The Execution of Charles I

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• 1. Introduction
• 2. The unrighteous king
• 3. The end of monarchy
• 4. Fighting for their rights
• 5. A radical view of history
• 6. Conclusion
• 7. Find out more
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Introduction

Common wisdom has it that the execution of Charles I on 30 January 1649 was a desperate, aberrant act by a small and reluctant minority of English parliamentarians - opposed by the right-thinking bulk of the population. One seventeen year-old boy in the crowd at Whitehall recorded that the execution was met with 'such a groan as I have never heard before, and desire I may never hear again'. This lad grew up to become a nonconformist minister in the 1660s but his views echoed those of a Restoration Bishop who claimed no king 'ever left the world with more sorrow: women miscarried, men fell into melancholy'. Over half of those sitting in the House of Commons in December 1648 had to be purged by Colonel Pride and his soldiers before the trial of the king could be undertaken - and this was of course a parliament from which royalist sympathisers had long been dismissed. Barely half of the one hundred and thirty five men nominated to the High Court of Justice to try the king actually attended its proceedings; sixty-eight were there when sentence was handed down, but only fifty-nine actually signed the death warrant, some later claiming undue pressure, especially from Oliver Cromwell. One member of the Rump, Thomas Hoyle, committed suicide on the anniversary of Charles' execution in 1650, while the death the same year of another, Rowland Wilson, was attributed to melancholy and guilt.

'...the execution was met with 'such a groan as I have never heard before, and desire I may never hear again'.'

For many historians, the regicides were 'rogues and knaves', or self-righteous fanatics driven to an Old Testament-inspired vengeance against an ungodly king who wantonly reopened the civil war in 1648 and could never be trusted to make a settled peace. No one would claim that the trial and execution of Charles I was widely supported by political elites, or met with popular acclaim. In this article, however, I shall argue that it is misleading to present the regicide only as a monstrous aberration; it is part of the comforting, moderate mythology of English history that the English do not do this sort of thing, and when it somehow happens, it is an unnatural mistake, the product of extreme short-term crisis. Here I want to present a different version: my argument is that regicide was not simply a result of the impasse of 1648, but a solution made thinkable by longer-term aspects of English political culture and history.

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Published: 2001-05-01