Latest / Ridiculous History / How Oliver Cromwell Got Executed Several Years After His Death

Transcript

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

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Hello
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: and welcome to the show. Have you ever dreamed of
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: toppling the status quo in your neck of the global woods?
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: Have you ever thought of maybe starting a food fight
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: in school, or you know, orchestrating a coup in another country?
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: I feel like all of us have had these, um,
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: revolutionary or rebellious thoughts at some point. But how far
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: does it go? You know, I've gone pretty far. My
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: name is Ben. We have come a long way, just
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: the two of us, if we want to look at
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: it on like a micro level, but on a macro level. Um, yeah,
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: I think that the human species has come a long way.
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: We certainly still I'm an old by the way, we
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: certainly still you know, have room to grow. Um. But
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: it's certainly not quite running up on the kind of
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: insurgency that, let's say, like a reign of terror like
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: a Robespierre situation during the French Revolution, or maybe more
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: of a Oliver Cromwell kind of situation like in the UH,
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: the Old UK. Yes, yes it's true. Uh. And by
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: the way, shout out to our own personal Cromwell, UH
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: super producer Casey Pegrom Ben he deserves better than that
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: he does. He does, he's uh, you know what you
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: deserve to be, Casey pegrom with no comparisons, no equivocations.
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: You okay with that, Casey, I'm great with that because
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: it's because, as it turns out, Cromwell, who was kind
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: of like a Protestant Robespierre in many ways, was kind
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: of a monster. Well. His legacy is still a matter
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: of hot takes and controversy here today. In Some people
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: will say he is the father of British democracy, he
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: got rid of the monarchy, albeit brief lee, And then
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: others will say, no way, he's a war criminal. He
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: hated the Catholics and he led vicious military campaigns. But
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: regardless of whether you are pro or anti Cromwell, there
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: is no denying that he changed the course of history
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: in England, Scotland and Ireland. Let's let's learn a little
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: bit about his life. What do you say before we
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: get to before we get to his death spoiler, he's dead,
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: Dead is a darnail, Dead's disco. I was wondering where
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: dead as a doornail comes from? Isn't it from Dickens? Yeah?
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: But what what made someone say? You know what I
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: think of what I think of death doornails. I guess
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: it's just because it's an inanimate object. Yeah, but then
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: because it dead is a table, but the alliteration is
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: key oh uh dead as uh see, Yeah, that is
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: a dumbbell that works. But door nails were much more
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: prevalent in the days of Dickens, perhaps so uh yeah.
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: Originally all of the titles that Dickens used in his
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: stories had had the phrase door nail in them. It's
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: also true so after fomenting the Parliamentarian uprising over the
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: Royalists in the English Civil War, UM Cromwell became the
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England in sixteen fifty three.
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: That's also, of course, after executing Charles the First who
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: was the king at the time. Um, and he ruled
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: over England, Scotland and Ireland just for the grand scale
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: of things, time being what it is, blip of time
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: right right, because he assumed he assumed this status is
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: Lord Protector in sixteen fifty three. The monarchy itself was
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: restored in sixteen sixty, so this is what maybe seven
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: years Why did Cromwell have such a beef with the Catholics.
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: Ben what a great question, Noll. You see, Oliver Cromwell
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: was born at the turn of the seventeenth century, and
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: when he came into the world, England was a Protestant
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: country ruled by a king who believed that he had
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: divine rights, meaning he was king because God had purposely
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: made him king. This was kind of a thing with
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: monarchs in those days, like the Sun King or you know,
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: I mean, like a lot of divine belief in that
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: they were like the extension of God's power on earth.
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: It still is, I mean, how how well, it's a
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: very effective way to um bully people into thinking that
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: they have some sort of obligation to serve you. Right.
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: So Cromwell converted to Puritanism in his late twenties, and
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: he thought that King Charles the First was just too Catholic.
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: He said, he's this king is far too Catholic for me.
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: He's a papist, which was a smear word at the time. Uh.
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: Many of Charles First policies he see, such as levying
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: taxes without the consent of parliament. Uh, they made his
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: subjects mistrust him and they said, hey, you're not the
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: kind of cultured monarch we like. You're one of those
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: tyrannical absolute monarchs. So let's not forget this is post
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: Protestant Reformation, where the country was very much split. It
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: became largely a Protestant country, and then the kings that
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: would come into power they would either be heavily Protestant
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: or maybe not quite Protestant enough for some people. But
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: it certainly wasn't as popular in general to be super Catholic.
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: There was kind of like a divide between the Church
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: of Rome and the Church of England. Absolutely, so the
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: stage was set for a civil war series of conflicts occur.
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: King Charles is on the losing end of history. He's overthrown,
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: he is executed. Fifty nine people signed the death warrant
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: for the king, and one of them is Oliver Cromwell.
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: And then they introduce the Commonwealth of England to replace
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: the monarchy. I mean, quote unquote replace replace because Cromwell
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: becomes Lord Protector, as we said, but Lord Protector is
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: pretty much still a king. It's a monarch, you know.
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: The best evidence for that is that when Cromwell has
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: done being Lord Protector, his son takes up the job.
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: Just to jump in here real quick, I was being
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: a little bit purposefully hyperbolic at the beginning of the
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: show when I compared Oliver Cromwell to Rosepierre, who was
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: known for decapitating human people in the streets with the
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: famous guillotine. Cromwell was a bit more known for his authoritarian,
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: heavy handed rule than he was for bloody executions. But
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: we will be getting some bloody executions in this story
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: either way. So between sixteen fifty three sixteen fifty eight
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: or so, he's ruling the UK. He has the same
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: powers as a monarch, but he's called Lord Protector and
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: he technically doesn't have a crown. I don't mean this
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: in some figurative sense. I don't mean that he lost
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: any power you would get with autonomy or whatever. I
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: mean that he didn't have the jewelry. And here he's
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: risen to the apex of his life. In the beginning,
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: he was just a member of Parliament for Cambridge, but
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: he became a Puritan, and then later he becomes Lord Protector,
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: helped in no small part by his brilliant military career.
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: You know, he was a tactician. He had fought decisive battles,
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: so he wasn't out there, you know, doing mass executions,
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: but war has no small measure of violence. And while
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: he was Lord Protector, he was in a controversial, unsustainable place.
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: Royalist hated him. The Royalist were a faction of people
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: who believed in the divine right of the king. So
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: if you believe that God has decreed a certain person
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: to be the absolute ruler of the land, then you're
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: going to equate the actions of anybody opposing that king
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: to the actions of un Christian, nearly demonic forces, you
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: know what I mean. So Cromwell was like a demon
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: made flesh to these guys totally. And even though Charles
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: the First was not popular because he had chosen to
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: marry a French Catholic princess, he was still to those
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: Royalists the rightful monarch of the realm. So in a
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: sense he replaces this monarchical regime with a puritanical republic.
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: But he puts in some ideas that seemed very forward
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: facing today and did not go over well at the time,
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: which was he had this concept of being religiously tolerant,
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: and his contemporary he's viewed that with suspicion, especially residents
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: of Ireland and Scotland's what what we're saying here, folks,
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: is that even when he was alive, he was a
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: controversial figure. And today's story really really starts when he dies,
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: because the last few weeks of his life before he
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: passes away in what was the third of September, right,
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: So right before he passes away, he is having a
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: terrible time. He's getting sharp bowel and back pains, he
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: has insomnia, he's freezing cold sometimes and then just sweating
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: hot other times. His throat hurts, he's coughing, he's getting confused,
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: he's vomiting left and right. He would get worse and
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: then he would get better. So he kind of ebbed
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: and flowed, you know. And his doctors we're trying to
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: figure out what was going on with him. They they
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: had no idea. When we have one quote where his
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: attendants have the sad apprehension of danger fairly vague, it
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: really is that is the foreboding quality. Yeah, they had
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: the shining about it. They said that he might not
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: get better at this point. This starts happening when he
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: is when he is almost sixty fifty nine years old,
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: and he dies suddenly on September three. So he's died, right,
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: Cromwell has died and his son inherits the position of
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: Lord Protector for a very very brief amount of time. Yes,
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: a year later, his son is overthrown by the army.
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: The monarchy is restored. So chalk line up for the
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: Royalist and Charles the second becomes the new king. What
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: does he do after he becomes king? Is it like
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: a bygones, be bygone situation? I think that would have
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: been about our real lapdown if that was the cause.
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: Now we wanted some blood, band We came here for blood,
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: and boy, will there ever be some blood now? He
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: declared everyone involved with overthrowing and executing the previous king
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: enemies of this day, whatever you want to call it,
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: and called for their immediate rounding up and execution, especially
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: those fifty nine people who signed the death warrant. Yeah,
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: because I mean, you know, their names are on a
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: piece of paper, their identities are out there, so it
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: wasn't too too hard to get to ramming them up.
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: This makes me think of so off Air. Before we
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: started this episode, we were talking about a strange moment
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: in a lot of people's financial history checks. We we
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: used to do that too. We put our names on
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: pieces of paper. It's still so bizarre to think about it, Like,
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: you don't even have checks. I have emergency checks hidden
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: away in my layer, and Casey, you have some checks
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: on the off chance you might ever need one, right,
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: that is correct? Yes, that's Casey on the case right there. Yeah,
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: Casey on the checks. I would you know what, I
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: would get some vanity uh you know, vanity check. I did.
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: I had Superman ones, Yeah, I had. I had a
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: couple of I had Space ones. I believe was very
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: into space. And speaking of fantastic segues back to the point. Yes,
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: King Charles the Second once once especially to find and
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: punish these fifty nine people who have signed the death
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: warrant for Charles the First. He catches many, several are hanged,
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: some are put in jail for life. Let's backtrack just slightly.
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: He did just call for their trial. But I would
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: imagine this is something along the lines of a kangaroo
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: court situation where I wasn't like they were gonna, you know,
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: walk away Scott free, right right. And the thing is that,
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: as as we mentioned, not all fifty nine people on
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: that list were still alive when Charles two came into power.
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: So he had this weird pickle, you know, do we
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: prosecute the dead? Do we let bygones be bygones? No?
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: He says, no, we do not, and so he orders
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: the bodies of several of the people have sudden these
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: death warrants to be exhumed. So on the twelfth anniversary
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: of the death of King Charles the First, our buddy
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: Oliver Cromwell, Master Protector, whatever you call it, Master and
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: Commander Lord protected whatever uh was dug up exhumed for
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: the purposes of uh, you know, making a show out
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: of kind of re executing him. It reminds me of
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: that there was a pope story we did where they
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: dug up a pope and propped him up with his
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: bones in the papal robes exactly exactly h the cadaver
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: synod right after the death of John eight formosis. That's right,
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: so yes, So Charles the Second has a lot of
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: these people dug up and their bodies are exhumed, and
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: for the less egregious offenders, they're just buried in communal
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: burial pits, so they lose the honor of being buried
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: on their lonesome right. But Oliver Cromwell, along with three
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: other people, get awarded death sentences, despite the fact that
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: Oliver Cromwell, John Bradshaw, Henry Ireton and Robert Blake are
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: all dead. They're dead men given death sentences. So as
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: you said, no thing, they chained the guy up. They
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: hang them and chains at Tyburn and in the afternoon
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: they hang him there for like a day, and then
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: as the afternoon winds on they take him down. They
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: cut off his head and they put it on a
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: spiked on a spike. It's just it's such a statement piece,
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, it's real, it's real. Power move very much.
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: So they put this head on a twenty foot tall
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: wooden spike. Question, there are difference between a spike and
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: a pike. That is a good question. A spike and
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: a pike. Let's do it a little quick Internet search here. Uh,
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: pike is to attack, proud or injure someone with a pike,
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: while spike is to fix on a spike. Oh, because
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: pike and spike are both verbs as well. So I'm
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: thinking a pike would be part of some sort of turret,
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: like a fence or something like that, and a spike
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: is just more like a like a hole, like a
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: stick in the ground. I don't know. Yeah, a pike
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: can also be a pole, like a long pole that
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: you use an infantry, right, and then there turnpikes and
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: turnpike comes from my car knowledge is coming down her
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: turnpike comes from the days of private roads when a
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: log would be physically placed across the road and you
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: had to pay someone to turn the pike or the
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: long pole. Interesting, And I think spike is maybe just
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: a little more of a generic term. And also as
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: we're going down this Google rabbit hole, which may or
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: may not be interesting to you. Uh. A spike was
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: also an Old English term for an ear of corn. Oh,
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: and corned beef is just salted, because they would describe
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: the units of salt used as corns. I thought that
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: was peppercorns corned beef. Pretty sure, of course you can
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: put pepper on it if you want. Well, Ben, through
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: the magic of editing and time travel podcasting, you have
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: once again proven me wrong. I'm not I'm not out
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: trained out, you're not out to you just do it
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: continuously because you're better than me. No, no, no, no,
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: one's better. We are both. We're both on the quest
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: for the truth. It's true, and uh no one is perfect.
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: But you know, one huge statement in favor of our
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: character or collective character, is that we've never dug someone up,
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: knocked off their head and hung it on on a
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: spike or pike. How long did they leave it up there?
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: Way longer than seemed humane than any of this and
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: is particularly humane in the first place. But this one
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: stuck around as a tourist trap for like decades. Yeah yeah,
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: and people had passed the head around. This thing was
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: around for twenty five years on that on that spike.
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: Eventually it's taken down and for the next two hundred years,
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: many different people take possession of this head. When I
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: first read got passed around, I pictured people passing around
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: in a circle like a hot potato. It was much
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: It was a much larger scale version of hot potato
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: like that, where it kind of changed hands a lot um.
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: I believe for a time it was in the possession
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: of a failed actor who was also a kind of
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: the town drunk um and was rumored to have been
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: a relative of Cromwell himself. This man's name was Samuel Russell.
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: This comes from a Fantastic A V Club article about
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: the subject that you can look up. And Russell was
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: not a particularly good steward of this artifact. Let's call
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: it yeah. Right. You can see some of the blow
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: by blowers, should we say passed by pass of this
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: uh in article on Atlas Obscura the Morbid Journey of
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: Cromwell's Traveling Head. As as you were saying, Noel, the
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: guy who possessed the head, Amuel Russell not the best guy.
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: He was poor, he was considerably in debt. He had
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: a serious drinking problem. He would literally pass the head
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: around at parties, Sam bring out the head and uh.
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: He refused to part with the head. People would offer
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: money for it, but instead of that, he would just
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: borrow money from people, and multiple folks for one reason
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: or another, said we've got to get this head away
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: from this drunk guy, so they continued offering him money. Eventually,
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: prominent goldsmith and clockmaker named James Cox enters the story.
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: He was a smart fellow because he was playing the
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: long game, because he kept trying to buy the head
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: off of him, off of our Russell, knowing that even
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: though he was turned down um and exchanged for loans,
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: he was eventually going to come to the point where
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: Russell could not pay him back the loans, and then
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: he would have the uper hand to say, hey, I'll
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: absolve your debt. Uh, you poor unfortunate bastard, if you
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: just give me the head. And that's exactly what happened. Yeah,
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: give me the head. He's he was able to flip
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: it for like three times when he'd invested it, was
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: it twice? I think it was quite a nice profit. Yeah. Yeah.
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: He sold Cox that has sold the head in sev
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: for thirty British pounds to three brothers with the last
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: name of Hughes. They wanted to start their own public display,
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: so they got the head as part of other Chromwell
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: related items. They made a bunch of posters for the event.
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: But then they found themselves in a bit of a
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: pickle because they wondered whether the head was actually the
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: head of Cromwell. And when they wrote to Cox to
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: ask for I guess the chain of custody, you know
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: what I mean? Uh, Cox was kind of evasive, and
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: so they thought, is this guy selling us a counterfeit head?
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: I mean, we've all been there, right, case Casey was
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: just telling me about something like this there other Yeah,
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: I'm I'm not at liberty to discuss that matter. It's
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: an ongoing situation, investigation, you know yourself. Yeah, I gotta
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: reuse You've been You've been advised by your legal team. Okay,
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: this has not been Casey on the KIG. So this
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: this is yeah, this is officially the cases pending. So
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: that's fair. That's that's a different sound. Casey is a
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: man of many side hustles. Let's put it that way.
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: That's true, that's true. I mean, we live in the
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: KIG economy. So what happens to Cromwell's head. Well, here's
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: the thing. There's a lot of conflicting tales as to
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: what happened. There's some versions of the story that say
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: the head itself was given a proper burial by loyalists
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: to Cromwell, or at least those that sympathize with his cause. Uh.
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: There's another version that says the head kind of disappear, right. Uh.
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: It's commonly accepted that the head was given a dignified
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: burial in a secret place, secret location, Sydney Sussex College
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: in Cambridge in nineteen sixty. But the story is too
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: good to let the facts distract from the possibilities, right, because,
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: as you said, there are people who are argue multiple
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: other things about it. One of the craziest, uh, the
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: craziest stories I heard was that it was secretly taken
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: by a fraternal society. I have a question too, man,
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: at this time, where there wasn't any obviously DNA or
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: any lab science at all, how could you confirm the
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: veracity of a rotted, shrunken head leathered up like beef turkey?
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: Would you know? You know, you know, you just feel
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: it in your heart. Have you ever been in that situation? Well,
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: we are about to have an amazing weekend. I'm excited.
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: So what an ignoble end? This is not what the
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: Lord Protector thought was in store for him. He was
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: separated from his grave first, then he was separated from
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: his body, and hopefully finally Cromwell, divisive character that he is,
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: has come to some sort of rest. According to the
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: head's latest owner, one Horace Wilkinson, he's the one who
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: talked about the secret burial in nineteen sixty Uh. The
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: head is still there today, and he announced that he
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: had buried it in this location in nineteen sixty two. Yes,
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: secret burial, my rear end. Yeah right. What about the
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: rest of his body? Though? Man? Whatever? What what of that?
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: No one knows, not for sure. There's some good ideas
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: out there. Yeah, it's true. H No one is entirely
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: sure about what happened. But the most likely story, according
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: to John Morris, who is a Cromwell biographer, is the
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: same thing that would have happened to the bodies of
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: a lot of folks who were executed um on mass
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: like this, and that they were just thrown into a
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: pit head on a pike body and a pit tales
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: all the time song is a run that to uh.
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: Some other versions of the story um include the idea
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: that it was chucked into the Thames. And then there's
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: a bonker story that comes from a man with the
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: name of Samuel Peppis in sixteen sixty four. Pepe Pep Peppis,
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: p e p y s. I just thought it was
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: fun to say. I will say it again, Pepis. What
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: did he say, Ben? This is? I love the story.
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: I want to hear I want to hear it from
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: from the mouth of Ben very Well. Samuel Peppe's in
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: sixteen sixty four claimed that Cromwell had swapped bodies of
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: various dead kings from one grave to another, with another story,
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: raising the possibility that it wasn't his corpse that was
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: decapitated after all, but that of Charles the First. But
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: Charles the First already lost his head the first time around. Man,
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: I want to believe this base. Let's not let the
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: facts get in the way of a good story. We
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: never do. This is a situation wherein the fact is
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: stranger than the fiction. It's a bit morbid, But we
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: hope that you found the story of Cromwell's posthumous execution
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: as strange as we found it. Stay tuned for our
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: upcoming episode where we get even more morbid and grizzly
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: morbidter morbidter. Yeah, Oh it's bad. It's peak morbidity. We're
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: going to have to do a trigger warning on that one.
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: It's probably the grossest ridiculous history we have ever done
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: so far. So far, let's just say this. It involves
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: very crude surgery during a very very specific period. Which
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: one was it? Again, Ben, it was the disco era, yes,
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: a k a. The late seventeen d early the first
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: disco era. That's right. It was across a lot of
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: people think of the disco eras like the nineteen seventies,
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: but that is actually the fifth disco era. These are facts.
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: Thanks so much to our super producer gaycy begram Always,
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: and thanks to our research associate Gabe Lucier for a
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: job well done as per usual. Thanks to Christopher Haciotis,
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: who's just we like him. He's a pal. We're gonna
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: have him back very soon. Um. Thanks to Alex Williams
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: who composed our theme, and thanks to you Noal. Thanks
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: to thanks to everyone who took decent care of Oliver
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: Cromwell's head. Yep, we'll see next time. For more podcasts
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: for my heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app,
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows