#execution of charles i

[maestros6]

Whitehall, 30th January 1649 - the Execution of Charles I by Ernest Crofts (1880s)

[cromwellrex2]

The Trial of the King, January 1649: ‘I tell you we will cut off his head with the crown on it,’

Revolution and Regicide

Judgement of Charles I by Ladislaus Bakalowicz (c1860)

EVENTS MOVED swiftly in the January of 1649. The ordnance appointing the High Court of Justice moved rapidly to the House of Lords where it was promptly rejected with many peers doubting the judicial or constitutional grounds on which Parliament could place the monarch on trial for treason. The Earl of Northumberland highlighted the difficulty in establishing which party had first declared war on the other, given the almost accidental commencement of armed conflict in 1642. Indeed, this lack of clarity as to the authority of the High Court of Justice to bring the King to trial at all dogged the proceedings throughout and questioned the legitimacy of its ultimate ruling. The Commons however were in no mood to brook dissent: claiming that ‘the Commons in Parliament assembled, hath the force of law,’ it rejected the Lords’ arguments and swiftly passed the ordinance into law on 6th January. The Rump then appointed 135 commissioners to act as judge and jury, although only sixty eight so appointed actually took up the role. The Grandees were also disunited. Thomas Fairfax was appalled by the whole business and publicly distanced himself from the trial, whereas Henry Ireton and Oliver Cromwell remained in the capital, symbolic support to the revolutionary enterprise.

The Lord President, effectively both prosecuting counsel and senior judge, was John Bradshaw, a republican barrister from Stockport who had not seen action in the wars, but was nonetheless convinced of the righteousness of the Parliamentary cause under God, and of the need to bring an end to the monarchy that had, in his view, brought England to the brink of ruin. Charles was brought from St James’ Palace to the Westminster Hall on 20th January. The King dressed in black for the occasion, including a cloak that clearly displayed the badge of the Order of the Star and Garter. He looked regal indeed, causing a last minute drop in confidence on the part of the commissioners and Cromwell himself, witnessing Charles’ arrival. When Cromwell urged the commissioners to be clear on the authority they held to try the King, they agreed that the Commons of England gave them authority enough: no other argument was ever made.

Westminster was fashioned into the appearance of a court house, with a stage erected to seat Bradshaw and his fellow judges, a table for clerks to record the proceedings, and a seat for the King, who kept his hat on his head throughout the trial, to face his inquisitors. John Cook, one of the prosecuting barristers, read the charge, that by pursuing war with his Parliament, Charles had sought to rule as an absolute monarch and was therefore condemned as ‘a tyrant, traitor, murderer, and a public and implacable enemy of the Commonwealth of England’. Charles laughed out loud at this and asked the question the commissioners had dreaded - by what authority did this court seek to put on trial their lawful king? Throughout the proceedings Charles continued to needle his prosecutors with this demand and never received a clear or satisfactory answer. For the next three days the trial continued in this vein. The King refused to enter a plea because to do so would be to confer legitimacy on the court and therefore to collude in their right to condemn him; Bradshaw flailed when faced by the King’s demands for precedent or sources of constitutional authority. His counters focused on Charles’ behaviour and the previous removal of unworthy monarchs in medieval times. All present knew this argument was weak: the usurpations associated with, for instance, the Wars of the Roses, were essentially coups within the ruling royal family. On no previous occasion had a rival source of authority to royal power sought the removal of a monarch.

The impasse remained unresolved. With Charles refusing not only to enter a plea, but also claiming that he represented the true liberties of England, a frustrated Bradshaw ordered the clerks to enter a plea of guilty on the King’s behalf. Witnesses, who could not be heard in court due to Charles’ refusal to plead, were therefore interviewed by a sub-committee of the court and their testimony accepted. The court was adjourned on 27th January and the commissioners retired to deliberate. There was much disquiet in the Kingdoms at the way events had transpired. Even the Parliamentary-loyalist Londoners were outraged to the extent Bradshaw himself feared to walk abroad without a guard of soldiers; the Scottish government denounced the trial of a Stuart King and the commander of the Army himself, Fairfax, was known to be deeply troubled. The job of Cromwell, Bradshaw and Ireton was therefore, in this febrile atmosphere, to impress on any wavering commissioners that they must finish what they had started.

So it was that on 28th January 1649 the sentence of death was passed by the court. The death warrant was signed by Bradshaw, Cromwell, Ireton and Colonel Thomas Pride, and just 59 of the commissioners. The show trial thus ended with a mockery of Parliamentary representation sealing the fate of Charles. One wonders what John Pym would have made of it all.

Charles was brought back to court the following day to receive the judgement. He made a last ditch plea to have his case heard before Commons and Lords and despite some sympathy amongst some of the commissioners to this request, Cromwell’s will prevailed and Charles was hustled away and back to St James’ Palace. He spent his last forty eight hours receiving spiritual sustenance from his personal chaplain, donating his personal effects and saying farewell to his distressed and terrified children, Princess Elizabeth and Prince Henry. On 30th January, the King was escorted under armed guard to the hastily constructed scaffold outside Indigo Jones’ Banqueting Hall in Whitehall. Soldiers kept a disbelieving crowd at bay as the monarch mounted the scaffold. He took prayers with his chaplain and made an unrepentant speech (characterised by the phrase ‘a subject and a sovereign are clean different things’) and finally lay face down to receive the death stroke. The executioner took just one efficient blow with the axe to sever Charles’ head from his body. When the head was shown to the watching Londoners in customary fashion, the crowd, according to witnesses present, let out an audible moan.

For the first time since the two realms came into being, England and Scotland were Kingdoms without a King.

[maypoleman1]

30th January

Execution of King Charles I

The Execution of Charles I by Unknown. Source: National Galleries of Scotland website

On this day in 1649 King Charles I was executed following his trial for treason by Parliament. Charles had gone to war with his own legislative body in order to impose the Anglican religion and in defence of the Divine Right of Kings. Charles lost the war and, ultimately, his head too. His reign was followed by republican rule and supporters of the new Commonwealth would celebrate the anniversary of the death of the King with the Calves’ Head Club feast every 30th January at the club of the same name. At the feast, calves’ heads, a symbol of idiocy, were served, representing the former King’s policies; a cod was also served, representing Charles himself alongside a pike, its mouth stuffed with fish, representing Tyranny. After the feast a toast was raised to the execution with the words: ‘To those patriots who killed the tyrant!’ The Restoration saw the end of the Calves’ Head Feast, and the veneration of the beheaded Charles as a Protestant saint. The Feast of Charles was marked as an Anglican religious feast until 1859 and several churches are still dedicated to Charles the Martyr, the oldest being located at Peak Forest near Buxton, Derbyshire; Tunbridge Wells in Kent, and Falmouth in Cornwall.

[lordhoptons]

Whitehall

Next weekend (Sunday 25th January), the annual King’s Army Whitehall Parade and Charles I Commemoration takes place. We follow the route that Charles I took to his untimely death in Whitehall, London. The King’s Army have been privileged to be able to hold this event for the past 40 years. The timetable for the event is as follows: 10am – Lord Hopton’s Regiment of Foote will place a wreath at the…

View On WordPress