Execution of Charles I
Charles I was beheaded outside his own banqueting house in Whitehall on 30 January 1649. The trial that produced it had no legal basis anyone could defend. The Commons had been purged by the army in December, with some 140 members excluded and 45 arrested, leaving a Rump that passed an ordinance the Lords rejected and then declared that the Commons alone could make law. A high court of 135 commissioners was named and fewer than half attended. Charles refused to plead throughout, on the argument that no court has jurisdiction over a king and that he stood for the liberty of his subjects in saying so — which was the best case he made in his life and was not without force. He was convicted as a tyrant, traitor, murderer and public enemy, and 59 men signed the warrant. He wore two shirts to the scaffold so that he would not shiver and be thought afraid, and the crowd is reported to have groaned rather than cheered. The executioner was masked and has never been identified. England was declared a commonwealth without a king or a House of Lords in March. The monarchy was restored in 1660, Cromwell's body was dug up and hanged, and the surviving regicides who could be caught were hanged, drawn and quartered. What the event established, and what 1688 confirmed, is that an English king could be removed — which changed the terms of every constitutional argument afterwards. The Eikon Basilike, a book of devotions presented as the king's own and published within days, went through some thirty-five editions in a year and did more for the royalist cause than he had managed alive. Milton was commissioned to answer it and did not succeed.
- Year: 1649 CE
- Category: Political
