The Execution of King Charles I: From King to Martyr

By Donna Scott

It was a cold, icy London morning.  King Charles I awakened to a sharp knock on his bedchamber door at 10am for what would be the final hours of his life.  He shrugged another shirt over the one he already wore so that his subjects would not think he was shivering from cowardice when he walked across St. James’s Park to Banqueting House in Whitehall.  At 2 that afternoon, the king—dressed in black velvet, the white lace of his collar blowing in the frigid wind—climbed out the window of Banqueting House onto the scaffold that had been draped in black, sawdust carpeting the wooden planks.  The executioner’s block lay on the ground, a clear slight to the king, requiring him to lay prostrate for his own beheading.  He handed over his outer clothing and the blue ribboned Order of the Garter he wore around his neck, then tucked his dark tresses into a white nightcap to make the executioner’s job easier.

The waistcoat worn by King Charles I at his execution.
The stains have been verified as bodily fluids, perhaps his blood

The New Model Army was brought in to control the huge crowd gathered in Whitehall for the king’s execution.  King Charles reiterated his innocence to a crowd that could not hear him through the wind and commotion.  The heavily disguised executioner, who wore a fishnet over his wig and false beard, spoke kindly to the king.  Charles finished saying his prayers, and then stretched out his arms to signal he was ready.  In one clean swipe, the executioner sliced off his head, then held it up for the crowd to see.  A throng of onlookers edged its way to the scaffold to dip handkerchiefs in the royal blood that now stained the planks. 

It was Tuesday, January 30, 1649, and nothing like this had ever happened before in England.  So what went wrong?  What had the king done that was so horrible he had to pay for it with his life? 

Born in Scotland in 1600 as the youngest child of King James I, Charles was never meant to be the king of England.  Considered sickly as a child, he was shy, gentle, and quiet, perhaps because he suffered from a slight speech impediment and a limp.  When his older brother Henry died at 18 from typhoid, he became the new heir to the throne and was officially crowned in 1626 upon his father’s passing.  The idea a new young king would rule delighted Parliament, but that excitement was short-lived for several reasons.

Charles I

He followed in his father’s footsteps regarding his belief in the divine right of kings.  This belief centered around the idea that kings were chosen by God to rule, so only God could overrule them.  They had the sole right to make laws that only God could oppose.  Essentially, kings answered only to God and no other.  He ruled as an authoritarian, launching expeditions and attacks without Parliament’s support.  Naturally, his belief in the divine right of kings and his unwillingness to concede or even compromise didn’t sit well with Parliament, as the king’s rule became problematic and contentious on matters of state. 

Furthermore, Charles married Henrietta Maria of France, a devout Catholic, creating concerns that there might be a turn from the current Protestantism the country had comfortably settled into for almost 100 years.  Although Charles supported the Protestant church, some of his ideals bordered on Catholicism, frightening those who feared another religious upheaval. 

Queen Henrietta Maria

In the first 4 years as king, he dissolved Parliament 3 times, the last time for a period of 11 years.  However, when his treasury was nearly depleted from the many foreign wars England engaged in, he turned to Parliament to ask for more money, but because he had burned so many bridges, Parliament wasn’t quick to grant his request.  The members couldn’t agree and chose sides, dividing into two groups—the Royalists and Parliamentarians.  With no resolution, the king and his Royalists raised his banner in August 1642 against Parliament, thus beginning the bloodiest conflict on English soil—the English Civil War.  Although the Royalists (or Cavaliers) seemed to be winning, the tides turned in 1644 and the Parliamentarians (or Roundheads) claimed victories under the leadership of Oliver Cromwell. 

In 1646, Charles was taken prisoner, put under arrest at Hampton Court, and confined in the old Tudor royal apartments.  Dressed in the rough clothing of a commoner, he escaped but was recaptured shortly thereafter and sent to the Isle of Wight, where he was treated fairly.  A year later in 1648, he was taken to London to be placed on trial for attempting to "uphold in himself an unlimited and tyrannical power to rule according to his will, and to overthrow the rights and liberties of the people".  When Parliament convened to judge the king, his supporters were blocked from entering, and a new Rump Parliament was created, stacking the favor in opposition of the king.  Consequently, in January 1649, Charles was found guilty and named a "tyrant, traitor, murderer, and public enemy to the good people of this nation, [who] shall be put to death by the severing of his head from his body”.

The death warrant of King Charles I signed by
59 members of the Rump Parliament

The people of England were divided.  After all, who could place a king on trial?  Wasn’t he above the law?  How could a king be tried for treason?  Was regicide the answer?  None of it seemed to make sense.  Nonetheless, they showed up on that bitterly cold afternoon to witness the first ordered beheading of a monarch on English soil.

This began the Commonwealth, a ten-year political structure where England was governed as a republic and Oliver Cromwell served as the Lord Protector.  However, not long after his appointment, the people grew discontented with the sober Puritan life Cromwell embraced and began to reconsider their harsh views against Charles.  When his son Charles II reclaimed the throne in 1660, they were ready for a return to a country governed by a monarchy.  The new king held accountable all the members of Parliament who signed his father’s death warrant.  Some fled the country, some begged for forgiveness, and others were tried and sentenced to death.  The country’s sentiment had changed regarding the fate of their old king.  A bit too late, unfortunately.

To this day, there remains disagreement as to whether King Charles I died as a martyr or a villain.  What do you think?

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Donna Scott is an award-winning author of 17th and 18th century historical fiction.  Before embarking on a writing career, she spent her time in the world of academia.  She earned her BA in English from the University of Miami and her MS and EdD (ABD) from Florida International University.  She has two sons and lives in sunny South Florida with her husband.  Her first novel, Shame the Devil, received the first place Chaucer Award for historical fiction and a Best Book designation from Chanticleer International Book Reviews.  Her newest novel, The London Monster, will be released in January 2021.

Website: www.donnascott.net
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Escape!

By Michael Paul Hurd

Charles II’s Royalist army was defeated by Oliver Cromwell’s New Model Army at Worcester on 3 September 1651. Following the defeat, Charles II became a fugitive for the next six weeks, before he successfully escaped to Normandy, France, on the morning of 15 October 1651. During his fugitive period, Charles II covered a circuitous 625-mile (1006 km) route from Worcester to Shoreham and were almost captured on several occasions. The route of Charles II’s escape is known as “The Monarch’s Way” and is signposted as a Public Footpath in its entirety. Charles II himself recounted the exact details of his escape to the Earl of Clarendon, Samuel Pepys (pronounced “peeps”), and his personal physician, Doctor George Bate. There were few discrepancies in the accounts recorded by each of the three men.

During his time as a fugitive, Charles II apparently gained a new appreciation for the life of the common man in England and how badly the populace had been affected by the English Civil Wars. Traveling in disguise most of the time and without a significant entourage, he relied on loyal subjects and Catholic noblemen for concealment. The subterfuge was elaborate: Charles was at times dressed as a common field hand, had his coiffure changed to match the locals, and even had what would have been the equivalent of a “dialect coach” to teach him how to speak and walk like a local laborer instead of an educated royal. At other times, he adopted an alias.

One of his most notable situations was his brief stay at Boscobel House in Shropshire, on 6 and 7 September 1651. There, Charles spent all day hiding – and even sleeping -- in a nearby oak tree while Parliamentary forces searched nearby. This tree later became known as the “Royal Oak” and a descendant of that tree still stands on Boscobel grounds. The King’s companion at the time, a Colonel Charles Careless, hid with Charles inside the oak tree and was responsible for alerting the King to imminent danger. Meanwhile, Boscobel House caretakers were detained and questioned by Parliamentary forces at the local militia headquarters but somehow managed to convince their interrogators that the King had never been on Boscobel House grounds, nor the White Ladies priory in particular.

So loyal were the Boscobel caretakers that they did not surrender Charles’s location to the Parliamentarian militia, even when reminded that there was a £1,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of the King and that the penalty for harboring the royal fugitive was “death without mercy.” However, the proximity of the militia to Charles’s location of concealment emphasized the importance of getting Charles out of England as quickly as possible.

Boscobel House - Image Attribution

Once again, Charles was on the move. His next exploits involved assuming the identity of a servant accompanying a woman who had a travel pass from the Parliamentarian military to visit a friend who was about to have a baby in Abbots Leigh, Somerset. Charles rode with the woman on a single horse, which threw a shoe during the journey. Because Charles had assumed the identity of a servant, it was his responsibility to take the horse to a local blacksmith; there, he engaged in a conversation with the blacksmith. In Charles’s own dictation of the escape to Samuel Pepys, he claimed to have told the blacksmith that “the rogue, Charles Stuart… deserved to be hanged more than all the rest…” Later, the King continued the ruse as a servant and was put to work in the kitchen, tending to a joint of meat roasting in the fireplace. He was inept at winding up the apparatus, and even claimed that he came from such poor beginnings that his family rarely ate meat, hence the inability to operate the roasting jack.

The exploits of the escape became even more elaborate over the next couple of weeks. His loyal accomplices tried to locate available ships to depart from Bristol; there were none available for at least the next month. Finding a hiding place in Trent while two Royalist officers tried to find a ship to sail from Lyme Regis or Weymouth, Charles himself witnessed a celebration by the local villagers who believed that he had been killed at Worcester. No one had recognized him. He later traveled with Juliana Coningsby, a niece of Lady Wyndham (who was the wife of accomplice Colonel Wyndham), pretending to be an eloping couple. They reached the market town of Bridport but found that the town was filled with Parliamentary troops. Charles boldly walked through the town to the best inn and arranged for rooms. He was almost recognized at the inn, but deflected and convinced the ostler that they had been servants together in the employ of a Mr. Potter in Exeter.

After the encounters in Bridport, the escape became much more complicated, but eventually Charles and his longtime traveling companion, Lord Wilmot, reached Brighthelmstone (now known as Brighton). There, the King was recognized by a former servant of the royal household under Charles I. This recognition was immediately problematic for the King; the captain of the vessel that was to transport him and Wilmot to France demanded an additional £200 as “danger money” before he would set sail. On the morning of 15 October 1651, Charles and Wilmot boarded the “Surprise”, sailing at the next high tide, around 7 a.m. A mere two hours later, Parliamentarian cavalry arrived in the village of Shoreham with orders to arrest the King.

Lord Wilmot

The previous narrative is an extreme oversimplification of Charles II’s escape to France. However, throughout the journey, Charles II repeatedly crossed paths with commoners and even assumed the identities of common servants; this is believed to have given him a thorough appreciation for their plight. When he returned to England nine years later at the request of Parliament following the death of Richard Cromwell, England was in political turmoil and the religiously divided House of Commons welcomed the Declaration of Breda in mid-1660. In this declaration, Charles II promised tolerance and liberty. He even promised not to exile past enemies nor confiscate their wealth.

Some historians have characterized Charles II as a popular King and a legendary celebrity in British history. Others have cited his ineptitude and poor judgment as contributing to a series of poorly prosecuted wars in the latter half of the 17th Century. Regardless of the bifurcated opinions, Charles II managed to guide Great Britain out of a period of extended political turmoil and towards the evolution into a constitutional monarchy under the Bill of Rights (1689) and the Acts of Settlement (1701).  These documents actually formed the basis for the United States Constitution, ratified approximately 100 years later.

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Michael Paul Hurd retired from full-time employment in 2018 and began writing his first historical fiction novel in August of that year. His “Lineage Series” of novels projects the touchpoints of his family onto events in history on both sides of the Atlantic. Genealogical research indicated that he is a distant relative of Jane Giffard, wife of Sir John Giffard, MP (1466-1556) and their line, which at one time owned Boscobel House. Married to his wife, Sandy (daughter of a British emigrant to the United States), for nearly 40 years, he spent over a decade working in the United Kingdom, from 1983-1994. There he took an interest in British history, studying under Dr. Sid Brown of Leeds University. Fourteen novels are planned for Hurd’s “Lineage Series,” several of which will involve topics relevant to British history as they evolve out of the vignettes of the first book in the series. 

Connect:

https://lineage-publishing.com/

Buy:

https://amazon.com/author/hurdm