Killers of the King

by Charles Spencer

  Thirteen years later, Cromwell insisted that a new High Court of Justice be set up to try the fourteen principal conspirators in a freshly unearthed Royalist plot. They were condemned to death for treason. Three of them – the brother of an earl, a knight and a priest – were granted the swift end offered by beheading. Another three, who were colonels, ‘were treated with more severity’, Clarendon reported, ‘and were hanged, drawn, and quartered, with the utmost rigour, in several great streets in the city, to make the deeper impression upon the people’. But the ghastliness of the procedure was too much, and ‘all men appeared so nauseated with blood, and so tired with those abominable spectacles, that Cromwell thought it best to pardon the rest who were condemned; or rather to reprieve them’.3

  While the Royalists had loudly complained at the barbarity of hanging, drawing and quartering when it had been used against their own, they now insisted on it as the correct form of punishment for the killers of their late King. They were delighted Harrison would be the first to sample the agony and the humiliation of it all. ‘No man in the kingdom was regarded with so much detestation as this, by all parties,’ remarked the Reverend Mark Noble, an eighteenth-century biographer of the regicides, ‘except the few remaining fanatics, who looked upon him as a saint and martyr, and firmly believed to see him arise – to see, rather his mangled scattered remains re-unite in glory amongst them.’4

  From the moment he had been sentenced, Thomas Harrison had shown an astonishing bravery nurtured by his religious intensity. Led from the court, he was immediately surrounded by a crowd howling with delight at what lay in store for him. In reply to the gloating taunts, he shouted, ‘Good is the Lord for all this! I have no cause to be ashamed of the cause that I have been engaged in!’5

  Harrison remained upbeat during the two days between his being sentenced and his execution. He stayed unshakeable in his conviction that the ordeal he and his fellow regicides were facing was part of God’s plan, before the imminent Second Coming. He greeted the confiscation of his entire £17,000 estate by bequeathing to his wife the one object that remained to him – his Bible. This, he maintained, was an object with a value far beyond human understanding.

  On 13 October he emerged from his cell, was tied to a sledge and was then pulled from Newgate prison, along Fleet Street, towards his place of execution. Charing Cross had been the site of one of the twelve Christian crosses erected in the late thirteenth century by Edward I, in memory of his dead and much-mourned wife Queen Eleanor. Parliament had destroyed this memorial to romance and royalism in 1647. Now some of its cause’s most ardent supporters would be slain on this same spot, within sight of Whitehall, where the King had been beheaded.

  The crowd was seething and hostile. ‘Where is your good old cause now?’ one man taunted, as the major general rattled past on his hurdle. ‘With a cheerful smile,’ Ludlow recorded, Harrison ‘clapped his hands on his breast and said, “Here it is, and I go to seal it with my blood.” ’6

  Far from being cowed by terror, Harrison presented a brave and defiant farewell to those who had come to celebrate his end. When he stood on the scaffold, about to give his final speech, it was noticeable that his legs were shaking. This provoked coarse heckling from those convinced he was quaking with fear. But the major general would have none of it, shouting out that his many wounds in battle had left him with a legacy of quivering limbs. He delivered his words within sight of the rope that would hang him, and of the instruments that would tear him apart.

  There was to be no last-minute repentance of his part in the death of the King. Instead, Harrison chose his final moments to justify his actions: ‘The finger of God hath been amongst us of late years in the deliverance of his people from their oppressors, and in bringing to judgment that who were guilty of the precious blood of the dear servants of the Lord.’ To any sympathisers in the crowd, he gave this rallying cry: ‘Be not discouraged by reason of the cloud that now is upon you, for the Sun will shine and God will give a testimony unto what he hath been doing in a short time.’7 There must have been many former Parliamentarians present who felt a tingle of satisfaction at their soldier’s heartfelt defiance.

  When the moment came for him to be put to death, Harrison recalled achievements from the past, while entrusting his future to God: ‘I have served a good Lord and Creator; he has covered my head many times in the day of battle: by God I have leapt over a wall, by God I have run through a troop, and by God I will go through this death and He will make it easy for me. Now into thy hands, O Lord Jesus, I commit my spirit.’8

  He was hanged with the short drop, to ensure no easy departure from this world, and only when the frantic thrashing had stopped was he cut down. As Harrison regained consciousness his shirt was pulled away. The executioner used his knife to cut off Harrison’s genitals, which were presented to him before being tossed into a bucket. He was then held down while red-hot metal bored into his belly.

  It was while his innards were being burnt in front of him that Harrison summoned up his remaining strength, and swung a punch that caught the executioner off-guard. This brought an abrupt end to the major general, as he was immediately dispatched by the irate and embarrassed hangman. Harrison’s head was severed, his heart cut out, and then his body was cut up into four.

  One who witnessed this blood-drenched ordeal was Samuel Pepys. The diarist was a Parliamentary sympathiser who was adapting to life under the Restoration. ‘I went out to Charing Cross, to see Major General Harrison hanged, drawn, and quartered; which was done there, he looking as cheerful as any man could do in that condition. He was presently cut down, and his head and heart shown to the people, at which there was great shouts of joy. Thus it was my chance to see . . . the first blood shed in revenge for the blood of the King at Charing Cross.’9

  There was plenty more to come.

  The trials had continued during Harrison’s final days. At the end of 12 October, with Scroope, Scott, Carew, Jones and Clements found guilty, Judge Bridgeman encouraged them to face up to ‘the foulness of this horrid offence’, in advance of appearing before ‘God’s tribunal’. He said he was sad to see the fatal fall of such men, several of whose qualities he knew personally. He painted Charles I’s reign before the Civil Wars as a period of unmatched peace and prosperity, and attacked the five men for being among those who had condemned a monarch who he believed to possess extraordinary personal virtues: ‘I urge this unto you, only that you would lay it to your hearts, that you would consider what it is to kill a King, and to kill such a King.’10

  Bridgeman was at great pains to distinguish between the King’s Parliamentary adversaries, and those directly involved in his conviction and execution: ‘They were not guilty, but some few ambitious, bloody, guilty persons, who contrived the same, and others misled by them.’11 Sir Orlando refused to allow fanciful religious beliefs to forgive earthly conduct, declaring, ‘There is a spiritual pride, men may overrun themselves by their own holiness, and they may go by pretended revelations . . . You must not think that every fancy and imagination is conscience; the Devil doth many times appear like an Angel of Light.’12

  When thirty-eight-year-old John Carew learnt the tone of Bridgeman’s comments, he said that he would be the first to follow Harrison, for he shared the same Fifth Monarchy beliefs that the Court and the Crown were identifying as a particular menace.

  Carew was regarded as second only to Harrison in the sect, and had suffered similarly under the Protectorate, after (like Harrison) some prominence in the years immediately after Charles’s execution: he had represented Devon during the experiment of Barebone’s Parliament. However, he came to believe that Cromwell’s personal ambitions flouted God’s will, prompting him to write a tract that included the accusation: ‘There are those who suspect you’ll King it, and procure your Heir to succeed it.’13 For this, and other acts that Cromwell viewed as sedition, Carew had been imprisoned in Pendennis Castle in Cornwall.

  The Restoration would provide no respite for
Carew. He had become one of Charles I’s judges by accident, his name not featuring in the original list of commissioners, but being added later – seemingly as an afterthought. Carew had asked to be excused the responsibility, but eventually agreed to sit when satisfied as to the authority of the High Court of Justice. Aside from his status as a regicide, Carew was a figure of special contempt in Royalist circles for not having attempted to plead for mercy for his half-brother, Sir Alexander Carew. Sir Alexander had been condemned to death for trying to betray the port of Plymouth to the King during the Civil War: he was beheaded in December 1644. One of Charles II’s supporters asserted, ‘It is no wonder that he was one of the Judges of the King, who was consenting to the death of his own brother.’14 The Commons voted for John Carew to be excluded from the Act of Indemnity by a majority of eighty votes to seventy.

  Carew had been the focus of public displays of intense hatred on his journey from Cornwall to the Tower of London. Contrary to the reports that had troubled the Commons earlier in the year he had not tried to flee abroad, even though he had had the opportunity to do so. He shared Harrison’s belief that running away would denote the abandonment of an honourable and blessed cause. He also swore by the apocalyptic Scriptures, and held dear a verse in the Book of Revelation that resonated with his beliefs: ‘And I saw the souls of them that were beheaded for the witness of Jesus, and for the Word of God, and which had not worshipped the Beast. And they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years.’15 He believed he could be certain of a place among the Elect.

  In several towns that he passed through on his way to London there had been calls to hang or shoot Carew there and then, rather than let him live a day longer. ‘He had a gracious presence of the Lord with him,’ recalled a Puritan witness to his journey; ‘Otherwise the many reproaches and hard usage in the way had been sufficient to have troubled his spirit.’16

  Carew remained calm but forthright during his trial. He readily admitted his presence at the King’s prosecution, and confessed his signature on both of the key documents. He justified his actions as being in tune with God’s will. ‘As for that I can say in the presence of the Lord, who is the searcher of all hearts,’ he offered, ‘that what I did was in his fear; and I did it in obedience to his holy and righteous laws.’ This provoked high excitement in the public gallery, but Bridgeman allowed Carew to continue, reminding the court and the accused, ‘Go on, he stands for his life, let him have liberty . . . Go on, you shall not be interrupted.’17

  There was less tolerance of Carew’s secondary defence: that he had acted under the authority of Parliament, when sitting in judgment of the King. Mr Justice Foster reminded Carew that there was no precedent for the House of Commons to act in such a way, to which Carew calmly countered, ‘Neither was there such a war, or such a precedent.’18 It was a brilliantly telling point, and he refused to retract it: ‘Gentlemen of the Jury, I say I shall leave it with you. This authority I speak of is right, which was the supreme power, it is well known what they were.’19 This was an argument that the Royalist court repeatedly disparaged, but never convincingly rebutted. Fellow regicide Edmund Ludlow referred to the Court’s counter-arguments on this point as being so flimsy that they were no more than mere ‘cobweb-coverings’.20

  At the end of the day, when Bridgeman asked the five who had been found guilty if they had anything further to say before he proceed to sentence, the other four cast themselves on the King’s mercy, while Carew bypassed earthly authority altogether. ‘I commit my cause unto the Lord,’21 he said. His family begged him to reconsider and seek clemency: then, even though his life may remain forfeited, they might have a chance of retaining his property. But he refused to compromise his most closely held beliefs for their material benefit.

  When the time came for his execution, everyone noticed how happy Carew looked. ‘Coming down Newgate stairs to go into the sledge,’ wrote an eyewitness, ‘in a very smiling and cheerful manner, his countenance shining with great glory, he uttered words to this effect: “My Lord Jesus endured the Cross, whose steps I desire to follow.” ’22 Royalist reporters, deeply troubled by another demonstration of pious bravery so soon after Harrison’s, wrote that Carew’s demeanour should be put down to drunkenness rather than courage: they claimed he had downed three pints of sack – fortified wine – before setting off for his execution. This, the Royalist scribes maintained, explained Carew’s excessive sweating that day, which even his handkerchief could not assuage.

  The day had started with threatening autumnal clouds hanging low, and they released their drops as Carew mounted the scaffold. He gave a fiery speech in the rain, warming the hearts of the Fifth Monarchists watching. He then met his death with a serene defiance and acceptance that drew reluctant admiration from many who had come to watch a wretched fanatic suffer.

  Part of the thinking behind the regicides’ trials had been the hope of drawing attention to what contemptible beings the defendants were. But the courage and piety of Harrison and Carew had drawn admiration from the watching crowds, and news of their stoicism spread quickly. The remaining doomed men aspired to match the example of the Fifth Monarchy duo for grit and dignity, when their time came.

  But another Man of God was finding the imminent prospect of excruciating death too much to bear. Hugh Peters was sixty-two, and in poor health. Eleven years earlier he had led Charles in triumph from Windsor to London for his trial, and had since combined his religious calling with command of a regiment during Cromwell’s Irish campaigns. Peters came from a well-to-do background: his father was an émigré from Antwerp who settled with Peters’s maternal family in Fowey, on the Cornish coast. A Cambridge graduate, Peters was filled with religious fervour as a young man, inspired by an electrifying sermon during a visit to London. It was a potent enough dose to last a lifetime.

  Peters’s certainty in his beliefs made him an outspoken opponent of royal policy and religion. He had been imprisoned in 1627 after openly condemning Charles’s French queen, Henrietta Maria, for the ‘idolatry and superstition’23 of her Roman Catholicism. His licence to preach was suspended, prompting him to move to the greater tolerance of the Netherlands. There he served as a military chaplain, before briefly becoming a prominent pastor in Rotterdam. Even there, the long arm of the Anglican Church caught up with him, pricked by his outspokenness. Peters decided to join the Puritan trek towards the far-flung, colonial communities of America’s eastern seaboard. An ocean away from Europe, they offered the chance of political and religious liberty.

  Peters had been intrigued by possibilities across the Atlantic for some time. He was an early investor in the New England Company, which bought a grant of land between the Charles and Merrimack Rivers (which makes up much of the central part of present-day New England). The settlers forcibly colonised land that had been home to the Massachusett, Nauset and Wampanoag tribes, who lost much of their population to disease as a consequence.

  In 1629 the trading body changed its identity to the Massachusetts Bay Company, acquiring a royal charter from Charles I that recognised it as being ‘one body corporate and politic’, able to pass its own laws provided they were ‘not contrary’ to those of England.24 Now it carried the quiet hopes of many who were eager to create a refuge from religious intolerance in England. This was the one English colonial body in America that did not require its board members to meet in the motherland, meaning that control of company stock provided a unique measure of independence.

  Hugh Peters took up his new life in New England in 1635, bringing energy and ideas to the colony. He used knowledge gleaned from his youth in Cornwall to advise the settlers on how to develop both their fishing trade and their shipbuilding. He helped spread the gospel among the Native Americans, later claiming that as a result of their newfound godliness, ‘in seven years among thousands there dwelling, I never saw any drunk, nor heard an Oath, nor any begging, nor Sabbath broken’.25

  Peters was one of 17,000 Puritans who had migrated to New England by the m
id-1630s. The preacher was among those anxious that this growing community of godliness should be led by suitably trained clergy. He became a prime mover in the establishment of Harvard College, by vote of the Great and General Court of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, in 1636. Harvard was established to provide an annual harvest of spiritual leaders. At the end of the same year Peters became pastor of the first church in Salem, which was, along with Boston, one of the two main settlements in the colony. He asserted his authority over the community, combining strong leadership with a compelling example of simple living. In the process he earned considerable respect and popularity.

  There was consternation in his congregation when it was learnt that Peters would be part of a three-man delegation from the colony to England, in 1641, ‘to negotiate for us . . . both in furthering the work of reformation of the churches there which was now like to be attempted, and to satisfy our countrymen of the true cause our engagements there have not been satisfied this year’.26 It was an important mission, and demanded the vivid oratory of the passionate preacher. Peters promised to return to New England, which he would from now on frequently refer to as ‘home’. However, to his bitter regret, this was not to be. Years later, when facing death, Peters would write: ‘It hath much lain to my heart above any thing almost, that I left the people I was engaged to in New England, it cuts deeply, I look upon it as a Root-evil.’27