died in 1957, bequeathing the head to his son, also called Horace. The younger Horace Wilkinson wished to organise a proper burial for the head rather than a public display, so he contacted Sidney Sussex College, which Cromwell had attended in his youth and which welcomed the burial. There it was interred on 25 March 1960, in a secret location near the antechapel, preserved in the oak box in which the Wilkinson family had kept the head since 1815. The box was placed into an airtight container and buried with only a few witnesses, including family and representatives of the college. The secret burial was not announced until October 1962. Authenticity Head The authenticity of the head has long been debated, and has resulted in several scientific analyses. The most notable and detailed of these was Karl Pearson and Geoffrey Morant's study conducted in the 1930s, which concluded that the Wilkinson head was that of Cromwell. The position of the head, in relation to the heads of Bradshaw and Ireton, has also been called into question. Pearson and Morant upheld the originally understood position—traditionally, Bradshaw's head was in the middle, with Cromwell to the right and Ireton to the left— through careful analysis of contemporary poems and plans. The Hughes brothers' failure to piece together a solid history of the head was possibly partly responsible for their failure to attract visitors. The skull held by the Ashmolean, reputed to be that of Cromwell, was the head's first rival claim, but the provenance in that instance did not prove to be reputable. The story attached to the Ashmolean skull was that: Cromwell's head was conclusively seen on Westminster Hall as late as 1684, and it was on the south side of the Hall. Archaeological evidence also disproved the Ashmolean skull's authenticity. It was pierced from the top, not from the bottom; and the skull had no trace of skin or hair, showing it had never been embalmed. Body Rumours and conspiracy theories have circulated since Cromwell's head fell from Westminster Hall. According to Fitzgibbons, the rumours surrounding Cromwell's body immediately after his death are "merely good yarns born out of over-active imaginations". One legend claims that he was conveyed secretly to Naseby, the site of his "greatest victory and glory", for a midnight burial. The field was then ploughed over to hide evidence of the burial. Another legend, written in the