Execution of Charles I (1649): The Trial and Death of a King

The execution of Charles I on 30 January 1649 was the climax of the English Civil War. After a trial for high treason before a specially created court, the king of England, Scotland and Ireland was beheaded on a scaffold outside the Banqueting House in Whitehall, London. It was the only time an English monarch was tried and put to death by his own subjects, and it was followed by the abolition of the monarchy and eleven years of republican rule.

Background: from defeat to trial

Charles I had lost the First Civil War by 1646, but he refused to accept a settlement that limited his powers over the army and the Church. Held successively by the Scots, Parliament and the army, he negotiated with each while seeking to divide them. In November 1647 he escaped from Hampton Court to the Isle of Wight, where he was again confined at Carisbrooke Castle.

In December 1647 Charles signed a secret “Engagement” with Scottish allies, which led to the Second Civil War of 1648. The army defeated Royalist risings and a Scottish invasion, and many soldiers now regarded the king as a “man of blood”, responsible for needless slaughter, who must be called to account before God and man.

Parliament nonetheless reopened talks with the king at Newport on the Isle of Wight. The army demanded that he be brought to justice. On 6 December 1648 soldiers under Colonel Thomas Pride stood at the door of the House of Commons and excluded or arrested members who favoured a treaty. The remaining members, a minority of the original House, became known as the Rump.

The trial

Creating a court

There was no legal mechanism to try a king, whom English law treated as the source of justice. On 1 January 1649 the Rump passed an ordinance setting up a special High Court of Justice. The House of Lords rejected it. On 4 January the Commons declared that the people were the original of all just power and that the Commons alone held supreme authority. It passed an Act creating the court on 6 January.

The Act named 135 commissioners to act as judges and jury. Many refused to serve, including Sir Thomas Fairfax, the army’s commander-in-chief. John Bradshaw, a relatively obscure lawyer, was appointed president. John Cook, a barrister, led the prosecution as solicitor-general.

In Westminster Hall

The trial opened in Westminster Hall on 20 January 1649. The charge accused Charles of trying to establish “an unlimited and tyrannical power”, of levying war against Parliament and the people, and of renewing the war in 1648. He was described as a “tyrant, traitor, murderer, and a public and implacable enemy” to the Commonwealth of England.

Charles refused to plead. He demanded to know by what lawful authority he had been brought before the court, insisting that no earthly power could judge a king and that he stood for the liberty of the people. Each time Bradshaw cut him short, the king repeated his challenge. When Fairfax’s name was read out among the commissioners, a masked woman in the gallery, widely identified as Lady Fairfax, called out that he had more wit than to be there.

Because Charles would not plead, the court heard witnesses in his absence in the Painted Chamber. On 27 January he was brought back to Westminster Hall and sentenced to death as a tyrant, traitor, murderer and public enemy. He was not allowed to speak after sentence was given.

The death warrant

The death warrant was signed and sealed by 59 commissioners, headed by Bradshaw, Lord Grey of Groby and Oliver Cromwell. Historians have debated whether some signers were pressured, and the document shows signs of alteration to dates and names. It survives in the Parliamentary Archives in London.

The execution

On the morning of 30 January Charles was escorted from St James’s Palace across the park to Whitehall. It was a cold day, and he reportedly asked for two shirts so that he would not shiver and be thought afraid. He spent the morning in prayer with William Juxon, Bishop of London, while a last-minute Act was hurried through the Commons forbidding anyone to proclaim a successor.

Shortly after 1 pm he walked through the Banqueting House, whose ceiling paintings by Peter Paul Rubens glorified his father, James I, and stepped out onto a scaffold built against its western side, facing Whitehall. The scaffold was draped in black and ringed by soldiers, so few in the crowd could hear him.

Charles addressed those near him. He said he died a Christian of the Church of England, forgave those who had brought about his death, and declared that the people’s liberty consisted in having government and laws, not a share in government, since “a subject and a sovereign are clean different things”. He told Juxon that he was going “from a corruptible to an incorruptible crown, where no disturbance can be”.

After a short prayer, he lay down with his neck on a low block and gave the signal. The masked executioner severed his head with a single blow, shortly after 2 pm. According to one eyewitness, a young man named Philip Henry, the crowd let out a deep groan. Soldiers then dispersed the people, some of whom dipped handkerchiefs in the king’s blood as relics.

Key people

• Charles I (1600–1649): king of England, Scotland and Ireland from 1625, aged 48 at his death.
• John Bradshaw (1602–1659): president of the High Court of Justice, who wore a hat lined with steel for protection.
• John Cook (1608–1660): the prosecutor, who argued that a king was bound by law like any other person; he was executed as a regicide in 1660.
• Oliver Cromwell (1599–1658): the most powerful figure in the army and one of the leading signers of the death warrant.
• William Juxon (1582–1663): Bishop of London, who attended the king on the scaffold and became Archbishop of Canterbury after the Restoration.
• Henry Ireton (1611–1651): Cromwell’s son-in-law and one of the main organisers of the trial.

Aftermath: a kingdom without a king

The king’s head was sewn back on to his body, which was embalmed. He was buried without the Church of England’s burial service, which was banned, on 9 February 1649 in St George’s Chapel, Windsor, in the vault of Henry VIII and Jane Seymour.

The Rump abolished the monarchy by an Act of 17 March 1649 and the House of Lords two days later. On 19 May England was declared a Commonwealth and Free State. In Scotland, however, the late king’s son was proclaimed Charles II on 5 February 1649, and in Ireland Royalists also recognised him, leading to Cromwell’s campaigns there and in Scotland.

A book called “Eikon Basilike” (“The Royal Image”), presented as the king’s own meditations, appeared within days of his death and went through dozens of editions in 1649 alone. John Milton replied with “Eikonoklastes” in October 1649, defending the regicide.

Myths and facts

Myth: Cromwell alone decided the king’s fate. Cromwell was decisive in pressing the trial forward once it began, but the push for justice came from many officers, radicals and members of the Rump. Fifty-nine men signed the warrant.

Myth: Cromwell viewed the body and said “Cruel necessity”. This is a later anecdote, first reported long after the event, and there is no reliable evidence for it.

Myth: Charles was executed on a balcony. The scaffold was a timber platform built against the front of the Banqueting House, which the king reached through a window or an opening made in the wall; accounts differ on the exact route.

Timeline

• 1647, 11 November: Charles escapes from Hampton Court to the Isle of Wight.
• 1648, 6 December: Pride’s Purge creates the Rump Parliament.
• 1649, 6 January: The Rump passes the Act establishing the High Court of Justice.
• 1649, 20 January: The trial opens in Westminster Hall.
• 1649, 27 January: Charles is sentenced to death.
• 1649, 29 January: The death warrant is signed and sealed.
• 1649, 30 January: Charles I is beheaded outside the Banqueting House.
• 1649, 9 February: Burial at St George’s Chapel, Windsor.
• 1649, 17 March: The monarchy is formally abolished.

Legacy

The republic established after the execution, later the Cromwellian Protectorate, lasted until the Restoration of Charles II in 1660. The new regime then took revenge on the regicides. Ten men, including Cook, Thomas Harrison and Hugh Peters, were executed in October 1660, most of them by hanging, drawing and quartering, and the bodies of Cromwell, Ireton and Bradshaw were dug up and hanged at Tyburn on 30 January 1661, the twelfth anniversary of the execution.

The Church of England commemorated Charles as “King Charles the Martyr”, with a special service on 30 January in the Book of Common Prayer from 1662 until 1859. Charles had been the grandson of Mary, Queen of Scots, whose own execution in 1587 had also shocked Europe, but his death was unprecedented: a reigning monarch put on public trial in the name of the people.

Why it matters

The trial and execution of Charles I established, in the most dramatic way possible, the principle that a ruler could be held accountable under law. Although the monarchy returned in 1660, kings never again governed England without Parliament, and the case became a reference point for later revolutions, notably the trial and execution of Louis XVI of France in 1793.