© Richard Randall

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Sundries

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The tension was heightened when the Irish rebelled against Protestant English rule and rumours of Charles' complicity reached Parliament. An army was required to put down the rebellion but many members of the House of Commons feared that Charles might later use it against Parliament itself. The Militia Bill was intended to wrest control of the army from the King, but Charles refused to give up such an important part of his royal prerogative.

The House of Commons then threatened to impeach Charles' Catholic Queen, Henrietta Maria, finally leading the King to take desperate action. His wife persuaded him to arrest the five members of the House of Commons who led the anti-Stuart faction on charges of high treason, but, when the King had made his decision, she made the mistake of informing a friend who in turn alerted Parliament. Charles entered the House of Commons with an armed force on 4 January 1642, but found that his opponents had already escaped. By violating Parliament with an armed force, Charles made the breach permanent. Many in Parliament thought Charles's actions outrageous, but others had similar sentiments about the actions of Parliament itself. Several members of the House of Commons left to join the royalist party, leaving the King's opponents with a majority. It was no longer safe for Charles to be in London, and he went north to raise an army against Parliament; the Queen, at the same time, went abroad to raise money to pay for it.

Civil war

The English Civil War had not yet started, but both sides began to arm. After futile negotiations, Charles raised the royal standard (an anachronistic mediÊval gesture) in Nottingham on 22 August 1642. He then set up his court at Oxford, whence his government controlled roughly the north and west of England, Parliament remaining in control of London and the south and east. Charles raised an army using the archaic method of the Commission of Array. The Civil War started on 25 October 1642 with the inconclusive Battle of Edgehill and continued indecisively through 1643 and 1644, until the Battle of Naseby tipped the military balance decisively in favor of Parliament. There followed a great number of defeats for the Royalists, and then the Siege of Oxford, from which Charles escaped in April 1646. He put himself into the hands of the Scottish Presbyterian army at Newark, and was taken to nearby Southwell while his "hosts" decided what to do with him. The Presbyterians finally arrived at an agreement with Parliament and delivered Charles to them in 1647. He was imprisoned at Holdenby House in Northamptonshire, until cornet George Joyce took him by force to Newmarket in the name of the New Model Army. At this time, mutual suspicion had developed between the New Model Army and Parliament, and Charles was eager to exploit it.

He was then transferred first to Oatlands and then to Hampton Court, where more involved but fruitless negotiations went on. He was persuaded that it would be in his best interests to escape — perhaps abroad, perhaps to France, or perhaps to the custody of Robert Hammond, Parliamentary Governor of the Isle of Wight. He decided on the last course, believing Hammond to be sympathetic, and fled on 11 November. Hammond, however, was opposed to Charles, whom he confined in Carisbrooke Castle.

From Carisbrooke, Charles continued to try to bargain with the various parties, eventually coming to terms with the Scottish Presbyterians that he would allow the establishment of Presbyterianism in England as well as Scotland for a trial period. The Royalists rose in July 1648, and the Scots invaded, beginning the so-called "Second Civil War". The Scottish armies, however, were defeated within months, their final loss coming in August at the Battle of Preston.

Trial and execution

Charles was moved to Hurst Castle at the end of 1648, and thereafter to Windsor Castle. In January 1649, the House of Commons—without the assent of either the Sovereign or the House of Lords—passed an Act of Parliament creating a court for Charles's trial. The idea was a novel one; previous monarchs had been deposed, but had never been brought to trial as monarchs. The High Court of Justice established by the Act consisted of 135 Commissioners (all firm Parliamentarians); the prosecution was led by Solicitor General John Cook.

The King's trial (on charges of high treason and "other high crimes") began on 2 January, but Charles refused to enter a plea, claiming that no court had jurisdiction over a monarch. He believed that his own authority to rule had been given to him by God when he was crowned and anointed, and that the power wielded by those trying him was simply that which grew out of a barrel of gunpowder. The court was proposing that no man is above the law. Over a period of a week, when Charles was asked to plead three times, he refused. It was then normal practice to take a refusal to plead as pro confesso: an admission of guilt, which meant that the prosecution could not call witnesses to its case. Fifty-nine of the Commissioners signed Charles's death warrant, on 29 January 1649. After the ruling, he was led from St. James's Palace, where he was confined, to the Palace of Whitehall, where an execution scaffold had been erected in front of the Banqueting House.

When Charles was beheaded on January 30, 1649, a moan was heard from the assembled crowd, some of whom then dipped their handkerchiefs in his blood, thus starting the cult of the Martyr King. There is some historical debate over the identity of the man who beheaded the King, who was masked at the scene. It is known that the Commissioners approached Richard Brandon, the common Hangman of London, but that he refused, and contemporary sources do not generally identify him as the King's headsman. Ellis's Historical Inquiries, however, name him as the executioner, stating that he stated so before dying. It is possible he relented and agreed to undertake the commission, but there are others who have been identified. An Irish man named Gunning is widely believed to have killed the King, and a plaque naming him as the executioner is on show in Galway city in Ireland. William Hewlett was convicted of regicide after the Restoration. In 1661, two people identified as "Dayborne and Bickerstaffe" were arrested but then discharged. Henry Walker, a revolutionary journalist, or his brother William, were suspected but never charged. Various local legends around England name local worthies. Contemporary sources that reported one blow and the cut through vertebrae examined in 1813 at Windsor imply that the execution was done by an experienced headsman: Henri Brandon the Common Hangman of London, trained by his father and long experienced.

It was common practice for the head of a traitor to be held up and exhibited to the crowd with the words "Behold the head of a traitor!"; although Charles' head was exhibited, the words were not used. It might be, because William Hewlett, the inexperienced stand-by, did not know to do so. In an unprecedented gesture, one of the revolutionary leaders, Oliver Cromwell, allowed the King's head to be sewn back on his body so the family could pay its respects. Charles was buried in private and at night on 7 February 1649, in the Henry VIII vault inside St. George's Chapel in Windsor Castle. The King's son, King Charles II, later planned an elaborate royal mausoleum, but this never eventuated.

Ten days after Charles's execution, a memoir purporting to be from Charles's hand appeared for sale. This book, the Eikon Basilike (Greek: the "Royal Portrait"), contained an apologia for royal policies, and proved an effective piece of royalist propaganda. John Cooke published the speech he would have delivered if Charles had pled, while Parliament commissioned John Milton to write a rejoinder, the Eikonoklastes ("The Iconoclast"), but the response made little headway against the pathos of the royalist book.

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