The King's Revenge: Charles II and the Greatest Manhunt in British History

by Jordan, Don

  Harrison then found himself under an onslaught from three judges. Bridgeman, Holles and Annesley castigated him for daring to claim that the Rump Parliament constituted a legal authority. Harrison would have liked to have had a barrister to argue that his actions were ordered by the de facto supreme law of the land – Parliament. The court ruled that since the Rump Parliament was not truly the supreme authority – lacking the completeness of the full Commons and the House of Lords – the argument was void.

  When Harrison tried to raise the point that both the Commons and the Lords had decided to go to war against the king in 1642, he was prevented from continuing. Soon he discovered that he had no arguments left. ‘The things that have been done,’ he concluded, ‘have been done upon the stage, in the sight of the sun.’

  ‘The matter itself is treason upon treason,’ said Sir Heneage. ‘Therefore we pray direction to the jury.’

  The clerk said, ‘Gentlemen of the jury, look upon the prisoner. How say ye? Is he guilty of the treason he standing indicted and hath been arraigned, or not guilty?’

  The foreman of the jury replied, ‘Guilty.’

  The jailers stepped forward and put chains on Harrison’s hands and feet. Sir Orlando passed sentence: ‘That you be led back to the place from whence you came, and from thence upon a hurdle to the place of execution; and there you shall be hanged by the neck, and being alive shall be cut down, and your privy members shall be cut off, your entrails to be taken out of your body, and you, living, the same to be burnt before your eyes, and your head to be cut off, and your body to be divided into four quarters, and head and quarters to be disposed of at the pleasure of the king’s majesty, and the lord have mercy on your soul.’

  The court was adjourned until seven o’clock the following morning. Harrison would have to wait two days before his sentence was carried out.

  On 12 October, the first defendant of the day was Adrian Scroop, pardoned under the Act of Oblivion having handed himself in only to find his faith betrayed. Like so many of the regicides, he had been schooled at one of the Oxford colleges and subsequently had learned the law at one of the Inns of Court. According to Ludlow, Scroop came from an ancient family and had a considerable estate. When the first Civil War broke out, he raised a troop of cavalry at his own expense.

  During Scroop’s trial, several of the same witnesses who had testified that Harrison had been one of the king’s judges, likewise testified to Scroop’s presence. Being a shrewd individual, Scroop asked each of them where he sat among the other judges and received the same answer from each; they could remember he was there but not where he sat. This line of questioning indicated that the witnesses may have been schooled to give the same evidence.

  However, the evidence given by Richard Browne, the Lord Mayor elect of London, proved decisive. Browne was a wealthy Presbyterian timber merchant and MP, whose initially strong support for the New Model Army had been undermined by the seizure of the king at Holmby House in 1647. Browne was ejected during Pride’s Purge and disgracefully imprisoned without charge for five years. He subsequently led the triumphant procession of Charles II into London and was knighted by the king.

  Browne recounted to the court his conversation with Scroop some time after the new king had returned to England from The Hague, when Scroop had replied, ‘Some are of one opinion and some are of another’, an answer Browne took to mean that Scroop was in favour of killing the king. Scroop denied he meant any such thing. Like Harrison, he asked for legal representation to argue he had acted as an agent of the government of the land. This was denied. Summing up, Bridgeman told the jury that it hardly needed to retire to consider its verdict. After conferring for a few moments, the jury found Scroop guilty. He was sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered.

  Scroop’s trial was followed immediately by that of the Cornish MP and friend of Thomas Harrison, John Carew. Sir Edward Turner, for the prosecution, said that Carew had been seduced by the devil into imagining and compassing the death of the king. Once more, the witnesses who had already given evidence that Harrison and Scroop were present at the king’s trial, gave testimony against Carew. They need hardly have bothered, for Carew admitted signing the king’s death warrant. When he tried to justify himself, arguing he had acted in obedience to God’s laws, the public galleries broke out in a loud humming to drown out his testimony, as if to say that they wanted to hear no more and he should be condemned. It was known as the ‘Death Hum’.

  Bridgeman silenced the public, saying, ‘He stands for his life, let him have liberty.’

  To defend his actions, Carew brought up the matter of the Grand Remonstrance of 1641, which had spelled out the shortcomings of the reign of Charles I, and had been passed by not one but both Houses of Parliament. The court moved quickly to shut him up. He was found guilty and again sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered.

  Carew was taken away in chains. He was replaced at the bar by luckless Thomas Scot, the ardent republican MP and former spy chief to the Commonwealth. Scot faced the usual witnesses, who testified that he had sat in judgment upon the king and had signed the death warrant. An unexpected witness was William Lenthall, who had been Speaker of the House of Commons when Charles I entered at the head of a troop of soldiers and tried to arrest five members. With his reply that he ‘had neither eyes to see, nor tongue to speak, but as the house is pleased to direct me’, Lenthall entered history.15 He gave evidence that Scot had told him he wished his role in the death of the king to be engraved upon his tombstone.

  Scot argued that such comments should be subject to parliamentary privilege and not trotted out in a court of law. He went on to claim that there were instances when the Commons alone constituted the supreme authority in the land. The court asked him to cite an example and Scot said it was the case in the age of the Saxons. This was too much for Bridgeman. In vain, Scot next attempted to argue that his case came within the scope of the king’s pardon. Like Scroop, Scot had turned himself in and so should have been eligible for pardon. The court overruled him. Bridgeman told him he should have argued this before entering his plea. But, of course, Bridgeman had refused to allow any legal arguments before the defendants pleaded. It was another cruel and cynical ploy by the court. Scot was sentenced to death.

  Next, Gregory Clement and Colonel John Jones were together called to the bar. Clement, the former MP notorious for being expelled from Parliament having been discovered in bed with a maid, was a merchant who had become rich trading with the new American colonies and by buying and selling expropriated land during the Commonwealth and Protectorate. Clement had confessed that he was guilty of sitting in judgment on the king, so the court produced no witnesses. But before sentencing him, the court tried the other defendant.

  The fearless Welsh merchant John Jones, standing next to Clement at the bar, had risen to become a colonel of a cavalry regiment, an MP and an important participant in the various administrations during the Commonwealth and Protectorate. In the eyes of the court, Jones was an especially good catch, for he was Oliver Cromwell’s brother-in-law. His wife, Katherine Cromwell, was interesting in her own right, having been suspected of harbouring secret royalist sympathies.16

  Jones had watched while the court crushed his co-defendant’s legal arguments. Perceiving that he would never be allowed to raise any legal justifications for his actions, he decided to confess his role in the trial of the king. Witnesses were shown the death warrant and pointed out Jones’s signature. Together, Jones and Clement were sentenced to death.

  While the high drama was unfolding at the Old Bailey, a related event went largely unnoticed in Hick’s Hall in Clerkenwell. Based on the hearsay evidence that he had been one of Charles’s masked executioners, a charge of treason was entered against the veteran soldier William Hulet. His name was added to the list for immediate trial – and what therefore seemed like his inevitable execution.

  At the Old Bailey the court adjourned until seven o’clock the following morning, 13 Octob
er. It was to be a momentous day. The first execution would take place – and the court would try two men who had not sat in judgment on the king.

  13

  DAMNED IF YOU DO,

  DAMNED IF YOU DON’T

  13–19 October 1660

  Having dealt with the men who sentenced Charles I to death, the show trial turned its attention to those who had the misfortune to have acted in an official capacity at Charles’s trial. The first to be brought to the bar was Daniel Axtell, commander of the guard. The former Hertfordshire grocer was no ordinary Roundhead. Having been, in April 1660, one of the few senior officers to rally to John Lambert’s side in an attempt to prevent Charles II being installed as king,1 he was now to make a similarly spirited last-ditch defence in the face of a cynical onslaught from a publicly partisan court.

  The evidence of the first witness repeated the claim that during the king’s trial, Axtell had threatened to have his men shoot the mysterious woman in one of the public galleries believed to have been Lady Fairfax. According to the witness, this anonymous woman had taken exception to the charge against the king and shouted out that Cromwell was ‘a rogue and a traitor’.2 This particular outburst appears neither in the record taken by Phelps nor in the official record taken by the parliamentary stenographers. It seems that it was made up by the witness, one Holland Simpson. The robust reaction by the captain of the guard to an interruption in court hardly amounted to treason, but its retelling was a useful tool by the prosecution to blacken the prisoner’s name.

  The next witness was one of Axtell’s former colleagues, Colonel Hercules Huncks, who had commanded the halberdiers at the king’s trial. The court record does not tell us how Axtell reacted to seeing him. Huncks came from a royalist family in Warwickshire but had joined the New Model Army to fight for Parliament. Upon the installation of Charles II he had handily realised that the rest of his family had been right all along. In return for giving evidence against Axtell, Huncks was awarded a pardon.3

  Huncks said that he had been present in Whitehall Palace together with Cromwell, Ireton, Harrison, and Colonels Phayre and Hacker on the morning of the king’s execution. Cromwell had asked him to sign the warrant for the executioners. When Huncks refused, Axtell – who had been standing at the door – admonished him, saying, ‘Colonel Huncks, I am ashamed of you. The ship is now coming into the harbour and will you strike sail before we come to anchor?’4

  Axtell denied that he had met Huncks on that day. ‘I know nothing of it, if I were to die at this bar presently,’ he said.

  Significantly, no other witness was called to corroborate Huncks’s version of events. Several more had been called to say they saw Axtell commanding the guard at the trial, that he ordered his men to point their guns towards the woman who cried out, and that he also ordered his men to shout ‘Justice! Justice!’ and ‘Execute!’*

  One witness, who said he had been a soldier under Axtell’s command, gave evidence that the colonel had commanded a troop of men to go to the house of the common hangman, Richard Brandon, and bring him back to execute the king. This testimony was directly contradicted by that of the next witness, who gave hearsay evidence that he had been told the men who killed the king were called Hulet and Walker.

  When this parade of witnesses ceased, Axtell told the court that his case did not fall under the law of high treason from the time of Edward III for the simple reason that he was a soldier obeying orders which came down from the houses of Lords and Commons acting together to raise an army. The Parliament that did so was held to be the lawful force in the land, even by foreign kingdoms. Axtell himself was bound by his commission to obey his senior officers and they had ordered him to Westminster during the king’s trial. ‘I conceive,’ said Axtell, ‘I am no more guilty than the Earl of Essex, Fairfax or Lord Manchester.’

  The court had heard this defence before, of course, from Thomas Harrison and others. Axtell enlarged on the theme: ‘I am no more guilty than his excellency the Lord Monck, who acted by the same authority, and all the people in the three nations.’

  At this, Lord Annesley interjected to say that the role of soldier did not protect Axtell, for the army had not heeded the call by the people for peace when there was a treaty (i.e. the Treaty of Newport) that would have brought peace. Of course, by the court’s reasoning, Axtell’s commanding officer, Sir Thomas Fairfax, was also guilty of treason. But Fairfax, like Manchester and Essex, was not on trial thanks to his social rank and his willingness to forsake his former comrades.

  The court realised it had to get Fairfax off the hook. As a seasoned court practitioner, Bridgeman undertook this task himself. He asked Axtell who had given him his orders. Axtell replied that his orders came from Fairfax. Bridgeman then asked if they came directly from Fairfax. Axtell replied that they came through the major-generals, Ireton and Cromwell. When asked how he knew the orders had come from Fairfax, Axtell answered that he knew because Cromwell and Ireton had told him they came from Fairfax. Fortunately for the court, Cromwell and Ireton were dead and could not be called as witnesses. Fairfax was now absolved from all possible crimes.

  After this charade, Axtell argued that he was in a double-bind: if he had not done as he was ordered, he would have been shot for insubordination, but by doing as ordered he was to die anyhow. He was damned if he did and damned if he didn’t. He then rebutted all the points made against him: he did not order that the woman who shouted should be shot, he did not order his men to call out ‘Justice! Justice!’, and so on. All in vain. After reminding the court of the rule which had formerly required two witnesses to events, he said, ‘I leave the matter to the jury, in whose hands I and my little ones and family are left … I leave my case, my life, my all, in your hands.’5 The jury took his life in their hands and crushed it.

  After Axtell’s conviction, it was a matter of formality for the court to convict Colonel Francis Hacker, one of those who signed the warrant for the king’s execution. Hacker’s case was unique in that the main evidence against him had been given by his wife, who had provided the court with the king’s death warrant. If this was not torment enough, another turncoat was produced to give evidence against him. In return for his life, Colonel Tomlinson testified that Hacker had commanded the guard that took the king to and from Westminster Hall and subsequently to the scaffold.

  A surprise witness was produced. In a breathtaking act of bias, the court called one of its own commissioners to testify for the prosecution. Lord Annesley stepped down from the bench and was sworn in. He testified that when Colonel Huncks was captive in the Tower, he had interrogated him. According to Annesley, Huncks told him he had witnessed Hacker sign the execution warrant. Seeing how the dice were loaded against him, Hacker said little more in his defence. He was quickly found guilty.

  One colleague of these soldiers was absent from the trials. Colonel Robert Phayre had been arrested in Ireland and transported to England to stand trial for his role in organising the execution of the king. Although he was on duty during the trial and at the execution, Phayre had refused to sign the execution warrant. More significantly, he was married to the daughter of Sir Thomas Herbert, the faithful companion to Charles I during his captivity, who was able to intercede on behalf of his son-in-law. Hence, Phayre was not among those arraigned for high treason.6

  Following the trials of the two colonels came the most peculiar of all the cases: that of Captain William Hulet, charged with being one of the king’s executioners.

  The case against Hulet was essentially that made against him upon his arrest: on the day of the king’s death, he had been one of a large number of sergeants in Hewson’s regiment who were asked to assist the common hangman in return for £100 and promotion. All reportedly refused, though it was suspected by some of his comrades that Hulet had secretly agreed to the job. The two executioners appeared on the scaffold heavily disguised, wearing hoods and false beards, one of which was black, the other grey. Several witnesses gave uninspiring testimony that the e
xecutioner with the grey beard was Hulet, based on guesswork, hearsay and circumstantial evidence.

  One prosecution witness managed to cast still more doubt on Hulet’s guilt. Walter Davis testified that, two years before the current trial, he and Hulet had met at an inn in Dublin and had shared two pints of wine. Davis had asked Hulet, ‘I pray, resolve me in this one question: it is reported that you took up the king’s head and said, “behold the head of a traitor.”’

  According to Davis, Hulet replied that it was a question ‘I never resolved any man, though often demanded. Yet, whosoever said it then it matters not. I say it now: it was the head of a traitor.’

  What is interesting here is that in contemporary descriptions of the trial, it is recorded that the executioner who held up the king’s head said nothing. If Hulet had been on the scaffold, he would have known this, but he answered the question without correcting Davis’s erroneous description of the event. There is no reason to suspect that Davis asked a trick question, nor is there any reason to think that Hulet would have considered it to be so. Hulet’s reply might only have been to acknowledge his feelings about the dead king. On the face of it, the exchange seemed to offer slender evidence either way.

  One piece of evidence was more compelling – the testimony about Hulet’s voice. A man called Richard Gittins, a sergeant in the same regiment as Hulet who had been one of those who turned down £100, gave evidence that he was standing by the Banqueting House window leading onto the scaffold when the king was executed. When the executioner with the false grey beard asked the king for his forgiveness, he unmistakably recognised his voice as that of William Hulet. Gittins repeated the claim that Hulet had been made a captain-lieutenant shortly after the execution and added that Colonel Hewson often called him ‘Old Father Gray-beard’.