Execution Of Charles I
The Catalyst that Finally Gave Britain a Constitutional Monarchy
Elizabeth I , "Darnley Portrait", c. 1575
In the hundred years from the death of Queen Elizabeth in 1603 to the accession of Queen Anne in 1702, the English people evolved a system of government by Parliament with a constitutional monarch as Head of State, which for long was peculiarly English. On the Continent, the struggle for power between King, Barons, the Church, and the cities with their rights and charters ended almost everywhere in the system of Absolute Monarchy, the archetype of which was the France of Louis XIV. The King of Spain, the Holy Roman Emperor of Austria, the petty princes of Italy and Germany were equally confirmed in their divine rights, and when, in the eighteenth century, new kingdoms arose to power such as that of Prussia, the king was a despot.
In England the central event of this important part of her historical evolution was the execution of Charles I which took place in 1649. It was an event which shocked the world and indeed shocked the English people, and which came about because, during a civil war, the army which fought for the Parliament against the king had become a force on its own; it had become the expression of the extreme Puritans, the men who had fought best against the Royalists but who no more represented the feelings of the English people than the extreme Catholic Royalists around Charles I’s French queen, Henrietta Maria.
Queen Elizabeth and her Tudor predecessors had exerted powers far greater than any constitutional monarch and had used, indeed, most of the methods of governing which Parliament and people rejected at the hands of the two first Stuart kings, James I and Charles I. But Elizabeth had chosen wise ministers, had never attempted to dispute the right of Parliament to sanction the raising of money, and had been careful not to offend the fierce religious passions which agitated the nation. Catholics and Puritans suffered at times, but the Crown was wise enough not to enforce too much conformity and so to drive moderate men towards extremes.
James I of England from the period 1603–1613
James I, “the wisest fool in Christendom”, believed in the Divine Right of Kings and considered himself qualified to settle once and for all the religious divisions of his subjects. The Court was the scene of scandals; James I had favourites, the most renowned of whom was the handsome Charles Villiers, whom he made Duke of Buckingham; he mortally offended his subjects by seeking an alliance with a country which Englishmen considered their bitter enemy, Spain; and for all this he earned much dislike and, for his general inconsequence, much contempt.
His son Charles I understood his subjects as little as his father. He was a man of strong religious principles, an Anglican, a discerning patron of the arts, but of human statecraft he had no inkling. He was obstinate where he should have been pliant. Short of stature, athletic in habit, he possessed natural dignity and charm. Yet he was melancholy and moody; the great sculptor Bernini, seeing some sketches of him made by Vandyck, said that this was the most unhappy face he had ever seen.
Charles I, early in his reign, attempted to raise money without Parliament’s consent, in particular funds known as Ship Money for the rebuilding of the navy which had been allowed to pass into decrepitude. This earned for the Crown the enmity of many normally staunch supporters of the royal power, including the Buckinghamshire squire, John Hampden. Charles attempted to make the Church of England and the nation conform to the most extreme High Church principles which restored some of the special judicial authority of the Bishops and Church Courts of the Middle Ages. His agent in this was Archbishop Laud, who, like his royal master, lacked both common sense and the common touch.
Thousands of English squires and yeomen were turned against the king and began to side with the extreme Puritans, with rather extraordinary sects, such as the Anabaptists, particularly strong in East Anglia, with whom they would otherwise have had little in common. Charles’s quarrels with Parliament and his unsuccessful attempt to arrest the five members of the House, of whom the best known were Pym and Hampden, for alleged treasonable dealings with the Scots, still further turned the country against him. It seemed possible to assert the power of Parliament against the king, for in 1641 Charles I had been forced to sign a Bill of Attainder, by which the Earl of Strafford, Thomas Wentworth, the king’s most able and trusted minister, was executed for having conspired against the freedom of the realm. Charles’s weakness at that moment made civil war inevitable, unless he renounced his pretensions.
The First Civil War, which started in 1642, was fought with moderation by both sides. There were Royalists like Lord Falkland who fought Parliament reluctantly, and there were Roundheads, as the Parliamentarians were called, such as the Earl of Essex and the Earl of Manchester, whose last wish was to abolish monarchy. At first the king, although always short of money and with the Fleet and the City of London against him, on the whole did best. England was not then a country of hedges but of open fields and, in the early stages of the war, the Royalist cavalry ran down the homespun infantry of Parliament.
An allegory of the English Civil War by William Shakespeare Burton. It depicts a Cavalier lying on the ground wounded, while a Puritan in black stands in the background.
But as the war went on sterner elements on the side of Parliament came to the fore. Oliver Cromwell, a Cambridgeshire squire, raised from poor farmers and townsmen of East Anglia a highly disciplined cavalry force, the New Model Army. It was fanatically religious, its officers, indeed, being chosen for their religious zeal. At Marston Moor in Yorkshire in 1644, and then at Naseby in Nottinghamshire in 1645, the king’s armies, commanded by Prince Rupert, were shattered. The test of strength was virtually over after Naseby, and the king was soon obliged to surrender to the Scots, and was by them handed over to Parliament. A crucial period then began in the life of Charles I which was to last some three years, one in which all his weaknesses were revealed.
For the leaders of Parliament were more than anxious to reach an understanding with the king. They were alarmed by the domineering attitude of many of the New Model Army’s leaders, by their demands for what seemed completely Utopian policies, total religious tolerance, a vote for all men. Also, they had great difficulty in continuing to pay this army. Cromwell, too, was of a mind to compromise and he held long talks with the king, whom he came to like, at Hampton Court where Charles was being held in honourable captivity.
Portrait of King James II
Terms known as the Heads of Proposals were drawn up, which the king pretended he was about to accept, and which if he had accepted would have conciliated all parties. The Episcopate of the Church of England was retained though shorn of any powers of coercion; the Prayer-Book was kept for all who wished to go to the Church of England; but there was to be complete religious toleration for all except Catholics. There were to be equal electoral districts for appointing Members of Parliament and strong measures for the control of the royal power. There were to be no further penalties against those who had fought for the king. It was a settlement of a reasonable kind and in many ways similar to that of 1689 which the Parliament drew up after the deposition of James II. Even the queen, from France, urged Charles to accept these terms. The vast majority of Royalists and Roundheads, but for the army extremists, would have been more than willing to have agreed to them. Charles, however, had never any intention of doing so and he was confident that he could play the army against the Parliament and the Scots against both. For the Scots were even more alarmed than the Parliamentarians by the extremism of the New Model Army and the influence it seemed to be able to exert on government.
In 1648 Scottish Presbyterians and Cavaliers joined together. A Scottish army passed southwards between the Pennines and the Lancashire coast and Cavalier factions seized towns such as Colchester and Pembroke. But by the energy of Fairfax, the able commander of the army, and Cromwell, the isolated centres of revolt in England were quickly reduced and, in a running fight lasting for three days, the invading army was completely routed at Preston by Cromwell. The Second Civil War was, therefore, quickly over, but it brought about a spirit of unforgivingness and violence in the victors.
Cromwell by “the dark lantern of the spirit” now went over entirely to the side of the New Model Army. “The man of blood”, Charles Stuart, must pay for his crimes, and this stern but essentially conservative man saw that he had to lead a revolution. The army demanded the trial of the king. A Colonel Pride, a former brewer’s drayman who was unable to write his name, surrounded the House of Commons and prevented one hundred Members from entering and imprisoned forty-three. So finally was given the consent of Parliament to the trial of the king.
Thomas Fairfax
Charles was brought to trial at Westminster Hall. It was a dangerous proceeding, for most of the best and noblest parliamentarians and even the army’s chief, Lord Fairfax, shrank from the impeachment of the king. The king refused with great dignity to plead, demanding constantly by what right he was being tried and what was the jurisdiction of the court. He demanded a trial by Lords and Commons in the Painted Chamber of Whitehall. “Sire,” said Judge Bradshaw when the king for the third time running had refused to recognize the court, “you are before a court of justice.” “I find I am before a Power,” said the king. Cromwell was adamant once he had made up his mind and he cajoled, cursed, reviled those who were, at the last moment, hanging back.
Judge Bradshaw pronounced the death sentence on Charles Stuart on Saturday morning, 27 January. That afternoon Charles was removed from the Palace of Whitehall to St James’s so that he could not see or hear the work of erecting the scaffold outside the banqueting house of Whitehall for his execution. He was allowed to see his two younger children who were in England, Princess Elizabeth, who the next year died of a broken heart, and his youngest son, Prince Henry. Nothing could equal the simplicity, dignity and courage of his bearing then and during the day of his death.
On Tuesday, 30 January, 1649, at around 9 a.m., he was sent for. He put on two shirts for it was an extremely cold day (the Thames was completely frozen over at that time) and he did not wish men to think he trembled from fear. He was dressed in black satin, with a short dark red cloak. His hair had turned almost white during the past year. His long beard was carefully brushed. He walked with his customary quick athletic step through St James’s Park with Bishop Juxon, the Bishop of London, and Mr Herbert, both faithful friends, and waited in a room on the ground floor of the Palace. He took Communion once more.
There was no summons at eleven nor twelve, and the king, pressed to eat, took a glass of claret and a little bread to keep up his strength. It was not until two o’clock that he was taken on to the scaffold. There had been difficulty in finding the necessary two executioners; The Common Hangman indignantly refused, though offered £100, and to this day, though years later a dying man is said to have confessed he did the deed, no one is certain who cut off the king’s head.
On the scaffold, the sides of which had been draped in black cloth so that no one from outside should actually see the execution, were some fifteen people, including some writers to take down the king’s last words. Whitehall and all the adjacent streets were packed with dense silent crowds from Westminster to Charing Cross. Cromwell had cavalry and infantry stationed in the Park and other points in case of trouble. The king looked over the sides and realized that what he had to say would not be heard by the crowds. So he spoke quietly to those on the scaffolding, saying:
“I shall therefore speak a word unto you here. Indeed I could hold my peace very well if I did not think holding my peace would make some men think I did submit to the guilt as well as to the punishment. But I think it is my duty to God first and to my country for to clear myself both as an honest man and a good king and a good Christian.”
His short speech expressed his belief that in spite of errors he might have committed he had stood for the liberty of his people. His strongly held view that “a subject and his sovereign are clean different things” was contested by many moderate men, but when he came to say why he was on the scaffold, he spoke a truth few could deny:
“If I would have given way to an arbitrary way, for to have all laws changed according to the power of the sword, I need not have come here. And therefore I tell you, and I pray God it be not laid to your charge, that I am the martyr of the people.”
His last words were to Bishop Juxon who had comforted him by saying that this last stage was turbulent and troublesome but short. Charles answered: “From a corruptible to an incorruptible crown where no disturbance can be; no disturbance in the world.” The block was low and Charles had to lie rather than to kneel to put his head (his hair was tucked in a nightcap) on it.
It was arranged that when the king stretched out his hands, the executioner was to strike. After a short prayer, the king stretched out his hands and the axe fell, severing his head in one blow. When the bleeding head was held up by the executioner, the shouts raised by the soldiers were drowned by an immense spontaneous groan from the huge crowd. The body was placed in a cheap deal coffin and taken into the banqueting house.
About two o’clock on the next morning, the body being watched by the Earl of Southampton and a friend, it is said that a man muffled up in a cloak came to have a look at the dead king. He sighed, shook his head and muttered, “Cruel Necessity”. It was Cromwell.
He nothing common did or mean, Upon that memorable scene.
wrote the Puritan poet Andrew Marvel, some time Cromwell’s secretary. It is also said of Charles: “Nothing in his life became him like the leaving of it.” Charles’s bearing at his trial and his death did more than redeem his errors of statecraft. His behaviour ensured that the memory which the vast majority of the English people kept of the monarchy which they had, through their internecine strife, allowed to be ended in this fashion, was one of nobility. To his followers he was the Martyr King. The English people as a whole became aware, by Charles’s death, that the alternative to monarchy was the triumph of faction and lawlessness.
Owing to the genuine and essential moderation of Cromwell, England during the eleven years of the Protectorate was efficiently governed. Cromwell’s army and navy won glory for England abroad. The people had had enough of civil war and neither Royalists nor Parliamentarians had leaders who could gather men around them. Oliver was “still all”, as the old song said. But the Protectorate was never for one moment considered anything but a tyranny, which in God’s good time would pass. When Charles II came to the Throne in 1660, it was to the universal joy of the nation.
There was never any doubt but that the Crown was restored; there was equally no doubt that it was not the monarchy by divine right for which Charles I had stood but one which had to correspond to the freedom-loving temperament of the English people. “This government has a monarchical appearance because there is a king, but at bottom it is very far from being a monarchy,” wrote the French Ambassador in London to Louis XIV. Charles II understood the role he had to play and was resolved, as he said, never to go on his travels again.
Under Charles’s brother, James II, a man of character but, like his father Charles I, incapable of understanding the thoughts and feelings of the English people, the monarchy was again in danger when it affronted the political and religious feelings of the country. James was forced to flee the kingdom and was succeeded by William of Orange, who had married Mary Stuart, James’s daughter.
With William and Mary and then with Queen Anne the rights of Parliament were triumphantly asserted, never to be seriously challenged again. But England remained a monarchy, of that there was no question, and the cause of this unquestioning acceptance was the dark deed done 011 30 January, 1649, and the noble bearing of its victim.