Fellow ridiculous historians. A few years back, we got interested in a guy named Oliver Cromwell.
What of a pill?
Not a nice fellow, bit of a bit of a specific guy.
Not much sense of humor that Oliver Cromwell.
He got in trouble. He was a Puritan, an ideologue more so than a soldier, had no military experience when the Civil War broke out in that part of the world in sixteen forty two.
Yep, And he quickly rose in prominence and within the ranks and became the Lord Protector and ruled over Wales, Scotland and England. He did eventually pass away due to natural causes. But this one has a twist.
Ending too, Ben.
Oh, that's right, because he was executed posthumously.
How how, how let's throw the tape fine.
Now Ridiculous Histories A production of iHeart Radio. Ridiculous Histories A production of iHeart Radio. Hello 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 revolutionary or rebellious thoughts at some point. But how far does it go? You know, I've gone pretty far. My name is Ben.
We have come a long way, Ben, just the two of us want to look at it on like a micro level, but on a macro level. Yeah, I think that the human species has come a long way. We certainly still oh I'm no, by the way, we certainly still you know, have room to grow, but certainly not quite running up on the kind of insurgency that let's say, like a reign of terror like a robes Pierre situation during the French Revolution, or maybe more of a Oliver Cromwell kind of situation like in the old UK.
Yes, yes, it's true. And by the way, shout out to our own personal Cromwell super producer, Casey Pegram.
Ben, he deserves better than that he does. He does.
He's you know what you deserve to be, Casey Pegrom with no comparisons, no equivocations.
You okay with that, Casey, I'm great with that.
Yeah, Because, as it turns out, Cromwell, who was kind of like a Protestant robes Pierre in many ways, was kind of a monster.
Well. His legacy is still a matter of hot takes and controversy here today in twenty nineteen. Some people will say he is the father of British democracy, he got rid of the monarchy, albeit briefly, And then others will say, no way, he's a war criminal. He hated the Catholics and he led vicious military campaigns. But 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 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, He's dead. Dead is a doornail? Dead is disco.
I always wonder where dead as a doornail comes from?
Isn't it from? Uh Dickens? Yeah?
But 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 think because said dead is a table, the alliteration is key.
Oh dead as see Yeah, dead is a dumbbell that works.
But doornails were much more prevalent in the days of Dickens, perhaps.
So 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 Royalists in the English Civil War, 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, and he ruled over England, Scotland and Ireland just for in the grand scale of things, time being what it is.
Blip of time, right right, because he assumed he assumed this status as 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?
Ben, What a great question, nol 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 son king, you know, 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 well, it's a very effective way to 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 he thought that King Charles the First was just two Catholic. He said, this king is far too Catholic for me. He's a papist,
which was a smear word at the time. Many of Charles' first policies, you see, such as levying taxes without the consent of parliament, they made his 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.
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 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, a series of conflicts occur. King Charles is on the losing end of history. He's overthrown 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 because Cromwell becomes Lord Protector, as we said, but Lord Protector is pretty much still a king. It's a monarch,
you know. The best evidence for that is that when Cromwell is 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 known for decapitating human people in the streets with the famous quillotine. 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 sixteen fifty eight or so. He's ruling the UK. He has the same 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 metonomy 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, 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. But war has no small measure of violence. And while he was Lord Protector, he was in a controversial, unsustainable place. Royalists
hated it. The Royalists were a faction of people who believed in the divine right of the king. So if you believe that God has decreed a certain person to be the absolute ruler of a land, then you are going to equate the actions of anybody opposing that king to the actions of Unchristian nearly demonic forces, you know what I mean. So Cromwell was like a demon made flesh to these guys totally.
And even though Charles I 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 facing today and did not go over well at the time, which was he had this concept of being religiously tolerant, and his contemporaries viewed that with suspicion, especially residents of Ireland and Scotland's what we're saying here, folks, is that even when he was alive, he was a
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 a sixteen fifty eight, the third of September, right, so right before he passes away, he is having a 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 figure out what was going on with him. They had no idea. We have one quote where his attendants have the sad apprehension of danger.
Fairly vague it really is. Is that it 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 is when he is almost sixty. He's fifty nine years old, and he dies suddenly on September third. 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.
Very brief. Yes.
A year later, his son is overthrown by the army. The monarchy is restored, so chalk one 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.
No, I think that would have been a bummer, a real let down if that was the Now. We wanted some blood, man, We came here for blood, and boy, will there ever be some blood?
No?
He declared everyone involved with overthrowing and executing the previous king enemies of the state, 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 wasn't too too hard to get round in 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 used to do that too, We would put our names on pieces of paper. It's still so bizarre to think about it. Like, you don't even have checks. I have emergency checks, yep, hidden away in my layer in casey, you have some checks on the off chance you might ever need one, Right.
That is correct? Yes, Casey on the case right there? Yeah, Casey on the checks yep.
I would you know what I would get some vanity you know, vanity check I did.
I had Superman ones.
Yeah, I had. I had a couple of different I had Space ones. I believe it 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, 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. 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 signed these death warrants to be exhumed.
So on the twelfth anniversary of the death of King Charles the first, Our buddy Oliver Cromwell, Master Protector, whatever you call it, Master and commander Lord Protector. Now whatever was dug up exhumed for the purposes of, 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 dug up a pope and propped him up with his bones and the papal.
Robes exactly exactly the cadavers synod right after the death of John the Eighth formosis.
That's right.
So yeah, 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 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 you said, Noel, they chain the guy up, they hang him in 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 spike.
Have a good head on a spike. It's just it's such a statement piece, you know.
Yeah, it's real, it's real power move, Yeah, very much so, so they put this head on a twenty foot tall wooden spike.
Question, there are a difference between a spike and a pike?
A good question. A spike and a pike. Let's do a little quick Internet search here. Pike is to attack, prod or injure someone with a pike. Well, spike is to fix on a spike. Oh, because 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 in infantry. Right, and then the air turnpikes and turnpike comes from my carnoledge is coming out here. 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 may not be interesting to you, a spike was also an Old English term for an ear of corn.
Oh, and corned beef is just salted beef because they would describe the units of salt used as corns.
I thought that was peppercorns corned beef.
Pretty sure, salt. Of course, you can put pepper on it if you want.
Well, Ben, through the magic of editing and time travel podcasting, you have once again proven me wrong.
I'm not out training it.
You're not out too. You just do it continuously because you're better than me.
No, no, no, no one's been.
We are both.
We're both on the quest for the truth. It's true, and no one is perfect. But you know, one huge statement in favor of our character or collective character, is that we've never dug someone up, knocked off their head and hung it on a spike or pike.
How long did they leave it up there?
No way longer than seemed humane than any of this, And just particularly humane in the first place, but this one stuck around as a tourist trap for like decades.
Yeah yeah, and people would 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.
Game or something like that.
It was much It was a much larger scale version of hot potato like that, where it kind of changed hands a lot. I believe for a time it was in the possession of a failed actor who was also a kind of the town drunk and was rumored to have been a relative of Cromwell himself. This man's name was Samuel Russell. This comes from a Fantastic av Club article about 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 we say passed by pass of this in article on Atlas Obscura The Morbid Journey of Cromwell's Traveling Heads. As you were say saying, Noel, the guy who possessed the head, Samuel 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. Yeah, and he refused to part
with the head. People would offer him 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, a prominent goldsmith and clockmaker named James Cox enters this story.
Yeah, 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 Russell, knowing that even though he was turned down in 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 upper hand to say, hey, I'll absolve your debt, you pour unfortunate bastard if you 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 what he'd invest it was it twice? I think it was quite a nice profit.
Yeah, yeah, he sold Cox that has sold the head in seventeen ninety nine for two hundred and thirty British pounds to three brothers with the last name of Hughes. They wanted to start their own public display, so they got the head as part of other Cromwell 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, Cox was kind of evasive, and so they thought, is this guy selling us a counterfeit head? I mean we've all been there, right, Casey. Casey was just telling me about something like this there other day.
Yeah, I'm I'm not at liberty to discuss that matter. It's an ongoing.
Situation, investigation, you know yourself.
Yeah, you've been You've been advised by your legal tya okay, And this has not been Casey on the case. So this this is, yeah, this is if there's the case's pending.
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 gig economy. So what happens to Cromwell's head.
Well, here's 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 disappeared.
Right, It's commonly accepted that the head was given a dignified burial and a secret place, secret location Sidney 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 argue multiple other things about it. One of the craziest, the craziest stories I heard was that it was secretly taken by a fraternal society.
I have a question, too, Ben, in this time where there wasn't any obviously any DNA or any lab science at all. How could you confirm the veracity of a rotted, shrunken head leathered up like beef jerky when you know.
You know, you know, you just feel it in your heart.
Yeah, you just feel it in your heart. Okay have you ever been in that situation?
Yes?
Not?
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 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 The head is still there today, and he announced that he had buried it in this location in nineteen sixty two.
Yeah, secret burial mine rear end. Yeah right. What about the rest of his body? Though? Man? What of that?
No one knows for sure. There are some good ideas out there.
Yeah, it's true.
No one is entirely sure about what happened, but the most likely story, according 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 on mass like this, And that they were just thrown into a pit head on a pike body and a pit tales all as.
Time song as old as rhyme that too.
Some other versions of the story include the idea that it was chucked into the Thames. And then there's a bonker story that comes from a man with the name of Samuel Pepys in sixteen sixty four.
Pepes Peppees, Peppyes, p e p Ys.
I just thought it was fun to say. I will say it again, Peppyes. 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 Peppees in 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.
A man I want to believe this very pees.
Let's not let the facts get in the way of a good story.
We never do.
This is a situation where in the fact this 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 upcoming episode where we get even more morbid and grizzly morbid morbid.
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 specific period.
Which one was it again?
Then it was the disco era, yes, aka the late seventeen hundred.
Early eighteen hundred. Yeah, the first disco era. That's right, it was the crossover.
A lot of people think of the disco era as like the nineteen seventies, but that is actually the fifth Disco era.
These are facts.
Thanks so much to our super.
Producer Jasey pegram Always, and thanks to our research associate Gabe Lucier for a job well done. As per usual. Thanks to Christopher Hasiotis, who's just we like him.
He's a pal. We're gonna have him back very soon. Thanks to Alex Williams, who composed our theme.
And thanks to you, Noel. Thanks to thanks to everyone who took decent care of Oliver Cromwell's head.
Yep, we'll see next time, folks.
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