why was charles i executed

[25] The platform was draped in black and staples had been driven into the wood for ropes to be run through if Charles needed to be restrained. Charles asked “if there was no higher?” It was explained that this was what an efficient block looked like. Charles’s father, James VI and I, had made the counter-argument that kings owed their rights to God alone – divine right kingship was supposed to have been a protection against religious justifications for violence.

Popular historians, such as Samuel Rawson Gardiner, Veronica Wedgwood and J.G. Another war was now brewing in Ireland that only Charles could prevent. Charles I awoke before dawn in St James’s Palace on the day of his execution. He took off his cloak and handed his Order of the Garter to the bishop, who was to give it to the Prince of Wales. His alibi consisted of the claim he was imprisoned on the day for refusing the position, though this seems to conflict with his promotion soon after. In truth, not everyone was saddened. On the morning of Saturday 27 January, Charles was brought back into the hall, and Bradshawe reminded the court that Charles was brought before them on a charge “of treason and other high crimes… in the name of the people of England”.

We're asking whether, in the context of the 17th Century, and the prevailing opinions of his peers, his execution was justified. Young, female and powerful: Was Elizabeth I a feminist? So Charles reminded the court that he was at the point of concluding treaty negotiations with parliament and, that being the case, he wanted to know: what was their authority?

Why was Charles I put on Trial and Executed in January 1649? [67] Even Charles showed planning for his future martyrdom: apparently delighted that the biblical passage to be read upon the day of his execution was Matthew's account of the Crucifixion. People paid a ha’penny to view his work, and Charles’s body, at Whitehall. To ensure superiority of the Commons, the judges have to pass the death penalty. [12] He had not seen his children for 15 months, so the parliamentarians allowed him to talk to his two youngest children, Elizabeth and Henry, for one last time. But there was another, more traditional, way to dispose of a monarch: murder. The King’s head was held up to the crowd. As he spoke his words recalled the standard he had raised at Nottingham in 1642 at the outbreak of civil war, with its phrase: Give Caesar his due. 27 January 1649 Charles has refused to plead on each day of his trial. In English law, treason had always been understand to be an action against the king, not by him. They waited in anticipation of an unprecedented event that would shake the nation to its very core. Charles I is seen as the man who lost the monarchy of England in a civil war. March – August 1648 The New Model Army is forced to fight a second civil war and a Scots invasion. But he wanted the people’s “liberty and freedom as much as anybody”. On his execution day, the reports of Charles' last actions were fitting for his later portrayal as a martyr[65] - as biographer Geoffrey Robertson put it, he "played the martyr's part almost to perfection". The monarchy, as Charles understood it, had disappeared for ever. Although the occasion pre-dated his diary by some eleven years, the few tantalising words Pepys wrote in his journal, after being reminded of the event by an old school friend, make it clear where his loyalties had been that day: ‘He did remember that I was a great roundhead when I was a boy, and I was much afeared that he would have remembered the words that I said the day the King was beheaded that, were I to preach upon him, my text should be “The memory of the wicked shall rot”.
Accompanies a three-part BBC Four documentary series, Charles I and a Nation Divided, due to air in July 2019, You’ll find more content on Charles I, from his love life to his execution, at historyextra.com/charles-i, This article was first published in the July 2019 edition of BBC History Magazine. In 1642 parliament claimed it was acting, not against the rightful authority of the crown, but as England’s highest court seizing a form of power of attorney. The Execution of Charles I. Charles was condemned as a "tyrant, traitor, murderer and public enemy to the. He waited a few moments and gave a signal; the anonymous executioner beheaded Charles in one clean blow and held Charles' head up to the crowd silently, dropping it into the swarm of soldiers soon after.

They demand he is tried as the cause of the civil war and “a man of blood”. Bradshawe addressed the king: “Charles Stuart, king of England, the Commons of England, being assembled in parliament, being deeply sensible of the calamities that have fallen upon this nation, (which is fixed upon you as the principal author of it), have resolved to make inquisition for blood.” It was for this that they had “constituted this high court of justice, before which you are brought”. After his defeat by Parliament in the Civil Wars, Charles I was imprisoned. He became heir apparent to the three kingdoms of England, Scotland, and Ireland in 1612 on the death of his elder brother Henry Frederick, Prin… This was a Catholic idea and something that the Puritan’s did not like. From here he stepped down onto the black floor of the scaffold. A Subject and a Sovereign are clean different things; and therefore untill that be done, I mean, untill the people be put into that liberty, which I speak of; certainly they will never enjoy themselves. The scaffold at Whitehall accomplished that which neither the eloquence of Eliot and Pym nor the Statutes and Ordinances of the Long Parliament had been capable of effecting. This affected thousands of people.

At his left knee, a garter band flashed diamonds. He carried on the belief in royal absolutism that was advocated by his father, James I, who began the antagonistic relationship with … Charles waited for someone to pick it up. Executing the king risked provoking foreign reprisals, or a popular rising.

Charles lay down flat and put his head on the low block. Since 1646 Charles had been playing his enemies against each other, holding out for the best terms he could get under which he would be restored as king. Was it really his fault or was it taken from him by those who also demanded to have power in England? On the other hand, if Charles accepted the legality of the tribunal, he would be accepting that he had no veto over the Commons’ decisions. It had allowed Mary to be found guilty of treason against her Tudor cousin, Elizabeth I. So in November 1647, when Charles received warnings he was to be assassinated, he had believed them, and had fled captivity. [91] Restoration historiography of the Civil War emphasised the regicide as a grand and theatrical tragedy, depicting the last days of Charles' life in a hagiographical fashion. [93] Early Whig historians such as James Wellwood and Roger Coke, even as they criticised and mocked the Stuarts, were hesitant to criticise Charles and quick to condemn the execution as an abomination. [22] Before leaving, Juxon gave Charles the Blessed Sacrament, so that Charles would not faint out of hunger on the scaffold. Charles was, after all, a king of Scots, the uncle of the king of France and father-in-law of the Prince of Orange. Leanda de Lisle’s book White King: The Tragedy of Charles I (Vintage, 2019) has been awarded the Historical Writers’ Association non-fiction crown. If Charles pleaded, he could be convicted, leaving the Rump parliament to commute his sentence, subject to his good behaviour, in a supreme act of parliamentary sovereignty. Soldiers dipped their swords in his blood” and swore at his body.

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