles, who
first thought of the foundational scientific theory. Erasmus was a polymath,

(10:31):
someone who is knowledgeable about a variety of things. For
all his accomplishments, though it was the writing least admired
in his own lifetime that contained his greatest ideas. I
hope you enjoyed today's guided tour through the Cabinet of Curiosities.
This show was created by me Aaron Mankey in partnership

(10:53):
with iHeart Podcasts, researched and written by the Grim and
Mild team, and produced by Jesse Funk. Learn more about
the show and the people who make it over at
Grimandmild dot com slash Curiosities. You'll also find a link
to the official Cabinet of Curiosity's hardcover book, available in
bookstores and online, as well as ebook and audiobook. And

(11:13):
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Speaker 2 (11:20):
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Speaker 1 (11:21):
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slash Grimandmild, and until next time, stay curious.