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CLASSIC: How Oliver Cromwell Got Executed Several Years After His Death · Ridiculous History

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  Speaker 1: Fellow ridiculous historians. A few years back, we got interested
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  Speaker 1: in a guy named Oliver Cromwell.
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  Speaker 2: What of a pill?
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  Speaker 1: Not a nice fellow, bit of a bit of a
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  Speaker 1: specific guy.
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  Speaker 2: Not much sense of humor that Oliver Cromwell.
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  Speaker 1: He got in trouble. He was a Puritan, an ideologue
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  Speaker 1: more so than a soldier, had no military experience when
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  Speaker 1: the Civil War broke out in that part of the
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  Speaker 1: world in sixteen forty two.
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  Speaker 3: Yep, And he quickly rose in prominence and within the
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  Speaker 3: ranks and became the Lord Protector and ruled over Wales,
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  Speaker 3: Scotland and England. He did eventually pass away due to
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  Speaker 3: natural causes. But this one has a twist.
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  Speaker 2: Ending too, Ben.
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  Speaker 1: Oh, that's right, because he was executed posthumously.
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  Speaker 3: How how, how let's throw the tape fine.
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  Speaker 1: Now Ridiculous Histories A production of iHeart Radio. Ridiculous Histories
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  Speaker 1: A production of iHeart Radio. Hello and welcome to the show.
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  Speaker 1: Have you ever dreamed of toppling the status quo in
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: your neck of the global woods? Have you ever thought
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: of maybe starting a food fight in school, or you know,
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: orchestrating a coup in another country? I feel like all
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: of us have had these revolutionary or rebellious thoughts at
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  Speaker 1: some point. But how far does it go? You know,
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  Speaker 1: I've gone pretty far. My name is Ben.
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  Speaker 4: We have come a long way, Ben, just the two
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  Speaker 4: of us want to look at it on like a
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  Speaker 4: micro level, but on a macro level. Yeah, I think
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  Speaker 4: that the human species has come a long way. We
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  Speaker 4: certainly still oh I'm no, by the way, we certainly
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  Speaker 4: still you know, have room to grow, but certainly not
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  Speaker 4: quite running up on the kind of insurgency that let's say,
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  Speaker 4: like a reign of terror like a robes Pierre situation
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  Speaker 4: during the French Revolution, or maybe more of a Oliver
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  Speaker 4: Cromwell kind of situation like in the old UK.
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  Speaker 1: Yes, yes, it's true. And by the way, shout out
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  Speaker 1: to our own personal Cromwell super producer, Casey Pegram.
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  Speaker 2: Ben, he deserves better than that he does. He does.
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  Speaker 1: He's you know what you deserve to be, Casey Pegrom
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  Speaker 1: with no comparisons, no equivocations.
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  Speaker 2: You okay with that, Casey, I'm great with that.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah, Because, as it turns out, Cromwell, who was kind
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  Speaker 4: of like a Protestant robes Pierre in many ways, was
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  Speaker 4: kind of a monster.
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  Speaker 1: Well. His legacy is still a matter of hot takes
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  Speaker 1: and controversy here today in twenty nineteen. Some people will
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  Speaker 1: say he is the father of British democracy, he got
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  Speaker 1: rid of the monarchy, albeit briefly, And then others will say,
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  Speaker 1: no way, he's a war criminal. He hated the Catholics
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  Speaker 1: and he led vicious military campaigns. But regardless of whether
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  Speaker 1: you are pro or anti Cromwell, there is no denying
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  Speaker 1: that he changed the course of history in England, Scotland
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  Speaker 1: and Ireland. Let's learn a little bit about his life.
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  Speaker 1: What do you say before we get to before we
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  Speaker 1: get to his death spoiler?
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  Speaker 4: He's dead, He's dead. Dead is a doornail? Dead is disco.
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  Speaker 1: I always wonder where dead as a doornail comes from?
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  Speaker 2: Isn't it from? Uh Dickens? Yeah?
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  Speaker 1: But what made someone say, you know what I think
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  Speaker 1: of what I think of death doornails?
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  Speaker 4: I guess it's just because it's an inanimate object. Yeah,
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  Speaker 4: but think because said dead is a table, the alliteration
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  Speaker 4: is key.
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  Speaker 1: Oh dead as see Yeah, dead is a dumbbell that works.
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  Speaker 4: But doornails were much more prevalent in the days of Dickens, perhaps.
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  Speaker 1: So Yeah, Originally all of the titles that Dickens used
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  Speaker 1: in his stories had had the phrase door nail in them.
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  Speaker 4: It's also true so after fomenting the Parliamentarian uprising over
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  Speaker 4: the Royalists in the English Civil War, Cromwell became the
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  Speaker 4: Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England in sixteen fifty three.
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  Speaker 4: That's also, of course, after executing Charles the First, who
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  Speaker 4: was the king at the time, and he ruled over England,
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  Speaker 4: Scotland and Ireland just for in the grand scale of things,
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  Speaker 4: time being what it is.
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  Speaker 1: Blip of time, right right, because he assumed he assumed
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  Speaker 1: this status as Lord Protector in sixteen fifty three. The
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  Speaker 1: monarchy itself was restored in sixteen sixty, So this is
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  Speaker 1: what maybe seven years.
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  Speaker 2: Why did Cromwell have such a beef with the Catholics?
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  Speaker 1: Ben, What a great question, nol You see, Oliver Cromwell
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  Speaker 1: was born at the turn of the seventeenth century and
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  Speaker 1: when he came into the world, England was a Protestant
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  Speaker 1: country ruled by a king who believed that he had
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  Speaker 1: divine rights, meaning he was king because God had purposely
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  Speaker 1: made him king.
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  Speaker 4: This was kind of a thing with monarchs in those days,
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  Speaker 4: like the son king, you know, I mean like a
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  Speaker 4: lot of divine belief in that they were like the
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  Speaker 4: extension of God's power on earth.
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  Speaker 1: It still is. I mean, how well, it's a very
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  Speaker 1: effective way to bully people into thinking that they have
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  Speaker 1: some sort of obligation to serve you. Right. So Cromwell
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  Speaker 1: converted to Puritanism in his late twenties, and he thought
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  Speaker 1: that King Charles the First was just two Catholic. He said,
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  Speaker 1: this king is far too Catholic for me. He's a papist,
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  Speaker 1: which was a smear word at the time. Many of Charles'
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  Speaker 1: first policies, you see, such as levying taxes without the
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  Speaker 1: consent of parliament, they made his subjects mistrust him and
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  Speaker 1: they said, hey, you're not the kind of cultured monarch
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  Speaker 1: we like. You're one of those tyrannical absolute monarchs.
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  Speaker 2: Let's not forget.
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  Speaker 4: This is post Protestant Reformation, where the country was very
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  Speaker 4: much split. It became largely a Protestant country, and then
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  Speaker 4: the kings that would come into power they would either
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  Speaker 4: be heavily Protestant or maybe not quite Protestant enough for
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  Speaker 4: some people. But it certainly wasn't as popular in general
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  Speaker 4: to be super Catholic. There was kind of like a
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  Speaker 4: divide between the Church of Rome and the Church of England.
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  Speaker 1: Absolutely, so the stage was set for a civil war,
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  Speaker 1: a series of conflicts occur. King Charles is on the
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  Speaker 1: losing end of history. He's overthrown executed. Fifty nine people
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  Speaker 1: signed the death warrant for the king, and one of
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  Speaker 1: them is Oliver Cromwell. And then they introduce the Commonwealth
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  Speaker 1: of England to replace the monarchy. I mean, quote unquote
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  Speaker 1: replace because Cromwell becomes Lord Protector, as we said, but
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  Speaker 1: Lord Protector is pretty much still a king. It's a monarch,
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  Speaker 1: you know. The best evidence for that is that when
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  Speaker 1: Cromwell is done being Lord Protector, his son takes up
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  Speaker 1: the job.
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  Speaker 4: Just to jump in here real quick, I was being
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  Speaker 4: a little bit purposefully hyperbolic at the beginning of the
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  Speaker 4: show when I compared Oliver Cromwell to Rosepierre, who was
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  Speaker 4: known for decapitating human people in the streets with the
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  Speaker 4: famous quillotine. Cromwell was a bit more known for his authoritarian,
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  Speaker 4: heavy handed rule than he was for bloody executions. But
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  Speaker 4: we will be getting some bloody executions in this story
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  Speaker 4: either way.
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  Speaker 1: So between sixteen fifty sixteen fifty eight or so. He's
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  Speaker 1: ruling the UK. He has the same powers as a monarch,
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  Speaker 1: but he's called Lord Protector and he technically doesn't have
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  Speaker 1: a crown. I don't mean this in some figurative sense.
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  Speaker 1: I don't mean that he lost any power you would
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  Speaker 1: get with metonomy or whatever. I mean that he didn't
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  Speaker 1: have the jewelry. And here he's risen to the apex
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  Speaker 1: of his life. In the beginning, he was just a
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  Speaker 1: member of Parliament for Cambridge, but he became a Puritan,
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  Speaker 1: and then later he becomes Lord Protector, helped in no
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  Speaker 1: small part by his brilliant military career. You know, he
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  Speaker 1: was a tactician. He had fought decisive battles, so he
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  Speaker 1: wasn't out there, you know, doing mass executions. But war
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  Speaker 1: has no small measure of violence. And while he was
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  Speaker 1: Lord Protector, he was in a controversial, unsustainable place. Royalists
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  Speaker 1: hated it. The Royalists were a faction of people who
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  Speaker 1: believed in the divine right of the king. So if
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  Speaker 1: you believe that God has decreed a certain person to
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  Speaker 1: be the absolute ruler of a land, then you are
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  Speaker 1: going to equate the actions of anybody opposing that king
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  Speaker 1: to the actions of Unchristian nearly demonic forces, you know
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  Speaker 1: what I mean. So Cromwell was like a demon made
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  Speaker 1: flesh to these guys totally.
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  Speaker 4: And even though Charles I first was not popular because
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  Speaker 4: he had chosen to marry a French Catholic princess, he
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  Speaker 4: was still to those royalists the rightful monarch of the realm.
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  Speaker 1: So in a sense, he replaces this monarchical regime with
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  Speaker 1: a puritanical republic. But he puts in some ideas that
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  Speaker 1: seemed very forward facing today and did not go over
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  Speaker 1: well at the time, which was he had this concept
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  Speaker 1: of being religiously tolerant, and his contemporaries viewed that with suspicion,
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  Speaker 1: especially residents of Ireland and Scotland's what we're saying here, folks,
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  Speaker 1: is that even when he was alive, he was a
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  Speaker 1: controversial figure. And today's story really really starts when he dies,
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  Speaker 1: because the last few weeks of his life before he
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  Speaker 1: passes away in what was a sixteen fifty eight, the
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  Speaker 1: third of September, right, so right before he passes away,
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  Speaker 1: he is having a terrible time. He's getting sharp bowel
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  Speaker 1: and back pains. He has insomnia. He's freezing cold sometimes
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  Speaker 1: and then just sweating hot other times. His throat hurts,
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  Speaker 1: he's coughing, he's getting confused, he's vomiting left and right.
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  Speaker 1: He would get worse and then he would get better.
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  Speaker 1: So he kind of ebbed and flowed, you know. And
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  Speaker 1: his doctors we're trying to figure out what was going
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  Speaker 1: on with him. They had no idea. We have one
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  Speaker 1: quote where his attendants have the sad apprehension of danger.
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  Speaker 2: Fairly vague it really is. Is that it the foreboding quality.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, they had the shining about it. They said that
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  Speaker 1: he might not get better at this point. This starts
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  Speaker 1: happening when he is when he is almost sixty. He's
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  Speaker 1: fifty nine years old, and he dies suddenly on September third.
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  Speaker 1: So he's died, right, Cromwell has died, and his son
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  Speaker 1: inherits the position of Lord Protector for a very very
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  Speaker 1: brief amount of time.
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  Speaker 2: Very brief. Yes.
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  Speaker 1: A year later, his son is overthrown by the army.
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  Speaker 1: The monarchy is restored, so chalk one up for the
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  Speaker 1: royalist and Charles the second becomes the new king. What
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  Speaker 1: does he do after he becomes king? Is it like
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  Speaker 1: a bygones, be bygone situation.
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  Speaker 4: No, I think that would have been a bummer, a
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  Speaker 4: real let down if that was the Now. We wanted
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  Speaker 4: some blood, man, We came here for blood, and boy,
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  Speaker 4: will there ever be some blood?
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  Speaker 1: No?
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  Speaker 4: He declared everyone involved with overthrowing and executing the previous
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  Speaker 4: king enemies of the state, whatever you want to call it,
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  Speaker 4: and called for their immediate rounding up and execution.
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  Speaker 1: Especially those fifty nine people who signed the death warrant.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, because I.
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  Speaker 4: Mean, you know, their names are on a piece of paper,
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  Speaker 4: their identities are out there, so it wasn't too too
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  Speaker 4: hard to get round in them up.
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  Speaker 1: This makes me think of so off air. Before we
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  Speaker 1: started this episode, we were talking about a strange moment
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  Speaker 1: in a lot of people's financial history checks. We used
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  Speaker 1: to do that too, We would put our names on
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: pieces of paper. It's still so bizarre to think about it. Like,
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  Speaker 1: you don't even have checks. I have emergency checks, yep,
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  Speaker 1: hidden away in my layer in casey, you have some
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  Speaker 1: checks on the off chance you might ever need one, Right.
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  Speaker 2: That is correct? Yes, Casey on the case right there? Yeah,
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  Speaker 2: Casey on the checks yep.
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  Speaker 1: I would you know what I would get some vanity
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  Speaker 1: you know, vanity check I did.
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  Speaker 2: I had Superman ones.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, I had. I had a couple of different I
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  Speaker 1: had Space ones. I believe it was very into space
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  Speaker 1: And speaking of fantastic segues back to the point. Yes,
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  Speaker 1: King Charles the Second once once, especially to find and
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  Speaker 1: punish these fifty nine people who have signed the death
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  Speaker 1: warrant for Charles the First. He catches many, several are hanged,
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  Speaker 1: some are put in jail for life.
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  Speaker 4: Let's backtrack just slightly. He did just call for their trial.
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  Speaker 4: But I would imagine this is something along the lines
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  Speaker 4: of a kangaroo court situation where I wasn't like they
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  Speaker 4: were gonna, you know, walk away Scott free.
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  Speaker 2: Right right.
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  Speaker 1: And the thing is that, as as we mentioned, not
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  Speaker 1: all fifty nine people on that list were still alive
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  Speaker 1: when Charles two came into power. So he had this
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  Speaker 1: weird pickle, you know, do we prosecute the dead? Do
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  Speaker 1: we let bygones be bygones?
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  Speaker 2: No?
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  Speaker 1: He says, no, we do not, and so he orders
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  Speaker 1: the bodies of several of the people have signed these
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  Speaker 1: death warrants to be exhumed.
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  Speaker 4: So on the twelfth anniversary of the death of King
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  Speaker 4: Charles the first, Our buddy Oliver Cromwell, Master Protector, whatever
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  Speaker 4: you call it, Master and commander Lord Protector. Now whatever
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  Speaker 4: was dug up exhumed for the purposes of, you know,
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  Speaker 4: making a show out of kind of re executing him.
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  Speaker 2: It reminds me of that there.
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  Speaker 4: Was a pope story we did where they dug up
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  Speaker 4: a pope and propped him up with his bones and
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  Speaker 4: the papal.
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  Speaker 1: Robes exactly exactly the cadavers synod right after the death
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  Speaker 1: of John the Eighth formosis.
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  Speaker 2: That's right.
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  Speaker 1: So yeah, So Charles the Second has a lot of
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  Speaker 1: these people dug up and their bodies are exhumed, and
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  Speaker 1: for the less egregious offenders, they're just buried in communal
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  Speaker 1: burial pits, so they lose the honor of being buried
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  Speaker 1: on their lonesome right. But Oliver Cromwell, along with three
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  Speaker 1: other people get awarded death sentences, despite the fact that
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  Speaker 1: Oliver Cromwell, John Bradshaw, Henry Ireton and Robert Blake are
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  Speaker 1: all dead. They're dead men given death sentences. So as
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  Speaker 1: you said, Noel, they chain the guy up, they hang
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  Speaker 1: him in chains at Tyburn, and in the afternoon they
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  Speaker 1: hang him there for like a day, and then as
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  Speaker 1: the afternoon winds on, they take him down. They cut
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  Speaker 1: off his head and they put it on a spike.
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  Speaker 4: Have a good head on a spike. It's just it's
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  Speaker 4: such a statement piece, you know.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's real, it's real power move, Yeah, very much so,
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  Speaker 1: so they put this head on a twenty foot tall
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  Speaker 1: wooden spike.
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  Speaker 2: Question, there are a difference between a spike and a pike?
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  Speaker 1: A good question. A spike and a pike. Let's do
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: a little quick Internet search here. Pike is to attack,
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: prod or injure someone with a pike. Well, spike is
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: to fix on a spike. Oh, because pike and spike
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  Speaker 1: are both verbs as well.
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  Speaker 4: So I'm thinking a pike would be part of some
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  Speaker 4: sort of turret, like a fence or something like that,
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  Speaker 4: and a spike is just more like a like a hole,
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  Speaker 4: like a stick in the ground.
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  Speaker 2: I don't know.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, a pike can also be a pole, like a
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: long pole that you use in infantry. Right, and then
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: the air turnpikes and turnpike comes from my carnoledge is
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: coming out here. Turnpike comes from the days of private
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: roads when a log would be physically placed across the
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: road and you had to pay someone to turn the
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: pike or the long pole.
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  Speaker 4: Interesting, And I think spike is maybe just a little
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  Speaker 4: more of a generic term. And also, as we're going
• 16:52
  Speaker 4: down this Google rabbit hole, which may or may not
• 16:54
  Speaker 4: be interesting to you, a spike was also an Old
• 16:57
  Speaker 4: English term for an ear of corn.
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: Oh, and corned beef is just salted beef because they
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: would describe the units of salt used as corns.
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: I thought that was peppercorns corned beef.
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: Pretty sure, salt. Of course, you can put pepper on
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: it if you want.
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  Speaker 4: Well, Ben, through the magic of editing and time travel podcasting,
• 17:18
  Speaker 4: you have once again proven me wrong.
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: I'm not out training it.
• 17:22
  Speaker 4: You're not out too. You just do it continuously because
• 17:24
  Speaker 4: you're better than me.
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: No, no, no, no one's been.
• 17:26
  Speaker 2: We are both.
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: We're both on the quest for the truth. It's true,
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: and no one is perfect. But you know, one huge
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: statement in favor of our character or collective character, is
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: that we've never dug someone up, knocked off their head
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  Speaker 1: and hung it on a spike or pike.
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  Speaker 2: How long did they leave it up there?
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  Speaker 4: No way longer than seemed humane than any of this,
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  Speaker 4: And just particularly humane in the first place, but this
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  Speaker 4: one stuck around as a tourist trap for like decades.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, and people would passed the head around. This
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: thing was around for twenty five years on that on
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: that spike. Eventually it's taken down and for the next
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: two hundred years, many different people take possession of this head.
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  Speaker 4: When I first read got passed around, I pictured people
• 18:14
  Speaker 4: passing around in a circle, like a hot potato.
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  Speaker 2: Game or something like that.
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  Speaker 4: It was much It was a much larger scale version
• 18:19
  Speaker 4: of hot potato like that, where it kind of changed
• 18:21
  Speaker 4: hands a lot. I believe for a time it was
• 18:25
  Speaker 4: in the possession of a failed actor who was also
• 18:29
  Speaker 4: a kind of the town drunk and was rumored to
• 18:32
  Speaker 4: have been a relative of Cromwell himself. This man's name
• 18:35
  Speaker 4: was Samuel Russell. This comes from a Fantastic av Club
• 18:39
  Speaker 4: article about the subject that you can look up, and
• 18:43
  Speaker 4: Russell was not a particularly good steward of this artifact.
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: Let's call it yeah, right.
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: You can see some of the blow by blowers we
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: say passed by pass of this in article on Atlas
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: Obscura The Morbid Journey of Cromwell's Traveling Heads. As you
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: were say saying, Noel, the guy who possessed the head,
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: Samuel Russell not the best guy. He was poor, he
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: was considerably in debt. He had a serious drinking problem.
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  Speaker 1: He would literally pass the head around at parties. Sam
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: bring out the head. Yeah, and he refused to part
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: with the head. People would offer him money for it,
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: but instead of that, he would just borrow money from people,
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: and multiple folks for one reason or another said we've
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: got to get this head away from this drunk guy,
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: so they continued offering him money. Eventually, a prominent goldsmith
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: and clockmaker named James Cox enters this story.
• 19:45
  Speaker 4: Yeah, he was a smart fellow because he was playing
• 19:47
  Speaker 4: the long game, because he kept trying to buy the
• 19:49
  Speaker 4: head off of him, off of Russell, knowing that even
• 19:53
  Speaker 4: though he was turned down in exchanged for loans, he
• 19:58
  Speaker 4: was eventually going to come to the point where Russell
• 20:00
  Speaker 4: could not pay him back the loans, and then he
• 20:02
  Speaker 4: would have the upper hand to say, hey, I'll absolve
• 20:05
  Speaker 4: your debt, you pour unfortunate bastard if you just give
• 20:08
  Speaker 4: me the head. And that's exactly what happened.
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, give me the head.
• 20:11
  Speaker 4: He's he was able to flip it for like three
• 20:14
  Speaker 4: times what he'd invest it was it twice? I think
• 20:16
  Speaker 4: it was quite a nice profit.
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, he sold Cox that has sold the head
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: in seventeen ninety nine for two hundred and thirty British
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: pounds to three brothers with the last name of Hughes.
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: They wanted to start their own public display, so they
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: got the head as part of other Cromwell related items.
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: They made a bunch of posters for the event. But
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: then they found themselves in a bit of a pickle
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: because they wondered whether the head was actually the head
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: of Cromwell. And when they wrote to Cox to ask
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: for I guess the chain of custody, you know what
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: I mean, Cox was kind of evasive, and so they thought,
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: is this guy selling us a counterfeit head? I mean
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: we've all been there, right, Casey. Casey was just telling
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: me about something like this there other day.
• 21:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm I'm not at liberty to discuss that matter.
• 21:06
  Speaker 2: It's an ongoing.
• 21:08
  Speaker 4: Situation, investigation, you know yourself.
• 21:13
  Speaker 5: Yeah, you've been You've been advised by your legal tya okay,
• 21:16
  Speaker 5: And this has not been Casey on the case. So
• 21:18
  Speaker 5: this this is, yeah, this is if there's the case's pending.
• 21:22
  Speaker 2: That's fair.
• 21:23
  Speaker 4: That's that's a different sound Casey is a man of
• 21:25
  Speaker 4: many side hustles.
• 21:26
  Speaker 2: Let's put it that way. That's true. That's true.
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: I mean, we live in the gig economy. So what
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: happens to Cromwell's head.
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: Well, here's the thing. There's a lot of conflicting tales
• 21:41
  Speaker 2: as to what happened.
• 21:42
  Speaker 4: There's some versions of the story that say the head
• 21:45
  Speaker 4: itself was given a proper burial by loyalists to Cromwell,
• 21:51
  Speaker 4: or at least those that sympathize with his cause. Uh,
• 21:55
  Speaker 4: there's another version that says the head kind of disappeared.
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: Right, It's commonly accepted that the head was given a
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: dignified burial and a secret place, secret location Sidney Sussex
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: College in Cambridge in nineteen sixty. But the story is
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: too good to let the facts distract from the possibilities, right,
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: Because as you said, there are people who argue multiple
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: other things about it. One of the craziest, the craziest
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: stories I heard was that it was secretly taken by
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: a fraternal society.
• 22:27
  Speaker 4: I have a question, too, Ben, in this time where
• 22:29
  Speaker 4: there wasn't any obviously any DNA or any lab science
• 22:32
  Speaker 4: at all. How could you confirm the veracity of a rotted,
• 22:38
  Speaker 4: shrunken head leathered up like beef jerky when you know.
• 22:42
  Speaker 2: You know, you know, you just feel it in your heart.
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you just feel it in your heart. Okay have
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: you ever been in that situation?
• 22:47
  Speaker 2: Yes?
• 22:47
  Speaker 4: Not?
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: Well, we are about to have an amazing weekend.
• 22:51
  Speaker 2: I'm excited.
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: So what an ignoble end? This is not what the
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: Lord Protector thought was in store for him. He was
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: separated from his grave first, then he was separated from
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: his body, and hopefully finally Cromwell, divisive character that he is,
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: has come to some sort of rest. According to the
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: head's latest owner, one Horace Wilkinson, he's the one who
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: talked about the secret burial in nineteen sixty The head
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: is still there today, and he announced that he had
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: buried it in this location in nineteen sixty two.
• 23:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah, secret burial mine rear end. Yeah right. What about
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: the rest of his body? Though? Man? What of that?
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: No one knows for sure. There are some good ideas
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: out there.
• 23:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's true.
• 23:43
  Speaker 4: No one is entirely sure about what happened, but the
• 23:45
  Speaker 4: most likely story, according to John Morris, who is, a
• 23:48
  Speaker 4: Cromwell biographer, is the same thing that would have happened
• 23:51
  Speaker 4: to the bodies of a lot of folks who were
• 23:53
  Speaker 4: executed on mass like this, And that they were just
• 23:57
  Speaker 4: thrown into a pit head on a pike body and
• 24:00
  Speaker 4: a pit tales all as.
• 24:01
  Speaker 2: Time song as old as rhyme that too.
• 24:04
  Speaker 4: Some other versions of the story include the idea that
• 24:09
  Speaker 4: it was chucked into the Thames. And then there's a
• 24:13
  Speaker 4: bonker story that comes from a man with the name
• 24:15
  Speaker 4: of Samuel Pepys in sixteen sixty four.
• 24:17
  Speaker 2: Pepes Peppees, Peppyes, p e p Ys.
• 24:20
  Speaker 4: I just thought it was fun to say. I will
• 24:22
  Speaker 4: say it again, Peppyes. What did he say?
• 24:24
  Speaker 2: Ben? This is? I love the story. I want to hear.
• 24:26
  Speaker 2: I want to hear it from from the mouth of
• 24:27
  Speaker 2: Ben very Well.
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: Samuel Peppees in sixteen sixty four claimed that Cromwell had
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: swapped bodies of various dead kings from one grave to
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: another with another story, raising the possibility that it wasn't
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: his corpse that was decapitated after all, but that of
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: Charles the First. But Charles the First already lost his
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: head the first time around.
• 24:51
  Speaker 2: A man I want to believe this very pees.
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: Let's not let the facts get in the way of
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: a good story.
• 24:56
  Speaker 2: We never do.
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: This is a situation where in the fact this stranger
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: than the fiction. It's a bit morbid, but we hope
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: that you found the story of Cromwell's posthumous execution as
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: strange as we found it. Stay tuned for our upcoming
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: episode where we get even more morbid and grizzly morbid morbid.
• 25:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Oh it's bad.
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: It's peak morbidity.
• 25:21
  Speaker 2: We're going to have to do a trigger warning on
• 25:23
  Speaker 2: that one.
• 25:23
  Speaker 4: It's probably the grossest ridiculous history we have ever done
• 25:27
  Speaker 4: so far.
• 25:28
  Speaker 2: So far, let's just say this.
• 25:30
  Speaker 4: It involves very crude surgery during a very specific period.
• 25:36
  Speaker 2: Which one was it again?
• 25:36
  Speaker 4: Then it was the disco era, yes, aka the late
• 25:40
  Speaker 4: seventeen hundred.
• 25:42
  Speaker 5: Early eighteen hundred. Yeah, the first disco era. That's right,
• 25:44
  Speaker 5: it was the crossover.
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: A lot of people think of the disco era as
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: like the nineteen seventies, but that is actually the fifth
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: Disco era.
• 25:52
  Speaker 2: These are facts.
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: Thanks so much to our super.
• 25:55
  Speaker 4: Producer Jasey pegram Always, and thanks to our research associate
• 25:58
  Speaker 4: Gabe Lucier for a job well done. As per usual.
• 26:02
  Speaker 4: Thanks to Christopher Hasiotis, who's just we like him.
• 26:05
  Speaker 2: He's a pal. We're gonna have him back very soon.
• 26:07
  Speaker 2: Thanks to Alex Williams, who composed our theme.
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: And thanks to you, Noel. Thanks to thanks to everyone
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: who took decent care of Oliver Cromwell's head.
• 26:17
  Speaker 6: Yep, we'll see next time, folks.
• 26:28
  Speaker 4: For more podcasts from iHeart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
• 26:31
  Speaker 4: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
• 26:34
  Speaker 4: For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
• 26:37
  Speaker 4: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.