Crowe discovers that he is related to last man beheaded in Britain
RUSSELL CROWE has revealed that he is directly related to the last man in Britain to be beheaded and whose death inspired the phrase “laughing his head off ”.
The New Zealand-born Gladiator star revealed on Twitter that he had been investigating his family lineage, and had come across a number of “fascinating” discoveries.
On his paternal grandmother’s side of the family, he is a direct descendant of Simon Fraser, the 11th Lord Lovat, notorious in 18th-century Britain as “the Fox”, a machiavellian, double-crossing menace.
His troublemaking finally caught up to him in 1747, when he was condemned to death by the House of Lords and executed on Tower Hill for supporting the Jacobite Bonnie Prince Charlie. The execution was deemed so important by George II that he erected additional viewing stands for the thousands of spectators who turned out to the event.
However, one of these platforms is said to have collapsed moments before the execution, killing about nine people. As the story goes, this caused such amusement to Fraser that he was still laughing when the axe came down – coining the phrase “laughing his head off ”.
The Golden Globe winner wrote on the social media platform: “On my father’s mother’s side, via John (Jock) Fraser (arrived in NZ in 1841) we directly connect back to Simon Fraser. 11th Lord Lovat. Look him up.
“He’s quite the character. The Old Fox, they used to call him.
“Seems his machiavellian ways caught up to him at the age of 80, & he has a claim to infamy as the last man to have the head chopped off his living body in the Tower of London. His death even coined a phrase.
“Apparently, they set up temporary stands for the gentry to watch him die.
“One of these stands collapsed which resulted in the death of nine onlookers.” Crowe added: “I’ve been on the hunt to track down my Italian forebears for quite some time.
“Folkloric family tales and misspelling had seen me travel on a number of wrong tracks.”
He detailed how his great great great grandfather, Luigi Ghezzi, was born in Parma and worked in Argentina before he decided to travel to India.
On route he was shipwrecked and ended up in Cape Town, where he met and married Mary Ann Curtain and together they migrated to New Zealand in 1864.
Crowe’s Maori heritage is well known. He is also the cousin of the late New Zealand cricketer Martin Crowe.
He said he also now knows that he has roots in Norway, Italy, and Scotland. As well as supposedly Ireland but claimed, “We don’t know how/who.”
Among the findings, Crowe revealed that on his mother’s side, three generations apart there are women who both married men called Crowe.
Fraser was sentenced to death for the first time in 1698 after he raped and forceably married the widow of his late Scottish clan leader.
He fled to France where he joined the exiled Jacobites, loyal followers of James II. But he would later betray them to the Duke of Queensbury, head of the Scottish Ministry, in 1703, leading to his imprisonment in France.
He escaped in 1715 and returned to Scotland where he was granted a pardon. But his loyalties reverted back once again to the Jacobites, as he publically voiced h8is support for them during an uprising.
The rebellion was defeated at the battle of Culloden and Fraser was condemned to death.
‘He’s quite the character. The Old Fox, they used to call him’