In Our Time - The Trial of Charles I

Episode Date: June 4, 2009

Melvyn Bragg and guests Justin Champion, Diane Purkiss and David Wootton discuss the trial of Charles I, recounting the high drama in Westminster Hall and the ideas that led to the execution.Begun on 20th January 1649, the trial culminated in the epoch-making execution of an English monarch. But on the way it was a drama of ideas about kingly authority, tax, parliamentary power and religion, all suffused with personal vendettas, political confusion and individual courage. It was also a forum in which the newly-ended Civil War and the events of Charles's reign were picked over by the people who had experienced them. Melvyn and guests recount the events of the trial, explore the central arguments and see whether, 350 years later, we can work out who really won.Justin Champion is Professor of the History of Early Modern Ideas at Royal Holloway, University of London; Diane Purkiss is a Fellow and tutor at Keble College, Oxford; David Wootton is Professor of History at the University of York.

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. Thanks for downloading the In Our Time podcast. For more details about In Our Time and for our terms of use, please go to BBC.co.com.uk forward slash radio four. I hope you enjoy the programme. Hello. In defending the killing of a king, the poet and Republican John Milton declared, if men within themselves would be governed by reason

and not generally give up their understanding to a double tyranny of custom from without and blind affections from within, they would discern better what it is to favour and uphold the tyrant of a nation. Milton's tyrant was Charles I, executed for treason in 1649. The events of his trial saw drama of ideas about kingship, parliament, law and power, set amidst political confusion and the bloody aftermath and rupture of civil war. And despite Milton's claims, whether Charles was justly killed or the victim of a messy coup, he still debated 360 years after his death.

With me to discuss the trial of Charles I at Justin Champion, Professor of the History of Early Modern Ideas at Royal Holloway, University of London, Diane Perkins, fellow and tutor at Keble College, Oxford, and David Wharton, Professor of History at the University of York. Justin Champion, on the 20th of January, 1649, Charles I was brought into Westminster Hall and armed guard to face his accusers.

Could you set that scene for us, please? I think we've got to imagine, incredibly bustling, vibrant, perhaps even turbulent hall. The trial itself takes place at the south end of the hall. Westminster Hall is a place of public resort. So before the trial, it's full of shops, booths. You go there to get your books, to get your pen, your ink. All of that is cleaned out.

And massive galleries are created. So that this is a place of public resort. As one colleague puts it, it's a place where the trial took place in front of everybody. It's a public trial. Charles is brought in at the south end, so he doesn't have to walk through the crowd. Real anxieties that there will be a military attempt

to capture him and take him away and save him. The officials, and remember, this is a performance, it's a stage play, spend days trying to work out how the trial will look. They spend time thinking about how the Lord President John Bradshaw will process in, how many soldiers he will have with him, what sort of gown, of mace, will he bear the sort of state in front of him?

And at that far south end, Charles is really hidden from the audience. And when we think of the audience, there may have been as many as four or five thousand people crammed into that room, hanging from galleries, hanging from the picture spaces. And it's a very noisy place. The actual business of the trial is shielded from most of that audience. And we know from the trial records that the business is disrupted. by shouts of God save the king or justice, justice. So it's a very noisy event.

And it's not one that we see often represented on the television of a quiet little Crown Court affair. It's very complicated and it's very staged. When Charles came in, did he have any of his own people around him? Charles is on trial for treason. He's only allowed to come in with three servants. He doesn't have any legal counsel. He has his back to the audience.

So he's very, very confused. This is somebody who's used to being treated with regal majesty. He's put in a seat. He's not quite sure where he's meant to sit. Nobody's advising him what to do. So it's very disorientating for him. In front of him, there are 67 commissioners. Many of them he won't recognise at all.

Lord Bradshaw sits on a fine chair in the middle of that. With his bulletproof... With his bulletproof beaver. There's some considerable debate about whether that does exist, although I think the claims to be one in the... the Ashmellian Museum in Oxford, but there may be many of them. He's put on trial in front of legal officers whom are lost to history, some of them.

John Bradshaw is the Lord President. We know about him. John Cook is another legal figure. Isaac Dorislaus, Dutch historian, very, very learned. The third part of the prosecution is a man called John Ask, and we know nothing about him. And then there are all the others. And then there are 67 Lord Commissioners.

So he said that. What were the charges brought against Charles I first? The charges really, I think, go back to November of the previous year. And they're based on the premise that the House of Commons has represented the sovereignty of the people. And that Charles I first is both a tyrant, a traitor and a murderer, as the indictment goes. He is a public enemy, a wonderful phrase to the Commonwealth of England. And in essence, he's put on trial both for war crimes. but for treason against the people.

He has, in again their own phrase, exercised unlimited, tyrannous will against the liberties and privileges of the people. And they spend a lot of time trying to work out what the precise charge will be. So the idea that the Republican element, both within Parliament and within the army, have sorted out this trial beforehand, is a myth.

They are still adjusting the language of the charge on the morning of the trial. So this is an improvised project, I think. Diane Perkins, Charles attacked his prosecutors declaring, why are you trying me, in whose name you are a rump? Why did they call them a rump? He called them a rump because of Pride's Purge. This could be construed as a successful military coup,

the whole staging and creation of the trial that Justin's just described, because what precedes it is the purging of the House of Commons of every MP who was liable to want to continue to try to talk with Charles, try and reach an accommodation or a negotiated deal with him. I mean, among those, Brutard... Let's just go back to Pride. Colonel Pride, friend of Cromwell, prevented 180 of about 460 MPs,

taking their place because he thought they might be sympathetic to King Charles I was the first. Is that what you're saying? Roughly. We don't actually know the exact number. I know. I've noticed between your different notes, there's a bit of fiddling and fiddling. But that's about the size of it. Yeah, roughly. I mean, it's worth knowing that one of the people exiled is actually one of the five members that Charles set out to arrest in 1642, Denzel Hollis. But come to the main point, so it's a purged parliament.

Yeah, it's a purged parliament. But what it's been purged of is the people who still want to negotiate with Charles. What's left in what Charles refers to as a rump and what the nation comes to refer to as the Rump Parliament, certainly after the restoration, is a group of people who are probably in accord with the demands and desires of the new model army, which is become. a really dominant force in politics, which is in a way that the driver behind the will to try the king at all, and particularly the will to find him guilty as a murderer and traitor, the army by this stage blames Charles for the war, and that's why they're so eager. The new model army is the Republican army.

They've been very effective, in the end, they've won the war, this very expensive, very bloody war, sometimes called the bloodiest war in its history up to date. And they are around the Palestine. of Westminster, their presence, sort of luring presence over it all. Can you tell us, where were there messages going out between the army and the

Rump? Were they in contact? Were they saying, look, you've got to help? Were they in contact? Again, we can't really be 100% sure, but yes, almost certainly the Rump saw itself. The surviving members of the House of Commons saw themselves as in accord with the Army and the army's

desires. But not everybody on the radical fringe actually wanted Charles Tried. John Lilburn, the leading leveller figure, didn't want Charles Tried, really wanted to save Charles. So there isn't, you know, as Jonathan was saying, there isn't the smooth sense of an achieved coup. What there is is a lot of sort of bobbing and weaving and dodging and diving to try to come up with something that will stick and will work and will pay off what the armies come to see as this enormous blood price that has to be laid at somebody's door. The mentality is not unlike the post-World War I wish to hang the Kaiser.

Lots of people have died. Lots of people have lost their homes. Somebody has to pay, and the army's decided that person should be Charles. And other people have just stayed away. Fairfax, for instance, who was on the Republican side, won't go. His wife is very much against.

She goes, and she cries shame when the verdict is reached. But he doesn't want a king to be tried. So there were people who didn't want anything to do with this. Quite a considerable number. and they were purged? Yes. Basically, the whole body of Presbyterian opinion, moderate Protestant opinion,

is what goes in Pride's purge. And, I mean, among those victims, you've got Denzel Hollis, you've got John Clockworthy, who's a violent Presbyterian iconoclast, very much at the forefront of Parliament in the mid-1640s. You've got William Prynne,

famous for having his ears cropped, one of the raison d'etras of the war in the first place, as far as godly Protestants are concerned, he's perched. Robert Harley and his son, Edward, Robert Harley, the man who actually cancelled Christmas, an event with which Oliver Cromwell is habitually credited wrongly. So all these very strongly Protestant people

who were at the forefront of prosecuting the war in its early years are the very ones who come to be seen as the moderates. They've been displaced by a different generation, and Fairfax is part of that moderate group. Justin gave us a vivid description of the context and the conditions. Was that thought at the time to be very unfair to King Charles I? were people around the place that evening, saying, look, this isn't, he's not getting a fair due.

No. The people who would have been saying that would have said that anyway, however the trial had been conducted. Obviously, the people who've been purged are completely out of sorts with Parliament and with the people who are trying trials. Royalists, you know, and there are still many of those, are unenthusiastic.

But there's no sense that the will of the people of England is being either expressed or thwarted by the trial. There isn't a single will. by this stage. There's factions. There are divisions. And you can't really resolve that into, okay, everybody's against the trial, everybody's for it. David Wooden, so are we faced with a coup d'etau? We're faced with a military junta here. I think fundamentally we are. Justin described it as a staged performance. The other term for it is that it's a show trial. Lady Fairfax wearing a mask so people can't identify who she is.

Call out twice in the gallery once on the first day and once at the last day. When she calls out on the first day, The troops level their muskets at her. Which you called on a shame. Yeah. Well, it's a longer statement of the first statement. The troops level their muskets at her and the commanding officer threatens to fire. You imagine a courtroom in which people are firing on the spectators.

And you get a sense of the nature of the military presence of that trial. It's a very intimidating presence. And it's very clear that the troops are there to quell the spectators as well as to ensure that Charles doesn't escape or there's no attempt to rescue him. So there's nothing English. moderate, temperate, ordered about it. I'm like the idea that we're trying to get into the period through this way. It's rumbustious.

Well, Justin described it very well. But let's keep to that, because that was what was going on. There's nothing English about it because no English trial looks like this. Everybody knows what an English trial should be like. What a trial does is enforce the King's Justice. And it enforces the King's Justice in front of a jury. There's no jury here. It enforces the King's Justice on the basis of the...

the known law of the land. There's no law here which defines what this treason is that Charles is accused of. And so in that sense, what's happening is a trial in which the law is being made up as they go along and the procedures are being made up as they go along. And everyone feels, I'm going to disagree, I have no sense with Diane here, everyone feels that's not English. Everyone understands what English justice looks like and it doesn't look like this. Is there any sense, because from your different notes, there's some disagreement of this, which is, is there any sense that most of us have? They went in there, they knew what they were going to do,

they were going to try the king and see him legally actually. Was there any sense of inevitability, are the thing being worked out or not? Well, this is something historians currently disagree about. My view of this is straightforward. If you put someone on trial for treason, and that's one of the charges, there is only one known outcome to a treason trial.

Anybody who goes in front of a court charged with treason ends up dead. Once they put him on trial, on the 20th, once that trial begins, there is only one possible outcome in my view, and they understand that's what they're doing, and he understands very clearly that's what they're doing. There is a view that this is all a sort of maneuver to force him to make concessions, the outcome of which will be some sort of settlement.

It's too late for that, in my view. And let's talk about speed. On trial on the 20th, trial finished on 27th, executed on the 30th. That's right. And so fast, Justin said, they're organizing it as they go along, so fast that they sign a warrant saying that he's going to be executed between 10 and 5 on the 30th. They get him to the scaffold at 10 a.m. And then he has to hang around for five hours while they pass legislation to say that no one can proclaim the new king after his death.

And he's sitting there, a little room behind the scaffold for four hours waiting to have his head cut off while the House of Commons tries to get its legislative process in order. Justin. I think one of the complexities is we don't really know the inside. workings of the trial process. So we know about the public bit and we know that the regime makes a deliberate effort to try Charles in public rather than behind closed doors at Windsor, sorted out quietly

either exile him or execute him. Every single day those commissioners retire to the painted chamber which is approximate to the Westminster Hall and they discuss what they're going to do next. Now the sense that there's any coordinated project is really complicated

I think by that process. So different people turn up every day and different people make different pitches for what they should do the following day. So I think the idea that there's a preordained plan is really compromised first and most importantly by the number of times that court gives Charles to admit his guilt, six times, perhaps 12 times. The last thing they want to do is executing.

Just a second, David, can I stick with that point? Justin, I can obviously come back. Charles said, and this maybe is the centre of his case, he represented himself. Was he forced to do that? It's a treason trial, so he doesn't have any counsel. He said, I would know by what power I am called hither. I would know by what authority. I mean lawful authority.

So he's challenging the court front on. Absolutely. Charles is an exceptionally clever man at this moment in his life, and he recognises that he's only. way out is to make a claim to be representing law and liberty in a more effective and powerful way. But in that confrontation, we essentially see a head-on clash between a House of Commons. House of Laws is very, very separate from this process, that claims to represent the people of England. And it's a rump of the House of Commons, and it represents the army more than the

people of England. Absolutely. But they're claiming that they represent popular sovereignty, and Charles is claiming that he represents the liberty of every single man in the land. If I can go into one more point, then please. Because he says, if you can do this to me, you can do this to anybody. That's right. So I am representing the people of England. Absolutely. It's a wonderful performance. And even though there's some evidence that the Lord Commissioner's thought about what they do,

if Charles refused to acknowledge their authority, they are thrown into chaos. They scurry back into the painted chamber and think, well, you know, what are we going to do? We've got to get him to appeal somehow. David. Yes. It's not the case that the court asks Charles. over and over again to admit his guilt. What they ask him over and over again to do is plead. And he says, I'm not going to plead because you have no authority to try me.

Now, the essential thing here is that under English law, the plea is the prerequisite for a trial. Everybody has to make a plea. You plead guilty or you plead not guilty. What happens if you don't? The law provides, English common law provides for a simple procedure. If someone refuses to make a plea, you take them out and you crush them until they agree to plea. I mean between two big stones? Between two big stones. You crush them, you suffocate them until some people go through this and they die.

They're prepared to hold out. The advantage of doing this is that you're never condemned, you're not found guilty, and so your children can inherit from you. If you're condemned, your children can't inherit from you because all your property goes to the crown. So some people hold out under that, what's called la Pén-Forte deor, being crushed to death.

Properly, under English law, Charles, by refusing to plea, should be crushed to death. They don't want to torch the king in public. That's the last thing they want to do. they're constantly scurrying back to their room saying, what are we going to do now? They're constantly saying, come on now, please give us a plea because they need that to start the trial. They then have the problem that because he hasn't pled guilty or not guilty, there's no normal procedure for hearing evidence.

And they then have a sort of hole in corner two days in which they hear evidence in camera in order to say, yes, we did think about the case against him before we condemned him. Diane. And that's all really powerful and entirely true. But I think by looking at the legal side of it, we're missing out on what they're trying to do representation What they're trying to do, representationally, it's a meaning that comes from Charles's refusal to plead and his grounds for refusing, is represent themselves, the House of Commons, as the voice of the people. And we can tell that really easily from this wonderful inclusion in the trial materials of 23 depositions about royalist atrocities, atrocities committed by the royalist armies, up and down the country from all over, that kind of offer to represent the aggrieved people of England as the principal voice. of the prosecution of Charles.

By refusing to acknowledge the validity of any of those charges against him as legally valid, Charles doesn't really successfully see off the representation that he's been the enemy of the people. And that's what Parliament's really going for. That's what this rump, this group of commissioners are really trying to achieve. They are trying to lay down that it's they, the House of Commons, who are sovereign. And what Charles does that actually is really intelligent and very effective, more than his refusal to plead, is he says, OK, now I'm not going to answer your charges because you're just a rump.

But if you reconvene a proper parliament, I'll answer to that proper parliament. And that really is very intelligent because it sees off their representational campaign, which to them, I think, is the nub of the matter. You're talking about people. Can we just get this clear? He was sent out, while they brought in, as I understand, about 33, 35 people from around the country, and there they were brought in to say he committed as war crimes, he committed atrocities as a tyrant would, and therefore he must be condemned. The evidence as far as I can, from Musary,

is that they didn't prove that of him. Well, I think it would be impossible to prove that Charles was personally responsible for the massacre at Barthamley Church, for example, they brought these people into doing it, but they didn't do it. They brought these people in to show that the royalists had done those things, and they ended up attributing acts by royalist armies

and royalist officers to the King's agency. And that obviously is legally hugely problematic. What it came from in the end was that Charles, from their point of view, had started the war. He'd raised his standard first. He'd declared war in that sense on his own people. And that really is the nub of the charge. What they succeeded in proving was that he'd been present on the battlefield

and had commanded his troops. They did not succeed in proving that he was responsible for any atrocities. And one of the crucial things here is that the English civil war, both English civil wars, had fundamentally been fought in an extremely gentlemanly fashion. There were very few atrocities compared to what had happened on the continent. In similar, it was prepared to what was about to happen in Ireland, it had been fought with remarkably little cold-blooded murder.

And in that sense, the attempt to prove that Charles was responsible for atrocities with an uphill work to prove that he had resisted Parliament, that was straightforward. Everyone knew that. There was no doubt about it. Diane, you were shaking your head violently. I was. because I don't think people knew that at the time. They'd all been reading the newspapers and every single newspaper that comes out in London,

parliamentarian or royalist from Oxford, is all about atrocities. I mean, these are daily male moments arriving on your doorstep of a week. I don't think that people in London in 1649 knew that atrocities were uncommon. I think they thought they were incredibly common. And so it was a hugely motivational factor

as far as people at the time were concerned. That's why I was shaking my head. I think also, I mean, This hearing of evidence from very, very minor, almost unknown figures is peculiar. But I think what it's also highlighting is that the fact that the king initiated and was constantly initiating further military conflict. So one of the problems in the later 40s is that the king will say, okay, I'll give up, I'll have a treaty with you, I'll stop fighting, and then almost immediately starts trying to plot to fight again. Now, that is the main force for the accusation that is a man.

man of blood who drives war on. I don't think ultimately they're really that concerned with proving that on this particular occasion he did this, but what they are showing is that around the countryside this sort of routine violence is the king's fault.

I mean this is where the debates are gone up to the last moment until, more or less until Charles has ushered into the room to be tried about what to charge the king with. They're absolutely fundamental. The real charge against him is that he is responsible by plotting while he's under army captivity, the second civil war arranging with the Scots for the Scots to invade England.

And arguably this was, you know, underhand, perfidious, and all sorts of other things. And that had provoked among parliamentary soldiers, many of whom had seen their comrades die because of this action, enormous hatred and quite understandably. But they chose to try him for making war against Parliament for the first civil war as well. and they debated whether they were going to try him for killing his father, which he certainly hadn't done. Can we just clear us up? The first Civil War, we're talking 1642 to 46,

and they thought that was the end of it, a lot of people, and they were going to negotiate a peace. And the thing that really triggered the thing was the second Civil War, 1648 to 9, which they laid squarely, and Diane thinks fairly squally, at the door of Charles I, don't you? Well, I think it's impossible not to lay that at the door of Charles I first. He was offered fairly good deals by Cromwell and Iter,

certainly would have saved his life, would have ensured the continuation of the monarchy, reasonable kind of negotiated pieces. And that was what everyone had been aiming for in the first Civil War anyway. They hadn't been aiming to dethrone him from 1642 onwards. What really put them off was that while kind of holding out an apparent hand of friendship to people like Cromwell and Aiton, he was busily plotting behind their backs to bring up rebellions from Kent and Essex and lay waste the whole parliamentarian regime. And that naturally alienated them.

I think we can't underestimate how clever Charles is as a negotiator. So all the way through from 47 through to the end of 48, even though he's technically either in prison at the hands of Parliament or at the hands of the New Model Army or hands of this aristocrat on Isle of White or wherever, he is constantly negotiating with just about everybody. And he's exceptionally good at playing off radical elements within the army against moderate elements within Presbyterians in Parliament, with the Scots, with the Irish, with the French.

He's constantly looking for an option. And I suspect for many of the military figures, it does become fairly apparent. The only way you're going to stop him is to kill him. Can we just concentrate on Charles Justin for a moment here? Two or three things. His idea of kingship, but also on a personal level, because he got this man,

we see him in the great portraits, immaculate, of course, and you talk about one of your all three, you talk about him being disheveled, unshaven. and that's the sort of persecution in itself to someone who has in public always appeared to be the grand figure as a divine and so on and so forth. Were they treating him badly? Did they want to sort of make him look like a...

Charles has very high expectations, it must be said. He does really think he deserves a full court with himself all the time. And as he's kept in closer and closer confinement from Hampton Court to Carrizzbrook to Hearst and then back to Windsor, the amount of access that he's allowed gets less and less. And there's no doubt that some of the soldiers who are asked to look after him are pretty rough at times.

But they're not physically rough. They're just not according him the respect he thinks his majesty is owed. I'm sorry to be so trivial, but what about the little things, like him looking a complete mess and everything like that? Charles claims when he's at Windsor that obviously somebody's going to murder him. And he thinks he will be done away privately. Like the others have been done. So he says, I'm not going to allow anybody to shave me.

So this is why the last famous portrait has him with a much full of beat. And he still has a canopy. He still has musicians. He still has much more than many others would have wanted to give him. When he's kept at Sir Robert Cotton's house, again, he has about 30 people in his sort of courtly retinue. It's not what he expected. He wanted more. And I think it's enormously difficult for us to recognise.

Charles does believe he's appointed by God and he's sort of almost been mused especially in the court when nobody will help him you know silver cane is meant to have fallen off help me nobody does it's almost that he's incapable but that that I think

gives him the stubborn authority to challenge the court can I bring in this idea he had of kingship David Wooden so he is a king Justin has talked about the divinely appointed a point particularly made by his father King James I first who wrote about magnificently, if you're interested, to be on his side,

and he was brought up in that atmosphere, and so on. So there he is. How is that playing, do you think, inside him, as he's facing this romp? He despises them, and he thinks that they're illegally occupying the place they occupy, and he has a case there. He despises them. He looks around the room. He's got these, whatever it is, 67 people in front of them. He only recognises two or three of them.

He knows that these are nobody's. Fairfax isn't there. He would have recognised Fairfax. The general of the commanding forces isn't there. knows that these are, as it were, middle management to have been put up to try him. And that's, as it were, a form of contempt, I think. But it is, Justin, I think, has painted a wonderful picture of how being a king is fundamental to Charles. He's been, since the moment when his elder brother dies, he's known he was always going to be king, he's always been king, he's always been treated with respect.

And he cannot imagine an England without a king. And that's why he thinks Parliament in the end must do a deal with him, right up until the beginnings of the trial, you might say, he's convinced they must do a deal with him because there is no alternative king. And England without a king is unimaginable. And so he thinks he has a veto on any settlement. And he expects him to go on treating him like a king because he thinks they must recognize the inevitability of kingship. Diane.

Yeah, that's one point of view. But, I mean, let's look at it from another point of view. I mean, you were talking about, and I was talking about whether this was the military coup. I mean, let's remember that Ayaton actually wanted not to purge, but to dismiss the whole of parliament and to replace it with two or three hand, hand-picked radicals, in which case we'd have had a genuinely army coup-laden situation. You're all describing

Charles as much smarter than I think he was. I think he was a victim of what my grandmother would have called silly cunning. He was great at plotting, but in the end it didn't really do him any good because he was incapable of seeing the bigger picture. He was within an ace, and he knew

that of being summarily murdered, as some of his predecessors had been. What was the bigger picture? The bigger picture was the fact that it was it had become possible for everybody else in the country to imagine a country without a king, to imagine a country ruled by the army grandees rather than by himself,

and that indeed is what happened. At that time in 1649, do you think it was possible for the people in the country to imagine that? Yeah, I think it was. I don't think it was possible for every single person, but I think it was possible for the people in charge of him to imagine that,

and that was what he resolutely refused to see. I'd like to think that was the case, but I think one of the things we miss very often from the grand narratives of that, this trial is quite how remarkable all of these very ordinary military men lawyers quite how remarkable their action was. They were breaking the fundamental

sort of beliefs of that society by putting their king on trial and I think they realised that they were as they put it sitting at the edge of Providence. If they were doing the wrong thing they were blowing it big time. Because they were working as they thought to God as well. Absolutely. I mean when you say Providence it was very very again it's bringing people into that time

it mattered massively that they did the right thing by their conscience and by God. That mattered to them, as much as it mattered to Charles as it was divinely appointed. So he had two gods clashing. Yes, and both are claiming the same God as both are claiming the same liberty and the same law. But Parliament's God was a God, or the Brumpt Parliament's God, was a God of battles. Charles had been defeated twice in war. God had declared by the outcome of those battles which side he was on. And that for people like Cromwell is fundamental.

God has shown his hand in the outcome of the war and thus they know what God's will is. Well, they're still worried about it though because they're willing to interview the prophetess Elizabeth Poole because she says she's had a divine revelation from God about what they should do with Charles and what she says to them is that they have every right to try him and they're very comforted by that

but that they shouldn't hurt him, she then adds. They're a bit disappointed by that. But plainly they're really anxious to bring their practices into line with the latest telegram from their God, and the fact that they're willing to give three days at this absolutely crucial point to this sort of nobody from Abingdon who nobody's ever heard of before

because she says she's had a divine revelation about what they should do with the king, shows how concerned they were to bring themselves into line with what they saw as the unfolding of the will of provenance. I think we've got to recognise that conviction is driving both sides in a very, very powerful way, but I would be worried if we thought,

on one side we have a godly king who's been brought up and knows that he's representative of God. And on the other side, we have a group of sort of radical Puritans who know that they're right. Because those radical Puritans are constantly anxious that they've got it wrong. If we look at Cromwell's sort of meditations and letters at this time, he's constantly going back to bits of the Old Testament,

Nebuchadnezzar. Looking at the parallels, you know, have I got it right? Is this a time of necessity? Is this a time of providence? You know, what happens if I get it wrong? So these people are anxious, not that they're making mistake, in a civil or illegal way, but they're doing

the Antichrist's word. Is it surprising, I think Dan has made this one of my looking at you, David, is it surprising itself that they're trying to make it legal and not just getting on with murdering him in a good old fashioned English way? It's a fundamental importance that they don't

they don't, they don't as it were, give him a military trial and stick him in front of a firing squad. They try to produce a public legal process. And that's what's unparalleled, and that becomes the model if we go through it to the execution of the King of the French Revolution or to the Nuremberg trials or now in

a sense to trials of war criminals. It's the first attempt to introduce a trial for war crimes and in that sense it's of enormous importance and one has to admire the process as Harrison said when he was tried in 1660 as a regicide it was not done in a corner

it was brought into the open light of day and that's I mean I don't have much sympathy with the way in which Cromwell and his associates conducted this but That is admirable. And I think one of the things we often miss from that great narrative is that these legal figures, John Cook, and in particular, Isaac Dorislaus, put a huge amount of effort into making sure that all the precedents and legal cases

that they could put together were there. But unfortunately, because Charles refused to play ball, they had all these wonderful speeches prepared that never got delivered. Cook famously produces the prosecuting counsel, produces it afterwards, and describes the trial as the most comprehensive, partial, glorious piece of justice ever acted. Now, he's obviously a little bit biased, but you know, he's a good lawyer. That's true. Dan, you want to come in. Well, conversely, I mean, there's also a kind of biblical rhetoric that, I mean, you spoke about Nebuchadnezzar, but another

way that people could see... Because Nebuchadnezzar apologised and was let off. Right. Well, another way of seeing these events is that many people would have believed that they were on the verge of the last days before Christ came in judgment. And one reason that they felt themselves capable of dethroning and executing a king was because they were expecting to be ruled by Christ the king any day now. Some of them were anyhow. And I mean, people actually say things like,

well, we've identified Charles as one of the ten horns of the beast from the book of revelations. And, I mean, once you've made that kind of connection, it becomes not only inevitable, but absolutely necessary to range yourself against this diabolically inspired figure.

And I mean, the other thing, kind of big factor that's going to be motivating some of these people. Not so much the fireband radicals, but the more ordinary kind of middle management people that are actually conducting the trial is the belief that the blood of the dead is actually superstitiously kind of

crying out from the ground. If you see the dead of the atrocities and the battles as murder victims, then you actually feel a sense of obligation to lay those bones to rest. Right. What defined the end of the trial and how did they come to say

we will send you to your death. Can you just take us there just in and then we can move through the execution to the consequences? I think by the 27th of January. Of January. Seven days in, yeah. They've really lost a plot

because Charles just simply won't play ball. They've tried every tactic both behind the scenes and in the public court to get him to enter a plea. He won't acknowledge the authority of the court. They've had all the evidence. So that they decide in the painted chamber

on the morning of the 27th, that they have to proceed to sentence. And Bradshaw, Lord President Bradshaw, has a long and very sort of deeply researched presentation of why he's guilty. Charles, at this last moment, suddenly he recognises, oh my Lord, they are actually going to sentence me to death

and attempts to speak. But of course, in procedural terms, as far as that court is then concerned, he's quiet. He cannot speak. and you have this rather touching moment at the end, recorded in different ways by royalists and parliamentarians, that when Charles recognises this, he either gives a haughty ha, as if what do I care,

or an agonised ha, as if he's suddenly got the view. And in essence at that point, then Bradshaw gives a massive set piece that condemns him as a tyrant, invokes all of the Old Testament stuff, and Charles is wheeled out. David, can you take us to the execution? Because it's amazing that it's three days, later he's executed. And if you

just tell us how... Yes, I mean, I don't think this is speedy justice by our standards. It's not speedy justice by 17th century standards. They're proceeding I mean, a normal treason trial lasts the day. This one has dragged on for seven days from their point of view, I think. But yes, as soon as they've condemned him,

they're on the way to executing him. They've got to make practical preparations. They've got to decide where to do it. They've got to build a scaffold and so on. And they take him down and they keep him waiting while they pass this last bit of legislation to make it possible. to execute him. And they take him out onto the scaffold. And

really, I think they haven't understood the man they're dealing with because Charles has shown perfect composure and self-restraint throughout the trial. But they're terrified, or they're not terrified, they're alarmed and concerned that he will break loose on the

scaffold. And so they've put staples where they can chain him down if he tries to struggle. And they've put up a block which is only 10 inches high. Well, normally a gentleman would kneel and the block would be about two foot high so it would sit neatly under his neck while he's

kneel. And they asked Charles to put his head on the block. And he knows he's going to have to lie down to do this. And he says, why can't the block be higher? The reason they block can't be higher is they're afraid of him struggling. But before that, he wants to make a speech and it's a basic right of a condemned man to

make a speech before he's executed. Usually what you do is you speak in favour of justice. He can't can't be heard by the crowd. And he speaks to those around him and his words are recorded and he speaks with great dignity. And then he puts his head down on the block. He raises his hair under his hat so the executioner can get a good blow. The executioner and his assistant are wearing fake moustaches and fake hair. So no one will be able to recognize them. People are very frightened of reprisals, which do actually happen. Dara Slous has been mentioned earlier as assassinated. And he dies what you might call a noble death. Yeah, that's right. Now can we go straight to the consequences because unfortunately we're running out of time. This book appears, Icon Basilica,

which in a sense, let us take, I'm used to make it easy. That is the defining, one of the defining things that happens over the next 10 years. Can you briskly tell us what that is and why it's so important? Icon Basilica, an image of holiness, probably written by his chaplain, but represents Charles really as Christ,

as the divinely anointed inspiration, and does more for monarchy, even perhaps today, than any other act. It becomes 60 volumes published in the same year. It becomes a standard-stock text. It has the beautiful image at the front of Charles kneeling with the crown of thorns in front of the Bible being infused with divine. He is the king martyr. And that's the origins of the society of Charles and Martyr that still persist today.

So it invents this sacral, an image for the sacral image of Charles as God ultimately. And that powers through the Protectorate, doesn't it? Cromwell's there, smashing Ireland, smashing Scotland, and then here in this country, protector passing on just Adelius, bringing back the hereditary principle. And so on.

But this icon basilica, from that moment, it's an extraordinary fuse, isn't it? It's really as a tradition, as an invented tradition, it's identified in the January of 30th commemorative sermons that exist in the Book of Common Prayer into the late 19th century.

it becomes a moment of mourning every year. And what happens to the regicides, David Wooden? When Charles II comes back at the restoration, what happens to the regicide, to the killers? Charles II comes back in 1660, saying that he will show mercy to all those who fought against him with virtually no exceptions, but they then get a royalist parliament elected,

and it's clear there are going to be more than a few exceptions, and essentially they say that if you're a regicide, or if you prosecuted the king, or if you carried out the death warrant, then you're in serious trouble. They've got 45 of them still alive, of the regicides out of 59. They arrest those who can.

Some go willingly to trial and stand up bravely and boldly and say they're not ashamed to what they did, that it wasn't done in the corner. Some try to flee the country, some successfully. Some are then assassinated abroad. Some are captured and brought back. In the end, they execute nine of the regicides,

and they do deals with numbers of the others, and they execute four of the people. who've prosecuted him. Diane. They actually dig up the bodies of Cromwell and Iaton and hang them on a jibbet at Tyburn. So I think it's important not to underestimate how vindictive the restoration regime is.

And though Charles II does come in saying he's not going to do anything nasty and he's going to be a very peaceful kind of figure, it doesn't turn out that way at all. It's really not a peaceable kind of movement. But it does show how vehemently people on the royal side had come to feel about the regicide by then. and certainly an instrument in that is like in Bicilicay.

I talked about lighting a few, which is a very commonplace image, but still, does it go through English history and have other amifications, just in general? I think it not only goes through English history, but perhaps through European and global history, because the trial of Charles I first becomes the model for subsequent revolutions,

whether it's the Americans in 1776, the French in 1789, or even Fidel Castro in the 1950s, that first political trial of a head of state, for crimes against the people. However inaccurate that may be becomes an icon in itself. And it's probably responsible

for the fact that the Republican sort of movement today is nowhere because it's almost still too complicated even with our ability to forget the past to imagine carrying an axe and killing a king. Our current monarchy is too kind for that. Well, thank you all very much.

I really enjoyed that. Dan Puckies, Justin Champion, David Wooten. Right. The Augustine Age in Roman history, Ovid, Virgil and the regime of Emperor Augustus. Thanks for listening. We hope you've enjoyed this Radio 4 podcast. You can find hundreds of other programmes about history, science and philosophy at BBC.com.uk forward slash radio 4.