The Thirty Years War had ended in Europe in October with the signing of the last in a series of treaties known as the Peace of Westphalia. Bohemia, where it had all begun, remained under Habsburg rule, but the Winter Queen saw her husband’s heirs returned the diminished inheritance of the Lower Palatinate, with a devastated population one-tenth of what it had been before the war. Spain now recognised the United Provinces of the Dutch Republic as a sovereign state, while the French gained most of Alsace-Lorraine. The French or the Dutch, freed from European battlefields, might now seek to profit from England’s weakness and disarray.
The aftershocks of the Thirty Years War were still being felt in Britain. Once the Stuart kingdoms had been uniquely at peace, but foreigners said that ‘Winter here had too many tears’ and that there had grown in England ‘a monstrous kind of wild liberty… for law, religion and allegiance are here arbitrary’, and where it used to be the saying ‘the king can do no wrong’, it was now said ‘the king can receive no wrong’.23
Only Charles, however, could prevent a war in Ireland that might easily spread to England if the kingdom’s European rivals became involved there. He was certain this threat allowed him, even now, to hold out for the peace terms he wanted.
On I January 1649 the MPs left in the purged House of Commons passed an ordinance to establish a High Court of Justice. This declared it treason for an English king ‘to levy war against the Parliament and kingdom of England’. The Lords rejected the ordinance. ‘Not one in twenty of the people of England are yet satisfied whether the king did levy war against the Houses first, or the Houses against him; and besides, if the king did levy war first we have no law extant that would make it treason.’24 So spoke the Independent grandee the Earl of Northumberland, but his words were an irrelevance. Parliamentarian peers had remained a powerful force right up to Pride’s Purge. No longer. The only MPs who now mattered were those permitted to sit in the Commons by the army.
On 4 January the Commons declared ‘That the People are, under God, the Original of all just Power.’25 As the people’s representatives the Commons MPs held this power in trust, and their acts alone had the force of law. At a stroke the declaration broke the traditional constitutional trinity of king, Lords and Commons. But what had replaced it? The absolute power of the Commons, looking strangely frail in a Westminster guarded by Pride’s men, patrolling its corridors armed with muskets and swords.
* He was furious when Henrietta Maria’s priests limited his access to her bedchamber on religious days, and their numerous children are testament to the importance of the physical side of their marriage.
* A third officer, who had already cast aside his doublet, ready to be shot, was told he was to be spared. His birth in Florence had saved him. The Parliamentarians didn’t want their own relatives to suffer a revenge attack if ever they toured Italy.
* Even today it remains a formidable sight as you approach it by sea from the Isle of Wight.
23
THE KING’S TRIAL
THE PAINTED CHAMBER IN THE PALACE OF WESTMINSTER WAS A wonder of the thirteenth century. There were scenes from the Old Testament that had inspired crusades against the Muslim invaders of the Holy Land. Its brushwork, as fine as lace, had glowed in brilliant lapis blues, vermilion reds, glittering silvers and gold. But the shining armour of the chivalrous knights was now tarnished, and the faded images obscured by tapestries. The medieval world barely intruded into the new on 8 January 1649, when men in military buff coats or plain Puritan suits sat at trestle tables and debated the fate of their king.
Two days earlier a High Court had been established that would for the first and only time try a King of England. This was justified on the practical grounds of preventing Charles from raising further ‘commotions, rebellions and invasions’, and on a matter of principle: that the king should have no impunity from the law. The 135 trial commissioners–or judges–who had been appointed by the Commons were mostly army officers and radical MPs. Eighty-three of them attended this first meeting. They included the generals Fairfax and Cromwell.
A legal opinion had been given to Cromwell that deposing a king was treason.1 He argued, however, that the king’s trial was not the action of ‘any man [who] has carried on the design of deposing the king’, but an expression of God’s will. ‘I cannot but submit to Providence,’ he observed.2
Charles was to be charged with having ‘a wicked design totally to subvert the fundamental laws and liberties of this nation, and, in their place, to introduce an arbitrary and tyrannical government’: crimes, it was declared, that deserved ‘exemplary and condign punishment’–in others words, death.3 But there was no certainty of outcome. Executing the king risked provoking foreign reprisals, another rising, or further mutiny in the navy. On the other hand, if Charles accepted the legality of the tribunal, he would effectively be accepting that he had no ‘negative voice’–the contemporary term for a veto that could block Commons decisions. This would mean he could be returned to the throne without any danger to Parliament, ‘a sword always over his head [and] grown grey in the documents of misfortune’.4 Yet the judges were faced with a grim fact: as Cromwell reportedly warned them, if the king refused to plead, then in order to confirm the supreme power of the Commons, they would have to ‘cut off his head with the crown on it’.
This was not what Fairfax had expected. His wife Anne, a Presbyterian, had virulently opposed the king being tried for his life, and one of the purged MPs had implored him to stop the trial, with the biblical warning ‘who can stretch forth his hand against the Lord’s Anointed, and be innocent?’5 The army’s December discussions about the trial had led Fairfax to believe that Cromwell backed him in seeking an outcome which would stop short of Charles’s execution, even if he refused to plead. There were rumours of Charles’s deposition being considered, and young Henry, Duke of Gloucester, being made king in Charles’s place. Fairfax now felt betrayed. He would never attend a meeting of the judges again. Nevertheless, Fairfax would not prevent the trial as he was urged to do. That would risk tearing his beloved army apart. Having delivered Charles up for judgement, he washed his hands of what he feared would follow.
A letter written to Fairfax, as well as to the Speakers of the Houses of Parliament, in which Henrietta Maria begged permission to see her husband, was not even opened.
The remaining judges elected the veteran London radical and Chief Justice of Chester, John Bradshawe, as their Lord President and agreed the trial would take place at Westminster Hall. Fearful of how people would react to the upending of the constitution and the insults to their king, dissidents were taken into custody under martial law, the vaults under the Painted Chamber searched for gunpowder then sealed, and London’s printing presses shut down. The first edition of the Eikon Basilike was destroyed at its printing house. Royalists promptly set up a new press outside the city.6 A second edition was being prepared as Charles was brought with maximum discretion from Windsor to London on 19 January 1649. Few noticed the return of the king to the capital he had fled in 1642.
After a night at St James’s Palace Charles was brought by barge to a private house next to Westminster Palace.7 It was bitterly cold, with ice knocking against the sides of the boats on the river. Charles would have little privacy in his rooms during his trial. The house was watched over by thirty guards who would be changed regularly and had permission to open the doors to his rooms whenever they wished. Two were actually to be stationed in his bedchamber where they could drink and smoke.8 In the grounds a further 200 soldiers were posted. At Westminster Hall, meanwhile, a raised dais had been built for the judges at the southern end. On it were benches covered in red baize, a raised chair and a desk. Facing these was another chair, covered in red velvet. It was here that Charles would sit.
It must have seemed appropriate to the king that he was to be tried in the same spot as Strafford had been. Westminster Hall had been packed for that trial–and so it was again, with a full audience awaiting the trial o
f the king.
Charles was escorted out of the back of his lodging at 2 p.m., twenty soldiers tramping ahead and more behind. They passed through the private garden, then between the buildings that huddled close against Westminster Hall and down a series of passages. At last he entered the hall through a doorway close to where the judges sat.
Inside, the sound of marching boots heralded a slight figure dressed in black silk. Charles wore a tall hat and around his neck was the blue ribbon of the Garter from which was suspended his George, the badge of St George and the dragon carved in onyx and studded with diamonds. At his elbow the silver rays of the Garter escutcheon sparkled. His beard was full. It was said he had refused to use the barber Parliament had provided for him, in case the barber was an assassin awaiting orders to cut his throat.9
The serjeant-at-arms conducted Charles to the railed-off area known as the bar. Charles stood there in his high hat. Everyone could see that it remained on his head: a highly visible reminder that no one there was his equal and so, legally, no one there was able to be his judge.
Charles’s gaze was directed first at the court. Then he turned round to a wooden partition which ran from wall to wall. A few feet behind it was a strong railing and a line of guards armed with halberds. Behind them more soldiers lined the walkway between the spectators who filled the rest of the space. Charles ignored them and looked up at the far corners of the room where there were galleries accessed from private houses. These were filled with people of high status, and there were guards here too. According to legend the Lord President Bradshawe had had his hat lined with lead to protect him from possible snipers.10 Charles moved to sit, but seemed to think better of it and turned again, his eyes sweeping the lowlier spectators, before he faced the court once more.
The Act of the Trial of Charles Stuart, King of England, was read out and Charles accused as ‘a tyrant, traitor, murderer, and a public and implacable enemy to the Commonwealth of England’. The roll call of the judges then began. Each of those present stood as his name was called. Many had chosen not to show up and their names were greeted only by silence–save for that of Fairfax. When his name was read a masked woman in the galleries shouted, ‘He has more wit than to be here!’ It was said to have been his wife, Anne. Cromwell, and many of the commissioners, would have recognised her voice.
It was a disconcerting beginning, but Bradshawe’s nerve held. He rose from his chair and 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’.
The neat forty-year-old prosecuting counsel, John Cooke, who stood on Charles’s right, now prepared to speak, but Charles tapped him on the shoulder with his cane. ‘Hold,’ he said. As Cooke moved to continue, Charles tapped again, ‘Hold!’ Bradshawe urged Cooke on and so Cooke asked for the charge to be read. As the clerk of the court began, Charles once again said, ‘Hold!’ This time his cane struck Cooke hard enough to send its silver head crashing to the ground. A hush fell across the room as it rolled on the floor. Charles waited for someone to pick it up. No one did. So he bent forward to retrieve it himself and put it in his pocket. Charles wondered if Hugh Peter had tampered with it deliberately.11
As the clerk continued Charles stood up and looked around him again before sitting and laughing contemptuously. Bradshawe now asked Charles to answer the charge. Charles could have argued that all he did was in self-defence, but he did not take that bait. ‘I would know by what power I am called hither,’ he demanded. He reminded the court he was at the point of concluding treaty negotiations with Parliament and, that being the case, what was their authority? ‘I mean lawful–there are many unlawful authorities in the world–thieves and robbers by the highway–but I would know by what authority I was brought from thence.’ There was none of the old stutter in his speech. ‘Remember I am your king, your lawful king,’ he continued, ‘think well upon it.’12
Bradshawe retorted that Charles was being tried ‘in the name of the people of England, of which you are elected king’. ‘No,’ Charles returned, ‘England was never an elected kingdom but an hereditary kingdom for near these thousand years, therefore let me know by what authority I am called thither; I do stand more for the liberty of my people than any that come to be my pretended judges.’13 * And if the people were represented by Parliament, which was a court, where was Parliament, Charles wanted to know. ‘I see no House of Lords here that may constitute a Parliament.’ Indeed, he noted, ‘You have shown no lawful authority to satisfy any reasonable man.’ ‘That is your apprehension,’ Bradshawe snapped; ‘we are satisfied who are your judges.’ ‘’Tis not my apprehension, nor yours either, that ought to decide it,’ Charles retorted.
As the court was adjourned Bradshawe commanded the guards: ‘Take down the prisoner.’ ‘The king, you mean,’ Charles corrected. Shouts of ‘God save the king!’ broke out as he was escorted from the hall. The guards countered: ‘Justice! Justice!’14
That night Charles refused to go to bed until his guards were removed from his room. It was a small victory. And there had been another. Ormonde had concluded a treaty with the Irish Confederates. Charles’s bargaining chip of a Royalist Ireland had become more substantial.
On the Monday Charles was back in court. Bradshawe again asked him to plead. Charles again asked by what authority he was being tried, ‘For’, he said, ‘if power without law may make laws [then] I do not know what subject he is in England that may be sure of his life, or anything that he calls his own.’ Bradshawe repeated that the judges sat by the authority of the Commons. ‘I deny that. Show me one precedent,’ Charles asked. ‘The Commons of England was never a Court of Judicature. I would know how they came to be so.’15
Bradshawe ordered the guards to remove him. Charles said he required more time to explain his refusal to plead. ‘Sir, ’tis not for prisoners to require,’ Bradshawe sneered. ‘Sir, I am no ordinary prisoner,’ Charles retorted. ‘Serjeant,’ Bradshawe continued, ‘take away the prisoner!’ When Charles nevertheless continued to speak Bradshawe lost his temper, saying, ‘How great a friend you have been to the laws and liberties of the people, let all England and the world judge!’ Charles was stung. It was, he said, ‘for the liberty, freedom and laws of the subjects that ever I took…’ He stopped himself, realising that if he said he had taken up arms, it could be construed as an admission that he was the aggressor in the civil war. He quickly corrected himself: ‘… defended myself with arms. I never took up arms against the people but for the laws.’ Bradshawe ordered sharply, ‘The command of the court must be obeyed!’ Charles was hustled out, huffing, ‘Well, sir!’
On the third day of the trial Charles was yet again asked to plead. He in turn again asked on what authority he was called. Bradshawe’s irritation at Charles’s claims to stand for the liberties and privileges of his subjects remained evident. ‘Truly, sir,’ he told Charles, ‘men’s intentions ought to be known by their actions; you have written your meaning in bloody characters throughout the whole kingdom.’ As the soldiers moved to escort Charles out, Bradshawe reiterated, ‘You are before a court of justice!’ Eyeing the brute force of the armed soldiers, Charles commented coolly: ‘I see before me a power.’ Only then did he rise from his chair to leave.
By now pressure to halt the trial was growing. Ministers fulminated from pulpits against the sin of regicide while the Scots, French and Dutch ambassadors pleaded for Charles’s life, and made veiled threats about what they might do if he were to be executed. Charles was, after all, a King of Scots, the uncle of the King of France and father-in-law of the now Prince of Orange. Charles himself believed that his judges had to see sense, and come to terms with him. Only he could end the risks of war in Ireland, and the intervention of one or more Europ
ean powers.
The prosecuting counsel, John Cooke, was frustrated at Charles’s refusal to plead. Cooke had hoped, amongst others matters, to cite in his case the ‘murder’ of King James by the royal favourite Buckingham. Over the course of the civil war Charles himself had come to be accused of involvement in poisoning James with potions and poultices. Referring to Charles’s supposed patricide would help justify the king being tried for his life. After all, in English law, treason was committed against the king, not the ‘commonwealth’. Charles might then have been convicted, leaving the purged Parliament to commute his sentence, subject to his good behaviour, in a supreme act of parliamentary sovereignty. But Charles had not pleaded.
That night a former pupil of Cooke’s stopped him on his way home, tugging at his sleeve. The pupil wanted to know what to expect from the trial at this crucial juncture. Cooke replied bitterly: ‘The king must die and monarchy must die with him.’ In refusing to accept the jurisdiction of the court, Charles had denied that the Commons was the superior power in the kingdom. The cost of keeping Charles alive was now greater than that of his death. He had left them with no choice but to cut off his head.
Allies of the serving judges worked until dawn that night trying to persuade Fairfax to rejoin them on the court benches so they could better present a united front. He declined to do so. But nor would he stop the trial taking its course. There were few senior officers he could rely on for support if he insisted on a last-minute royal reprieve, and the probable result was mutiny in his army and a renewed civil war. Yet he had been ‘much distracted in his mind, and changed purposes often every day’.16
In the Painted Chamber the judges now reviewed evidence and thirty-three witness statements were heard. The next day they were read out in a public session to help justify what was to come. The statements included that of the citizen of Leicester who claimed Charles had urged his troops to kill unarmed civilians in the town. Cromwell and his close allies insisted the judges hold their course, and by the following day, 26 January, the judges had finally agreed that Charles would suffer execution–if he refused a last offer to plead. A death warrant was drawn up and signatures began to be gathered.
The White King Page 28
