‘The king’s guilt was not doubtful’
Alice Hunt is Professor of Early Fashionable Literature and Historical past on the College of Southampton and writer of Republic: Britain’s Revolutionary Decade, 1649-1660 (Faber and Faber)
The technical reply is ‘sure’. Charles was charged with, and located responsible of, levying battle in opposition to his Parliament (which represented the individuals) and of a ‘depraved’ design to rule in keeping with his personal will. Treason had been redefined to embody a king waging battle on Parliament. Accordingly, the trial’s commissioners – who acted as each jury and judges – sentenced this ‘tyrant, traitor and assassin’ to loss of life ‘by the severing of his head from his physique’.
However the trial rested on unprecedented laws. Earlier in January, when the Home of Lords rejected the invoice that might carry this novel Excessive Courtroom of Justice into being, the Commons responded with the astonishing declaration that the individuals have been ‘the unique of all simply energy’ and that the Commons (because the individuals’s representatives) held ‘the supreme energy on this nation’. They might cross legal guidelines with out the king’s consent, or that of the Lords. Charles refused to acknowledge this, or the courtroom’s authority. He was not the one one. Lots of the summoned commissioners by no means took their locations. Thomas Fairfax, chief of the New Mannequin Military, didn’t attend any of the general public periods.
As well as, the parliament that had pushed by means of this laws was the ‘Rump’ parliament. Over the past weeks of 1648, whereas MPs have been nonetheless attempting to barter with Charles, highly effective figures within the military (Henry Ireton and, ultimately, Oliver Cromwell) declared that the king was ‘the capital and grand writer of our troubles’ and that he must be ‘dropped at justice for the treason, blood and mischief he’s therein responsible of’. Many troopers additionally believed that, as a result of they’d been victorious on the battlefield, God himself had declared in opposition to Charles. For them, the king’s guilt was not doubtful. The query was tips on how to get Parliament to cease treating with Charles, and convey him to account. The military’s reply was to forcibly purge Parliament of any wavering MPs.
In these circumstances, as soon as this trial went forward, most knew that it might, and would, finish with the king’s loss of life. Charles himself ready for martyrdom. He refused to plead both responsible or not responsible, which was tantamount to accepting a responsible verdict. On this sense, to avoid wasting what he believed a king was, Charles ‘had’ to die.
‘Reformists believed Charles couldn’t be trusted’
Jonathan Healey is Affiliate Professor of Social Historical past on the College of Oxford and writer of The Blood in Winter: A Nation Descends, 1642 (Bloomsbury)
Charles I’s rule collapsed for 2 causes, each essential to understanding the civil wars. One was spiritual: he was a Excessive Church anti-puritan, and this alienated a lot of England and precipitated revolution in Scotland. The opposite was constitutional: he took taxes with out his English Parliament and used the judiciary to rule by royal prerogative. When the disaster got here between 1640 and 1642, Charles caved on a lot of this. He allowed his energy to crumble in Scotland, whereas in England he conceded common parliaments and an finish to prerogative taxes. He modified path on the Church and moved in the direction of the centre floor.
However he by no means traded his powers willingly, and was all the time in search of methods to regain management – by hook or criminal. He tried to suppress the Scots by power twice, and engaged in a sequence of plots in opposition to reformers each in London and Edinburgh. When rebel broke out in Eire in late 1641 many reformists had come to consider that Charles couldn’t be trusted to manage a military, and even the county militia used for defence. Nor, even, ought to he be allowed to nominate his personal authorities officers. Charles believed, accurately, that the reformists wished to strip him of most of his powers. His enemies believed, accurately, that Charles needed to regain the higher hand and get revenge. Warfare was unavoidable.
There have been those that sought desperately to carry the 2 sides to an ‘lodging’, however in the end they have been irreconcilable. When combating got here, each side might make a professional declare that the opposite had began it, however the actuality was a deathly spiral.
Parliament received the battle, ultimately. Charles must settle for defeat and a dramatic curbing of his monarchical powers, seemingly a everlasting one. This could have saved his rule and his life, however he selected one other path. Taking part in off one victorious faction in opposition to one other, he refused a treaty and began one other battle. Defeated once more, he as soon as extra negotiated, however understandably the extra radical parliamentarians had misplaced all remaining belief of their king. By late 1648 these radicals had determined that Charles needed to die, and it was they who have been now making the selections.
‘Charles’ execution was not a foregone conclusion’
John Rees is Writer of The Fiery Spirits: Widespread Protest, Parliament and the English Revolution (Verso)
Outcomes are by no means inevitable, however selections made in a single timeframe can develop into goal limits within the subsequent. Charles’ regime was in a state of existential disaster from the late 1620s. It confronted riots, rebellions, a tax strike, and the assassination of the duke of Buckingham. This was adopted by the forcible dissolution of Parliament and the imposition of 11 years of private rule and, in 1640, battle with Scotland. When, in 1642, the king was pressured from his capital, he selected army motion, precipitating civil battle. His execution was not the foregone conclusion of his defeat in 1645, nevertheless it was definitely one other step nearer.
Many parliamentarians would nonetheless have most popular an lodging with the king, together with Oliver Cromwell. However two civil wars had created a radical political constituency within the New Mannequin Military, in London, and amongst a minority of MPs. The king remained adamant that he would settle for no settlement however a return to his previous powers – a settlement unacceptable to the newly radicalised parliamentarians.
The ‘fiery spirits’ within the Commons included Henry Marten, Thomas Rainsborough, Alexander Rigby, and William Strode. Apart from Marten, they’d not been republicans earlier than the Lengthy Parliament, however a decade of revolution and battle had made them so. When battle got here they have been foremost in elevating males, cash, and munitions to struggle the king till Parliament pushed apart its average commanders and achieved a crushing victory. By 1647 they’d a substantial following amongst each the officers and the rank and file of the New Mannequin Military and among the many supporters of the Levellers, then on the peak of their energy.
The previous political centre floor that favoured reviving the normal structure of king, Lords, and Commons couldn’t maintain. This polarisation, set in stone by ‘Pleasure’s Purge’, when average MPs have been excluded from the Commons in December 1648, made the execution of the king extremely possible. As soon as the king’s trial started, reprieve was all the time the least seemingly consequence, even when it was nonetheless desperately hoped for by many. It will be Marten – the fiercest of the ‘spirits’ – who signed the king’s loss of life warrant in January 1649, designed the seal of the brand new republic, and was given the duty of disposing of the late king’s possessions.
‘The reply will depend on how we outline “kingship”’
Rachel Hammersley is Professor of Mental Historical past at Newcastle College
The query posed right here is deceptively easy. I’ve 350 phrases, but certainly just one is required: both ‘sure’ or ‘no’. However historical past isn’t so easy. We now have to ask: is the query involved with whether or not any king ruling these islands at the moment would have needed to die? Or, is it about whether or not this explicit king, Charles I, needed to die?
The reply to the primary query seems to be ‘no’. There have been few open opponents of kingship in England previous to 1649. Henry Marten and Thomas Chaloner match this class, however most MPs continued to advocate working with Charles even after his defeat within the civil wars. One might, after all, query how far it was prudent to argue in opposition to kingship at the moment, so maybe there have been opponents who stored quiet, however the calls for made by parliamentarians between 1640 and 1648 weren’t inherently incompatible with kingship. Somewhat, they sought to shift the stability of energy from king to Parliament. Paperwork such because the ‘Nineteen Propositions’ (June 1642) and ‘Newcastle Propositions’ (July 1646) referred to as for: parliamentary approval of royal counsellors, office-holders, and Friends; parliamentary management over the royal kids; parliamentary oversight of the army; and the implementation of Parliament’s proposals for Church reform. It was, subsequently, doable to think about a system through which the king continued to rule however with extra restricted powers.
However, from this, we’d conclude that the reply to the second query is ‘sure’. Charles did must die as a result of he was unwilling to just accept these restrictions on his energy. ‘His Majesties Reply to the Nineteen Propositions’ declared that agreeing to these propositions would successfully rework him into ‘a duke of Venice’ and England into ‘a republic’.
Does this, although, require us to rethink our reply to the primary query? Kingship, as Charles understood it, was plainly incompatible with Parliament’s calls for, so it might be argued that it was mandatory for the king to die with a view to safe the sort of regime MPs have been in search of. Partly, then, the reply will depend on how we outline ‘kingship’ – and whose view we undertake.
