History’s greatest conundrums and mysteries solved

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KINGS AND QUEENS

What happened to Charles I’s head?

VIEWING THE VANQUISHED Oliver Cromwell signed the death warrant of Charles I – but he did allow the king’s head to be sewn back onto his body before it was buried at Windsor

GETTY IMAGES X3, ALAMY X2

Well, it was chopped off on 30 January 1649. The king had lost the Civil Wars, and had been sentenced to be executed for the rather unlikely crime of high treason. After the unknown executioner carried out the deed with a single strike of his axe, several people approached the scaffold at Banqueting House and dipped their handkerchiefs into Charles’s blood to make gory souvenirs. As for the head, Oliver Cromwell allowed it to be sewn back on to the body, which was then buried quietly at Windsor Castle. So quietly, in fact, that everyone forgot exactly where it lay. Then, in 1813, a team of workmen found the lead coffin by chance, and King George III’s physician successfully identified the body as that of Charles I. The head, noted the doctor, was “loose, and, without any difficulty, was taken up and held to view”.

DOOMED MONARCH Charles I was defeated in the Civil Wars, and then executed for treason – beheaded outside the Banqueting House in Whitehall, London in 1649

What happened to Nonsuch Palace?

MONUMENTAL LOSS Nonsuch Palace was hugely expensive to build, but stood for less than 150 years before being pulled down to pay off debts

Nonsuch in Surrey was the most spectacular of Henry VIII’s royal palaces, its very name boasting that it was a place like no other. Construction began on 22 April 1538, soon after the birth of Henry’s long-anticipated son, and it was still unfinished when he died in 1547. Construction cost at least £24,000 (perhaps £20m today), but Nonsuch stood for less than 150 years. Having changed hands several times, it was given by Charles II to his mistress, the Countess of Castlemaine, who tore it down c1682–83 to pay her gambling debts.

Few traces of the palace have survived, though depictions of the building in its pomp are displayed in several museums. Sadly, this architectural marvel was wiped off the face of the Earth – giving the name Nonsuch a very different meaning.

HIDDEN HISTORY A 1959 excavation revealed new details of the palace’s layout

Why did Persian kings have so many eyes?

THE EYES HAVE IT From the sixth century BC, Persia’s Achaemenid rulers were served by many officials

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History Revealed Magazine

21 December 2023

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