Speaker 1: Welcome to Aaron Manke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild.
Speaker 2: Our world is full of the unexplainable, and if history
Speaker 2: is an open book, all of these amazing tales are
Speaker 2: right there on display, just waiting for us to explore.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities. It had been a
Speaker 2: tumultuous decade in England. For generations, the Stuart monarchs had
Speaker 2: reigned over England, claiming a divine right to rule the nation.
Speaker 2: Their authority came straight from God himself and thus should
Speaker 2: not be questioned. Parliament at the time had become increasingly Puritan,
Speaker 2: and so when King Charles the First married the French
Speaker 2: Catholic Henrietta Maria, and his support of an English High
Speaker 2: Church was redoubled, they worried about a backslide into Roman Catholicism.
Speaker 2: Tensions between the crown and the Parliament grew until sixteen
Speaker 2: forty two, when the King tried to arrest five members
Speaker 2: of the House of Commons, widely considered an assault on
Speaker 2: its constitutional privilege. Negotiations between parties fell apart, and on
Speaker 2: August twenty second of sixteen forty two, Charles declared war
Speaker 2: on Parliament. The civil war that erupted as a result
Speaker 2: would last for two whole years and exposed the deep
Speaker 2: divides in politics and religion that had long been simmering
Speaker 2: in England. In the end, the Royalist army was defeated
Speaker 2: and Charles was captured by Parliament's forces. In victory, Parliament
Speaker 2: faced a massive dilemma, what exactly do we do with
Speaker 2: the King? Debate raged on for months before a grim
Speaker 2: decision was finally made. On January thirtieth of sixteen forty nine,
Speaker 2: Charles the First was brought to London Bridge, where, in
Speaker 2: front of a crowd of his former subjects, London's official executioner,
Speaker 2: Richard Brandon, ended the king's life with an axis blow.
Speaker 2: The head was displayed on a spike to deter any
Speaker 2: Royalists from further action. Eventually it made its way to
Speaker 2: the Tower of London, where it was placed into storage.
Speaker 2: In the coming years, another would rise to take the
Speaker 2: mantle of Leader of the Commonwealth. One Oliver Cromwell, a
Speaker 2: farmer and a senior officer in the Parliamentarian Army, who
Speaker 2: rose to claim the mantle of Lord Protector in sixteen
Speaker 2: fifty three. His Puritan administration championed religious tolerance, although brutally
Speaker 2: cracked down on Royalist descent wherever it reared its head,
Speaker 2: and conspiracies to reinstate the royal line were many. The
Speaker 2: beheading at Charles the First cast a long shadow over
Speaker 2: the political landscape. Cromwell would rule until his death in
Speaker 2: the autumn of sixteen fifty eight, after a stroke left
Speaker 2: him incapacitated. With its figure had gone, Parliament was once
Speaker 2: again leaning toward Royalist sentiment. Within days of the Lord
Speaker 2: Protector's death, a measure was passed Oliver Cromwell's corpse was
Speaker 2: a trader, and so a posthumous execution was ordered for
Speaker 2: the dead man, who was exhumed and summarily beheaded, and,
Speaker 2: as with Charles's skull displayed at the Palace of Westminster,
Speaker 2: now as a warning to those who may try to
Speaker 2: carry on Cromwell's republican tradition. It would be displayed there
Speaker 2: for nearly two years. As the Stuart monarchy reclaimed the
Speaker 2: throne after the coronation of Charles the Second in sixteen sixty,
Speaker 2: the head was removed from its public perch, boxed up
Speaker 2: and placed in Saint George's Chapel at Windsor Castle, with
Speaker 2: the thought that its gruesome reminder was no longer necessary.
Speaker 2: It would remain hidden until sixteen eighty five, after Charles
Speaker 2: the Second's brother, James the Second, took the throne. You see,
Speaker 2: it was during his reign that yet another uprising took place,
Speaker 2: and although it was quelled, Cromwell's head was brought back
Speaker 2: out and put on display at the Tower of London
Speaker 2: just to be safe. And after that, while the head
Speaker 2: vanished from official inventories, its ultimate fate shrouded in mystery.
Speaker 2: And looking at these two gruesome spectacles, several striking parallels
Speaker 2: and contrasts emerge. Both heads were exhibited in highly visible
Speaker 2: civic locations, ensuring that the largest possible number of ordinary
Speaker 2: citizens would witness the stark warning. Yet the timing of
Speaker 2: the displays diverged dramatically. Charles the First's head was shown
Speaker 2: immediately after his death, serving to legitimize a brand new
Speaker 2: Commonwealth and a signal that the old order had been broken.
Speaker 2: Cromwell's head, by contrast, was displayed years after his burial,
Speaker 2: precisely to delegitimize the Republican experiment that he had embodied
Speaker 2: and to try to reinforce the restored Stewart claim to
Speaker 2: divine right. But the most striking difference of all between
Speaker 2: those heads was probably how they were treated after they.
Speaker 1: Were on display. Charles the first head was buried neat
Speaker 1: the floor of Saint Peter ad Vincula, a gesture of
Speaker 1: royal clemency that allowed the king's remains to rest in
Speaker 1: consecrated ground. Crownwell's head, on the other hand, simply vanished,
Speaker 1: reflecting the monarchy's intention to erase his legacy entirely. Erasmus
Speaker 1: was a large, friendly man, although his face didn't always
Speaker 1: show it. His features tended to droop and make it
Speaker 1: look like he was scowling, but in truth he had
Speaker 1: never been happier in his life. The year it was
Speaker 1: seventeen ninety and he was living with his second wife
Speaker 1: and their children in their home in Derbyshire, England. Although
Speaker 1: he was a doctor by trade, he also had a
Speaker 1: second passion invention. He was seated now in his workshop
Speaker 1: sketching plans for a combustion device that could be used
Speaker 1: to propel carriages. He already tinkered with his existing carriage,
Speaker 1: making it sturdier and easier to steer. Now, he wondered
Speaker 1: if he could get it to move on its own
Speaker 1: without horses. But this invention would have to wait. The
Speaker 1: sun was rising and he needed to get out to
Speaker 1: his garden to observe his plants. Now that might sound
Speaker 1: boring to you and I, but natural observation had always
Speaker 1: been an important part of Erasmus's medical practice, because, as
Speaker 1: far as Erasmus was concerned, the only difference between a
Speaker 1: doctor and a shaman was observation as to whether a
Speaker 1: plant was actually effective at treating the disease in question.
Speaker 1: Keeping an open mind, but also doing empirical research allowed
Speaker 1: Erasmus to find success treating people who other doctors hadn't
Speaker 1: been able to help. For example, back in the seventeen sixties,
Speaker 1: he had become so well known for this approach to
Speaker 1: medicine that the King himself asked Erasmus to be his
Speaker 1: personal physician, but Erasmus declined. He wanted to have time
Speaker 1: to focus on his experiments. Looking at a thorn apple
Speaker 1: plant growing in his garden, he was pleased at how
Speaker 1: well it was doing. Erasmus had learned to cultivate plants
Speaker 1: by splicing different samples to create the strongest possible plant.
Speaker 1: It was the kind of thing that humanity had done
Speaker 1: for thousands of years, but now he was putting these
Speaker 1: plants to the greatest possible use. After his work in
Speaker 1: the garden was done, he spent his afternoon at his
Speaker 1: medical practice, attending to patience. He saw one man who
Speaker 1: he felt quite bad for, because thus far he'd been
Speaker 1: unable to help him. The span was large, like Erasmus himself,
Speaker 1: but unlike Erasmus, he had poor circulation and stamina. His
Speaker 1: heart seemed to be struggling. In the past, Erasmus had
Speaker 1: also treated this man's father, who had died from a
Speaker 1: similar condition. The father ate as much as Erasmus and
Speaker 1: was also quite large, and so it seemed to this
Speaker 1: doctor that the father had passed this propensity toward overeating
Speaker 1: onto his son. Erasmus worried that he had done the
Speaker 1: same to his own children. But as he checked the
Speaker 1: man's vitals, a star startling link formed in his mind
Speaker 1: between the thorn apple and his garden and the man
Speaker 1: on his exam table. Both were the product of their parents.
Speaker 1: Only one had inherited traits that were useful, and the
Speaker 1: other had inherited traits that were harmful, and while the
Speaker 1: plant and its offspring would endure, this patient sadly would not.
Speaker 1: Much of the plant and animal kingdom that Erasmus had
Speaker 1: observed behaved in a similar way. Each species produced variations,
Speaker 1: the most adaptable of which survived and even evolved into
Speaker 1: new species. It had struck him as odd that so
Speaker 1: many plants and animals all seemed to be a variation
Speaker 1: of one another. Even humans themselves were a sort of
Speaker 1: variation on a chimpanzee if one observed how similar the
Speaker 1: two species were. And so that night, Erasmus took his
Speaker 1: idea to the latest meeting of the Lunar Society, a
Speaker 1: group of scientists and inventors that he was friends with.
Speaker 1: His friend Josiah Wedgewood was present. Josiah was a businessman
Speaker 1: who always encouraged Erasmus's endeavors, including his writing of poetry,
Speaker 1: which had in fact led to him becoming the most
Speaker 1: popular poet in England on top of all of his
Speaker 1: other accomplishments. Josiah thought that Erasmus's theory that all life
Speaker 1: might somehow be connected in some way was quite interesting,
Speaker 1: and told him that he should expand on it in
Speaker 1: a book. Encouraged, Erasmus decided to do just that. They
Speaker 1: spent the rest of the meeting discussing the abolition of
Speaker 1: slavery and the education of women, two causes the society supported,
Speaker 1: but they were having trouble gaining traction for in English society,
Speaker 1: and over the next few years, Erasmus expanded on his
Speaker 1: ideas in his two volume work Zoonomia, where he detailed
Speaker 1: his understanding of anatomy and how to treat various illnesses.
Speaker 1: And in the book, this is something that he wrote,
Speaker 1: would it be too bold to imagine that, in the
Speaker 1: great length of time since the earth began to exist,
Speaker 1: perhaps millions of years, that all warm blooded animals have
Speaker 1: arisen from one living filament. Sadly, the book didn't gain
Speaker 1: much traction during his lifetime. Decades later, though, long after
Speaker 1: Erasmus's death, his grandson Charles, began to research his grandfather
Speaker 1: in an attempt to get to know him. Erasmus's ideas
Speaker 1: inspired Charles's own research, and eventually, through observing animal and
Speaker 1: plant life, Charles put forth his own theory of evolution. Curiously,
Speaker 1: it was Erasmus Darwin and not his grandson Charles, who
Speaker 1: first thought of the foundational scientific theory. Erasmus was a polymath,
Speaker 1: someone who is knowledgeable about a variety of things. For
Speaker 1: all his accomplishments, though it was the writing least admired
Speaker 1: in his own lifetime that contained his greatest ideas. I
Speaker 1: hope you enjoyed today's guided tour through the Cabinet of Curiosities.
Speaker 1: This show was created by me Aaron Mankey in partnership
Speaker 1: with iHeart Podcasts, researched and written by the Grim and
Speaker 1: Mild team, and produced by Jesse Funk. Learn more about
Speaker 1: the show and the people who make it over at
Speaker 1: Grimandmild dot com slash Curiosities. You'll also find a link
Speaker 1: to the official Cabinet of Curiosity's hardcover book, available in
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Speaker 1: slash Grimandmild, and until next time, stay curious.