After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal - Execution of Charles I

Episode Date: May 1, 2024

In 1649, Charles I had his head chopped off for treason. It's a unique, divisive moment in English history. Was Charles a tyrant or a martyr? Was his trial justice or a kangaroo court? Did he deserve to die?Our guest to help tell this truly incredible piece of history is Ronald Hutton - one of Britain's foremost historians who is working on a three volume biography of Oliver Cromwell.Ronald will be returning next week to help us tell the other half of this story — the Revenge meted out on those responsible after the Restoration of the monarchy eleven years later.Edited by Tom Delargy. Produced by Freddy Chick. Senior Producer is Charlotte Long.Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Get a subscription for £1 per month for 3 months with code AFTERDARK sign up at https://historyhit/subscription/ You can take part in our listener survey here.

Westminster Hall is the oldest part of the Houses of Parliament in London. It is a huge cavernous space, the foundations for which were laid in the late 11th century by the son of William the Conqueror. You may well be familiar with the space, even if you've never visited it, for it was here that people around the world watched Queen Elizabeth II's coffin lying in state for five days and five nights in 2022. The weight of history in its walls was palpable, even through the TV screen. The Hall's history is intertwined with that of the Magna Carta, the rise of Richard the Lionheart, the fall of Richard II, and the fates of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn.

Yet, in my mind, one event stands out above all of these. Westminster Hall, January 1649. King Charles I is on trial for treason and the hall is packed to the rafters. Civil war has torn at the sinews of England, then Scotland and Ireland for most of the decade. Fighting continues but Charles has lost. Those who observe him now note that he is a short man but bejewelled in the regalia of his office he is every inch the king. He's being harangued by his judge, John Bradshaw, because he is refusing to cooperate. Charles, you see, secure in his divine right, will enter no plea. Instead, he asks by whose

authority, by what law, he, the king, can possibly be tried for treason. Bradshaw gives no grounds, however, saying Charles Stuart is a tyrant called here by the people of England. Then, supposedly, a woman's voice calls out from the galleries. She insists that not a half, not a quarter of the people of England endorse what is unfolding. Legend has it that this voice belonged to Jane Fairfax, wife of Thomas Fairfax, leader of the army that defeated the king. So many conflicting ideas meet in this moment. They meet in this hall that is the fulcrum of English history. Was Charles I guilty of treason? On whose side were the English people? Where do they lie on the matter now? And did the king deserve to die? Hello and welcome to After Dark. I'm Maddy.

And I'm Anthony. And this episode, our guest is friend of the podcast and all-round beloved historian, Professor Ronald Hutton. He is, of course, a historian of the 16th and 17th centuries, Ronald Hutton. He is, of course, a historian of the 16th and 17th centuries, known for his work on witchcraft, paganism, magic, and much more besides. He is currently writing a major new biography of Oliver Cromwell, and today he's going to help us with not one, but two episodes, helping to tell the story of the regicide of Charles I and the revenge of his son, Charles II. Ronald, welcome back to After Dark. Thank you. It's lovely to be back.

You're very welcome. So before we get into the trial and the eventual execution of Charles I, can you, if it's possible in simple terms, give us a little bit of context of the English Civil War, sometimes referred to as multiple civil wars. What is going on here? Who is in conflict? And how has it got to the point where Charles I is on trial? What's gone wrong is the total collapse of government in not one, but all three of the kingdoms which had been united by the Stuart royal family, that's Ireland, Scotland and England. A lot of the problem is that the huge split in Christianity we call the Reformation had left each of those kingdoms in a mess but in a different kind of mess. In Ireland the great majority of the population stuck by the old, the medieval church, and were Roman Catholics, with committees of gentry and clergy to manage the

church. No bishops, no cathedrals, no Christmas, no Easter, no rituals in churches. And the English had a much more moderate Reformation, so they keep lots of ceremonies, bishops, cathedrals, and festivals. But there's a minority who want to go the Scottish way and have a more extreme reformation and annihilate Roman Catholics. These three kingdoms hit each other like billiard balls because the man in charge, Charles I, tries to tidy up what is becoming an impossible situation by imposing his view of religion on all three kingdoms, which turns out to be one that most people in each actually don't want. So he's kind of going to lose, lose, lose situation. And as a result of this, all three of his kingdoms dissolve into civil war. Scotland goes first, Ireland goes next, England goes last. The problem is that each one's divided. The king is not a solitary egomaniac with an impossible dream. He is wedded to the idea of a Church

of England that's much more based upon ceremony and beauty and tradition, and an awful lot of people agree with him. And so the Civil War is in large part a fight between those who want one kind of Church of England, ceremony, bishops, tradition, and those who want a different kind, scripture, preaching, a link to hot Protestants on the continent. And not surprisingly, the first lot reckon they can trust the king, and the second lot don't. And the king loses largely because his enemies based in Parliament call in the Scots and that tips the balance against him. Otherwise, it's entirely possible that the king would have won the Civil War. So what we're left with is a ravaged, traumatized,

bitterly divided England with what has become a minority of believers in charge, people who have seized power against the wishes and the will of what turns out in the end to be most of the English. Nobody could have summed that up as well as you. If you were listening to After Dark for the first time, then you are so lucky to have Professor Ronald Hutton sum up the English Civil War, the Irish Civil War, the Scottish Civil War in this way, because this is the mind that has influenced so much of what is known about the Civil War today. And we could spend hours, days, weeks, episodes on the Civil War itself. But we're going to fast forward a little bit for the purposes of this episode, and we're going to go back to the trial, which we hinted at at the very beginning. How, Ronald, does a king come to trial? Obviously,

civil war is unusual in itself, but it's extra unusual then for it to end in the trial of a king because he was supposed to, was he not, have some immunity from this. The king certainly had some immunity from this. What doomed him was the hatred of him conceived by a unique and, in English terms, utterly unrepresentative body of people, and that's the soldiers of the army that had defeated him in the English Civil War. The guys who paid the soldiers and ran them, that's the king's enemies based in Parliament in London, actually wanted a deal with the king. And the king quite wanted a deal with them. The problem which went on for three years of bickering after the big civil war

was that Parliament offered the king its own terms, naturally enough, to settle the land with much more limited royal power, and a church reformed to make it more based on preaching and scripture and getting rid of all the things the king had liked in it. And the king's not unreasonable point of view was that an awful lot of the English had backed him in the war. And so the only way of getting a really durable settlement was a compromise between the two. In other words, that Parliament should allow a bit of ground to him and people who thought like him to reunite the nation. And that was actually not unreasonable. But Parliament's attitude was,

you lost bad luck, so you've got to agree our terms. And Charles kept on trying to win some concessions from them. The people who pushed the whole apple cart over in the end were those soldiers who defeated the king because they hated his guts for two reasons. First was it was his armies who'd repeatedly tried to kill them in the war, and he had led them. He'd been the opposing enemy on the battlefield. And second, a lot of the soldiers had been radicalized in the course of the fighting to see the war as a jihad in which it wasn't just a matter of having a church purged of ceremony and hierarchy it was a matter of the loving people who rejected a national church altogether to worship outside it and a lot of soldiers converted to this kind of

extreme radicalism and they had allies in the civilian population who also rejected a national church and there didn't seem much prospect that either the king or their own paymasters in parliament would accept this and so first the army turned on parliament and tried to push it into doing what it wanted for a couple of years. And when parliament, acting strictly according to its conscience, kept on saying, no, we've got to deal with the king. We've got to get him on board. Otherwise, we'll turn most of the country against us. And the army and those who agreed with it represented maybe 5% of the English and Welsh. This is a very small, very radical minority. Trouble is the soldiers are A, very determined.

They really believe God's on their side, otherwise they wouldn't have won the battles. And B, they're the only armed people in the country. And so having tried to persuade Parliament to do what they want by bullying it for two years, they eventually lose their tempers and expel the whole of the House of Lords and most of the House of Commons. of a minority of a minority that are willing to do their will, kill the king, get rid of the house of lords, break the traditional powers of the Church of England and give them a new kind of England with 95% of the nation against them. And this is Charles's point on trial. Charles did not actually take his stand on the divine right of kings. What he said was, my liberties are those of the English now, because the government now facing me is not elected by the English. It's one that's been installed by armed force against the will even of a minority of elected representatives. So if you don't give me my

legal rights, what legal rights are there for anybody? I just want to go to that moment of the trial. You mentioned earlier the absolute trauma and the ravaging of England, of what would become Britain. There's so much chaos. There has been so much chaos leading to this moment. there's so much chaos. There has been so much chaos leading to this moment. And yet the king takes what some would presumably see as quite a noble and dignified stand in his trial. On the other side, you've got this group of people, as you say, a relative minority in terms of the English population, but so convinced of their point of view. Can you tell us what it would have felt like in that atmosphere to be in that room during the trial? What was the feeling like? Was it a palpable struggle between these two clearly defined sides? Was it something more

complicated? And what was the king feeling in that moment? The king's feeling is what the king's feeling always had been, that basically he must be right because his conscience tells him he is. And so God must want him to act this way. Charles is a religious bigot just as much as the people facing him who are about to kill him. He believes that God has put him there to rule for the good of his people. And if he doesn't do what God wants, he's going to burn in hell. So it doesn't matter if he gets killed by evil men, that makes him a martyr. He goes straight

to heaven. He compromises, he goes against his conscience, he fries in hell for all eternity. He goes against his conscience. He fries in hell for all eternity. So the stakes are that high. The atmosphere in Westminster Hall, apart from the intervention of that single brave and anonymous woman from the gallery, is not that of division because it's a show trial. The whole room is packed with soldiers. I mean, visually, it's intensely dramatic. Let's imagine it from the viewpoint of the judges. They are on benches covered in scarlet cloth at one end of the hall, and in their middle is the judge, John Bradshaw, in a high chair covered in crimson velvet with clocks on either side and on the table, covered in a rich Turkish carpet in front. Then there's a space, and then there's the four-foot-eleven figure of Charles, dressed extensively in black with a hat

on his head and wearing the blue ribbon and the jewelled insignia of the Order of the Garter, every inch a king. Not many inches, but he looks great. And then beside him on the left, the place is packed with soldiers with muskets and swords in red coats. On the other side, the right side is the general public behind barriers to make sure they can't storm the court. And then there's a gallery above with this single heckler woman in it. The soldiers are there basically to arrest anybody who makes any trouble. The lady in the gallery gets up so fast they can't grab her, but some of them are already levelling muskets to shoot her. So this is carefully stage managed. It's a military court, a kangaroo court. It doesn't have the usual

atmosphere of the public court of justice. And so when we're talking about this, almost a stage that these actors are acting this trial out upon, we know that he is found guilty, but he refuses to enter a plea. And that seems to me, what you're saying is that's all part of that performance. The outcome is predetermined. Do you think that's accurate? Yes, I think it's accurate. This is controversial among experts, but my own view, which seems to be becoming the majority at the moment, is that Charles was doomed. He was going to die from the moment that the army came back to deal with him at the end of the wars. I don't think that it would have made any difference had Charles made any further concessions. Right from almost a

year before, when a rebellion broke out against the army's rule, which involved a lot of the English and most of the Welsh. The army had decided that if it won that next round of wars, it was going to kill the king. And so as soon as it came back from the wars, it basically gave parliament an option, break off talks with the king and put him on trial for his life or else. And Parliament went by its conscience and most people, all the lords and most of the House of Commons, disagreed with the army and tried to make a deal with the king that would secure as they sought their war aims. And the army turned on them immediately. And the condition of anybody remaining in parliament, the small number who did, was that the king goes on trial for his life.

And people on the whole, right through the Tudor and Stuart period, don't go on trial for treason unless those putting them on trial are sure they're going to get convicted. The big surprise is the king doesn't defend himself. He says the court has no legitimacy. So it has to hear the witnesses against him in private and then declare that he is condemned to death, which actually is against the law of the land automatically without entering a plea. Do you think that that is a move by Charles to invalidate the court? Is that his attempt at a version of a plea or a way of maybe escaping what some experts say is the inevitable outcome of this? Or is it that he's already accepted his

fate and he just doesn't want to participate for the sake of his immortal soul? his fate and he just doesn't want to participate for the sake of his immortal soul. We don't know what was going through Charles's head. It's entirely possible that he hoped that God would rescue him somehow at the last moment. On the other hand, pretty well from the beginning of the wars, Charles has said, this is what I believe in. This is the Ireland, Scotland, England that I think are right and God wants. I'm prepared to die for this if I have to. So he's setting himself up for martyrdom right from the beginning, which is why he plays the part so consummately well. I don't think there's any way that Charles can recognise the court. For one thing, it is a breach of everything that he believes in as religiously and constitutionally right. And second, it actually is constitutionally illegal. It's the product of an absolutely

blatant military coup. And that brings us just briefly back to the voice from the gallery, the woman's voice from the gallery. And there is plenty of speculation, one of which I alluded to in the introduction there, that it may be Jane Fairfax. But I think it's more appropriate to point out, as you were saying, Ronald, we don't actually know that, do we? We don't know who the voice was. But the real question is, I suppose, how accurate is she in saying that this is not the will of the English people, particularly the English people in her case she mentions? Firstly, do we know who she is? And secondly, how accurate do we think her point was? Okay, we don't know who she is, but she probably was Jane Fairfax. Why? Because at the time, no hunt was made for her identity, which there would have been given her dramatic intervention if she

hadn't had powerful friends. Second, 10, 11 years later at the restoration, when it's totally safe to do so, witnesses identify her as Jane Fairfax, and nobody contradicts this. So there's an element of doubt, but there's heavy probability that Jane is looking forward to a distant time when the majority of people might agree with them and there never is a time in England when the majority of people agree that there should be no monarchy, no second chamber to parliament and no established church of England which is equipped with bishops and cathedrals and lots of ritual. There may come a time when the English agree with this, but it hasn't happened yet. Catherine of Aragon and Berlin. The End And this month on Not Just the Tudors, I'm joined by a host of experts to tell the stories of the six queens of Henry VIII, who shaped and changed England forever. Subscribe to and follow Not Just the Tudors from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. so we have this show trial we have the king at the center of it refusing to acknowledge any of this is happening we We have these huge questions about English liberty,

English law, about the future of the king's soul, the future of the nation, all playing out in this performance. As you said, Anthony, this stage set with actors for all intents and purposes. But there's one element of this performance that we haven't spoken about, and that's the death warrant that is signed, the death warrant to bring about the execution of Charles I. Anthony, we do have an image of it, and we're going to describe it for listeners. Do you want to describe it? Shall I describe it? I'll tell you what, I've seen this in person, so I'll describe it. It is a rectangular piece of parchment. It is now quite stained and old. It's exactly what you want from an archival piece of 17th century paper. It has, I believe now, Ronald, you're going to have to correct me here, but from memory, potentially, what is it, 59 names in total, including, of

course, Oliver Cromwell's. And there are multiple, multiple seals on the second half of the page. The first half of the page describes what has been found during the trial and that Charles I is going to be killed. And then in that lower half of the page, the red wax seals. So it's a very dramatic document with all the signatures beside the seals. Ronald, correct me, tell me in better detail than I have described there what the... Because it's a very palpable document, right? You get a real sense of history from this. Yes, it's one of the key documents of English history, although it sent history down what turned out to be, in the long term, a blind alley,

in that it instituted a kind of England which came to an end only 11 years later and which we've never resumed in that. So it's one of the great turning points of English history in which English history ultimately failed to turn. And there are a lot of stories, admittedly retrospective, about the unseemly scramble to get it signed, about Oliver Cromwell going into the House of Commons and hauling out people who were on the tribunal to come and sign it, of Oliver and another very radical MP called Henry Martin, who are clearly very wound up, flicking ink into each other's faces as a joke, while the squabble over the signing is going on. So it's not the most dignified of processes. And you can tell who are the real zealots, because they're the people who

fill up the first couple of columns of signatures. First off is the judge of the court, which is how it has to be. Second, because of rank, is the only lord who's willing to sign. And third is Oliver himself. And there are an awful lot of Oliver's army officers there, and a lot of religious radicals. And then gradually you go down into the people who are clearly more reluctant to put their names, but are plucking up their courage or being pushed into it, until eventually you run out of people who are willing to sign under any circumstances. But it's still quite an impressive number of those who sat and listened to the trial. who sat and listened to the trial. I think today, it's a little bit difficult for us to grasp the significance of signing a document like this. But for the people who do sign this document,

it is so meaningful, isn't it, Ronald? It's such a powerful act to put your name and your seal to this. It's a remarkable moment, even if there is levity within that and some joking around and there's a lot of maybe nervous energy in the room. It's such a huge moment. It certainly is. And it's a huge moment for everybody. Most of the nation, in fact, most of the European world just cannot believe what is happening. They always dream that somebody would draw back from the brink, that they'd depose Charles or just put him in imprisonment in cold storage, or that they would put one of his younger children on the throne instead. Instead, it's a complete sweep. I think very few people believe the army would actually nerve themselves

up to do that. They thought it must be a bluff. It must be a way of getting a different settlement. Well, as you hinted to there, Ronald, we go from trial to execution, which brings us to the second narrative of this episode. On the 27th of January, the King's trial in Westminster Hall had ended, with Judge John Bradshaw saying, Charles the First spent much of the next two days with his children Elizabeth and Henry. Elizabeth wrote in her diary about her final meeting with her father the evening before his execution. As she cried, the king tried to comfort her

with these words, sweetheart you will forget this. The following morning, January 30th, ice covered the city. Charles, held in Whitehall now, asked for a second shirt so that the people would not mistake his shivering in the bitter air for a sign of fear. At 2pm, Charles was brought onto the scaffold at Whitehall, where a crowd of thousands had gathered. As he arrived on the platform, he saw that his executioner's identity was hidden by a mask and a heavy wig. Charles made a final speech, defending himself and saying, I am the martyr of the people.

He broke off during it to beg a soldier behind him to leave the executioner's axe alone, fearing the man was trying to blunt the blade. He finished by saying, I go from a corruptible to an incorruptible crown, where no disturbance can be, no disturbance in the world. Then all the words were said, and Charles lay his head down on the block. The masked executioner made quick work of it in the end, and then it was done. The English had killed their king.

This is one of those poignant moments in English history that everyone knows. We are taught this in school. Everyone's familiar with it. And everyone is familiar with the anecdote about Charles wearing two shirts to prevent him from shivering and giving the impression that he's maybe trembling with fear. First of all, is that accurate about the two shirts? And if so, what does this whole scene and Charles's response to it, Charles's behaviour in this moment that I think few of us can possibly comprehend, what does that tell us about his personality, how he meets his end as a king and as a human being? It tells us two things. The first, that this is, according to your point of view, either a very brave man or a particularly pig-headed one, obstinate and blinkered. The other point is that Charles is good at ritual. He's an intensely insecure, nervous man. He's definitely neurologically divergent in modern terms, which is why he can't understand other people, and they have problems understanding him. He loves ritual.

He loves dependable, wound-up, repetitive, clockwork-like action. It makes him feel secure. So although he is a dreadful politician and statesman, he can stage a scene to perfection. And he does that at his trial. And he does that at the execution where he is eloquence and majesty and martyrdom embodied in one. And this is without any coaching. And it's from somebody who normally has a severe and pronounced psychosomatic stammer. But at the time of his death, when he knows that he's got nothing left to lose, his stammer goes completely. He has perfect diction. And he gets his exit word perfect. I mean visually again like the trial it is stunningly dramatic. His last walk is from a chamber of his own palace where he's been put to wait for his death and then he's conducted through the banqueting house which is the main ceremonial centre of his palace, with this enormous painted ceiling by Rubens

above him, showing his father, James, ascending into heaven. And so Charles is about to make the same ascent, but in rather less gorgeously painted circumstances. And he steps out of the first story window onto this scaffold covered in deep, rich black cloth. We know this because it's the kind of absurd detail which his judges debate and record beforehand. The street in front is crowded with spectators, and he is surrounded by soldiers who are there to kill anybody trying to interrupt the proceedings. He has no idea who is about to kill him, literally. There is this guy in heavy disguise. Taking somebody's head off with a single painless blow of an axe is incredibly difficult. So part of Charles's anxiety

is that he hasn't got a klutz in charge of his exit. Mercifully for him, he hasn't. It's brilliantly done. And Charles acts brilliantly too. He delivers just the right exit speech, memorable one-liners, nothing too long, perfect dignity, showing himself as dying for his beliefs, dignity, showing himself as dying for his beliefs, but also for his nation. He remains in charge. He informs the executioner, you hit when I stretch out my hands. What I love about this is the idea that you mentioned earlier that Charles I loves ceremony and thrives amongst the kind of repetition and expectation and the formal expectation of ceremony. And then you hinted at this idea that the stammer goes in these last moments when he's delivering this speech. It makes me wonder how he feels at this point, if he actually feels, and this might sound odd, somewhat comfortable, because this in itself is a ceremony. This in

itself is something he must follow rigidly and confidently in the structure of what's happening around him. He knows where he needs to be. There are beats to hit. And I'm just wondering, as you're describing it, if that's something that gave him some form of purpose, role and comfort during those final minutes. As ever, I don't think we can get inside anybody's mind at this time or most other times in history. I think he's almost certainly completely bewildered by what had happened. He finds it hard to believe that God would allow this. On the other hand, if God is allowing this, then God clearly intends him to be a martyr, and he'd better play the part to perfection. But to a deeply devout Christian like Charles, when there's always this element

of doubt, he has absolutely no doubt that he is going to go to heaven or hell. Christians do not think otherwise. And so there is this element of doubt at the end as to his destination. But as for any truly devout Christian, he's simply hanging on to his faith that if he seems to do everything right, as God expects, then he really is going to be facing the heavenly choir in a few minutes. But like any dying, devout person, there is this nervousness about have you actually got it right? Charles behaves in such a dignified way or a way that acts the part required of him pretty perfectly. What do his enemies make of this moment with him on the scaffold that seems to go as choreographed wonderfully well. He

overcomes the stammer. His actual execution, the moment the blade falls, goes as smoothly as it possibly can. Is this a moment of triumph for Cromwell and his other officers and the men who signed that death warrant? Or is there a moment of reflection and maybe a little bit of regret in there? I don't think there's much sign of reflection or hesitation on the part of the people in charge of the army, but they are different from each other. And you can tell that by an almost absurd moment soon after the kings died, when the Dutch ambassadors who've raced over to try and stop the proceedings and been ignored are in the palace. And Sir Thomas Fairfax, now Lord Fairfax,

the guy in charge of the army, comes out of an inner room and asks them how things are with the king. This is about an hour after the kings died. So Fairfax clearly hasn't got a clue as to what has actually happened. And then they run into Cromwell and some of Cromwell's cronies. And Cromwell clearly knows everything that's happened. And he says he's giving directions for the body to be disposed of. So there's no unanimity among the army leaders. And as is customary with people in charge of other people's political executions, they aren't there. They're not witnesses of what's going on.

The army leaders are back in the palace behind, praying and conversing with each other, and waiting for the fatal moment to pass. I think that Cromwell and his people are incredibly relieved they've actually got to this stage. They've made it happen in the face of so much constitutional and political difficulty. And they're driven by their soldiers. It's the common soldiers, the army, who have pushed this process from the beginning because of their visceral hatred and distrust of the king and his supporters. So we have a situation where the king is dead, unbelievably maybe to the majority of people in England specifically. What happens next? Give us a brief roundup of what comes after the king's death, what form of

government takes hold, and how it shapes this new England. Well, the only people left standing in terms of authority are the relatively small remnant of MPs in what had been the House of Commons, who are prepared to support the trial and execution of the king. And they basically can't get a government together from themselves. They have to do two things now that the king has gone to make government possible. The first is to form an executive to run the state, a council of their members, but not impose an oath on them to agree with what's just happened. In other words, to allow people back who are prepared to accept the government as it is, without also accepting that it has a right to be there. So part two of the policy is

to allow back MPs into the House of Commons who will more than double its numbers without asking them to endorse what's gone on, but asking them to agree to help out to get England back together. They have to abolish the House of Lords because they can't get a quorum of the House of Lords to work with them. lords because they can't get a quorum of the House of Lords to work with them. They have to abolish the monarchy because they can't get anybody with royal blood to agree to work with them. And so what is patched together is a makeshift interim government. And basically, those in charge are going to spend the next 11 years trying to work out how to get a stable and viable government to run a revolutionary state. I think that's a perfect place to end this particular episode that of course has been focused on the execution of Charles I, but we are going to do a second episode. Join us again next time when we concentrate on the revenge

enacted by Charles I's son, Charles II, at his restoration in 1660. But until then, we want to say a huge thank you and goodbye to Professor Ronald Hutton, who will be joining us again in the next episode to tell us how that particular history unfolded.

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