6. Regicide trial, p200-201.
7. ibid, p205.
8. ibid, p226. Bridgeman directed them that ‘It is very plain he had a hand in this business. He was a principal agent in it, because he brought the King to the scaffold, he had the care of managing that business. He signed the warrant to the executioner. Either he is guilty of compassing the death of the King or no man can be said to be guilty.’
9. The trial of Hulet is in Regicide Trial, p227-240.
10. Speeches and Prayers, p28.
11. ibid, p30.
12. Descriptions by detractors, but credible at this point: see J. B. Williams (Muddiman), Notes and Queries, March 1913, p164-5.
13. Cooke’s final speech and prayer is excerpted from Speeches and Prayers, p30-38
14. See Mercurius Publicus¸11-18 October 1660, when Muddiman concedes that Cooke ‘carried himself at his execution much better than could be expected from one that acted such a part in that horrid arraignment of our late sovereign . . . taking notice of Hugh Peters (he) wished he might be reprieved because, at present, as he conceived, he was not prepared to die.’
15. Philippians 2, verses 17 & 18.
16. John Evelyn states that Cooke and others ‘suffered for the reward of their iniquities at Charing Cross, in sight of the place where they put to death their natural Prince and in the presence of the King his sonn whom they also sought to kill.’ Diary, ed Bray (London, 1818), p268. Evelyn muddles names and dates (e.g. this entry is for October 17, the day after Cooke’s execution) but his closeness to the King and the court gives credence to his report of Charles II’s attendance, at least for some of the week’s executions.
17. This is Ludlow’s version. Some royalist accounts have Peters dying ‘sullenly and desperately’; others admit that he pulled himself together with a short prayer. See Notes on Queries, March 1913, p164-5. There can be no dispute that his death was greeted with loud shouts and acclamations.
18. R v Marten, Regicide Trial, p245-51.
19. Pepys, Diary, above note 1, p268.
20. Letter from William Smith to John Langley, 20th October, 1660. See the Fifth Report of the Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts (London, 1876), p174.
21. Evelyn, Diary, p268.
22. Secretary of State Nicholas to Henry Bennet, October 18, 1660 ‘The heads of the traitors Harrison and Cooke are, by the King’s orders, fastened onto two poles and pitched on the north end of Westminster Hall.’
23. Pepys, Diary, ed Latham & Matthews (London, 1970), p269.
24. ibid, p270.
Chapter 20: Long Live the King
1. See F. A. Inderwick QC, The Regicides, in Sidelights on the Stuarts, (London, 1888), p294.
2. Rugg, Diurnall 1659-61, ed Sachse (London, 1961), p128.
3. Pepys, Diary, ed Latham & Matthews (London, 1970) Vol. II (1661), p283.
4. Mercurius Publicus, 31st January, 1661. There is no reference to the body of Thomas Pride, of ‘Prides Purge’ which was to have suffered the same fate. Doubtless it was in too poor a condition to serve as a prop in the macabre pantomime.
5. Rugg, Diurnal, above note 2, p151.
6. State Trials, Vol. V, p1337.
7. Mark Noble, Lives of the English Regicides, (London, 1798), Vol 1, p155.
8. St Martin’s church has an affecting tribute to Phelps, the court clerk, erected by descendants from Massachusetts. The remains of William Cawley, the Chichester MP and philanthropist who founded St Bartholomew’s hospital, were later removed from St Martin’s and brought to the family vault at Chichester cathedral.
9. State Trials, Vol. V, p1365 citing Hutchinson’s History of Massachusetts Bay.
10. Nicholas Murray, World Enough and Time: The Life of Andrew Marvell (London, 1999). Marvell took up Milton’s case, claiming that the £150 jail fees he was forced to pay were excessive, although given the alternative this financial penalty might be accounted poetic justice.
11. Willis Bund’s State Trials, (Cambridge, 1879-82), Vol. II, Part I, p339.
12. See Tongue’s Case, ibid, p381.
13. Northern Rising Trial, ibid, p383-6.
14. See Mark Noble, The Lives of the English Regicides, (London, 1798), Vol. I, p xliv-xlv.
15. Rasul v Bush, US Supreme Court (2004) 124 S.Ct. 2686, 159 L.Ed.2d 548. See judgement of Justice Stevens.
16. As early as 6 November, less than 3 weeks after the final trial, Pepys ‘found good satisfaction’ in reading this trial transcript: Diary, Vol I, 1660, p284.
17. Comparison between the official transcript and contemporaneous court reporting in Mercurius Publicus shows that Bridgeman cut out some of Cooke’s best moments – including his opening sally – and his own summing up attributes arguments and authorities to Cooke which do not appear in ‘An Exact Accompt . . .’ of Cooke’s speech. It is this version, edited by Bridgeman, that appears in State Trials.
18. Many historians who should know better actually claim that the regicide trials were fair: see e.g. Howard Nenner – ‘Bridgeman’s rulings and conduct of the proceedings at all times were legally and judicially correct’ (ODNB entry for Bridgeman, 2004) and Alfred Havinghurst: ‘A careful reading leaves a conviction that the accused had a normal hearing. Rules of procedure were carefully explained, the defendants were granted writing materials, and they were patiently heard in their own defence. Chief Baron Bridgeman took special pains to answer all questions’. The Judiciary and Politics in the Reign of Charles II – Law Quarterly Review, January 1950, p67. Even C. V. Wedgwood opines that ‘The trials of the Regicides were not grossly unfair . . . it is surprising that standards of justice and decency were, on the whole, upheld.’ The Trial of Charles I, (London, 1964), p219. These opinions are demonstrably wrong.
19. The trial of Twyn is reported in A Compleat Collection of State Tryals (London, 1719). He was convicted and executed for treason.
20. The trial of Thomas Brewster, reported in A Compleat Collection of State Tryals (London, 1719), p981.
21. Brewster the bookseller and Dover the printer both died in prison in April 1664, possibly from the plague. They stoutly refused to secure their freedom by naming others involved in the publication. Brewster was a republican and follower of Vane: over 3,000 people ‘of the same stamp’ attended his funeral: The Newes, 28 April 1664; Notes and Queries, September 13, 1913.
22. Charles II direction to trustees for Sir George Lane, 24 November 1660, Calendar of State Papers, Ireland, 1660-1662, p98. The King ordered that Lane was to have immediate possession: 14 March 1661 (CSP, 262).
23. There are records from Barwell Parish, near Burbage, which show that Mary Cooke, a widow, married John Shenton in 1669 and died in 1679. John Cooke’s last letter to Freelove (extract p333) urged obedience to her mother and ‘thy loving uncle and aunt Massey’ (Speeches and Prayers, p75). In 1680 Elizabeth Massey of Northampton, by now a widow, made a will leaving a bequest to her niece Freelove, ‘now the wife of John Gunthorpe of Antigua’. Gunthorpe was the island’s provost-martial, later a major and a member of Antigua’s parliament. In a land dispute in 1687 he was described in court papers as ‘son-in-law to that egregious trayter John Cook, solicitor to the pretended High Court of Justice against King Charles the Martyr . . .’ (see Vere L. Oliver, History of Antigua, Volume 3, p40). These traces give reason to believe that Freelove made a happy and fruitful life in the Caribbean: the Gunthorpes had a son (Robert) and other children. In the course of researching St Cross records I came across a curious postcard sent to the Master in 1913 by one Earnest Hampden-Cooke who presented him with a signed copy of the Regicide Trial and promised a portrait of Mr Justice Cooke. Mr Hampden-Cooke obviously aspired to be a descendant of John Cooke and probably of John Hampden as well. He is a curious figure – the author of a book explaining that the second coming of Christ has already been and gone. The Christ has Come (1891) is much discussed on American biblical websites run by preterists.
24. Anonymous, 1667, sometimes attributed to Edmund Waller; see BBC
History, October 2001, p18.
25. Blair Worden, Roundhead Reputations (London, 2001), p130.
26.Trial of Alice Lisle, in A Compleat Collection of State Trials (London, 1719) Vol. III, p489. The fugitive was a preacher, and Lisle said she did not realise he had fought for Monmouth. Jeffreys sentenced her to hanging, drawing and quartering. James I, almost as cruel, resisted all requests to commute her sentence but allowed her the indulgence of beheading.
27. Worden, above note 25, p133.
Epilogue
1. Edmund Ludlow, A Voyce from the Watchtower, ed. Worden (London, 1978), p229.
2. G. M. Trevelyan, England under the Stuarts, 12th Edition (London, 1925), p516.
3. Clarendon, History of the Rebellion, Vol. VI, (Oxford, 1888), p475 (paragraph 220).
4. A pamphlet attacking Cooke’s case against the King appeared in 1691, purporting to have been written by Samuel Butler, although it lacked the style and wit of the late author of Hudibras. Entitled The Plagiary Exposed or An Old Answer to a newly-devised calumny, it heavy-handedly rebuts some of the points in Cooke’s closing speech and claims that the civil war was started neither by the King nor by Parliament, but by the Scots. It is represented in The Somers Collection of Tracts Vol. 5 ed Walter Scott (London, 1811). It appears to be a royalist response to a renewed interest in the good old cause (‘There is risen amongst us a new race of the old Republican stamp who have revived the quarrel’). The pretence that Butler (who died in 1680) had written it in 1661 would help it sell.
5. See R. C. Richardson, The Debate on the English Revolution, Third Edition, (Manchester University Press, 1998), p88.
6. ibid, p59.
7. S. R. Gardiner, History of the Great Civil War (London, Windrush, 1987), p300.
8. Blair Worden, Roundhead Reputations (London, 2001), p244.
9. Keneth Rose, King George V, (London, 1983).
10. The standard site, ‘national curriculum material – History at Key Stage 3, Unit 8 – The Civil Wars, Department for Education and Skills, website. It is ironic that a nation with more history to be proud of than any other should undervalue its study. History is not compulsory for school study age 14 onwards, and parents are advised by the Department of Education that selecting it as a GCSE option will fit their children for a career as an ‘archivist, museum attendant or researcher’: Which Way Now (Dept Education and Skills, 2005) p10.
11. Donald Veall, The Popular Movement for Law Reform (Oxford, 1970).
12. Toby C. Barnard, Cromwellian Ireland: English Government and Reform in Ireland 1649-1660 (London, 1975).
13. A. L. Rowse, The Regicides and the Puritan Revolution, (London, 1994), p97-100. ‘Cooke removed superfluous offices and reduced fees, abolished judges’ fees and put them on a straight salary, combined equity and common law practice, and held assize sessions in the country. He also bent over backwards on behalf of the poor. In England Cooke actually pleaded that lawyers and physicians should remit every tenth fee to the poor. He ridiculed the enthronement of precedent – ‘this over-doting upon old forms’ – and the obfuscation of laws by antiquated language and procedure. He favoured the use of English law in cases, in place of the Anglo-Norman gibberish which gave the profession a trade union monopoly.’
14. G. E. Aylmer, G. E., The State and its Servants (London, 1973), p276.
15. Antonia Fraser, Cromwell Our Chief of Men, (Phoenix, 2001), p283.
16. ‘Charles I – Regicide and Republicanism’, History Today, (1996), 46:1, p29-34. However, Dr Barber perceptively discusses some of Cooke’s pamphlets in Regicide and Republicanism, (Edinburgh, 1998).
17. Derek Wilson, The King and the Gentleman (London, 1999), p416.
18. Christopher Hibbert, Charles I (London, 1968, repr 2001), p274.
19. Inderwick Q.C., Sidelights on the Stuarts, p290.
20. Mentorn Oxford Films, broadcast as part of Channel 4’s ‘Civil War Season’, in February 2005.
21. Suzanne Trill, Kate Chedzoy and Melanie Osborne, eds., Lay by your needles ladies, take the pen: writing women in England, 1500-1700 (London, 1997), p170. These authors offer no biographical details for Frances.
22. Mercurius Militarius, 17th – 24th April, 1649, p13, cited by Joad Raymond, Pamphlets and Pamphleteering in Early Modern Britain, (Cambridge, 2003), p305.
23. See Simon Schama, Citizens – A Chronicle of the French Revolution, (Harmondsworth, 1989), p659-661.
24. Versailles Treaty, Article 227. This recorded the allies’ agreement in principle to establish a court of 5 international judges to try the Kaiser, but U.S. policy ensured that it remained a dead letter. He lived happily in exile in Holland until his death in 1941.
25. Report 1st June 1945, Jackson to Truman. Anne and John Tusa, The Nuremberg Trial, (London, 1983), p66.
26. Robert E. Conot, Justice at Nuremberg, (London, 1983), p68.
27. See generally Geoffrey Robertson QC, Crimes against Humanity: The Struggle for Global Justice, 2nd ed. (London, 2002).
Index
The page references in this index correspond to the printed edition from which this ebook was created. To find a specific word or phrase from the index, please use the search feature of your ebook reader.
Act abolishing the office of King (1649) 205
Act Declaring England a Commonwealth (1649) 206
Act of Free and General Pardon, Indemnity and Oblivion (1660) 284, 288, 315, 316, 321, 343
Act of Settlement (1700) 354
Act to Establish the High Court of Justice (1649) 137–42, 144, 153
The Agreement of the People 99, 101
Allen, Sir Thomas (juror) 305
Annan, Kofi 363
Anne Boleyn 123, 132, 150
Annesley, Arthur 252, 280, 282, 290, 302, 305, 306, 329, 330, 331
Arbella (ship) 39
Army Council 132, 133, 182
Ascham, Anthony 210
Ashley Cooper, Anthony 252, 280, 290
Aske, John 142, 210, 225
Aston, Sir Arthur 229
Athlone 250
Attenborough, Richard 359
Axtell, Col. Daniel 179, 291, 297, 300, 329–31, 332, 340, 341, 343
Aylmer, G.E. 359
Bacon, Francis 24, 72
Banqueting House 198, 340
Barebone, Praise-God 247
Barebone’s Parliament 247, 248
Barkstead, Major General John 361
Barnehay 235, 282
Basing House 68
Bastwick, Dr John 47, 54, 253
Berkeley, Sir Robert 49
Beza, Theodore 39
Bill of Rights 41, 267, 306, 354
bin Laden, Osama 363
Bisse, John 280
Blair, Tony 3
Blake, Admiral Robert 28, 94, 255, 345
Bolingbroke, Henry 152
Booth, Sir George 264, 271
Bosworth Hall 23
Boyle, Dean Michael 238
Bradshawe, John 14, 16, 20, 85, 117, 134, 143, 146, 151, 153, 244, 246, 252, 256, 284, 297, 344, 345, 355, 356; initial exchanges with the king 155–9; and assasination bid 161; conduct of second session of trial 162, 165–8; expresses legality of the court 170–1; and evidentiary sessions 174; and sentence of conviction and death 178–81, 183–7; and trial of Hamilton 203; appointed president of Council of State 204; and Lilburne’s trial 220; death of 264, 273
Brandon, Richard (hangman) 332–3
Breda 244, 276
Brewster, Thomas (bookseller) 351–2
Brickenden, Thomas 30, 41
Bridgeman, Orlando 90, 129, 164, 316, 317, 341, 343, 350; and trial of the regicides 289, 291, 294–6, 297–300, 301, 303–7; attack on Cooke 319–21
Broghill, Lord 268, 275, 280, 304
Brougham, Lord Henry 314
Broughton, Andrew 17, 136, 142, 147, 155, 186, 277, 346, 358
Brunel, Isambard Kingdom 358
Buckingham, 2nd Duke of 269
Buckingham, George Villiers, 1st Duke of 23, 26, 28–9, 31,
32, 111
Burbage (Burbach) 21, 23, 378(n1)
Burden, Samuel (soldier) 311
Burford Church 218, 358
Burleigh, Captain 142
Burnet, Bishop 134
Burton, Dr Henry 47, 54
Bush, George W. 3
Cade, Jack 78
Calvin, John 38, 40
Calvinism, Calvinists 10, 22, 32, 92, 100, 245
Campbell, Lord John 315
Capel, Lord 114, 211–13, 217
Carew, John 297, 305, 328
Carisbrooke Castle (Isle of Wight) 101, 110, 113, 118, 129, 132, 142
Carlyle, Thomas 357
Caroline, Queen 314
Catherine of Braganza 24
Catholics 29, 42, 52, 55, 63, 67, 94, 230, 236, 239, 248, 251, 354, 358
Causton, Reverend 202
Cawley, 346
Cerdogni, Camillo, Album Amicorum 46
Chalgrove Field 64
Chancery 76, 81
A Charge of High Treason, and Other High Crimes 147–50
Charing Cross 1, 326, 328, 334, 339, 340
Charles I 66, 277, 294, 306, 354, 355, 361; portrait of 4; belief in divine ordination and absolute/hereditary monarch 6; kept prisoner 13; reasons for civil war 15; charges against 16–18, 136, 138–9, 147–50; marriage of 24; birth and childhood 25; and divine right of kings 25, 27, 124–5; self-celebrations of 27; and death of father 29–30; appointment of bishops/court favourites 32; character of 32; and forced loan 32–5; diatribe against his enemies 35; imprisons politicians 36; as unassailable 42; reproached by Protestants 46; and ship money 48–51, 124; and invasion of Scotland 51–4; curbed by Parliament 60–1; defied by Parliament 61–2; support for 63; declares war 64, 110–11; duplicity and unreliability of 65; conduct of the war 67–8; wariness of judges 83; resistance to diminution of prerogatives 88; rejects Parliament’s terms of settlement 91–2; secret scheming 95; escape from Hampton Court 100–1; and control of army 101–2; held at Carisbrooke 101; refuses to sign Parliamentary bills 102; secret negotiations with Scots 102, 110; negotiations with 115; removal to Hurst Castle 118; brought to trial 151–2; untroubled by deaths laid to his charge 168; asks for Peters to intercede with the court 172; belief in his own innocence 189–90; execution of 194–200, 201–3, 318, 358; identity of his executioners 332–3
The Tyrannicide Brief Page 52
