I was doing some reading about him and came upon this passage about his execution via beheading:
As was common at the time, his head was embalmed and presented to his wife. She apparently carried it with her at all times until she died 29 years later at the age of 82.
:eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek:
I’ve never heard of this. How common was this practice? Did only the English do this or did the French stuff a guys head and give it to the family too? Did they stick a candle in it at halloween?
Sir Walter Raliegh’s wife was Pocahontas, IIRC. So maybe her carrying it with her always was an Indian thing. Probably not, but I thought I would throw it out.
There’s an Athapaskan Indian tribe living in British Columbia called the Carrier tribe. You know how they got that name? From their custom that widows carry their husbands around in a backpack for three years after death. Everyplace they go.
Pocahontas also died in her late teens or very early twenties, making it difficult for her to have carried around a head for 29 years, then die at age 82.
As to the OP, I have never heard of the custom. Most really nasty criminals (or politicians who evoked a real hatred from those in power) had their heads mounted on pikes projecting from fortress walls.
Not his Sir Walter’s head - his heart. She kept it in a pouch which she wore from a belt. Around her waist. Near her Brazilian-wax area.
And it wasn’t Catherine the Great - it was Peter the Great, whose wife was too favorable to a certan member of the court. Peter reacted by having his head put in an jar and ordered it kept in her bedroom.
While on a trip to Paris, Peter the Great once stopped at a public toilet and found out that it was out of paper. He wiped himself with a zillion-franc note and told the toilet-owner to fish for his tip. Except that the French didn’t use paper money back then.
And the medical name for the specific trauma from which Catherine died after the horse broke from its block and tackle: apocryphitis.
No, the usual version of the story is that it was indeed his head and this version is generally accepted as being true. The rules for the disposal of the bodies of those who had been executed for treason in Jacobean England varied, but it was by no means unusual for all the bits to be handed over to the relatives. It was then up to the relatives to dispose of them in whatever way they wished. Lady Raleigh’s method was decidedly eccentric. The rest of him was buried in St. Margaret’s, Westminster.
{Regis voice] Oh, gee, Slithy. You almost got it right. But you still go home with $800.[/Regis voice]
See, the problem is, the French issued banknotes from 1701-1710 for up to 10,000 Livres. They remained in circulation for long after their issue. 10,000 Livres would have been about $1500 US. Of course, the average fro…er, Frenchman never got to see such a note. And neither did Peter the Great when he made his first trip to France in 1698. But, when he was there on his second trip, in 1715/16, I have it on good authority that he could have easily wiped his royal tush with anything he damn-welled pleased. No, it wasn’t a “zillion franc note” as they didn’t use francs at that point. But whose to say he didn’t use a circulating note. After all, he was the bumpkin from Russia come to the big city.
did you mean that Catherine the Great was Peter the Great’s wife? She, of course wasn’t. Peter’s wife was(well, his second wife) was Catherine I. Not Catherine the Great. I never heard that Peter’s wife was having an affair with anyone at court.
Golly Sam, I didn’t write that Catherine the Great was wife to Peter the Great anymore than I wrote that Frederick the Great was his wife (although, had the two men been contemporaries they probably would have been Great together). And his wife probably didn’t have an affair - according to the story she only remarked to Peter on the doomed man’s good looks.
My point was that I doubt that the butt-wipe bank-note story is true. I’ll also add my belief that the story of Frederick’s releasing the only prisoner who admitted his guilt “before this man corrupts all these innocent men,” is also nothing more than an amusing invention.
(But I truly believe that the hatchet I recently bought is the same one George Washington used to cut down the cherry tree. Oh sure, it may look brand new, but that’s only because the handle’s been replaced twelve times and the head six.)
To further clarify, a swift glance at Simon Sebag Montefiore’s recent bio of Potemkin, Prince of Princes reveals that he devotes the entire final chapter to the assorted fates of Potemkin’s body and its various parts. While there are various murky episodes along the way, his head appears to have unambiguously remained attached to his torso.
