by Jordan, Don
Hulet said he could not have been on the scaffold because on the day of the execution he was imprisoned in the Tower for refusing to participate in the execution. He suggested the court call the various commanders of the guard present that day to confirm this. The court did not take up his suggestion. In an effort finally to nail Hulet, the court called Colonel Tomlinson, who said he thought the fatal blow was struck by the executioner with the grey beard, but he could not quite remember. The evidence against Hulet remained inconclusive. Despite this, the jury found him guilty, as they knew they should. Hulet now faced the same grisly death as his fellow defendants. The judges, however, remained uneasy about the proof of Hulet’s role in the affair. Showing contempt for their own packed jury, they pardoned Hulet, possibly saving the life of a man who did assist in the death of the king.
William Hulet’s unsatisfactory trial did not completely answer the question of the identity of one of the two heavily disguised men on the scaffold – but it did solve the question of the identity of the chief executioner. Ever since the morning of 30 January 1649, when Colonel Axtell had sent a detachment of troops to fetch Richard Brandon, the common hangman, from his home, rumours had circulated about whether or not it was Brandon who had actually cut off the king’s head.
Of course, the court could have simply asked Colonel Axtell, who was languishing only a few hundred yards away in Newgate awaiting execution. He was one of the few people alive who knew with certainty the identities of both the disguised men (indeed, Hulet had suggested to the court that they should call Axtell). This could have put the court in a difficult situation. Having convicted Axtell for signing the execution warrant, to have then asked for his evidence would have placed him in a similar category to Tomlinson and Huncks, both of whose lives had been spared for helping the prosecution.
Making do without Axtell, the court called possibly its first witnesses to be truly independent. Abraham Smith was a boatman who had walked up Whitehall to see the execution. Shortly after the king was killed, a troop of musketeers had instructed him to take the hangman downriver. Smith was told, ‘Waterman, away with him, be gone quickly.’7
When Brandon got into his boat, he gave one of the soldiers half a crown. A previous witness, employed by the sheriff’s office, had testified that Brandon had been paid in half-crowns, which fitted the story of how he paid the soldiers for helping him escape safely from a potentially hostile crowd.
Once he was rowing downriver, Smith asked his passenger if he was the man who had cut off the king’s head. Brandon replied that he was not. He said he had taken him to Whitehall where he had been held prisoner while his instruments – his axe and the block – had been taken away. According to Smith, Brandon was shaking uncontrollably.
It is hardly surprising that Brandon should deny his role – he could not have known whether Smith was for or against the king. Perhaps the best evidence that Brandon was the executioner was the professionalism of the man who had tucked a wisp of hair away from the neck and struck a clean blow to sever the head.8 The next two witnesses both testified that they subsequently heard Brandon admit he had killed the king. Taken with the anonymously published confessions that appeared later in the year after he had died, it seems safe to conclude that the man who wielded the axe that cut off the king’s head was indeed Richard Brandon, the common hangman.
While the trial continued, the first execution took place. On the morning of 13 October Thomas Harrison climbed the scaffold of Charing Cross. According to a contemporary account anonymously published as The Speeches and Prayers of the Regicides, Harrison was an imposing figure. When the noose was put around his neck he told the crowd, ‘By God I have leaped over a wall, by God I have run through a troop, and by my God I will go through this death, and He will make it easy for me.’ As he concluded by committing his spirit to Jesus, the hangman cast him off into space. He was cut down, still conscious, and the hangman set about cutting open his abdomen to remove his entrails. At this, Harrison is reported to have summoned up a final spasm of strength and boxed his executioner on the ear.
Among those who watched the spectacle was Samuel Pepys who that evening wrote that Harrison looked ‘as cheerful as any man could do in that condition’. Two days later, Harrison’s fellow Fifth Monarchist John Carew was taken to the scaffold, where he conducted himself with similar bravery. He prayed for some time before loudly addressing friends and colleagues in the crowd with, ‘Farewell, my friends, farewell!’
Having been summarily tried themselves, on the evening of 15 October, Hugh Peters and John Cook made what preparations they could before their executions in the morning. Peters remained in a state of dread and anguish. He told the others that he was unprepared for death and feared he would not face his suffering on the scaffold with courage. Cook tried to comfort him, saying, ‘Brother Peters, we shall be in heaven tomorrow in bliss and glory.’ After midnight, neither man was sleeping (Cook had slept for only an hour and a half). Cook again comforted Peters, saying, ‘Come brother Peters, let us knock at heaven-Gates this morning. God will open the doors of eternity to us before twelve of the clock.’9
On the morning of Tuesday 16 October, Cook took leave of his wife, saying, ‘Farewell my dear lamb, I am now going to the souls under the altar that cry, “How long, O Lord holy and true? Dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on earth?” And when I am gone my blood will cry and do them more harm than if I had lived.’
Cook’s wife embraced him and wept. He said, ‘Why weepest thou? Let them weep who part and shall never meet again, but I am confident we shall have a glorious meeting in heaven.’
When the sheriff came to take him away, his wife clung fiercely to his arm, crying bitterly as she pulled him back. Cook gently chided her for preventing him from going to meet Jesus Christ. He eased his arm away from her grasp and went out to the yard where a wooden sledge of the type used to carry condemned prisoners to Tyburn awaited him. He was greeted by the head of Thomas Harrison, strapped to the sledge so that it faced him as he lay down and was tied on. As the horses started up and the sledge jerked forward, Cook shouted out, ‘This is the easiest chariot that ever I rid in all my life.’
On the scaffold, Cook said he had no malice towards anyone and forgave everyone. He had no hard thoughts regarding the king, whose throne he prayed would be upheld by truth and mercy. For those who put him and his colleagues on trial, he had less forgiving words: ‘But I must needs say that poor we have been bought and sold by our brethren, as Joseph was. Brother hath betrayed brother to death.’ When he said he wished the king could show some mercy, the sheriff interrupted, saying that the king ‘hath clemency enough for all but his father’s murderers’.
Cook went on to talk about his hopes for a better judicial system ‘good for both king and people’, but the sheriff interrupted him again. Cook replied sternly, ‘It hath not been the manner of Englishmen to insult over a dying man – nor in other countries among Turks or galley slaves.’
Interrupted by the sheriff a third time, Cook retorted, ‘Sir, I pray take notice of it: I think I am the first man that ever was hanged for demanding justice, therefore I hope you will not interrupt me.’
He turned to the friends who had accompanied the sledge from Newgate and asked them to look after his wife and child, and that the king and Parliament would not take all the property from either them or the other attainted men. Finally he prayed that no more might suffer and said, ‘Blessed Father, I come into the bosom of thy love.’
Cook was cast off the ladder and swayed above the crowd. Among those who watched his torture was Hugh Peters, who had been cruelly brought from the prison to observe what awaited him. He was brought up to the scaffold when Cook was being quartered. The hangman came over to him and, rubbing his bloodied hands together, said, ‘Come, how do you like this, Mr Peters, how do you like this work?’
Peters gathered up what spirit he could and replied, ‘I am not, thank God, terrified. You may do your worst.’
10
When Cook’s entrails were cut from his body and burned, the smell was reported to be overpowering. Many people turned away, covering their noses. After what remained of him was dragged away on the sledge, Hugh Peters was put on the scaffold. He spotted a man he knew in the crowd and gave him a golden coin, asking for it to be given to his daughter as a token from him. Before the coin came into her hands, Peters said, he would be with God.
Despite his fears that he would let himself and his fellow prisoners down, Peters met his death with bravery. Speaking to the crowd, he said, ‘Oh, this is a good day. He is come that I have long looked for and I shall be with him in glory.’11 His last words were drowned out by jeering and booing from the crowd.
The day continued at the Old Bailey with the trial of Charles I’s remaining judges. This group of sixteen were in a different category from those who had been tried before. Though potentially facing the death penalty, it had been stipulated that they could only be sentenced to death by a further Act of Parliament. Therefore, they faced life imprisonment or loss of property or both. Some were more distinguished than others, some had been more active in the court or in the Rump Parliament. All but three had signed the death warrant. They were John Downes, Augustine Garland, Edmund Harvey, William Heveningham, Robert Lilburne, Henry Marten, Simon Meyne, Gilbert Millington, Sir Isaac Pennington, Vincent Potter, Owen Rowe, Henry Smith, James Temple, Peter Temple, Robert Tichborne and Thomas Waite.
Among them, one man’s name stood out. Henry Marten’s strong republican sentiments were well known to the House of Stuart. Although friendly with Sir Edward Hyde, Marten had consistently called for the Stuarts to be swept away. Charles I had called him ‘an ugly rascal and a whore-master’.12 Marten repaid the compliment by playing a central role in setting up the High Court that tried the king. Given all this, it was remarkable that he had not been included in the primary death list. His omission seems to have been due only to sheer weight of numbers. Even he and the others on the secondary list, of course, were not entirely secure for their lives.
In his defence, Marten said that he was not guilty according to the wording of the charge, namely that he ‘maliciously, murderously and traitorously’ conspired to kill the king, for there was no malice in his actions. Hence, while not denying what he had done, he did deny he was guilty under the Act. Among his accomplishments, Marten was a lawyer and this was a good point. The bench must have collectively groaned.
But the prosecution was up for the fight and sought to prove that Marten had on the contrary acted maliciously. Heneage Finch recalled the moment in Whitehall Palace when Cromwell and Marten marked one another’s faces with ink before signing the king’s death warrant:
Finch:
We shall prove against the prisoner at the bar (because he would wipe off malice), he did this very merrily, and was great sport at the time of the signing of the warrant for the king’s execution.
Marten:
That does not imply malice.13
After this, Marten based his defence solely on the fact that he had acted on instruction from the Parliament that existed at the time. In the same spirit, he would obey any Parliament; he would thus obey the present Parliament that had invited Charles II back and hence would be obedient to the king.
On the court’s stated position that the Rump was not a real Parliament, Finch asked the jury to find Marten guilty ‘out of his own mouth’.
The two men among the remaining prisoners who had not been signatories to the death warrant were Edmund Harvey and Sir Isaac Pennington. Harvey told the court he had not signed the warrant because he was against killing the king and had done all he could to argue against it. This was a reasonable argument. Pennington pleaded stupidity for sitting in the court in the first place, saying, ‘I knew not what I did.’ It was a wretched defence by a thoroughly wretched man.
Among the rest of the unhappy crew, Gilbert Millington changed his plea to guilty and asked for forgiveness, saying he had been ‘awed’ by the previous Parliament and court. Robert Tichborne did much the same, changing his plea to explain he had been led astray ‘by want of years’ (he was thirty-eight at the time). Owen Rowe pleaded ignorance, as did Robert Lilburne. Henry Smith claimed he couldn’t remember what he had signed.
Edmund Ludlow, who must have received the published court record in Switzerland, summed it all up well: ‘Some of them pleaded simply guilty; but others, though they acknowledged the guilt, denied the malice; and some confessing the fact, denied the guilt.’14
The court chose to ignore the fact that men like Marten had given themselves up under the king’s promise of clemency. Bridgeman recapped the evidence and, following a short discussion, the jury found all of the men guilty. They were returned to Newgate until the court decided what sentence awaited them. Ludlow said of the court’s decision, with particular reference to his friend Henry Marten: ‘the sentence of condemnation was passed against him; the convention making no provision for securing the lives either of him or the rest of the gentlemen that had been decoyed into the surrender of their persons, though they had implicitly promised them favour.’
The court finished its deliberations by considering the fate of the remaining members of the group: Augustine Garland, William Heveningham, Simon Meyne, Vincent Potter, James Temple, Peter Temple and Thomas Waite. They all resorted to similar arguments: that they now pleaded guilty but had been under duress or had misunderstood what they were involved in. All were declared guilty by the jury.
It was evening now. All that remained was the sentencing. The clerk ordered the sheriff’s officer to bring Sir Hardress Waller back to the bar. Waller had admitted his guilt on the very first day of the hearings, six days before. He was accompanied by George Fleetwood, the major-general who also had pleaded guilty. They were joined by all the others previously found guilty but not yet sentenced: Axtell, Hacker, Harvey, Hulet, Lilburne, Marten, Millington, Pennington, Rowe, Smith, Tichborne and Heveningham.
In an extraordinary last-minute development, Heveningham, the wealthy MP and religious radical, was told he should stand aside from the others, away from the bar. He was evidently not about to be sentenced. Heveningham was one of those who pleaded that he had been duped into participating in the trial and had not signed the king’s death warrant. The court had heard all this before. There was one possible reason why the case was suddenly set aside – the influence of Heveningham’s father-in-law, the wealthy and influential Earl of Dover. The earl seems to have let his son-in-law sweat before putting in a word.
With the light fading fast, Bridgeman made his speech to the guilty. He told them they belonged to three distinct categories. For the first group, the death penalty would be suspended until a further Act of Parliament; for the second, comprising Axtell and Hacker, there could be no mercy. The third category included only one member, William Heveningham, and here Bridgeman’s speech swerved from his usual direct and decisive manner. He became evasive. ‘I presume some time will be given to him to consider something relating to him before any order will be given for his execution,’ he offered.15 It was a clumsy cover-up. Bridgeman, who edited the court reports, did not even bother to insert a better choice of words for posterity.
Squinting to read his prepared text, Bridgeman complained about the light before sentencing all to death by hanging, drawing and quartering. In total, ten were actually executed. Harrison, Carew, Cook and Peters had already been disembowelled, leaving six still to be attended to. The next day, 17 October, John Evelyn recorded in his diary that the regicides died ‘in sight of the place where they put to death their natural prince, and in the presence of the king, his son, whom they also sought to kill’.16
So, if we can believe Evelyn, Charles was present and watched the executions. According to Evelyn – who had very good connections at the royal court – curiosity proved too much for Charles and he watched some of those who passed sentence on his father meet their terrible deaths. If this is the case, why did the courtiers not
record this interesting fact? It is impossible to say why a courtier such as Hyde might not have known about it and therefore recorded it, except out of fealty to Charles. Others might not have known of the presence of the king: perhaps he watched from the gallery in the Holbein Arch, which overlooked Charing Cross, or from an unmarked coach on the edge of the crowd. Either way, it was only natural that the king should wish to see those who had held the monarchy in such contempt pay with their lives.
Charles would not have cared much for the nuance that most of the men he now watched tortured to death did not detest the monarchy itself but had run out of patience with a duplicitous and obdurate king. Indeed, Cromwell and Ireton had once seen the younger Charles, when still Prince of Wales, as a substitute for his father. That had all ended with the second Civil War and the realisation by Cromwell and others that the king could never be trusted.
Now the men who had judged him to have been guilty of treason were paying dearly. Evelyn said of it: ‘I saw not their execution, but met their quarters, mangled and cut and reeking as they were brought from the gallows in baskets on the hurdle.’
The noxious smells from the gruesome executions led to petitions from local residents asking the king to remove the scaffold from Charing Cross. Perhaps, having witnessed the stench at first hand, Charles was more than receptive. Whatever the reason, the scaffold was moved more than a mile north-west to Tyburn, a traditional site of executions, situated at what is today Marble Arch.
On Friday, 19 October, ten days after the trial began, Colonel Axtell was hanged, drawn and quartered. The smell would not have reached Whitehall. His colleague Colonel Hacker was hanged. Though this form of execution was dreadful enough – the victim was left to dangle on a rope until he asphyxiated, rather than the modern technique of being dropped sharply to break his neck – he was spared the torture of disembowelling and castration. This may have been due to the loyalty of his brothers to the crown.
