page_title: Oliver Cromwell's head
section_title: 19th and 20th centuries
hierarchical_section_title: Oliver Cromwell's head / Journey / 19th and 20th centuries
caption_attribution_description: Oliver Cromwell's death mask at Warwick Castle.
context_page_description: Oliver Cromwell's head sat on the body of Oliver Cromwell, who became Lord Protector and ruler of the English Commonwealth after the defeat of King Charles I in the English Civil War and Charles's beheading. Cromwell died on 3 September 1658 and was given a public funeral at Westminster Abbey equal to those of the monarchs who came before him. His position passed to his son Richard, who was overthrown by the army in 1659, leading to the re-establishment of the monarchy. King Charles II was recalled from exile, and his new parliament ordered the disinterment of Cromwell's body from Westminster Abbey and of those of John Bradshaw and Henry Ireton for a posthumous execution at Tyburn. The three bodies were left hanging "from morning till four in the afternoon" before being cut down and beheaded. The heads were placed on a 20-foot spike above Westminster Hall. In 1685, a storm broke the pole upon which Cromwell's head stood, throwing it to the ground, after which it was in the hands of private collectors and museums until 25 March 1960, when it was buried at Sidney Sussex College in Cambridge.
  The symbolic value of the head changed over time.
context_section_description: Despite the failure of the Hughes brothers' exhibition, a Hughes daughter continued showing the head to anyone who wanted to see it. An offer was made to Sir Joseph Banks, but "he desired to be excused from seeing the remains of the old Villanous [sic] Republican, the mention of whose very name made his blood boil with indignation". William Bullock, considering a purchase, wrote to Lord Liverpool, who stated "the strong objection which would naturally arise to the exhibition of human remains at a Public Museum frequented by Persons of both Sexes and of all ages". Failure to sell to public museums forced the daughter to sell it privately, and in 1815 it was sold to Josiah Henry Wilkinson, in whose family it would remain until its burial. Maria Edgeworth, attending breakfast with Wilkinson in 1822, was shown the head, and she wrote with great surprise that she had seen "Oliver Cromwell's head—not his picture—not his bust—nothing of stone or marble or plaister [sic] of Paris, but his real head". 
  Coinciding with the release of his Letters and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell in 1845, Thomas Carlyle was asked to view the head. He did not, and on the basis of a friend's visit, wrote a scathing dismissal of the authenticity of the head: "it has hair, flesh and beard, a written history bearing that it was procured for £100 (I think of bad debt) about 50 years ago ... the whole affair appears to be fraudulent moonshine, an element not pleasant even to glance into, especially in a case like Oliver's." Fitzgibbons 2008, Pearson and Morant agree that Carlyle's dismissal was not based on any historical or scientific fact. Although Carlyle conceded that it was "the head of some decapitated man of distinction", the only other known man of distinction to be embalmed and then decapitated in such a manner over the previous 200 years was Henry Ireton. George Rolleston had conducted an examination on another skull—called the Ashmolean skull—after claims that it was Cromwell's head. Rolleston was unconvinced by the skull's supposed history, and visited Wilkinson's home to see the skull shortly afterwards. After an examination, he dismissed the Ashmolean skull as a fake and declared that the Wilkinson head was the real head of Cromwell.
  After another full examination in 1911, with comparisons to the Ashmolean head, archaeologists dismissed the Ashmolean head as a fake. The absence of firm evidence of the whereabouts of Cromwell's head between 1684 and 1787 made them wary about declaring the head genuine. They concluded their study unable to verify or refute the head's identity. The uncertainty increased public demand for a full scientific examination, and Wilkinson reluctantly allowed the head to be taken for examination by the eugenicist Karl Pearson and the anthropologist Geoffrey Morant. Their 109-page report concluded that there was a "moral certainty" that the Wilkinson head was that of Oliver Cromwell. Horace Wilkinson died in 1957, bequeathing the head to his son, also called Horace. Horace Wilkinson wished to organise a proper burial for the head rather than a public display, so he contacted Sidney Sussex College, which welcomed the burial. There it was interred on 25 March 1960, in a secret location near the antechapel, preserved in the oak box in which the Wilkinson family had kept the head since 1815. The box was placed into an airtight container and buried with only a few witnesses, including family and representatives of the college. The secret burial was not announced until October 1962.
caption: Oliver Cromwell's death mask at Warwick Castle
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