I guess no head has provided greater long-term value as an object of public instruction and contemplation than that of Oliver Cromwell. His mummified noggin has had quite a checkered career. As one web source notes:
-- The head was first put on public display in January 1661 when Charles II had Cromwell, dead for over two years, disentombed from Westminster Abbey, dragged to Tyburn, hanged for a day, then beheaded to mark the anniversary of Charles I's beheading. Cromwell's head remained stuck on a spike for public viewing at Westminster Hall for over two decades, then it apparently blew down in a storm and was retrieved by a sentry who kept it hidden for years.
-- Cromwell's head remerged in the public eye, better than ever, in 1710 when it was put on show at in a private museum. In later decades it was apparently acquired by a succession of speculators and featured at various curiosity galleries.
-- In 1814 the head was bought by Josiah Henry Wilkinson, who one contemporary source said "doats upon it." A descendant of Wilkinson refused the BBC permission to film the head in 1954 but apparently did delight local children with it on a regular basis.
Unfortunately the head's long public service is over. It passed into the hands of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, four decades ago and reburied ... in a hidden location.
<http://www.cambridgeshire.gov.uk/leisure/museums/cromwell/online/>
Carl
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