Charles I - Auburn Hair ?

A neat little one now, concerning Charles I. As ever with these 19th century publications the language is a little dated, so forgive it. The passage is from an 1881 publication titled The Sunday Magazine, and the particular article in which it's found is titled "Grey Hairs", by a Rev. J. G. Wood.

"The amount of red colouring matter in hair, for example, is very great, and often exists where it is unsuspected. Some years ago when red hair was at a discount, and ladies with black hair heaped derision on their red-haired sisters, they would not have felt much flattered if they had been told that their hair had quite as much of the red pigment as that of the most fiery-locked of the despised "carrots."

Yet the hair of William Rufus and of the blackest negro possess an equal amount of red matter, only in the latter the red is over-powered by the addition of black particles.

In the true auburn hair, where the black colouring matter is replaced by brown, the red is visible through the darker hue, and in the sunbeams makes the hair look as if mixed with threads of shining gold. In the museum at Oxford there is a lock of hair taken from the head of Charles I. Though it has lain for so many years in the tomb, it still retains its bright auburn, and in the sunlight the golden threads sparkle in it as if it belonged to a young girl."

I've included the first two paragraphs as they relate to another topic discussed on these pages. Namely that people with dark hair have the red pigment in their hair too, it's just masked or "over-powered" by the darker pigment. Today we would say that people with darker hair also have the pheomelanin that makes red hair red, but that they also have high levels of eumelanin that mask it - which redheads do not have (or have, but to a relatively lower extent).

As for Charles the First we already have a redhead page for him.

See here: https://redheadsinhistory.blogspot.com/2018/06/226-charles-i-of-england.html

It would perhaps be a little cheeky to claim him as a redhead, but it does seem that his hair at least had some reddish elements. I also came across this article which supposedly shows some of his hair.

https://news.justcollecting.com/king-charles-i-beard-hair-auction/

The article states that one Sir Henry Halford, a physician to King George III, who was part of a group that inspected the newly discovered tomb of Charles back in 1813, described the hair as:

"..thick at the back part of the head and, in appearance, nearly black. A portion of it, which has since been cleaned and dried, is of a beautiful dark brown colour. That of the beard was a redder brown."

So in this account the hair is somewhat darker. In the images accompanying the article the hair also appears fairly dark, though it's often hard to judge such images due to variations in lighting and photographic methods. So doubt is the order of the day. Especially given that the tomb of Charles was said to have been opened on the 1st of April, 1813 (!)