MYSTERY OF A HEAD

Greymouth Evening Star, 27 April 1935, Page 9

MYSTERY OF A HEAD

A CROMWELLIAN INVESTIGATION

Fresh light on one of the most baffling “relics” of English history the alleged embalmed head of Oliver Cromwell. has been shed bj r exhaustive researches conducted by Professor Karl Pearson of London University' and Dr. G. M. Morant. For centuries the famous “Wilkinson Head,” now in the possession of Canon Horace Wilkinson, of Woodbridge, Essex, has been the centre of romantic interest and expert controversy. At times it has been treated with something approaching veneration. 'Yet the great historian Carlyle 'characterised its claim to authenticity as mere “moonshine,” and artists and historians have alike differed as to the degree of resemblance to the living features of the Protector. Now Professor Pearson and Dr. Morant conclude that it is a “mora* certainty” that the head is genuine. They base their conclusion on the fullest examination of both the head and its history, but more particularly on a comparison of its measurements with those of some eight different masks and busts.

Portraits of Cromwell by Cooper. Walker, and Lely (attribution uncertain) have been pressed into service. Even the hair of the mummified head has been examined beneath the microphone, and the size of the head compared with its owner’s helmet and “Long Parliament hat.” Measurements obtained from painted portraits they find to be mutually inconsistent. But calculating mean measurements from the various masks and busts available, the investigators find the head differs less from the mean measurements so obtained than the different masks and busts do among themselves. The interest in the head is increased by the fact that, after being duly buried in Westminster Abbey in 1658, Cromwell’s body was disinterred three years later by triumphant Royalists, ignominiously carted to Tyburn and his head then placed on a spike high upon the south side of Westminster Hall.

There, the investigators state, it remained until Charles the Second had reigned and died, and probably James the Second also. Tradition has it that the head was then blown down in a gale and recovered by a sentry, and no evidence has been found that it was disposed of in any other way.

Not the least interesting aspect of the inquiry, published as "The Portraiture of Oliver Cromwell,” is a brief report by Sir Arthur Keith on certain abnormalities in the skull which had been first, revealed in an X ray photograph. Sir Arthur, who had iio knowledge of the possible identitv of the skull stated that the skull should be that of an oldish person, that the bone formation was not normal, and that he had seen the condition in question in-,skulls of the:-insane. “Cromwell was certainly.' not insane,” the authors comment. “But he did suffer from a religious monomania. He believed that he really received inspiration from the Deity, which unfailingly guided him in his actions. Perhaps he could not have achieved what he did without such a belief.”