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At curiosity stream dot com slash real life lower There is perhaps no single historical figure mawr controversial in British history than Oliver Cromwell.

Nor has anyone's disembodied head gone on a stranger journey.

In the mid 17th century, England became embroiled in a civil war between supporters of the parliament.

In supporters of the king, Cromwell was a prominent general who supported the parliament, and upon their victory in 16 49 he personally signed the death warrant that led to the beheading of King Charles.

The first oversaw the abolition of the English monarchy, the transition of England into a republic, the military conquest of Ireland and in 16 53 was appointed lord protector of all of Britain, effectively becoming a new absolute monarch in his own right.

He would rule all of the British Isles in this way for five years until his own death from natural causes in 16 58 which rather promptly led to the complete destruction of his entire regime.

Initially, Cromwell's body and funeral retreated with all the respect and grandeur of every English monarch who came before him.

His body was embalmed light in state and buried prominently in Westminster Abbey after an elaborate funeral procession through London.

But none of this lasted for long because, unfortunately for Cromwell's body and legacy, things were about to get really weird.

The king he had executed nine years previously had a son who was living in exile, who then promptly returned to England shortly after Cromwell's death to take the country right back over.

He was successful and restored the English monarchy as Charles the second after over 11 years of absence and perhaps a bit understandably upset by the execution of his father and his force decade in exile, he was in the mood for some vengeance.

12 still surviving men who had participated in the trial and execution of his father were rounded up and found guilty of regicide, for which the punishment was hanging, drawing and quartering Ah horrifically brutal execution technique that went like this.

For each of them, they would be stripped naked, tied to a wooden panel and dragged through the streets of London by horse to the place of execution.

They would then be hanged by the neck, right up until the point they were almost dead and then cut back down.

They would then get pinned to a table, have their balls pulled out of their abdomen, and to add insult to injury, they would be emasculated, literally there, man hoods would be chopped off.

And all of this was, of course, while they're still alive.

Finally, eventually they would be killed by beheading by sword and then, for extra measure of their body, was tort apart into four pieces by horses before getting dumped into a ditch somewhere.

And for gotten Yeesh as horrific and brutal is these executions were Charles.

The second couldn't get his hands on the main people responsible for his father's death like Cromwell, because obviously they were already dead except just kidding that didn't actually stopped him.

He had chrome os body ripped out of its resting place in Westminster and had his corpse posthumously executed for high treason by hanging in the public square of London.

Afterwards, the already dead corpse was taken down the head was lopped off by an executioner, and the Fascinatingly bizarre 300 year adventure of Cromwell's disembodied head would begin to start.

King Charles, the second, had the head impaled on a spike and placed high above Westminster Hall in London as a warning toe.

What happens to regicide?

This was in 16 61 and it remained up there for 20 continuous years, until in 16 81 it was briefly removed by construction workers for routine roof maintenance.

But right after they were finished, they placed it back on the spike.

Charles, the second himself, died in 16 85 and his son James, the second, ascended to the throne next, who continued to keep the head high up above Westminster.

However, sometime early in his reign between 16 85 and 16 88 it's believed that a great storm hit London that Blue Cromwell's head off that spike and into the streets of London.

For the next several decades, only circumstantial evidence has been put forward for where the head waas.

But according Toa legend, it was discovered in the street by a guardsman who picked it up, took it home with him and hid it in his chimney.

The loss of prom owes head in the late 16 eighties was still significant in London.

You see, James the second was the grandson of the king Cromwell had had executed, and so a large reward was offered for the safe return of the head.

Many people began searching across England for it in the Guardsmen who took it for himself was allegedly too afraid to turn it in because it would have been confessing to stealing it in the first place.

Eventually, a few decades later, in 17 10, after the heated cooled off a bit, the head somehow fell into the possession of a Swiss guy named Claudius.

Deploy, a collector of curiosities who had opened a museum in London, evidently deploys.

Museum was among the top tourist attractions in the city at the time, and the head remained a prominent display inside there for gawking tourists toe look at until Deploy died in 17 38 after the museum closed following his death.

It's not entirely clear what happened to Cromwell's head for a few years until it showed up again in the mid 17 hundreds in the possession of a man named Samuel Russell Ah, failed comedian and well known public drunkard, allegedly Russell was a distant relative of Cromwell's, and it's theorized that he may have purchased the head from the museum after du Pois death.

But regardless of how it came into his possession, Russell was certainly the least respectful owner of it.

Tearing several drunken parties and gatherings.

Russell would bring out the disembodied head of a man who once ruled the British Isles with absolute authority and passed it around to everybody like it was an inflatable beach ball at a concert on.

Surprisingly tossing the head around at parties like that caused irreparable damage to the heads, facial features over time, and it was getting less and less recognizable.

Eventually broke and desperate for money, Russell attempted to sell the head to Sidney Sussex College, who for some reason wasn't interested in buying a deformed head that once belonged to the Lord protector of England.

Fortunately for him, a very prominent Goldsmith and toymaker at the time named James Cox was interested for some reason, and he paid the equivalent of £5600 in today's money to purchase the head from Russell.

A century after Oliver Cromwell had died and his head was being tossed around at parties and sold for the price of a used early two thousands Toyota Corolla.

But apparently buying ahead for £5600 turned into a worthwhile investment for James Cox because he sold it a few years later in 17 99 for £7400 in today's money to a group of three brothers who wanted to use the head in their new London exhibition of curiosities.

Thousands of posters for the exhibition displaying an image of the head, were printed, but it ended up becoming a financial failure for the brothers anyway.

One of those brothers, daughters, came into possession of the head.

Next, who continued showing it toe all kinds of people privately and attempted to sell it to multiple museums and colleges, all of whom, for some reason, refused.

Eventually, in 18 15, the daughter sold it privately for an undisclosed amount to a guy named Josiah Henry Wilkinson, who wanted it for some reason and who began the tradition of keeping the Cromwell head as a family heirloom for the next 1.5 centuries.

Over these years, the Wilkinson family passed the head down from one generation to the next and subjected it toe multiple scientific studies and examinations to determine if it really was the original head of Oliver Cromwell.

In the 19 thirties, a 109 page scientific report was written about the heads authenticity the determined that it was, in fact, the actual original head of the former Lord protector.

Eventually, in 1957 Horace Wilkinson died and by tradition, bequeathed the head to his son and heir, also named Horace Wilkinson.

This horse, Wilkinson finally decided to do what nobody else had done with the head in the past 300 years.

He buried it and put it to rest.

And so, on the 25th of March, 1960 in a secret location at Sidney Sussex College, the head was finally placed into a box and buried after a journey that spanned 299 years since 16 61 when Cromwell's head was first lopped off of his already dead body that saw an eccentric cast of owners tossing the head from one person to the next.

The three century long journey of Oliver Cromwell's disembodied head had finally come to a close.

Unless, of course, someone decides to dig it back up again.

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