The following day, a Tuesday, the court met in the Painted Chamber. Analysing their predicament, they agreed the king should
be given yet another chance to plead. To encourage him, it was decided that Cook should ask the court to proceed speedily
to judgment. That, they reasoned, should focus the royal mind. And so they trooped off to Westminster Hall and the king was
sent for.
Once Charles was seated, Cook launched into a strenuous argument against any more time-wasting. Bradshaw asked Charles for
his final answer – guilty or not guilty?
It was hopeless. Charles announced that he wished to defend the ‘ancient laws of the kingdom’ and claimed that there was no
law that permitted his trial. He was almost right, except that he had not grasped the full nature of what was taking place.
The laws of England were being reinterpreted to allow the people to try a tyrant. The absolutist views of the Stuarts were
in direct conflict with previous ideas about the order of good government. Almost a hundred years before, a member of Queen
Elizabeth’s council had described England as a ‘commonwealth’ with a government made up of monarch, Council of State and Parliament.
20
Bradshaw wrapped up the public proceedings for another irksome
day. The court retired to the Painted Chamber. By now, their resolve had hardened.
On Wednesday, 24 January, the court sat in private in the Painted Chamber to take evidence from witnesses against the king.
A procession mainly of ordinary soldiers and civilians reported that they had seen the king raise his standard in declaration
of war or had seen him with his army at various battles. One witness described how the king had shown bad faith during the
negotiations at Newport by secretly trying to contact the Prince of Wales to raise an army. Evidence continued into the following
day.
On Friday morning, the commissioners met in private to discuss the draft sentence. Sixty-two commissioners answered the roll
call. Discussions over the exact form of the sentence continued until nightfall. In its final form, the sentence condemned
the king as a ‘tyrant, traitor, murderer and public enemy to be put to death by the severing of his head from his body’. It
was agreed that the court would reassemble in public in Westminster Hall at ten in the morning and read the sentence to the
king.
When the court assembled, Charles once again took everyone by surprise. Without waiting for Bradshaw to open the proceedings,
he began, ‘I desire a word to be heard a little and I hope I shall give no occasion for interruption.’
Bradshaw was taken aback. He was now dressed in red robes which made him look as if he were playing the role of a pope in
a bad charade. Mustering his dignity, he told the king he might be heard but first he had to hear the court. It was well known,
he said, that the king was charged with treason and other high crimes in the name of the people of England. At this, a woman
in one of the public galleries shouted out, ‘It is a lie – not half the people.’
21
Colonel Daniel Axtell, commander of the halberdiers guarding the king, reacted swiftly, ordering his men to direct their
guns at the woman. He shouted, ‘What whore is that who disturbs the court?’ It was later claimed that this was Lady Fairfax
once more. Although this is likely, there is no real evidence. The galleries were searched but
the woman had disappeared. Order restored, the court continued. Bradshaw informed the king that the court would hear anything
he had to say in his defence. Charles replied that he wished to speak in the Painted Chamber before both the House of Commons
and the House of Lords. At this, one of the commissioners, John Downes, spoke out. In all the hearings, he was the only commissioner
to break the rule agreed from the outset that no one but the Lord President should speak. Rising from his seat, he asked,
‘Have we hearts of stone? Are we men?’
22
Cromwell, who was sitting in the row in front of Downes, turned round and swiftly rebuked him. ‘Art thou mad?’ he asked. Bradshaw
ordered an adjournment. The king was escorted back to Sir Robert Cotton’s house. The sixty-seven commissioners present filed
out of the hall and through to the Court of Wards, situated just beyond the south door.
Phelps appears to have made no record of what occurred in the Court of Wards. Most likely, Downes was stoutly put down by
Cromwell so that the court could regain its united face and go back into the great hall to pronounce sentence.
Half an hour later, the judges filed in and the king was called. Once Charles was seated, Bradshaw told him that the court
was resolved to proceed to judgment. In response Charles asked that they consider delaying – ‘a little delay of a day or two
further may give peace, whereas an hasty judgment may bring on that trouble and perpetual inconveniency for the kingdom’ –
so that he might be heard in the Painted Chamber before the Commons and the Lords.
Bradshaw tersely answered that if the king had no more to say the court would proceed to judgment. To this, Charles replied,
‘I have nothing more to say.’
Broughton rose, unrolled a parchment and began: ‘He, the said Charles Stuart, as a tyrant, traitor, murderer, and a public
enemy, shall be put to death by the severing of his head from his body.’
Charles listened in dignified silence while the sentence was read out. When it was finished, Bradshaw said, ‘The sentence
read and
now published is the act, sentence, judgment and resolution of the whole court.’
At this, on a prearranged signal, the whole body of judges rose as one to show their unanimous agreement with the sentence.
After they had sat down, the king spoke very quietly:
‘Will you hear me a word, sir?’
Bradshaw replied, ‘Sir, you are not to be heard after the sentence.’
For the first time, Charles reacted with passion and cried, ‘No, sir!’
Then Bradshaw said, ‘No, sir, by your favour, sir. Guard, withdraw your prisoner!’
By refusing to allow the king to speak after the sentence was read, Bradshaw was correctly, but brutally, applying the rules
of the time. In seventeenth-century England, last words were reserved for the scaffold.
23
Hacker ordered his men to form a guard around Charles to take him away. Charles again said, ‘I may speak after the sentence.
By your favour, sir, I may speak after the sentence ever.’
As the guards clustered around him, Charles became clearly distressed. He shouted, ‘By your favour, the sentence, sir … I
say sir, I do … I am not suffered for to speak: expect what justice other people will have!’
In this pitiful manner, the trial ended. Charles was escorted from the hall. Soldiers lining the stairs and corridors shouted
‘Justice! Justice!’ and jeered at him. Some soldiers blew smoke from their pipes in his face. Others spat on him. Regaining
his composure, Charles said, ‘Poor souls, for a piece of money they would so for their commanders.’
He was led to Sir Robert Cotton’s house and then to Whitehall Palace to await his execution. The following day, the public
galleries, the commissioners’ benches and the king’s velvet chair were taken away. The booksellers and lawyers reclaimed their
places, stalls were set up and people gossiped where history had just been made. The court received notice that the king wished
to see his children, the Duke of Gloucester and Lady Elizabeth, and Dr Juxon, the Bishop of London. In its final decision,
the court granted the king’s wishes.
When the trial ended, a committee of the court met in the Painted Chamber to agree on arrangements for the execution. A warrant
was drawn up, instructing three colonels – Hercules Huncks, Robert Phayre and Francis Hacker – to organise the king’s death
by ‘the severinge
[sic]
of his head from his body’.
According to parliamentary records, the death warrant was ready to sign on Monday, 29 January, though there is good evidence
that it was in fact ready by the evening of the final day of the trial two days before and that as many as twenty-nine commissioners
signed it then.
24
Out of the sixty-seven commissioners present on the sentencing, fifty-seven went on to sign the warrant by the end of Monday.
Two commissioners who were not present at the court’s final sitting also signed the warrant: Thomas Challoner and Richard
Ingoldsby. A famous story is told that Cromwell and the republican Harry Marten daubed ink on one another’s faces while signing.
Though their signatures are so far apart on the warrant that they may not have signed at the same time, there is a good source
for this colourful tale.
25
The ten commissioners present at the final day of the trial who did not sign were all regular participants in the work and
sittings of the court, with the exception of Colonel Tomlinson, whose duties as officer in charge of the king’s person throughout
the trial precluded his participation except when the king was present. A. W. McIntosh has suggested the absence of signatures
should not be taken as signifying any diminution of purpose. However, Nicholas Love, who helped draft the sentence, was later
to claim, self-servingly, that he had wished for more discussion before actually moving to the delivery of the sentence.
26
Over the years, there has been a great deal of speculation about the manner in which some signatures were obtained. While
it is undoubtedly true that Cromwell drummed up signatories, there is no evidence to support the contention that some commissioners
were forced to sign. Neither is there any evidence that some signatures were forged.
The warrant itself shows us that the first to sign was the president of the court, John Bradshaw. He was followed by Thomas,
Lord Grey of Groby, the MP for Leicester. Grey was given prominence because he was the only peer to sit as a commissioner.
His signature immediately precedes that of Oliver Cromwell. As the signatures mounted on the parchment, they became increasingly
bunched up, until there was space for barely three or four more – perhaps the reason more commissioners did not sign, nor
were asked to sign.
The warrant stipulated that the execution was to take place in Whitehall between ten o’clock in the morning and five o’clock
in the afternoon, so that it could be carried out in daylight. The date was set for Tuesday, 30 January 1649 – the following
day.
29 January—7 February 1649
Throughout the freezing night the carpenters worked hard to finish the scaffold ready for use in the morning. The noise echoed
around Whitehall and across the frozen Thames to the hovels on the far shore. It penetrated the locked and guarded room in
St James’s Palace and woke the man for whom the structure was being built. Sitting up, he pulled back the heavy curtains surrounding
his bed. Cold air rushed around his face. By the light of the large candle left burning through the night he read the dial
of the little silver clock hanging on the bedpost. It was just after five o’clock on the morning of 30 January 1649. Charles
Stuart, appointed by God as king of England, Scotland and Ireland, counted his last hours on earth.
St James’s Palace had been built by Henry VIII on the site of a hospital dedicated to the patron saint of lepers. Most of
Charles’s children were born in the palace. Now he was to be led from it to his death. A court whose authority he had refused
to recognise had sentenced him to be executed for crimes against the people. As Charles got out of bed, his servant, Sir Thomas
Herbert, woke from his mattress where he had been sleeping beside the king’s bed. For more
than two years while the king was in custody, Herbert had served as Charles’s gentleman of the bedchamber. During that time
he had, though a parliamentarian himself, grown fond of the king, whose good humour in the face of adversity had impressed
many who came into contact with him.
With Herbert’s help, Charles began to dress meticulously. In his memoirs, Herbert would famously tell how the king insisted
on wearing two white shirts, so he would not shiver in the freezing air upon the scaffold and give the impression he was afraid.
1
Herbert groomed Charles’s hair fastidiously and trimmed his beard. Though he had been appointed by Parliament, a diplomatic
career had equipped him with the social graces necessary to serve a king. He had been present the day before while the king
heartbreakingly took leave of his two youngest children. The scene that followed was said to have reduced Cromwell to tears.
At the outbreak of war, Princess Elizabeth and Henry, Duke of Gloucester, had been taken into custody by Parliament. They
spent the following years in the care of various families, including those of the Earl of Pembroke and the Duke of Northumbria.
At the time of their father’s execution, Elizabeth was thirteen and Henry eight. The king had not seen them for eighteen months.
He told Elizabeth she was no longer to think of her eldest brother, Charles, merely as her sibling, but as her sovereign.
Then he said, ‘Sweetheart, you’ll forget this.’
2
Elizabeth burst into tears and swore she would not forget, and that she would write down what her father told her – and so
she did:
He told me he was glad I was come, and although he had not time to say much … he told me, he had forgiven all his Enemies,
and hoped God would forgive them also; and commanded us, and all the rest of my Brothers and Sisters to forgive them: he bid
me tell my Mother, That his thoughts never had strayed from her, and that his love should be the same to the last …
Charles also had serious matters to discuss with young Henry:
he took the Duke of Gloucester upon his knee, said, Sweetheart, now they will cut off thy Fathers head; (upon which words
the child looked very steadfastly on him.) Mark child, what I say, they will cut off my head, and perhaps make thee a King:
But mark what I say, you must not be a King so long as your Brother Charles and James do live; For they will cut off your
Brothers heads, (when they can catch them) and cut off thy head too at the last … At which the child, sighing, said, ‘I will
be torn in pieces first’. At these words, coming so unexpectedly from so young a child, rejoiced my father exceedingly.
And desired me not to grieve for him, for he should die a Martyr …
In The Hague, the Prince of Wales was frantically trying to bring pressure to have the execution abandoned. He wrote personally
to Fairfax, pleading for mercy for his father. He also asked the States-General (the Dutch Parliament) for help. As a result,
two Dutch ambassadors came and made direct representations to Parliament. At the prince’s request, the French ambassador also
made a plea for mercy on behalf of Queen Henrietta Maria. Despite all this activity, the prince would later be criticised
for not having travelled across Europe to solicit help directly from the crowned heads of as many states as possible. But
the prince had done what he thought he should, though what he did was to no avail.
When daybreak came, the outlines of the frozen city were etched in frost. Europe was descending to the lowest trough of what
was to become known as the Little Ice Age. The officer in charge of the king’s guard, Colonel Tomlinson, came to check on
his prisoner. Through the barred windows the pallid morning light barely illuminated the room. Tomlinson saw that the king
was ready. He was dressed in black, apart from the white lace of his shirts. As at his trial, he wore only two decorations:
the Order of the Garter on his cloak
and also on a ribbon around his neck. Against his funereal clothing, their symbolic brilliance made it clear that he saw himself
as England’s martyr.
Less than a mile away across St James’s Park, muffled masses were already making their way towards Whitehall Palace to witness
the execution. From Charing Cross they pressed under the palace’s massive red-brick Tudor gate towers and gathered around
the scaffold erected against the Palladian façade of the royal Banqueting House. At ten o’clock a company of halberdiers commanded
by Colonel Francis Hacker arrived at the palace to take Charles on his final journey. At this point, Colonel Tomlinson relinquished
his role as the king’s jailer; Charles was now in the care of Colonel Hacker.
The procession left the palace for the short journey to Whitehall. Their route took them through St James’s Park. Unlike today,
the park was enclosed and forbidden to the public. When Charles was a boy, it had been a zoo, set up by his father. There
had been camels and even an elephant. In the lake, crocodiles had lurked. Now the lake was frozen over. All the animals had
long since gone. A regiment of infantry now lined the route. The royal procession made a grand, if melancholy, sight. It was
led by Colonel Hacker. The king was flanked by Bishop Juxon and Colonel Tomlinson, while immediately before and behind him
walked his gentlemen-in-waiting, escorted by a company of halberdiers. Bright regimental banners fluttered incongruously against
the skeletal trees. Drummers beat a rhythm like a dying heart.
When the entourage arrived at Whitehall Palace it became clear there was a hitch in the arrangements: death was not to be
so swift. The king was placed under guard in the ornate cabinet-chamber which in happier times had been an anteroom to his
bedroom. There was a fire burning in the grate and on the walls hung some of the finest paintings from Charles’s peerless
art collection, which included masterpieces by Rembrandt, Caravaggio and his favourite, Titian. There were portraits of Charles,
among them those by the
incomparable wizard Anthony Van Dyck, who had done more than anyone to give Charles the appearance of a divine king.
Among Van Dyck’s portraits, the famous triple-head is interesting in the present context. It was produced to be sent to Italy
so that the finest sculptor of the age, Gian Lorenzo Bernini, could carve a bust of the king. When he saw the painting, Bernini
said the sitter was the saddest person he had ever seen and must surely die a violent death. Not only did the sculptor’s prophecy
come true but his marble bust also had a violent end, perishing in the accidental fire that destroyed Whitehall Palace in
1698.
While Charles lingered among his paintings, Parliament had urgent business. Legal minds had discovered a problem. It had dawned
on them that with the king’s death there was nothing to stop the Prince of Wales inheriting the throne. So, as the doomed
king toasted his all too mortal toes by the fire, the judges hurried to pass a law stating there could be no successor. They
made it illegal for anyone to declare the prince as king.
There was an even more pressing problem: the appointment of an executioner. Given the nature of the prisoner, the executioner
could not be called for until the morning when the sentence was to be carried out. At the order of Colonel Hewson, troops
went to the house of the public executioner, Richard Brandon, and found him at home; but his assistant Ralph Jones could not
be found. So a very reluctant Brandon was taken alone under arrest with what equipment he could carry, and someone still had
to be found to fill in for the headsman’s assistant. It was to remain a matter of conjecture whether Brandon, who brought
the axe, was the man who wielded it.
Poised between life and death, the king prayed with Bishop Juxon. He pledged to God his forgiveness of those who were determined
to obliterate the House of Stuart. It was one thing for a condemned king to forgive; as would soon become apparent, however,
it was quite another for his heirs or followers to do the same.
While Oliver Cromwell and his closest companions patented the
formula to make their revolution stick, another last-ditch drama was being played out around the condemned monarch. General
Fairfax received a letter delivered by a courier from the Prince of Wales. When the general opened the envelope, he found
two items. One was a piece of parchment, blank except for the prince’s signature and seal. The other was a letter explaining
the meaning of the blank sheet: in return for his father’s life, the prince explained, the general could write his own terms,
which he, as the heir to the throne, would see were obeyed. These were the heartfelt pleadings of a son to his enemies intent
on executing his father,
deposing him from the royal dignity given him by God alone, who invested his person with it by a succession undisputed, or
even of taking his life; the mere thought of which seems so horrible and incredible that it has moved us to address these
presents to you, who now have power, for the last time, either to testify your fidelity, by reinstating your lawful king,
and to restore peace to the kingdom – an honour never before given to so small a number as you – or be the authors of misery
unprecedented in this country …
3
The Prince of Wales was nothing if not thorough in his pleading. But the army had had enough of trying to do deals with the
House of Stuart.
For his part, Charles felt his downfall was due not to misrule but to a bad deed regarding Strafford. The betrayal had gnawed
at him ever since. Sitting as a prisoner in his own bedroom, he resolved to say something about it on the scaffold.
There was another hold-up. A day or two before, Cromwell had found it a slow job to obtain sufficient signatories to the king’s
death warrant. Now he was having difficulty getting signatures on the order for the executioner to carry out the sentence.
The death warrant instructed three officers – Colonels Hacker, Huncks and Phayre (who was Herbert’s son-in-law) – to ensure
that sentence was carried
out. Now Huncks and Phayre refused to sign the order. In exasperation, Cromwell signed it himself and passed it to Hacker,
who also signed.
Shortly before two o’clock, the military guard came to take Charles to the scaffold, escorting their prisoner through the
maze of corridors linking parts of the old palace, constructed piecemeal over several centuries. At this point, Colonel Tomlinson
had no further part in the proceedings but the king asked him to accompany him to the scaffold, to which Tomlinson agreed.
4
A staircase led them into the imposing Holbein Gatehouse, built by Henry VIII to straddle Whitehall so that he could reach
his cockpits and tilt-yard without having to enter the street. Now Charles and his escorts took the same route to cross Whitehall
unseen by the crowds swarming below.
In a throng of soldiers, parliamentarians and hangers-on, Charles emerged into the echoing volume of Inigo Jones’s Banqueting
House, with its celebrated ceiling painted by Peter Paul Rubens. The ceiling was a glorious affirmation of the divine right
of the House of Stuart to rule. Above the doomed king’s head his father ascended gloriously into heaven, stepping from earth
onto the wing of an eagle clutching a thunderbolt in its talons. Charles was up there too, depicted as an infant with the
Roman goddess Minerva holding a crown above his head, indicating his divinely ordained succession.
The great chamber had played host to many royal revelries and masques, attended by the court or by foreign ambassadors. After
many years of war, the great chamber’s windows were still boarded up, obscuring its extravagance in a funereal gloom. One
window was open, its frame ripped out to allow a temporary flight of steps to lead up and out to the scaffold built against
the outer wall. Before climbing the stairs, Charles said goodbye to Tomlinson, who had been his jailer since he was taken
to Windsor. As a memento, Charles gave Tomlinson a gold toothpick in a case.
5
At two o’clock, the king emerged from the Banqueting House. The huge crowd surged forward but was pushed back by lines of
cavalry and infantry. Across the square, Oliver Cromwell looked on from a window in the palace. Staring around him, Charles
realised that a circle of troops kept the crowd too far back for them to hear his speech. This was a blow: his last words
– those he had wished to speak in Westminster Hall following his sentence – would have to be addressed to the group standing
on the scaffold. Among them were Colonel Hacker, Bishop Juxon, some soldiers and the heavily disguised executioner and his
assistant, wearing masks and false beards, like pantomime villains but for their very lethal axe.
Following established protocol, the condemned man addressed the crowd as best he could. He began by protesting that he had
not waged war on Parliament and so was innocent: it was Parliament which had waged war upon him. He declared that his death
was God’s judgment and, alluding to the Strafford affair, said that one unjust sentence was being punished by another. He finished
by proclaiming that he was going from a corruptible to an incorruptible crown, adding wistfully, ‘Where no disturbance can
be, no disturbance in the world.’ For a monarch whose reign had encompassed more disorder than any since the Wars of the Roses
it was a reasonable sentiment. For a man with one eye on the block and the other on posterity, it was a well-judged speech
– the words of a martyr.