April 16, 2019 • 25 mins
Today, Oliver Cromwell is known as one of the most famous figures in English history -- he was a Puritan with no military experience when the Civil War broke out in 1642, but within a decade he rose to the position of Lord Protector, essentially ruling Wales, Scotland and England. He died of natural causes, but was later executed... after his death. What are we talking about? Tune in to find out.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Hello
(00:27):
and welcome to the show. Have you ever dreamed of
toppling the status quo in your neck of the global woods?
Have you ever thought of maybe starting a food fight
in school, or you know, orchestrating a coup in another country?
I feel like all of us have had these, um,
revolutionary or rebellious thoughts at some point. But how far
(00:50):
does it go? You know, I've gone pretty far. My
name is Ben. We have come a long way, just
the two of us, if we want to look at
it on like a micro level, but on a macro level. Um, yeah,
I think that the human species has come a long way.
We certainly still I'm an old by the way, we
certainly still you know, have room to grow. Um. But
it's certainly not quite running up on the kind of
(01:12):
insurgency that, let's say, like a reign of terror like
a Robespierre situation during the French Revolution, or maybe more
of a Oliver Cromwell kind of situation like in the UH,
the Old UK. Yes, yes it's true. Uh. And by
the way, shout out to our own personal Cromwell, UH
super producer Casey Pegrom Ben he deserves better than that
(01:37):
he does. He does, he's uh, you know what you
deserve to be, Casey pegrom with no comparisons, no equivocations.
You okay with that, Casey, I'm great with that because
it's because, as it turns out, Cromwell, who was kind
of like a Protestant Robespierre in many ways, was kind
of a monster. Well. His legacy is still a matter
(01:58):
of hot takes and controversy here today. In Some people
will say he is the father of British democracy, he
got rid of the monarchy, albeit brief lee, And then
others will say, no way, he's a war criminal. He
hated the Catholics and he led vicious military campaigns. But
(02:20):
regardless of whether you are pro or anti Cromwell, there
is no denying that he changed the course of history
in England, Scotland and Ireland. Let's let's learn a little
bit about his life. What do you say before we
get to before we get to his death spoiler, he's dead,
(02:40):
Dead is a darnail, Dead's disco. I was wondering where
dead as a doornail comes from? Isn't it from Dickens? Yeah?
But what what made someone say? You know what I
think of what I think of death doornails. I guess
it's just because it's an inanimate object. Yeah, but then
because it dead is a table, but the alliteration is
key oh uh dead as uh see, Yeah, that is
(03:03):
a dumbbell that works. But door nails were much more
prevalent in the days of Dickens, perhaps so uh yeah.
Originally all of the titles that Dickens used in his
stories had had the phrase door nail in them. It's
also true so after fomenting the Parliamentarian uprising over the
(03:25):
Royalists in the English Civil War, UM Cromwell became the
Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England in sixteen fifty three.
That's also, of course, after executing Charles the First who
was the king at the time. Um, and he ruled
over England, Scotland and Ireland just for the grand scale
(03:47):
of things, time being what it is, blip of time
right right, because he assumed he assumed this status is
Lord Protector in sixteen fifty three. The monarchy itself was
restored in sixteen sixty, so this is what maybe seven
years Why did Cromwell have such a beef with the Catholics.
(04:08):
Ben what a great question, Noll. You see, Oliver Cromwell
was born at the turn of the seventeenth century, and
when he came into the world, England was a Protestant
country ruled by a king who believed that he had
divine rights, meaning he was king because God had purposely
made him king. This was kind of a thing with
monarchs in those days, like the Sun King or you know,
(04:29):
I mean, like a lot of divine belief in that
they were like the extension of God's power on earth.
It still is, I mean, how how well, it's a
very effective way to um bully people into thinking that
they have some sort of obligation to serve you. Right.
So Cromwell converted to Puritanism in his late twenties, and
(04:51):
he thought that King Charles the First was just too Catholic.
He said, he's this king is far too Catholic for me.
He's a papist, which was a smear word at the time. Uh.
Many of Charles First policies he see, such as levying
taxes without the consent of parliament. Uh, they made his
(05:12):
subjects mistrust him and they said, hey, you're not the
kind of cultured monarch we like. You're one of those
tyrannical absolute monarchs. So let's not forget this is post
Protestant Reformation, where the country was very much split. It
became largely a Protestant country, and then the kings that
would come into power they would either be heavily Protestant
(05:35):
or maybe not quite Protestant enough for some people. But
it certainly wasn't as popular in general to be super Catholic.
There was kind of like a divide between the Church
of Rome and the Church of England. Absolutely, so the
stage was set for a civil war series of conflicts occur.
King Charles is on the losing end of history. He's overthrown,
(05:56):
he is executed. Fifty nine people signed the death warrant
for the king, and one of them is Oliver Cromwell.
And then they introduce the Commonwealth of England to replace
the monarchy. I mean, quote unquote replace replace because Cromwell
becomes Lord Protector, as we said, but Lord Protector is
(06:18):
pretty much still a king. It's a monarch, you know.
The best evidence for that is that when Cromwell has
done being Lord Protector, his son takes up the job.
Just to jump in here real quick, I was being
a little bit purposefully hyperbolic at the beginning of the
show when I compared Oliver Cromwell to Rosepierre, who was
(06:39):
known for decapitating human people in the streets with the
famous guillotine. Cromwell was a bit more known for his authoritarian,
heavy handed rule than he was for bloody executions. But
we will be getting some bloody executions in this story
either way. So between sixteen fifty three sixteen fifty eight
or so, he's ruling the UK. He has the same
(07:01):
powers as a monarch, but he's called Lord Protector and
he technically doesn't have a crown. I don't mean this
in some figurative sense. I don't mean that he lost
any power you would get with autonomy or whatever. I
mean that he didn't have the jewelry. And here he's
risen to the apex of his life. In the beginning,
(07:23):
he was just a member of Parliament for Cambridge, but
he became a Puritan, and then later he becomes Lord Protector,
helped in no small part by his brilliant military career.
You know, he was a tactician. He had fought decisive battles,
so he wasn't out there, you know, doing mass executions,
(07:44):
but war has no small measure of violence. And while
he was Lord Protector, he was in a controversial, unsustainable place.
Royalist hated him. The Royalist were a faction of people
who believed in the divine right of the king. So
(08:05):
if you believe that God has decreed a certain person
to be the absolute ruler of the land, then you're
going to equate the actions of anybody opposing that king
to the actions of un Christian, nearly demonic forces, you
know what I mean. So Cromwell was like a demon
made flesh to these guys totally. And even though Charles
(08:26):
the First was not popular because he had chosen to
marry a French Catholic princess, he was still to those
Royalists the rightful monarch of the realm. So in a
sense he replaces this monarchical regime with a puritanical republic.
But he puts in some ideas that seemed very forward
(08:50):
facing today and did not go over well at the time,
which was he had this concept of being religiously tolerant,
and his contemporary he's viewed that with suspicion, especially residents
of Ireland and Scotland's what what we're saying here, folks,
is that even when he was alive, he was a
(09:13):
controversial figure. And today's story really really starts when he dies,
because the last few weeks of his life before he
passes away in what was the third of September, right,
So right before he passes away, he is having a
(09:34):
terrible time. He's getting sharp bowel and back pains, he
has insomnia, he's freezing cold sometimes and then just sweating
hot other times. His throat hurts, he's coughing, he's getting confused,
he's vomiting left and right. He would get worse and
then he would get better. So he kind of ebbed
and flowed, you know. And his doctors we're trying to
(09:58):
figure out what was going on with him. They they
had no idea. When we have one quote where his
attendants have the sad apprehension of danger fairly vague, it
really is that is the foreboding quality. Yeah, they had
the shining about it. They said that he might not
get better at this point. This starts happening when he
(10:19):
is when he is almost sixty fifty nine years old,
and he dies suddenly on September three. So he's died, right,
Cromwell has died and his son inherits the position of
Lord Protector for a very very brief amount of time. Yes,
a year later, his son is overthrown by the army.
(10:42):
The monarchy is restored. So chalk line up for the
Royalist and Charles the second becomes the new king. What
does he do after he becomes king? Is it like
a bygones, be bygone situation? I think that would have
been about our real lapdown if that was the cause.
Now we wanted some blood, band We came here for blood,
and boy, will there ever be some blood now? He
(11:02):
declared everyone involved with overthrowing and executing the previous king
enemies of this day, whatever you want to call it,
and called for their immediate rounding up and execution, especially
those fifty nine people who signed the death warrant. Yeah,
because I mean, you know, their names are on a
piece of paper, their identities are out there, so it
(11:24):
wasn't too too hard to get to ramming them up.
This makes me think of so off Air. Before we
started this episode, we were talking about a strange moment
in a lot of people's financial history checks. We we
used to do that too. We put our names on
pieces of paper. It's still so bizarre to think about it, Like,
(11:44):
you don't even have checks. I have emergency checks hidden
away in my layer, and Casey, you have some checks
on the off chance you might ever need one, right,
that is correct? Yes, that's Casey on the case right there. Yeah,
Casey on the checks. I would you know what, I
would get some vanity uh you know, vanity check. I did.
(12:07):
I had Superman ones, Yeah, I had. I had a
couple of I had Space ones. I believe was very
into space. And speaking of fantastic segues back to the point. Yes,
King Charles the Second once once especially to find and
punish these fifty nine people who have signed the death
warrant for Charles the First. He catches many, several are hanged,
(12:30):
some are put in jail for life. Let's backtrack just slightly.
He did just call for their trial. But I would
imagine this is something along the lines of a kangaroo
court situation where I wasn't like they were gonna, you know,
walk away Scott free, right right. And the thing is that,
as as we mentioned, not all fifty nine people on
that list were still alive when Charles two came into power.
(12:53):
So he had this weird pickle, you know, do we
prosecute the dead? Do we let bygones be bygones? No?
He says, no, we do not, and so he orders
the bodies of several of the people have sudden these
death warrants to be exhumed. So on the twelfth anniversary
(13:16):
of the death of King Charles the First, our buddy
Oliver Cromwell, Master Protector, whatever you call it, Master and
Commander Lord protected whatever uh was dug up exhumed for
the purposes of uh, you know, making a show out
of kind of re executing him. It reminds me of
that there was a pope story we did where they
(13:37):
dug up a pope and propped him up with his
bones in the papal robes exactly exactly h the cadaver
synod right after the death of John eight formosis. That's right,
so yes, So Charles the Second has a lot of
these people dug up and their bodies are exhumed, and
for the less egregious offenders, they're just buried in communal
(14:03):
burial pits, so they lose the honor of being buried
on their lonesome right. But Oliver Cromwell, along with three
other people, get awarded death sentences, despite the fact that
Oliver Cromwell, John Bradshaw, Henry Ireton and Robert Blake are
all dead. They're dead men given death sentences. So as
(14:25):
you said, no thing, they chained the guy up. They
hang them and chains at Tyburn and in the afternoon
they hang him there for like a day, and then
as the afternoon winds on they take him down. They
cut off his head and they put it on a
spiked on a spike. It's just it's such a statement piece,
(14:46):
you know. Yeah, it's real, it's real. Power move very much.
So they put this head on a twenty foot tall
wooden spike. Question, there are difference between a spike and
a pike. That is a good question. A spike and
a pike. Let's do it a little quick Internet search here. Uh,
pike is to attack, proud or injure someone with a pike,
while spike is to fix on a spike. Oh, because
(15:08):
pike and spike are both verbs as well. So I'm
thinking a pike would be part of some sort of turret,
like a fence or something like that, and a spike
is just more like a like a hole, like a
stick in the ground. I don't know. Yeah, a pike
can also be a pole, like a long pole that
you use an infantry, right, and then there turnpikes and
(15:29):
turnpike comes from my car knowledge is coming down her
turnpike comes from the days of private roads when a
log would be physically placed across the road and you
had to pay someone to turn the pike or the
long pole. Interesting, And I think spike is maybe just
a little more of a generic term. And also as
we're going down this Google rabbit hole, which may or
(15:50):
may not be interesting to you. Uh. A spike was
also an Old English term for an ear of corn. Oh,
and corned beef is just salted, because they would describe
the units of salt used as corns. I thought that
was peppercorns corned beef. Pretty sure, of course you can
put pepper on it if you want. Well, Ben, through
(16:11):
the magic of editing and time travel podcasting, you have
once again proven me wrong. I'm not I'm not out
trained out, you're not out to you just do it
continuously because you're better than me. No, no, no, no,
one's better. We are both. We're both on the quest
for the truth. It's true, and uh no one is perfect.
But you know, one huge statement in favor of our
(16:34):
character or collective character, is that we've never dug someone up,
knocked off their head and hung it on on a
spike or pike. How long did they leave it up there?
Way longer than seemed humane than any of this and
is particularly humane in the first place. But this one
stuck around as a tourist trap for like decades. Yeah yeah,
(16:56):
and people had passed the head around. This thing was
around for twenty five years on that on that spike.
Eventually it's taken down and for the next two hundred years,
many different people take possession of this head. When I
first read got passed around, I pictured people passing around
in a circle like a hot potato. It was much
It was a much larger scale version of hot potato
(17:17):
like that, where it kind of changed hands a lot um.
I believe for a time it was in the possession
of a failed actor who was also a kind of
the town drunk um and was rumored to have been
a relative of Cromwell himself. This man's name was Samuel Russell.
This comes from a Fantastic A V Club article about
(17:37):
the subject that you can look up. And Russell was
not a particularly good steward of this artifact. Let's call
it yeah. Right. You can see some of the blow
by blowers, should we say passed by pass of this
uh in article on Atlas Obscura the Morbid Journey of
Cromwell's Traveling Head. As as you were saying, Noel, the
(17:58):
guy who possessed the head, Amuel Russell not the best guy.
He was poor, he was considerably in debt. He had
a serious drinking problem. He would literally pass the head
around at parties, Sam bring out the head and uh.
He refused to part with the head. People would offer
(18:20):
money for it, but instead of that, he would just
borrow money from people, and multiple folks for one reason
or another, said we've got to get this head away
from this drunk guy, so they continued offering him money. Eventually,
prominent goldsmith and clockmaker named James Cox enters the story.
(18:42):
He was a smart fellow because he was playing the
long game, because he kept trying to buy the head
off of him, off of our Russell, knowing that even
though he was turned down um and exchanged for loans,
he was eventually going to come to the point where
Russell could not pay him back the loans, and then
he would have the uper hand to say, hey, I'll
absolve your debt. Uh, you poor unfortunate bastard, if you
(19:05):
just give me the head. And that's exactly what happened. Yeah,
give me the head. He's he was able to flip
it for like three times when he'd invested it, was
it twice? I think it was quite a nice profit. Yeah. Yeah.
He sold Cox that has sold the head in sev
for thirty British pounds to three brothers with the last
name of Hughes. They wanted to start their own public display,
(19:29):
so they got the head as part of other Chromwell
related items. They made a bunch of posters for the event.
But then they found themselves in a bit of a
pickle because they wondered whether the head was actually the
head of Cromwell. And when they wrote to Cox to
ask for I guess the chain of custody, you know
what I mean? Uh, Cox was kind of evasive, and
(19:51):
so they thought, is this guy selling us a counterfeit head?
I mean, we've all been there, right, case Casey was
just telling me about something like this there other Yeah,
I'm I'm not at liberty to discuss that matter. It's
an ongoing situation, investigation, you know yourself. Yeah, I gotta
reuse You've been You've been advised by your legal team. Okay,
(20:13):
this has not been Casey on the KIG. So this
this is yeah, this is officially the cases pending. So
that's fair. That's that's a different sound. Casey is a
man of many side hustles. Let's put it that way.
That's true, that's true. I mean, we live in the
KIG economy. So what happens to Cromwell's head. Well, here's
(20:34):
the thing. There's a lot of conflicting tales as to
what happened. There's some versions of the story that say
the head itself was given a proper burial by loyalists
to Cromwell, or at least those that sympathize with his cause. Uh.
There's another version that says the head kind of disappear, right. Uh.
(20:56):
It's commonly accepted that the head was given a dignified
burial in a secret place, secret location, Sydney Sussex College
in Cambridge in nineteen sixty. But the story is too
good to let the facts distract from the possibilities, right, because,
as you said, there are people who are argue multiple
(21:17):
other things about it. One of the craziest, uh, the
craziest stories I heard was that it was secretly taken
by a fraternal society. I have a question too, man,
at this time, where there wasn't any obviously DNA or
any lab science at all, how could you confirm the
veracity of a rotted, shrunken head leathered up like beef turkey?
(21:38):
Would you know? You know, you know, you just feel
it in your heart. Have you ever been in that situation? Well,
we are about to have an amazing weekend. I'm excited.
So what an ignoble end? This is not what the
Lord Protector thought was in store for him. He was
separated from his grave first, then he was separated from
(22:01):
his body, and hopefully finally Cromwell, divisive character that he is,
has come to some sort of rest. According to the
head's latest owner, one Horace Wilkinson, he's the one who
talked about the secret burial in nineteen sixty Uh. The
(22:22):
head is still there today, and he announced that he
had buried it in this location in nineteen sixty two. Yes,
secret burial, my rear end. Yeah right. What about the
rest of his body? Though? Man? Whatever? What what of that?
No one knows, not for sure. There's some good ideas
out there. Yeah, it's true. H No one is entirely
sure about what happened. But the most likely story, according
(22:43):
to John Morris, who is a Cromwell biographer, is the
same thing that would have happened to the bodies of
a lot of folks who were executed um on mass
like this, and that they were just thrown into a
pit head on a pike body and a pit tales
all the time song is a run that to uh.
Some other versions of the story um include the idea
(23:06):
that it was chucked into the Thames. And then there's
a bonker story that comes from a man with the
name of Samuel Peppis in sixteen sixty four. Pepe Pep Peppis,
p e p y s. I just thought it was
fun to say. I will say it again, Pepis. What
did he say, Ben? This is? I love the story.
I want to hear I want to hear it from
from the mouth of Ben very Well. Samuel Peppe's in
(23:27):
sixteen sixty four claimed that Cromwell had swapped bodies of
various dead kings from one grave to another, with another story,
raising the possibility that it wasn't his corpse that was
decapitated after all, but that of Charles the First. But
Charles the First already lost his head the first time around. Man,
(23:48):
I want to believe this base. Let's not let the
facts get in the way of a good story. We
never do. This is a situation wherein the fact is
stranger than the fiction. It's a bit morbid, But we
hope that you found the story of Cromwell's posthumous execution
as strange as we found it. Stay tuned for our
(24:10):
upcoming episode where we get even more morbid and grizzly
morbidter morbidter. Yeah, Oh it's bad. It's peak morbidity. We're
going to have to do a trigger warning on that one.
It's probably the grossest ridiculous history we have ever done
so far. So far, let's just say this. It involves
very crude surgery during a very very specific period. Which
(24:33):
one was it? Again, Ben, it was the disco era, yes,
a k a. The late seventeen d early the first
disco era. That's right. It was across a lot of
people think of the disco eras like the nineteen seventies,
but that is actually the fifth disco era. These are facts.
Thanks so much to our super producer gaycy begram Always,
(24:54):
and thanks to our research associate Gabe Lucier for a
job well done as per usual. Thanks to Christopher Haciotis,
who's just we like him. He's a pal. We're gonna
have him back very soon. Um. Thanks to Alex Williams
who composed our theme, and thanks to you Noal. Thanks
to thanks to everyone who took decent care of Oliver
Cromwell's head. Yep, we'll see next time. For more podcasts
(25:25):
for my heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app,
Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Hello
(00:27):
and welcome to the show. Have you ever dreamed of
toppling the status quo in your neck of the global woods?
Have you ever thought of maybe starting a food fight
in school, or you know, orchestrating a coup in another country?
I feel like all of us have had these, um,
revolutionary or rebellious thoughts at some point. But how far
(00:50):
does it go? You know, I've gone pretty far. My
name is Ben. We have come a long way, just
the two of us, if we want to look at
it on like a micro level, but on a macro level. Um, yeah,
I think that the human species has come a long way.
We certainly still I'm an old by the way, we
certainly still you know, have room to grow. Um. But
it's certainly not quite running up on the kind of
(01:12):
insurgency that, let's say, like a reign of terror like
a Robespierre situation during the French Revolution, or maybe more
of a Oliver Cromwell kind of situation like in the UH,
the Old UK. Yes, yes it's true. Uh. And by
the way, shout out to our own personal Cromwell, UH
super producer Casey Pegrom Ben he deserves better than that
(01:37):
he does. He does, he's uh, you know what you
deserve to be, Casey pegrom with no comparisons, no equivocations.
You okay with that, Casey, I'm great with that because
it's because, as it turns out, Cromwell, who was kind
of like a Protestant Robespierre in many ways, was kind
of a monster. Well. His legacy is still a matter
(01:58):
of hot takes and controversy here today. In Some people
will say he is the father of British democracy, he
got rid of the monarchy, albeit brief lee, And then
others will say, no way, he's a war criminal. He
hated the Catholics and he led vicious military campaigns. But
(02:20):
regardless of whether you are pro or anti Cromwell, there
is no denying that he changed the course of history
in England, Scotland and Ireland. Let's let's learn a little
bit about his life. What do you say before we
get to before we get to his death spoiler, he's dead,
(02:40):
Dead is a darnail, Dead's disco. I was wondering where
dead as a doornail comes from? Isn't it from Dickens? Yeah?
But what what made someone say? You know what I
think of what I think of death doornails. I guess
it's just because it's an inanimate object. Yeah, but then
because it dead is a table, but the alliteration is
key oh uh dead as uh see, Yeah, that is
(03:03):
a dumbbell that works. But door nails were much more
prevalent in the days of Dickens, perhaps so uh yeah.
Originally all of the titles that Dickens used in his
stories had had the phrase door nail in them. It's
also true so after fomenting the Parliamentarian uprising over the
(03:25):
Royalists in the English Civil War, UM Cromwell became the
Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England in sixteen fifty three.
That's also, of course, after executing Charles the First who
was the king at the time. Um, and he ruled
over England, Scotland and Ireland just for the grand scale
(03:47):
of things, time being what it is, blip of time
right right, because he assumed he assumed this status is
Lord Protector in sixteen fifty three. The monarchy itself was
restored in sixteen sixty, so this is what maybe seven
years Why did Cromwell have such a beef with the Catholics.
(04:08):
Ben what a great question, Noll. You see, Oliver Cromwell
was born at the turn of the seventeenth century, and
when he came into the world, England was a Protestant
country ruled by a king who believed that he had
divine rights, meaning he was king because God had purposely
made him king. This was kind of a thing with
monarchs in those days, like the Sun King or you know,
(04:29):
I mean, like a lot of divine belief in that
they were like the extension of God's power on earth.
It still is, I mean, how how well, it's a
very effective way to um bully people into thinking that
they have some sort of obligation to serve you. Right.
So Cromwell converted to Puritanism in his late twenties, and
(04:51):
he thought that King Charles the First was just too Catholic.
He said, he's this king is far too Catholic for me.
He's a papist, which was a smear word at the time. Uh.
Many of Charles First policies he see, such as levying
taxes without the consent of parliament. Uh, they made his
(05:12):
subjects mistrust him and they said, hey, you're not the
kind of cultured monarch we like. You're one of those
tyrannical absolute monarchs. So let's not forget this is post
Protestant Reformation, where the country was very much split. It
became largely a Protestant country, and then the kings that
would come into power they would either be heavily Protestant
(05:35):
or maybe not quite Protestant enough for some people. But
it certainly wasn't as popular in general to be super Catholic.
There was kind of like a divide between the Church
of Rome and the Church of England. Absolutely, so the
stage was set for a civil war series of conflicts occur.
King Charles is on the losing end of history. He's overthrown,
(05:56):
he is executed. Fifty nine people signed the death warrant
for the king, and one of them is Oliver Cromwell.
And then they introduce the Commonwealth of England to replace
the monarchy. I mean, quote unquote replace replace because Cromwell
becomes Lord Protector, as we said, but Lord Protector is
(06:18):
pretty much still a king. It's a monarch, you know.
The best evidence for that is that when Cromwell has
done being Lord Protector, his son takes up the job.
Just to jump in here real quick, I was being
a little bit purposefully hyperbolic at the beginning of the
show when I compared Oliver Cromwell to Rosepierre, who was
(06:39):
known for decapitating human people in the streets with the
famous guillotine. Cromwell was a bit more known for his authoritarian,
heavy handed rule than he was for bloody executions. But
we will be getting some bloody executions in this story
either way. So between sixteen fifty three sixteen fifty eight
or so, he's ruling the UK. He has the same
(07:01):
powers as a monarch, but he's called Lord Protector and
he technically doesn't have a crown. I don't mean this
in some figurative sense. I don't mean that he lost
any power you would get with autonomy or whatever. I
mean that he didn't have the jewelry. And here he's
risen to the apex of his life. In the beginning,
(07:23):
he was just a member of Parliament for Cambridge, but
he became a Puritan, and then later he becomes Lord Protector,
helped in no small part by his brilliant military career.
You know, he was a tactician. He had fought decisive battles,
so he wasn't out there, you know, doing mass executions,
(07:44):
but war has no small measure of violence. And while
he was Lord Protector, he was in a controversial, unsustainable place.
Royalist hated him. The Royalist were a faction of people
who believed in the divine right of the king. So
(08:05):
if you believe that God has decreed a certain person
to be the absolute ruler of the land, then you're
going to equate the actions of anybody opposing that king
to the actions of un Christian, nearly demonic forces, you
know what I mean. So Cromwell was like a demon
made flesh to these guys totally. And even though Charles
(08:26):
the First was not popular because he had chosen to
marry a French Catholic princess, he was still to those
Royalists the rightful monarch of the realm. So in a
sense he replaces this monarchical regime with a puritanical republic.
But he puts in some ideas that seemed very forward
(08:50):
facing today and did not go over well at the time,
which was he had this concept of being religiously tolerant,
and his contemporary he's viewed that with suspicion, especially residents
of Ireland and Scotland's what what we're saying here, folks,
is that even when he was alive, he was a
(09:13):
controversial figure. And today's story really really starts when he dies,
because the last few weeks of his life before he
passes away in what was the third of September, right,
So right before he passes away, he is having a
(09:34):
terrible time. He's getting sharp bowel and back pains, he
has insomnia, he's freezing cold sometimes and then just sweating
hot other times. His throat hurts, he's coughing, he's getting confused,
he's vomiting left and right. He would get worse and
then he would get better. So he kind of ebbed
and flowed, you know. And his doctors we're trying to
(09:58):
figure out what was going on with him. They they
had no idea. When we have one quote where his
attendants have the sad apprehension of danger fairly vague, it
really is that is the foreboding quality. Yeah, they had
the shining about it. They said that he might not
get better at this point. This starts happening when he
(10:19):
is when he is almost sixty fifty nine years old,
and he dies suddenly on September three. So he's died, right,
Cromwell has died and his son inherits the position of
Lord Protector for a very very brief amount of time. Yes,
a year later, his son is overthrown by the army.
(10:42):
The monarchy is restored. So chalk line up for the
Royalist and Charles the second becomes the new king. What
does he do after he becomes king? Is it like
a bygones, be bygone situation? I think that would have
been about our real lapdown if that was the cause.
Now we wanted some blood, band We came here for blood,
and boy, will there ever be some blood now? He
(11:02):
declared everyone involved with overthrowing and executing the previous king
enemies of this day, whatever you want to call it,
and called for their immediate rounding up and execution, especially
those fifty nine people who signed the death warrant. Yeah,
because I mean, you know, their names are on a
piece of paper, their identities are out there, so it
(11:24):
wasn't too too hard to get to ramming them up.
This makes me think of so off Air. Before we
started this episode, we were talking about a strange moment
in a lot of people's financial history checks. We we
used to do that too. We put our names on
pieces of paper. It's still so bizarre to think about it, Like,
(11:44):
you don't even have checks. I have emergency checks hidden
away in my layer, and Casey, you have some checks
on the off chance you might ever need one, right,
that is correct? Yes, that's Casey on the case right there. Yeah,
Casey on the checks. I would you know what, I
would get some vanity uh you know, vanity check. I did.
(12:07):
I had Superman ones, Yeah, I had. I had a
couple of I had Space ones. I believe was very
into space. And speaking of fantastic segues back to the point. Yes,
King Charles the Second once once especially to find and
punish these fifty nine people who have signed the death
warrant for Charles the First. He catches many, several are hanged,
(12:30):
some are put in jail for life. Let's backtrack just slightly.
He did just call for their trial. But I would
imagine this is something along the lines of a kangaroo
court situation where I wasn't like they were gonna, you know,
walk away Scott free, right right. And the thing is that,
as as we mentioned, not all fifty nine people on
that list were still alive when Charles two came into power.
(12:53):
So he had this weird pickle, you know, do we
prosecute the dead? Do we let bygones be bygones? No?
He says, no, we do not, and so he orders
the bodies of several of the people have sudden these
death warrants to be exhumed. So on the twelfth anniversary
(13:16):
of the death of King Charles the First, our buddy
Oliver Cromwell, Master Protector, whatever you call it, Master and
Commander Lord protected whatever uh was dug up exhumed for
the purposes of uh, you know, making a show out
of kind of re executing him. It reminds me of
that there was a pope story we did where they
(13:37):
dug up a pope and propped him up with his
bones in the papal robes exactly exactly h the cadaver
synod right after the death of John eight formosis. That's right,
so yes, So Charles the Second has a lot of
these people dug up and their bodies are exhumed, and
for the less egregious offenders, they're just buried in communal
(14:03):
burial pits, so they lose the honor of being buried
on their lonesome right. But Oliver Cromwell, along with three
other people, get awarded death sentences, despite the fact that
Oliver Cromwell, John Bradshaw, Henry Ireton and Robert Blake are
all dead. They're dead men given death sentences. So as
(14:25):
you said, no thing, they chained the guy up. They
hang them and chains at Tyburn and in the afternoon
they hang him there for like a day, and then
as the afternoon winds on they take him down. They
cut off his head and they put it on a
spiked on a spike. It's just it's such a statement piece,
(14:46):
you know. Yeah, it's real, it's real. Power move very much.
So they put this head on a twenty foot tall
wooden spike. Question, there are difference between a spike and
a pike. That is a good question. A spike and
a pike. Let's do it a little quick Internet search here. Uh,
pike is to attack, proud or injure someone with a pike,
while spike is to fix on a spike. Oh, because
(15:08):
pike and spike are both verbs as well. So I'm
thinking a pike would be part of some sort of turret,
like a fence or something like that, and a spike
is just more like a like a hole, like a
stick in the ground. I don't know. Yeah, a pike
can also be a pole, like a long pole that
you use an infantry, right, and then there turnpikes and
(15:29):
turnpike comes from my car knowledge is coming down her
turnpike comes from the days of private roads when a
log would be physically placed across the road and you
had to pay someone to turn the pike or the
long pole. Interesting, And I think spike is maybe just
a little more of a generic term. And also as
we're going down this Google rabbit hole, which may or
(15:50):
may not be interesting to you. Uh. A spike was
also an Old English term for an ear of corn. Oh,
and corned beef is just salted, because they would describe
the units of salt used as corns. I thought that
was peppercorns corned beef. Pretty sure, of course you can
put pepper on it if you want. Well, Ben, through
(16:11):
the magic of editing and time travel podcasting, you have
once again proven me wrong. I'm not I'm not out
trained out, you're not out to you just do it
continuously because you're better than me. No, no, no, no,
one's better. We are both. We're both on the quest
for the truth. It's true, and uh no one is perfect.
But you know, one huge statement in favor of our
(16:34):
character or collective character, is that we've never dug someone up,
knocked off their head and hung it on on a
spike or pike. How long did they leave it up there?
Way longer than seemed humane than any of this and
is particularly humane in the first place. But this one
stuck around as a tourist trap for like decades. Yeah yeah,
(16:56):
and people had passed the head around. This thing was
around for twenty five years on that on that spike.
Eventually it's taken down and for the next two hundred years,
many different people take possession of this head. When I
first read got passed around, I pictured people passing around
in a circle like a hot potato. It was much
It was a much larger scale version of hot potato
(17:17):
like that, where it kind of changed hands a lot um.
I believe for a time it was in the possession
of a failed actor who was also a kind of
the town drunk um and was rumored to have been
a relative of Cromwell himself. This man's name was Samuel Russell.
This comes from a Fantastic A V Club article about
(17:37):
the subject that you can look up. And Russell was
not a particularly good steward of this artifact. Let's call
it yeah. Right. You can see some of the blow
by blowers, should we say passed by pass of this
uh in article on Atlas Obscura the Morbid Journey of
Cromwell's Traveling Head. As as you were saying, Noel, the
(17:58):
guy who possessed the head, Amuel Russell not the best guy.
He was poor, he was considerably in debt. He had
a serious drinking problem. He would literally pass the head
around at parties, Sam bring out the head and uh.
He refused to part with the head. People would offer
(18:20):
money for it, but instead of that, he would just
borrow money from people, and multiple folks for one reason
or another, said we've got to get this head away
from this drunk guy, so they continued offering him money. Eventually,
prominent goldsmith and clockmaker named James Cox enters the story.
(18:42):
He was a smart fellow because he was playing the
long game, because he kept trying to buy the head
off of him, off of our Russell, knowing that even
though he was turned down um and exchanged for loans,
he was eventually going to come to the point where
Russell could not pay him back the loans, and then
he would have the uper hand to say, hey, I'll
absolve your debt. Uh, you poor unfortunate bastard, if you
(19:05):
just give me the head. And that's exactly what happened. Yeah,
give me the head. He's he was able to flip
it for like three times when he'd invested it, was
it twice? I think it was quite a nice profit. Yeah. Yeah.
He sold Cox that has sold the head in sev
for thirty British pounds to three brothers with the last
name of Hughes. They wanted to start their own public display,
(19:29):
so they got the head as part of other Chromwell
related items. They made a bunch of posters for the event.
But then they found themselves in a bit of a
pickle because they wondered whether the head was actually the
head of Cromwell. And when they wrote to Cox to
ask for I guess the chain of custody, you know
what I mean? Uh, Cox was kind of evasive, and
(19:51):
so they thought, is this guy selling us a counterfeit head?
I mean, we've all been there, right, case Casey was
just telling me about something like this there other Yeah,
I'm I'm not at liberty to discuss that matter. It's
an ongoing situation, investigation, you know yourself. Yeah, I gotta
reuse You've been You've been advised by your legal team. Okay,
(20:13):
this has not been Casey on the KIG. So this
this is yeah, this is officially the cases pending. So
that's fair. That's that's a different sound. Casey is a
man of many side hustles. Let's put it that way.
That's true, that's true. I mean, we live in the
KIG economy. So what happens to Cromwell's head. Well, here's
(20:34):
the thing. There's a lot of conflicting tales as to
what happened. There's some versions of the story that say
the head itself was given a proper burial by loyalists
to Cromwell, or at least those that sympathize with his cause. Uh.
There's another version that says the head kind of disappear, right. Uh.
(20:56):
It's commonly accepted that the head was given a dignified
burial in a secret place, secret location, Sydney Sussex College
in Cambridge in nineteen sixty. But the story is too
good to let the facts distract from the possibilities, right, because,
as you said, there are people who are argue multiple
(21:17):
other things about it. One of the craziest, uh, the
craziest stories I heard was that it was secretly taken
by a fraternal society. I have a question too, man,
at this time, where there wasn't any obviously DNA or
any lab science at all, how could you confirm the
veracity of a rotted, shrunken head leathered up like beef turkey?
(21:38):
Would you know? You know, you know, you just feel
it in your heart. Have you ever been in that situation? Well,
we are about to have an amazing weekend. I'm excited.
So what an ignoble end? This is not what the
Lord Protector thought was in store for him. He was
separated from his grave first, then he was separated from
(22:01):
his body, and hopefully finally Cromwell, divisive character that he is,
has come to some sort of rest. According to the
head's latest owner, one Horace Wilkinson, he's the one who
talked about the secret burial in nineteen sixty Uh. The
(22:22):
head is still there today, and he announced that he
had buried it in this location in nineteen sixty two. Yes,
secret burial, my rear end. Yeah right. What about the
rest of his body? Though? Man? Whatever? What what of that?
No one knows, not for sure. There's some good ideas
out there. Yeah, it's true. H No one is entirely
sure about what happened. But the most likely story, according
(22:43):
to John Morris, who is a Cromwell biographer, is the
same thing that would have happened to the bodies of
a lot of folks who were executed um on mass
like this, and that they were just thrown into a
pit head on a pike body and a pit tales
all the time song is a run that to uh.
Some other versions of the story um include the idea
(23:06):
that it was chucked into the Thames. And then there's
a bonker story that comes from a man with the
name of Samuel Peppis in sixteen sixty four. Pepe Pep Peppis,
p e p y s. I just thought it was
fun to say. I will say it again, Pepis. What
did he say, Ben? This is? I love the story.
I want to hear I want to hear it from
from the mouth of Ben very Well. Samuel Peppe's in
(23:27):
sixteen sixty four claimed that Cromwell had swapped bodies of
various dead kings from one grave to another, with another story,
raising the possibility that it wasn't his corpse that was
decapitated after all, but that of Charles the First. But
Charles the First already lost his head the first time around. Man,
(23:48):
I want to believe this base. Let's not let the
facts get in the way of a good story. We
never do. This is a situation wherein the fact is
stranger than the fiction. It's a bit morbid, But we
hope that you found the story of Cromwell's posthumous execution
as strange as we found it. Stay tuned for our
(24:10):
upcoming episode where we get even more morbid and grizzly
morbidter morbidter. Yeah, Oh it's bad. It's peak morbidity. We're
going to have to do a trigger warning on that one.
It's probably the grossest ridiculous history we have ever done
so far. So far, let's just say this. It involves
very crude surgery during a very very specific period. Which
(24:33):
one was it? Again, Ben, it was the disco era, yes,
a k a. The late seventeen d early the first
disco era. That's right. It was across a lot of
people think of the disco eras like the nineteen seventies,
but that is actually the fifth disco era. These are facts.
Thanks so much to our super producer gaycy begram Always,
(24:54):
and thanks to our research associate Gabe Lucier for a
job well done as per usual. Thanks to Christopher Haciotis,
who's just we like him. He's a pal. We're gonna
have him back very soon. Um. Thanks to Alex Williams
who composed our theme, and thanks to you Noal. Thanks
to thanks to everyone who took decent care of Oliver
Cromwell's head. Yep, we'll see next time. For more podcasts
(25:25):
for my heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app,
Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows
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Noel Brown
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