ancestor." Russell did not take the correct care with the head; in drunken gatherings, he passed the head around, leading to "irreparable erosion of its features". Cox connived to get the head using a different approach. He offered Russell small sums of money, gradually reaching the total of just over £100, and Russell could not pay when the loan was recalled. Thus his only option was to give up the head. In April 1787 it was legally transferred from Russell to Cox. As Fitzgibbons 2008, Pearson, and Morant argued, Cox's pursuit of the head appears to be for retail investment. By the time of his acquisition, he was a rich jeweller and no longer owned his museum, so display was not his intention. Cox sold the head in 1799 to a trio of speculators, the Hughes brothers, for £230 (about UK £30,000 in 2020 money). Interested in starting their own display in Bond Street, the brothers acquired the head as part of other Cromwell-related items. Thousands of posters were produced for the event, but the exhibit was marred by doubtful provenance. The Hughes brothers and their publicist, John Cranch, wrote Cox to ask about the gaps in the journey, but Cox was evasive, leading to concerns that he had sold them a fake. Indeed, Cranch could not come up with a documentary history of how the head came into their hands, so improvised a story that Cromwell's head was "the only instance of a head cut off and spiked that had before been embalmed; which is precisely the case with respect to the head in question". Although Henry Ireton had also been embalmed before being beheaded, the story stuck, but it was in vain. The exhibition was a failure. The entrance fee was high (two shillings and sixpence, about the equivalent of £5) and rumours that the head was a fake were prevalent. 19th and 20th centuries Despite the failure of the Hughes brothers' exhibition, a Hughes daughter continued to show the head to anyone who wanted to see it. An offer was made to Sir Joseph Banks, but "he desired to be excused from seeing the remains of the old Villanous Republican, the mention of whose very name made his blood boil with indignation". William Bullock, considering a purchase, wrote to Lord Liverpool, who stated "the strong objection which would naturally arise to the exhibition of human remains at